Games Workshop dropped a pile of freebies on us players last week, which included the warscrolls and fighter cards for 13 returning warbands. These warbands have all been recently released in the previous edition of Underworlds, so if you’ve been keeping up with the game in the last year or so, there’s a chance you have some of these models kicking around. You’re in luck because combined with these new (free) rules, they’re fully ready to take into this new edition of the game.
I’m going to take a look at all of these new fighter cards and accompanying warscrolls, plus share my first take of a deck for at least one of the warbands in each of the grand alliances. These will be first draft decks since I haven’t had a chance to take all of them out for a spin yet, but can at least serve as a starting point. If you want to check out the other grand alliances in this release, you can find those articles here:
Chaos Warbands
Destruction Warbands
Order Warbands
Death Warbands
Death is one of my favorite grand alliances in Age of Sigmar. The models are all so flavorful and there’s just something right about a good ol’ spooky skeleton or ghost. What can I say? I really dig necromancy. I’d love to take a class titled Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone. In this release, we have four returning warbands that were all released or re-released fairly recently in the previous version of Underworlds. There’s the Sepulchral Guard, who have been around since the first season of the game and released multiple times in starter sets. There’s the Thorns of the Briar Queen, another warband from early in the history of the game that also caught an update later in the life of first edition. Zondara’s Gravebreakers were one of the most flavorful warbands released in the previous edition, and they return with a surprising amount of that story and feel on their warscroll. Finally, we have one of the very last warbands released before Embergard came around – the Skinnerkin, who are here to cook up a treat. No more time to waste – let’s dig in!
The Sepulchral Guard are a wonderful representation of an unending skeletal horde – they’re slow, they’re not terribly threatening on their own, but they keep coming back (and back and back…) after being slain. Embergard brought along major changes to how raising fighters works, and of all the warbands in the game it seems likely that Sepulchral Guard are going to feel these changes the most. As a refresher, when a fighter is slain you must discard all their upgrades and uninspire them. When a fighter is raised, their bounty is set to zero.
Raising is the name of the game, and that’s also how this entire warband inspires. Each individual skeleton (aside from your leader) will inspire once they’ve been brought back. Once you’ve managed to do this a few times, your leader will also inspire.
Speaking of the Warden, the next two warscroll abilities require him to be alive (er… undead?) and to not have a charge token. Since they have the Underworlds skull icon, these are core abilities meaning they will take up one of your turns when you elect to use them. Forward! allows you to move two fighters in one turn – this is breaking the action economy of the game in half. One of the defining rules of Underworlds is that each player is only ever going to get to take 12 turns, so your Warden effectively allowing you to double dip on the amount of turns you have access to is huge. Granted, the skeletons are all slow as hell but being able to move two at once is strategy defining.
Pairing with the previous ability is Arise! Using this ability will bring back two slain fighters into empty starting hexes in your territory, then ding them for 1 damage each. Since all of your non-leader fighters only have 2 health, they’re coming back inspired but vulnerable. This sounds like a big drawback, but given the amount of restrictions on 1 damage effects not being able to target vulnerable fighters, they are not quite as endangered as it may seem.
The next three abilities are all once-per-game effects, and all revolve around combat. The first is Grasping Hands, which is a solid one-shot boost to accuracy. Moving a swords attack (succeeding on 2 of 6 dice faces) to a surrounded swords attack (succeeding on 4 of 6 dice faces) is quite a nice accuracy boost and works especially well on the fighters rolling more dice. You’re not going to be dealing a phenomenal amount of damage with any of the skeletons barring some extra power card based oomph, but being able to land an attack can also help guarantee a drive back to free up a treasure token.
Relentless Blows is their second ability that can only be used once per game. This will require some setup, but if you fail an attack with one fighter, you can use this ability to make an attack against the same enemy fighter with another of your skeletons. Upgrades that grant ranged attacks will make this a little more reliable to get off, but it’s still not something that’s going to usually change the game to your favor when it goes off. A bunch of range 1, mediocre attacks aren’t going to suddenly become threatening if you can try again (with stipulations).
Bone Shrapnel is the final ability here, and it’s ending us on a higher note. This ability lets you pop a skeleton when it dies to deal a damage to the enemy that did the killing blow. Amusingly, there is no range restriction here – this shrapnel can really travel.
All the fighters here start on 2 move and inspire to 3. Since the Forward! ability has your fighters move (and not push a set amount like another warband we’ll talk about), they’ll be able to cover more ground once they’ve been flipped. Despite being a 7 fighter warband where every fighter is worth 1 bounty, your leader is tremendously important. You cannot do double moves, nor can you raise once the Warden goes down. Protecting the warden is going to determine how well you do in games with the Sepulchral Guard. His attacks are more or less the standard middle grade attacks for a leader – R1/H2/D2 and R2/H2/D1. He gains a nice damage boost when inspired, but you’re honestly not going to be making too many attacks with this guy. When push comes to shove, he can at least fight back though. Defensively, the Warden only has 4 health and 1 block no matter his inspiration status. Finding upgrades or ploys to bolster his survivability and shuffle him off somewhere safe will be important to keep in mind when choosing pairings for this warband.
The rest of the peanut gallery can be divided up into the named skeletons (The Prince of Dust, The Champion, The Harvester) and the three Stooges Petitioners (Inevitable, Zealous, Rising). All of these bone bozos have 2 health, 2 move (3 inspired), and 1 save dice so they’re not held together too well, but they can be bodies on the battlefield. The three named fighters have decent attacks – R1/H2/D2 or R1/S3/D2 aren’t going to win awards for offensive profiles, but they’re fairly reliable especially if you can get some flanked or surrounded bonuses when making attacks. They also each inspire to get marginally better, picking up a weapon runeword each. The three Petitioners are all identical and not something you’re going to be wanting to roll attack dice with unless you’re all out of options. Their weapon profiles of 2 swords (3 swords inspired) for a single damage isn’t getting a lot done.
So if these bone daddies are so squishy and not very threatening in combat, what do they excel at? Why, moving! As long as it isn’t too far. They’ve traditionally been played as a warband that focuses on standing on treasure tokens and earning their glory that way, resurrecting any skeletons that die and just throwing themselves at the hexes on the board. This is also what Games Workshop thinks they’re best suited for as indicated by their Take and Hold role. However, their warscroll abilities focus more on fighting, and the new board makes it incredibly hard for the Warden to safely sit in the back lines. I’ve played a couple of games against this warband so far, and in each of them there simply wasn’t anywhere safe for the Warden to hide. I haven’t played using the Sepulchral Guard yet, but if I were I would likely try building a deck out of Pillage & Plunder and Countdown to Cataclysm – both of these decks offer a few defensive upgrades for your Warden, movement buffs for everyone else, and you can focus on delving treasures instead of trying to stand on them and not die.
Next up are the Thorns of the Briar Queen, another 7 fighter warband that Games Workshop has also classified as Take and Hold. Let’s see how they shape up, especially when compared to the skellingtons above.
The Thorns will each inspire if they begin one of your turns adjacent to an enemy fighter. Their fairly average move value isn’t doing you favors if the enemy wants to play keep away, but having fly on every single model will at least prevent you from blocking yourself in. The ideal situation would be to use a power card to position yourself adjacent to an enemy during your opponent’s power step, so you can start a turn with an inspired model ready to go. Otherwise you’re going to have to rely on charging, moving, or Soul Warden to get into place and then (hopefully) weather one of your opponent’s turns before benefiting from the inspire.
Speaking of Soul Warden, this is a once per battle round core ability. You can push up to 2 of the minions (so anything other than The Briar Queen or Varclav) up to 2 hexes, then have the option to give the pushed models a charge token. Of note, this ability isn’t tied to any of your models. In previous editions, Varclav had this ability so if he was slain, you’d lose access to it. Now you can continue to push your chainrasps around regardless of whether your leader or her lieutenant is still around. Pushing means you’re not going to be able to benefit from fly, which is something I’ve caught myself up on a few times in the past. Just throwing that out there as a heads up in case you’re anything like me.
“But Jake,” my hypothetical reader asks, “why would you want to give your models a charge token?” Great question. Aside from creating scenarios where you can access being “charged out,” Wave of Terror is the third ability on their warscroll and it’s a way for this warband to increase their accuracy. You already want to be trying to set up flanked attacks, and this just turns those flanked attacks into a full surround – increasing your chances of a success on every dice rolled by about 16%. None of these fighters are particularly accurate, so getting any increased chances of landing hits is welcome.
Moving on to the first of their four once per game abilities, we have Stare of Death. Stopping a particular fighter from charging for a turn can be handy, but it’s also worth watching for a situation in which you can get a stare off onto their last fighter who hasn’t charged this round. If that happens, none of the previously charged fighters can act, and the last remaining fighter can’t charge. It’s still going to suffer against opponents who have sufficient ranged attack options, those with high enough movement values to stay out of reach before they charge, or opponents who have gameplans other than ABC – Always Be Charging.
Endless Malice is next. I don’t want to draw too many direct comparisons between warbands, but this really feels like the Sepulchral Guard’s Relentless Blows but better. If you fail an attack, you get to try again. No extra strings attached. Useful for when you really need to try and finish off a fighter or drive them back off of a treasure token.
Spectral Touch is another attack-based ability that will boost your accuracy. Granting cleave or ensnare to any attack is likewise going to help you push through that vital swing in a clutch moment. Just keep in mind that you can only ever choose one weapon runemark, so if you elect to use this on the inspired Briar Queen, you will have to choose between her critical grievous ability, cleave, or ensnare – you can’t get more than one.
Finally, we have Throttle, which continues the theme of accuracy boosting. This time it’s in the form of a pretty unreliable and conditional stagger token – each enemy fighter adjacent to one of your minions has a 33% chance of getting staggered. That’s not reliable at all, so I wouldn’t suggest counting on this to do much work. Fire it off when you can but don’t bank on it landing.
Getting into the fighter cards now, I immediately noticed every single fighter starts on 2 dodge. With critical successes no longer trumping any number of non-crit successes, this feels fair while still being a strong save value that benefits well from guard. As mentioned before, they all fly which helps maneuverability and all start on 3 move that inspire to 4. The entire warband is quite fragile, with the Queen and Varclav sitting at 3 health and all the minions at a measly 2; plus, unlike the Sepulchral Guard, these ghosts have no way of returning once they are slain.
Offensively, the Briar Queen has a twist on the standard attack profile we’ve seen many leaders get – she has a R1/S3/D2 profile for up close and a R2/S3/D1 to reach a bit further. When inspiring, the swords change to hammers and her R1 profile gains critical grievous. She’s no slouch, but it’s not exactly a pain train to offset her fragility. Varclav is less flexible, having only R1/H2/D2 that gains another dice on inspiring. The rest of the chainrasps are sporting 2 swords for their attacks which is pretty rough. The Ever-Hanged at least is 2 damage while the rest are a measly 1, but those aren’t very reliable attacks anyway. The Ever-Hanged does become more accurate–especially against dodge fighters–once inspired with the change to 2 hammers and ensnare. The remaining 4 minions split between inspiring to S3/D2 or H2/D2 – not bad for being dinky minions, but they do have to inspire to reach these profiles.
If you can work any guard tech in, I feel like this warband has a decent shot at filling the Take and Hold role. I don’t think it’s ideal, but I would like to give them a shot as a sort of swarm aggro warband a couple of times – gambling on the 2 dodge to keep them safe after a charge and trying to just stack bodies around your targets. Again, I don’t believe this is where they’d shine but I’m a simple man and charging with ghosts sounds fun.
True love. Zondara and Ferlain were a couple, but Ferlain was cursed and turned into a savage beast. Zondara delved into necromancy to try and find ways to undo this curse. With her three cobbled-together zombies in tow, she won’t stop searching until she finds a way to return her love to his true form. I really enjoy the flavor of this warband and it was such an accomplishment that the rules designers in the previous edition were able to translate their story into solid mechanics. I was initially wary on whether the same flavor could be condensed down to fit onto a warscroll, but I believe Games Workshop managed it!
Zondara and Ferlain, the warband’s two destined fighters, have their own inspire mechanic while their undead minions have a separate one. A destined fighter will inspire immediately after the other destined fighter has been given their second of subsequent upgrade. Cracktomb, Toyle, and Pikk will each inspire once they have been given a raise token. Pretty clear here, and gives you goals to work towards.
Gravebreakers is their first surge ability. After one of your minions delves a feature token, you can use Gravebreakers. Gravebreakers itself doesn’t do anything, but it does give you the option to either let that delving minion Unearth or your leader can Exhume. Both of those abilities are covered in a moment.
Destined, weirdly, is an ability name as well as a runemark for Zondara and Ferlain. The ability acts as a sort of power up to one of the lovers should their counterpart be slain during the game. Getting +1 move and +1 attack dice for free if your opponent decides to take out one of your most capable fighters is quite a consolation prize, and one that can swing things in your favor.
Undying Love is the other surge ability on the warscroll. Currently, there’s a bit of a problem because it’s a surge but nowhere in the text does it tell you when you can use it. Hopefully this will be addressed shortly by Games Workshop, but if I had to guess I’d assume it would be during a power step in lieu of playing a power card. Regardless, the ability itself is flexible and has potential to be very impactful. You can only use it if both Zondara and Ferlain are still around, but it allows for a heal and a massive 3 hex push (towards the other fighter). Phenomenal for pulling one of the two back into safety if they overextend, or calling in support.
Exhume is next and ties back into the Gravebreakers surge mentioned earlier. If you delve with a minion and Zondara is still on the battlefield, you can use this ability to raise a slain friendly minion. They’ll pop up adjacent to whichever other minion delved and then inspire. With Destined being punishment for your opponent to kill your destined fighters, Exhume makes killing the minions unappealing as well – they’ll just come back, and be worth 0 bounty next time.
Finally we get to Unearth, the other part of Gravebreakers. This is nuts. When you choose to Unearth after using Gravebreakers, you will draw a number of power cards equal to the number of slain enemy fighters. This doesn’t require your leader to be alive, it counts all of your slain friendly fighters (not just minions), and it’s something that can be done every single power step (yours and your opponent’s). There isn’t another warband out there yet with the raw card drawing potential that Zondara possesses. If you’re new to card games, card advantage is a concept that’s been talked about for literal decades at this point, but it boils down to the idea that if all cards are relatively equal, it’s better to have more cards than your opponent and to have to use fewer cards in achieving your goals than your opponent. I feel like this warband will really help bring this concept to Underworlds.
Looking at the fighter cards, we have Zondara at a not-too-impressive speed of 3 and sporting 1 block with 4 health. She’s not built to take hits, and even when inspired none of these stats change. Offensively, she has a twist of what I’m thinking of as the standard leader weapon profiles – R1/S3/D2 and R3/H2/D1 gives her a suitable close range bonk and the ability to reach a bit further than average, which will allow her to position in safety a little more easily. It’s really weird when she inspires, though. The profiles essentially swap and her melee becomes 2 hammers while her ranged becomes 3 swords. Smarter folks than me have done the math and with the change to how critical hits function, 2 hammers is slightly (like 1-2%) more accurate than 3 swords (assuming no outside factors like flanking/surrounded), so inspiring Zondara feels mostly like whether you want to focus on her ranged or melee attack more.
Her partner is built much more sturdily. Ferlain is quicker at 4 move and inspires to 5 and rocks 5 health protected by 2 dodge. He has a R1/S3/D2 attack with critical grievous while uninspired that drops the critical requirement and gains flat out grievous when inspired, putting him at a fairly solid 3 damage. It’s a lot harder to boost this damage; since most damage boosting effects so far do it by adding grievous, they won’t stack with his. It’s still a respectable attack profile, especially once you can set up flanking/surround or get some extra dice (perhaps from the Destined ability…).
The minions are all share the same defensive profiles of 3 move, 1 block, and 2 health which don’t change whether or not they are inspired. Their attacks are varied, but surprisingly hard hitting for being dinky zombies – Cracktomb and Pikk both start at an inaccurate but punchy R1/S2/D2 profile, and even Toyle gets up to 2 damage once inspired.
It’s kind of a no-brainer at the moment, but pairing this warband with Pillage & Plunder is too good to pass up. Both the warband and the deck are incentivizing you to delve, so you might as well score a bunch of glory for doing so at the same time. I mentioned in my review of Countdown to Cataclysm that it feels like a deck that can play up the control angle of the game provided it can find a suitable warband and another deck to combine with it in Nemesis, and I think Zondara is that warband. The card advantage Unearth can generate combos well with the denial some of the Cataclysm cards can lean into. Here’s what I’m going to be playing with this warband first, once I get them painted up!
Now that all those pesky death warbands are done with, let’s take a look at some outstanding citizens who just want to cook a meal for their liege. This entourage is lead by head chef Gristla while her two apprentices Kretch and Seddrik serve as her sous chefs. Flensemaster Pewdrig helps to prepare the ingredients and… I don’t know what Carnskyr is supposed to be. Maybe a really weird guard dog? Anyway, let’s look at this warband that Games Workshop has classified as Strike.
I am grateful that not only does this warband revisit the mechanic of haunch token, which is so much fun to say, but they also get runemarks! There’s a little ham slice (yes, it’s definitely ham and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) and a fork-and-knife icon. How adorable.
Speaking of haunch token, that’s the inspiration mechanic for these five. All of your fighters will inspire immediately after you gain your third of subsequent haunch token. Luckily, there are quite a few ways baked in to gain those tokens.
Perfect Cut is the first of these. It’s a surge ability that you can use immediately after a chef makes a successful attack. Your chefs, by the way, are indicated by that cute ham slice and are Gristla and Kretch. This is already pointing you toward wanting to make multiple attacks with these two fighters.
Fillet is the next ability, indicated by the fork-and-knife runemark on some fighters’ weapons. If you choose to use this weapon ability when attacking, you will gain a haunch token if it’s successful. Spoiling this a little we can look again at the fighter cards and see that once again Gristla and Kretch are your Fillet marked fighters – when uninspired, they have critical fillet and when inspired they have normal fillet. This is even more incentive to get successful attacks with those two.
Grasping Talons is finally an ability that cares about a different fighter. In this case it’s The Carnskyr, and this batty beast has the ability to roll an attack dice after moving through an enemy fighter’s hex (say, as part of a charge). You have a 33% chance of dealing 1 damage and gaining a haunch token, a 33% chance of pushing the enemy fighter up to 1 hex, and a 33% chance to curse at your attack dice for not cooperating.
Calloused Hands is kind of nuts if it works as printed. I suspect this might be getting a change, but I’m willing to be proven wrong. As it stands, you have the option to discard a haunch token after your enemy decides to attack one of your fighters. When you do, you’re guaranteed to benefit from the Stand Fast ability which will prevent drive back and reduce incoming damage by 1. The part I’m dubious on is that “you can use this ability once per turn” which means… on every single attack your opponent makes. Sure, it costs a haunch token each time but this is pretty dang powerful. My guess would be it becomes a once per round ability, or even once per game. We’ll have to see.
Next up is Precise Fillet, which allows you to just give critical fillet to any of your fighters. Gristla and Kretch already have either this ability or a better version, but it allows the Carnskyr, Pewdrig, and Seddrik to happily harvest hunks of haunches, provided you choose to use it over Pewdrig’s grievous or Seddrik’s ensnare.
Finally, we have More for the Pantry which is a nice and simple push. You are restricted to only pushing fighters with move and/or charge tokens and your fighter has to end adjacent to an enemy fighter, but that’s still a useful ability to have on tap once per gam– what? It’s also once per turn? So you can immediately follow up on any drive backs as if you had Overrun, but with more flexibility?!
Alright, that warscroll was coming in hot so let’s look at the fighter cards. Gristla is the only one sporting 4 health while the rest of the warband is at 3. Nobody has particularly good save stats prior to being inspired – Gristla and Kretch are on 1 block while the others sit at the worst save possible, 1 dodge. Kretch even goes down on his save when inspired! Meanwhile the other three fighters bump up to 2 dodge. Gristla and Kretch are key to your gameplan because they are the most reliable haunch generators, so trying to keep them (a) in the thick of things making haunches and (b) alive while doing so will prove to be a challenge.
Offensively, this warband feels pretty average.Gristla’s attack is fine, not great, at R1/S3/D2 and critical fillet. At least the 3 swords helps trigger fillet more than it would if she was on 2 hammers. She does inspire to a pretty nice 4 sword attack which can be handy for triggering Overrun, which I’m just now realizing can combo with More for the Pantry to really make these fighters get in your opponent’s face. Kretch share’s Gristla’s uninspired attack profile but swaps over to 2 hammers instead when inspired. Carnskyr’s attack doesn’t change at all when inspired, so I hope you’re ready to fish for those Grasping Talons rolls with him. Pewdrig will be an average brawler, getting up to 2 damage roughly 42% of the time when uninspired and either being a pretty reliable 2 damage or 1 damage plus a haunch token 52% of the time. Seddrik is the only ranged attacker–and only has a ranged attack–in this warband. Amusingly, Seddrik cannot benefit from Precise Fillet, because that only works on melee weapons.
Despite Games Workshop calling these a Strike warband, the Calloused Hands ability is going to make them very potent at holding treasure tokens. I can definitely see them playing into some kind of blend of invasive aggro plus treasure token holding.
Honestly, I only glanced at this warband before beginning this review because the others held more interest for me. They’re fire though! Even with the anticipated erratas that I expect, I’m pretty eager to give them a spin. There really are too many cool warbands in this game!
That’s it for the Death warbands from last week. Check out the coverage of the other grand alliances if you want to see what else was given free rules!
Chaos Warbands
Destruction Warbands
Order Warbands
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