It’s another Underworlds preorder day! That means Goonhammer has coverage for a deluge of Games Workshop releases that will be coming your way soon. It feels like we just did this recently, but that’s the new edition rush for you. There are four boxes, each containing four revamped warbands and themed to one of the Age of Sigmar Grand Alliances. We also have two brand new warbands in the Jaws of Itzl and Grandfather’s Gardeners as well as two brand new Rivals decks with Reckless Fury and Wrack & Ruin. That’s 18 warbands, 2 decks, and a lot of new rules to cover!
Before getting into the reviews, if you’re reading this on November 23-24, the World Championships of Warhammer are underway right now, and this year the Underworlds event has streamed coverage! Check it out over on the Mortal Realms YouTube channel. The hosts for the stream are Davy from the What The Hex?! podcast and Mike (aka Fishmode) from the Spent Glory blog and Underworlds Underground podcast. These two are genuinely wonderful dudes with a solid grasp on the game and a great way of explaining what’s going on. Check it out!
When covering the warbands, I’m going to take a look their fighter cards and accompanying warscrolls to go over what sets them apart compared to their contemporaries in the pool of 33 Organized Play legal warbands. If you want to check out the other items being covered today, you can find those articles here:
Despoilers and Daemons: Chaos Warbands
Revenants of the Realms: Death Warbands
Brutes and Bandits: Destruction Warbands
Heroes and Hunters: Order Warbands
Rivals Decks: Reckless Fury and Wrack & Ruin
Lizards, Snakes, Ticks, and Flies
The Jaws of Itzl and Grandfather’s Gardeners have the distinction of being the first individually released warbands of this new edition. We’ve already seen from-scratch designs with the Emberwatch and Zikkit’s Tunnelpack, but given those were warbands in the starter box, they were intentionally designed to be easy to pick up and play by newcomers. How do these two new additions to the roster shape up?
I was unreasonably hyped about seeing these guys revealed. I’m a big fan of the 3-4 model elite warbands, I like brawling, and lizardmen (especially the recent sculpts) are bad ass. As if it wasn’t enough to have three Seraphon warriors stomping around kicking butt, they’re joined by an adorable pile of little scaled critters? Sotek’s Venomites are definitely in the running for most adorable Underworlds model.
The inspire mechanic for these lizards hints at further abilities on their warscroll and already suggests potential deck pairings. You’ll need to have ways of dealing damage to enemy fighters specifically in your opponent’s power step or action step in order to inspire any of the Jaws. Luckily, they can do exactly that.
Predatory Fighters is a surge ability that is used after an enemy fighter fails an attack against one of your Saurus fighters. If your save contained a shield (which is a 33% chance on any save dice), you ping the attacker for 1 damage. There’s no restriction on range, nor a restriction on non-vulnerable fighters. That means if Yurik from the Emberwatch is standing a full 4 hexes away and plinking with that giant crossbow of his, your Saurus can still make him pay, potentially slaying him if he only has one wound remaining. My head canon here is that they’re like horned lizards that can shoot toxic blood from their eyes when threatened. Regardless of how this works, it’s a mechanic worth building around. Any ways to increase your fighters’ save dice or grant them rerolls will be helpful – the idea of Kro-jax with a 4 shields save from Countdown to Cataclysm’s Utter Conviction is incredibly fun to think about.
Another reusable (sort of) ability is Instinctual Control, which helps this four fighter warband get some extra action economy by letting Sotek’s Venomites (the reptile pile) get a free move after you choose a target for a Saurus to attack. The timing here is after the target is picked, but before the roll is made so if the Venomites are close enough they can be scooched in to help flank, or just move off to do whatever work you need a 0 bounty snake pile to perform. You can technically use this repeatedly, but since the Venomites can’t have a move or charge token on them to make the extra move, it’s going to effectively be once per battle round barring shenanigans.
Savage Mauling is yet again another repeatable (sort of) ability. You can only use it once per game, but if it manages to slay an enemy fighter your use is refunded and you can do it again. It’s a scaling attack that gets better with the more damage your Saurus has taken, but can only be used if said Saurus has no charge tokens. At first blush, it looks like it’s effectively making a swords based attack during your power step, but your opponent doesn’t get to roll any save dice so it’s better than that. Your target dice results will be a 33% chance per dice rolled to deal a damage, so it’s going to be a tight rope to walk in order to determine how far you want to push your luck. More damage means more dice, which means a better chance to kill the target and get to use it again. Then again, more damage could also mean a dead lizard.
Their final warscroll ability is Obstinate which lets one of the Saurus fighters not be eligible to be driven back for the remainder of the battle round. This is truly once per game. If you’re tired of getting driven back out of melee range or if you really want to stand on a treasure token (either for your own scoring or to deny enemy scoring), this is the ticket.
With a 3/2/2/0 split for bounty, you’ve got your three main fighters in the Saurus fighters and the little pile of Venomites hanging out to support them.
Defensively, the Seraphon share the same profiles while uninspired – a respectable 5 health and a decent 1 shield for their save. With a move of 3, they’re not terribly fast but at least they’re faster than (some) skeletons! They’re actually quite similar to various versions of their fellow Order warbands, the Stormcast. When inspired, your leader picks up an additional save die which is substantial and So-kar bumps up to 4 move.
The attack profiles are fairly substantial and means these are no slouches in fights. Kro-jax starts on an impressive R1/H2/D3 attack which inspires to R1/S4/D3 – a bit more accuracy in a vacuum, but double the chance to get an Overrun and far more accurate if you can set up flank/surrounded situations. Ro-tak enjoys the distinction of being the only with reach in this warband and starts with the “standard” spear profile of R1/H2/D2 or R2/H2/D1, allowing for more damage up close or less but with reach. After you flip Ro-tak, the profiles merge into R2/S4/D2. So-kar’s sporting a decent profile of R1/S3/D2 uninspired and upgrades to R1/S4/D2 with critical grievous after inspiring, which is a pretty reliable trigger given how many dice you’re rolling.
Sotek’s Venomites are nowhere near as impressive in combat, but that’s hardly surprising. With 3 move, they can keep up with the Saurus warriors but a single health is not going to be hard to chew through. At 2 dodge, there will be times you just roll hot and your opponent doesn’t and these stick around longer than they should but they’re always going to be the softest target here. That could work to your advantage in some cases though; if they stick around you can get caught up by the charged out rule, but if the Venomites bite the dust then you’ll be able to easily activate an already charged fighter. Yes, they do have an attack profile but you’re going to be in a real pinch if you’re ever forced to use it. Especially because 99% of the time it will be the very lackluster R1/S2/D1 uninspired version – if you’re using one of your inspire triggers to flip these guys over, something has gone wrong.
For a Nemesis deck, I am torn between two directions. The first would be to push the aggro approach and take Blazing Assault with Reckless Fury and just push the pedal to the metal. That said, despite this being a Strike warband, I think they could do a pretty good job at using a Take and Hold approach. Between Obstinate making it hard to get you off tokens, Predatory Fighters punishing the enemy for trying to hit you, and getting a sneaky little extra move with the snake pile, I feel like they can do a reasonably good job pushing up and holding objectives in neutral and enemy territory. Emberstone Sentinels combined with either Countdown to Cataclysm or Wrack and Ruin would equip you with some pings and positioning based objectives.
Holy crap, these models are disgusting. They’re grotesque. Games Workshop, why do you keep making Nurgle models? It was one thing when it was the 80s and everything was a cartoonish blob, but these are just… yuck. The rules for the Grandfather’s Gardeners are just as juicy as the models themselves (typing that made me gag a little) and I predict they’re going to be force to be reckoned with on the table.
This warband has one of the most grimace inducing inspiration requirements. Not being able to inspire unless your fighter is vulnerable for most warbands means you’d expect to see maybe one fighter inspire per game, if you’re lucky. Fortunately, the Gardeners have a trick in their pocket.
Blooming Plague explains why some of the fighter cards have a weird symbol on them instead of numbers. If you ever encounter this symbol, you just replace it with the current space on your warscroll’s tracker. Throughout the game, this value will fluctuate between 1 and 3, and the only place this is shown on the cards is in the damage value, so the majority of your fighters are going to constantly shift between 1, 2, or 3 damage.
Imperturbable is going to be the main tool you’re using to help get inspires on these daemons. Limiting the incoming damage to 2 applies to all damage, not just from combat, and it being per turn includes the power step after the combat step. No sneaky pings following up an attack to finish off a fighter. Do note that it only applies to your uninspired fighters; once they flip, they lose this bonus.
Reap a Harvest shows up once on your tracker, so for each full cycle you make you’ll get one trigger of this ability. You can use it to heal any of your fighters. Which one is the correct choice will be based on many factors – breakpoints of your opponent’s fighters’ damage, whether you’re able to get an uninspired fighter up to 3 health to make them unkillable in one turn again thanks to Imperturbable, whether you want to use it on an uninspired fighter or not.
While it feels like these plaguebearers get fewer warscroll abilities than other warbands, this tracker mechanic is pretty wild. The flow here is:
As the scroll states, it increments by one after your turn (guaranteed, predictable), after damage is inflicted on a friendly fighter (less predictable, your opponent has more control here) and after your turn if you hold more treasure tokens than your opponent (middle-road guaranteed, up to both you and your opponent). Being able to accurately predict and control the flow of this tracker is going to be the deciding factor in how hard this warband can hit when they get into combat; likewise, a savvy opponent can save effects to bump you off of your 3 values.
This five fighter warbands has a 2/2/1/1/1 split for their bounties. Your leader, Phleghmus, has the most health of the uninspired lot at 4, meanwhile the rest of the plaguebearers all have 3 health. Squort the disgusting fly thing has 2. This makes the three non-leader daemons the easiest to inspire since any attack they take that would normally be 2 or more damage will just drop them to 1, then they’ll inspire. Phleghmus will take a little extra work on your part, or unintentional cooperation from your opponent, because they won’t inspire without a little help from a single damage hit. Squort’s just going to go splat like the bug it is if an attack connects. However, if you have access to a Great Fortitude upgrade, you could conceivably bump it to 3 health. I feel like you’d rather put it on Phleghmus most of the time, but it’s still a good option to have in case your leader goes down or you just value more bodies rather than better bodies. Imperturbable also really brings down the value of heavy hitters in the opposing warband (Wielder of the Blade is extra sad) and devalues the normally highly rated upgrades to grant grievous.
Anyway, for saves the warband as a whole is pretty average. Squort is on 2 dodge while the others are all on 1 shield, neither of which change upon inspiration.
Damage profiles are where it gets interesting. Phleghmus has a R2/H2/D* profile uninspired and gains an extra attack dice when they inspire. Strewg is fairly similar – uninspired, they attack with 3 swords and inspired it becomes identical to the profile that Phleghmus has. Dripterus is yet another range 2 fighter, but suffers from having the lowest accuracy of the bunch at S2 and H2 on the two card faces. I guess having a backpack tick sticking its proboscis through your face will do that to you. The lone range 1 plaguebearer, Slunge, goes from R1/H2/D* to R1/S3/D* and ensnare. Squort, which my autocorrect apparently loathes, has a surprising amount of potential for being the token “weird little critter” in this warband – it starts at R1/H2/D1 with critical grievous and inspires to R1/S3/D2 still with critical grievous. This is yet another fighter that has the potential to spike up to 3 damage.
It feels so hard to evaluate any of these because the damage profiles can be 1, 2, or 3 and that can change at the drop of a maggot. Any of the four plaguebearers have potential to be 3 damage – this is huge and makes it impossible for your opponent to focus down the big damage dealer, because any of the four could be that fighter. None of them are sporting grievous either, so the potential to toss that out and have a 4 damage fighter is something your opponent will always have to be wary of. Even Squort, with its grievous, can spike up to 3 damage. That said, there is only one fixed value of 3 on the tracker so that 3 isn’t coming around too often. During round 1, the average value is 1.71; round 2 the average is 1.86; round 3 the average is 2. It feels less scary this way, but a lot of the threat from these stinkers is going to be based on how well you can force the tracker to progress when it’s going through the low values and try to delay it in the high values.
With how resilient these five fighters can be, and given that the majority of them have a handy reach of 2, I would be inclined to try a Take and Hold strategy to start with. They’re innately durable and can weather the hyper aggressive big fighter warbands, and if you can just hold more than the opponent a few times in a round you’ll be able to snag a heal out of the tracker progression. Emberstone Sentinels paired with Countdown to Cataclysm sound tempting, or perhaps Emberstone Sentinel and Wrack and Ruin – the new deck leverages a bunch of pings, some of which hit both warbands, so that would be another way to force progress on your tracker.
That’s it for the two brand new warbands released in this torrent. Check out the rest of Goonhammer’s coverage if you want to see what else is in this massive drop of Underworlds content!
Despoilers and Daemons: Chaos Warbands
Revenants of the Realms: Death Warbands
Brutes and Bandits: Destruction Warbands
Heroes and Hunters: Order Warbands
Rivals Decks: Reckless Fury and Wrack & Ruin
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