Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. I’m approaching Underworlds with a focus on improving gameplay, building communities, and a maybe even painting some models. Let’s roll off and get started!

Monday was one heck of a surprise because Games Workshop dumped a load of new goodies in PDF form on the Underworlds community. Along with the rules for 13 returning warbands (don’t worry, we’ll get to those soon!) and the Core Rules themselves, there were two very short documents that I think are worth highlighting on their own before diving into the warbands.

Short But Sweet

The first of these documents is the brief two page Organized Play document. Within this document, the rules are outlined for both the Rivals format as well as the Nemesis format, which seem to be the only two formats supported so far in this new edition of Warhammer Underworlds. The legal warbands, decks, and boards are outlined here. The two formats’ lists are identical, with the only difference being that in Rivals you will pick a single deck, while in Nemesis you will pick two decks and then build your Nemesis deck according to the rules “on page 23 of the Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard rulebook.”

Somewhat annoyingly, the version of the core rules that are available on the website do not have this page – they are a more stripped down set of the rules with no fluff which is understandable as a free resource, but they also chose to drop the page on Nemesis Deck-Building. That’s an odd choice, but fortunately the rules are incredibly simple as has been outlined on Warhammer Community.

• Pick two different Rivals decks. Only one Rivals deck with a plot card may be chosen.
• Pick 12 or more objective cards, with a maximum of 6 surge objectives.
• Pick 20 or more power cards, of which up to half may be ploys.
• Each card must have a unique name; no duplicates are allowed.

As of now, the list of legal decks for both Rivals and Nemesis are the four contained within the Embergard Core Box – Blazing Assault, Emberstone Sentinels, Pillage & Plunder, and Countdown to Cataclysm. We already know that two more decks are on the way, so the assumption is this document will be updated shortly before or after their release to include them in the formats’ legality. The actual phrasing is that you can use “any Warhammer Underworld Rivals deck from the following seasons” which certainly feels like they’re implying future seasons being in the mix, despite earlier claims that the new edition won’t have a “new season starter box every six months.” There’s the usual caveat to take anything from Warhammer Community articles with a grain of salt, they’re not legally binding, yadda yadda. But this does make me wonder if we will get a new season starter box, just on a longer time frame. Perhaps one a year? We’ll have to wait and see.

For warbands, the legal lists are broken down to the two within the Embergard Core Box (Zikkit’s Tunnelpack and the Emberwatch), as well as the list of warbands that released alongside this document:

• Order: The Brethren of the Bolt, Cyreni’s Razors, The Farstriders, and Ironsoul’s Condemnors

• Chaos: Spiteclaw’s Swarm and The Thricefold Discord

• Death: The Sepulchral Guard, The Skinnerkin, Thorns of the Briar Queen, and Zondara’s Gravebreakers

• Destruction: Daggok’s Stab-ladz, Mollog’s Mob, and Zarbag’s Gitz

Like the decks, this was broken down by saying warbands “from the following seasons” and then only listing Embergard, but then the 13 above warbands are spelled out specifically.

So far this is all more or less news as expected, but hang on. There’s something genuinely cool here in the last section – where it details which boards are legal:

The game boards from the following seasons, including alternate art game boards found in Organized Play packs, can be used in the [Rivals/Nemesis] format.

Emphasis here is mine, and boy do I like this. If you’re not familiar with the organized play kits from the past, they are pretty hefty boxes of goodies that event organizers or game stores can purchase from Games Workshop and are essentially an event’s worth of prizes in a box. This is where those iconic Shadeglass trophies originate from, as well as deck boxes decorated with seasonal art, acrylic tokens, and cards with alternate art. It seems that come Embergard, these OP packs will contain alternate art games boards. Given that it looks like we’ll be on the Embergard boards for some time, that’s a pretty rad bit of swag. I know I’m more excited about that than any of the previous box contents – I’m a big picky nerd when it comes to deck boxes and tokens, but an alternate art board? Sign me up!

… now I just have to get good enough to win one.

Your New, Constant, Companion

The other document I want to touch on is the Tournament Companion – a document that’s only longer if you count the full image cover page. That said, there’s some insight that can be gleaned from how Games Workshop is suggesting events be run and how organized play in general be approached, both by tournament organizers and by players. Some of these are quite a departure from the past, too.

I’m honestly quite happy with the first section, The Play Area. This very simply outlines expectations that players keep the game area organized so that a clear game state can be observed by both parties (and judges, if needed). It starts broad, with a general statement that cards and tokens “should be managed so that they are organized, tidy, and easily interpreted” so there’s no confusion about what’s going on at any point in the game. I was surprised with how far they drilled down though. Some examples are that Games Workshop suggests decks “should be oriented vertically, with the short sides of the cards facing each player” as well as specifically calling out that cards with persisting effects “must be placed at the center of one of the battlefield’s sides” so that both players can read them.

The conventions outlined here have been my experience playing with most people anyway, so I don’t foresee this causing any real arguments. There have been one or two cases where a player had a bit of a chaotic mess going on with their discard piles (or having a single discard pile) which these guidelines would rule against, so it’s nice having such clear statements about the importance of a clean game state.

There’s a potentially large shakeup coming in the next section. Only eight lines long, Tools of War seems pretty straightforward. You need to bring everything required to play a game. Duh! Miniatures, warscroll, cards, copies of your deck list for the TO and opponents to inspect, game board and tokens, and a copy of the core rules. Moving on – wait, what was that? “Copies of their deck list for tournament organizers and opponents to inspect?”

Underworlds has long been an outlier for many reasons in the Games Workshop ecosystem. One of those is that the game relies heavily on cards for many of its mechanics, and traditionally deck lists (outside of the Rivals format where lists are fixed) have been hidden information. You won’t know what your opponent has in their deck until you see them play it or discard it. This focus on hidden information allows a certain skill set to have an increased impact on how players can perform in the game, especially in the traditional best-of-three format that many tournaments run. Being able to remember what your opponent has and hasn’t played, along with the knowledge of the card pool to deduce what they could be including, is something that comes with practice, familiarity, and a good memory.

Frankly, I have a pretty shit memory so at first I raised my eyebrows in interest when reading this. Especially if you combine it with the likely-needs-a-clarification line from the Core Rulebook in the Muster Warbands section that reads (emphasis mine) “Each player picks a warband and a Rivals deck. They reveal their choice and place the relevant components in front of them.” One interpretation of reading this is that you have to reveal your deck selection regardless of whether you have a plot card to reveal, and combining with this section of the Tournament Companion document implies that not only do you have to reveal your deck choices, you have to reveal all the card choices as well.

“This is great,” I thought. “Now my inability to remember what I had for breakfast won’t impede my games.” Upon further reflection, I’m not quite as hot on this as I was initially. I worry that if deck lists are really open, it will encourage players to quite literally check off the cards their opponent has played in each game which could severely hamper the flow of the game and lead to issues finishing within time. I’m still on the fence about how I feel about this. I know many very experienced players are going to hate it and feel that one of their ways of expressing skill is removed, and I can see that argument. I can also see a full deck list being a sort of analysis paralysis for less experienced players, which is also a negative outcome. The main upside I can see to a fully transparent deck list is eliminating the benefit of players scouting out future opponents during events. I’m not certain this is a worthwhile tradeoff. I will, however, stand by my initially positive impression of the core rules having players reveal their decks used.

The next, also very short, segment is on Calling a Judge. Not much here, but I did want to applaud Games Workshop for using very positive language around players requesting judge attention. This is not a negative thing. You are not implying your opponent is trying to cheat, nor are you coming off as looking like you don’t know the rules. A judge is there to help facilitate the game and make sure everyone has the best experiences they can. When in doubt, call a judge. That’s why they’re there!

… and then GW does a complete 180 when talking about conceding. Before talking about how to handle conceding a game, the document goes on for a paragraph talking about how it’s a terrible thing to do that should be avoided at all costs because it “goes against the spirit in which Warhammer Underworlds is played” and that “both players are expected to play out [a] game in its entirety” when they start. I’m going to mentally lump this in with GW’s strangely vehement aversion to chess clocks in 40k. Concessions are a necessity of events, especially in best-of-three formats where a player can already see a game has a foregone conclusion and wants to use their time more effectively. I know when I run events, I’ll continue to include concession rules and make sure I don’t scold my players for considering them.

I will only briefly touch on the remainder of the document, because it’s more or less similar to what was out for the previous edition. There’s a section on what to do when time is called which feels reasonable (and is basically what I used when running GHO) – finish the current turn, then the game is over. There’s a section touching on how to do pairings (by record, win path, and randomly) and placings (overall record, opponents’ win records, total glory points) in an event. I do like that they specifically call out how using total glory scored is not an ideal metric for placing. Close fought games between equally skilled opponents can have lower glory totals as they each counter each others’ plans, meanwhile a vast skill imbalance between two players will tend to have a runaway high glory total for one of the players. I, and evidently GW, feel the latter should not be rewarded over the former.

There’s a section saying you should use the rules updates and commentaries when they eventually come out. I don’t think anyone was wondering whether such documents would continue to be produced, but this at least confirms it.

Finally, we end with an afterword talking about “the magic of Warhammer in an event setting” being the chance to “build friendships with fellow hobbyists.” It’s pretty cheesy, but in my experience also completely true. In the slightly-over-one-year I have been playing this game and attending events, I have made a surprisingly large amount of friends who share my passion for this game. It’s been a wonderful chance to link up with folks from around the country (and world!), have a pleasant couple of hours, and get my butt kicked by them. I look forward to continuing and hope to play games soon with you, dear reader.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.