Shadespire

[The Other Dave]

That's definitely some silver-lining news, as I'll be able to use my December bonus just on Arena Mortis and the DoK, and pick up the last Blackstone expansion before it evaporates as well, knock on wood. (Ugh, I need the Death Guard codex too...)

And I guess the online consensus is "probably vampire pirates" for the bat-symbol warband? I guess that's a thing in the current lore?

[me_in_japan]

Huh. Bummer - I was actually quite keen to get Direchasm, despite not having actually played any Underworlds for months and months (and having a ton of warbands still to paint.) I even got the game for the pc, incidentally, if anybody fancies a game some time

[The Other Dave]

Huh. Bummer - I was actually quite keen to get Direchasm, despite not having actually played any Underworlds for months and months (and having a ton of warbands still to paint.) I even got the game for the pc, incidentally, if anybody fancies a game some time

I'm in the Mac Exclusion Zone

How are you finding it? People were worried about the matchmaking and user base, but the couple Underworlds YouTube content people I follow have been doing some streaming - I guess they might have got some serendipitous good timing with a global lockdown.

[Jye Nicolson]

I bought it but the combination of absolute garbage performance on my Surface and being still very much a Shadespire game (as opposed to Nightvault, let alone Beastgrave) has kept me from going back. The former is more important so if I bother to open it up and turn off enough graphical widgets it should be OK.

I am very much here for vampire pirates, that sounds awesome.

[The Other Dave]

https://canyourollacrit.com/2020/12/05/direchasm/

Wow, looks like Direchasm is shaking things up a bunch, if only in terms of universal cards in the coreset - lots of new universal cards, not just reprints of the same old same old that've been in every core set 'til now. (Let's all pour one out for "hold objective X" cards.) Also lots of hunter and quarry cards, so that whole thing wasn't just a flash in the pan with Beastgrave.

Basic rules changes: The big ones are fighters with a wounds characteristic of 6 or more being worth 2 glory, and simplified support rules. The former is a nice if smallish bennie, although it might make Morgok's players think twice about loading up on +W upgrades. The latter is a wash in terms of dice-rolling outcomes, but it'll mean those half circles and circles actually mean something more often, heh.

The Primacy mechanic looks interesting, although I'll have to see how it works in play. It seems like it's fundamentally a build-unlocked mechanic that gives you bennies for being aggressive, which is if nothing else a much-needed boost for aggro decks. In principle, I dig it. The other big one is a bunch of cards based on Hunger tokens, which various cards can give, take away, require and spend for buffs and such.

[me_in_japan]

I haven’t looked at the core rules yet, but the slaaneshi warband look right up my alley* Their combination of fiddliness and mobility puts me in mind of all the best parts of eldar, and if their damage output is a tad lackluster, then meh, you can’t have everything. I’ve already ordered them from evilbay, and am optimistic I’ll be able to get them in my hands with enough of the winter holidays left for them to maybe even see some painting time.

Overall, I’m genuinely pretty stoked for direchasm



*yes, yes, insert** innuendo here as you see fit

**here, too

[The Other Dave]

(Long overdue thread title rename! edit: which doesn't carry through to the "display threads" page! )

The first images of the full lizardmen warband are up:



It's the studio Seraphon scheme, which is very... blue, but the sculpts look OK! Personally I wouldn't paint the chameleon so completely different to the rest of 'em, but that's a paint thing and not a models thing. 3 scrubby skinks, one tough saurus, a mage and a sneaky skink should make for an interesting warband!

Jye and I headed up to Plamojuku today for a Direchasm day (and WarCry too, but I didn't get in on that). I brought a Direchasm Aggro Magore's deck (linky) and considering the extent of my thinking was "all the faction cards that are any good plus all the new aggro cards from Direchasm," it worked really well. Primacy and hunger, even with the very limited card support they have out of the core box, are a nice extra souce of glory and buffing respectively. I went 4-0, with a blowout and a 1-point win versus Jye's Wild Hunt, a 9-5 win versus Morgok, and a game where I dominated the Grymwatch enough that he conceded halfway through round 2, not seeing how he could score any more of his objectives (which isn't a super-fun way to win, but eh). I think the Morgok game was the real clincher, and being able to get even a close, low-scoring win against one of the stronger Beastgrave warbands, playing their own aggro game, with a season 1 warband, felt pretty nice. Grymwatch, too - he did the usual "score 7 points in turn 1 by standing on objectives" song and dance, but then I just proceeded to murder a whole bunch of ghouls and neutralize the warband. (I got a *bit* lucky with the Greatsword flubbing 3 attacks against Magore, any of which would have one-shot him, but them's the breaks with a 2-dice swords attack - I know those odds well from playing the banshees, and they aren't good.)

[The Other Dave]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... 1-roadmap/

So the bad news is, the Slaves to Darkness warband is delayed to February thanks to... the world. (Hopefully it won't mess with the overall schedule too much - I'd rather they make a season 18 months long than trying to shove a lot of releases into a small period. Covid already seems to have messed with the Underworlds meta to some degree or another...)

The good news is, the warband after the lizards is indeed confirmed to be vampires!



Looks very promising, in an understated "that's a vampire, all right" kind of way.

[Balloonacorn]

GW has definitely outdone themselves with this years Direcasm/Underworlds models.

[me_in_japan]

One of my favourite things about underworlds is the almost universally high standards of the models. That said, lady vamp there is great, but I'm just not sold on her monstery face. I mean, I get that she, yknow, is a monster and all, but I prefer my vamps a bit more seductive? Gothic, perhaps? It may be fixable with a softer paint job, though, so I'll reserve complete judgement until I have the mini in hand.

And as for a February delay, eh, not bothered. I just counted I still have 11 warbands left to paint, so, er...aye. No rush...