Warhammer Underworlds

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The Other Dave
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:20 pm

For me personally, deck building is… let’s just say much less than half of what I find enjoyable about Underworlds. :D it’s purely the means to an end for me, the end being the fun of the moment to moment decision-making and dice rolling and, well, board gaming bits. (To the extent that probably 85% of my deck building comes down to “hit the auto build button in underworldsdb”, the other 15% being, to be sure, minor fiddling with a deck I already have set up - “this card doesn’t seem to work, let’s swap it with this one in the next few games” and etc.) So really, the thought of having a “sub-optimal” deck, and trying to figure out how to make it work in the game at hand - how to effectively use those cards that don’t make the cut in Championship, knowing your opponent is doing the same - sounds honestly really exciting to me, even (or, heck, especially) between veteran players. It can be fun to play a fine-tuned deck that “plays itself,” but it can also be fun to have something that’s more a puzzle to solve.

(TBH I’ve been intrigued by the idea of trying “all-faction deck” games since beastgrave dropped and it became actually possible, but it’s hard to suggest when it’s not a “real thing”.)

All of which is to say, there’s lots of ways to engage with the game!
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
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Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 8 infantry

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The Other Dave
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Oct 30, 2021 11:35 pm

They previewed the third Harrowdeep warband over the weekend: An ogre pirate!
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And he looks sweet as, and has a monkey and a parrot and a gnoblar with a goatee and a gnoblar with a pegleg, which is all very awesome! Due out early next year.

But a lot of Underworlds followers are probably making a certain face and going "well, maybe they'll get the big-guy-focused warband balance right this time?" (That said, Kainan's Reapers are quite well-balanced by all accounts, so I personally am not too worried. Plus, extremely dope-lookin'.)
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 8 infantry

Jye Nicolson
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by Jye Nicolson » Sat Nov 13, 2021 9:04 am

We played a whole bunch of Underworlds today in Ichinomiya in a community centre room that had tatami floors, low tables and a surprising amount of "playing in a ryokan" energy.

I actually liked Rivals format quite a lot, having played with it most of the day. Wouldn't switch to it permanently but it's fun figuring out how to score your faction's weirdo objectives that you wouldn't normally take, and it definitely puts the breaks on the sort of roflstomps you can get with tuned vs more naive decks.

The new Stormcast were my team all day and they're...alright. I actually did pretty well with them but that was partly luck (Kawamura-san's dice are...infernal) and partly taking advantage of 3 player games to score their harder objectives. Their inspired sides are actually really good but they need someone important to die for that to happen 😅. I liked messing with the bird too but keeping it close to the action made it a tempting target, and it doesn't give you anything when it dies and you need warm bodies to score a lot of their objectives. They fall apart pretty quick to dedicated aggression and unsurprisingly my two losses for the day were when Dave took the time to apply some of that :lol:

I had a lot of cards keying off the Vulnerable status (1 wound from death) and they can make for great comebacks but just aren't reliable enough at 4 wounds. Would work better for 5 wounds Orruks or Death that can bring someone back on 1.

I liked the cover/gloom stuff and the lack of placed lethal hexes in that it reduces the lethality of the game a bit while the new flipping mechanic for objectives slows down objective holding decks just enough that it's probably fair.

I mulliganed every single game but that's probably to be expected in Rivals. It certainly made late game objectives much more viable.

Overall I think runaway victories are a bit harder and that along with the rest of the changes, is all to the good for casual play. I dunno how it will go competively but in practice that's not *really* my problem so happy with Season 5 so far.

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The Other Dave
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Nov 13, 2021 9:17 am

Yeah, it was good fun - the most surprising takeaway for me was that an experienced player with a Rivals deck versus a newer player with a Championship deck can make for a good, engaging game.

Lots of people were mentioning that it was fun to try and figure out how to use all those suboptimal cards that don't necessarily make it into a constructed deck, and I'd agree with that. It probably helped that I was mostly running the Soulraid, which is very tricksy and includes quite a few cards in the Rivals deck that are just too much work to score to put in a regular deck (the one where you get 2 glory in an end phase if no fighters are adjacent stands out for me - it was sometimes a lot of work to score, but in a good puzzly thinking-two-turns-ahead way, and I did get it more often than not). It'll be interesting to see how much legs it's got - how engaging it remains once you start to get a handle on the "puzzle" of a given warband.

I definitely agree that I don't see it replacing Championship, but it's a nice alternative play mode that - and this really cannot be undersold - is really really good for newer or less-interested-in-deckbuilding players, and I like how it's a really easy way for experienced players to get a warband you don't use much to the table to see how they play.
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 8 infantry

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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by Jye Nicolson » Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:10 am

Looks like Japan is on the delay train again, so no ogre pirate for preorder 😔

Hopefully it's not too long, it's hard to resist the pirate hype and I'd like to play the team at the next Ichinomiya Meetup.

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The Other Dave
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by The Other Dave » Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:17 am

The illusions rivals deck looks like fun too! (The dads over at Agents of Sigmar just put up reviews of both releases.)

Next release after this isn’t supposed to be til Q2, right? I have to say, I kind of like this relatively leisurely release schedule.
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 8 infantry

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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by me_in_japan » Thu Feb 03, 2022 10:35 pm

Just wanted to say that I'm very pleased to see the new warcry book has stats for all the UW warbands. That's a ton of value right there. So much so I might even buy it. I was already using my beastmen in warcry, and this just makes it official. MiJ approves 👍
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Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by Primarch » Thu Feb 03, 2022 10:51 pm

me_in_japan wrote:
Thu Feb 03, 2022 10:35 pm
Just wanted to say that I'm very pleased to see the new warcry book has stats for all the UW warbands. That's a ton of value right there. So much so I might even buy it. I was already using my beastmen in warcry, and this just makes it official. MiJ approves 👍
UW warbands are usually 3-5 models, and Warcry is ~10 or so right? So do you need to double up on UW or add in models from elsewhere? Just curious.
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The Other Dave
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by The Other Dave » Fri Feb 04, 2022 12:05 am

It looks like they'll basically function as "special characters"* for their faction - the idea being that you'd add Underworlds characters to your WarCry warband.

*Very much in a Blood Bowl Star Players kind of way, as they don't gain experience or anything either.
Feel free to call me Dave!
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Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 8 infantry

Jye Nicolson
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Re: Warhammer Underworlds

Post by Jye Nicolson » Fri Feb 04, 2022 2:13 am

Yeah, I kind of miss Warcry and there's nothing like a ton of new options that are *already painted*.

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