Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard - First Games

A whole new edition of Warhammer Underworlds was realeased this past weekend on Saturday. While there have been little rule tweaks and minor changes and additions along the way with each new setting/"Season" of the game, this was the first true NEW EDITION for the game! ALL of the stuff released up until that point was still stuff you could play with Warhammer Underworlds: Wintermaw - the last release (realier this year) of the previous edition. It wasn't COMMON to find people playing games with the older cards - but you could use any of them in relic format! It also wasn't terribly common to see people playing with a lot of the older warbands - largely due to "power creep" - the older ones just aren't as effective against newer warbands... but it could all be used. 

ALL the old cards are no longer playable with this new edition. I mean, you CAN still play with ALL THE OLD STUFF... just not in games using this new edition! 

Orion went and picked up her copy early on Saturday and then came by my place to play a few games. We had to use fighter and warscroll cards I printed off at home on our black and white laser printer... which were not the easiest to read!  

GAME ONE

Orion played Ironsoul's Condemnors and I tried playing the Thricefold Discord. Mostly because they only needed three fighter cards printed and cut out each! 

I played with "Flex" deck; Pillage and Plunder, which had me Delving treasure tokens (flipping them over) to gain glory points. 

Orion played with the "Stike" deck; Blazing Assault... which scores a lot for being aggressive and fighting and killing stuff...? 

The new board is... well, ONE board! No more each player picking one and setting them up offset or lengthways! 

Brodus started things off by charging in and giving Vexmore a good bash! 

Bit of a melee going on off to one side and Vashtiss feeling a little left out! 

Tavian taking a swing at Vexmore. I think they took the daemon out... I was down to two by the end of the first Round. 

VAshtiss whacking Brodus in the back, trying to finish him off! 

Ganging up on Lascivyr... they have one more wound than in the previous edition... but wasn't enough to keep them alive against a pair of big powerful Stormcast brutes. 

Starting off the third round, Vahstiss attacked Brodus and Finally finished him off!

Then she moved as far away as she could to just try and stay alive and maybe flip that last treasure token...? I think I had a card that moved her to a Treasure token or start hex in enemy territory... and then I moved to try and stay out of their charge range...? 

Some how Tavian got to Vashtiss... with some kind of boost to speed... I was excited because I actually rolled a crit and a success for defence.... 

Somehow Orion was rolling FIVE dice and rolled a Crit and FOUR successes!?

Orion won 16-9. 

Vexmor is arguably worse in this edition... deals less damage and lost the Locus of Indolence ability... They gained the Indolence ability which gives them +1 attack dice and grievous (+1 damage) IF they don't have any move or charge tokens... Meh... 

Vashtiss also deals less damage AND had lower defence!? Loses the Locus of Paramouncy (adjacent enemies cannot be supported). She and Lascivyr have a new ability called Evasive on the warscroll, allowing them to roll an attack die when they would take damage and on hammers or crits reduces by one to minimum of one... 

Lascyvr has lower defence, but one more would/health... No locus of Carnality. 

Being Daemons of Slaanesh, I really wanted to love these and have some fun with them... they did a lot of FUN stuff in the previous edition... but they're feeling pretty... "meh"... 

GAME TWO

Four our second game we switched things up. Orion had a go at playing the Thricefold Discord, but played them with the "Mastery" deck - Countdown to Cataclysm! I played the only other warband I'd printed and cut out cards for - the Thorns of the Briar Queen - and paired them with the last deck in the box, the "Take and Hold" deck; Emberstone Sentinels. 

I took a lot less pictures for some reason...

This was the state of affairs at the end of Round One/Beginning of Round Two.

Things had NOT been going great for me. I was down three and another was wounded - every activation Orion had (but one) killed one of my Chainrasps (and the other one wounded one...) I had dealt some damage, but the Daemons of Slaanesh were all still there and taking a Chainrasp out with every shot. 

I was concentrating a little too hard on the game and forgot to take any more pictures until the very end!? I finished off the two wounded Daemons and killed the third... but had lost two more Chainrasps in the process. 

I'd gotten my last two fighters onto Treasure Tokens in Enemy Territory (even have Delve one to make it a Treasure Token again) to score one last Objective Card worth THREE POINTS... then realized, after all that effort to get them there, it had said two or more friendly fighter WITH A COMBINED BOUNTY OF THREE holding... ALL of my fighters are only worth ONE bounty... I'd have needed THREE fighters to score it... 

Somehow I eeked out a victory; 14-11...? 

I like it so far. As with everything, it will take some getting used to. I'll need to play a few games with each of the four decks and then maybe start tweaking them. while those that LOVE deck building are lamenting the lack of cards, I don't mind that there is limited stuff, for the moment. Less stuff to learn/keep track of. Less overwhelming when trying to decide which to pair with which. 

There will be two more decks in two and a half weeks. Reckless Fury is another Strike Deck, and Wrack and Ruin is a Mastery deck... 

Hopefully I can find something good to pair Wurmspat with and they won't suck so bad in this edition!

By the time we were done, it was later in the afternoon and there'd been some freezing rain and the streets were like skating rinks and I was just not feeling like going out in that... I figured I would wait until Sunday when it was forecast to be +7°C! 

Indeed it did warm up - and was really quite nice out! 

So I rolled out to Dragon's Den Games and picked up my copy.  

all the stuff in the box!

I also rode out to Staples to pick up the cards I'd ordered printed... I only uploaded four of the warbands to start with. I've never had things printed there before and didn't want to just PRINT THEM ALL in case the print quality or paper quality sucked (I ordered them on card stock). They turned out pretty nice.... 

After an evening of "arts and crafts" (cutting and then gluing the fronts and backs of fighter cards and warscrolls together) I have fighter cards and warscrolls for four warbands ready; Thricefold Discord, Mollog's Mob, Zondara's Gravebreakers, and Cyreni's Razors. The first three are ones I like the idea of and thought would be fun to try playing. Cyreni's Razors was one of the ones that got it's own separate pdf and custom Warscroll that I thought Amanda might play. 

All the warbands that were released in the last year got separate pdfs with Fighter cards and custom Warscrolls. There are sixteen that are being re-released in four boxes of four that are only getting printed fighter cards and warscrolls - either in the boxes with the miniatures, or in one deck including all sixteen (conveniently, I have fifteen of the sixteen, so I'll be buying the deck!). 

The rest of the warbands - those not released in the last year that are not being re-released... did get PDF fighter cards, but did not get custom warscrolls. There are two very generic warscrolls for each Grand Alliance (Order, Chaos, Death, Destruction) from which those could be picked. They were released in one big 47-page pdf... and I didn't want to mess with print ranges and stuff the first time I uploaded stuff, and definitely didn't want to print off all 47 pages in that first go around - since I didn't know how it would all work out.... I'll probably be printing off all the cards for all the others soon enough. 

That'll be a lot of cards to cut and paste... which will I do first!? Maybe the Generic Grand Alliance Warscrolls... and then Wurmspat (for me!) and Morgwaeth's Blade Coven and Elathain's Soulraid for Amanda! The soulraid looks fun,