Warhammer Underworlds

[The Other Dave]

Wish I could've made it!

As I've said elsewhere, I think that "solid but not great" seems to be a general theme in Direchasm warbands, and I think that's a very good thing for the game, even if we're missing the excitement of a table-flipping warband like the ghouls or Mollog. Even the weaker warbands this season, like the Ravagers (and that's very relative - they have great stats and only really suffer because of all the "hold more objectives than your opponent" objectives in the current pool that they more or less automatically give to their opponents) aren't weak in the same sense that, say, the Eyes of the Nine or the Wurmspat are.

(All the same, the buzz is indicating I should throw together that Wraithcreepers deck...)

[The Other Dave]

Hmm, the bonesplitters are up for preorder this weekend, along with a surprise card pack - I guess the essentials pack isn't interfering with the usual "one extra card pack per season" deal. It's interesting that they're making it explicitly thematic and tied to something in the fiction of the game (namely, the mysterious silent people who live in the Beastgrave), which is a neat new direction for these things. Looks like I'll be getting some cards along with the vampires and savage orcs for my May payday hobby splurge.

Jye and I got together up at plamojuku for a bunch of games today, which was excellent fun. I got pretty well stomped on paper (1-5 for the day), but there were some close games in there, and I got a lot of good insight on how to make the Wurmspat work, so it's all good!

[Jye Nicolson]

If it helps, Matt introduced me to the business end of some Manticore Rockets and a Demolisher Cannon later on, so I got my richly deserved comeuppance

Having thought about it a bit, the Castigator's pretty good access to Guard on top of a 4 wound profile makes a big difference. There were several times today where you said "And I'll push you back", I replied "no you won't" and then I promptly scored. It's really tough to disrupt their gameplan without high damage or actual push cards.

They more I play them the more solid I think their design is. They'll never be top tier but you have to work really hard to stop them scoring in the teens at least.

[The Other Dave]

I have only myself to blame for ignoring basic-since-Beastgrave deckbuilding and not having more than one or two pieces of push tech in there! Swapping out some edge-case aggro stuff for Confusion and Nightmare in the Shadows is probably going to help in more matchups than it hurts.

The Wurmspat also have relatively little access to damage boosts, which hurts them a little bit. Sting of the Ur-Grub doesn't work on Sepsimus since it's range 1 only, and the defense loss from Savage Strength makes it a no-go too. I think I felt the reliance on 2-damage hits against both the castigators and mollog. (Fortunately, Gloryseeker is the answer to both those questions.)

[me_in_japan]

I'm still grumpy about the lack of vampire warband availability, as I ordered that plus two other bands and the whole thing is trapped in limbo until GW deign to release more vamp stock. Not feeling very inclined to pick up the new orcs/cards until I get the other stuff I'm waiting on, which could well be some time. This, imho, is how people fall out of a game system...


*edit* eh up! I stand corrected. Just checked the status of my order and it says "package sent April 26th", so I guess I should shut up with me moaning and sit back down. That's me telt...

[The Other Dave]

Crisis averted! Yeah, I was going to say - there's lots of Crimson Courts out in the wild.

The card previews for the savage orcs went up. Lots of Primacy tech, as you'd expect. I'm not sure about their inspire mechanic - every time you get Primacy you can inspire one - because, even though they have a couple cards to give up the Primacy token, in general you're only going to be able to earn it once per turn unless your opponent is also going heavy into Primacy. Still, they're cool models and the idea of an orc shaman with a beer gut is just intrinsically hilarious.

Also I like how one of their fighter's names (Wallop da Skull) is a sentence.

[The Other Dave]

The 8th warband of the season: Feesh, and also Crabe:

Interesting, I like them! Although crabs' mouths do not work that way &c. I can imagine some interesting stuff stat-wise - there've been a whole lot of "4-fighter warbands with an archer, 2 DPS and a leader" this season.

The inspire condition, though: "it is the second round" Fits the Idoneth rules in AoS, with tides ebbing and flowing, but it kind of feels like they were designing them at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon - "eh, whatever, let's go get a beer".

[me_in_japan]

I’m slightly underwhelmed by these guys. I do like the fish and crab (weird mouth notwithstanding), but I feel like the actual elves lack a little somethingsomething in the swoosh department. Maybe a head-swap or something might help? I dunno. I don’t hate them, to be sure, but of late Underworlds has raised the bar so high, these guys being only “pretty good” is a little disappointing.

[Primarch]

I’m slightly underwhelmed by these guys. I do like the fish and crab (weird mouth notwithstanding), but I feel like the actual elves lack a little somethingsomething in the swoosh department. Maybe a head-swap or something might help? I dunno. I don’t hate them, to be sure, but of late Underworlds has raised the bar so high, these guys being only “pretty good” is a little disappointing.

Given that they are aquatic elves, maybe "sploosh" is more appropriate than swoosh?

[Balloonacorn]

Love these guys! Great Variety from GW. Give me a fish and a crab and I will take over the multiverse.