We’ve attempted to put together a quick guide to each Warhammer Underworlds Rivals deck including a brief summary of how they play, which types of warbands they might work best with and a few important cards. Hopefully now you can see what each deck is good at doing with just a glance.
This quick review is a snippet of a larger article which we’re trying to keep up to date with every Rivals Deck. You can check that out at the link below.
Breakneck Slaughter Rivals Deck
| Release | Deathgorge core set |
| Season | Deathgorge |
General goal
Breakneck Slaughter is an aggro deck – but it won’t feel like one. Instead, the focus is much more about launching your fighters across the board with a truly hit-and-run playstyle thanks to the man movement boosts and Momentum counters.
The Plot card associated with the deck details the ‘Impetus’ mechanic, which means that fighters with Momentum counters get +1 move, at the cost of your opponent being able to push your fighter a distance dependant on the number of counters, after the activation. So a fighter with 2 counters could charge in, only to potentially be pushed back 2 hexes. It’s an interesting mechanic that will come into effect differently depending on who you face up against. You need to be careful your opponent can’t push you into a worse situation, but it does mean you can essentially hit-and-run, bouncing off your opponents, which might be especially annoying for warbands who want to stay close to you.
The deck leans really hard into this theme of movement, with a lot of cards offering Momentum counters as well as their various buffs to offence, defence and speed. The deck’s Objective cards are all focused around charging, attacking or being right up in your opponent’s face (such as [Fastest Around])
The deck has a solid 17 glory available, but as with any aggro deck, you’ll likely be adding on a few more from successful kills.
Which warbands work best?
I feel like this deck is designed as a love letter to all of the sturdy-but-slow warbands that have been added to Underworlds over the years. Ironskull’s Boyz and Morgok’s Krushas spring to mind, as well as the more melee focused Stormcast warbands like Steelheart’s Champions or Ironsoul’s Condemners.
The often unusable Chosen Axes may even be fun with this if you just ignore their inspire condition. The certainly need the speed boost!
Faster warbands may prefer to use a more traditionally agressive deck, but there’s scope for this playstyle to be fun with a lot of different warbands, old or new. Cyreni’s Razors, Grashrak’s Despoilers, Garrek’s Reavers or perhaps you fancy something a bit more wacky, like catapulting Zarbag’s Gitz across the board!
Key Cards
Force of Frost Rivals Deck
| Release | Deathgorge core set |
| Season | Deathgorge |
General goal
Paths of Prophesy is a deck which will have you bombarding your opponent with spells from a distance and collecting ‘Ice counters’ in order to boost your abilities as you control the board.
This deck is pretty straightforward with no plot card, but it does set you the task of collecting Ice counters, collected mainly via upgrade cards. They aren’t needed too much for scoring, but will really help ramp up the offensive and defensive abilities of your spellcasters. As well as the numerous spell cards you’d expect in a magic-based deck, there are also some nifty ways to mess with the pace of the game (like [Time Freeze] allowing you to essentially skip an activation in order to later make two actions at once) and to force your opponent to discard/break their cards.
The deck has 17 glory, which is fairly good, especially when you factor in the additional glory available through [Chasm Key], and the fact that a lot of the objectives are relatively easy to score. There aren’t any high-scoring cards and the timing on the objectives are pretty open, so if your gameplan backfires, you can likely pivot without leaving too much glory unclaimed.
Which warbands work best?
As a magic-based deck, having a wizard is obviously essential. Bonus points if you’re using a warband that naturally has more than one such as The Thricefold Discord, Stormsire’s Cursebreakers or The Crimson Court, but that’s not necessarily essential as [Everwinter Staff] lets you convert a fighter into a level 2 wizard, which will be incredibly handy.
Warbands with built in spell attack actions will work nicely for this deck, as it’ll make a couple of the objectives easier to score without having to rely on gambits and upgrades. Ephilim’s Pandaemonium and Domitan’s Stormcoven seem to fit this deck amazingly, with both having multiple spell attacks from the get-go, but to a lesser extent also includes other warbands such as Ylthari’s Guardians, Myari’s Purifiers and Eyes of the Nine.
Force of Frost doesn’t really need you to rely on brute strength – it includes some range 2-3 attack upgrades and cards like [Frozen to the Spot] to punish enemies attempts to be aggressive, or even neutralise weak/wounded fighters. If the deck you’re using contains a non-wizard fighter with ranged attacks, then it’ll be even easier to control your opponent from afar.
Key Cards
As a reminder, this quick review is a snippet of a larger article which we’re trying to keep up to date with every Rivals Decks. You can check that out at the link below.
Have we overlooked anything? Are there any warbands that are just perfect for a specific deck? Leave us a comment and let us know! If you enjoyed this article then be sure to check out the rest of our Underworlds content.
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