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.
Malevolent Masks Rivals Deck
| Release | Packaged separately |
| Season | Deathgorge |
General goal
If you’re looking for a deck that requires clever management of your cards and fighters, then Malevolent Masks may appeal to you. The deck is themed around unique ‘Mask’ upgrades. Like real masks, using a second mask removes the first one, giving you a way to swap the upgrades on a fighter mid-game. The abilities on the masks themselves are not crazy, with some requiring you to use an action for their benefit. The real bonuses come from the Gambits which interact with them.
This deck comes with a number of cards with interesting mechanics that could almost be seen as game breaking if not for the limitation of them requiring fighters to have Mask upgrades already. One of my personal favourites is the Gambit card [Maskborn] which allows a Mask-wearing fighter to essentially teleport to a starting hex in your territory, make an action and then take them out of action. The obvious use for this would be to get a final action out of a weakened fighter who is likely to die in the next turn. But there are also options for synergy with other cards, for example by using the Action granted by [The Eternal Smile] or [The Frostbitten Veil] as your main activation, ahead of using [Maskborn] for the actual attack. Now, imagine pairing this with a warband with resurrection mechanics.
The deck has a total of 15 glory available with 6 Surge objectives.
Which warbands work best?
The Malevolent Masks deck doesn’t seem to lean too strongly into any one playstyle, instead giving you a variety of tools to aid movement, attacks and interactions with feature tokens. As a result, warbands who lean into more of a flex playstyle are probably the ones to look at.
There are a number of cards in the deck which help to improve your card usage, but the issue with this deck is still going to be getting the initial mask upgrades on to fighters. So many of the Gambits are designed for fighters with Mask upgrades, that it may take a little while to get the ball rolling.
Warbands who have methods of giving themselves upgrades such as Hexbane’s Hunters could be a solid pick for this reason.
Revive mechanics could also come in handy for a couple of cards in this deck. I would perhaps suggest The Headsmen’s Curse, although unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to all inspire without some of their faction cards to grant them their Condemned counters. A more reliable suggestion might be The Grymwatch, who also align well with the deck in that they want to spread into your opponent’s territory, which will score a couple of objectives in this deck.
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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