After going quiet about Underworlds for a little while, Warhammer Community has finally let us know what’s happening, with a new edition of Warhammer Underworlds – Embergard, and oh boy it’s a big shake-up.
We’ve combed through the release article and preview stream and highlighted some of the biggest changes to the game for you, as well as a few thoughts on how these affect the game going forward.
No 6 month core box rotation
Most people tended to be in agreement that the 6 month core box cycle Underworlds moved to was a little too much. Well, this new edition appears to be slowing the release cycle. According to Games Workshop, this core box will be the base for the entire edition.
Unfortunately it’s not clear right now how long each edition will last, but it does at least mean this box is going to be relevant for a while.
New boards and tokens
On initial impressions, the new boards are a strange choice. Existing players are very familiar with the two board set-up, each player bringing their own board halves. But now it seems we’re moving to a larger single board instead.
Now, I’m sure this is partially to give people to buy the new season core box, but this will bring some changes to the game too. Firstly you’ll notice they’ve dropped a couple of hexes from the far corners. These were rarely used anyway, but it does mean less ability to run and hide. Secondly, no dedicated halves means that warband set ups will be much closer to start with, getting stuck in much sooner. This could be an interesting new change, but depends a lot on the new rules.
The thing we want to know right this second is whether there will be a way to get hold of new boards and tokens outside of the core box. Now that the core boxes are slowing right down, it seems like board expansions are a must.
New rules
A new edition of Warhammer Underworlds of course means new rules. The new core box comes with a 36 page rulebook. This apparently contains 16 pages of actual rules, with only 7 of those being the core game rules.
All we know right now is that Games Workshop say “The new rules are easier to learn, but with more depth to master than ever before.”
It’s a little early for us to talk about, as the rules have changed a lot over the years, but hopefully this means they’ve aimed for a highly accessible book with a lot of included lore about this season’s setting.
Fighter cards have been streamlined, accompanied by a new Warband Warscroll card
Fighter cards were admittedly starting to feel a little bloated. When the game started, warband rules were simple, with a few rules on each fighter’s card. As seasons went on, the rules got more complex, and there were plenty more shared rules across cards, which got a little messy.
Now, the fighter cards just focus on the model’s actual stats, with dedicated warband cards for all the wordy text. This means more space for pictures of the fighters, making it easier for you, and your opponents to tell apart the cards for similar fighters like Lady Harrows Mournflight. It also gives more space for wounds, and other tokens, to go on cards without covering key text. Overall it feels like a much needed clean up.
Old warband rules will be available digitally
This is huge news. Games Workshop clearly saw people’s frustration at wanting to play with older warbands but being unable to get the fighter cards and decks to go along with them. Previously the only real answer was to tell people to go to an unofficial site, download and print them.
For Games Workshop to release old warband cards digitally, they’re giving us an official way to use these warbands at zero cost. And if you don’t own the models, you could still grab the rules and proxy or convert the models to try them out.
This also theoretically means that erratas can be applied directly to the cards themselves, so you don’t need to check separate documents to check your warband rules. Just make sure you have the latest version downloaded.
No more warband decks
As part of the change above, Warhammer have apparently decided that in this new edition of Warhammer Underworlds they want to remove warband decks completely, using just Rivals decks.
Now, this is clearly a change to help with the above issue of using old warbands, but makes us a little more apprehensive. Warband decks always tied in really nicely with the warband rules and added a lot of flavour.
Presumably the warbands who had key mechanics throughout their decks will now be re-written so these are purely functional through the new warscroll rules.
Now, Rivals decks are great, and we have a huge article reviewing the ones from the first edition. It does leave one big question on our mind however: Is this the end of deckbuilding? It sounds like there’s still potentially some customisation, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Well, those were the major shake-ups we spotted in the new edition of Warhammer Underworlds. Anything we missed? Leave us a comment down below. Alternatively, let us know what parts you’re most excited about.
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