Defending the Hearth — The Mortal Realms

Have you ever seen a more valiant group of heroes?

Welcome to uh… the next installment of Hexodus? You know.. a cool 10 months since the last one. Good news! At this rate, I’ll have a wrap on this project about 45 years after the game is no longer supported. So you’re guaranteed content into the foreseeable future. You’re welcome.

A little peek behind the curtain- I did get 10 games in with Eyes of the Nine, but that was right before Harrowdeep dropped and then it no longer seemed relevant for this series. We’ll come back to those nasty boys. Or we won’t. The Changer of Ways is fickle. In the meantime, the next warband is…

The Grymwatch

Oh how the mighty have fallen. For “Underworlds players of a certain age”, this warband is synonymous with a dominant and skewed play style that pervaded much of the Beastgrave era. And now they’re just dust in the wind. Which made it feel like a perfect time for me to come to grips with my PTSD of losing to these guys over and over again (What’s that, you scored 12 glory in the third round? Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.)

Have You Played Them Before?

Uhhhh…. kind of? Before this blog went into a coma for the last almost-year, I tried this crew out. It didn’t go particularly well, and I was also trying to spin up for Adepticon. The curse of content creation. But, yeah. I steered clear of this warband in their heyday, because I’m a contrarian. Or dumb. Or both. What I’m saying is that I probably had five or so games with this warband prior to this latest run, and… like…. 75 against them. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

Have You Painted Them?

Why yes. Specifically for this series. I wish I’d done a better job with the blood effect, but experimenting with that was part of the whole appeal.

Special note on this warband: I really don’t care for the AoS range of Flesheater Courts. I lurrrrve their background. As far as ghoul models go, these ones have enough character that I enjoyed painting them. I liked reading about them even more. We talk about it in our cross over episode with the Story Phase when we cover the Direchasm short story compilation.

Did You Build Your Own Deck?

Yes and no. I recognized that I was a real noob with this warband, and that I should probably lean on outside help for this project. That said, I felt like there were a few ways to lean with this warband: Full on hold objectives, full on hold any feature tokens, and full on hold objectives in enemy territory. I saw the latter strategy played to tremendous effect in late Direchasm by Nickramone.

So my first five games are with a home-brew deck that I built myself. The theory was to be happy to sit in my own territory, kick people out as much as I could (to inspire) and score by sitting on the stuff I already had. So, of the types I noted above, this would fit under the first. After five games, I’d change up the archetype. More when that happens…

So this is the “hold lots of objectives” option. Trying this, I was fresh of getting man-handled by Requizen’s Spiteclaw’s Swarm at Adepticon, so really wanted to try out some of the cards that penalized an opponent for killing my fighters. An original iteration included Shrewd Wits, which someone helpfully pointed out, does not actually work in conjunction with Duke Crackmarrow’s Ghoul Call.

The glory count is decent, but there’s a ton of positioning requirements to pull it off. As a result, most of the power deck is given over to that.

The gambits focus almost exclusively on changing board position or where objectives sit, with a little help for inevitable fighter death. The upgrades try not to sleep on some of Grymwatch’s so good it’s a little silly offensive upgrades, while continuing the fighters are gonna die theme and adding some more positioning tech.

What did I learn?

The Games

Game 1: This was against a newer player in my local running Clawpack. Erik is new to Underworlds but a GW veteran and plays with a competitive mindset. He played a little too conservatively and I was able to get the inspire at the end of R2 and start running away with things. We called this one at 10-6. Not a ton to pick up here, other than the fact that inspiring the Grymwatch really turns on their counterpunch ability. The Duke and Gristlewel really appreciate the offensive bump.

Game 2: Same player, but switching to Starblood Stalkers, a warband more in line with his preferences. This deck was built to score off of holding things in my territory. This game had the following power cards played: Confusion x2

Centre of Attention X2

Huanchi's Device

Burst From the Shadows

Pack Advance

Appalling Visage

Heeded Instinct

It was glorious. I missed a chance to kill Kixi-Taka earlier because I held Seized Weapon longer than I should. The Harrowdeep/Nethermaze power phase sequence means you can’t just hold a ping in hand to guarantee a kill if your turn works out how you wanted. In this case, Kixi pushed away from the attacking fighter, much to my dismay, and it took several more turns to land the kill. 15-11

Game 3: My gracious co-host not-so-graciously straight up murdered me in this game. Phil knew enough to push hard and early to deny the inspire. R1 had four Starblood Stalker activations land four kills. However- my biggest error here was in getting flustered by how badly things were going and risk a fourth activation charge with Crackmarrow through a lethal. He was sporting Well-Motivated, so things felt odds on for a kill, but it was not to be. The downside was that I damaged Crackmarrow and put him in a spot where a single push from the Lizards meant that he was in range for a counterattack and was finished without mercy. My take-away- I panicked and risked a key piece far too early in the game, denying any chance at a comeback. Conceded at a 7-8 but on track to be much, much worse. I only kept pace as long as I did courtesy of a very front loaded surge hand.

Game 4: Played via Vassal vs. Plaguedoc’s Exiled Dead. I thought this would be a difficult matchup. Aggressive Danses would theoretically prevent me from ever inspiring. Grymwatch just don’t have the accuracy or damage in R1 to kill off enough invaders. However, Plaguedoc went for a more passive approach with his zombies, instead leaning on Regulus and Marcov. I was able to inspire and build enough of a lead through R2 that I could play a very conservative R3 to maintain the lead, knowing that Exiled Dead weren’t going to have a big surprise score. (19-8)

Games 5: Played vs Skyler (Omniops). Skyler has been running Soulraid of late locally and again, I felt sure that I wouldn’t inspire, mostly thanks to the fish being an near-guaranteed presence in my territory. However- Skyler (and he’d be the first to admit this) misplayed early. In attempt to disrupt my feature token holding and get an easy token to flip for Sudden Revelation, he kept placing shoal tokens on my feature tokens. This let me happily take move actions on to the same tokens, both blocking the fish from arriving and progressing my own game plan. I still only inspired thanks to a very lucky charge from an uninspired Crypt Ghoul shoving Duinclaw out of my territory and allowing a Chum the Waters score in R1. Although I took this game 16-8, I was only confident that future matchups against this warband and against Skyler would be much harder.

Intermission: So after five games with the “hold in my own territory” build, I wasn’t super impressed. I’d landed some wins, sure, but several of those were due to misread matchups. I felt like I wasn’t presenting any difficult choices to my opponents. It was merely a “this is what I’m trying to do, can you stop me?” situation. So now… it was on to trying out a more aggressive build.

Many thanks to “freeze” from Vassal discord

This is an oh-so-slightly modified deck that user “freeze” shared with me on discord. Freeze described this deck as “very greedy” and it’s hard to disagree. There’s a lot of glory tied up in holding two (or all) objectives in enemy territory, but there’s a lot of tricks to do so as well. Freeze had Impervious Delusion in this deck, but my experience with it so far had been that without a +wounds upgrade, it wasn’t all that great. So I subbed in Terrifying Shadow. Freeze also had Unlikely Hero, which I ditched for Swarming Darkness on the basis of really wanting power cards to feed the selected strategy. As you can see there’s additional aggression in the upgrades portion of the power deck here. Another advantage is that Fearless Seekers and Horrors in the Dark makes the bats have a little more utility, in this build. Let’s see if it paid off.

Game 6: Alexx’s Blackpowder Bucanneers. I was pretty happy with boards and objectives. A full offset felt like I should be able to get my inspire off and I had objective placed deeply enough in enemy territory that my inevitable casualties would be able to arrive and scoop some of them up without too much risk. Or would at least present a difficult choice of whether or not Alexx would need to turn around to get after them. As it turned out, Alexx played his free pushes on the the monkey and parrot very well, threatening my inspire, and got me in a 0-4 hole most of the way through Round 1. I scraped enough glory to get a soultooth dagger out, kill the parrot and inspire. Then positioning power cards meant I was able to pull ahead with some really big end phase scores and avoid bleeding too much for a win. 24-12

Game 7: Phil’s Hrothgorn. This involved a minor flashback to when I first tried to work on this article and the aforementioned Alexx managed to get Hrothgorn’s crossbow really tooled up and smoke ghoul after ghoul. Phil built a very solid early lead, but at this point, I was used to bleeding early for bigger scores late. I also was able to combo some push cards to kick Hrothgorn out of my territory and land a couple juiced up Soultooth dagger attacks to kill Hroth early and claw my way back in. Especially helped by an 11 glory R3, this again landed the win, 19-17.

Intermission 2: I was enjoying these games much more, but felt like waaaaay too much was riding on a couple objectives in enemy territory. I dropped the glory cap by cutting Treasure Hunters for Lengthening Shadows. This gave much more leeway as far as positioning without too much of a cost of overall glory. Additionally, I felt I wanted a little more positioning help, so decided to experiment with cutting a damage boost (Gloryseeker) for a positioning option: Soundless Step.

Game 8: Played vs. Phyriphiry’s Dread Pageant. I’m never quite sure what Dread Pageant are set up to do- be it hold 2 (probably these days) or invade (less likely, but more problematic for me). This is the game where I finally hit upon the revelation that as I moved ghouls onto objectives in a contested area, I could delve them. When my ghoul inevitably died, I could use my next activation to run back on to it, scoring In the Name of the King. Giving up the modest cover bonus ended up totally worth it. In this game, Crackmarrow leveraging Beast Trails (because he’s a hunter for some reason?) and a damage upgrade meant that he put in huge work in the backfield to land a 21-14 win.

Games 9-10: Played vs Vint’s Storm of Celestus. I can admit it. I underestimated this warband. In the first game, I chose objective advantage, vaguely knowing that the Storm cared about holding things. I got long-boarded and ended up stuck waaaaay in my territory. That’s a problem when half your objective deck wants you to get into enemy territory. I also discovered that my favorite trick of using Swarming Darkness to steal a feature token doesn’t work if the enemy delves early and doesn’t delve back. The combination of Stormcast squatting on objectives in their territory and racking up kills and inspiration by smoking single dodge defense die ghouls meant that I lost this one handily- called at 9-6 due to time shortages.

Thankfully, I got to try the rematch. Curious to see what adjustments I could make, we ended up with a longboard again. This time, I was able to place objectives in a way that forced the last one onto an edge hex which is great if you have Beast Trails. I made a bad choice in holding an opening hand of Extraordinary Revelation, The Hunt Advances, and Sudden Revelation. I was enchanted by an easy surge, but on further consideration, a mulligan here draws from 5 surges (all of which are fairly easy) and 4 end phase. Additionally, I had a 5 gambit power hand, which meant that looking for Pervasive Delusion was probably a good idea. I went down early in this game again, but the sheer amount of counter-punch meant that we went from 6-8 at the end of R2 to a very healthy win for the Grymwatch. Another lesson learned here: I realized I had blinders on with Swarming Darkness. I was fixated on using it to steal feature tokens for maximum efficiency, but that was never going to happen against a warband that was delving early. I could have used it to save myself a move action early- just slide a feature token under Valreek and use the extra activation to flood enemy territory.

Another lesson learned: In a tight game guaranteed glory is probably a better call. At the end of R1, I saw a chance to maybe grab 2 objectives after all, and score Making a Statement, Extraordinary Revelation, and The Hunt Advances. It meant a ghoul call would need to drop the Night’s Herald next to an enemy fighter holding an objective and get a lucky hit. I got blinded by a longshot, thinking that the downside (if I roll a crit with this scatter token orientation I wouldn’t even score the Hunt Advances) was worth it. You know how this story goes… The Night’s Herald rolls a crit and arrives deep, deep in my backfield and I come up completely empty. At the time, the game was close and the gamble was not worth it!

Award for “Great Card, graduating to amazing with some planning”

Whatever route you’re going with your Grymwatch, I think this is your #1 auto-include. If you’ve messed things up, it still usually lets you push a fighter two hexes. It can be tricky because your three crypt ghouls spend a lot of time dead. Don’t let the fact that you’re not pushing all three at the same time deter you from pulling the trigger. And if you can, set up the board so that a single play of this card could score Ever Downwards, Sudden Revelation, and In the Name of the King.

Award for Card That Gives Me that Nostalgia Dopamine Hit When I Play It

This skink wandering around on the Beast Trails is probably the least of your worries.

Shout out to Hidden Paths. Situationally spectacular. Having a leader that you really want to keep safe, but also has a great inspired attack is a great setup. This can help score The Hunt Advances, or some of your other objectives with a little help from pushes, confusion or Swarming Darkness.

Whaddya Know about those Fighters?

Yeah, in the immortal words of Jean Ralphio, Master Talon is…

Regularly the guy I let die and bring back with Muster because I don’t care about his inspired side. Gristlwell is still a menace with a starting 3 damage attack with which to bully. I still have nightmares from the Haymaker days. But a small bump from Berserker Rage (with the promise of another attempt from Partial Resurrection) felt real juicy. The Night’s Herald sitting on one threatened objective and another ghoul using Terrifying Shadow on another made for some pretty unappetizing attack options.

The Wrap-up:

Games to reach first win: 1

Final record: 8-2

Overview: Still got some great in faction cards and pretty fun to explore now that they’re not the meta bullies. Some times these can just give too much up to farming and I think a couple of the warbands that you can expect to see regularly in the meta (Soulraid and Exiled Dead) will really create problems for them, despite the individual games here.

Fun factor: There’s a lot going on here. Perhaps it was the lack of familiarity. After getting pummeled by these guys badly in previous seasons, I was surprised with how much learning there was. 3.5 out of 5 delusions that are not permeable. It was a good puzzle to get back into the push and confusion playstyle and have those power step battles.

Other resources: What the Hex!?! had an interview with a successful Grymwatch player in their heyday. it’s a little dated, but still worth soaking up some high level knowledge.

Final note: Thanks to underworldsdb where I stole many an image and built many a deck!

Who’s Next: It’s almost jinxing things to act like another installment is forthcoming this year. But maybe it’s all a kunnin’ trick.

Where the wailing of a baby meets the footsteps of the dead/

We're all mad here