There Is Only Slaughter
Chili night in Shadespire is a rough affair.
Welcome to the first actual installment of Hexodus: A Journey through Warhammer Underworlds. When I conceived of this project, there was always an obvious first warband to start with.
Targor approves.
Garrek’s Reavers
The first warband. Well, technically, released simultaneously with Steelheart’s Champions, but Card #1 in Shadespire was A Worthy Skull. They were the first warband I played. So they retain the pride of place for this series and kick it off.
Have You Played Them Before?
Yes. For sure. I played them a bunch in season 1, season 2, and early in season 3 during the heyday of Grymwatch. My highest accomplishment with them is technically placing 4th at Waaaghpaca’s 2018 Grand Clash. But this was when there were only 4 warbands for the whole game, and before we really knew what a Grand Clash was. Aaand, I’m almost positive I was using Supremacy in that deck. And… as I’ve said more than once on the podcast, I had an opponent score Annihilation on me in the second match of the tournament.
Have You Painted Them?
Actually, yes. They would have been… the first warband I painted? Behold…
When you’re the boss, you just don’t have time for shoes.
I really do love the models for this warband. I’ve got a sweet spot for Arnulf- he’s one of the figures that originally hooked me on the warband in the first place.
Did You Build Your Own Deck?
You know it. With enough previous reps for these guys, I felt I’d be comfortable putting something together without outside guidance. Taking a look at their faction cards, you can see they have some of the problems encountered by a lot of the Season 1 warbands… that is to say, you’re going to rely an awful lot on the universal pool. Another is the, frankly shocking, fact that of their ten upgrades, nine (!) of them are restricted to a single fighter (three for Garrek, 2 for Karsus, 2 for Saek, and 1 for Targor and Arnulf). The only one that isn’t, is Frenzy . Which to be fair, is a sweet upgrade. Honestly, I think you could remove the fighter restrictions from all of their upgrades and it would be totally fine.
Side note, but the build for these cool cats originated before the entirety of Direchasm came out and certainly before the FAR. That means the list before has a few changes, but at it’s core it’s pretty much the same.
Welcome to Margareaverville.
So the core of the end phase objectives is the “everybody dies” package: It Begins, Khorne Cares Not, Bold Deeds, and Pure Carnage. As long as you’re mixing it up, this can be a pretty solid baseline. Clean Kills fits in too, and although it can occasionally get awkward this deck packs a lot of extra damage. The last inclusion is Underdog which, given the fragility of our fighters, is always on the table.
The surges start with the “get it while it’s not restricted” Everything to Prove and another few Primacy cards, Surge of Aggression, and Wrested Dominance. The latter could easily be Primal Display, but might wait to lock that one in once GW clarifies Primacy timing. There’s 4 speed cards and the inspire to help with the speed surges (Gathered Momentum and Winged Death), which leaves Show of Force. While this deck doesn’t really plan to voltron, the reality is that so many of your fighters die, you’re going to be dumping upgrades on to someone.
The gambits focus on accuracy, speed, and positioning. Upgrades are heavy on the damage (4) and accuracy (3), a little speed (2), and a weapon for boosting the little fellas if inspiration doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. Or for Arnulf, because… yikes, dude.
What did I learn?
Award for “Probably More Cute than Good”
Lethyr (?) feeling the rhythm of the night and Huachi channeling that Reaver energy.
Malkyn Grace is in over Spectral Wings specifically to let Saek or Karsus use this gambit. And since it’s for the whole activation, you can scythe with Karsus for maximum grossness. And I guess, now that the fish is around, it lets you use Punching Up on Arnulf or Targor. Look, I know it’s bad. The title of the segment is “more cute than good”. Cut me some slack.
Award for Card Where I Should Really Know Better, but I Just Don’t Know How to Quit
Yeah, Targor’s triggering this one. But not the way he thinks…
This is kind of a win more. But extra attacks are so rare, that I just get tempted. A lot of times, it’s just kind of a Mighty Swing. It does have the advantage of triggering after the inspire. If you lean into more range 2 (spears, larval lance), this really can shine a little more. It also means that the enemy has to respect any of your fighters that might have charged and are still standing next to the enemy. They run off and kill Garrek, and Karsus throws another axe at someone. The dream… the dream, is to trigger in the middle of Karsus’ scything attack, make another scything attack, and the return to your original scything attack.
Whaddya Know about those Fighters?
Yeah, in the immortal words of Jean Ralphio, 1 dodge on defense is…
Seriously, the only other warband with defensive stats this bad is the Sepulchral Guard. And those guys come back to life. Well… kind of. You definitely operate in a playstyle that assumes every attack on your fighters will hit (even if it won’t- the odds of 3 fury vs. 1 dodge succeeding are 58%. I’ve made this worse with my deck by taking literally nothing to increase survivability. Insensate is an excellent card that would help. Scavenged Armour, too, with the guard token providing some lethal hex protection as well as the +1 wound (note that I’m still assuming you’ll get hit).
The Games
Games 1 & 2: The inaugural games kicked off during vassal league, and I was excited to show my opponent (Grimnir) that I was bold enough to bring Reavers. He, called my bluff, and plopped down Steelhearts. What are the odds? This ended up being an example of everything going your way- with a crit defense to keep Saek alive and rapidly boosting to one shot kill range, knocking down all the Steelhearts in both games before they could meaningfully inspire. Might have said more about the dicey-ness of Stormcast inspire conditions than the reavers… Two wins! (2-0)
Game 3: A one-0ff vs. Gummitutte’s aggro Gitz. You know you’ve got defense issues when you get jealous of the GItz survivability. I played this a little wrong, and got Karsus dead too early, unable to leverage his range. A bottleneck and a couple whiffs meant that my inspire stalled while his powered up. Pure Carnage is great in this matchup… unless the other player has it too! Loss! (2-1)
Games 4-6: Also a league match! Up against Fireburner’s Rippa’s Snarlfangs, a warband I am pretty familiar with. On the one hand, getting to 4 damage fast can be pretty scary for these guys. On the other, those wolf bites can be pretty terrifying when you’re defending on one dodge. I took the first game with a really nice Round 3 swing with Pure Carnage and Khorne Cares Not. The second game of the match was an epic duel with round 3 coming down to a test of nerves- both players drawing power cards to boost their chances of a kill shot. I flinched first and went all in on a charge. I had extra dice and re-rolls, putting me at something like a 65% for the kill. I landed a crit/ double success, but celebration was premature when Rippa double crit out of the attack! (Note- this brings up a good point about odds. Rather than be salty about that double crit, I had to recognize that my chances going in were just about 2/3. Good, but hardly automatic. This revelation helped my serenity greatly). The last match I played like an idiot, drawing a speed package set of surges with no power cards to help and for some reason… didn’t mulligan one or the other. Whoops! One win, two losses! (3-3)
Game 7: Phil’s Starblood Stalkers. This was one of those rough ones- a lot of early misses meant I was playing from behind for most of the game. Painfully, I dropped a round 2 lethal ward on a skink… because why not? Then promptly drew into clean kills and answered the question myself. Whoops. Even a big Khorne Cares Not and Pure Carnage couldn’t catch me up. Loss! (3-4)
Game 8: Played vs. Crimson Court. Tragically drew into Khorne Cares Not and Pure Carnage in the opening hand. This probably probably hasn’t happened more than the odds would indicate, but boy, it sometimes feels like it! Throwing away that much glory was just too tough, and despite scoring the rest of the deck, the Reavers are defeated 17-21. Loss! (3-5)
Games 9-10: Played in the Vassal league vs. Headkrakka’s MadMob. This was an example similar to the Steelheart’s games- where just a couple of misses from the opponent can really break the game wide open for the Reavers. There was a tragic moment where Underdog was bricked courtesy of the MadMob playing Feign Strength, thus discarding the Primacy Token before Underdog could score for it. This was a matchup where sacrificing Targor and Arnulf helped an early inspire and the powerful second wave of attacks started one-shotting Orruks to death. These games went 19-11, and 6-4 (with a concession). Two wins! (5-5)
The Wrap-up:
Games to reach first win: 1
Final record: 5-5
Overview: Some pretty decent faction ploys amongst a lot of drek means there will always be a little temptation. Range 1, middling accuracy, okay starting speed means they need help to get going and are probably more subject to card order than some other warbands. Pure Carnage is nice, but not when you draw it in the first round with Khorne Cares Not. I think the set of games that told me the most was the matchup I lost vs. Rippas. Importantly, I felt like I could hang and better play might have turned that from a 1-2 loss into a 2-0 or 2-1 win.
Fun factor: With the requisite nostalgia boost, these guys reach a solid 4 out of 5 cares that Khorne does not give. That disposable missile playstyle is refreshing and games are often very bloody by the end of R2. Or earlier. They do lack some of the cool tricks that came along in later seasons. Although they don’t use much in the way of faction cards, there are enough to add a little extra flavor, and that’s always fun.
Other resources: What the Hex!?! did an episode on Reavers with Matt Martine, but I also learned a lot from Path to Glory’s Warband Wisdom series. I thought Jimmy Molini had some particularly effective insights on the warband. You can find that episode here.
Who’s Next: Not sure, but it’s definitely time to change things up. (WINK)