Choosing Skulls
Hey bud, you know a good dentist?
Finally got off that disgusting underwater Aelf kick and got into something a little more my speed… Chaos!
Oh lawd, he comin’!
Kamandora’s Blades
I think I was responsible for this pick. Chaos is my sweet spot, and so I dragged Jake kicking and screaming away from the Idoneth and into the wholesome embrace of the Blood God. This also felt like a timely pick because they had a significant change with the balance adjustment earlier this year, namely a change to how the Slashing runemark works… but more on that later.
Have You Played Them Before in second edition?
Oh yeah. I was excited for what looked like it might be a return to Garrek’s Reavers style play when I saw these models, so I jumped on them pretty early. I’d dabbled early on and found them to be more powerful than most folks seemed to be giving them credit for, winning a fair number of games. I wasn’t the only one either, as I heard rumblings of folks doing well elsewhere with them coughValcough. Fishmode too?
Have You Painted Them?
Wellllll…. yes and no. I almost had them complete but a back injury made it extremely difficult to sit for any prolonged amount of time. I actually tried to see if I could paint while lying down. Do not recommend.
Placeholder till I can finish them off so very soon.
What deck did you use?
Several, and It’s actually hard to pick which I preferred. I got most reps with:
You Give Blood a BADS Name (Blazing Assault and Deadly Synergy)
Laws of the Hatemother (CataWrack)
Oh boy, this can spike so much damage (see in particular Games 2 and 3 below). The main problem is the scoring
If you’re looking to build your own, this is a crew that really, really loves pushes. There’s all the usual stuff that pushes give you- scoring denial, extra attacks, but these can pop some surprise inspires out which really helps you pop off. And now with the new interaction between Slashing, Bleed and stagger, any stagger cards are pulling double duty, increasing accuracy and effectively functioning as ping damage as well. Ping damage that can kill! They also love guard cards, especially once inspired.
Most reps with this beaut… which is actually not too dissimilar from some of the Cyreni builds I tried.
Game 1: After all that talk about deck pairings, the first one I actually tried for this endeavor was a straight Rivals. I was excited, Nexus of Power came out, so sue me. I was up against my son with Thanatek’s Tithe on straight Countdown to Cataclysm. I’m going to give us both a bit of a pass since Rivals is often a little clunky and we were both new to either our deck or warband, but this was pretty atrocious. I thought I’d leverage the extra range for being covetous on a treasure, but Emmett managed to either flip or cover up a lot of what I needed, and didn’t come near the rest. Our scores just crawled and I found myself able to gather a little bounty but not much else. Cataclysm’s innate scoring carried Emmett through and I lost the first outing 7-12
Game 2: We made it out to our league night and I got a game in against Alexx for the first time in a long while. He was supporting the newly nerfed Wurmspat. In theory, it felt like the extra damage from staggers plus Slashing would be at its most effective against big chunky targets and Wurmspat had those. I recall mulliganing my objectives into a hand that included Low on Options which is pretty rough for R1, but it paired with a hand that had 4 ploys and one upgrade, after which I lost the roll off and drew another ploy. And what was that upgrade? Sundering Weapon for cleave. This was the dream round: I managed to kick Sepsimus into a stagger hex for two damage with first activation, then follow up with an inspire and kill from Throkk. Then a handful of staggers, pushes and pings meant that Fecula also went down before the end of R1. I briefly had a chance to kill Gulgoch in R2, but it turns out if your enemy has a single fighter with R1, you just don’t need to step to him. This was a game where everything that could possibly go right in R1 did go right and the rest of the game was just a matter of making sure I didn’t trip over myself on the way out the door with the win. (19-9 I think?)
Game 3: Into the new Rippas piloted by Dan! Exciting! Running Realmstone Raiders (!) and… Blazing? We may have slightly misplayed, allowing raids on wolf bites, which unfortunately isn’t the deal. I got way in trouble early taking damage across the board and looking pretty sluggish on scoring. The sheer number of attacks and great warscroll abilities meant that I was hemorrhaging fighters early. I was able to put some decent damage on every one of his fighters but wasn’t quite landing the finishing blows. Until R3 that is. He had two vulnerable fighters in no man’s land and his third had only taken a little damage but a quick hit and drive back had all three Rippa’s hanging out. I think you can see where this is going.
One power card later, and I was 7 glory richer. Victory from the (wolf) jaws of defeat. 20-15
Game 4: A re-rack and play of the same matchup. Once again horrendous early damage before I got the inspires online meant that I was fighting with a small cadre of fighters but I landed more early hits and managed to burn the wolves down with me in glorious combat. One nice thing about the Catawrack pairing is that the big end phase scores can really flow once the battlefield is pretty cleared out. Rippas were pretty scary but I think this sort of reinforced the idea that the hyper ping build plus bleeds meant that I could really tear into bigger fighters. 19-16
Game 5: With proof of concept set using the CataWrack matchup it was time to try some of that Blazing Assault/Deadly Synergy. Here I was headed into another matchup with Emmett, experimenting with Nexus of Power and Emberstone Sentinels. I initially liked the setup- I’m okay taking one damage here and there on my way in, and theoretically, I knew exactly where the duardin would be since they wanted the treasure tokens. Unfortunately, I killed Khazgan a little too fast in round 1 (note: If there’s a Thundrik’s player out there who has ever seen this dude live through a game, let me know. I’ll try to believe you.) In round 2, Emmett cannily retreated the Chosen Skull away from my lines. I was still able to use the start of round push to create some great Deadly Synergy chains, either moving directly into positions where they were United or where a charge would have the help of United. Brothers in Arms felt like a great selection with this pairing, allowing an uninspired fighter (or poor Kannat) to come flying in with the higher accuracy and damage from a comrade. The game came down to the wire, and I thought I was going to cleverly make Emmett decide between Iron Grasp or making a last attack. Unfortunately, unlike his dad, Emmett sometimes saves his abilities late into the game and did both by prudent use of By the Code, winning on tiebreakers 18-18.
Game 6: This was an online foray into a Edge/DS Grymwatch build. I was looking forward to trying the Blades into something a little more horde oriented. I got an early edge in this game when the Night’s Herald became the Worthy Skull and got stranded in a bad spot that allowed Kamandora’s gang to start powering up. The extra range from pushes meant that Throkk managed to cut down Crackmarrow to vulnerable status get the edge. I think if that attack misses, it’s a different story, but with resurrection shut down and decent accuracy throughout thanks to the inspire, the Blades rolled to victory. Through no smart play of my own, I shut down Trial of the Tempered accidentally by a Defiant Duo play that was just looking for guard. 17-13.
Thoughts about the warband after playing it: I was so prepared to be all in on this crew. This is my sweet spot for an Underworlds warband. Just four schlubs and their pet. No epic heroes like Stormcoven. It’s that kind of street level fight that appeals. And… Garrek’s Reavers were one of my all time favorites. Even before the update, Blades were more powerful than I thought at first. After the update, I found them to be pretty darn juicy. Deadly Synergy is pretty incredible for them. United gives a solid accuracy and defensive boost, it’s got a guard card, the objective deck keeps them doing what they want to do.
Award for “Most Disconnect Between What It Sounds Like it Might Do and What it Actually Does”: The inspire is powerful. Good payoff on most of the fighters, and the ability to get it as a surprise in the power step is awesome. But it just feels weird to be picking a chosen skull candidate and then purposely not killing that fighter so that you can inspire more dudes. I don’t know why standing next to a guy is just as big a deal as killing him. It just feels like slaying the chosen skull should have a bigger payoff? Or immediately generate a new Chosen Skull?
Award for “Best Chance to Show Off”: Slaughterous Pilgrimage is the primary source of what this warband had in tricks (I’d argue the power step inspire is a close second). Finding clever ways to shift the board state or pull more efficient scoring in deck pairings (Deadly Synergy, Pillage, maybe Nexus?) is the best way you can try to show off your chops.
Award for “Most Unfortunate Use of Warscroll Real Estate”: Call the Pursuit. Man. It is a big push, but on your weakest fighter, needs your boss alive, has positional restrictions, and can only be used once per game. It’s… not bad. You can certainly do some useful things with it (see below), but I was burning it early because I was expecting one half of the duo to die if I waited at all. If it was repeatable, or worked on more fighters, or was almost anything else… It just feels like a missed opportunity to put something more flavorful on the scroll.
Whaddya Know about those Fighters?
A health pool of 15 and low early defense saw me often getting knocked into a spot where I was only a couple attacks away from everything falling apart. Antro, Ghalista, and to slightly a lesser extent Thrakk really get a huge bump from inspiring and it felt like games turned on
Kamandora herself is an interesting profile- starting on two dodge means she can tank hits a little better at the outset, but three health is a little soft.
Throkk is cool, but I just want something more than an extra wound. The background says he’s the guy who chops the heads off after the rest of the crew weakens them. I wish this was repped in his rules. Like… just grievous instead of slashing? Or an attack profile with each?
Of your two not-quite-minions, Ghalista has the best model, Antro Krast has the best name. I will not be taking comments at this time.
Kannat… sure is a fighter in this warband. In the deadly synergy pairing especially his warscroll ability helps set up United status which is handy.
The Wrap-up:
This is hard enough without having to do the non-unique warscrolls. Don’t make me un-hide them.
Games to reach first win: 2
Final record: 4-2 (one game not counted)
Overview: Divisive miniatures, surprisingly good stat blocks (once inspired), with very high damage output, and just a couple “tricks”
Fun factor: It’s fun to win games, sure, but… there’s just not enough to chew on here. I felt like I had a pretty set game plan that didn’t take much adaptation, and apparently, that factors into the fun for me. There’s still some exploration into the more hordes oriented matchups that I haven’t gotten to delve into, but I’m ready to move on. I’ll give ‘em 2.5 out of 5 stagger tokens given to a single Wurmspat fighter in one round.
Other resources: Underworld’s Underground’s warband coverage, Starting Hexodus’s partner entry.
Final note: Thanks to underworldsdb where I stole many an image and built many a deck!
Who’s Next: I’ll be in consultation with my partner in crime, but we should probably look at Destruction or Death Grand Alliances? Or maybe something more purely hold. TBD. Accepting requests.