Warhammer Underworlds Embergard Review

Those dreaded words ring out, “relaunch”, “reimagining”, “complete rework from the ground up”, a combination of words that tell you – BIG CHANGES ARE COMING. This was what Games Workshop declared for their newest edition of Warhammer Underworlds, launching with Embergard, the first core set.

It goes without saying that the Warhammer Community team sang the song of how amazing the changes would be, but fans all over met these upcoming changes with fear and concerns or shouts of joy that the health of the game would be better for it. We were the former. We loved Underworlds, arguably one of Games Workshop’s better gaming systems, and the thought of the system being ‘tinkered’ with, concerned us it would no longer be that game we loved. Perhaps we should have been more open minded, especially given Age of Sigmar 4th edition had not that long ago launched with Spearhead being one of the best tabletop rulesets for their larger game systems we had ever experienced, and perhaps the main ruleset we will play going forward. But the fear was real, and in true Games Workshop “teasing” style of releasing information, it would take time for us to learn more about the changes.

That said, we delved into the system, getting the new set and ready to play it for ourselves before making our final judgement call.

Would Embergard be the treasure we would seek in the undergrounds, or deserve burying deep to be forgotten?

Are you wondering about sending a warband deep into the depths of Embergard?

For those who have never played Warhammer Underworlds, it is a tabletop game, that uses a board, decks of cards – which include cards to score points and cards to upgrade characters or activate events or abilities – dice, and miniatures… and it has to be said, even by GW’s standard, Underworlds has always had some of the most interesting miniatures you will ever be tempted to paint.

It plays over three rounds, where each player gets four activations, with two phases. Each activation lets you take one action, which can include things like moving, attacking – involving the classic roll off of dice – or charging (which allows you to move and attack in one go). Once you have completed an activation, you move into the power phase, where you can play power cards, which allow you to either upgrade (should you have bounty tokens) or trigger actions or events, or you can choose to delve, which is a process of turning feature tokens onto their opposite side.

Play then moves to your opponent.

At the end of a round (although sometimes immediately after certain events take place) you can then score objective cards, gaining all important glory tokens. Bounty tokens are used to help upgrade fighters (as previously mentioned) but are also the main aim to ensure victory, as at the end of the game, it is not about who is left standing, but whoever has the most glory wins.

Digging deep, what has actually changed?

Let’s face the least effectual but aesthetic elephant in the board game room. ARTWORK has gone! Ok, so Games Workshop is a miniatures company first and foremost, is it really a surprise they want to showcase those awesome miniatures as much as possible? Well, their community team hailed how ‘super gorgeous’ the miniatures photos are, and how awesome the new cards look. But let’s be honest with ourselves, we all know the reality is, it is cheaper. It costs a lot less to generate a large supply of photography than custom commissioned artwork for each card, especially when the miniatures are already being painted by their expert painters anyway. It is a shame, the artwork was always nice to look at, and added a nice narrative element for the cards, that we don’t feel is quite captured in the same way in photographed miniatures. Ultimately though, this is merely aesthetical and has no bearing on game play, so as sad a loss the artwork is, the game itself is more important.

The board is now smaller. This was one of the early announcements that concerned us. Shrinking the board? How can that be a good thing? Well, surprisingly it is. The board is obviously smaller, but they have actually increased playing space. That’s right, less actually became more. How you ask? Well the wizards in Games Workshop figured out that they could shrink the board, but also the size of the hexes to make more efficient use of space, which actually ended up leaving you with MORE hexes to move around and play on. This is pure sorcery! The bonus here though is the new reduced size of the board helps with people who perhaps have less space to play great games on. Another trade off with the new board is the loss of the two boards to pick and place together, instead you now have one board. Admittedly it still has two sides that look different, but you now have no option to create a really long board, forcing those smaller and slower warbands (sorry Duardin, we are looking at you), to take half of their activations just making their way up the board. It is a loss of what was a very interesting mechanic, but in all honesty, on reflection, we didn’t play like that often anyway, and at an event it wasn’t something that was really seen. So not a deal breaking loss.

Another big change is the decks have undergone a rethink. Early explorers, would find that their warbands would come with a complete, thematic deck, completely designed around their warband. Artwork featured images of their chosen faction, and the power cards and objective cards were all keyed in to how you would expect them to engage in combat or exploration. Later, these decks would be known as ‘rivals decks’ and you could either choose to use these or one of the other released universal ‘rivals decks’ released to play your games (all assuming you didn’t play a format you can create a deck to use). Well rivals decks are here to stay, however, all rivals decks are universal. Embergard comes with four to use, all representing one of the four play styles GW has decided to define, which include; Strike (combat based), Take and Hold (objective based), Flex (a combination of styles) and Mastery (which in the core set has a deck with an interesting gameplay mechanic added). This means gone are decks themed around warbands, so you could be playing Orruks and staring at photos of Aelves or Sigmar’s golden warrior the Stormcast Eternals. It’s a shame really, as the decks no longer feel unique to your warband, and you could easily end up playing an opponent with an identical deck. However, the rivals decks themselves all feel very unique and appropriate to their playstyle. GW escapes warband blandness by now introducing warscroll cards. These cards contain unique warband rules and abilities you can activate, that really do retain the sense of individual character we feared would be lost. Warbands have also got recommended playstyles, and these playstyles are represented well on these warscroll cards. The warscroll cards are a real win for this edition of the game, and we now find ourselves excited to explore how different warbands will play with different decks.

Magic dice are gone with the winds (of magic). This is probably partly due to loss of unique warband decks (as this would limit which warbands could use certain decks), and partly because actually they were never the clearest of Underworlds rules. There used to be spells on character cards and spells on ploys and how or if you could defend against them. This is probably one of the areas we were glad to see reviewed and simplified, though was shocked to see it go already. Currently magic hasn’t really featured in Embergard, so it will be interesting to see if Games Workshop explores this again later in the edition and how they will approach it.

Bounty has changed when you kill an opponent. This change was a very welcome one. Now each character card includes a bounty value, which means depending how tough the foe is, depends on how much they are worth… don’t forget, the more bounty you get, the better chance of winning you have. This may also give you the opportunity to decide who to protect and who can be cannon fodder for the enemy, to distract them whilst you aim for your objectives.

Other changes in the rules include simple things such as clarity of structure and language, and the general removal of a lot of ‘bloat’ generated by years of added rules.

This has meant that the overall instruction book has shrunk (just like the board), which should make it quicker for new players to pick up and learn.

So is the second edition of Underworlds still Underworlds?

The short answer is… Yes!

If you love Warhammer Underworlds, it is still the game you very much know and love. The same fast paced, tabletop miniatures game that will have you desperately trying to get every last bit of bounty before the game is up. Yes, the loss of artwork is gutting, but at the end of the day that is purely an aesthetic thing. Yes because of the changes, you’ve probably guessed it, long time collectors will find their collections defunct and unusable. Well… GW has got you covered. All older warbands have received updated rules. Some, in the form of purchasable card sets and miniature packs. These form the basis of this ‘seasons’ legal tournament warbands (if that sort of thing is your bag). Some, as free, YES FREE, to download PDF’s so you can still use your warbands in the new edition. They have also said as the edition progresses into a new season, some older warbands will be rotated in and out, meaning even more will get those purchasable cards to own. There is no indication yet if they will differ from the free versions. And of course, Games Workshop will of course continue to release new warbands as well.

Of course, collectors can still own and continue to play using the old cards under the old edition rules, but it will be interesting to see how often we do, especially as our beloved warbands get their new rules. This game still felt like the game we loved, and actually, in hindsight, perhaps did not warrant our fear. Some of the new changes are great – we are looking at you warscroll cards – and with the new rivals decks playing in a certain way, we can now play how we want, even if our warband isn’t set up to play that way.

In short, if you love Underworlds, give this edition a go, you may well find a real treasure yourself.