Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. I'm excited today because I get to talk about my experience competing at the World Championships of Warhammer, but also because after returning from the event I've had a bit of an epiphany. I have been quite critical of my performance in this game in the past, but between the four days I spent in Atlanta, the encouraging words of some good friends, and the advice of my wonderful wife, I have decided to make a conscious effort to acknowledge and combat my impostor syndrome.

This won't be your traditional event report. I won't have play-by-play recaps of my games – partly because I don't think people want to read that, but mostly because I can never remember the details to the degree that's required. I do feel like all of us have experienced a sense of inadequacy in some point of our life, so I hope my self discovery ramblings will be useful for at least one other person out there.

A post-award ceremony picture of most, but not all, of the Underworlds participants at the World Championships of Warhammer. Credit: Brian of What the Hex?!

Making it to the WCW has been a far-fetched competitive goal of mine for a bit. I say it was far-fetched because it was further along in my set of personal goals for this game and I hadn't managed to reach some of the earlier steps yet, so I didn't think winning an invite and attending the event were reasonably achievable. Hell, the first one on my list was to win a Shadeglass trophy at my FLGS and I still haven't managed that! Despite that, due to the complete shark tank of a field that NOVA 2025 was – one where so many competitors already came into the event with an invite – the second ticket trickled its way down a few places to me.

This was one of the big contributing factors to me feeling like I didn't belong at the event. I didn't win any qualifier event. I just did "good enough" at an event where all the "real" winners already had their prize. I also still feel like a relative newcomer to the game since I only came into it about two years ago. These were just some of the factors that kicked my imposter syndrome into high gear and made me feel like I was not really fit to be a competitor at Worlds.

I consider myself to be an average player. I've been maintaining a spreadsheet that tracks all my games of Underworlds that I have played since January 2024. When the first edition of the game wrapped up, I was sitting at a 50.5% win rate. Before attending WCW, I was at a 46.6% win rate. These records seemed to shout "statistically average player!" any time I looked at them. And like I mentioned earlier, I've never actually come in first place at any event.

This lead to me often saying offhand comments about how I wasn't a great player, or telling my practice partners that I was dragging them down, or other similar negative comments.

Thorns of the Briar Queen. Painting credit: keewa

However, I finished the WCW event with a 5-5 record. Heck, I was even a hair's breadth from making the cut to top 16! Additionally, after reviewing my overall game records, I noticed that in the last 100 games I've played, almost three quarters of them have been against players who were also Worlds qualified while still maintaining an almost even win rate.

I'm not saying all of that to brag. I'm saying it because it's something my friend group had been saying to me all along, but I felt like I wasn't worthy of accepting it. It came to a head after a practice game one day when I (once again) forgot to stop Strip the Realm from scoring and I said something offhand like, "I'm an idiot, I'll never remember to play around objectives." My buddy called me out on it and said talking about myself like that isn't helpful. My amazing wife has said the same thing to me in the past, as well. I think I just sat there for a few seconds letting it sink in. I haven't said anything about it before, but thanks for calling me out on that, Battlemaster.

I don't want to turn this into a full blown therapy journal, but between that moment of realization and reflecting on WCW in the airport on the way home, I have decided to try and curb my negative self talk. Maybe I was subconsciously thinking it would shame me into improving, but it doesn't actually help. I'm not only demeaning myself, but I'm undercutting my opponents and friends as well – by saying things like "I'm a bad player" or "I made a bunch of stupid mistakes," I am either devaluing their own well earned wins or inadvertently saying they lost to a bad player.

Phew. With all that heavy stuff out of the way, let's get into the event.

Travel

I packed up my bags and got a ride to the airport from my darling wife where I met up with Craig (the two-time GHO champion). We had the same flight down, so we met up and hung out at the departing gate and quizzed each other on the contents of our decks. We were both able to rattle off all but two or so cards in our decks off the top of our heads which felt pretty good considering I think we both had only a handful of games with the submitted deck lists before going in.

The excellent dice calculator created by Spinnerite and hosted at whudice.com.

On the flight, I intended to pull up the awesome dice calculator that Discord user Spinnerite put together. The goal was to memorize a few common attack and defense profiles that I expected to come up in my games to help me make better choices (when should I use a 3 swords attack over a 2 hammer attack? How much value do I gain from getting surrounded over just flanked? etc.). Instead, I opened up the Root board game app and played through a few of the tutorials. I'm sure this won't come back to haunt me.

After a short ride on MARTA, Atlanta's public transit system, Craig and I arrived at the venue. We checked in for the event that night and got the absurd pile of boxes that all Underworlds players received – Spitewood, all four Grand Alliance boxes, the Warbands of Spitewood pack of cards, and the Games Workshop Open swag box that everyone else at the event got. It was kind of comical seeing this massive tower of GW products being carried around by all the players.

I was fortunate enough to be able to join a group of folks who already booked a hotel room across the street from the venue well in advance. The downside is that five of us guys were going to be sharing the room slumber party style. The upside is that it was relatively cheap when split that many ways. Craig (of GHO winning fame), Thomas "Saxthom" (part of the Underworlds Underground podcast), and Brian (of the What the Hex?! podcast) were my initial roommates, with Jesse (the winner of NYO and my most regular practice partner) joining us in the final hour. This did mean one of us wound up sleeping on the floor, so Jesse brought his camping air mattress and made a little nest out of it. Considering he did the best out of everyone in the room, maybe that's the way to go in the future.

Sleeping arrangements for five members of Team USA, including the Battlemaster's nest in the floor. Credit: Jake

With four very long days of playing Warhammer Underworlds ahead of us, naturally the choice was to test out the stream setup with yet another game of Underworlds, right? The annual(ish) ">Pink Slip Match was held on Wednesday night, pitting Brian's Headsmen's Curse against Michael "fishmode" and his Emberwatch. Both of these warbands were lovingly painted, but only the winner was going to be leaving with them. I won't spoil the results here – check out the linked video if you're curious.

A tense moment in the Pink Slip match between Brian and Michael. Credit: Jake

After the game wrapped up, everyone got ready for the first day of the event.

Day 1

As I touched on in last week's article, the first two days were set up so players would be playing in distinct pools. I was in Pool 2, and it turned out so were many others from USA – not only was fellow Goonhammer contributor Blake Law in this pool, but so were my practice partners and temporary roommates Craig and Jesse. Due to the pools getting slightly tweaked on the first day, even Davy (interviewed in the last article and also a co-host of What the Hex?!) wound up in there with us. That said, the event organizers did their best to keep folks from the same country from being paired together. Out of the six pool matches, I only played two fellow players from the US, but one was the ringer which I believe wasn't taken into account for country pairings.

I brought a very aggressive build of Thorns of the Briar Queen with Blazing Assault and Deadly Synergy. My plan was to try and leverage the absurd positional game that the Thorns' warscroll offers via multiple teleports, the increased accuracy and defense that Deadly Synergy provides, and the solid array of power cards that Blazing Assault adds to the mix to enhance all of those previous points.

Day 1, Game 1

Game one against Derek's Gnarlspirit Pack. Credit: Jake

My first match was against Derek "Kaptain Murder" from Canada. I want to say something like, "I've heard his name come up multiple times as a high performer in the competitive scene," because it's true, but it's also true for every single person here. For some reason, I felt like I had to have this realization multiple times over the course of the event. Anyway, I knew I was in for a challenging match from the get-go.

He brought Gnarlspirit Pack with Deadly Synergy and Raging Slayers. This was a blood bath of two highly aggressive warbands hitting each other. The first game swung very heavily in my favor while Derek battered me soundly in the second. The third was much closer, but ultimately Derek won with 23 glory to my 20 – this last match was the highest total glory scored by both players in any of my games.

The big takeaway I had here is that the "downside" of Raging Slayers is incredibly obnoxious for a Thorns player. Having the enemy fighter always get pushed away from you as an attacker threw me off a few times. I'd set up a charge and mug combo with plans to inspire multiple fighters but forget the chaos dudes were effectively on roller skates and would slide away after the attack. Derek played the Gnarlspirit well, flipping back and forth between their inspired and bestial states whenever the situation demanded it.

Result: 1-2 loss; 0-1 total

Day 1, Game 2

Game two against Josh's Blood of the Bull. Credit: Jake

Next up was Josh from Australia. He brought Blood of the Bull paired with Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage & Plunder. Josh was easily one of the most pleasant people I ran into at the event and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to share some games with him. I believe Josh is also the first person I've ever run into who knew of me from my writings here before meeting me in person and that was a surreal experience. Sometimes I forget people read my ramblings!

This was my first time really playing into Blood of the Bull (barring a single dwarves-vs-centaurs Rivals game) and I somehow both underestimated and overestimated the impact of the daemonforge dice. It had a substantial impact whenever Josh decided to use it, and it turned those substantial defensive profiles into brick walls, but they didn't crop up quite as often as I had expected. Josh did a great job re-delving back to the treasure side near the end of the round to prepare them for the next round, but it's still a limited resource.

Our first game was close – a 19-19 tie that he won on tiebreakers. I made a conscious effort to focus fire down Imnidrin and Zuldrakka in the following two games because the former had an attack profile that's quite good at turning into a ghost blender and because both of them were worth the most bounty of his warband. I even ignored an in-position Grisk a few times (which resulted in murdered ghosts) but it wound up being worth it because I managed to take the last two games of the match.

Result: 2-1 win; 1-1 total

Day 1, Game 3

The final round of the day was against Maks from Canada. He brought Zarbag's Gitz with Countdown to Cataclysm and Pillage & Plunder, my old enemy. I'd practiced against this warband a fair bit leading up to this event and despite that, it's still a difficult match for me. I also forgot to take pictures here and became even more forgetful as the event went on.

This was also the first time I played against a Gitz opponent and saw the joy in their eyes as they realized that they could choose the Spitewood board in an orientation that places two of our starting hexes adjacent and get to place the first fighter. This means Maks got to plop down Snirk in that forward starting hex, I'm forced to place a fighter adjacent to him at some point, and thus take a damage before the game even starts. Ouch.

Since I'm writing this a few days after the event and all my Zarbag matches have melded into a muddled mush in my brain, I unfortunately can't remember many specifics from our games. Maks was a great opponent through, and while I kept the first game close (20-21), I wound up losing both of the games in this match up.

Result: 0-2 loss; 1-2 total

Dinner after the first day has wrapped up. Credit: Jesse

Ending the day 1-2 overall obviously isn't ideal, but I was actually in a pretty good mood. I came into this event halfway expecting to go 0-10 and in a sense I had already done better than my goal. I won a round! A group of us went out for dinner that evening and a good time was had by all. Except maybe the table of Canadians next to us who all flinched when someone at our table very enthusiastically slammed their Warhammer challenge coin down on the table so loud it sounded like a gunshot. Welcome to America, I guess!

Day 2

Starting the day with a very mediocre hotel breakfast wasn't the wisest move, but oh well. My sad little breakfast sandwich was adequate to get me through the first match of the day.

Day 2, Game 1

First up for me on the second day was Bryce, the USA ringer who stepped in to play because there was an odd number of competitors. He brought Xandire's Truthseekers with the Reckless Fury and Pillage & Plunder pairing. I believe this is one of his six Xandire warbands, so if anyone happens to have a spare and doesn't know what to do with it, I'm sure Bryce will be willing to take it off your hands. He is a great guy who I have had the privilege of chatting with on various Underworlds focused Discords for a while now and it was a blast to finally get to play in person instead of only online. I also played four games with him over the course of the week and of course took pictures of none of them.

We played two games and my ghosts just jump scared the Stormcast to death in both of them. I mugged and murdered and mugged and murdered. There was still some time left in the round, and I wasn't quite ready for a lunch break yet so I asked Bryce if he was willing to play a third game for fun. After all, we were there to play Underworlds so we might as well get our money's worth! Craig was walking by when I made this offer and he proposed that we play a third game, but we should swap warbands and decks with each other. That sounded like a completely unhinged idea, so naturally we both agreed. It was a weird feeling playing with a warband and deck I had very little experienced piloting but playing against something I was pretty familiar with. In the end, Bryce outplayed me and took the game.

Result: 2-0 win (and then a bonus 0-1 loss for fun); 2-2 total

Day 2, Game 2

A big ball of ghosts and ghouls in the middle of a game with Rafael's Grymwatch. Credit: Jake

Rafael from Spain was my second opponent for the day and he brought absolutely gorgeous Grymwatch paired with Deadly Synergy and Pillage & Plunder. If you like seeing well painted models, go check out his Instagram and take a look at the multiple Golden Daemon winning models and dioramas he's done.

Our first game was a close one, but I managed to squeak out a victory by 2 glory. The second was one of those games where the dice just go off and I managed to get multiple double critical results on my save dice while chewing through his fighters. In both games I tried to prioritize taking out his leader to stop the resurrections while also killing as many non-raised fighters as I could for the bounty. As painful as it was, I tried to not waste any attacks on fighters that wouldn't net me bounty even if they were threatening. Fortunately, the ghosts fly and I was able to avoid body blocks which feel like a strength that the ghouls typically can leverage.

After the games were over, I had a blast just chatting with Rafael and seeing some of his other paint jobs. I also found out he didn't consider his Grymwatch done and that he's planning to do more to them before bringing them to Adepticon. I can't wait!

Result: 2-0 win; 3-2 total

Day 2, Game 3

Craig and I swapped warbands and decks for a bizarro rematch after finishing our "real" games. Credit: Craig

Oh no. It was bound to happen at some point, but this is the round where I got paired into Craig. We play together fairly regularly against each other, we traveled a few hundred miles together to compete at WCW, and then we have to play each other and (potentially) knock one of us out of the running for top 16. I didn't (and still don't) fully understand the tiebreakers that were in place to determine who made top 4 in each of the pods, but given the records of other people it was possible that someone going 4-2 would make it there.

Craig brought Starblood Stalkers and was running Emberstone Sentinels and Countdown to Cataclysm. I knew this. I've played against this pairing of his five times before this day. He also knew exactly what I was bringing because he has done the same. We're about even when playing each other, so this was going to be a tight match.

One thing Craig did that was excellent was playing around the Thorns' mugging ability. One of the mugs triggers from the enemy leader performing a core ability, so Craig spent multiple rounds in each game just not doing anything at all with Kixi-Taka. The Thorns get four teleports, and if you deny even just one of them that's a substantial 25% reduction. Despite this, I managed to close out with a 2 glory lead in the first game and build up momentum in the last game to also seal it.

Since this was the last match of the day and the pool play, it felt like a pressure valve had been opened and we could relax. Whoever makes it in the top 16 is out of our hands at this point, so we ran back a third game and continued the new tradition of a warband/deck swap. I piloted the lizards and Craig was the ghost wrangler. It continued to be a bizarre experience to swap like this, but it's a ton of fun. I want it to become a regular tradition whenever I play against friends in the future. Also, Craig beat me in this one.

Result: 2-0 win (with bonus 0-1 loss for fun), 4-2 total

I feel kind of silly for admitting this, but I didn't even check the standings of all the other players after games wrapped up for this day. At this point, pool 2 had three players with 5-1 records and three players with 4-2 records, myself included. The 5-1s would obviously make the cut, but it was down to tiebreakers to determine which of the 4-2 would make it. I wound up not being one, but I didn't even really connect the dots until a few days later that I was even in the running. I was too busy thinking about dinner and getting some rest!

Day 3

Pool play was over. The top 16 players were moved to their own bracket where they could play for the championship while the remainder of us were placed into the "worlds bracket" where we ostensibly played to earn more points for our respective countries but really I was just there to jam more games of Underworlds against great players.

Day 3, Game 1

Thomas's Shadeborn are locked in combat with my Thorns. Credit: Jake

Oh no again. I saw Thomas from the USA as my opponent for this round and that meant I was going to play against yet another roommate, but also that I was going to face his (rather terrifying) Shadeborn. The Shadeborn have mobility that almost rivals my own, have two fighters who are quite capable of becoming ghost~~busters~~ blenders, and have their accuracy enhanced even further with the Raging Slayers and Blazing Assault combo that Thomas brought.

Slythael is terrifying with her range 2 attack that can one-shot most of my ghosts and already comes with ensnare and cleave. I wanted to focus her down ASAP in every game, but I also couldn't afford to ignore Drusylla because she's just as scary. I learned the hard way that even the dinky archer is a legitimate threat. Thomas played expertly and was another player to outright deny one of my muggings in every single game – in this case, he never moved a fighter onto a treasure token. I tried my best to fight around them, but he did a great job.

Our first two games ended with similar, but flip-flopped, scores. He won the first by 5 points and I won the second by 6. The final game… yeesh. I got slaughtered and lost 8-22. I believe this was the game where Thomas dove deep into my territory with Slythael to bait out some mugs, only to Commanding Stride her away once my ghosts were stranded somewhere useless. Well played, Thomas!

Result: 1-2 loss; 4-3 total

Day 3, Game 2

Diego from Chile was my final opponent for the day. We initially had a bit of a language barrier, but we managed to overcome it and have a set of very great games. I know I was smiling a ton in this match-up because Diego was just such a nice, pleasant guy to play with. He brought Starblood Stalkers, but this time the lizards were sporting Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage & Plunder.

I was able to lean heavily on my many previous games against the Starblood Stalkers to try and deny what I suspected his gameplan was. I blew all my resources early to do everything in my power to stop Diego from being able to inspire his warband. Once they inspire, they become much more threatening and durable. I was able to combine some timely drive backs off of treasures with planting my own ghosts with guard tokens on other treasures to delay the inspire by a few turns. This ultimately proved to be enough to get the ghost murder ball rolling in both games.

Result: 2-0 win; 5-3 total

At this point I was on cloud nine. I somehow managed to win 5 matches by the end of day 3. I told a few people that this means I could trip and fall, crack my head open on the sidewalk outside of the venue, and still manage to go 5-5 by the end of the event. Despite that being my final record, I want to reassure everyone I suffered no head trauma.

Let it rip! Beyblades over lunch was a hit. Credit: Saxthom

Additionally, I need to highlight the fact that Thomas brought a Beyblade arena to the event. He set it up and passers by would look confused and/or intrigued, rip a few blades (or whatever the slang is for spinning metal death tops), then walk away with a smile.

Day 4

It felt weird going into the final day. I was simultaneously relaxed because there wasn't really anything on the line at this point, but also pretty psyched because it's the final day of the event and maybe I could come out of it with a positive record overall.

Day 4, Game 1

My first opponent of the day was also my third Canadian of the event. This time I was paired with Yury, who brought Zarbag's Gitz with Pillage & Plunder and Countdown to Cataclysm. Ah, Zarbag… my nemesis. Yury also happily realized he could pick the Spitewood board with adjacent starting hexes which would cause Snirk to damage one of my fighters before the game even started. Brutal.

The first game was a close one. We wound up both scoring 20 glory, but I was able to take it on the tiebreaker. The second was less so; I remember missing a few key attacks, including a 50/50 gamble that was kind of greedy for me to make. The final game of the match was close; we went over time into the 2 hour lunch break, but in the end Yury took the game and thus the match.

One day, I'll beat Zarbag… maybe.

Result: 1-2 loss; 5-4 total

This has nothing to do with my games for the day. Blake Law brought Kurnoth's Heralds and not only were they painted beautifully, but he also crafted an elaborate diorama for them to hang out on. Credit: Jake

Day 4, Game 2

The last pairing of the event is finally here and I checked my phone over lunch. I was terrified at the results. I was up against the 11-year-old Polish player who had thoroughly destroyed two of my roommates and struck terror in the hearts of us all.

He brought Ironsoul's Condemnors with the ever potent Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury combination. Pure, focused elite aggro against my swarming ghost mob. I was excited to test my mettle against the youngest player present at the event.

I was demolished. The two games we played were both the most decisive losses I have ever had in any Warhammer game in my life, as well as the fastest game losses I have had in my whole time in Underworlds. The first game was over around the 15 minute mark – my entire warband was dead, leaving me tabled before round 2 even ended. We shuffled up, re-racked, and played the second game where I at least scored a few more points and took out one of his models, but even then our round wrapped up before 45 minutes had passed. It felt like both games were scripted and everything was playing out exactly as my opponent expected, even when I tried to throw a curve ball with some power step pushes and Illusory Fighter. He clearly had the reps because at no point did he hesitate. I look forward to this future World Champion returning and claiming the crown in the upcoming years.

Result: 0-2 loss, utter destruction of any remaining ego I had; 5-5 total

Day 4, Game 3 ?!

Sure, the event was over but like I said before, I came here to play Underworlds! I had plenty of time left after my brutal beating, so I tracked down Bryce and we played another fun game to run back our Day 2 experience. This also put me at 27 total games played over the course of the event, only 3 short of the theoretical maximum of playing 3 games in every round. Pretty good value, I'd say!

Wrap Up

I feel like I barely scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what happened over the four days of this event. Along with the games, there were multiple meet-ups for lunch and dinner, weird conversations about the merits of white noise vs pink noise vs brown noise, and a wholesome amount of comradery – not only among a country's team, but among all the Underworlds players as a whole. One of the major highlights of this event for me was getting to meet in person some of the folks I've been talking to online for years and cheer them on in their games.

I'd like to extend a big thank you to everyone I had the pleasure to be paired into and play games with, along with all my friends (new and old) that I got to hang out with over the week. The event team also did a fantastic job of herding cats and making it run as smoothly as possible. One highlight here is that our initial tables were fairly narrow, but the team noticed that and switched out every single Underworlds table over the course of lunch one day. This gave us much more room and allowed for some comfortable games.

As if commentating on ten matches over the course of the event wasn't enough Underworlds, Jerod and Phil managed to squeeze in a game of their own during a break. Credit: Jake

I also want to acknowledge how great the stream team did at covering this event. Jerod from Battle Mallet and Phil from What the Hex?! streamed for the duration of the entire event and all of those videos are available to watch on demand on the Mortal Realms YouTube channel. Check them out if you haven't already!

Congratulations to Jarosław from Poland for winning the whole event and also to Michael "Vintro" from Austria (and the Staggerers blog) for a hard fought second place – it was great to finally meet you, Vintro!

Last, but not least, thanks to my fantastic wife who encouraged me and supported me making this fairly last-minute trip. I love you, darling.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to next year's WCW, but after going to this one I know I'm going to try my best. I fully encourage anyone who is remotely interested in the game to see if events are in your area. This people playing this game are wonderful and getting to hang out with a slice of the international community is something I will hold dear.

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Tags: warhammer underworlds | World Championships of Warhammer | Starting Hex