Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. This is the first entry in a special Starting Hexodus series that I'll be periodically adding to. If you think the Hexodus name sounds familiar, it was a series originally kicked off by Davy from What the Hex?!

Davy's a cool guy who I have had the fortune to bump into and hang out with a few times in my Underworlds journeys. Most recently, we managed to chat during Worlds back in November and discussed the idea of revisiting his original series – check out the original Hexodus entries that he wrote to get an idea of how this will work, but I'll give a quick recap of how I'm planning for it to go here as well. And, to top it all off, Davy's going to be posting his own Hexodus entries as well. Check out his own Cyreni's Razors musings that just came out!

Hexodus was intended to be a journey through every warband in the game, playing multiple games with a warband and (ideally) painting it if it wasn't already painted. I'm thrilled to be able to contribute to Davy's project with my own games and (again, ideally) painting some models. At the time of penning this article, Underworlds has 49 different Organized Play legal warbands and quite a few of them that I haven't played, so there's a lot of work to be done!

My goal will be to work through warbands I have the least experience with in this second edition of the game. I brought Morgok's Krushas to a few events last year and then played the revamped Thorns of the Briar Queen in practice games for Worlds and the event itself, so they're basically the only ones that won't be on my to-do list. I'm aiming to get at least five games in with each warband and also want to use this as a chance to experiment with more decks, so there's a good chance whatever Nemesis pairings I do in each of the tests will change throughout.

I don't play nearly as many games as I'd like, so this will probably be a slow process. Here's to hoping it's a fun one to run and also to read about!

Cyreni's Razors

Cyreni's Razors warscroll. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

My first entry in this series will be with the warband that is responsible for me even being aware of this game's existence. Cyreni's Razors, and more specifically the awesome model of the squid Cephanyr, caught my eye during the NOVA 2023 previews and I've been entangled with this game ever since. I'm ashamed to admit I never got around to exploring them fully in the last edition of the game, nor have I spent time with them in the latest edition. I was worried after the Spitewood release that the digital warbands would have rotated out of legality for organized play, meaning Cyreni and her crew would be gone. Fortunately, this wasn't the case and Cyreni (plus the other digital warbands) remain legal for organized play. I felt like this was a sign, so now it's time to get the reps in and see what they can do!

Previous Experience with Cyreni's Razors

Looking back at my game tracker spreadsheet, it appears that I have not even played against the Razors – even including the previous edition. That feels wild to me considering I have over 200 games recorded. I know they've been at events I've played in and I have distinct memories of people bemoaning the dreaded "longboard Hammertide" setup that was possible with in first edition.

Despite second edition's overall reduction in unconditional pings, Cyreni's Hammertide still allows you to deal a damage at potentially massive range with no dice involved. This feels huge and I question why it hasn't been more of an impact in the game despite the warband having been around for over a year now. Is it that the boards are on average more of a circular shape instead of the potential hallways of the last edition, thus giving Cyreni fewer reliable shots? Maybe it's because the average health pool for fighters has increased which reduces the value of spending an activation on a single point of damage? Hopefully I'll be finding out soon!

Are Mine Painted?

While for me, the focus of this journey is on playing games with the warbands, I'm also using it to try and get more into the painting aspect of the hobby which I tend to struggle to engage with. Whenever I come across a warband that I don't have painted yet, I'm going to do my best to get paint onto the models and show it off here.

Cyreni's Razors. Credit: Tyreal

Fortunately (for me), I have a lovely painted warband of Cyreni's Razors already. I had mentioned in a Discord conversation that ironically, the model that got me interested in the game arrived broken in my copy of Deathgorge. Tyreal, a cool fellow Underworlds enjoyer, let me know that he had recently painted up the warband but didn't plan to use them, so we arranged a trade – his Razors for some AoS items I had kicking around. The double win for each of us of freeing up shelf space and getting stuff we want in the process was a good feeling.

Thanks again, Tyreal!

Deck Tech

Once I had the warband in mind, it was time to figure out the deck. I have spent an awful lot of time playing Blazing Assault recently. In fact, 69 of my over 100 games in this edition so far involved me playing BA with some other deck. Additionally, my last few events (and practice preparing for them) involved me playing a lot of Always Be Charging style aggro, so I wanted to veer away from that and try something out of my comfort zone. Pure Hold feels unlikely due to their mediocre saves, which leaves some kind of midrange/Flex strategy.

My first try was with this Deadly Synergy/Pillage and Plunder deck. The goal was to rely on the P&P scoring and splash in some of the high payoff DS objectives, but it didn't work out too well in practice. It just feels like it's pulling in different directions between wanting to be united and also needing to spread out to hit treasure tokens. It also really highlighted how unimpressive the Razor's defenses are – I had Got Your Back! sitting in my hand for a full round but my opponent just kept landing attacks. I only got to activate Cephanyr's push once and the thralls' cleave/ensnare combo twice (once where my thrall was already charged and couldn't benefit from it).

I went back to the drawing board and decided to lean into the one thing that's unique about Cyreni's Razors – Hammertide. Having a guaranteed ping on demand is great, so why not pack as many damage dealing power cards into my deck as I could? I put together my variation of a Wrack & Ruin and Countdown to Cataclysm deck that Vintro from Staggerers (who took second place at Worlds this year) had published and I played a few games with it. It felt like it had some potential, but it didn't feel like the deck was flowing smoothly for me. Some objectives were quite difficult and I wasn't always happy to see all my power cards. The Razors also have a few warscroll abilities that hinge on the opponent failing attacks, but since their defenses are pretty lackluster they don't come into play often. What if I swapped decks (again) and picked up some more save boosting cards?

The next deck I tried with this warband was a pairing of Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage and Plunder. The plan here was to continue to try and play a somewhat defensive game, but be able to rely on the potent upgrades and power cards in this pairing to boost the warband's offense and defense capabilities once they're online. The plan was spending the first round playing conservatively to score some glory to upgrade my fighters, then become a little more aggressive in round 2 when the upgrades are in play and I can have two inspired fighters.

The final deck I played with was Emberstone Sentinels and Countdown to Cataclysm which continued to lean in the "stand on tokens to score" gameplan. It also packed upgrades to raise my fighters' defenses, some extra pings to try and enhance the killing power of Hammertide, and the nice positional power cards from Emberstone like Sidestep and Confusion. I think this might be the deck pairing I'd most want to play again, even though my test game with it did not exactly go well.

Cephanyr is in trouble! The Briar Queen and her Everhanged are out to get the squid. Credit: Jake Bennington

Games Played

Game 1: Cyreni DS/PP vs Gnarlspirit Pack with BA/DS. Lost 9-22.

I sat across from the deck pairing that I took to Worlds, so I felt reasonably confident in what I'd see. I saw it. It hurt. There were some mistakes on my part and very clean play on my opponent's end, but I think my deck pairing just wasn't up to snuff. I could see it working for another warband with more bodies and/or more movement tricks.

Game 2: Cyreni WR/CC vs Shadeborn DS/RS. Won 21-8.

I do not feel that this was an indicative performance of either of these decks, honestly. Shadeborn dove for Cyreni hard and I never got a Hammertide off, but once the shadow elves were all clustered around my moist elves, I was able to inspire Alathyrr and go to town. Dice were not in my opponent's favor and my 2/3/2 fighter was able to outperform both of his similar fighters.

Game 3: Cyreni WR/CC vs Starblood Stalkers ES/CC. Lost 6-15 (called it early round 3)

I feel like I lost control of this game pretty early by gambling for a greedy attack (an uninspired Cephanyr attack) vs a far more reliable attack (inspired Alathyrr). It cost me a killing shot on an early Klaq-Trok that was holding a treasure token which lead to the Stalkers inspiring and getting those frightening stat profiles online. This one felt closer than the score indicates, but it was around here that I was noticing a problem with the warscroll and fighter cards that I touched on earlier.

Game 4: Cyreni PP/ES vs Khagra's Ravagers ES/HG. Lost 9-9

This was a fun match up in that we were both desperately scrabbling for tokens. It was also insanely low scoring. I didn't take notes for this game, but I seem to recall the one time I dared to get near his territory, multiple Hunting Ground objectives were scored so that was not the smartest idea for me. I was definitely jealous of Khagra having a warscroll push to get onto more tokens.

Game 5: Cyreni ES/CC vs Wurmspat BA/RF. Lost 2-13 (called it end of round 2)

Pretty sure this game was a lost cause as soon as I burned an early Sidestep instead of saving it for the end of the round. My starting hand had both Supremacy and Iron Grasp, so if I could have just held the two treasures in my territory it'd be a huge swing… however because my opponent wasn't a brain dead goldfish, he didn't let me. I wasn't able to claw back enough glory for my defensive upgrades and the low defense values meant I couldn't keep my fighters reliably on tokens in the first place.

In the end, I went 1-4 with some of my lowest scoring games in the last year which isn't exactly what I'd have hoped for. Whoops.

This preview was what suckered me into checking out the game. Credit: Games Workshop

Highs and Lows

The main high here is obviously how damn cool Cephanyr looks. C'mon, this is the model that got me into this game that I rapidly became obsessed with, so of course I'm giving praise to it. The flexibility in choosing which fighters to inspire is nice – Alathyrr for some extra offense, Cephanyr or Cyreni get some extra speed, Renglaith … okay, Renglaith is second fiddle to most of the other fighters for the first round, but it's still some appreciated flexibility. Hammertide is also a rarity in that you can just decide to do a damage with no dice rolling, provided Cyreni is in position. I wound up using it far less often than I assumed I would, but maybe that was a misplay on my part. It just felt like devoting an entire turn to a single point of damage was never furthering my game plan when I had the chance to do so.

The lowest low for me has to be the warscroll. Deadly Riposte and Phantasmal Ink are, in theory, cool abilities to have. Being able to punish the opponent for missing your fighters is a unique mechanic and the benefits for triggering these abilities are the right amount of useful without feeling overpowered. However, my opponents just didn't miss my fighters most of the time due to their low save values. Those models are 1 dodge base (the literal worst save profile possible in the game) and only inspire to 1 shield or 2 dodge. Likewise, the Soul Harvest ability feels like it has potential and could be cool – being able to uninspire enemy fighters or draw cards? Sign me up. The problem I ran into here was how wildly it would fluctuate in value depending on the opponent. It's practically useless against some warbands like Gnarlspirit Pack and Wurmspat, situationally useful against the other three warbands I played against, and (in theory) quite good against warbands with difficult inspire conditions like Morgok's Krushas, Knives of the Crone, Jaws of Itzl, etc.

Credit: Jake Bennington

Final Verdict

I am fully prepared to accept I didn't stick with the warband long enough to get a good feel for what it's capable of, but I am confident that I don't want to pick it up again until it either gets a rework or some other substantial shift happens in the game. Aside from Hammertide, their warscroll can effectively be blank in some match ups and the fighters themselves don't have enough stats to make up for it. If they leaned more into the "being hard to hit" evasive style that it feels like their warscroll wants, it could be an interesting niche for the warband to fill, but that would require some substantial defensive stat bumps in my opinion. Hammertide is unique enough in itself to keep the warband as something I'll ponder in the future, but probably not enough to get me to put them back on the table for a while.

The warband feels like it's not quite able to fill the existing niches out there – low saves and no movement tech means it's difficult to reliably hold tokens while middling offensive stats don't give it enough threat to be a reliable strike approach. Inspired Alathyrr used to be a cut above many other fighters in terms of her weapon profile, but it's becoming much more common to see fighters accurately threatening 2 damage from 2 hexes away.

My record of 1-4 is hardly awe inspiring, but I don't want to place it fully on the backs of the warband. I tried implementing a play style that I haven't had much practice on with a warband that was new to me. Between my unfamiliarity of the warband, unfamiliarity with the play style, and potential mismatch between the two, there's a lot of room for "the Razors are fine and Jake is just bad" but this is how I'm feeling currently.

Ranking: 3/8 tentacles

It will probably be a few weeks before the next entry in this series, but Underworlds coverage will continue happen in the meantime. If anyone has any warbands in particular you want me to give a spin, let me know and I can add it to the queue!

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Tags: warhammer underworlds | Starting Hex | starting hexodus