A Merry Grotmas Update

Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. Games Workshop put out a new version of the Rules Update for Warhammer Underworlds on Wednesday, December 17. This one in particular seems to be mostly working as an FAQ to address questions from the new release rather than as a big balance update, although there are a couple of small balance tweaks as well.

As a reminder, if you have any questions to submit to Games Workshop regarding Warhammer Underworlds rules, they have an email address that you can send questions to (whunderworlds@gwplc.com). You won't receive a direct answer, but given how often I see answers to stuff I've sent in appear in these FAQs, I know someone is reading the emails and passing it along to the team making these updates.

Spitewood Expansion

Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these updates are clarifications where the rules were vague or just not present at all. One such area of contention was about how Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens were placed and how they functioned on the board.

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

This is all pretty cut-and-dry. Unlike how it was ruled at Worlds, the new Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens are used in every game regardless of which board is chosen – the new Spitewood boards or the older Embergard boards – and when they're in play, they're treated as feature tokens for all purposes (delving, counting for the Cataclysm tracker, etc.). This is great news for me in particular because I already wrote an article on all the ways you can use Aqua Ghyranis tokens beyond just their glory granting and healing and this means GW didn't make a liar out of me.

This also means that since the tokens are in play on both boards, the player who deploys the first fighter is now also going to be the player who has two treasure tokens to place. This is because the treasure token placement alternates between players, then the first Aqua Ghyranis token is placed by the player who places the final treasure token before passing to the other player (e.g. ABABAAB). This isn't a huge shift, but it does impact a few niche scenarios like a Zarbag player wanting to plop Snirk down in that one starting hex adjacent to an enemy starting hex on one of the Spitewood boards.

Warband Changes

Elathain's Soulraid

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

This is a combination clarification and balance tweak. The previous wording was about how the Elathain player could treat the defense roll as having more critical results than the attacker and could also ignore the results of Overrun and Drive Back. The intention was clear, but the wording wasn't quite air tight. The wording on the new ability is much more clear. Instead of trying to phrase it so you can meet all the criteria to use Stand Fast, the ability just says you can use Stand Fast. Easy.

The balance tweak here is limiting it to once per round instead of for every single attack. This will make Furiann a little less of a brick house, but she's still going to be one of the tankiest fighters in the game. You often don't need to use Stand Fast more than once a round anyway, but this allows an opponent to sink resources into a dedicated Furiann removal round. It definitely feels fair to me for both sides of this matchup.

The Shadeborn

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

No rules changes here, but instead we get answers to a series of questions regarding the Shadow Ambush ability on the Shadeborn's warscroll. There were a few interpretations of how this ability would work in action, and going off of the answers here it seems that the most powerful version of Shadow Ambush is the one that exists in our reality. The Shadeborn are able to use Shadow Ambush as part of a charge, they're able to continue moving after teleporting (and also do it as part of a charge), and they can even combo it with the Wrack & Ruin upgrade Barge.

This is a relatively small change, but I think a combination of the slight power level bump and no longer having to play an unclear warscroll is going to cause more Shadeborn to appear at events in the future. They're a solid warband that can deal surprising amounts of damage.

The Sons of Velmorn

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

Two changes come to the skeletons with the most swag in Warhammer Underworlds. The first is addressing a print error – the fighter card for Jedran that came in the Warbands of Spitewood card pack had his inspired side being an unimpressive 2 sword attack (a peek behind the curtain – the Warbands of Spitewood card pack is what Goonhammer, and many others, were given to review). The fighter card that came in the Morbid Minions box of four death warbands had his inspired attack being 2 hammers. That's a substantial difference, and we finally get official word that the card in the Morbid Minions box is the correct one. Jedran's glow up is solid.

Another bump for the warband is a tweak to their inspire mechanic. Previously, it was worded to inspire the attacker and any adjacent fighters after the attack completed. This meant if you chose to drive back the target of your attack, any flanking fighters wouldn't get to inspire. It also was a bit murky in whether ~~Vemlorn~~ Morlak himself would get to inspire after flanking via Deadly Command, since Deadly Command only let Morlak count as adjacent during the attack and the inspire was after the attack. This change allows the warband to leverage drive backs (which is important for scoring quite a few new objectives) and still get their multiple inspires off of a successful attack. Nice!

I still hold out hope that there will be some additional bump to these guys in some future balance update. Something like letting Velmorn himself start with a command token, or letting the token persist between rounds, or generating the command token after the first action of every round regardless of which fighter activates. I guess we'll just wait and see if the cursed skeletons can ever rise to the challenge.

The Starblood Stalkers

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

Similar to Jedran, Kixi-Taka had a misprint on the inspired side of their fighter card. It's not a huge change, but Kixi-Taka does pick up one additional dice on the ranged attack and no longer is the only fighter in the game to receive literally zero changes between uninspired and inspired sides of their fighter card.

The Wurmspat

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

The Wurmspat receive a much needed change to their Blades of Putrefaction ability. As it was previously written, it genuinely didn't work. You could only use it during your own power step. As a reminder, your power step is the one that follows your activation. This means you could only grant grievous to your fighters during your opponent's turn… which is basically useless. The rewording here allows you to use it in any power step, even though in practice you're going to use it in your opponent's power step 100% of the time.

Zikkit's Tunnelpack

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

This is a funny one that probably hasn't come up much, but it's another case of a fighter card with a typo. In this case, it's a typo that's only present on the alternate art promo card for Krittatok that's found in the Organized Play kits. That version has him starting with a flat 1 damage and inspiring to 2 damage with critical grievous. If you have the fighter card from Embergard, you have the right profile for this knife fingered rat. If you're using the promo card from the Organized Play kit, make sure you are using this profile.

Rivals Decks

Deadly Synergy

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

The Battering Ram upgrade card from Deadly Synergy is both reworded and has a question addressing how it is used. The rewording is nice because previously, it called out Drive Back and Overrun but left out Stand Fast. This meant if your opponent had more crits, they could still choose to Stand Fast which meant this upgrade did nothing. It's now changed to count as having more crits for Overrun and Stand Fast, meaning a fighter equipped with Battering Ram is always going to be overrunning their target…

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

… unless they can't. The FAQ here also reinforces that can't overrides can in the rules – in this case, an immovable object beats an unstoppable force. Furiann (if she uses Phantasmal Forms) can stop Battering Ram. Likewise for other similar effects.

The Closed Down objective has a nebulous criteria of an enemy fighter holding a treasure token, but it isn't specified what exactly that means in the rules. Here, at least, we know that just running across a token without ending a move on it isn't enough to count as holding. To me, it feels like holding requires ending a move, push, or placement onto a token. I don't think this is codified anywhere but it does match the rulings made at Worlds, for what little that's worth.

Brother in Arms also gets a pair of questions which limit its use a bit. If your fighter doesn't even have a melee weapon, they can't utilize the ploy. Likewise, despite Fighter A's weapon being modified by upgrades like Keen Eye, that bonus won't carry over to Fighter B who uses the weapon profile via Brother in Arms.

Hunting Grounds

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

Crippling Blow gets a single question here clarifying that the move token goes onto the target as long as they started the attack sequence in friendly territory, regardless of where they end up afterwards. Notably, there is no answer on whether a successful attack needs to be made in order to grant the move token. I'm inclined to continue playing this card as written and giving the target a move token even on a failed attack because as written, the only requirement is that the target is in friendly territory.

Wrack and Ruin

December 2025 Rules Update. Credit: Games Workshop

A slightly strange ruling is made here for Volcanic Eruption, a card that's been out for over a year now. I (and folks I have played with) have been playing this card so that the target your opponent chooses was in your own warband, but it's now clarified that when playing Volcanic Eruption, you choose an enemy to try and ping and then your opponent is allowed to choose a fighter in their own warband for you to also try and ping. In practice, this will effectively be a single ping for the Wrack and Ruin player with varying reliability and now has no downside, so I suspect it'll see much more play. There aren't many times when any player wants to damage their own warband, so that optional second ping will not come up often.

(Un)wrap Up

This update came just in time for the holidays, so I hope it finds everyone in good cheer. I'm also using that as an excuse for the terrible unwrapping pun above.

Overall, this feels pretty positive to me even if I am less pleased that some stuff had to be addressed in the first place. While it's nice that the unclear portions of Spitewood's release have been covered, I'll admit it doesn't feel great that we had to wait for a rules update to address some of these basic things. The bar for a release containing things like "how to use the new game pieces" and "abilities that actually work in the framework of the rules" and "products that don't accidentally have different printings based on what box you buy" isn't particularly high. Games Workshop is no novice to this area either, so I'm not really sure how to excuse it all.

Negative thoughts aside, this does address many of the issues of the release and brings the game to a better place. The meta is relatively solid right now with no particular warband or deck overly dominating the scene and a wide variety of options all being competitively viable. There are a few things I'd personally change, but if GW has decided this is going to be the meta for the next few months, I can certainly live with that.

Enjoy your games, Underworlds players!

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Tags: warhammer underworlds | Starting Hex