Welcome to another (surprise!) installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. Games Workshop has just released a substantial rules update for our beloved game that changes quite a bit. Follow along with me as I dig into these updates for 22 warbands and two decks(!!) and predict how they'll impact the game going forward. If you want to check them out yourself, they're currently hanging out in the Recently Added section of downloads on the Warhammer Community page.

Warbands

Everyone's favorite pirate has plundered two more buffs to his Swag Blast and Swag Mortar shots. These special attacks seem to be shaping up to be the defining feature of this warband since they're still the only 2 damage ranged attacks in the game right now. In addition to this distinction, they're also picking up the ability to push your other fighters around the battlefield and give them charge tokens. This is great news for finding ways to squeeze more activations out of Blackpowder himself once your other fighters have charge tokens. It's also potentially opens up the door for some more scoring opportunities by positioning your fighters and maybe leveraging some objective cards in Reckless Fury. It's probably not going to topple the meta and emerge in S-tier, but another buff to Blackpowder surely can't hurt.

These three were a menace at the first World Championship of Warhammer for second edition, but have received a few changes since then. This time, there's just a single change to Gorehulk's inspired profile that drops his 3 damage attack down from range 2 to range 1. No longer is Gorehulk doing his best Stretch Armstrong impression! Instead, he'll have to run up to give enemies a big hug.

This is also the first of a few fighter card changes which has traditionally been something GW has avoided doing for balance reasons so far. I'm hopeful that they continue to be willing to tweak fighter cards because it's another important lever for balance updates.

This warband still has great stats and a solid warscroll, so despite catching another nerf I think they're going to come out of it fine. The Gorechosen haven't seen a ton of play lately to my knowledge, but I would not be surprised in any way to see them pop up and win an event. If anything, I think their lack of presence in events is due more to many competitive players feeling tired of them from early in the edition rather than a perceived lack of power.

These brave crusading knights haven't made much of a splash in second edition so far, but maybe this little buff will change things. Previously, you could use I Dub Thee... to dub one fighter per round and it'd last until the end of the round. Now, you're able to keep the dubbed fighters going until the end of the game, letting you potentially have three fighters in round three (assuming they survive that long) who are benefiting from all of the quest buffs.

Adding +1 move, +1 attack dice, and +1 damage (via grievous) is a substantial boost to these fighters' humble stats. I don't know if it'll be enough to bring the warband into the limelight considering their warscroll doesn't really do much aside from offering these boosts to 1-3 fighters, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

These resplendent nobles took a slight hit with the nerf stick. In the Name of the King! now requires you to use it in your own power step, not just any power step. This gives your opponent the opportunity to respond to a raised or inspired fighter before receiving a Gristlewel shaped missile to the face.

In general, I like this type of change because I quite enjoy the back-and-forth moments that can happen in Underworlds. This also requires a little more planning on the part of the Grymwatch player to make the most of this once-per-round ability. It is a decrease in their overall power level, but the warband still possesses enough tools and fills a unique niche that it'll emerge just fine. This allows for a little more skill expression as well as room for a player to grow into the warband.

In a setting full of monsters and divinely empowered beings, just being a plain ol' human (or dog) can be tough. Hexbane has been suffering this edition with a combination of low damage and fighters who are quite fragile, even if they have some neat movement tricks available with the dogs. This change gives the warband a little more teeth by buffing the Marked for Vengeance ability. The same re-roll against the marked target is there, but your fighters also pick up grievous on their melee attacks. That can go a long way, especially considering the warband is solely rocking 1 or 2 damage attacks.

Additionally, the inspire mechanic for Pock, Ratspike, and Grotbiter has been tweaked so that if any of those three are slain, the other two inspire. Your opponent will often choose to slay the dogs early on to deny their utility, so if they pursue this plan it will at least inspire Pock quickly. This change might not be enough to change target priority, but at least the Hexbane player will benefit in a small way from it.

Loyal Hounds hasn't changed -- it's just sandwiched between two abilities that have.

It doesn't take a mastermind to realize that the gnoblars suck. Look at their abysmal stats and laugh. To top it off, the warscroll is primarily focused on placing and moving the trap, but all the methods of doing so wind up with a gnoblar standing right next to it and just waiting to be pushed in by their opponent.

Well, the gnoblars still suck (as they should; they're gnoblars!) but at least they're not going to constantly fall into their own traps anymore. The More Traps ability still places a new trap down as normal, but now you get to then push that gnoblar one hex after dropping the trap. Additionally, Surprising Competence is buffed by having the gnoblar pick up a guard token after moving the trap. Both of these changes are perfect for ensuring your own fighters don't wind up getting thrown into the wood chipper and also unlock some additional strategies. It's probably not enough to make me want to try to hold treasures with the warband, but it can help deny opposing objectives, set up flanked attacks, and make it just a touch more difficult to dislodge a little guy from an Aqua Ghyranis token.

Hrothgorn has been a fun looking warband since their update and I'm hoping this change makes them show up a little more frequently. Maybe they can be an upcoming entry for Starting Hexodus?

Dire Ultimatum, Monolith Stance, and Unrelenting Assault received some slight timing updates. Previously, they were all written to "use immediately after your action step" and now instead function like most warscroll abilities where you can use them at any point in your power step. This loosens up the timing restrictions and gives the Kainan player an opportunity to respond to the opponent's shenanigans in the power step. As I've mentioned many times before, I'm a big fan of making rules more consistent across the game system.

As far as I can tell, no changes were made to Mortek Advance this time around. This is just the update that was made to it in a previous balance update.

I'm not a Kainan wizard, so I'm not certain if this affects any special tricks the warband can pull off. Nothing comes to mind immediately, but I'd defer to known bone experts (Hi, Mark aka baconborne) to see if this drastically affects anything.

This flock of avian enthusiasts picks up two small but substantial changes here. The first is a tweak to their inspire criteria. Previously, only the Foretold Wisdom results from successful attacks would inspire your fighters, but now even the start-of-round prophecy roll has potential to inspire them. Since these fighters pick up some pretty substantial increases from inspiring, particularly increasing their fragile defensive profiles, this is a welcome update. It's also nice because it gives you the potential to inspire a fighter before they are activated in the round, allowing more uses of inspired attack profiles.

Secondly, Foretold Slaughter is getting a facelift. Gone is the lackluster benefit of picking up critical grievous (seriously, does anyone enjoy critical grievous?) and instead the fighters are picking up the more useful and more thematic cleave and ensnare. I dig the flavor here in particular. If they're reading the future and seeing a successful attack coming, this actually changes the odds of the attack to make it more successful. It's also more universally useful – you'll always be able to pick between the two runemarks and guarantee they'll be part of your attack instead of merely hoping to roll a crit. The cherry on top means that the Knives of the Crone also wind up being extra threatening into the new Wurmspat, given their much easier time in turning off the Nurgle band's Disgustingly Resilient ability.

I'm adding the Knives of the Crone to my list of warbands I am eagerly wanting to get on the table.

Well damn. This was unexpected but is quite welcome. Blood for Khorne! has been updated and now Slashing works completely differently. Kamandora's Blades had the unfortunate distinction of unveiling with a new, but somewhat limited mechanic, only to be followed up very shortly by Skittershank's Clawpack with their Barbed mechanic. Slashing felt outclassed almost immediately and that's a shame because despite the polarizing opinions on their models, this warband had some really unique things going on.

Let's dive into how Slashing works now. When one of these models makes an attack with the Slashing runemark, they're going to apply two tokens in a certain order. First is the bleed token, second is the stagger token. Bleed tokens don't care about the target performing actions anymore; instead, they lurk on the model and wait to be triggered for when the model gains their second or subsequent stagger token. As soon as this happens, regardless of the reason, the bleed token "pops" and the model suffers a damage.

A few examples of this in action: Kamandora charges into an enemy model and lands a successful attack. The enemy has a bleed token and a stagger token. Throkk follows up with an attack of his own and also succeeds. He applies another bleed token (which I don't believe matters) but more importantly, applies a second stagger token. This pops the bleeds and the model suffers a single damage.

Another example: Your opponent is playing Pillage & Plunder because of course they are. They move a fighter onto a treasure token and delve it. You take your action and have Ghalista charge into this fighter. Assuming Ghalista lands her attack, she applies a bleed token and a stagger token. Since the target already had a stagger token, the bleed pops immediately and deals an extra point of damage.

Yet another example: You send Antro Krast into an enemy and land a hit, giving them a bleed and stagger token. The opponent uses something like Illusory Fighter to flee in terror because they want to keep their skull. You follow up by playing Raging Tremors to apply a stagger token to multiple enemy fighters, potentially popping multiple bleed tokens all at once for extra damage.

This change boosts both the accuracy (due to stagger tokens) and damage of the warband, but more excitingly it also makes Kamandora's Blades into an anti-Pillage & Plunder warband. That deck is still one of the most prevalent ones seen in events because the scoring is just so smooth, and this is a way to add in a pressure release valve to the game without having to directly nerf the deck itself. Plus it breathes some life into all of those incidental stagger cards that didn't typically make the cut in decks previously.

I'm quite excited about this change, and I promise it's not because the first warband I painted happens to be Kamandora's Blades. I can't wait to see this warband more often!

One model of this warband, Lenwythe, is receiving a few minor tweaks despite Kurnoth's Herald's relative newness to the scene. The first is a slight adjustment to Precision Volley which removes the restriction that requires the follow-up shot to be against a different target. Just a straight up buff, albeit a minor one. It will be particularly nice for the Heralds player when they really need to dislodge an enemy fighter from a token since they now have two tries at it.

Lenwythe's second buff is picking up a second save dice when inspired. This warband has notoriously bad saves given that they're a three fighter warband. They'll still be getting hit plenty, but being able to bump the support piece up to 2 dodge is at least something

There are a few changes here that are quite impactful for the big guy.

The most noteworthy is that Unnatural Hazards, the menu ability where you pick one of three options but really only ever picked the first one because it was clearly the best, has been changed. Now each option can only be chosen once per game, meaning the Mollog player must choose when to turn on the absolute insane accuracy and also when to utilize the stagger and 50% chance ping. This is great. Mollog has gone through multiple iterations in second edition, but for some reason this ability has carried over each time. Now the entire warscroll will be used as well as reigning in the power level a bit.

The other change here is similar to the one affecting the Grymwatch. Infestation, the squig raise, is now only usable in your own power step. This stops you from raising a squig in the opponent's power step immediately prior to taking your turn. Infestation is still one of the strongest raise effects in the game, even with this minor restriction on it. Your minion comes back with full health in any of a huge number of potential hexes and brings a charge token so it doesn't interfere with your Mollog activations or scoring.

Mollog was strong even before he got his rework in the Gitz and Goliaths release which only served to add more abilities to the warband. He's in no danger of becoming irrelevant, but this change will bring the over-the-top accuracy back in line with what other warbands have.

Anyone who was disappointed at the update to Rippa's Snarlfangs is probably slavering over this update. The Snarlfang's Jaws attack used to be a terror, but it's been pretty unreliable given how it was implemented in second edition Underworlds. That all (maybe) changes now. The biggest difference is that the follow-up snarlfang bite no longer has to target the same target as the initial grot attack. This additional flexibility allows Stabbit and Mean-eye to leverage their increased attack ranges to poke something further away while still biting an adjacent target, allows fighters to threaten multiple kills in a single activation, and will just up the overall damage output of this warband.

The second change to the jaws attack is that it no longer only follows a successful grot attack; instead, it can also be triggered from a drawn attack. Drawn attacks aren't super common, but they certainly happen so this is pure upside for these three little guys. These updates removes one of the main restrictions that I thought the warband was chafing under and also gives a slight buff in the number of bites you'll likely see in a game, so I'm expecting to shortly relive my first game of my first event in Underworlds – getting demolished by rabid wolves and grots.

Maybe it's time I finally crack open the Raptodon Hunters box I bought a while back and make some Seraphon proxies…

The chefs have a mixed bag of changes this time around, receiving a few nerfs but also a few buffs. Interestingly, they're the only ones who get magenta change highlights on their warscroll.

Starting with the bad news, their inspire condition has been downgraded slightly in what I assume is an effort to make it easier to track. It used to be that they'd all inspire once the warband collected its third haunch token, regardless of whether they've been spent in the meantime, but now they'll instead inspire once you have three or more haunch tokens. There's less requirement to remember if you've spent any when you can just look down and count tokens, but this does mean the Skinnerkin player has to decide whether they want to invest hunks of meat into inspiring later or spend them now for some quick gains.

Speaking of haunch tokens, there's a better chance of that happening with Carnskyr's Grasping Talons now. Previously, there was a 33% to inflict a damage and generate a haunch, a 33% chance to push the enemy, and a 33% chance to do absolutely nothing. Now it's a straight 50/50 on getting one of the good effects. You still can't control what happens, but at least you're guaranteed to have something happen now. I like this change because it honestly sucks to have abilities completely whiff if you're spending the effort to trigger them, especially if they're reasonable ones like this.

Taste Test has been tweaked and in conjunction with the change to their inspire condition, it might even be used now! The Skinnerkin player is now able to choose an instant inspire on any fighter by spending a haunch token, not just on a fighter that's already activated this round. This opens up the possibility to inspire a fighter before they ever activate and gain access to their slightly better inspired stats off the bat. If you're able to generate a token before activating either of your chefs, this can really get the ball rolling by inspiring one of them before an attack.

Quick Nibble, the warband's heal, was frankly kind of ridiculous as it was. Previously, it could be used in every power step of the game meaning the warband could theoretically heal 24 times. It's been toned down to only work in your opponent's power step, so there are "only" 12 instances of healing potential now. That's still a ton and the warband remains abnormally capable of healing their own fighters… provided they have haunches and don't die in one hit.

Skinnerkin have been picking up some steam in various communities, so I'm eager to see how more experienced chefs rate these changes. I'm tentatively excited – sure, they have nerfs included with the buffs, but I feel the latter are more impactful and can help these weirdos out in the long run.

It blows my mind that these poor guys have never had a moment of being at the top of the food chain. In first edition Underworlds, they were pretty lackluster – even after receiving a few buffs. In their revamp of second edition, they're still struggling a little bit. Let's see if these changes can nudge some of the coolest models GW has ever made into the competitive arena.

First up is a small change to Deadly Command. You'll still need to activate Velmorn first if you want to enhance your Grave Guard for the first round, but now at least the command token isn't vanishing between rounds. Theoretically, a single activation of your leader can keep the little guys juiced up for the rest of the game (or twice if you want to use Rise Again). That's cool and removes the Velmorn tax of needing to make potentially subpar early activations with your leader each round.

The warband also picks up a change to their raise. Rise Again is tweaked in a few ways. The biggest is that it's no longer a core ability and instead can be used in your power step like many of the other raise effects in the game. This continues the trend of removing activation taxes from this warband which is pretty cool. It's not all upsides, though, because now it's limited to one use per game and also no longer automatically replaces the command token that it spends when used. That last interaction always felt weird in that it required a command token, but using it just replaces the command token, so I won't mourn its removal.

The final change goes to The Velmorn Curse. This is a great change because the previous iteration was nearly worthless given that you could only do a retaliatory ping against an opponent who kills one of your raised fighters, who they typically already have no incentive to go after before factoring in the damage they'd inflict upon themselves in doing so. Now it instead works when any of your fighters are slain (which now includes Jedran and Velmorn) with the restriction that it can only be used once per game. That's already more times than the previous version was getting used, so I consider it a straight up buff.

I definitely dig these changes and, to continue the trend, want to get these onto the table and jam some games as soon as possible.

Continuing the trend of minor timing-based nerfs, the Starblood Stalkers had their inspire tweaked. The warband now checks to see if you control three or more treasure tokens after your opponent's power step. Like the other similar changes, this allows your opponent an opportunity to interact with your game plan. Anyone who has ever faced off against a Starblood player who uses their first activation to move onto a token, then their power step to Violent Blast onto two other tokens and inspire before you even get your first activation will welcome this change. This will make it much harder for the Starblood player to inspire, but the huge jump in quality on inspired stats for the warband makes it seem like a worthwhile hoop to jump through.

A small change has been applied to the Temptations of Slaanesh mechanic. The punishments for your opponent either accepting or rejecting the temptation dice have been flipped. Now, when you choose to offer a success on an opponent's attack roll, they can accept the success and have their fighter take a damage, or they can choose to reject the success and you push another of your fighters one hex. It also makes a lot more sense thematically, in my opinion.

It's a pretty simple change at its core, but I'm tentatively excited about it. The Thricefold certainly did not get the same glow-up that other warbands did when transitioning from digital to physical rules in the last big release in October. I'm not sure if I'll ever get over Vexmor changing from a +1 attack dice and grievous wielding terror to just a big lazy guy, but hopefully this change is enough to at least let them hang with other solid warbands.

I think we all knew this was coming in some form. The Wurmspat are a frighteningly aggressive warband that also have some of the toughest fighters in the game and top it all off with battlefield control via brutal movement penalties. Games Workshop is addressing this in a few ways.

First, their Disgustingly Resilient ability can be bypassed with cleave. This is huge and will drive up the value of cards like Sharpened Points or warbands who innately have access to cleave. Cleave now pulls double duty in making attacks more consistent, both in the initial hit roll (since all three Wurmspat are on block) and now also in pushing through full damage.

The other change is reducing the movement penalty tied to their Bile Blade runemark from -2 move to -1 move. This is still a meaningful penalty to the opponent, but it no longer locks enemy fighters down to the point of being effectively immobile. The timing of applying the bile token has also been tweaked so that it's given to the target after the attack has been resolved. This means if a Wurmspat fighter slays an enemy model in a single hit, that model won't pick up a bile token. This has a side effect of making these Nurgle fighters more difficult to inspire.

This warband needed something to bring them in line with the other elite warbands out there. They'll still be quite strong and serve any Nurgle fans well, but hopefully be less annoying for opponents to play against.

Taros picks up some extra utility here. Raptor's Eye was previously a very restricted re-roll for attack dice, but now it's a positioning tool instead. A 3 hex push is quite substantial, and it's even usable multiple times in a round. Taros can be a handy pocket flanking buddy that can boost the accuracy and defense of the fighters in this warband even further or be used to run feature token interference while your Stormcast are out bashing heads in.

Will it be enough to make this Stormcast band compete with their peers? Having all the fighters be stuck on 1 save dice even after inspired is rough, but maybe the Raptor's Eye change can help somewhat.

Their initial release was absolutely bonkers but was reigned in with an emergency errata before they were even made available for purchase. Despite that redesign to knock them down from being the best warband in the game, the Gitz are still power houses that combine a massive combined health pool (the largest in the game), a ton of bodies (the most in the game), and respectable damage profiles. One of the strengths it had was being able to jam two accurate and respectable damage fighters down their opponent's throat without any fear because the squigs were worth 0 bounty. Fortunately, this has changed and now the squigs are also worth 1 bounty, bringing the warband's total up to 9.

Like the other warbands that have received nerfs in this update, this isn't going to suddenly make Gitz a nonviable option. They're still highly mobile with a ton of bodies and respectable attacks, so their place in the meta is pretty secure. They're just a lot less frustrating to play against.

The warbands released in the original Embergard box aren't being left being, either. There's a small change made to Warp-charged that won't really change much about how Zikkit is played, but will at least make the play experience more reliable. The previous "sometimes 2, sometimes 0" damage mechanic was thematic for Clan Skryre inventions being unpredictable, but that doesn't make for good gameplay. Now, you'll always be able to plan around taking a single point of damage when activating this ability -- which isn't necessarily a downside, because you can then inspire one of your other fighters. Silver lining and all?

I don't think this will noticeably affect how often Zikkit's Tunnelpack shows up in events, but I do think it will make the play experience as a Tunnelpack player more enjoyable.

The original rat swarm that came out in Underworlds' earliest days is back (again-again). Much like how the Knives of the Crone ditched critical grievous because it's lame, Scheming Pack no longer grants critical grievous to Spiteclaw and Krrk. Instead, when they are making attacks into a flanked or surrounded target, they just straight up have grievous. This is huge because this warband struggled with damage previously, and now they have potentially two fighters who can deliver 3 damage hits. It's doubly fortunate for them that there's also a solid deck in the meta right now that cares about flanking while making it much easier to achieve.

They also pick up a utility buff now that Out of my way, fool-things! has been changed. It used to be limited to only swapping friendly fighters which was an incredibly niche effect that felt kind of useless. You can still replicate the original effect, but you're also able to swap with an enemy which will be much more common. Use this to steal feature tokens, reposition enemies into unfavorable flanked positions, and just generally scheme like a backstabbing rat.

The most romantic warband in the game picked up a nice buff as well. Undying Love was a solid tactical power to heal one of your main fighters while pushing the other a whopping 3 hexes towards them. Well it still does that, but now you can do it once per round instead of once per game. Given how much Zondara and Ferlain form the bulk of your useful fighters in this warband, being able to heal and push potentially three times can be quite helpful. If for no other reason, I know I'll be less inclined to sit on the ability and wait for the perfect moment to use it. Just fire it off as soon as it's remotely helpful, take advantage, and then get to use it again in the following round.

I fear that their fighter stats have been a little outclassed by more recent releases, but I'm going to at least give them a shot with this change. I'm quite fond of my models that were painted my a very talented local painter and any excuse to get them on the table is one I'll take.

Decks

This balance update didn't just change a huge pile of warbands. It also fairly dramatically adjusted two existing Rivals decks by tweaking their plot cards. While GW did make small changes to the Countdown to Cataclysm plot card a while back (making progressing the tracker no longer optional), these changes are much more substantial and in one case, completely redefine how the deck functions and can be evaluated.

When this deck initially came out, many people zeroed in one how the re-roll from the plot card was massively powerful but the objectives just flat out sucked. There was too much push-and-pull between objectives that wanted rage tokens and power cards that wanted you to spend them. When this deck did see play, it was often only taking two objectives and those were the ones that didn't care about the rage tokens.

This redesign manages to devalue the benefit of having rage tokens on your fighters but also increasing the chance that the objectives can be scored and letting the power cards be more freely used without feeling like you're shooting yourself in the foot.

First, the way rage tokens are acquired via Raging Charge has changed. Instead of only a charging fighter getting one, now a charging fighter or a fighter who has already charged is eligible of generating rage tokens. Alongside more chances of generating the tokens, there are also more tokens generated – the fighter activating still can get theirs, but you're also able to choose another fighter to pick a token up. This means there will be far more rage tokens on the board in your average game, freeing the Raging Slayers player up to spend some on their utility ploys while still having enough tokens out to enable objective scoring and spending them on the useful ploys the deck has.

Secondly, Raging Strike has been changed. Rage tokens no longer grant a re-roll for attacks. Instead, they allow you to change one of your successful rolls into a critical hit. This is quite a shift, because previously Raging Slayers was taken to increase the accuracy of warbands that needed a boost. Now it does nothing to help with accuracy, but instead can be used to more reliably deny Stand Fast, trigger your own Overrun, enable critical runemarks (Skinnerkin players, take note!), and do other fun things with critical attack results (more easily inspired Ironsoul's Condemnors, for instance). No way around it, this is a big nerf, but it's balanced out by how the rest of the deck is actually useful now and not just a tax to have a good plot card.

I'm sure GW saw that almost nobody was taking this deck, and if they were they were taking as few cards from it as possible. If they simply made the cards more enticing, the re-roll on the plot card would have made this the default aggro deck. By adjusting both of those levers, I assume the goal was having the deck used more often without it becoming a broken mess. I'll be revisiting this deck later on – basically reviewing it again – because this plot card change forces us players to reevaluate the entire deck now. I'm looking forward to trying out new Nemesis combinations with this deck now.

[update 14 FEB] GW added a line to the plot card to indicate that the rage tokens go away at the end of the round. That's how it used to work, but the image above simply forgot it. Whoops! It's back to working as intended.

There was only a single deck that had zero presence at the World Championships and it was Realmstone Raiders. There are many reasons for this. Realmstone Raiders puts more of a mental load on the player because they're forced to track multiple objective criteria, track the cards revealed and placed on the bottom of the decks, and basically work harder to achieve the same results that other decks can do. The entire point of this deck is the raid mechanic that it introduces, but the viability of it is completely up to what warband your opponent brings. This has the unpleasant effect of feeling like you can be in a losing position before the game even starts depending on who you sit across from.

Two changes were made to the plot card which go a little way to alleviate these issues. The first is adding a floor to the number of cards raided when your fighters make a successful attack. Previously, it was equal the bounty of your target, meaning any raised fighters (who have their bounty set to 0) or little incidental fighters (such as Tik-Tik, Spinefin, Sotek's Venomites, etc.) would never allow you to raid cards. Now, you're always guaranteed to raid at least one card.

The other change addresses the problem when your deck just happens to be in the wrong order and you wind up with all your Emberstone cards in your hand. Once drawn, you were never able to raid these cards which turns off a huge portion of the scoring in the deck. Now, there's a mechanic to tuck Emberstone cards from your hand back on the bottom of your power deck. It's not great – they're still going to be on the bottom of your deck, so you're going to have to draw and raid a substantial amount to get to them – but you at least are able to turn bricked objectives into potentially playable ones again.

Honestly, these changes aren't enough to make me want to try the deck again. It's just too much to keep track of for too little reward. I'm also not fond of how easy it is for a player to accidentally score objectives that weren't met, whether or not it was intentional. It's a cool idea and had the potential to be really strong (with all the built in card draw and playing cards off the top of your deck) but it feels the deck just needed more time in the oven. Even this quick re-bake isn't cutting it for me.

Forbidden and Restricted

There was also a small update to the FAR list. Outmuscle from Deadly Synergy has been added to the collection of restricted cards. This 2 glory end phase objective is quite easy to score for nearly any warband that's running Deadly Synergy, so I can see why it made the list.

My personal dream of seeing Supremacy come off the list remains unfulfilled, however. Alas.

Recap

Dang, that's a lot. We have multiple small changes to warbands and some quite large changes – enough to make at least one warband and deck feel like a functionally new option. I'm particularly pleased that so many buffs were handed out to the under performing or less popular warbands in the game and not just nerfing the top performers. We're in a new meta now and I can't wait to see it shake out.

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Tags: warhammer underworlds | Starting Hex