Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. The February 2026 balance update made quite a few changes to the game, but one of them in particular was an update to the plot card from Raging Slayers. It's only a few lines of text different from the previous version, but it has substantially changed how the deck operates and how all of the cards within it can be evaluated. The changes are so substantial that I feel like it's worth looking at the deck again from the ground up and re-evaluating it. This is the second part of a two-part dive into Raging Slayers. Last time, we examined the change to the plot card and how various warbands could take advantage of having on-demand critical attack rolls. Today, we're going to take a look at the cards in the deck and specifically talk about how their value has changed now that rage tokens are completely different.

The Changes

The plot card was the only card to receive any changes, so all of the cards within the deck itself are identical. The only reason to reevaluate them is because rage tokens are much more plentiful now which can help when you're trying to include both objective cards (many of which require fighters to be enraged) and power cards (many of which require you to spend rage tokens) from the deck.

Objectives

As mentioned earlier, a lot of the objectives in this deck require you to have your fighters enraged. This has become substantially easier now because you're able to generate up to eight rage tokens every round instead of the previous cap of four. Not only are you able to generate more, but the requirements for generating the tokens are more lenient – previously you had to charge with a fighter, but now you can either charge or make an attack with a fighter who already has a charge token. In the end, this means rage tokens are going to be plentiful and you can reasonably expect your entire warband to be enraged.

Surges

Raging Slayers cards. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

Before the update, I'd have said Raging Slayers had one solid surge with Best Foot Forward, and this was a card that didn't even interact with the mechanics of the deck. Now, I'd be more willing to consider some of the other cards as potential candidates.

Blinded by Rage becomes much less restrictive when you can charge with Fighter A to soften up an enemy and apply an rage token to Fighter B to set up a charge-and-kill in your following activation. You can leverage the flanked bonus to accuracy this way and make this kill surge even more reliable to score.

Coordinated Assault and No Respite are also both going to be much easier to score when you're able to rain rage tokens down upon your warband. They're still working at odds with each other, which is obnoxious, but you can select the one that's going to be the most reliably scored by your particular warband and include it for a reasonably easy surge if you're planning to do a lot of charging – and that's what this deck is all about, after all.

Sever the Head and Supreme Slayer don't change at all with the update. The former is still annoying because it restrains your choices during a game. What if you have a shot at taking out an enemy leader but don't have this card in your hand yet? Or if you draw the card but it's just not the right time to go for the leader? Supreme Slayer still has too many restrictions tacked onto it for me to want to include it. It's at least easier to get rage tokens out, so maybe a warband like Mollog's Mob could find a way to use it…

End Phase

Raging Slayers cards. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

Aggressive Expansion gets a little easier to score, but it's still a fairly restrictive objective for only a single glory payoff. I'm still worried about having enough bodies on the board to reliably score this after the first round. If you can get around that requirement, you can spread the rage tokens out after an activation or two of charging and still expect to have enough rage tokens to score it, at least.

Both of the two-glory end phases become a little more appealing as they perform their best impressions of other, existing objectives. They're still fairly easily denied by your opponent, but against someone who isn't expecting them they're substantially easier to score. Even against a player who is aware and trying to play around them, they can at least force sub-optimal plays.

No Escape becomes a more rewarding form of Denial from the Blazing Assault deck if your warband is at all planning to charge and invade (and frankly, why would you take this deck if you weren't?). Overwhelming Presence winds up being a mini Strip the Realm from Pillage & Plunder with all the difficulties that come from trying to score that objective. It's more difficult to score than Strip, but just forcing your opponent to go stand on a treasure can be disruptive of their own plans and be a worthwhile thing itself.

Into the Fire, No Contest, and Unrelenting Massacre don't change in any way.

Power Cards

The issue with the previous design of this deck is that, as you can see, you needed a lot of rage tokens in order to score the majority of the objectives but those tokens were also a currency that you were required to spend in order to take advantage of many of the power cards. This created an unpleasant feeling where you could either score objectives or use your ploys and that frankly isn't a fun sensation to run into, especially when the other decks out there don't have these kind of internal anti-synergies.

Now that rage tokens are more plentiful, players are going to be able to (usually) have plenty on hand in order to power their ploys and still enable scoring if you include the Raging Slayers objectives.

Ploys

Raging Slayers cards. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

There are a two main categories of ploys here. Some ranged from playable to good beforehand and only became better now that more rage tokens are being generated each game. It's quite possible to spend the rage token early in a round for these ploys and still have them replaced by subsequent activations. Other ploys didn't interact with the rage tokens at all and remain unchanged.

Honed Reflexes, Knife to the Heart, Venting Strike, Murderlust, Slayer's Aid and What Pain? were all in that first category. These cards were already strong enough to be played even when they were going against the deck's gameplan, but now that they're not realistically sabotaging any of the objectives, they're even better.

Honed Reflexes was already one of the stronger defensive cards available, but now that you're able to splash rage tokens out at twice the rate as before, you're going to be able to blanket your whole warband with defensive rerolls much quicker. Couple it with What Pain? and this all-out aggressive deck winds up packing some surprisingly good defensive tech.

Knife to the Heart likewise was a great card – a guaranteed ping always is – but now the downside of having to remove an rage token is almost non-existent. You can even charge with one fighter, place the rage token on another fighter near an enemy, and then immediately spend that one to fire off a ping. Venting Strike and Murderlust provide an always welcome extra attack dice which is even more useful now that the plot card no longer provides a reroll.

Slayer's Aid is much more intriguing now that you're able to use it on a fighter that hasn't charged yet this round. There's a play pattern where you charge with your leader, put the rage tokens on your leader and Some Sidekick, then use Slayer's Aid immediately after your leader's activation to yank the newly enraged Some Sidekick up into the front line. It still has all the same issues that any leader-restricted card has where it can wind up being an unplayable dead card once your leader dies, but this makes this massive three hex push card more flexible.

Adrenaline Rush becomes easier to use but, uh, you still aren't going to want to include this.

Upgrades

Raging Slayers cards. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

There are some generically useful upgrades that didn't care about rage tokens and (surprise) they're still generically useful. Agile, Haymaker, and Keen Eye haven't changed and will still be taken in many cases. Murderous Instincts and Gifted Vitality also don't care about the change, but are a little more niche in their applications. Take them if they work for your warband, skip them if they don't.

Raging Slayers cards. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

Aggressive Ambusher provides the highly desired runemarks of cleave and ensnare to a fighter. The setup is still required to turn them on, but it's both easier than before (due to a plethora of rage tokens and the popular inclusion of Deadly Synergy as the Nemesis pair for this deck) and also more important than before with how vital having access to cleave is proving in this meta.

Angered Swing is a little weird, but it's not broken (nonfunctional connotation) like some folks seem to think. You just need to choose after seeing your initial roll whether you want to turn a successful dice face to a critical or reroll all of the attack dice. There will probably be times where this is a tricky decision, but most of the time you'll know what to do. Zero successes? Re-roll. Two to three successes? Turn one to a critical. [edit: whoops, nope. That's called "cheating" so don't do that. Reading the card is helpful!] It's still a three swords, two damage attack that can be an upgrade to a lot of the profiles offered by horde warbands. You can at least use it without having to charge now, provided another fighter has charged earlier in the turn and shared a rage token.

United in Anger catches a tiny buff in this update as well, because it triggers off enraged fighters being pushed and by making fighters enraged at a faster rate, it'll go off more often. It's one I haven't seen in action many times so it's a little hard for me to evaluate, but surely a repeated push effect has to be good. Maybe throw it onto an elf in Elathain's Soulraid, enrage the crab and fish, and enjoy going ice skating with half your warband after every single activation?

Raging Slayers in Action

I want to share a couple example decks that have successfully utilized this new iteration of Raging Slayers. Maybe this can serve as a springboard for your own deck building or just grab one of these lists wholesale and run with them.

Jesse's Raging Slayers and Deadly Synergy decklist for Skinnerkin. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

First up is Skinnerkin with a Raging Slayers/Deadly Synergy deck combo that was piloted by Jesse, a local and Worlds top 16 finisher. This was the first time either of us had experimented with Skinnerkin and we were both impressed by how well the auto-crit mechanic from Raging Slayers fed into the warband's haunch generation. I was playing something with Pillage & Plunder as part of my makeup, and I was not prepared for how much Raging Slayers can enable Overruns off of attacks. It meant holding feature tokens was extra difficult. The reliable critical result isn't as handy once the whole warband is inspired, but getting them to that point seems to be their main hurdle.

Spinnerite's Raging Slayers and Deadly Synergy decklist for Sons of Velmorn. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

Next is Spinnerite's Velmorn list that's also Raging Slayers/Deadly Synergy. Spinnerite is the author of whudice.com, the Underworlds dice probability calculator. Check it out if you haven't. There's a lot of overlap here with the previous deck which probably isn't surprising, but in this case it's being used to really amp up the damage output of this warband. By ensuring all the successful attacks will trigger critical grievous, it means the Sons of Velmorn are starting out with two fighters on three damage and three fighters at two damage; this flips after Faulk manages to inspire and the warband has a whopping three fighters hitting for three damage. Combined with their solid defense and recently revamped warscroll, this is a warband that can leverage the new deck quite well.

Muras's Raging Slayers and Blazing Assault decklist for Ironsoul's Condemnors. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

Switching things up, there's a Raging Slayers/Blazing Assault combo that Muras piloted with Ironsoul's Condemnors in a recent tournament in Poland. Reliably inspiring the fighters early helps with both offense and defense, and like the other examples above, probably helps to be extra disruptive to enemy plans by utilizing Overrun. It did quite well at the event, securing second place and only losing to…

Double Michał's Raging Slayers and Realmstone Raiders decklist for Ironsoul's Condemnors. Credit: UnderworldsDB.com

… Double Michał who also piloted Ironsoul's, but this time with a wild Raging Slayers/Realmstone Raiders pairing that won first place. The above average accuracy of the Condemnors would allow for more reliable raids with Realmstone. This event was pretty heavy on elite warbands, meaning even more raids were enabled on average (since it's based on the bounty of the enemy fighter). I would never have pegged this as a combo to watch out for, but that's what I love about this game. Congrats on the event win!

Thoughts Revisited

My initial review of this deck back in July of 2025 was pretty negative. I thought the best card was the plot card and the rest of the cards were effectively a lead weight that dragged the deck down. In retrospect, I might have been a little too harsh in my first take but I don't think I was off by much. The deck found a few pretty narrow niches and it did at least show up to Worlds (pour one out for Hunting Grounds which did not) with some solid showings but it wasn't a commonly selected deck by any means.

I suspect I am having the opposite problem with this tweaked version and might be rating it a little too high. I haven't played games piloting the new deck yet; I've been too busy testing other various exciting things that changed in that same rules update. However, I have played against this deck a few times since the change and n the whole, I'm pretty high on it. I suspect it's going to wind up being a very useful deck for certain warbands, but not universally taken which is a respectable place for a deck to settle into.

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Tags: warhammer underworlds | Starting Hex