Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'm absolutely stumped as to why anyone thinks Rivals will fix balance.

We've had Rivals since literal day 1. Every single warband that ever existed was packaged with a Rivals deck. It was even wrapped seperatly from the other cards. Thinking Rivals will fix balance means thinking all the stat cards are balanced and all the default decks are balanced and somehow all the imbalance randomly ended up in the generic cards.

It doesn't fix balance at all. Balance came from being able to remove the poor cards in your faction deck for universal cards. All it does is restrict season 1 and 2 warbands from ever seeing play since they didn't come with full 32 card faction decks.

GW now has the ball when it comes to trying to make faction decks worth playing, and while the Direchasm warbands have honestly been fairly good... the first two faction decks we see for the Harrowdeep warbands... are bad. Really bad. Almost as bad as the faction deck for Storm Of Celestus from the Two Player Starter.

We played a four player "Rivals" game yesterday... and the only ones who had fun were the Kainan and Wraithcreeper players.

The Storm Of Celestus and Blade Coven (myself) player... might as well have not participated due to how back the faction cards for both of those warbands are without using universals.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'm absolutely stumped as to why anyone thinks Rivals will fix balance.

We've had Rivals since literal day 1. Every single warband that ever existed was packaged with a Rivals deck. It was even wrapped seperatly from the other cards. Thinking Rivals will fix balance means thinking all the stat cards are balanced and all the default decks are balanced and somehow all the imbalance randomly ended up in the generic cards.

Because GW said so, that means it must be true.

Did anyone say rivals fixes balance? Point me to that quote. In my post I said that a good rivals mode has the potential to help with obselesence and bloat. I understand that season 1 and 2 warbands can't be played right now but it would be easy for gw to put out a card pack that brings those old warbands up to date.
That said some users are saying that rivals is not well implemented here, which is fair enough.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'm absolutely stumped as to why anyone thinks Rivals will fix balance.

We've had Rivals since literal day 1. Every single warband that ever existed was packaged with a Rivals deck. It was even wrapped seperatly from the other cards. Thinking Rivals will fix balance means thinking all the stat cards are balanced and all the default decks are balanced and somehow all the imbalance randomly ended up in the generic cards.

Courtesy of GW:

"It works like this: each player gets a pre-built deck, either by selecting the warband-specific cards for a particular warband or by picking one of the pre-built decks such as Silent Menace, which you can even combine with older warbands from the first few seasons of Warhammer Underworlds.* You won’t have to build a deck – and because both sides now have a deck of equal power, the game will be decided by skill rather than the size of your card collection."

According to GW, rivals fixes the balance issues as all faction decks are of equal power....... hahahahahahahahahahaha. Wyrmspat would like a word with the marketing department of GW. And the new warbands are a poor representation of "decks having equal power", when they get absolutely dunked on by Direchasm warbands.

NH Gunsmith wrote:
The game never started as a "casual people will collect them" type game as you said, as it has been marketed as "The Ultimate Competitive Miniatures Game" from GW since day one. Even though a lot of AoS and Warcry players have picked up the boxes of minis to use as characters, there is/was a massively healthy Underworlds competitive player base (outside of the U.S.). The game has been embraced by people looking for a fairly solid competitive arena combat miniatures game, the type of game that has caught of since Deadzone, Aristeia, Godtear, ect, and Magic players due to the tactical positioning along with dice based combat and deck building mechanics.

The "competitive mini game" was part of it, but it was also aimed at the board game market - just look at the reviews of Shadespire and Nightvault on YouTube - lots of board game review channels covering it that don't normally cover GW stuff. It's also the reason for coloured plastic and push fit models. No hobby experience required if you're not interested in that side of things.

lord_blackfang wrote:I'm absolutely stumped as to why anyone thinks Rivals will fix balance.

We've had Rivals since literal day 1. Every single warband that ever existed was packaged with a Rivals deck. It was even wrapped seperatly from the other cards. Thinking Rivals will fix balance means thinking all the stat cards are balanced and all the default decks are balanced and somehow all the imbalance randomly ended up in the generic cards.

Outside of the starter boxes there were no pre-built decks for the season 1 and 2 warbands. Plus Rivals was never a supported format before, so balance never mattered. Yeah you could grab the Beastgrave and Direchasm decks and play a few games quickly out of the box, but that wasn't the intended way to play outside of learning games - no-one was promising balance. The decks just needed to be playable. Now it's an actual format, in theory more effort should be put in to balancing the decks. Especially if they're hoping to see this format played at events and tournaments. But Harrowdeep isn't promising in respect to that.

I do wonder if they're going to allow themselves to issue updates to Rivals decks. I don't see how it can possibly be an ongoing format if not. You release one over-powered faction deck and that's the only faction anyone ever plays with. But you can't exactly ban or restrict cards when there's no deckbuilding - the only easy options are banning an whole warband, or saying you can use the warband but only with the generic decks. The only other option, and the best one, is to release updated Rivals deck lists that have some universal cards swapped in.

I do wonder if this would have worked better like the old Starwars LCG or Marvel Champions - where you get half of each deck as a faction deck, and then you pair it with another set half deck made up of universal/GA cards, on different themes (aggro, control, etc). You could still package each warband with a playable deck, but you could split that deck in half and swap the universal half around with other warbands.

If every faction deck was a bit more evenly balanced originally.
The older warbands could have like a list with the four cards you need to add to make their set ready for Rivals.
Either 4 that work for all - which would be tough - or just the 80 or however many extra cards from the box just had 4 that work really well for each warband.

What do we know about this Silent Menace deck they mention?
Do you just use that deck on its own? I can see that being possible

Danny76 wrote:
If every faction deck was a bit more evenly balanced originally.
The older warbands could have like a list with the four cards you need to add to make their set ready for Rivals.
Either 4 that work for all - which would be tough - or just the 80 or however many extra cards from the box just had 4 that work really well for each warband.

What do we know about this Silent Menace deck they mention?
Do you just use that deck on its own? I can see that being possible

Yeah, Silent Menace is already out. You just use that deck on its own, as you say.
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/WHU-Direchasm-Silent-Menace-Deck-EN-2021

I'd be very surprised if relic is adopted for any sort of competition play, it's basically there to let folks who just started play at an even level.

I will say, I much preferred the vanguard format, as it limited the card pool, but kept deckbuilding. But, I'm only really going to play championship unless I'm introducing someone to the game.

I wouldn't mind trying out the silent menace deck with my Profiteers though in rivals, that could maybe work (if we ever do that). Everyone in my club who plays underworlds ordered harrowdeep, so we are just going to keep going with what we are doing lol.

My favourite format I've seen, which I'd love to try at an event is relic, but you can only use universals from the season your warband was released in. That'd be cool.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/10/22/take-your-warbands-out-of-harrowdeep-and-onto-the-battlefields-with-these-free-warscrolls/

AoS warscrolls for the two new warbands.

I actually like the Krule Boys, of course it's a classic WHU mixed weapon unit that's a pain to resolve, but the boss does interesting things.

Blackpowder's Buccaneers

This warband is pure win.

I wonder how they will compare to the previous Ogre Warband.

That is an amazing Maneater,, plus we can have knife-monkey fights!

Has anyone in the US had their Harrowdeep ship yet (from GW)?

LordAriakan wrote:
Has anyone in the US had their Harrowdeep ship yet (from GW)?

I literally just got a shipping notice on my copy of Octarius Book I from them. They're definitely backed up somewhere.

Seeing the new pirate ogor, Do you think it will be much bigger than Hrothgorn ?

Now, if only the monkey had a gun...

I find it interesting that the card pack and warband have stayed at £12 and £25.

I wonder if that is because I wasn't alone in avoiding the £65 starter. Hopefully it is and they will do a stock clearance at £50 at some point. (They did do this with Direchasm but from £50 to £40 I seem to remember).

I notice Direchasm isn't on the website, probably as they don't want the £50 starter sitting right next to the £65 starter.

Is this the only underworlds thread? Seems like no posts in two months would suggest they've killed a lot of interest in this game with that price rise.

P.S If not clear, I'm still not happy with the price of the new starter.

Direchasm isn't the current Core Box, so they probably wouldn't be adverting it anymore for folks to buy.

I ordered both the card pack and warband today, excited to use the new cards in my decks.

my group has really enjoyed the Harrowdeep changes.



The New errata's and FAR list has me really excited about deckbuilding now too, adding keywords to older warbands brings a lot more life into the legacy bands, I'm pretty keen to play my Farstriders again, now that they are all hunters.

Underworlds is a social game. With many places having gone back into/going back into lockdown, there's gonna be a lack of interest.

Yeah, there hasn't been much buzz around my gaming group for the game since the new expansion but in saying that, I did finally get my first few games in using the Direchasm starter.

The price bump really killed it for quite a few interested parties.

It's possible the price bump really was down to cost of materials in terms of cardboard at the moment then. Or increase freight costs getting that stuff from China.

(And yeah, GW should absolutely of just absorbed that increase as their margins on plastic are *so* big, but that was never going to happen)

I mean, I own every Underworlds release and am still keeping up with my collection for the moment, but who knows for how long that'll last.

Beyond just generic price increases, they've all come with no real increase in the product contents. They've also increased the number of add-on products per season (we now have the possibility of boards, upgrade packs, and rivals decks) and are now adding another expensive Core Box and two more warbands per season.

Which is all doubly funny because GW originally described this game at it's Adepticon debut as being "affordable to collect". While this is the textbook definition of "milking it".

And for LCG-esq games like this, the most passionate fans who will keep playing and recruiting new players are also likely trying to collect the full range/seasons, making it harder and harder to stay up to date.

Also to add insult to injury GW changed the card backs from Harrowdeep onwards which means I now need to re-sleeve 4 seasons worth of cards with opaque sleeves and cant look at the card back art anymore

 Jack Flask wrote:
I mean, I own every Underworlds release and am still keeping up with my collection for the moment, but who knows for how long that'll last.

Beyond just generic price increases, they've all come with no real increase in the product contents. They've also increased the number of add-on products per season (we now have the possibility of boards, upgrade packs, and rivals decks) and are now adding another expensive Core Box and two more warbands per season.

Which is all doubly funny because GW originally described this game at it's Adepticon debut as being "affordable to collect". While this is the textbook definition of "milking it".

And for LCG-esq games like this, the most passionate fans who will keep playing and recruiting new players are also likely trying to collect the full range/seasons, making it harder and harder to stay up to date.

Also to add insult to injury GW changed the card backs from Harrowdeep onwards which means I now need to re-sleeve 4 seasons worth of cards with opaque sleeves and cant look at the card back art anymore

...yeah, Harrowdeep did do a good job of curbing my enthusiasm towards the game. Kind of glad that the people who jumped in with me didn't go anywhere neat as nuts as I did.

Why haven't they revealed or at least teased the next warband? Usually when a new warband drops, they at least show off one model for the next one.

Did we even get a timeline like in season three?

Q2. For the next.
Still abit early for the next reveal I’d have said?

 GaroRobe wrote:
Why haven't they revealed or at least teased the next warband? Usually when a new warband drops, they at least show off one model for the next one.

Did we even get a timeline like in season three?

LVO is next week.

We also don't know anything about the quarterly release of KT, blood bowl, or necromunda (Q1)

I expect this, something eldar and the next AoS thing in this preview... although in the end they only showed marines.

Also to note, Q2 will have three warbands rather than just one...

According to the roadmap (which only shows out to Q2 sadly), there will be one warband box (something Lightning, probably SCE) and a new core set with two unknown warbands.

The rumor, which has been confirmed by one former playtester, is that the next warband expansion is a Necromancer + Zombies.

Further, the next box will be the starter for season 6, the second in Ulgu. Two season a year now, each year in a new Realm.

callidusx3 wrote:
The rumor, which has been confirmed by one former playtester, is that the next warband expansion is a Necromancer + Zombies.

Further, the next box will be the starter for season 6, the second in Ulgu. Two season a year now, each year in a new Realm.

That would make absolutely no sense...
If you're talking about the next core box in Q2 then Season 5 would consist of just Harrowdeep, Blackpowder's Buccaneers, a Rivals deck, and the one unteased Q2 warband.

That'd come nowhere near a typical season, much less GW's claim of "two additional warbands per post-Harrowdeep" season.