Review: Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard

The new edition of Warhammer Underworlds has landed, promising a streamlined and reinvigorated experience. We eagerly grabbed our box set, ready to see if the Embergard core box can live up to the promises. Will it reignite our passion for Warhammer Underworlds or will the changes leave us feeling a bit flat?

The Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard box will be available for pre-order starting Saturday, 2 November 2024. The pre-order period lasts two weeks, with the official release date set for 16 November 2024.

Included in the box are:

• The Emberwatch (Stormcast Eternals warband), inc. warscroll cards
• Zikkit’s Tunnelpack (Skaven Clan Skryre warband), inc. warscroll cards
• A 36 pages rulebook plus a quick start sheet
• 4 universal Rival Decks (Blazing Assault, Emberstone Sentinels, Countdown to Cataclysm, Pillage and Plunder) plus rule reference cards
• 1 double-sided gaming board
• 1 sheet of tokens
• 8 Warhammer Underworlds dice (5 transparent orange attack dice, 3 black defence dice)

The updated ruleset and gameplay

The new edition is a hard reset. The rules have undergone a process of streamlining and optimization, but the core mechanics are preserved.

In my reviews of the last few Warhammer Underworlds core sets, I often mentioned that I wished for a new edition that would streamline the rules. The rewritten rulebook of Embergard achieves this with great success. Instead of nearly 40 pages, you’re now down to 17, and the rules are incredibly clear and well-structured. Key terms are highlighted, and complex rules are made more accessible with designer’s notes. There is also playstyle guidance for the four included Rivals decks. I appreciate that, because many game manuals teach the rules but fail to teach how to play. The rulebook takes you by the hand, and thanks to the additional quick start sheet and reference cards for key rules, getting started is easier than ever.

A new approach to decks and cards

Instead of faction-specific Rival decks with faction-specific cards, warband rules come now on separate warscroll cards. This makes all decks universal. With the four decks included in Embergard, you get plenty of variety straight away. Plus, the new edition introduces icons for the four different playstyles, making it immediately clear which deck works best with which warband. It’s now incredibly simple to pick one of the many universal Rivals decks in a plug-and-play fashion.

Deckbuilding in the Nemesis format works as usual: you combine cards from any two Rivals decks. Conversely, this means that without the Rivals format and without deckbuilding, all warbands are limited to just four decks, or six if you include the soon-to-be-released standalone decks Reckless Fury and Wrack and Ruin. More decks will certainly be released later on, but at the beginning, the Rivals format might feel a bit limited.

A change that has been met with controversy within the community concerns the card design. The hand-painted artwork has been replaced with cinematic photos of miniatures. Games Workshop produces the best miniatures photography around, and here at Tale of Painters, we strive to achieve the same standard in our pictures and models. Having said that, while the card photography is narrative and expressive, I miss the traditional hand-painted artwork. For me, collectible card games and hand-painted art go together like bread and butter. Without the artwork, the cards, for me, have gone from being collectibles to mere game pieces. Which is probably acceptable, because Underworld’s cards were never able to meet the same printing quality as “proper” collectible card games like Magic or Pokémon.

The new format board

Another change that might take some getting used to is the new game board. Instead of two landscape format boards, Warhammer Underworlds will now be played on a single, square board. As the hexes are significantly smaller than before, the square board, measuring 16.5” x 18”, is slightly smaller than two of the old boards combined. With smaller hexes, the number of hexes has increased from 80 (= two old boards combined on the long edge) to 85.

From a streamlining perspective, reducing the complexity of board selection makes sense. It also eliminates the disadvantage for players who may not own certain boards. However, I did appreciate the variable setup enabled by two boards, which I found to be a unique mechanic in Warhammer Underworlds. I’ll need to play more games before deciding whether I miss it or not.

The future, organized play & handling of older Warbands

Games Workshop has announced that Embergard will be the sole core box for the entire edition. The twice-yearly boxes from previous seasons are therefore a thing of the past. This is good news, as many casual players couldn’t keep up with the previous release frequency. Since future warband releases will no longer include decks, players won’t have to buy them just to get specific cards, as they previously had to.

For organized play, 33 warbands will initially be allowed: the two from Embergard, two to be released in the coming weeks, 16 older warbands being re-released in four Grand Alliance boxes, and the 13 most recent warbands which will receive digital rules. The remaining 25 of the 58 total warbands will also get downloadable rules, but won’t be allowed in organized play (update 11/11/2024: turns out the remaining 25 warbands get only profiles and a generic set abilities for each Grand Alliance, not fully-fledged rules as the 33 warbands allowed for organized play).

I think it’s commendable that all warbands will remain playable for casual play, at least. And some rotation is necessary for tournament play, as we see in other collectible card games. However, I question why, like in the new edition of Kill Team, we can’t have free download rules for ALL warbands. Because the warscroll cards for the 16 re-released warbands can only be found either in the respective Grand Alliance boxes or in a warscroll card pack. The option to buy physical cards makes sense, but why not simply offer all warband rules as a download? Especially since it’s not entirely clear whether the card set will be permanently available.

It’s not particularly user-friendly, is it? I’m puzzled by Games Workshop’s decision to be so selective about providing access to their rules. Warhammer Underworlds could really do with a fresh new start, and it would be helpful to make things easier for players and collectors who have invested in the old edition. Their card collections are no longer compatible with the new edition, after all.

The miniatures

In Warhammer Underworlds, each new warband explores a facet of a faction that hasn’t yet been creatively exhausted in this form, and Embergard is no exception. We get to see the newly-forged Vanguard Chamber of the Stormcast Eternals for the first time, alongside new Skryre gizmos on the Skaven side, including a fantastic Warplock Engineer and his wonderfully weird apprentices.

Both warbands are supplied on a two-part coloured plastic sprue. The Emberwatch come on blue sprues, while Zikkit’s Tunnelpack are on green ones. The models are push-fit, with no assembly options, and all come with scenic bases – 40mm for the Stormcast Eternals, and a mix of 25mm and 28mm for the Skaven.

Patreon bonus content: Ultra high-res, uncompressed versions of the sprue images of both warbands (and backsides of the sprues) can be downloaded here.

Value

Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard has an RRP of £67.50 / €85 / $100, slightly more as the most recent core sets. You get roughly the same amount of gaming material as before, so a slight price increase unfortunately.

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