What would GW do without people like you? This was excellent, I've been trying to get into this but I just couldn't be bothered to understand all the modes of play and seasons.
I felt it worth noting here that your comment about playing Underworlds in the pub stuck in my brain, and today I can finally say I played Underworlds in a brewery and it was glorious
There’s only two things that could make Underworlds better for me personally. 1, If I had people to play with locally and 2, if it were a 40k game as I prefer the setting.
Underworlds in 40k setting would be absolutely amazing, Im trying to get into it, but I just prefer 40k so much more, hope they will release something like that in the near future. Afterall we do have Warcry and Killteam for skirmish games, AoS and 40k for bigger games, but no underworlds equivalent for 40k which is weird in my opinion.
@@ArbitorIan haha well thanks a lot for the quality content; now I have to consider picking this up after previously dismissing it. Perhaps secondhand for cheap.
Nice one Ian, I've been looking to get UW going with my mates and this has not only filled in the blanks that I had about what the release order was, but will also save me a bunch of time and garbled explanation. Oh and also thanks to John for the high class assist.
I bought a bunch of Underworld warbands a while back for the models, but the game itself was intimidating with the “competitive” label, the rotating card lists and the meta focus (CCGs scare me) so I never really tried it. After this video, it might be time to give it a chance.
It's very intimidating for sure. Your gameplay must be revolves around objectives and not being able to score more or a single objective while your opponent scores more or every objectives than you feels so bad and frustrated. If you draw a bad one and not being able to score more in the next turn, you will not be able to catch up (if your opponent scores again).
I hope "Rivals+"or some other gamemmode that keeps the card pool limited really picks up speed. I think that level of deckbuilding is more approachable, but allows some expression in playstyle.
True, I also almost quit playing WHU because of deck building. But now, with the Rivals format, and also Nemesis, I don't have to keep buying new cards to be competitive.
Thank you Ian! That was interesting, and very well explained. I've been hearing about this game for years but never bothered to find out anything about it until now!
I keep forgetting I have the Arena Mortis stuff - it's interesting, everyone only uses a single fighter which gets upgrades depending on how many wounds it has (so you can have a strong fighter with no upgrades or a weak fighter stacked with upgrades, or somewhere in between), and a hazard deck which adds environmental stuff into the mix. It seems fun but definitely a bit of a novelty.
This does look cool. Ima 40k player/collector mainly but adore Skaven. Ive started an Advanced Heroquest project and trying to collect all the additional minis..........very very slowly! A.H.Q. and Space Hulk I can play solo which is great!
Would love to see some battle reports with that camera quality. Great video, very helpful, this game needs more of this kind of spotlight. Cheers to that!
Hi there. Great video! I play blood bowl and my son wanted to try warcry but both are fairly long (he has adhd among other things) and my spare time is short. I have been looking for a small contained game to play and this may well be it!! You provide Really good content and fully explains what I am getting into and Im quite excited to get involved. Thank you for this and keep up the good work 👌🏻
This sounds exactly my kind of game. I love the lore of Age of Sigmar, and I own some Kharadron Overlords, but I don't enjoy large scale wargaming and have always preferred skirmish level. I also love deck building. So yea, this might be my jam! :O Now I just gotta find good battle reports to watch.
I want to compliment you on your amazing approach to the competitive aspect which you have always openly shown dislike to in pretty much every Warhammer franchise. Congratulations on being awesome once again.
I played Shadespire when it first came out and haven’t played one since. I wanted to get back into it recently but found it pretty confusing (talk of ‘Rival decks’ etc was completely foreign to me), so thank god for this video. Thank you 🙌
I had the Shadespire box and really enjoyed it. But, I and others just couldn't (as you stated) keep up with the release schedule so I sort of dropped it. I am very eager to give it another go though now after watching this. The new set in particular has two warbands I REALLY like in it so I'd be happy with either when splitting with a friend.
Nah, the miniatures and their faction cards from any season are always legal. There are different game formats and the universal cards rotate out in some formats (after 2 years) but not in others.
Nope. All warbands can always be played. GW do stop selling them after a while, or start selling them as models-only kits for AoS, but even then you can print out the fighter cards and use them with a Rivals deck.
Thank you so much for this One! Played it today for the first time, and fell in love with it! I play to many Systems, that Is why I stayed away from this one, until now.
I have everything for UWs besides the original Shadespire box (rip at that price), super awesome models and fun gameplay. The new formats were always a bit confusing though so thanks for another banger of a vid.
I recently bought some of the older bands that went Last Chance to Buy, simply to paint. Godsworn Hunt and a few others. Those kits were just the models. Is there any practical way to use them to try out Underworlds without tracking down the original cards that came with them?
Oh I should have put that in the video. Yes, you can use any of the Rivals decks with them. As above, you just need to find and print out the fighter cards for them, and since those are never shuffled into a real deck that usually looks fine.
I tried to get into Underworlds and even Age of Sigmar, but its just such a bourocratic and exhausting task to keep up with all the rules and markers, the seasons and all the different factions you NEED TO KNOW about when going against them. Also this "3 Battlerounds" always seems so lazy as a winning option compared to most other games (Its just not a good pay-off for me personally) At least they seem to have a consistent Ruleset in underworlds since I also tried WarCry - and stopped after they kept changing the stats all the time, making me print out ugly cards on my home-printer instead of using the cards they sended with the Box. Whoever their Gamedesigner is, he needs to remember that in a good game the rules should be set in stone and always be developed FIRST - They may be ADVANCED, but not CHANGED COMPLETELY later off. After 2+ years we also noticed that they keep worsening the stats of older models so you would have to buy newer ones or (far too expensive) books, which then pissed off my playgroup that much we stopped playing GW games alltogether. I'm happy for the people that have enough time to keep up with all the changes they do on a regular basis, but it was just too much for us.
One of the advantages of Underworlds is that a team's cards and special rules can be explained in a couple of minutes. At no point have I ever felt like I needed to revise on every single team and card 'just in case' I have to play them. At worst, you learn how they play in the first game, and a game doesn't take very long.
The game was in concept REALY good. the minis are wonderfull and i love the variety it brings. the game has easy and refreshing rules and is fun to play....BUT the biggest hurdle is the fact that the cards are rotating like magic the gathering formats! and THAT is a no go for me. you can not buy the cards seperatly from the minis, and once they are OOP you can not get a hold of them anymore. it is basicly impossible to keep track of what is allowed and what isn´t between banned, restricted and rotated out cards, and you have to keep buying new warbands, just for the new cards, because your old are not allowed anymore.
As we get to in this, they've pulled back on a lot of that. Most popular formats are Rivals and Rivals + (now made official and called Nemesis) which feature no card-chasing, and the old Championship format you're referring to has kinda died off.
Would really love to see this game become more popular again. It's honestly my favorite GW game.... I was into it pretty hard until Beastgrave hit years ago then I honestly stopped playing championship.- I have high hopes that Nemesis takes off big and results in naturally creating more Championship format players. I myself have bought back into the game with the entire Nethermaze season with plans to buy into all the forthcoming releases while I stick mainly to Nemesis until Harrowdeep cycles out at which point I will have everything everyone else has for Championship play. But it's possible I may just still stick to Nemesis when that time comes as it in my view can potentially be just as good if not better than Championship format.
I think, given that every press release mentioned Rivals, Nemesis and Relic only, that Championship is probably on its way out. I'd guess that events in the future are likely to be Nemesis based, with Relic there for the people who want full-on deckbuilding.
@@ArbitorIan I won't be upset if Championship goes away honestly. I have been thinking that Nemesis may actually be more competitive than Championship in that you are working within set pools of cards with limited power and options rather than potentially grabbing multiple overpowered things from everything. Therefore it's going to be important that they design the new decks carefully and perhaps build them to do very specific things for very specific playstyles - which could mean that certain decks would have no value for certain warbands (a magic focused deck would be useless to a Khorne warband for example).
I am forever going to be in a grump that Vortimus isn't the most potent wizard in the game! Great break down though! The new skeletons are getting me back into the game. Wish there was a way to pick up old factions and their cards though! Missed out on some lovely little war bands.
you are correct. Eyes of the 9 are really underpowered and Vortemis isn't strong enough. I am also bummed they took out of production all of the older warbands and their cards The new skeletons are also promising. The old ones are soo lackluster compared to all the newer warbands. They are slow, have no range apart from the leader who never sees combat, die instantly so the opponent farms points by constantly killing them, waste an entire activation to resurrect, have meh to bad weapons and the worst faction deck out of everyone. They were clearly made to be ok in the first season of the game and never became better after it.
@@torcaace For sure! The Guard and the Eye's where my two war bands! I'm kind of hoping they're going to release complete Rivals decks with some tweaks for all the old stuff (one can dream) For the Guard though the new rules from Gnarlwood that models can move more than once might see them get a little more love?
@@matthewthomas5657 meh not really. The thing is they move, then get obliterated by the opponent's models. Also pre-made Rivals decks are kinda lackluster because they feature some cards that are just impossible to score with a warband and some of them also have a specific playstyle in mind which doesn't work with all warbands
Rivals wasn't a thing back then, so the older warbands from the first two seasons don't have enough faction-specific cards to build a full deck (12 objectives and 20 power). You can still use them in Rivals by using one of the pre-built rivals decks, and in Nemesis you can deckbuild using their faction cards and another pre-built deck.
idk if it will work in a 40k version. Most of the warbands in UW are melee focused, with a few exceptions (Profiteers, Farstriders, Hunters etc). In 40k everyone has a gun so in order to shoot with someone you need to be in range. And in order to be in range you have to move. And if you move, you get shot by your opponent in the next activation and they send you a hex back in order for you to be out of range and you can't move back in order to be in range again because you already moved. I don't see the format working on ranged games like 40k. They would have to make a lot of changes for it to work
It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the first few seasons of the game. Since then, a few more rules and a LOT more warbands have been added to the physical game, but broadly, if you've played the digital one, you'll know how to play the physical one, and vice versa
Great video, I've been looking for a 2 player game that is cheaper, shorter and a lot easier to play than 40k or even killteam and so this may be the one I go for. Do you have any recommendation on which set to buy to start out? Would I be better to jump in with a more recent release (i see a new one gnarlwood is being released soon) or better to start in release order with the first starter pack or just pick which ever starter 2 player set I like the models of most? I'm not interested in competitive play, it's just to play with a friend
When one is released the last one is discontinued so at the moment I think you're best off waiting for Gnarlwood. If you really wanna get started before that, or if you just like the warbands in the box, just grab Nethermaze and download the Gnarlwood pdf when it's released. Or I think there's a cheaper 'starter set' still available that just has two easy-start warbands and their cards that's actually a really good deal.
@@ArbitorIan thanks for that, it really helped. I think I've seen the starter set you mention and is why I thought the old ones were still for sale. I think I'll wait and see how much gnarlwood is going to be and how long the wait is, and then weigh up waiting or getting that other starter set. Cheer 👍
Warhammer underworlds was a great idea when it first launched with Shadespire. Since then it has juat spiraled out of control, the way the game was set up a player basically had to get all the warbands in order to get the full card library. At first that wasn't so bad, then they introduced rotation, which killed it dead for me. Such a shame as the core mechanics are spot on and it is a very tight game, and shows that when they put effort in GW can make some good games... which then get ruined by their sales strategy of never ending releases.
Ah but SINCE then, as we get to in the video, they've moved it way back the other way and removed card chasing almost entirely. That's what got us back into it. Gnarlwood looks like it's going even further in this direction.
it runs like seasons, each starter set updates the rules a bit and tightens up the rules (they were a bit loose in the beginning) also new boards/board art new additions and most importantly new warbands get added each time.
