I really love Warhammer Underworlds. I think it’s a really clever little game – it’s quick to play but has a lot of depth to it. It’s relatively straightforward to teach someone the basics but depending on how and where you want to play there’s so much you can hone in on – whether that’s mastering different formats or Warbands, fine-tuning your deck building, agonising over your board choices and placements plus all the usual Warhammer hobby bits.  I personally find it a lovely palette cleanser to get my gaming fix but to mix it up from a game of Age of Sigmar or 40k as the deck element is something totally different from any time other GW games. My favourite thing about Underworlds though is that in my house, it’s the bit of the hobby that my family engage in with me!

I’m married and have three kids. The eldest of the kids used to collect Orcs and Goblins back in Warhammer Fantasy days and then dropped out of the hobby. Nowadays he has a Custodes squad and likes the idea of getting back into it but hasn’t taken the plunge proper. The younger two have had some passing interest and each enjoyed painting a Space Marine on the last family visit to Warhammer World but find the wargames a little intimidating or just not exciting enough to really engage beyond that. My wife, humours me by taking an interest in whatever I’m working on (although hates the Emperor’s Children colour scheme so won’t ever approve of my choice of wanting to paint everything pink and black!) but otherwise isn’t particularly interestedm

Underworlds is where that differs, the boys (oldest and youngest) are usually too engrossed in their video games to join in for this one but my wife and daughter join me for regular Warhammer Underworlds games, usually on a Sunday. I tend to play the Dread Pageant or Thricefold Discord (seeing as they also belong to my Hedonites or Slaanesh for Age of Sigmar), whilst my wife generally goes with Khagra’s Ravagers and my daughter, Skittershank’s Clawpack.

Games Workshop provide some rules for games with 3 or 4 players in the rulebook in each of the boxed game sets but I can’t say I ever read anything online about people engaging with the game this way – so this may be a blog post for a tiny little audience but I wanted to write it anyway in case there are any other hobby parents who wanted to give it a go or anyone wanting to get a few friends together and have everyone play!

Changes to the Rules

The first thing it’s worth pointing out is that the Games Workshop rules for 3 and 4 players have some differences from the regular two player version.

For example, in a regular game of Underworlds, whenever the players have to dice off, they each roll 4 dice (any combination of Attack Dice and Defence Dice – Underworlds uses modified D6 with different symbols) and the players compared their rolls.

The player with the most Critical Successes in the roll wins the dice-off. If they both have the same amount of Critical Successes (including both having 0), then the player with the most Support – Single wins and if the players also have the same amount of those then the player with the most Support – Double wins. If still a tie, they re-roll their roll-off.

In three or four player the value of the dice is the same but sometimes you will be looking for the loser of the dice roll – so the fewest Critical Successes etc and sometimes the winner of the dice roll. For example – if you’re playing a 3-player game, the loser of the initial dice roll places their first board. However, when rolling off to place fighters, the winner places the first fighter. Worth checking these because it does differ.

The Power Step in a two-player game is nice and simple as the player who just took their turn plays the first card and then the players alternate to play cards until both players Pass in succession. In three and four player games, the player who just took their turn and the player who is going next are the only people who can play any cards in a power step (with the exception of Reaction cards).

Also, in 3-player games specifically, each player takes 3 turns in a round instead of the usual 4.

House Rules

Some of those changes mentioned above make sense to me and some make less sense. So we have made some little tweaks to House Rule bits to make it work for us.

• On the roll-off for boards we let the winner pick who places the first board. Then the remaining players roll-off with the winner picking who goes next and so on until there’s only one player left. Only a subtle change from the 3 or 4-player rules but ultimately the player putting the first board down gets more objectives and it felt right the winner should get the choice to make that themselves rather than it always just being the loser
• You might have spotted that randomly for 3-player games there are only 3 turns per player per round but it goes back to 4 in a 4-player game (same as when you play 2-player). Unless I’m missing something, that change just seems a little random to me and one of the main outcomes of these games for me besides being lots of fun around the table for the family is it’s still a chance to get some Undeworlds practice in and for the family to get to learn the game too, so it just seems an unnecessary change so in our 3-player games we do 4 turns per player per round.

Deck Building

It might sound really obvious, but there are some cards that are much better in 3 or 4 player games and there are some cards that are much worse. Generally, this tends to fall around the language used around the numbers of Fighters and/or Friendly Fighters and Enemy Fighters.

As an example, the card ‘All Part of the Plan’s is a Surge objective that scores you 1 Glory if the value of objectives you hold adds up to a greater number than the number of surviving fighters. If you’re playing a four player game and everyone is running 5-fighter Warbands that number of surviving fighters could be up to 20!

There are also some really great ‘free’ scoring cards. If an Objective card is scored on an enemy fighter being taken out of action for example, that can often be scored without you having to do anything unless it stipulates it being taken out of action by a friendly fighter.  I like some passive scoring and there’s something satisfying about passively scoring a card that usually requires more active scoring I think. For example, the 2 Glory you score from ‘Chill of the Grave’ is based on there being two enemy fighters out of action. Usually this means you’ve had to kill them, but in 3 or 4 player games you can quickly see two enemy fighters out of action and if you’re lucky this can be without you having had to expend any effort to make it happen.

You might have spotted that there could be some challenges when it comes to Championship and Relic formats in 3 or 4 player games as suddenly when drawing from a wide pool of cards there’s more quirky interactions to take advantage of. It’s for this reason that my personal recommendation would be to use the Nemesis or Rivals formats. I personally prefer Nemesis as it’s a bit easier to balance out some of the disparity in strength of some Rivals decks and it opens up Deck Building for the players without the potential pitfalls of Championship say.

Another thing to consider particularly in Championship decks is that if like me you’re playing this with your family, you might have to take a more proactive role in balancing the decks because you’re unlikely to have a Great Strength and Great Fortitude card for everyone say but how many decks otherwise wouldn’t have one or both of those in this format? If playing with friends who each play Underworlds and have the cards this might be less of a problem.

Other Things to Consider

If you’re playing this at home with family, for 3 and four 4 games you’re going to need three or four warbands and boards. This means needing to grab two Boxes Sets – the great news is between whichever is the newest season boxset and the Starter Set you’d have this covered but one to keep in mind – in a box you get everything you need for a 2-player game. Roll-offs etc get a little bit easier if you have a set of the Underworlds dice for everyone. You can work it with one set of dice, that allows two players to roll at once anyway so you can keep the winners dice and then make the third (and fourth) roll to compare to that. I’ve been playing Underworlds since Direchasm came out so have plenty sets of dice and rotate our board options to match the competitive season options.

Power Step planning can be important and worth keeping the differences in mind. Depending on the turn order, there might be opportunities to play cards against one of your opponents without them being able to retaliate in the same Power Step. This can be handy for stuff like pushing an opponent off an objective when they’re not in the Power Step to stop them using a push of their own – handy sometimes if you’re looking to score a Hold Objective style Objective Card.

Like any tabletop game there are sometimes rules discrepancies – something happens that there doesn’t appear to be answer to in the rules. There’s ever-so-slightly more chance of that happening in 3 and 4 player games with it not being the main way the game is being played and more likely to be questions that might not have been asked, so, common sense and if an answer can’t be found settling disputes with a dice-off should be the way forward.

Do you play 3 or 4 player Undeworlds? Will you give it a go? Do you have any house rules to make it work for you? Let me know in the comments.