The Warhammer Day preview brought us the news that Warhammer Underworlds was getting a new edition and a massive overhaul as part of that. Further detail has been added to this since via a Warhammer Community article on some of the changes we can expect to see (you can read that here)

It probably won’t come as a surprise to most people reading this who have ended up here via my Instagram or another post on this blog, that primarily, I’m a Slaanesh player in Warhammer Underworlds. I regularly switch between The Dread Pageant and The Thricefold Discord and I’ve been playing Warhammer Underworlds for a while now, starting with Beastgrave and my next love after Slaanesh – Beasts of Chaos! This is a lot less time than some who got in back in the original launch for example, but still plenty enough time to have invested in a number of box sets to keep up with the seasonal rotation. Therefore the announcement of the new edition and some of the things that are changing or leaving have definitely caused some emotions already!

Excitement – There’s something really special about the news of a new edition. It always feels like a great time full of hobby promise. So, my instant reaction was one of excitement. I think that Warhammer Underworlds is one of Games Workshop’s best games or at least has the potential to be one of their best! The format is great, it has a bit of a niche – certainly within the family of Games Workshop games – and it’s a really great entry point into the wider hobby because you could buy one set and you have probably between 3 and 5 minis to build and you can just crack on and depending on how you play, where you play, and who you play with, you might never need purchase anything else! You also don’t necessarily have to engage in the painting side of things if that’s not your bag as it’s a board game first. I primarily play with my family and a lot of the time with my daughter, the middle-child age wise, who seems to have taken to it most. She loves Skittershank’s Clawpack and when I saw the warbands for the new box-set I was excited to show her the newest rats that she might get to play with in our games in the future!

Frustration – Diving into the detail, the next emotion to hit was frustration. There’s no getting around it, a new edition or season means that some old stuff is going to become useless. I’ve grown to except that some of my cards will cycle out each season, but I’ll get a good few uses out of the new ones as they carry into the season after that as well. I appreciate Games Workshop are a commercial enterprise, they need a product to sell and they need to keep it fresh but I’m not going to pretend it’s not frustrating working out the expense of having kept up with that until now. This new edition is changing a LOT about the game of Underworlds and it’s not just the cards from the season before last that are going. It’s all of them! And it’s not just the cards, it’s the boards too! And the magic dice! And the fighter cards! And. And. And… This is massive! There’s no sugar coating it! That’s a LOT of card and card related stuff that’s been rendered effectively worthless. Slight tangent with this, does anyone else find it really difficult to know what to do with stuff in this situation. Feels wrong to sell it, as I’d hate for someone to buy it thinking it was to keep and they’re not actually going to get any use because it’s being replaced and they’ve missed the announcement. It feels even more wrong to bin it – I’ve paid a lot of money for it! Sure, I could continue to use it, but I’m going to want to play the newest edition that everyone else is so I can join the online discourse around the hobby as that’s one of the bits of our hobby I enjoy most… So yes a lot of frustration! Especially on the back of losing the Underworlds warbands in Age of Sigmar too, (although some of that seems to be being back-tracked which is great) it felt like a second punch to the proverbial gut!

Concern – That frustration softened a tad and became concern next. I love Age of Sigmar and I love 40k, they’re games I play with mates and attend tournaments for. Underworlds I love primarily because it’s the game I also play with my family, so it has a special place in that pantheon of hobby loves as a result. Would it be the same? Will the family want to relearn everything they knew? Will they want to abandon the cards they’ve grown attached to? Recently, in Age of Sigmar and 40k it feels like we’ve said goodbye to quite a few things. Minis and even armies have been retired or marked for retirement. The announcement included news about new rules for the existing warbands, but can we expect similar? That some warbands will get rules but find themselves in the weird limbo that is ‘Legends’ where you’re not very really dead in a hobby sense but very nearly dead because you’re not going to be on the competitive scene that tends to be the main channel of discussion online even if you’re not a “competitive” player. We maybe need new language I think for some of this – Matched Play, Competitive etc don’t quite differentiate between playing the game at Events and playing the game using the same rules as you’d expect at an event without having to ever attend one. But, that seems to be where people default to when discussing rules and lists and in Underworlds’ case, deck building. Which is then another concern. Is deck building gone? We tend to play Nemesis format in my house, but I love the challenge of the Championship format and trying to fine-tune a deck down to the individual cards that will make your warband sing in the way you want it to. Then you have Rivals. I like it as a format, but there’s not a huge amount of the list-building / deck-building reward there that gets me my dopamine rush when I can’t hobby or game. How will I fill my spare time if I can’t be planning a new deck online?!

Also, I have to say, I’m currently unconvinced about the new photo art style. I know it’s the approach with warscrolls and datasheets now in the main GW games, but the wonderful (and sometimes weird) artwork on the cards was definitely one of the charms of the game. I know it’s not the basis for good deck building but I have definitely picked cards because I loved the artwork or because it had a picture of one of my favourite characters doing something ridiculous. I’ll probably still pick cards because they have a photo of Sexy Vexy on them (Vexmor now can only be referred to as Sexy Vexy in my house – it’s a rule – sorry!) but I’m sad to see that go as it was an old-school charm to the game.

Curiosity – Questions, so many questions! Rather than list every thought or question here, I decided to pick out some really crucial ones that I’m looking forward to understanding or exploring as we learn more about the new edition and once I have the new boxset in my hands:

• What will the warbands feel like when their character is distilled down into a warscroll card rather than a deck of 12 objectives and 20 power cards? I feel like there’s probably scope for more consistency in how a warband is meant to feel or behave because it won’t be dependent on whether you even see that card in your hand all game but, will it still be able to match up to what I’ve decided they’re meant to be because of my favourite card for example.

• What does the support for the game look like moving forwards? There’s a lot of sub-questions here about how will the rules be kept updated? Is the full roster of warbands staying competitively active? What will new seasons bring with them? etc but really, it’s about Underworlds receiving a fair level of time, energy and attention from the design studio, Warhammer Community and the online community.
  
• How do the different ways we can currently play the game translate into the new edition? So it sounds as if what was Rivals is the new de-facto format as we are just picking a single deck to go with our warband warscroll, but will formats like Nemesis continue to exist and allow us to bring an additional or many additional decks into the mix? If that’s not built in by Games Workshop, will the Community build it themselves, we’ve seen some of this with Rivals+ previously which was the proto-Nemesis format. I imagine people might still want to continue to scratch that itch so it’ll be fascinating to see what events look like etc.
  
• Will there be support for 3 and 4 player games? What will that look like with a different approach around the boards themselves? This is a more selfish one but it’s a different game with 3 or 4 players currently but it’s the way I often play at home with the family and if there’s not something built in, I’ll have to homebrew a solution to retain family Underworlds time!

Excitement – All of that leads me eventually right back to excitement. That we’ll have a number of older warbands available for re-purchase and that there will be a focus on the game that it’s perhaps not had for a little bit means that there’s probably never been a better time to share the hobby with new people! Underworlds has always had a challenge with its accessibility with cards and minis disappearing from stores but remaining legal and indeed competitive – it can be quite frustrating for new players to learn that to play some formats, they ideally want cards from a set you can’t buy, or that the minis for a warband that really appealed to you are no longer available unless you pay well over the odds on eBay! Hopefully we get to break down some of those barriers with a new edition. Hopefully we can grow the player base so it justifies more time and attention. Mostly though, I’m just excited to for it all to be new again for me! I can’t wait to find out what the new edition has in store for my favourite warbands!

We’re still unsure of the actual release date for the new edition but will definitely have some more posts on the topic once we have it and some further information and definitely a little further down the line to review how it looks and to look at the warbands closest to my heart and how they interact with the new decks. Watch this space!

Edit: Some answers to some of this starting to emerge thanks to another Warhammer Community article!