Doesn’t feel like that long ago that I was reviewing the Wintermaw boxset, but this time, not only do we have a new box, but a whole new edition of Warhammer Underworlds! This is one of a few posts – a review of the box contents. In the future I will share some posts around actually playing Underworlds and looking at some specific warbands – namely The Thricefold Discord and The Dread Pageant as they’re the ones I plan on playing most!

Just for full clarity, I pre-ordered and purchased this boxset myself and it isn’t a review copy or anything like that.

When you open the box, similar to Wintermaw, there’s a lovely card box/file featuring some artwork of Ardorn Flamerunner and the Emberwatch (fighting the Skaven of course but the Stormcast are the main focal point here!):

This contains all the paper and card stock for the game – rulebook, quick start guide, assembly instructions, boards, cards and tokens. I like this approach, a gripe I’ve had with earlier boxes is that there being nothing between the fragile cards and the sharp or sticky out bits of mini sprues other than a thin layer of cellophane often meant some cards were dog-eared or damaged before you’d even gotten into the box – this approach seems to keep them much safer. It’s also much more environmentally friendly which is a massive plus too!

The new rulebook has a cool Skaven head/skull sigil on the cover:

I’ll talk more about the rules in a future post but the rulebook itself is well laid out and the core rules have been noticeably streamlined. After the Core Rules, there are some Expanded Rules, Rules Clarifications, and then some primers on building decks for the Nemesis format as well as positioning at a high level what each of the Rivals Decks included in the box are about and the two warbands too. Finally, the background section tells the story of the mines and tunnels of Embergard and the warbands fighting over them. There’s also the standard section on building and painting Citadel miniatures and a ‘Eavy Metal showcase of The Emberwatch and Zikkit’s Tunnelpack.

One thing that is missing are any rules for 3 or 4 player games, these have been included in previous rulebooks wso it’s a shame not to see them here – hopefully we’ll see something soon as it’s been a favourite way of playing in our house as per a previous post on 3 & 4 Player Games

Next up, the tokens, which have also been streamlined somewhat:

The Damage tokens are double-sided with 1 damage on one side and 2 damage on the other. The ‘Generic’ gemstone tokens are now on the other side of the Raise tokens. Finally, with the changes to how Glory is used for upgrades, there’s no longer the need for the Spent side of these tokens so they now represent 1 and 5 tokens. This means you need a lot less tokens overall than previously for a regular game and the Generic tokens not being on the other side of the Damage tokens feels like a massive improvement to me as I think Raise tokens are generally used a lot less overall so feels less like you’ll be running out of those when you end up with more to keep track of (although now these are mostly to be used to track the once-per-game abilities on the warband warscroll cards). You also have your Feature Tokens which are double-sided, with Treasure (objective) tokens on one side and Cover tokens on the other.

One of the much discussed changes for 2nd Edition is the change to the board. This is still double-sided but now there’s one large board rather than the two smaller ones to be put together.

The boards are really high quality as they always are with Warhammer Underworlds and the artwork remains top-notch. I would say, to me, the tunnels of Embergard, visually, are less interesting than the lovely icy boards we had in Deathgorge and Wintermaw. Appreciate that’s as much personal taste as anything else though!

One of the other changes with 2nd Edition is the loss of Magic Dice. We do have some lovely Attack Dice in the new set though in a translucent orange:

The Save (defence) Dice are somewhat more generic in a plain black. I think it’s a shame the Magic Dice are gone, not from a gameplay perspective, I think removing them is a good way of streamlining things as having an ever so slightly different set of Attack Dice that didn’t follow the same rules as others was probably an unnecessary complication, however, they’ve tended to be in the nicest colours amongst all of the dice in previous boxsets. I’ll miss the pretty dice but hopefully we get some different attack dice as nice as these in future sets (and some more interesting Save Dice too, please Games Workshop!)

Finally, we have the miniatures in the set. First up we have the Stormcast Eternals of the Emberwatch:

I’m not a massive Stormcast fan, but there are some lovely sculpts here. I particularly like Yurik Velzaine:

I can’t pretend to be much keener on Skaven myself, however, my daughter has tended to favour Skittershank’s Clawpack when we play and the appeal of what she has decided to call “The Science Rats” to me is in how much she will enjoy using these (hopefully):

There are lots of fun details in all of these and obviously Rittak Verm in his mini-doomwheel is a particularly impressive sculpt in a game full of phenomenal miniatures… Seriously, Underworlds has to be one of the prettiest games with how good all of the minis are!

So that’s the contents of the box. As far as starter sets go this feels pretty strong. Two warbands and four different decks gives you plenty to get started with. That you can play some games of Rivals pretty much straight out of the box (once the minis are built) is a definite positive and then once you want to have a play with some deck-building there’s enough cards here to make a Nemesis deck for each warband, assuming there’s no competition for any of the individual decks e.g. one going Blazing Assault and Pillage and Plunder and the other going Countdown to Cataclysm and Emberstone Sentinels.

I’m going to do a detailed breakdown of a game of Underworlds next week and then I’ll also be posting about some ideas for how to play The Thricefold Discord, seeing as we now have their rules they’ll be getting some time on the board before I go back to The Dread Pageant – so stay tuned for plenty more on Warhammer Underworlds!