Games Workshop has announced that they will release a new Warhammer Underworlds Starter Set designed to introduce new players to their “ultimate competitive board game.” The two-player starter set will go on preorder soon and will feature two of the most iconic warbands from the first season of the game, released in 2017, the skeletal Sepulchral Guard and the armor-clad Farstrider’s Fighters.
The goal of this two-player starter set is to introduce new players to many new mechanics and improvements made to the Warhammer Underworlds including the latest ones that are introduced with Wyrdhollow. With the set Games Workshop will include a 52-page rulebook and a booklet that new players are going to find particularly helpful.
The booklet runs players through a typical game of Warhammer Underworlds and explains step-by-step how the game is played. It also covers how Ploy, Upgrade, and Objective cards work and how players accumulate Glory Points over three rounds of the game. These instructions also accommodate testing the game solo, so you can see how the game works and how various in-game factors influence the outcome of your moves and dice rolls.
The game also includes all the necessary tokens, dice, cards, miniatures, and boards from the city of Shadespire where players battled in the first season of this competitive deck-building board game.
The starter set is also an opportunity for those who missed out in 2017 to add two original bands with quite different playstyles to their collection.
The Stormcast Eternals warband consists of three elite warriors with a mix of ranged, and melee weapons, and Farstrider’s Star Falcon. While durable, each loss of these warriors reduces their effectiveness significantly.
By contrast, the Soulblight Gravelord warband consists of seven skeletons, none of which are especially durable. The fun gameplay twist comes from the leader, the Sepulchral Warden, who can bring back fallen comrades, command multiple warriors to make a move, and thus swarm the opponents or control the board.
Both warbands are updated to feature Rival decks and keep up with the current game meta. We at Boar Gamer are happy to see that these bands we loved to play before are getting a new lease on their fantasy (un)lives.