We’ve been spoilt for Underworld’s content recently with multiple new Warbands and the multiplayer Arena Mortis expansion. Warhammer Underworlds Harrowdeep is the new core box for this latest season of the game available for pre-order as of today and you can check out our video review and unboxing below or read on for the full review below.

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Thank you to Games Workshop for sending Sprues and Brews a copy of the new Warhammer Underworlds Harrowdeep for us to review.

We have a video going up this weekend, unboxing the lovely contents! We’ll put a link to it here once it’s on our YouTube channel.

Harrowdeep

Harrowdeep is the fifth and latest season of the Warhammer Underworlds board game and, like those seasons that came before, this new core box contains a whole heap of rules, cards, dice, models, tokens and more. If you’e a fan of the Underworlds game you’ll know exactly what to expect in terms of component quality.

Inside you’ll find a nicely illustrated 52 page rulebook which, in addition to the full rules, contains some amazing new artwork and lore for this latest setting, Harrowdeep which resides in the realm of Ulgu. The majority of the rulebook is given over to the rules themselves and is well laid out, making the rules quite easy to read and understand. There are lots of hand reference tables or flow charts included throughout the book (and on the back cover) to act has a handy reference during games too which is nice.

There are also a whole heap of tokens (including the new Gloom Hex Tokens) and dice inside as well as two game boards meaning players have everything they need in this box to start playing their games. Which brings me on to the new Warbands included in this new core box – Xandire’s Truthseekers and Da Kunnin’ Krew. The models themselves are very detailed ‘push fit’ kits on a blue and green sprue respectively, the Kruleboyz in particular featuring lots of variety and detail.

Both Warbands get a preconstructed deck of 32 cards containing a number of Gambit, Upgrade and Objective cards which I think is a great way for new players to pick up and learn the game, allowing them to pick up a Warband and start using it straight out of the box without having to create a deck first. With a few games under their belt players can then crack open the set of 48 Universal cards and the new 36 Grand Alliance cards also included in the box and start tweaking their deck.

On the subject of Grand Alliance cards now is probably a good time to take a closer look. These are a new feature that has been added to the game and essentially provide a number of new Gambits, Upgrades and Objective cards that are locked to a specific Grand Alliance, that is they can only be used in a Warband’s deck of the same Grand Alliance. It’s an interesting additon and potentially opens up additional deck building strategies for the different Warbands going forward.

There a couple of new keywords to be found on some of the cards too. Vulnerable is a new state that Fighters may find themsleves in and interacts with some cards whereas the Grievous keyword means that an attack will inflict some extra damage on a critical are just some examples. As well as new Keywords there are also a handful of new mechanics such as Stagger, which allows a Fighter to re-roll an attack dice when targetting a model with one or more Stagger tokens.

The Gloom hex tokens themselves also add a new twist to your games of Warhammer Underworlds. There are nine Gloom hex tokens included in the box which have one face showing a numbered objective and the other representing the ‘Gloom’. The remaining two Gloom hex tokens show ‘Gloom’ on both sides. When setting up the battlefield you shuffle and deal a number of ‘objective’ Gloom hex tokens to each player who then take turns to place them on the battlefield with the ‘Gloom’ side face up and being careful not to reveal the reverse facing to their opponent. The remaining ‘Gloom-only’ hex tokens are then placed by both players. A ‘Gloom’ hex token acts as a cover hex, granting a defence bonus to any Fighter model who occupies that hex meaning even the weakest of Warbands will see their survivability increased this season due to the amount of cover hexes present on the board. In addition, those Warbands who focus on seeking out and claiming particular Objective hexes may need to adjust their strategy somewhat as it becomes much more difficult to locate a particular objective in the murky depths of Harrowdeep!

Warhammer Underworlds Harrowdeep is the most expensive Underworlds core set yet with a price tag of £65 but for that you do get everything two players need to start playing a game , with some additional cards to further expand their decks with in future. A good box, despite the cost, for new players certainly and with enough extras that owners of existing Warbands will find it useful too. Games Workshop have recently revealed their roadmap for season five via Warhammer Community which shows what’s in store for this season into Q2 2022. It looks like we’ll soon be able to try the new Rivals format but what’s really interesting is the addition of four new Warbands, two of which will be available in a new core set. We’re not sure whether these new Warbands will be availabled to purchase outside of the core set at some point in the future, or whether the new core set will be priced similarly to this one.

Warhammer Underworlds Harrowdeep is available to order today and will be released on the 23rd of October.

Published by captberk

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