Skulking through the tunnels of Deathgorge, Daggok’s Stab-Lads come to Warhammer Underworlds, unfolding their cruel schemes in order to get the upper hand.

Up for pre order today are Daggok’s Stab-Lads, the latest warband for the Deathforge season of Warhammer Underworlds. In this post we’ll be checking out the warband, seeing what tricks and gimmicks they have and will talk about some of our favourite cards in the box!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free copy for review purposes. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

Also, make sure to check out our other post today with our full review of Kill Team Salvation!

So without further ado, lets head back into Deathgorge and check out Daggok’s Stab-Ladz

As with all recent Underworlds warbands, we get the miniatures across two frames in coloured plastic – these are push fit and so don’t actually require any glue. If you do decide to glue them together then I would recommend trimming the plastic pegs down a little, as the extra few mm of glue can actually cause some nasty gaps to appear. Personally, I never glue Underworlds figures unless they are particularly fiddly, and have never had any issues with them coming apart while gaming. I know some people are not keen on push fit models, but I love that you can get these to the table in no time at all. From a models point of view, I think this is one of the more boring warbands we have seen for Underworlds – While we see some new stuff such as the big warhorn and the spear and flail armed Kruelboyz (something I hope that we see in Age of Sigmar), there’s nothing too out there here, which is a shame as we’ve seen some very interesting and different warbands that push things a little further away from what we see in the main line games.

From a rules point of view, the primary mechanic of the Stab-Lads are Schemes. These are gambit cards that can be played face down onto the table during your power step, and from that point no longer count as being in your hand. Then, in your next turn all face down Schemes are flipped over revealing the ability that triggers from them.

So for example the card “Bust Their Ears” means that fighters supported by Hurrk count as being supported by an additional fighter.

This effect lasts until the “condition” listed on the card is met – so in the above example, the condition is “A friendly fighter makes an attack action supported by Hurrk”. So with Bust Their Ears, as soon as the effect triggers, the card’s condition is met and it is then placed under your plot card. However other cards have conditions you have a little more control over before they are removed. There’s also multiple cards that trigger or objectives that are scored based on the number of completed Schemes under your plot card.

This is a really fun mechanic as in most cases you have a little control before you remove the cards, and equally you can get a few set up ready to trigger in the following turn. What’s also great is that you can opt to return one that is persisting back to your hand, perhaps before you trigger the condition – this stops the condition from removing the card and leaves you open to play it again next turn, opening up an interesting resource mechanic with how you opt to spend the cards.

The warband itself is pretty hardy with 4 wounds on each fighter, and each fighters abilities and inspire conditions having quite a lot of synergy.

Daggok the leader’s inspire condition has him deal damage to a second fighter in a round, and his ability has him make a reactionary attack action next to any of your fighters after they have made a move action – and with range 2 you can potentially get a lot of attacks off with him doing this.

Hurrk Da Howla inspires when he supports a fighter that makes a successful attack, and his horn means that he supports friendly fighters within 2 hexes as long as he doesnt make a superaction – and again this can combo quite nicely with Daggok

Grakk Da Hook is able to push an enemy fighter 1 hex after his attack action (And with a range of 2 he can do this at distance too) and inspires as soon as he does this

And finally Jagz Da Bleeda inspires when he takes an enemy fighter with wound counters out of action. Boasting 3 dice and Grievous 1 on his attack, this guy is pretty well tooled for taking those fighters down.

Objectives

The Stab-Ladz get a decent mix of objective cards

Aspirin Killaboss just requires your leader to be alive and inspired, something that is pretty easy to score with his inspire condition

Da Plan Worked needs you to put two Schemes under your plot card in the same turn – because there’s no limit to the number of Schemes you can pop face down ready to trigger next turn this should be pretty easy to do. For those that are stacking Schemes, there’s also “Legendary Kunnin’” which scores you 2 glory if you have 3 or more under your plot card, and Finksteala Triumph which scores you 1 glory is you have 1 scheme under your plot card, and 3 if you have 4 or more. On a good turn with a lot of Schemes played you could potentially score 6 glory from 3 very similar cards

They do however have some trickier ones too such as having to wound or take out of action the entire enemy warband for 2 glory, or kill a number of fighters higher than the round number, while also ensuring that the number of yours taken out of action remains lower than the turn number.

Gambit Cards

In total 6 of the 10 gambit cards are Schemes, which really points to how the warband is intended to be played. We’ve looked at Bust Their Ears above, but here’s the other 5:

Gut Em makes all range 1 or 2 attacks get ! Grievous 1, with the condition being a range 1 or 2 attack takes someone out of action – so you can keep this in play by causing lots of pain but not quite killing people.

Outfink Em has you draw 2 power cards when you opponent plays a power card, which is pretty nice

Rush Em increases the move of all friendly fighters by 1, and condition is met when a fighter moves 5 hexes from where it started, or adjacent to the enemy

Skare Em allows you to push any pushed enemies an additional hex, but condition is pushed when an enemy is pushed two hexes, making this one resolve straight away

And finally Take Dat Head makes all attacks against a chosen target get +1 dice, with the condition of killing the target. Whats cool with this though is that you can always return any Schemes in play to your hand, so again you can use this to almost kill someone, then take it out of play and save it again for next turn

Upgrades

Like with other aspects of the warband, a lot of the upgrades revolve around Schemes – Deffproof gives a fighter +1 defense while a scheme is active, Finkin’ Muscles allows you to return Schemes in your discard pile back to your hand and Krule Braggart gives you glory for achieving a scheme (But then the upgrade breaks) – potentially allowing you to maximise glory in the turn you go big on schemes when you have multiple objectives revolving around them. We also get a nice weapon that gets more and more special rules depending on the number of schemes you have achieved, maxing out at 3 schemes giving your attacks Stagger, Cleave and Grievous 1

Summary

The Stab-Ladz are a fun warband to use with a unique Scheme mechanic that feels satisfying when you pull them off, my only complaint is the relatively vanilla looking minatures, I feel Warhammer Underworlds is at its best when it looks at the more wacky fringe areas of the known races and gives us something a little different! Orruk fans will love them though, and we do get a couple of sculpts with load outs not current in Age of Sigmar that are a fun hint to what we may get in the future

Warhammer Underworlds Daggok’s Stab-Ladz are up for pre order today and are released on the 13th of January 2024

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.