Zondara’s Gravebreakers and the new Rivals Deck, Rimelocked Relics, are both up for preorder now. If you decide to preorder one (or both!) then why not use one of our Element Games links? Not only will this save you money Vs RRP, but also it’ll help us out!

The Deathgorge season of Warhammer Underworlds presses on, and in this review we’ll be unboxing and checking out the latest warband for the game, Zondara’s Gravebreakers who are, as you’d expect, an undead warband led by a cursed Vampire and a Necromancer. We’ll also be checking out the latest Rivals Deck, Rimelocked Relics, which can be used by any Warhammer Underworlds warband.

A massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us both products to unbox and review!

Before we go into the review you can check out the unboxing of both in the video below.

Zondara’s Gravebreakers

We are going to start off with the new warband. We’ve had a few undead warbands now, but this one is a little different. It focuses on two major characters, and three supporting zombies. You can check out their cards below:

As with all Warhammer Underworlds minis, these are all push-fit models and come on a bone coloured pair of sprues. They were all straight forward to assemble, and are fantastic looking models, in particular Zondara and Ferlain.

Instead of having one Inspire mechanic, theirs a split between the models. Should Ferlain gain two upgrades then Zondara Inspires. Should Zondara gain two upgrades, then Ferlain inspires. Simples.

The three zombies, Cracktomb, Toyle and Pikk each compliment each other, and also help to reveal upgrades for your characters. Each Inspire in the same manner, once a Raise token has been placed on them. Toyle and Cracktomb have a Reaction ability to summon one friendly minion which is out of action, so long as the leader (Zondara) is alive and kicking.

Toyle and Pikk also have the ability to Unearth upgrades to apply to your characters (helping you to Inspire Ferlain and Zondara).

The warband includes a Rival Deck specifically for Zondara’s Gravebreakers. On first impressions, the deck feels quite straight forward to use. Let’s break down the Objectives, Ploys and Upgrades.

Objectives

Some of the recent Rivals decks I’ve played with have, at least based on my Underworlds skill level, have a number of quite challenging objectives, which have slowed down my Glory Token generation.

Thankfully, these objectives read like they can be quite straightforward to achieve, and play completely to the strengths of the warband.

Fates Entwined, for example, scores you a point of Glory if in an end phase Zondara and Ferlain are within 2 hexes of each other OR if Zondara and Ferlain are both out of action. Dreamers’ Respite also plays on the relationship between Zondara and Ferlain, scoring you a point if both are alive in and end phase, or scoring you 2 Glory Points if played in the third end phase.

Soulbound Killers scores a Glory Point if Ferlain or Zondara takes a character out of action (and an additional Glory point if the other supports). Their are other objectives however, that do not focus on the two primary characters, such as Life and Death, which scores you two points if you have more surviving Inspired characters than your opponent and Wrest from the Realm which you can score when you use one of the Gravebreak reaction abilities in your enemies territory.

All and all, for me anyway, I’m really happy with how you score with the Gravebreakers!

Gambits

This deck has a nice selection of Ploys and Spells. Again, most seem to be geared towards the two primary characters. A number of them focus on giving you additional movement, or a little extra kick in combat, but then we have cards like Atavistic Creativity which plays to your Inspire mechanics for the two main characters. It allows you to equip an upgrade at no Glory cost, and works by placing a feature token and then successfully casting this spell.

What I’ve liked throughout the cards in this deck is how it plays off the love relationship between Zondara and Ferlain, for example Bond Unbroken, which allows you to re-roll a hit roll with Ferlain so long as Zondara is alive, and equally allows you to reroll a Defence dice on Zondara so long as Ferlain is alive.

Overall, their is nothing too complicated about any of these ploys, which may be a little boring for the more experienced Underworlds players, but for me who dips in and out, it feels like I could play a number of these cards even if I make some positional errors, or if I’m not playing with any particular plan.

Upgrades

With both Zondara and Ferlain looking to equip upgrades to inspire, it’s important to check out what upgrades are within the deck.

Again, theirs a good selection here. A couple help with movement, whilst most help with damage dealing. I wanted to pick out a couple of my favourites.

Broken Heart, yes its playing again on that relationship, is an upgrade you can only give to Ferlain or Zondara. When either of them is out of action the bearer of this card gets +1 Dice to the fighters Attack action and also Inspires the character. On top of this, as a Reaction, should Zondara or Ferlain be taken out of action, you can give this upgrade to a friendly fighter without any Glory cost.

Something I hadn’t seen yet (you can shout at me if other decks have had a similar card to this) is a card that adjusts your Wizard Level, but that is exactly what Cursed Power does. It grants +1 Wizard Level to Zondara, but comes with a curse…as the fighter will suffer a backlash should any ! appear in your casting roll.

Something else I don’t think we see much of is Healing. Undying Love is a card that can only be given to Ferlain and, at the start of each round, heals both himself and Zondara for one and you can also push both fighters up to 3 hexes towards each other.

Summary of the Gravebreakers

I’m not going to lie, this deck really seems to fit my play style and current experience level with Warhammer Underworlds.

Yes, it does weigh heavily on the two primary characters, Zondara and Ferlain, as a large percentage of the cards only affect them, so you’ll need to play carefully, choosing when to send both in carefully whilst your three zombies can push forward with a little more freedom thanks to the relatively straight forward mechanic to bring them back. This works well with the Objectives that require you to be pushing into enemy territory.

The models themselves are fantastic, and I can see a number of Warhammer Age of Sigmar players potentially using Zondara as a Necromancer in their games, as she is a fantasic example of one.

Those more experienced players may find these less challenging to play with, but personally I think it’s a great allrounder deck that will be a lot of fun to play with.

Rimelocked Relics | Rivals Deck

With the Gravebreakers out of the way let us turn our attention to another Underworlds product that is up for preorder today.

Rimelocked Relics is a Rivals deck that is usable by any warband (so you could use it with the Gravebreakers, should you wish). You can use the individual cards and make your own deck, or take the whole deck, it is up to you.

The mechanic behind the Rimelocked Relics is that you need to Thaw out your upgrades. When you play one you place it down upside down, so your opponent cannot see it. During the course of the activations the card will Thaw out and allow you to equip as normal. I personally really like this mechanic, as it will keep your opponent guessing what you have. It’s almost a mini game within a game.

With that, let us check out the Upgrades.

Upgrades

As you may imagine, being a Relic focused deck, theirs a few good choices to be had in here. What’s more, the more I look at these cards, the more I like them and the more I appreciate how well this deck could work with a number of warbands.

Now their is nothing ‘killer’, at least not in my opinion, and a few don’t feel like they are THAT worth waiting to Thaw out, but I have picked out a couple to give a mention.

Rimewyrm Skin Boots is a simple, yet very effective upgrade. It prevents the equipped character from being pushed back, which is awesome for someone like me who constantly forgets that being pushed back is a thing, normally whilst stood in front of a dangerous hex. One note, cannot be given to a Large character.

Polar Connection is a great card for casters. It grants them +1 Dice and Innate support for Range 1-2 Attack actions whilst the fighter is holding an objective. Instantly think this would be good on combat casters, such as the Stormcast Coven.

Teleporting is cool right? Gelid Cyclone does just that. When it thaws you can remove the character this is equipped too and then place that same fighter back on the board in an empty hex that contains an objective token. Neat! It continues to have a use thereafter, by allowing you to push your character one hex as a reaction following that fighters activation.

Gambits

It’s not all about cool new toys, as theirs a series of cool ploys to play with too.

A number of them play on the Rimelocked keyword, and help you to Thaw out some of your upgrades quicker which is cool. One of your enemy fighters has a cool upgrade? Why not play Frozen Solid, a ploy that can potentially turn one of your opponents none Rimelocked upgrade into one and force them to have to follow the Rimelocked mechanics.

Remember when I said forgetting about being pushed back? Well, their is a ploy here that can also help me, entitled Cool Heads. It makes friendly fighters holding objectives unable to be pushed, and persists until the end of the next power step.

Objectives

And then we come to the Objectives, and if I’m being honest, what I feel to be the weak link in this deck.

All bar one Objective card have two objectives on them (Dual). This makes scoring them a little tricker as you are looking to position your fighters carefully in order to score both at the same time. A number are worth more than one Glory to make up for this, but for me it makes this deck a little too complicated for my experience.

On the flip side to that though, I can see this being a really fun set of objectives for the more experienced player and the higher payout of Glory will help with the overall score and of course gaining those relics.

Summary of Rimelocked Relics

When I first opened this deck during the unboxing video, I immediately looked at how the Objective cards worked and thought “wow, these will be quite challenging to complete” which gave me a bad first impression and I almost dismissed this deck completely.

However, it is always important to look at every card and to look at the deck as a whole. My opinion has now changed, and I can certainly see that, in the right hands, this could be a very fun and rewarding deck. With the amount of Glory on offer you could outscore your opponent with the right positioning and play.

This is not a deck for newcomers, or for those who are still really learning how to play competitively. I won’t be using this deck just yet, but I do want to play more Warhammer Underworlds and 100% when I feel like I’m ready to take this deck out for a spin I will give it a go.

For now I’m really keen to try out the Gravebreakers and who knows, maybe I’ll end up at Warhammer World one day with the Rimelocked Rivals deck taking on a tournament!

Don’t forget to check out our unboxing of yet another Warhammer Underworlds product which is up for preorder today, the Rivals of the Mirrored City!

Our thanks again to Games Workshop for sending us both products to review.