I continue to enjoy the new edition of Warhammer Underworlds. There’s something about this game that energizes me and draws me in. It is one of the few games where I can go an entire day of playing in an event and come out at the end just wanting to play more (after a suitable bit of brain cooldown has occurred). If I spend a full day playing most other games I will usually walk away going, “That was great. Now let’s not even think about it for a few days,” but that’s just not the case for Underworlds. I guess this game just tickles my brain in the right way.
I did go through a bit of a dry spell earlier in the year for a variety of reasons, but my enjoyment of the game and the friends I’ve made through it are enough that I am still seeking out events even if they require travel to get to. Not all of us are lucky enough to live next to Warhammer World with its 80+ player events on a monthly basis, so in my case that meant making the trek from Maryland to Wisconsin to participate in the Madtown Throwdown Q2 event. The downside is that it is pretty damn far away, but the upside is getting to hang out with friends I have made through this hobby.
The luxury of being able to take time off from work isn’t something everyone has, and I acknowledge my fortune in being able to do just that. I am also, far more importantly, supported by my phenomenally amazing wife so I could go play plastic orcs with some friends six states away. I love you, babe.
I made the bold decision to drive to this event instead of fly. I flew last year, but between the cost of a flight, the general misery of crowded airports, and uncomfortable plane rides, I elected not to take the aerial route. A train ride would have been a neat option to have, but because this country has an allergy to passenger rail that isn’t an option for this journey. All told, the drive wound up being about 14 hours each way, but I went into it without too much trepidation. I had knocked out a similar drive last October at the tail end of a family vacation and was in awe of how much easier a marathon drive like that is in a comfortable modern minivan as opposed to my old neon orange Prius C. The gas mileage isn’t as impressive but the comfort level is beyond compare.
Thursday
And so, on Thursday morning, I loaded up in the van and took off. The passenger seat held a cooler with drinks (orange juice, Coke Zero, and my water bottle) as well as road food (sandwiches, pistachios, and granola bars). My phone was loaded up with podcasts and audio books. On the whole it was an incredibly uneventful and easy drive for the first 9 or so hours. Then I hit Chicago and holy hell, that was unpleasant. I’ve driven in Atlanta, Baltimore, Philly, and a variety of other cities but nothing compares to the 2 hours I spent going a mile and a half in Chicago. This little stretch of road probably took 85% of my energy. I powered through and survived, arriving in the late afternoon to my hotel. I grabbed a place close to the venue, but in hindsight I should have checked with my friends to book one closer to their houses since that’s where I spent most of the weekend. Plus, this particular hotel was weirdly humid in the room despite me running the AC like I wasn’t paying the power bill.
After unpacking, I popped across the street to get a few groceries from what I thought was a local grocery store chain. It turns out Menards is not, in fact, a regional grocery store. It’s more akin to Home Depot or Lowes, but I did pick up a tape measure because I figured it’d be nice to have one for the van. When I told my wife this, she said it was one of the most “dad-brained” things I’ve said. With the fruitful tape measure purchasing trip completed, I made it back to my room and passed out for an indeterminate amount of time.
As I have mentioned, this wasn’t my first trip to Madison to play Underworlds. I went to the last World Championship of Warhammer qualifier event in 2024. That event, like this one, was hosted by the members of the What the Hex?! podcast and blog. I’ve raved about these guys before, but buckle in because I’m doing it again. I feel like they are the pinnacle of what it means to be community leaders. They’ve fostered a thriving and inclusive community for what is a fairly niche game not only locally, but globally. Many of them were at the previous Worlds event in a variety of capacities – competing, judging, and commentating – and they do it with such a positive approach that energizes and inspires me. I feel lucky to call them friends. Skyler and Brian in particular, thanks for being stellar hosts and inviting me to your homes to hang out before and after the tournament. If Underworlds were to vanish tomorrow, I’d still want to make a yearly (or more frequent) pilgrimage to Wisconsin just to hang out, play board games, and eat cheese curds.
Friday
My initial plan for Friday was to spend it refamiliarizing myself with my deck, maybe do some mock deployments and some solo practice. I had baked in a down day in the trip to recover from the drive before the big event, but it turns out through the power of Minivan Magic/staying properly hydrated/not eating fast food, I was feeling pretty well rested anyway. This meant I got to meet up with Madison local and WTH?! co-host Brian early in the afternoon. We caught up and he showed me his rad work-in-progress 40k Warlord Titan (fully magnetized and sporting an assortment of kit-bashed Imperial Weirdos to hang out on the balconies) before we transitioned over to playing a couple of games of Underworlds. Brian was the TO for the event, so he wouldn’t be playing the next day and I definitely needed to knock some rust off, so these two games were quite helpful.
I guess I should have mentioned what I brought as my warband and deck pairing by now, huh?
In an effort to further counteract my anticipated brain fog from a long drive and playing in an all day event, I wanted to pick something that wouldn’t be too taxing to play. After going back and forth and getting feedback from players much better than myself, I settled on an elite aggro plan with Morgok’s Krushas and the Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury deck combination. No ground breaking tech here – it’s a pretty tried-and-true pairing with a bludgeon of a warband. Most of my deck’s scoring revolved around making attacks and charges, which is what I wanted to do anyway. The tools provided in the power deck boost accuracy and damage, plus assist with positioning with a handful of pushes and movement speed boosts. The fact that I had a 20 card power deck but really only had maybe 14 unique effects in it really helped smooth out some randomness and leverage some extra reliability throughout the event. Even 2 of the 3 abilities on Morgok’s warscroll were basically duplicates of effects in the deck between a very strong push in Get a Move on Ya Gits and the flexible accuracy boost and/or anti-drive back tool of Dead ‘Ard. A straightforward scoring avenue, redundancy, and trusting in the luck of the dice was my plan.
Brian whipped out the latest warband, Knives of the Crone, and we played two quick practice games. His Knives managed to be peak examples of how that warband works. Hot dice in one game had everyone inspired and handing out prophecies left and right, while the other game had a much slower start on his side so my orcs were able to take advantage of the low defensive profiles of the uninspired elves. We each won a single game there. At one point when picking the board layout, I mentioned that despite this edition of the game being around a year old, I still don’t have a firm grasp on how to best take advantage of board setup. They are different, sure, but it feels pretty samey when I’m choosing a side and an orientation most of the time. Around this time, another of the WTH?! co-hosts, Skyler, got off work and showed up. We all got to chatting and chatting and chatting. There was a break in the chatting when we made the trip to a local BBQ place where I picked up a trio of sliders that were quite good as well as a pretzel that wound up being, no exaggeration, the size of a car tire. Time really flew by and before I realized it, it was time for me to head back and get a night’s sleep in the humidifier that I was calling my hotel room.
Saturday
The day of the event was here. I, and many others, turned up a little early to help with set-up. There turned out to be a bit of a miscommunication on the part of the FLGS venue and various workers, so it was a bit crowded with multiple events going on throughout the day. Not only was the world qualifier event being held, it was Free RPG Day and a local vendor market as well. There’s a separate smaller room which I think usually gets reserved for D&D groups, but in this case it was planned to be where the stream table and commentator (Skyler!) would be set up. Unfortunately, the venue miscommunication applied here as well, because a D&D group had booked it, so the table got set up out in the open with all the players. It was set far enough back and (fortunately?) there was enough other stuff going on in the room that it was next to impossible for players to hear anything Skyler was saying unless he were to shout.
This felt like an honest mistake. I’m not going into details because it is all stuff I just heard 2nd or 3rd hand but the venue itself, the employees there, and the folks running the various events were all very amiable and accommodating.
It’s also worth noting that this event was trying out the best-of-2 format compared to the more common best-of-3 or best-of-1. Yes, at first blush that feels really weird but the rationale is that games are ever so slightly longer in this edition so instead of trying to rush through 2-3 games in 2 hours, players get to have a comfortable 2 games in 2 hours without worrying that they’re burning up time for an ephemeral third game. Since at the time there was no best-of-2 scorecard in BCP, this required some extra work from the TO but I feel like it worked out quite well in the end. I never felt pressed for time while playing my games – even though I was playing something close to “unga bunga aggro” I did go deep in the tank a few times and so did my opponents. At the same time, none of my rounds wrapped up and left me wandering around for more than just a few minutes. It’s a very Goldilocks zone in my opinion, and I am hopeful more events take on this format. I know it’s currently what will be used at NOVA for day 1, for instance.
Enough pre-amble. Let’s get to the games.
Game 1 vs Bobby playing Thricefold Discord with Blazing Assault + Countdown to Cataclysm
I was quite happy to see I’d get to play with Bobby to start the day. We’ve been to a few of the same events and I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with him a bit previously, but we’ve never had a chance to play. He brought Thricefold with the BA+CtC pairing which I thankfully have a fair bit of experience thanks to that combination being a favorite of one of the “locals” in my area, Jesse. I’ve been smacked around enough in previous games that I had at least a rough idea of what the Slaaneshi daemons were capable of, and I already know Bobby is a force to be reckoned with (he just came back from a raiding party that went to Canada to beat them up and win their qualifier tickets) so I was cautious but optimistic.
I’m sadly pretty rubbish at remembering details of games, but the end result were some very positive vibes and a great time where we both won one game – 19-10 and 12-14 were my results of each game. I definitely made some positioning mistakes and got whacked by an Indolent empowered Vexmor which made me feel silly. Maybe one day I’ll learn not to stand next to that guy. On the plus side, I also rolled more crits in one of these games than I did the entire rest of the day. Seriously, my dice were completely unfair to the point that I was scoring Perfect Strike (score after an attack if all the rolls were a success) with a four dice attack rolling nothing but crits.
Result: 1 win, 1 loss
Game 2 vs Alexx playing Blackpowder’s Buccaneers with Pillage & Plunder + Edge of the Knife
Alexx is another great guy who is local to the Madison area and was also the one who crafted the trophy for this event – a massive metal Underworlds attack dice with a removable display stand. This thing was freaking awesome. He also brought the newly buffed Blackpowder to this event paired with Edge and (the thematically appropriate) Pillage decks. His models were also a fun conversion inspired by Disney’s Aladdin – complete with Kagey the genie and Mange the monkey riding a flying carpet.
Continuing the trend from my first game, I happened to have played against a Blackpowder player at my local store a few times (hi, RJ!) and have come to learn to respect that giant sack of health. The week prior to this event, I took Morgok’s Krushas for a spin against Blackpowder and realized the hard way that trying to blitz down the ogre is just not a feasible plan. Taking that hard earned lesson into account, I made taking out the squishy minions in the warband my top priority. Blackpowder has some solid ranged options, but the Krushas have enough health to weather the blunderbuss shots.
That’s exactly what happened, too. Krushas crushed the little guys which severely hampered their scoring abilities and either avoided or traded hits with Blackpowder himself without any substantial effects. Wound up taking both of these games 23-14 and 21-6.
Game 3 vs Davy playing Dread Pageant with Wrack & Ruin + Pillage & Plunder
Just prior to going into round 3, I was informed that a few folks tuning into the stream had requested to get me on camera. Presumably so there could be an eternal record on the internet of me getting crushed. The joke was on those people – there’s already a video of me losing a game of Underworlds online.
I knew the stream plan going into the event was to showcase a variety of games throughout the day and then stream the top table in the last round. That way there would be the most variety of warbands and players showcased. That’s one reason why when I was told I was at the top table for this round, I thought it was a joke. Turns out it wasn’t. Neat!
Davy is another of the co-hosts for WTH?! and at this point was someone I haven’t had the pleasure of playing Underworlds with yet. There have been a few shared games of Blood on the Clocktower, including one where we were both on the evil team and wound up killing off my wife to win the game (for which she’s yet to forgive him – her rationale was she expected it from me, but not someone as nice as Davy), but this will be the first time we’ve played against each other in the ULTIMATE COMPETITIVE MINIATURES GAME. I’d also like to point out Davy was coming off of a 48 hour shift just hours before this event started. Surely, that means I have an edge here, right…?
Unlike the other games so far today, I haven’t played against Dread Pageant in this edition yet. I knew they had a lot of flexible tricks and that Vasillac becomes a terrifying monster when inspired. Coming off of some Blackpowder games, I initially planned to just avoid Vasillac and focus on the remainder of the warband. That turned out to be a horrible plan because once the inspire came around, my orcs were dropping like flies. Davy also showcased an expert grasp on what my own objectives were likely to be and managed to play around them in a way that almost felt trivially easy. There were a few moments where he’d start an action, then say something like, “If I do this, that would let you score X and Y so instead I’ll do this,” which left me staring at the sadly unscorable X and Y cards in my hand and trying to hide the pain in my eyes as I smiled and nodded.
The second game wound up having my favorite moment of gameplay of the day, and is likely one of the most memorable gameplay sequences I’ve had in Underworlds so far. After the brutal first game, I realized I had to take out Davy’s leader ASAP. I used my mulligan aggressively to get some extra movement tools and decided to dive deep. Across both of our first two turns of the game, we collectively used six power cards and five warscroll abilities just jockeying for position.
I threw Headlong Charge down on Thugg to get him in kill shot range of Vasillac, so Davy used the Dread Pageant warscroll to push Vasillac away. I countered with my own warscroll ability to push my orcs back into range. Davy used Violent Blast to get even further away, so I countered by teleporting Thugg closer with Illusory Fighter. I got the charge off and missed… but used Push Through to get another activation out of my otherwise charged out Thugg. Vasillac went on guard through the Dread Pageant’s warscroll to try and be a little harder to hit, so I used Diving In to push Morgok up to provide supports. That was enough for Thugg to swing for the kill.
Davy pulled through remarkably well for such a rough start and the second game was a lot closer – in the end, I was denied my big scoring final objective by clever placement on Davy’s part, and he also forced me into a position where I couldn’t prevent him from scoring both Stay Close and Alone in the Dark, so I had to just pick one. Initially, I believe we had it as a 14-14 glory count that he won on tiebreakers, but after recounting our glory it was revealed that the tiebreakers weren’t even needed. I went 15-16 here and 11-18 in the previous game, giving the match solidly to Davy.
Game 4 vs Ben playing Ironsoul’s Condemnors with Blazing Assault + Reckless Fury
The final round of this event was utilizing best-of-3 to ensure the finalists had the least dependence on tie breakers and the results were more weighted toward the game outcomes. This also meant everyone else was playing Bo3 for the final round. I have to say, after going through a day of relatively comfortable Bo2 time frames, getting tossed back into Bo3 when my brain was already fried wasn’t the most welcome transition.
Oh well, at least it’s a BARF on BARF mirror. How much thinking would that require? Turns out a lot more than I expected. There’s a lot going on when both players’ gameplans are basically identical and their warbands have a lot of overlap. I obviously want to get charge tokens out to help my scoring… but then I’m just helping Ben score, as well.
Speaking of Ben, he’s yet another local to the Madison area and was yet another very pleasant person to play against. Who knew that driving out to an event with a healthy amount of friendly players would result in me playing a bunch of said friendly players? I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed every single game at this event or the one I went to last year, as well as every pick-up game I’ve played with these people.
Going into this round, I was definitely feeling some brain fatigue. I didn’t have much of a plan going into game 1, and wound up just throwing my models into the middle where we had a pretty bloody melee. Ben wound up taking this one and I knew if I wanted to do better, I needed to change things up.
Both of our warbands had similar split of fighters – we had two that inspired to a more defensive 2 shields profile along with one fighter that both hit harder and had some extra range on their melee profile. Most fighters were dishing out 2 damage aside from our bruisers, which inspired up to 3. I decided this hard hitter was going to be the key fighter (Brodus for Ben, ‘Ardskull for me) for both of us in the next game(s) because they had the potential to set up taking out our 5 health fighters in only two hits instead of three. So plan A is kill Brodus and protect ‘Ardskull.
I also decided to heavily favor deploying on one side of the board instead of evenly spreading out. My first fighter would go centrally, then I’d skew toward wherever Brodus was. I wanted to be able to get a one/two punch of two back to back attacks into Brodus to take him out as well as potentially strand one of the Stormcast on the wrong side of the battlefield to negate one action’s worth of attacks. Honestly, I can’t recall if this worked out. I have vague recollection of one of Ben’s fighters being forced to burn activations on moving instead of charging, but I didn’t take any notes and I’m kind of dumb so I might have dreamed that.
I do know I was able to beat up Brodus and get a little lucky on dice rolls, so the final two games went in my favor. Final scores for this round were 17-20, 13-12, and 16-10.
Placing and awards
As I mentioned, there was some hand-jamming of the scores due to BCP not supporting this format quite yet. If you check the event placings, you’ll see me sitting pretty in 3rd place – however, the reality is that I was closer to 5th or so. I did manage to get Best Destruction and won some rad custom activation tokens! This is the best placing I’ve had at an event this size and it feels pretty reassuring to know that I am, in fact, improving at this game. My spreadsheet tracking my games played is showing me at a 55% win rate which is at least a positive record, and pretty satisfying considering close to a third of those games are against people who have either gone to or are going to the world championship. All in all, I am happy with my performance and looking forward to the next event.
Afterward the awards and tear down, a huge portion of us went to get dinner at a local brewpub. Due to the overwhelmingly powerful aura of the minivan, I was able to haul some of my fellow gamers and travelers there. The company was great, the cheese curds were delicious, the karaoke was entertaining (the slow ballad cover of Hey Ya was unexpected), the temperature was uncomfortably warm, and our server ran the checks wrong at the end so there was a long and sweaty wait before we could leave. At this point I was pretty tired because I am old, but the real reason for this trip was coming up.
A few folks split off after dinner, but most wound up back at Skyler’s place to play Blood on the Clocktower. If you’re not familiar, it’s a social deduction game in the style of Werewolf or Mafia. One player is the evil imp who is killing townsfolk. There are a few people on the imp’s team based on how many people are playing, and the rest are on the “good team” trying to identify the imp. Everyone has a role that has different perks; you either know some guaranteed information, have some kind of ability to use during the game, or have a metaphorical wrench to throw out when people are trying to piece the puzzle together. It’s the kind of game that is incredibly fun with a lively group of people and I thoroughly look forward to playing with these friends. It was an hour or two full of accusations, murder, lies, and deceitful bargaining that ultimately lead to the team of evil winning
Sadly, it eventually came to an end. I wound up back in my hotel and passed the hell out.
Sunday
The event is over, so now it’s time to pack up and head home.
WRONG!
It’s time to go play board games. I again met up with Skyler, Brian, and Alexx and we jammed many more games, including one of my favorites: Bargain Quest!
I’ve owned my copy of Bargain Quest since the second printing years ago but only pulled it out to play a few times. It’s just one of those curses of having board games but not a regular gaming group. I’m glad I brought it to Wisconsin because it was a blast to play. The premise is that there’s a bog standard fantasy town that’s under siege by monsters. Adventurers show up and are preparing to go out and fight those monsters. Nothing atypical yet, but the fun part is that you’re not playing as the adventurers – you’re the merchants in the town. The goal is to sell equipment to the heroes so they’re able to fight the horrible creatures threatening your safety profits and, in the process, make money. Ideally you’d sell them the best gear, make the most profit, and get rewarded for them surviving the fight. Since it’s a card drafting game that’s not always possible, so there’s some push/pull on whether you want to fleece them for everything they own and send them to die or equip them as best you can but not make quite as much money. It’s incredibly fun and easy to learn, plus the art style is adorable.
I definitely stayed way too late playing the last round before making it back to the sauna hotel to sleep.
Monday
I wasn’t going to risk getting stuck in Chicago rush hour, so I left at 3:30 in the morning and hated myself for a few hours. I got through Chicago relatively painlessly and the remainder of the trip was silky smooth. I queued up a bunch of SAGA podcasts to listen to on the way back because the Goonhammer historicals team has poisoned my brain and made it home with plenty of time to read to my kid and tuck her in at bedtime.
If you’ve been reading Goonhammer or any other gaming blog for any amount of time, you’re probably familiar with event write ups like this. They usually have some comment in them about how the game is fun, but the real reason to go to events and conventions is for the community. It sounds cheesy as hell but it’s absolutely true. If you have never attended a Grand Clash (or any other type of organized Underworlds event), I strongly encourage you to give it a shot. You can even check out a great write-up on what to expect at your first grand clash over at Spent Glory to get more reasons to try these events out!
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