Another preorder day has come for Warhammer Underworlds. There’s a bevy of releases available to preorder today and Goonhammer is going to cover all of them. In this article, we’re going to look at the two Rivals decks that are included within the Spitewood box – Hunting Grounds and Deadly Synergy. I’d like to extend thanks to Games Workshop for providing these materials early for Goonhammer to review.
You can find all our content for this big preorder day below:
- Spitewood & Grand Alliance Box Overview
- Spitewood Unboxing
- Decks of Spitewood: Hunting Grounds and Deadly Synergy
- Warbands of Spitewood: Kurnoth’s Heralds and The Blood of the Bull
- Chaos Warbands: Reavers of Ruin
- Death Warbands: Morbid Minions
- Destruction Warbands: Gitz and Goliaths
- Order Warbands: Seekers in Shadow
Hunting Grounds
First up is Hunting Grounds, the Strike deck included in this box. This is the fourth Strike deck in Embergard so far, which is by far the most represented deck type if you don’t count Mastery (which I maintain isn’t really an archetype and is instead just a label for “decks doing weird things”). Warbands who want to make attacks are spoiled for choices now.
The early teasers for this deck claimed it was for warbands who want to stay in their own territory and that you could manipulate the positions of your warband while waiting on the enemy to come to you. If this is the case, it would be a pretty radical departure from all the existing decks which strongly encourage invading the enemy’s side of the board. How well does it hold up to this theme?
Objective Cards
This is the first deck in quite a while that hasn’t had a plot card. It’s kind of refreshing to be able to jump straight into the objectives and not have to worry about increasing your bean counter or whether any of your fighters are sparkly. If either of those become actual effects in a deck, I apologize for speaking them into existence.
In addition to the main themes of decks, I like to also try and identify if there are any sub-themes. In Hunting Grounds’ case, there is definitely a main theme around being in and making attacks against targets in friendly territory. There’s also a small package of objectives that care about driving the enemy fighters back – half of the surges hinge off making a drive back and the big keystone end phase objective does as well.
Surge Objectives
The only way to pull this off is to fight around the band of neutral territory in the center of the board. A lot of fights wind up happening there anyway, but Back Off! requires deliberate positioning before making the attack and your opponent being considerate enough to stand adjacent to another zone. Like we’ll see with all of the drive back objectives, this has an inherent weakness against squishier fighters because if you kill them in one hit, you can’t drive them back. Poor Mollog is cursed by his own success.
Interestingly, the trigger here is that the target “was pushed” and not an actual drive back, so a fighter with Grapple could score this by pulling a fighter closer.
Another thing this objective will have in common with others we’ll look at is that it just requires an attack, not specifically a melee attack, so ranged attackers will be able to leverage their ability to cover more of the board effectively.
I’m a bit wary of this objective because it’s fully dependent upon your opponent to stand in the right place. There’s also the risk that you kill your targets while making the attacks. Perhaps in a warband with multiple weaker fighters, ideally with some ranged attacks, so you can hang out in your territory and drive back anyone coming forward?
Next we have another surge objective with punctuation in the name. A lot of what makes me cautious about Back Off! also applies to Hands Off! However, since we’re in a very Pillage & Plunder heavy meta right now there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to run into someone who will run onto a feature token and stagger themselves by delving it. That won’t help against the pure aggro decks like BARF who often completely disregard feature tokens, but Spitewood’s fancy new Aqua Ghyranis tokens are feature tokens that count for scoring Hands Off! These tokens give your opponent strong incentive to come stand on them, so I’m much warmer on Hands Off! than I would otherwise be. What’s your opponent going to do? Not stand on your Aqua Ghyranis token to deny you scoring this? That sounds like a win to me.
Technically Home Advantage also requires your opponent to do something particular for you to score it, but “make an attack” is part of the game plan for everyone these days. Unlike some other similar objectives, this one requires that your opponent fail the attack – it’s not enough to survive an attack. This will be easier to score for warbands that have or can gain access to multiple save dice, but even something as simple as putting a forward deployed fighter on guard can help stack the odds in your favor here. This is about as close to a passive objective as we get now.
This is a fantastic counter punch objective. The counter punch style hasn’t been something that could easily be pulled off so far this edition – it involves having objectives that allow you to score in your own side of the battlefield, then attack the opponent when they try to come and disrupt you – but No Business Here is great for this. The easiest way to score it will be if your opponent charges into your territory, fails to kill one of your fighters, and then you just attack them back. The attack doesn’t have to be successful to score this objective, nor does your attacker have to be in friendly territory. Ranged attacks or melee attacks from neutral will still work. Also, due to the wording, a single fighter with the Hidden Aid upgrade will be able to trigger this. Spoiler: This deck has Hidden Aid.
Kill surges are objectives that I tend to avoid. A surge for making attacks? Sure. A surge for getting a kill? That’s more demanding. That said, No Trespassers doesn’t have a particularly onerous requirement. The target just needs to have been in friendly territory when slain. I can see this functioning as the sixth surge slot in a Nemesis deck. You know, when you’re building the deck out and get five pretty comfortable surge objectives and have to start holding your nose while picking your sixth? That’s how I feel here.
The final surge objective is Usurped. Remember how No Trespassers was a potential sixth surge? This feels like a seventh surge. Reminder: you can’t have more than six surges in a deck. As it is written, you’re going to need to (a) attack an enemy fighter on a feature token, (b) roll enough crits to manage to get the Overrun ability, and (c) choose to use Overrun to put your attacker onto the feature token after the combat. My initial thought was that you could use Duellist as another way of moving your attacking fighter, but both Duellist and Usurped are in the same “immediately after” attack window so I don’t believe that works out. This is effectively Critical Effort but much much harder, so I can’t see ever including it.
End Phase Objectives
Bloodscent is the first of our end phase objectives and it feels like a pretty reasonable ask for 1 glory. Normally this style of objective wants enemy fighters to be vulnerable which has the problem of leaving your enemy alive and kicking when you should instead kill them, but the fact that this can also score off having a moderately damaged enemy fighter helps its case. That’s not even factoring in the underdog mechanic where it suddenly becomes substantially easier to score. Bloodscent doesn’t have me jumping for joy, but it does pass the initial smell test and could potentially make it into a Nemesis list.
Leader focused objectives tend to be risky, because if your leader goes down before you can score it then you’re just out of luck. The fact that Lead by Example is worth 2 glory is tempting, though, and could be worth it if your warband has a leader that is reasonably durable and maybe possesses a ranged attack for easier access to standing attack. Blackpowder and Hrothgorn come to mind as particularly capable candidates to lead by example. It’s worth noting that your leader can make attacks from anywhere, as long as they’re in friendly territory by the end phase to score this.
A juicy 3 glory is gated behind Pinned! and you are going to have to work for it. Normally I would say there is no chance of scoring this with a competent opponent, but the fact is you can plop your Aqua Ghyranis token down adjacent to the edge hexes and suddenly your opponent is much more likely to get into position to let you score this. It still has hurdles to clear in that you have to succeed your attack and you can’t accidentally kill the enemy fighter in the process, but the presence of Aqua Ghyranis in Spitewood really helps cards like this that want your opponent to be in a certain place.
On a side note, I don’t particularly love the design of this card. It’s very much worded like a surge objective but due to being worth more than a single point of glory, it is an end phase objective. It isn’t the only objective in the game that has some memory demands, but this one just feels particularly egregious. If I’m ever taking it in a deck, I will probably make a point of saying, “This would score Pinned,” when I fulfill the criteria even if it isn’t in my hand. Just to keep it transparent and clear with my opponent.
Ready or Not was one of the objectives I was highest on initially, then I re-read the card and realized I had completely misread it the first time. The way this is written is incredibly punishing to try and score. You’ll need to have two or more enemy fighters in your territory (something you have absolutely no control over) and each enemy fighter, regardless of where they are on the board, needs to either be damaged and/or adjacent to friendly fighters. If your opponent just doesn’t come into your territory, you can’t score this. If they only send one model over (say, Mollog or the Wielder of the Blade, or even just one member of an elite warband) then you can’t score this. If they leave some random dingdong deep in their territory to hold a token and you can’t get over there, you can’t score this. I don’t think it’s unplayable, but it’s only going to score if your opponent lets you.
We’ve got another leader-focused objective in Spoiling for a Fight. Weirdly, this feels harder to score than Lead by Example and it’s worth half the glory. Needing to be near an enemy and a friendly fighter feels like there are too many cases for it to go wrong, especially for only a single glory payout. The risk vs reward on Lead by Example is tempting enough for me, but I don’t believe Spoiling for a Fight will pull it off.
Our final objective highlights the real sub-theme of this deck – exclamation marks. This is Our Turf! is pretty straightforward. Are you playing a warband that you feel can comfortably outnumber the enemy and/or has access to move or charge tokens on demand? Something like Hexbane’s Hunters can get extra move tokens from the dogs, but you have to balance out their squishiness. Thorns of the Briar Queen also have access to extra charge tokens but are in a similar boat as Hexbane. I’m pointedly ignoring the elephant in the room of Zarbag’s Gitz.
Objectives Thoughts
I realize I’m assuming your opponent is going to be invading your territory when looking at most of these cards and the awkwardness of a Hunting Grounds mirror is not something I’m looking forward to, but the fact is most of the decks in the game either directly or indirectly reward you for getting into enemy territory. Some objectives call for it outright (Get Stuck In, Slow Advance, etc.) while others want you to do things that just happen to be in enemy territory (Strip the Realm, Hoarder’s Hovel, etc.).
This deck’s inclusion in the set that introduces the Aqua Ghyranis tokens goes a long way to making it feel viable. I was a little hesitant at first, but the fact is if your opponent chooses to ignore the token in your territory, they’re giving up a potential 3 glory. That’s a hefty amount and the temptation is going to be strong, which tees up these objectives perfectly.
Power Cards
Moving on to the power cards, we’ll start with ploys before moving into upgrades. We’ve already seen the objectives really want you to hang out in your territory and engage the opponent there, so will the power cards support this?
Ploys
Audacious Denial certainly has more restrictions on it than Improvised Attack from Countdown to Cataclysm has, but Improvised Attack has already proved time and time again how versatile a ploy speed attack is. Audacious Denial will likely be more accurate than Improvised Attack typically is, but the fact that it has to be your leader making the attack, the target has to be adjacent to your leader, they both have to be in friendly territory, and your leader has to have a melee weapon that is only 1 damage brings the utility down a fair bit. If this instead set your leader’s damage to 1 for the attack, it would be so much more useful.
Many warbands won’t be able to use this at all because their leaders hit too hard, and warbands with leaders who have damage 1 attacks also tend to be pretty squishy, so there’s a big risk in taking a leader only card there. Surprising no one after looking at the art, Kurnoth’s Heralds can make good use of this with the leader’s 4 sword, 1 damage, grapple attack.
Other warbands with eligible leaders include Spiteclaw’s Swarm, (uninspired) Dread Pageant, Zikkit’s Tunnelpack, (sometimes) Grandfather’s Gardeners, (uninspired) Sepulchral Guard, Thorns of the Briar Queen, (uninspired) Grymwatch, Da Kunnin’ Krew, Daggok’s Stab-Ladz, (uninspired) Hexbane’s Hunters, and Cyreni’s Razors.
This deck’s flavor of extra attack dice is Deny Invaders. Unlike most other effects, you play this in the power step before your attack instead of right before making the attack. It does last for the entire turn, buffs all your fighters, and doesn’t specify melee weapons. If you have some way of making multiple attacks in a turn (Audacious Denial, for instance) you can double dip on this card’s effects.
Giving your opponent -1 dice on an attack is a great effect, but I worry that the restriction on Hidden Snares (in friendly territory and within 1 hex of a feature token) is going to prove to be awkward. Early in the game, your enemy is likely charging into position in your territory in which case they’re unlikely to activate again that round. I’m prepared to suffer a blowout from not expecting this and it hitting me at the wrong time, but I don’t feel like it’s going to make the cut in most Nemesis decks.
What a cool effect and putting Snark on the card genuinely made me laugh when I saw it. The first time I played Grinkrak’s Looncourt, I genuinely thought he had a range 2 melee weapon because of how long that squig-on-a-stick is. Anyway, Keep Them at Bay allows your fighters to do a limited impression of the Emberwatch’s Deadly Sentries ability. Bumping all your fighters’ range 1 attacks up to range 2 opens a lot of options, from making standing attacks your opponent wasn’t expecting to enabling charges that were previously out of reach. Letting the Wielder of the Blade suddenly smack someone from 2 hexes away? Yes please.
Mind Your Step provides an ability that is quite rare in Underworlds – a push that can target an enemy fighter. Requiring the push to end in neutral or enemy territory is annoying, because it means you can only ever target fighters that are just over the line in your territory, but depending on treasure and Aqua Ghyranis placement, the effect can be a game changer. You can sometimes even use it to shove a fighter closer to the edge in neutral territory to set up for a big fat 3 glory Pinned! in the end phase.
The fact that both of the treasure tokens have to be in friendly territory hampers the usefulness of Mystical Misdirection. They’re already within your default zone of control, so presumably you have access to them both. If you could swap with something outside of friendly, this could be useful for scoring some of the Emberstone Sentinel end phases or Horder’s Hovel from Realmstone Raiders, but as is I can’t see this being worth a card slot.
Now we’re talking. Being able to just tell your opponent, “No, you can’t attack this model,” is potent. Use Paths Unknown on a fighter in danger of being killed or on a fighter holding a feature token of importance so they can’t be driven off. Being able to use it in enemy territory as the underdog is just rude, too, especially since you could keep an Aqua Ghyranis squatter safe for the final turn in a round.
After playing a lot of BARF lately, seeing Poor Footing makes me think about how good it is at denying Reckless Fury’s objectives. Even if a pure aggro warband is ignoring the feature tokens in your territory, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to be within 1 hex of something – if not a treasure token, then the coveted Aqua Ghyranis token. This feels like a meta choice. If there’s a lot of ABC (Always Be Charging) happening, this can throw a wrench in folks’ gameplans.
Speaking of a meta choice, the impact of Secrets of the Realm depends entirely on how much delving is going on. As of now, Pillage and Plunder is such a prevalent deck that fighters feel like they’re staggered all the time by default. If something shifts and P&P becomes less common, being able to stagger a wide swath of the enemy’s warband would be more useful although I’m still not sure it’s worth a card slot. Annoyingly, I believe the wording means that enemy fighters standing on feature tokens aren’t going to be affected by it – it specifically says they need to be adjacent to them, and standing on one isn’t the same as being adjacent.
Sidestep is the last ploy and it’s a classic for a reason. A no-strings-attached push for one of your fighters can do so many things. Get into or out of range of an attack, set up for one of the many positional objectives, or hop onto a feature token after the opponent drives you off – the utility offered is phenomenal. There is never a time when I have access to Sidestep that it doesn’t end up in the deck.
Upgrades
The total cost of glory for all these upgrades is 12, which is a tiny bit lower than the average.
I’m picturing someone like Mollog or Kainan wearing Balance of Ghyran and it scares me. Or excites me. Maybe both. If my math is right, this comes out to a 42% chance of pinging anyone who successfully attacks the equipped fighter. Those aren’t amazing odds, but given that it’s an upgrade that sticks around, it is likely to eventually do something if you slap it on a big bruiser. There’s also no qualifier about the enemy needing to be non-vulnerable, so it’s entirely possible for a weakened fighter to take themselves out of action with this. “Stop hitting yourself!”
At a 50% chance of triggering when the criteria are met, Blocked! can either do nothing or greatly annoy your opponent. The Sepulchral Warden can hide behind one of his minions and (maybe) remain safe for another turn, or you can park a fighter one hex away from a blocked hex to make a 4-hex wide zone of Temu Gandalf saying, “You might not be able to pass.”
Bounty of Ghyran is a weird upgrade that functions more like a ploy that just happens to be gated behind having a glory. For fighters who have a real big glow-up when inspired and especially if the inspire condition is tricky, I could maybe see including it. You could throw it on a fighter in your power step to have them inspired for the opponent’s turn which could help if you’re bumping a save profile up from one to two dice. Both Morgok and Thugg from the Krushas gain a fairly significant boost to their saves and attack profiles when inspired and the ramp up to inspiring takes a few turns, so it feels like a potentially nice fit there.
Crippling Blow continues the trend that Poor Footing started with handing out move tokens. It’s a costly 2 glory to equip, but being range 2 makes it more likely that the wielder can dish out a few move tokens in a round. The opposing fighter will already be in your territory which means denying charges may not be as useful as if they were out of position, but it can still come in handy for disrupting objectives like Unrelenting Slaughter or the like. A side effect of it only being 1 damage is that you’re able to use it to score those drive back objectives without killing the enemy.
Also, I’m sure it is not intended, but the way it’s worded makes me think that a successful attack is not even required to give the target a move token… I have no doubt the Rules As Intended here is that you have to make a successful attack and that’s how I’ll be playing it, but be prepared to have this be a contentious card until we get an FAQ.
A fascinating entry in the “extra save dice” upgrades, Goading Defender is a mirror opposite to Impossibly Quick from Pillage & Plunder in that it won’t break on a failed attack but rather when the fighter takes damage (or is the target of a ploy). In some cases this is going to feel much harder to get through and probably feel frustrating, but be mindful that it will be discarded if either player targets the fighter with a ploy – including your own. No Sidesteps allowed without sacrificing your 2 glory upgrade. There aren’t a ton of ploys that pick enemy fighters, but the ones that do exist see a lot of play. Confusion, Lure of Battle, and Damned if you Do show up quite often and there are more situational ones that could also surprise you. It’s a strong effect balanced by the fact that it’s costly to apply and can break at inopportune times.
Great Speed feels like a curious inclusion in a deck that wants you to mostly stay in your own territory. It will still be useful, as it typically is, because it’s free and can help set up unexpected attack avenues that will allow you to score a bunch of the drive back objectives or simply give your leader enough movement to scuttle back into your territory after making two attacks to score Lead by Example.
Not only is Hidden Aid a generally useful card because it enhances both your accuracy and survivability when adjacent to the enemy, but in this deck it also helps set up scoring the surge objective No Business Here.
Hidden Traps has the honor of being the most accurate printed attack granted from an upgrade. Sure, there are situations that can come up to make other upgrades more accurate but the fact that this starts on 3 hammers out of the gate with the potential of being 2 damage is pretty rad. You can also just choose to not use Grievous if you want to keep it at 1 damage in an effort to score drive back objectives without killing the target.
A conditional Great Strength that only costs 1 glory, Killing Blow feels like a situational card. Does your warband and/or paired deck in Nemesis offer a decent amount of pings to turn this on? If so, it feels pretty nice. Otherwise it’s going to be situational based on what your opponent is bringing. Against elite fighters with enough health to get damaged and still need grievous to kill them, it’ll feel nice. It will be less ideal against 2-3 health swarms where it doesn’t allow for one-shots and only turns on when it winds up being overkill. I guess overkill is still useful because it helps ensure you don’t get ambushed by a Stand Fast, though.
I love weird cards and True Grit feels like a really weird card. Like guard tokens, this will have more of an impact on dodge fighters than shield fighters but it’s still a net increase for anyone who can benefit from it. Finding the right home for it does feel tricky, though. You want a leader that can reliably carry it without folding to the first hit, you want friendly fighters who can cluster around the leader (perhaps with ranged attacks?), and ideally they’d also have multiple save dice. Perhaps Ephilim’s Pandaemonium or (sigh) Zarbag’s Gitz would put it to good use.
Power Card Thoughts
The teaser from a while back mentioned this deck can “manipulate the positions of your warband” but aside from Sidestep, that doesn’t seem to be the case. What it does offer is a surprisingly high number of ways to manipulate your opponent’s fighters by handing out move tokens, pushing them, stopping them mid-move, or reducing their attack effectiveness. It’s an interesting toolbox that stands out from the other decks currently available. It really does feel like a defensive Strike deck.
Jake’s Picks
This is where I highlight cards that stand out to me from the deck. I’ll pick a surge objective, end phase objective, ploy, and upgrade and talk about it a little bit. They might not be the most powerful option in their category – sometimes I pick something that’s just a neat design that I appreciate, other times it’s something I feel is going to be really solid in play.
No Business Here: This surge feels like it encapsulates what this deck is trying to do. You want to set up favorable situations to attack the invaders. I also appreciate the little tricks you can do to help score this easier like leveraging Hidden Aid or some warband specific abilities like what the Sons of Velmorn offer.
Lead by Example: There’s enough reward here in it being 2 glory to tempt me to risk taking a leader-based end phase, especially if my leader has access to ranged attacks to try and stay safely away from the brawl while plinking away.
Paths Unknown: I love how this rewards you for identifying what your opponent wants to do the next turn. I’m pretty bad at predicting things, but there are cases when even I can realize that my 3 bounty fighter who is near death is likely to be a prime target. Getting to throw a wrench in my opponent’s plans is always enjoyable.
True Grit: This is one of those cards that I’m picking not because I think it is good, but because it’s a neat design. In the ideal magical Christmasland scenario, you can park your leader in a hex and surround them with six other fighters to put the majority of your warband on pseud-guard. That will never happen and isn’t even a good play, but it’s fun to think about!
Final Thoughts
If nothing else, this is a new deck that doesn’t have a plot card so being able to freely pair it with any other deck in existence for Nemesis is already a welcome change of pace from the last few decks that have been released. There also hasn’t been a deck that really leans into a counter punch playstyle in this edition – even the one and only Take and Hold deck (c’mon GW, the masses yearn to stand on treasures) is mostly concerned about invading enemy territory.
In my test Rivals game where I played this deck, I went up against Pillage & Plunder on the other side and they were able to simply not enter my territory to score their own objectives. It made me realize this deck is going to struggle unless the opponent chooses to enter your territory so you have to have some reason to make your opponent come to you — which I think you can achieve through a paired deck in Nemesis.
You could go for a Nemesis pairing with Emberstone Sentinels and just pick the cards that don’t require venturing into enemy territory to craft a pretty passive deck… aside from the problem that arises when your opponent “loses” the roll off at the start of the game and can place three treasures over in their territory. That’ll make scoring Supremacy a bit more challenging, but still possible if you can hold the neutral treasure.
Both the Edge of the Knife and Countdown to Cataclysm decks have some control elements if you want to lean into that which also hasn’t really been a supported archetype yet. Between Spiteful Traps and Lash Out potentially applying a move token and Death Throes reducing enemy fighter accuracy, Edge has some overlapping tools. Countdown can also take advantage of Sunder the Realm since (in theory) the opponent is going to be crossing the danger zone to enter your territory, as well as Growing Concerns to tack on movement reduction.
Hrothgorn feels like he’d enjoy this deck. It has some cards that care about the leader and Hrothgorn is clearly the star of his own warband, but also the suite of enemy pushes would pair very nicely with the trap mechanic that the Mantrappers have. It’s putting all your eggs in one basket though, because holy crap do the little gnoblars suck.
Slow but durable warbands like the Wurmspat, Ironsoul’s Condemners, or Morgok’s Krushas could also be played in a way that welcomes the opponent to come to them instead of having to rush off.
I predicts that one of the biggest downsides to this deck is that by focusing so much in your own territory, you’re passing up the chance to secure the enemy’s Aqua Ghyranis. Movement tricks like Hidden Paths from Emberstone Sentinels or Canny Sapper from Pillage and Plunder can assist in trying to sneak a round of scoring in, but more than that might be difficult. Another issue will be if your opponent just doesn’t want to engage in your territory. Maybe they’re also playing Hunting Grounds, or they’re willing to take a hit on some of their scoring to try and wait you out while scoring their own passive objectives.
I don’t think Hunting Grounds is going to be a meta breaking deck where everyone has to pivot to counter it, but I do like the odds of it having an impact in what is seen at events. Adding support for new playstyles is massive.
Deadly Synergy
The other deck included in Spitewood is Deadly Synergy. This Mastery deck was advertised as having benefits for flanking your foes and granting “unique advantages for arranging your warband in specific formations.” If you were anything like me, you wracked your brain over what the heck that even meant. You could even say we are united in curiosity. Fear not, we’re about to discover how this deck works together.
Oh, we’re doing plot cards again. Okay.
Deadly Synergy is the fifth Rivals deck to be introduced in this edition of Warhammer Underworlds that contains a plot card. As a reminder, a deck that has a plot card cannot be combined with another deck with a plot card in the Nemesis format. This means you cannot combine Deadly Synergy with any of the following decks: Countdown to Cataclysm, Edge of the Knife, Realmstone Raiders, or Raging Slayers. Otherwise, the plot card just serves as a bit of extra rules text for playing the game with the deck.
Similar to how Edge of the Knife’s plot card worked, this introduces a game term and then provides a definition for it. In this case, the term is united and it’s a state for fighters to be in. Your fighters are united if (a) they are adjacent to friendly fighters or (b) they are the only friendly fighter remaining. That last one is pretty humorous when you consider the sole survivor considers themselves united, but it’s nice to include this stipulation so the deck can continue to function if a player is down to their last model.
The other thing this plot card does is add another way for enemy fighters to be considered flanked. I missed it on my first read of the card, but this allows you to have a single fighter sandwiched between one of your fighters and an enemy fighter and still be able to count results of flanked on their dice as successes. It’s a nice boost for both accuracy and survivability provided you can keep your fighters in formation.
Something that I thought of but haven’t had come up in test games yet is that treasure tokens have, at minimum, two empty hexes between them. You can have two fighters in these spaces and thus have two united fighters threatening/supporting two treasure tokens. That might come up at some point. Maybe?
Objective Cards
It should come as no surprise to learn that many of the objectives in this deck hinge off of your united fighters doing something. What shocked me is that out of the 12 objective cards, a full 11 of them key off united friendly fighters. This deck leans hard into its theme. Fortunately, as far as hoops to jump through, having your fighters be adjacent to each other is a fairly reasonable one.
It’s worth pointing out ahead of time that there is a single ploy in this deck that temporarily makes one of your fighters united as well as an upgrade to make a fighter united more permanently. Keep those in mind while taking a look at these objectives.
Surge Objectives
There are a few factors to consider in how easily your warband can score Got Your Back. The first is how easily you can unite the fighters that your opponent wants to attack. If you have a linchpin fighter that you know your opponent is going to go after like Ephilim or the Sepulchral Warden, you can often start them adjacent to another one of your fighters and already be united or position them in a way that you can use your first turn to get another friendly fighter next to them. The other is how good the save values are on those fighters. It’s kind of obvious after writing it out, but your opponent is going to fail attacks into a 2 shield fighter more often than a 1 dodge fighter, so this becomes more reliable the more you can stack the defensive odds in your favor. Failing that, you can just hope to get lucky because your opponent will certainly be making attacks against you eventually.
There have been many games where Critical Effort has sat in my hand turn after turn because I couldn’t get any of my attack dice to land on the 1/6 chance that one face of the dice is. Helping Hand has this exact same problem (flanked is just as likely to roll as crit) but also has the stipulations that the attack has to be successful and your fighter needs to be united. That’s a steep ask, but there are ways to stack the odds in your favor. Wrack and Ruin has Henchman, an upgrade that goes nicely with much of this deck, and that can turn one of your dice over to the flanked result. Deadly Synergy also has Out of Nowhere which fulfills a similar role, which we’ll get to later.
Infiltrate is another card with a bunch of stipulations on it, but they’re all “or” and “either” caveats. This is a pretty flexible objective that can score not only if your attacker is united, but if the target is flanked/surrounded. This is more forgiving for your own fighters’ positions and also enables synergy with effects like Hidden Aid.
Very similar to Infiltrate, Tag Team cares about your attacker not having move or charge tokens instead of going after a target in a particular zone. It has the same forgiving criteria as the former objective but the ease of scoring Tag Team is going to depend a lot on your warband. Fighters with ranged attacks are going to be more likely to be able to make attacks without having to move or charge, or warbands that have access to strong pushes like Kamandora’s Blades can yoink a fighter up the board to make attacks without having technically moved.
Tandem Assault is a kill surge, and those are ones I approach with caution. It also has the “attacker was united or the target was flanked/surrounded” caveat which I appreciate, though. You’re obviously not going to take this deck if you don’t have some ways to ensure your fighters can be united, but this one makes me want even more tools before I’m comfortable taking it due to the timing issues of needing to have it in hand and having united fighters that can deliver killing blows and have an opposing fighter in the right place.
The final surge, United Aid, is like a defensive mirror to Helping Hand. I think it’s worth pointing out that this is not triggering off of a failed attack – you have to roll more successes on your save dice than the attacker does on their attack dice. Considering just about every situation in the game has the attacker rolling more dice than the defender, the odds are already stacked against you. Additionally, having a drawn attack isn’t sufficient, nor is neither of you rolling any successes. The redeeming factor is the inclusion of the underdog modifier that completely removes the need to roll a flanked result. That’s helpful, but probably not enough for me to want to take it.
End Phase Objectives
The end phases here have a nice split in values. Only two are worth a single glory while the other four have a pretty nice payout of two glory each.
Aggressive Unity is an interesting 2 glory objective. Making three or more melee attacks is entirely reasonable. Making three or more attacks with united fighters is also reasonable. Having to make melee attacks with united fighters is going to be a little more difficult because you can’t just park two archers next to each other and knock this out. It’s not a freebie, but it feels like an achievable goal worth working toward.
Meanwhile, Beatdown is only worth one glory and is questionable. If your fighters are weedy little gitz, you could easily make three attacks without killing your target… but why are you attacking with the likes of Bushwakka? Meanwhile, if your warband has melee attacks worth making, it’s entirely possible you kill your target before you get to make all three attacks. There’s also the consideration of what fighters your opponent is bringing. It’ll be a lot easier to make three attacks into Blackpowder than it will into anything brought by the Exiled Dead. I don’t think the uncertainty is worth the measly payout here. This was my stance before I re-read the card and realized it has to be three different fighters making the attacks. Hard pass on this for the measly reward.
Although that does bring up an interesting question – if you make attacks against a fighter, it is slain and then resurrected, are further attacks against it considered to be against the same enemy fighter? I believe so, but I’m no judge.
(Except at the yearly Maryland Goonhammer Open which is a fun filled time for everyone each year – you should come in 2026!)
Another 2 glory objective, Closed Down is entirely reliant on your opponent wanting to stand on treasure tokens. In the current meta, this is pretty unlikely – the hold strategy isn’t super common, but it does pop up here and there. You could try and force the issue by pairing with Pillage and Plunder and making your opponent want to stand on treasures to deny Strip the Realm, or by taking a hold strategy yourself and naturally causing fights around treasure tokens, but I’m not sure how comfortable I’d be taking this right now. It’s definitely a meta pick and one I can see including if we ever get another Take and Hold deck. Maybe some day…
I am leery of objectives that require killing the enemy leader in the battle round. Hemmed In is a tempting 2 glory, but what happens if you’re in position to take out the enemy leader without this in hand? Do you kill the leader to strengthen your board position but brick this objective when you draw it later? That’s not even taking into account the requirement that the killing blow has to be done by a united fighter.
Inevitable Outcome is what I like to see in a single glory objective. It’s fairly simple to meet the criteria and the reward is appropriately scaled. Presuming your warband wants to stand next to the enemy, this feels like a great 12th or 13th objective to include in your objective deck.
The drive back sub-theme from Hunting Grounds has leaked through! Outmuscle has Fjul-Grimnir looking like a hunk in his big ol’ hat (hi, WathLab) and simply requires a drive back performed by a united fighter. This conveniently has no melee rider on the attack, so an archer tucked securely beside another friendly fighter can score this as well. It does have to be a successful attack, however, so a drawn attack doesn’t count even though you can drive back from those.
Objectives Thoughts
It’s a good sign when a deck has multiple end phase objectives worth more than 1 glory that feel playable. Likewise, the flexibility of the surges mean some warbands will be able to make use of them more than others, but most warbands will be able to find something useful in there. It really does play heavily into the united theme, though, so that will strongly dictate your play when using this deck. In addition to whatever tech your warscroll brings, hopefully there are a bunch of power cards in your deck that can help with getting your fighters into position.
Speaking of power cards, let’s see how well Deadly Synergy can support its own objectives.
Power Cards
Ploys
Out of the ten ploys in the power deck, seven of them require you to have a united fighter to get any use out of them. One makes one of your fighters united temporarily. Weirdly, one requires a non-united fighter.
A few of these ploys are surges that have to be done in the middle of combats, so pay careful attention to the timings. Feel free to tell your opponent, “Hold on one second,” if they declare an attack and immediately start rolling dice – you might have something you want to do between those two steps.
Another Swing won’t find a home anywhere other than a high fighter count warband given that you need to have some particular positioning involving three of your fighters being adjacent and one of them is making a melee attack. I feel like it might be worth jumping through all those hoops if you can set up Gristwel for a juicy 3 damage swing, but the fact that this sets the damage of the retry attack to 1 is pretty unappealing.
Army of Two is one of the two ways the power deck has to make one of your fighters be united without needing to hang out with their buddies. Being able to turn one of your fighters into a united fighter on demand is going to make so many of the objectives easier to score. It also grants a small accuracy and survivability boost given the pseudo-Hidden Aid effect that the plot card grants.
The timing on this one is quite particular, so be cognizant of that when you’re trying to set up plays. The fighter you choose isn’t united until the next turn. I don’t believe this is going to affect too many cards in this deck, but it does mean you can’t use Army of Two in a power step and then try to get that fighter to benefit from playing Defiant Duo later in the same power step.
This is just funny. Brother-in-Arms can lead to truly silly scenarios like Sotek’s Venomites hitting with the power of Kro-Jax or the Sharpener of the Blade getting giddy from being able to swing the Wielder of the Blade’s sword. It can also provide some surprise angles of attack when a fighter “borrows” their buddy’s range 2 melee weapon. Suddenly Spiteshroom can reach out one more hex than anticipated and deliver a bonk with Mollog’s club. This will come in handy for warbands with a disparity of attack profiles, but some of the more homogeneous attackers like the Emberwatch may not find it as useful.
Being able to grant a guard token is often worth a ploy. Being able to heal a fighter is also worth a ploy. Defiant Duo allows you to do both of those things in a single card which is solid value. The typical caveat applies where you need the fighters to be united yadda yadda if you aren’t already planning to do that, this isn’t the deck for you. Two really solid effects in one card is sweet.
Out of Nowhere! (yet another exclamation point) is an interesting card. A ploy that guarantees a success on a roll is a unique effect, and it has some added synergy in helping you score some of the surge objectives listed earlier. It’s nice that you get to see the full result of your roll before committing to playing this card, but you do have to do it before seeing the opponent’s save roll.
The decision to allow you to change to either flanked or surrounded feels odd – does this exist solely as a counter to Kurnoth’s Herald’s inability to be flanked in their own territory?
Most warbands have fighters with differing save profiles, and Selfless Parry can help leverage that to your benefit. The fighter with the superior save doesn’t even have to be a valid target of the attacker – they can be standing safely out of range and still confer their expertise to your fighter that is getting thwacked. Uglug calling all his little buddies to huddle around him and then suddenly offering his mighty 2 shield profile to any of the little idiots feels like something I’m going to run into more than once.
It’s Sidestep. Everything I said about it in Hunting Grounds applies here as well. You can use it to help position your fighters to ensure they’re united, even after an opponent disrupts you with a drive back or other push of their own. Sidestep is just so damn good. I would run half my power deck as this one card if I could.
Take One for the Team is similar to but different from Selfless Parry, and having both in the same deck is going to make your opponent stay on their toes when trying to attack your united fighters. Take One for the Team protects the initial targeted fighter even better than Selfless Parry, but with the downside that the fighter taking the bullet has to be within range of the attacker. It’s great for defending a feature token that you don’t want to be driven back off of or keeping a key fighter alive.
The sole card that cares about a non-united fighter, Timed Strike is this deck’s version of a ploy that grants additional attack dice. It’s nice that there’s something in here for the lone fighter that gets separated from your group either willingly or unwillingly, and getting an extra attack dice is solid. Due to the final point on the plot card, you won’t be able to use this ploy when you only have a single fighter remaining which feels odd but whatever. There’s nearly zero chance you’ll have all your fighters united all game, so this card should come in handy at some point.
A global save increase? Dang. United Front boosts the save value of all your united fighters for one turn to a maximum of 3, which is really generous. Not many fighters start at 3, and boosts that get the rest there are fairly uncommon so this is a substantial survivability boost. Use it in conjunction with United Aid or similar objectives to help you score them, holding key areas of the board (like an Aqua Ghyranis token, perhaps), or just to keep your fighters from being punched in the face.
Upgrades
At 15 total glory, this set of 10 upgrades ties for the most expensive set of upgrades of any deck (it’s tied with Realmstone Raiders).
Games Workshop introduced the “act like you rolled more crits” mechanic back with Manipulated Fate in the Realmstone Raiders deck and it seems like someone liked it. Not only does Battering Ram use this mechanic, but it shows up on some warscrolls in this release as well.
As for Battering Ram itself, it’s a two-pronged benefit for you. First, you will guarantee that you always get to drive back and overrun when making melee attacks. This doesn’t even specify successful attacks, so even if you roll a bunch of nothing, you can still shove the enemy out of the way and optionally stand on their recently vacated hex. This kind of positioning control is subtly powerful. You’re not longer reliant on dice rolls to steal treasure or Aqua Ghyranis tokens. You can guarantee shoving a fighter into a stagger hex (or Hrothgorn’s traps, or Borgit’s Stab ‘Em Good, etc.).
The other upside is that you will never get surprised by an untimely Stand Fast from the opposing fighter. This makes combat math a little more predictable – Stand Fast’s -1 damage won’t be throwing off your exact lethal attack as long as Battering Ram is in use.
Coordinated Deathblow is one of the few weapon upgrades that costs 2 glory and it’s a pretty neat one. Just looking at the profile itself, it’s pretty mediocre for the cost. Range 1, 3 swords, 2 damage can serve as an upgrade for particularly runty models but many already have profiles that meet or beat this. When the wielder is united, however, it changes greatly. Not only does it pick up grievous to bump up to 3 damage, but since the fighter is united and this is a range 1 attack, that means the target is going to be flanked. This (effectively) turns into a 3 hammer, 3 damage attack – the same as inspired Morgok and other elite brawlers. Now that’s a deathblow!
Duellist is a card that’s seen a few printings so far this edition. It’s often seen the most value when placed on a fighter that has a range 2 or higher attack – I have personally been traumatized by Vexmor and Uglug using Duellist to skate around the battlefield, bonking my fighters while repositioning at will. It still performs all of those tasks in Deadly Synergy while also being useful for securing the united status on your fighters.
Another weapon upgrade, Entangling Strike is a scarily accurate attack. On its own, a 3 hammer attack is pretty solid but once you get flanked and/or surrounded in there, it also picks up either cleave or ensnare on the attack. Gaining extra successes from flanked and also ignoring save rolls makes this super reliable at delivering that single damage. It’s particularly useful for scoring Outmuscle or just driving back the opponent to get them into a more favorable position.
Great Fortitude isn’t anything fancy or new. Extra health is good.
The art on this version of Keen Eye made me laugh when I first saw it. It’s just perfect. I want to high five whoever thought to grab this model from the GW vault and use it for this card.
Art aside, it’s the tried-and-true Keen Eye that is already in five other decks. Extra attack dice are good at helping your accuracy and boosting your chances of rolling specific results (like Flanked or Crit for certain objectives).
Rush to Aid is interesting. It feels sort of like a super charged Duellist with more restrictions on where you can end your pushes. Getting to push 2 hexes is substantial, but since you need to have set up a united fighter (which typically means two fighters) as your landing zone ahead of time, it’s not quite as flexible as it would otherwise be. You can do some fun shuffling with multiple attacks if this fighter has a ranged weapon, although I’m not sure how useful that is.
Shared Incentive is a leader restricted upgrade. Those are quite uncommon to see in this edition of the game. You are also asked to pay 2 glory just to equip this, so are all those restrictions worthwhile?
For all that, you get the effects of Great Speed – an unrestricted upgrade that costs 0 glory. That’s obviously not great, but it also grants the same speed boost to any adjacent fighters. That’s not an inconsequential boost, but my gut instinct is to say that restricting it to the leader and it being a 2 cost upgrade means it doesn’t quite make the cut.
This is a weird card. Spurred Momentum gives you a method of removing move and stagger tokens from one of your fighters, but it only works once and then breaks. It can be useful for setting up a “surprise” charge (“surprise” in that you give your opponent at least a full turn cycle to prepare) and incidentally removing a stagger token. There aren’t too many times in which you’re desperate to remove a stagger token, but for those few situations (playing Blood of the Bull, fighting against the Exiled Dead, probably a couple others) this could wind up having a nice little bonus. Not sure it’s worth a slot in the power deck all the time, but if you’re in a pairing with some rough upgrades it could make the cut.
Titan of Combat is a cheap upgrade that permanently makes one of your fighters united. It’s not going to be easy to have your fighters be united, and this adds incredible flexibility. It’s also basically Hidden Aid, but with the extra benefits of triggering all the united effects in this deck. Titan of Combat is a slam dunk of a card for this deck.
Power Card Thoughts
On the whole, this power deck has some juicy options. There’s a mixture of solid competitive staples, generically useful cards that can support any gameplan, and cards to really lean into this deck’s unique gimmicks.
Jake’s Picks
This is where I highlight cards that stand out to me from the deck. I’ll pick a surge objective, end phase objective, ploy, and upgrade and talk about it a little bit. They might not be the most powerful option in their category – sometimes I pick something that’s just a neat design that I appreciate, other times it’s something I feel is going to be really solid in play.
Infiltrate: This is a surge objective that I enjoy because of just how flexible it is. It requires the target to be in neutral or enemy territory, but your own fighter can be anywhere – so making attacks right at the boundary with melee fighters or safely tucked in your own territory with ranged fighters is possible. Allowing your attacker to be either united or the target being flanked/surrounded is another nice bit of flexibility. All that said, it still requires a successful attack and positioning of at least two of your fighters, so it isn’t a freebie.
Outmuscle: This gets my pick here for an end phase objective and it’s not just for the dwarf in a loincloth. Maybe it’s because Hunting Grounds has infected my mind with thinking about using drive backs for scoring, but I think this is a nice 2 glory reward for setting up fighters like pool balls and breaking them. I have played pool like twice so my metaphor is probably wrong.
Defiant Duo: This is just so tempting with its two solid effects at ploy speed. I predict that the insane flexibility you get when being the underdog is going to lead to some substantial board position swings.
Battering Ram and Coordinated Deathblow: I group these together as the two upgrades that I am most excited about. Battering Ram because positioning is a vital part of performing well in this game and it helps guarantee your ability to move both the enemy and your own fighter in a key situation. Aqua Ghyranis tokens are going to be very spicy hexes to fight over; having a tool in your pocket to ensure that not only your opponent gets knocked off of your token but you can also plant a fighter there to guard it is solid. Coordinated Deathblow is just a neat weapon profile – it’s a fairly nice baseline to throw onto some dorky minion that doesn’t have a great profile on their own, but if you can make the most of the united mechanic this average profile becomes top tier.
Final Thoughts
It’s going to require effort on your part to set up and maintain united fighters, so carefully consider if your warband can do any lifting on that end to make your life easier. High model count warbands have an edge here because there are just flat out more models on the board, so it’s going to be more forgiving to position your fighters to be adjacent to one of their buddies. Thorns of the Briar Queen have some teleports to help with this, while the Grymwatch, the Exiled Dead, and the Sepulchral Guard all have raise effects to keep the board clogged up with your own models.
Other warband options are ones where your fighters are just flat out tough enough to stay on the board even if they’re receiving a beating. Grandfather’s Gardeners are the premier “obnoxiously hard to kill” warband, but many of the three fighter Stormcast warbands are fairly durable and have ranged attacks so they can continue the pressure while staying united. The Wurmspat are even more durable than any Stormcast and can persist for quite a while, especially with some healing or defensive backup from your decks.
Another option would be to choose warbands that have plenty of movement related tricks to aid you in getting your fighters united. Hexbane’s Hunters are quite good at this because your dogs can zip around the board and unite whoever needs it at the time. Kamandora’s Blades has access to a massive push to bring Kannat adjacent to Kamandora – it’s fairly restrictive, but it instantly unites those two fighters across a large distance. Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz offer Reassuring Presence to push minions adjacent to Uglug, as well as Da Bait to push Borgit into position elsewhere. Kainan’s Reapers have the infamous Mortek Advance which requires you to end the extra moves with minions adjacent, which is what you want anyway!
For decks to pair with Deadly Synergy in Nemesis, I’d like to look for ones that offer additional movement tricks (Blazing Assault’s Lure of Battle, Commanding Stride, Illusory Fighter, etc.) and decks that can ensure your fighters don’t get pushed around (Emberstone Sentinel’s Stubborn to the End, Brute Momentum, Settle In, Hold the Line, etc.). Deadly Synergy is flexible enough that I can see it working pretty well with nearly any deck.
That’s a Wrap!
I’m pretty excited for these decks to show up in the wild. We’ve had a run of decks that had niche use cases, but both Hunting Grounds and Deadly Synergy look to be much more globally useful. There may not be a shift off of the dominance of Pillage and Plunder focused decks, but these will at least shake up the meta and provide a bunch of new combinations. They both even work for supporting the counter punch playstyle that has been missing from Embergard – Hunting Ground explicitly from wanting to be in your territory, but also Deadly Synergy because it’s going to be easier to set up united fighters where they start the game.
Phew, we haven’t had multiple deck releases at the same time in a little while. That’s a lot of cards. If you’re still eager for more, dive into the rest of the Goonhammer coverage of the Spitewood releases!
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