Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. This particular mini-series covers various aspects of the game that occur between players sitting down to play and beginning the first turn, hence the name Turn Zero. When first getting into the game, I noticed that some players (myself included) just breeze through this stage of the game without making deliberate choices in order to get to playing the “real game” as fast as possible. I’ll be walking through the various steps of the Setting Up chapter in the rulebook and highlighting different things to keep in mind at each point to both help make conscious choices to strengthen your gameplay and also demystify the process for anyone who mentally lumps it into a nebulous “before the game” step.
If you turn to the section in the rulebook titled Setting Up (page 10 in the physical rulebook, page 6 in the digital rules), you’ll see the roadmap for this series. Today we’re going to take a good look at the Deploy Fighters step and see if there’s anything you can do in this step to put yourself in an advantageous position for the upcoming game.
Muster Warbands & Draw Starting Hands
Determine Territories
Place Treasure Tokens
Deploy Fighters
Retracing Our Steps
On its own, this is a fairly straightforward part of the Setting Up stage. This is partly due to the fact that it’s “just place your fighters in their stating hexes” but mostly assuming that you’ve put thought into the preceding steps. Let’s take a look at everything that’s brought us to the final step in Turn Zero and see how we’ve (hopefully) set ourselves up by now.
Muster Warbands: Well, obviously, where you put your fighters will depend on what fighters you’ve brought. The actual models you bring to the table are perhaps the most concrete limiting factor here, but it’s also which deck(s) you have paired with the warband. Ylthari’s Guardians playing with Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury are likely to deploy differently than the same warband paired with Emberstone Sentinels and Countdown to Cataclysm.
Draw Starting Hands: Unlike in prior rule sets for Warhammer Underworlds, you’re drawing your cards before doing anything else. You’ll have full knowledge of which objectives and power cards you are starting the game with. If you are playing an aggressive game plan and happen to have Wings of War from Blazing Assault in your opening hand, you know you can start a fighter further back than usual to keep them out of initial danger. Conversely, if you are playing Edge of the Knife and start the game with Immovable then maybe you’ll want to risk putting a 2 health, 2 dodge fighter deliberately in charge range of the enemy.
Determine Territories: Perhaps the most impactful step to deploying your fighters, this step gives you the actual field with starting hexes on which to deploy your models. This shapes not only where you can initially place the fighters, but also whether there are stagger hexes or blocked hexes in the way and how far away you can deploy from the enemy. It’s worth noting that only one player has any influence on this step, however, so while being able to determine the orientation of the board is of tremendous import, it is also a decision that isn’t yours to make 50% of the time. Having some basic but flexible plans for different orientations that may be presented to you is a good idea.
Place Treasure Tokens: As discussed in the previous article, the importance of this step depends on what the players are bringing. If either player brings decks like Pillage & Plunder or Emberstone Sentinels, then the placement of treasures relative to starting hexes is going to play a big factor in the upcoming game. Pay extra attention to starting hexes which can threaten treasure tokens – a well placed fighter with a range of 2 can cover two or more treasures without having to move. Vexmor thinks this sounds like a lovely situation to be in. Conversely, in a BARF mirror, treasure tokens might not come up even once during the game but they can always play a role as a tie breaker.
Counting Is Hard But You Still Have to Try
Trying to deploy your fighters in the correct spot sounds like it should be an obvious thing to aim for. I like to frame it more that if you deploy in the wrong spot, you’re going to have to burn one of your precious twelve activations to get into the right spot. In that light, being in the right place from the start of the game is kind of like getting free activations (if you squint) and activations are one of the most precious resources you’ll have in a game of Underworlds.
So what is “the correct spot” when setting up your fighters? I’d say it breaks down into three categories: your threat range, opponent’s threat range, and relative positional requirements. A lot of this is simply counting out hexes and comparing it to the numbers on your cards. Sounds simple, but as any gamer knows, counting can sometimes be surprisingly tricky…
Your Threat Range
I’m considering your threat range to be how much distance on the board that your fighters can threaten in order to score glory. In the most straightforward way, this refers to the combined move range and attack range of your fighters to their targets which can easily be the opposing player’s starting hexes. Multiple decks have objectives that require your fighters to have charge tokens and be in enemy territory, so making sure to count out from your potential starting points and ensure you’re going to be in range is key. If you have fighters with a move of 3 and a range of 1, your threat range is 4. Faster fighters and/or fighters with longer ranged attacks obviously will make this range longer, and thus “turn on” more of your starting hexes if your plan is to charge in on turn one. A warband with a threat range of 6 or 7 can deploy deeper in their own territory to be safe from the enemy while still having a solid threat range for their own scoring.
Aside from simply being close enough to make attacks on enemy fighters, managing your threat range can also mean you are ensuring that you are in range of actions which are less attack-based. Making sure you’re in position to move onto treasure tokens to delve or ensuring your fighters can move into a specific territory if you have reason to care about being in that territory would still fall under this category. By the time you’ve reached this stage of Setting Up, you’ll know where all the treasure tokens are. If you’re trying to set it up so you can score objectives like Step By Step or Behind Enemy Lines in one activation, you’ll need to make sure your fighters can reach their destinations from their starting positions.
You’ll also have your final hand of cards before deploying, so be sure to take any power cards that can enhance your threat range into account. Most cards will require you to play them in a power phase meaning they won’t be available for the first action of the game, but there are a few threat extension cards available like Wings of War or The Extra Mile that can give you that extra oomph even if you wind up taking the first turn. Be sure to factor them into your plans before deploying any fighters to maximize their impact. I’m guilty of sometimes forgetting to take them into account so be better than me (that shouldn’t be too hard!).
Your Opponent’s Threat Range
Much like the above section, you should also take your opponent’s potential threat ranges into account. This is going to be more theoretical and fluid than your own threat ranges by nature of not knowing what is in your opponent’s hand, nor where they are necessarily going to deploy their fighters.
Local Underworlds player and two-time Goonhammer Open champion Craig told me, “You can’t necessarily win against [Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury] in deployment, but you can lose there.” Being able to zone your opponent out of reliable charges early in the game will help not only when playing against BARF, but against many other decks since so many objectives rely on having a charge token and doing things in enemy territory. Standing on treasures, making attacks, and being adjacent to other fighters are all things you can deny if you’re just starting out of reach. Is it easy? Hell no. These boards are small, there’s no real long board option anymore, and even the furthest back starting hexes are still within 5 or 6 hexes of the closest enemy on any deployment. You might not be able to ensure denial of some of the staple surge objectives that aggro players take, but you can at least lower their chances of scoring them. If they can only make two attacks instead of four in the first round, that’s more chances of them missing those vital (scoring) attacks.
If your opponent is less focused on wanton bloodshed and more on “that looks nice; I think I’ll stand on it” then the calculus changes slightly. You aren’t trying to move your opponent’s targets to deny them scoring this time, but instead will have to focus on disruption in other ways. Can you utilize any of the starting hexes between your opponent’s side and the treasures on your half of the board? If so, you can place your fighters between them to body block (non-flying) enemy fighters from reaching their goals. Can you identify the token they’re going to want to rush towards and delve for a quick Claim the Prize? Ensure you can easily get a fighter onto it to prevent that, perhaps with a timely Sidestep or similar effect if you can deploy close enough to it.
The ideal situation is finding a place you can deploy your fighters to keep them out of range of your opponent, but keep your opponent in range of your own shenanigans.
Relative Positional Requirements
This is a big bucket where I’m lumping all the other non-scoring based considerations for where you deploy fighters. These aren’t quite as straightforward as effects that increase your threat range like Sidestep or ranged attack upgrades. Think more along the lines of effects that care about where a fighter is in relation to another point on the board. Many of these effects are warband specific bits of flavor that you’ll find on warscrolls.
Here are just a few examples to hopefully get the point across and get the brain juice flowing.
Ephilim’s Pandaemonium: Power Leech will grant you extra power cards if a friendly fighter is slain while close enough to Ephilim. There’s a balance between keeping Ephilim close enough to the combat while not being too vulnerable. Having your castle set up from the start allows you to adapt to changing game states easier (how thematic for Tzeentch) without disrupting the potential card draw.
The Thricefold Discord: Eldritch Enmity is something to keep in mind the whole game while playing these daemons and probably one of the most pure examples of this category. You can push up to two fighters, but they have to end up further away from each other if you do. Leveraging it to do something like Vashtiss charging behind your Vexmor’s starting hex to then push him forward requires you to have both of the fighters staged in the right spots before getting the ball rolling.
Kainan’s Reapers: I take it back, Mortek Advance is the peak example of relative positional requirements. Having the minions in place for turn one allows you to make the most of this powerful, but mentally taxing (for me at least) ability. This warband has six fighters, which means you’re going to have to use all but one of your available starting hexes, so make sure you plan out where everyone is roughly going to go before even placing the first model.
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz: If you want to leverage Reassuring Presence early on, you’ll need to make sure that wherever you deploy the gits will allow them to reach your projected landing spot for Uglug. Like any of these other abilities, you can always set them up later in the game but if you’re in position before the first turn, you can effectively save yourself some activations.
Order Matters (as Do Chaos, Death, and Destruction…)
Since fighter deployment is done one at a time, alternating between the two players, the order in which you deploy your warband can impact the game as well as where you deploy them. Every time you place a fighter, you are locking in that choice and giving information to your opponent. If you place Mollog as your first fighter, your opponent now knows exactly where the big guy is, what he can threaten, and will (probably) choose to deploy their fighters outside of painful bonking range. If you are playing Dread Pageant and place Vasillac as one of your first drops, your opponent can dial in their own threats to try and eliminate him before he gets an opportunity to inspire.
By saving key fighters for your last drops, you are both increasing and decreasing your options at the same time. I guess it’s like Schrödinger’s cat except instead of a cat it’s a giant skeleton and instead of being about quantum mechanics it’s about board game mechanics. Also I don’t really remember what Schrödinger’s cat is about so this might be a terrible analogy. Feel free to “um, actually” at me in the comments.
Your options are increasing because you are getting more information about your opponent’s deployment with each fighter they place, and can thus react to this new knowledge. This gives you the most information before committing a valuable fighter. Your options are decreasing because you have to be placing your other fighters in the meantime, and each starting hex they take up will deny you one more option for these key fighters you hold in reserve. Ideally, you are keeping your key fighter(s) in mind while deploying the more expendable fighters so your early drops don’t take up the potential spots you’ll want to place your valuable fighter(s).
The Vasillac example above was one I ran into recently when playing against the fearsome Davy a few months ago in Madison. I was on Morgok’s Krushas and Vasillac was my primary target for the game. Davy knew this and made a point of saving Vasillac for his last deployed fighter which allowed him to see where all three of my orcs were going to be starting the game before committing to a decision. He was able to (mostly) tuck Vasillac safely in the rear of his board. Tricky Slaanesh players…
Three Plus Four Equals Seven
This is of minor import, but I find it interesting. Perhaps it’s more of a thought experiment than useful advice, but since each player will always need to have access to seven starting hexes the boards can be placed in any orientation, the starting hexes have to be divided up in a way that the sum of starting hexes on each side always equals seven. With the current board (and as previews have indicated on the new board) this is done by having a split of three and four starting hexes in each quadrant. This means that any time you sit down to play, you will have three starting hexes on either the right or left side of your territory and four starting hexes in the other side.
For the smaller warbands, this presents you with the option to skew to one side of the board. If your warband only has three models, you can deploy all of them to either side of your territory – this helps shut down the ability for your opponent to fully engage your fighters if they are forced to utilize their entire deployment area since some of yours will simply be out of reach. This tactic is going to be more useful if you are utilizing a more passive game plan like the Take and Hold style, since having to utilize some of the more rearward starting hexes could put aggressive fighters too far to easily charge into the opposing fighters. If you can strand just one fighter from the opponent’s side so they don’t have a charge, it can really throw a wrench in the plans of decks like Reckless Fury or Raging Slayers which deeply want to have everyone be able to charge in order to score their objectives.
Finally, and most importantly, you need to make sure that when you deploy your fighters, you angle them in a way that they are staring down the enemy fighters in the most menacing pose you can pull off. Underworlds has no facing mechanics, but it’s still important! You’ll roll better if you do, I promise.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
