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 start with the first two steps since they’re not quite as deep as the others but I feel they still have some facets worth examining in detail.
Muster Warbands & Draw Starting Hands
Determine Territories
Place Treasure Tokens
Deploy Fighters
Today we’re going to take a good look at the Determine Territories step. This is actually the subject that sparked my idea for this entire series, so buckle in.
Home Is Where the Start(ing Hex) Is
Not long ago, I had a fun destination event where I traveled to Wisconsin and played a ton of games, While there and chatting with players much better than me, I realized that despite this edition being around a year old I still don’t feel like I have a solid grip on how to orient the board when I win the initial roll off. I’ve been meaning to sit down and do some hard thinking on this topic ever since I wrote my initial review of the Boards of Embergard around 8 months ago, so here’s more of my madman ramblings derived from me flipping the board around and deploying models alone in my hobby room after my kid’s bedtime. This is less of a deep dive of the boards themselves and more a framework of questions that can be used to help make decisions.
The very first roll-off in the game determines who will be choosing and orienting the board. It’s not even a matter of the winner getting to pick who chooses – if you win the roll, the board is in your hands. That means you should probably have some idea of what to do with it, right? For some reason, I’ve been approaching this as needing to come up with a detailed ranking and deep dive on each of the 8 possible orientations of the board. This felt like such a hurdle that I have been putting it off (and put it off long enough that a new board has been revealed) but I recently had some sense knocked into me by Jesse, one of the talented locals who I am fortunate enough to play against. You just need to find one board orientation that you want to use. This is the one you can default to when you win the roll. If you lose the roll, it’s completely out of your hands so it doesn’t really matter if your opponent is between offering your 4th or 6th favorite picks – you just have to take what you’re given in that case.
This is not a foolproof approach. Like any good heuristic, it holds true for most cases but there are always exceptions. I’ll touch on those briefly later, but I’d like to float the idea that when you’re picking your warband and deck(s), you should also put some effort into choosing your warband’s home. Where is the place that Ylthari and her crew want to flop down on a couch and hang out after a hard day in the forest? Which particular layout of hexes is where Kamandora and her Blades dump off the pile of skulls in the evening before cracking open a cold one (Seraphon connotation)? If I can identify one of the eight options as my default, it means I’m not scrambling before every single game to try and pick The Right Choice. I can instead just take the comfort of my warband’s chosen lair and briefly evaluate the opponent – do they bring anything that makes me want to change things up? If not, it’s time for home sweet home.
This is wonderful, because you can shift part of the mental burden that comes from playing a game (or especially multiple games in the course of an event) to an entirely different day! If you can find various ways to ease your mental load on the day of an event, it’s a huge load off of your shoulders and lets you spend precious brain cycles on other aspects of the game.
Let’s go home shopping!
Building Materials
When you win the roll off and are the one to determine how the board will be set up, there are really only three things you are influencing. Between the eight options currently presented (two board sides, four orientations of each side) you will be choosing the type of neutral territory, the distribution of starting hexes, and the location of special board hexes. None of these are individual factors that you get to shape – the board is printed in only one configuration after all – but your choice will be dictating how these aspects all shake out.
Neutral territory is going to be determined by how much you rotate the board. One orientation has an unbroken chain of nine hexes that form neutral territory where each of the non-edge hexes are adjacent to two others. The other orientation has five hexes in neutral territory and, due to the rotation of the hexagons, none of them will be adjacent to each other. The terms “fives” and “nines” was coined early on in this edition by the cast of Battle Mallet to refer to each of these orientations and I’ll continue to use those names when referring to layouts.
In the nines orientation, the length of the board (from the back of your territory to the back of the enemy territory) is 11 hexes long. At its widest point it is, unsurprisingly, nine hexes wide. This layout creates a battlefield that is longer but narrower than the alternative, albeit only by a small amount. If you desire to have as much distance as possible from your opponent, this layout could be your default choice. Perhaps you have constructed a somewhat passive plan of standing on treasures and surviving. Perhaps you have a key fighter that needs to be protected and kept as far away from the fight as you can until the right moment – the Sepulchral Warden from the Sepulchral Guard comes to mind, or even Vasillac of the Dread Pageant before he inspires.
The nines orientation also has the most hexes in neutral territory (again, unsurprisingly, there are nine). Of these, two are also edge hexes which can come in handy for effects like Hidden Paths, the teleport from Emberstone Sentinels, or the Vanguard Dash teleport that the Emberwatch have. Since nines has the most hexes in neutral, it also necessarily has to have the fewest hexes in friendly or enemy territory. There are plenty of warscrolls and cards that specifically call out these territories. It isn’t a huge difference, but if you’re packing a bunch of cards like Careful Survey, Nowhere to Run, or Spread Out! it could factor into your choice. We have even been teased by the new Kurnothi Hunters warband and Hunting Grounds Rivals deck being focused on friendly territory.
Meanwhile, the fives orientation is going to basically be the opposite of all of the above considerations. The board length is nine hexes, which makes it the shorter and wider of the two configurations. It is a contender for warbands and game plans that involve aggressively invading the opponent’s territory and chasing down their fighters (or treasures). Reducing the space between fighters by one or two hexes is effectively increasing the threat range of melee terrors like the Gorechosen of Dromm or Ironsoul’s Condemnors, both of which are a little on the slower side with short range attacks to offset their prowess.
As far as neutral territory goes for the fives layout, it has almost half the number of neutral hexes as nines and none of them are edge hexes. The friendly and enemy territories are also slightly larger than what is available in the nines orientation. Nothing surprising here. One fun note is that you can be in friendly territory and still be adjacent to enemy territory in this layout, meaning a “push 1 hex” effect can move a fighter from one territory to any of the others provided they have an open hex to land in.
One incredibly niche consideration is also the actual orientation of the hexagons on the board. It currently only really applies to Cyreni’s Razors, specifically the Hammertide ability. In fives, you have a straight firing line from friendly to enemy territory as well as two forward facing 60 degree lines. This gives more options of shooting off the Hammertide from your side of the board into the enemy’s side from the get-go. The nines orientation only has two lanes that extend from your territory into enemy territory. Another niche factor that has cropped up for me in the past is the Countdown to Cataclysm ploy Sunder the Realm – this is the only area of effect ping in the game and it’s based on hexes adjacent to neutral territory. In nines, this covers a 25 hex area. In fives, it’s only 17 hexes.
The starting hex distribution is something else to consider when orienting the boards. Some options are going to be more centralized while others will offer more skew, either forward or in the back edge, and your play style will dictate which of these you will favor. An offensive plan may favor one of the layouts with one (or more) starting hexes adjacent to neutral territory to ensure juicy targets are within range from the start. Some starting hexes are also on the edge, so once again consider these highly if you’re packing effects like the aforementioned Hidden Paths or if you expect your opponent to be playing something like Stay Close from Wrack & Ruin. The size of your warband is going to matter a lot here – if you’re playing the Farstriders and will only use three starting hexes for deployment, you have more flexibility than if you’re playing Thorns of the Briar Queen and have to use each of the seven starting hexes available.
While looking at the starting hexes, consider the threat range of your fighters. All but the most passive of gameplans are going to require attacks, and a good offense is the best defense (or at least that’s what I keep telling myself as I recklessly charge my squishy wizards into massive trolls). Factor in the movement and attack range of your fighters and see how much of the board they can cover from the various starting hexes available to you. How many enemy starting hexes can you threaten with a charge from the first turn? Are there any you can threaten attacks into without even having to move your fighters? Take a little bit of time and do some mock deployments on each of the eight current orientations against a theoretical enemy seven fighter warband and three fighter warband to see which offers you the most favorable positions to start from.
Home Hunting Questions
If you’ve ever spent time apartment or house hunting, you’ll know there’s an overwhelming amount of questions to consider before moving. For finding our theoretically perfect Underworlds home, it’s not going to be quite as bad. Here is a list that takes the previous discussion and bundles it up in a quick question format to ask yourself when taking a look at your options. Hopefully this can help you find the perfect home for your warband. Grab your bag and let’s go looking!
What will your commute be like? Whether this is for the combined movement and attack range for an aggro approach’s threat range or the ability to cover potential treasure placements for a hold focused plan, you’ll want to know how much of the board will be in reach of your fighters. How many landing spots for a charge will put your fighters in a position to threaten multiple enemy starting hexes? How many objectives do you have that require being in neutral/enemy territory, and can you reliably get there to score them ASAP?
How close are your neighbors? Perhaps you have a vital fighter that needs to stay alive as long as possible. Someone like the Sepulchral Warden, or even Vasillac before he gets inspired, want to remain safe for the first few turns. Having a board orientation that gives you a (relatively) secure spot to tuck this fighter can help further your gameplan. This requires taking other warbands into consideration. What are their threat ranges? Is there a current meta menace at your store or friend group?
Is the home in a natural disaster zone? The placement of stagger hexes can also shape your decision here, particularly if your deck is packing power cards that care about them like Canny Sapper or Violent Blast, or objectives that want you to be staggered to score like Stand Firm. Keep in mind that even if you’re not playing those effects, your opponent could be – you don’t want to accidentally give your opponent a setup where they can play one ploy and immediately throw two fighters onto treasures in the first power step.
Are there any property disputes with neighbors? Similar to the stagger hexes above, blocked hexes can factor in to your choice. They’re hand for blocking line of sight against long ranged shooters, so a melee-focused warband might want to consider using these to disrupt the opponent. You can also take advantage of these hexes to fence off one approach to a treasure or key fighter in order to have a slightly safer zone of the board.
Does it have communal living spaces? Some orientations will present you with a handful of starting hexes in close proximity, or even adjacent starting hexes. These can be useful for setting up early game plays with warbands that can take advantage of their warscroll to generate some action economy advantage – warbands like Zargbag’s Gitz have access to Scurry and Kainan’s Reapers can utilize Mortek Advance to get a bunch of free moves, but the restrictions tied to these abilities require some forethought. You can also leverage adjacent starting hexes to set up easy scoring of objectives like Vicious Brawl or Power in Numbers which would allow you to score without having to do anything. Conversely, being able to have fighters just start adjacent and leaving them there can help counter your opponent’s own Alone in the Dark.
It’s Moving Day
I encourage you to grab your favorite warband and the Underworlds board and perform some mock deployments with each orientation. Answer each of the questions above and try to find your warband’s home. That way, the next time you sit down to play, it’s one less bit of mental burden on you as a player. Also, as the new board comes out, keep all these questions in mind while evaluating it. You can give yourself a leg up on the competition before Spitewood even comes out!
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.
