As always, there is more in an Underworld’s Warband box than some shiny plastic and faction cards. Khagra’s Ravagers expansions includes a pile of Universal Cards that many other warbands are tying to get their grubby, armored, or clawed hands on!
Objectives
| (10) Arcane Cleansing Magical Mark Pitiable Death Starvation The Hunt Advances Turned Tables Unafraid Unassailable Underdog Wrested Dominance |  |
Arcane Cleansing – 1/5
There are basically no cards that work with this right now. I guess it might see some benefit down the line? If we see a lot of Heal Spells or Spells to remove Move/Charge/Guard tokens, you might run this, but it’s basically worthless at the moment.
Magical Mark – 4/5
For Wizard warbands, this is very solid. Usually your Wizards want to be squatting objectives and supporting from a range (Zarshia, Vortemis, Myari, etc), or are squishy and want to hide (Zarbag, Gashrak, Myari). For Cursebreakers, this is one Glory for holding any Objective! Not terrible at all.
Pitiable Death – 3/5
This is not a bad card by a long shot. A Surge on a kill isn’t terrible, but it can be countered with movement on the second half, and the first half of the Hybrid is mostly up to your opponent to play Hunger or not. Right now, Hunger is pretty middling, but if it becomes a big mechanic, I could see this gaining more value.
Starvation – 2/5
You have little to no control over scoring this. The only reason it isn’t a 1/5 is because it’s a Surge, and if Hunger becomes prevalent, it might just be an autoscore in some matchups.
The Hunt Advances – 4/5
A solid Hunter addition. For Hunter-heavy warbands like Wild Hunt, Snarlfangs, or Grymwatch, this is just a better Conquest. It’s definitely Warband specific, though.
Turned Tables – 4/5
Another Warband specific card, but if you have a good baseline Quarry, like maybe Slakeslash, this is a card that can really be an easy score. It also synergizes well with Strength of Terror if you’re running it, among other Quarry Upgrades. It’s also a free score against Hrothgorn, which is nice.
Unafraid – 3/5
This seems pretty good for Aggro warbands, as you want to advance and be near enemies. You can still score this after hitting and driving back an enemy, though it loses some luster if you’re just killing them outright. Snarlfangs in particular will love scoring this, as they’re fast and often want to just run into the thick of things.
Unassailable – 3/5
While an extra Glory for having Primacy is nice, I generally prefer my one Glory cards to be more reliable. Still, it’s an acceptable choice for a hard-aggro warband that wants to hunt enemy Leaders.
Underdog – 3/5
In the current meta, I think this is a very solid card. Primacy usage is abundant, and having at least a chance at a mitigation mechanic is solid. I don’t think you’ll ever score the second half of the Hybrid, or if you do, it won’t do enough to catch up, but even then it’s a reasonable gap-closer.
Wrested Dominance – 3/5
Another boost for Primacy builds, though a bit more limited. I actually like the second half of this Hybrid card, as it’s a solid way to snag some extra Glory when fighting Hold Objective opponents.
Gambits
| (10) Beast Trail Colossal Blow Energy Drain Feign Strength Feign Weakness Hopesink Hunters Aspect Macabre Feast Shocking Ferocity Storm of Foreboding | |
Beast Trail – 5/5
I remember Hidden Paths. This has more restrictions than Hidden Paths, but for any Range 2 or 3 Hunter/Quarry with a good attack, this is going to be brutal. And it can snag edge Objectives out from under your opponent’s nose!
Colossal Blow – 4/5
Knockback is often underrated, and Knockback 2 even moreso. The fact that you can turn this into extra damage is an excellent bonus, though it does require the attack hit, and therefore should be lined up with a few other Aggro-boosting cards. Nice and flexible.
Energy Drain – 4/5
I can’t really approximate the Hunger aspect of this card, as Hunger is still a fairly strange mechanic to me, but giving a fighter a Move Token is always good. If you can Distraction a big fighter onto an Objective, or hit them with this at the start of a round, it’s almost back breaking.
Feign Strength – 2/5
I’m not sure how to evaluate this card. It feels more like a denial card than anything – save it until the final Power Step, steal the Primacy token, and then deny your opponent 1 Glory… but overall that seems pretty limited.
Feign Weakness – 3/5
This seems much stronger than Feign Strength. An Aggro warband can use this to set up double Primacy scoring by killing, getting the Token, playing this, and then killing again to get the Token back. While it’s not game-breaking Glory generation, there’s some cool Aggro synergy here.
Hopesink – 3/5
-1 Defence cards have always been theoretically good, but usually not heavily utilized in practice. It is, however, another way to make an opponent a Quarry, which can be powerful in setting up Hunter bonuses. Maybe two mediocre mechanics together make this a good card? We’ll find out.
Hunter’s Aspect – 4/5
There’s some solid utility to this spell – notably, it makes many Wizard Leaders able to score Master of Many Paths quite easily without Upgrades, and is an easy cast for any Warband that have Objectives that score off of spellcasts. The reroll aspect isn’t particularly insane, but it has uses on powerful Wizards like Stormsire or The Briar Queen.
Macabre Feast – 2/5
Hunger Counters are still not insanely easy to set up, though this is potentially a pretty good payoff for building them up.
Shocking Ferocity – 3/5
Return damage always seems better on paper than in practice, but chip damage like this can set up counterattacks pretty easily.
Storm of Foreboding – 2/5
Double Channel isn’t great for casting. While this is potentially +4 or more dice, the chance of failure is too high to consider this reliable. If you have access to an Innate Channel, it gains some value, so it might find space in a Cursebreaker or Tzeentch deck, I suppose.
Upgrades
| (10) Charike Claws Dominant Defender Feral Symbiote Geomancers Gauntlet Mundane Razor Ravening Stone Rod of the Archmage Scavenged Armor Soultooth Javelin Terror Shield | |
Charike Claws – 2/5
What strange wording. Basically it’s Cleave at Range 1 or 2, unless you’re a Hunter, and then it’s Cleave at any Range. There aren’t that many Hunters with baseline Range 3+ Attacks that are worthwhile – mainly just Hrothgorn. The rest are Damage 1 or unreliable. It doesn’t seem great.
Dominant Defender – 3/5
Lets you take or steal the Primacy Token by just rolling Crits. That’s neat, and potentially can gain you some Glory. Being on Guard while holding Objectives is also pretty cool. It’s not a game changer, but defensive builds could use the Guard boost and it gets them some potential Glory by just sticking around, so it might be worth an inclusion.
Feral Symbiote – 3/5
Great Strength, with a downside. If it does see inclusion, it likely won’t be on a Voltron style build, but rather in a build that looks to spread out offensive upgrades among multiple fighters.
Geomancer’s Gauntlet – 3/5
An action to flip an Objective Token is potentially very powerful, and you could possibly set it up to flip multiple. It’s not directly impactful, and doesn’t affect all matchups equally, but the potential is solid.
Mundane Razor – 2/5
Removing a persisting effect is pretty cool, but it’s very situational and the attack is mediocre otherwise.
Ravening Stone – 1/5
There’s not enough going on with Hunger to really make use of this. Maybe you have some synergy with Macabre Feast or Ferocious Resistance, but overall it’s not worth the slot.
Rod of the Archmage – 2/5
If you’re doing a magic-heavy build, this is another way to get Primacy off of chip damage or sustained attacks. It’s kind of like a Trophy Belt for Wizards, but only once per turn? Kinda? More Glory is always good, but I’m not sure this is super worthwhile.
Scavenged Armor – 4.5/5
Great Fortitude, for Aggro. Most of the time with Aggro you’re charging forwards anyways, so Great Fortitude with an upside is solid. There may be games where you can’t play this, but if you’re looking for more Wounds, this is a solid bet.
Soultooth Javelin – 3/5
I would rate this higher if it wasn’t a one-off. It’s very solid at sniping off 2 Wound chumps holding objectives, or getting that chip damage on 2 Shield enemies, but there are better Weapon options out there.
Terror Shield – 2/5
50/50 to gain an extra Defence during an enemy’s Charge action. That’s… fine? It’s pretty ok for a hard defensive build, but there are likely many better options.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this set isn’t particularly amazing as far as Universals go. There are a couple solid inclusions, but nothing game changing or anything like that. And that’s, well, probably good for the game, but I’m not chomping at the bit to include any of these cards right away for excitement.
Except Beast Trail. Expect that to be in a loooot of decks.
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