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. This article is going to cover the Place Treasure Tokens step – perhaps the most impactful part of shaping the battlefield for the game.

Muster Warbands & Draw Starting Hands
Determine Territories
Place Treasure Tokens
Deploy Fighters

The Spring 2025 rules update made a small tweak in how players place the treasure tokens, but it has had an outsized impact on what is being brought to competitive events. Is the treasure holding strategy dead in the water as some theorize? Let’s try to find out.

I want to be upfront and state that treasure placement is a tactically deep topic and I’m only going to scratch the surface. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants from the previous edition, some of which wrote dissertation-level guides on optimizing token placement. Places like Steel City Underworlds, the absolute masterpiece series from Monkey’s Hex, and Leathanam’s guest article at Spent Glory are things I personally have had bookmarked and read multiple times. The rules have changed, but you can still glean insight from reading through these when you have time. These were some of my favorite deep dives of the game to read back then, and since there has been a hole in this topic for the current edition I decided to stick my under-qualified nose in and take a shot.

Much of what I go into here will be specifically considering certain decks and how to place tokens to maximize scoring when playing as those decks and how to try and counter your opponent when playing against them. I feel like the current structure of objectives leans heavily into needing feature tokens in specific territories in order to score. Previously, it was more open – just holding a token anywhere was what mattered. It meant you could do incredibly strong plays like deltas or triangles (read the Monkey’s Hex articles if you want to know what those are) but it seems like those aren’t as generally as useful currently. Maybe with some new decks, things will change, but for now I’m going to talk about specific objectives in certain decks.

A Token Change

As a brief refresher, the way treasure token placement works now is as follows: After the winner of the roll-off chooses how they want to orient the board, the player who did not orient the board gets three treasure tokens. The player who did orient the board gets two treasure tokens. Placement alternates, starting with the player who has three tokens.

• Tokens cannot go in starting hexes, blocked hexes, stagger hexes, edge hexes, or within two hexes of another feature token.
• The second token must go in neutral territory.
• If it’s otherwise impossible to place a token, it can go in an edge hex.
• After 5 feature tokens have been placed, there must be a minimum of one feature token in each player’s territory.

The change here is that prior to this rules update, the first player was the one restricted to neutral territory. Now it’s the second player to place tokens who must place their first token into neutral territory. This also means the second player is substantially more constrained than the first. Not only do they only have two tokens, but one of those is locked to a very narrow range of board and part of that narrow range may already be zoned out from the first player’s token placement. Additionally, the first player has complete free range – since the first token doesn’t have to go in neutral anymore, there will be no treasure already down to block placement, so every single legal hex is available.

So what does this mean?

If either player cares about treasure token placement, the results of the first roll-off are going to be of tremendous import to their gameplan. If they “win” the roll-off for boards, that means they are stuck with only two tokens – one of which has a severe placement restriction on it. If they “lose” that roll-off, they have the majority of the tokens and also the most freedom in where they can go. It is trivially easy for the player with three tokens to place them in a way that forces three tokens into one of the players’ territories, leaving only one for neutral territory and the other player’s territory. This means that hold treasure strategies are much more variable; a player going that route needs to plan for the possibility of having three treasure tokens in their territory or only a single treasure token. No longer are you able to guarantee two treasure tokens in any particular territory regardless of who places first. The Take and Hold playstyle was traditionally a reliable plan that could score without relying heavily on dice now hinges precipitously on the result of the very first roll of the game.

[Update: The original diagram was wrong and has been corrected.] Here’s a quick diagram to show how the player who receives three tokens can force a situation where there are three in one player’s territory and only one token in neutral and the other player’s territory. The first token goes into whichever territory you want to stack them in while blocking off one side of neutral territory. The other player must place their first token into neutral, but you have greatly restricted where they can go so it’s barely a choice. You place your second in the same territory as before, but ensure that it’s leaving room for a third to be placed. Your opponent’s last token can go anywhere — if it goes into the hole you left in the stacked side, that’s fine. If it goes into the empty territory, then you just place your last one in the stacked territory. Ta-da, a 3/1/1 split.

One Fighter’s Trash Is Another Fighter’s Treasure

Who even cares about the tokens on the board? It’s not uncommon for one (or both!) sides of the game to just rush through the placement step because neither of their game plans really care about the tokens. Many aggro mirrors, for instance, would only care about a treasure for the purposes of being a potential tiebreaker at the very end of the game. However, many other decks are going to rely on feature tokens for their scoring in one form or another and a variety of warbands have mechanics that interact with feature tokens. Some decks and warbands are going to inherently care more about where the tokens are than others. I’ve broken the decks up into three categories based on how important feature tokens are to their usual method of play.

Heavy focus on feature tokens: Emberstone Sentinels, Pillage and Plunder
Some focus on feature tokens: Countdown to Cataclysm, Edge of the Knife, Realmstone Raiders
Minimal or no focus on feature tokens: Blazing Assault, Wrack and Ruin, Reckless Fury, Raging Slayers

If you are bringing one of these feature token-focused decks, this shouldn’t come as a shock to you. This list really just serves to assist in making a snap judgment when sitting down across from your opponent after they reveal their deck(s) to you. Are you going to be able to place your tokens in a way to hinder them while not disrupting your own scoring? Keep in mind that in Nemesis, the values here can shift a little bit – it’s possible for a Blazing Assault / Countdown to Cataclysm deck to not take any CtC objectives which care about the tokens at all, while an Emberstone Sentinels / Countdown to Cataclysm deck could take most of those objectives.

The focus of this article will be on decks in the first two categories and what you will want to keep in mind when playing as or against those decks. Playing to your objectives is how you win this game, so keeping them in mind while figuring out where you want to place your tokens is key. I won’t reinvent the wheel of considering objective counterplay in Warhammer Underworlds (mostly because I’ve already done that once, even if it needs an update soon), but I will also briefly touch on what objectives can be made more difficult for your opponent to score just from some mindful token placement.

Emberstone Sentinels

The first and only official Take and Hold deck as of now (GW, please, we’re begging you for another Take and Hold deck), Emberstone Sentinels unsurprisingly has a lot of focus on treasures. The following objectives are ones that I think are important to keep in mind when placing tokens at the start of the game when playing as or against Emberstone Sentinels.

Playing as Emberstone Sentinels:

Aggressive Defender, Sally Forth: The ideal situation for scoring both of these surge objectives for an Emberstone player is for there to be a treasure token adjacent to an enemy starting hex, the opponent places one of their fighters there, then the Emberstone player charges in before that fighter is moved. If you are playing these objectives, placing a treasure in a good landing position will help score them – ideally you’d place a token touching two different starting hexes that your opponent will be tempted to put models in. It’s also important to ensure that the landing zones you’re creating are within charge range of one of your fighters from the get-go.

Slow Advance: Since this requires holding any in neutral and enemy territory, having more tokens to choose from will make it easier to score because that’s more potential places that your opponent has to try and prevent you from standing on. If you are placing the first token, it would be beneficial to put it right over the line into enemy territory – this gives you a nice, easy to reach point that will also help with other scoring. If you are placing the second token, you’re in worse shape if your opponent is savvy to your plan. Good luck!

Iron Grasp: Contrary to Slow Advance’s “hold any,” this is a “hold all,” so having fewer tokens in one of the territories will make it a little easier. However, it’s pretty trivial to delve away one of the treasures in your territory if you wind up with two. If you’re taking both Iron Grasp and Slow Advance, having a single treasure in your territory and two in each of the others (with the enemy ones right across the line) feels ideal.

Supremacy: Since this objective isn’t particular about where the treasures are, you have some flexibility here. It’s safest if you’re just going to stand on two treasures deep in the back lines of your territory, but that does pull against some of the other objectives in this deck which want you to invade your opponent’s territory. Fortunately (…?) this card is restricted, so if you’re playing Nemesis and don’t take it, you won’t have that push-and-pull (but you also miss out on a huge 3 glory bomb so maybe don’t do that).

Playing against Emberstone Sentinels:

Aggressive Defender, Sally Forth: Avoid placing a treasure token adjacent to one of the starting hexes that you plan to put a fighter into. That will cause these two objectives to be either more difficult or impossible for the opponent to score on their first activation. You can simply out range them by placing the tokens outside of the movement value of enemy fighters even if the tokens wind up adjacent to your starting hexes, but be wary of cards like Sidestep or The Extra Mile that can extend the range their fighters can go. Denying these surges become much more challenging if their fighters have ranged attack options. If your warband has fewer than seven fighters and thus won’t take up all the starting hexes in your territory, you can also deny by not deploying near the tokens your opponent places.

Slow Advance: You want to avoid giving your opponent a treasure within easy reach on your side of the board. If they have to go out of their way to stand on any of the ones in your territory, this becomes much harder for them to score. It’s going to be either fairly doable (if you have 3 tokens) or flat out impossible to deny (if you have 2 tokens). If your opponent has three tokens and places first, they can just put it wherever they want. If on the other hand, you get to place first you could do something like this example where you place the first token either in neutral or on the edge of neutral in their territory to block off a good chunk of the middle of the board (#1 in image, your territory is in the bottom). Then, after they place your required treasure (#2 in the image) in neutral, you can place the next (#3 in image) in a way that blocks off even more of the front lines of your territory and neutral territory – reducing the number of potential treasures in neutral to only one.

Iron Grasp: Do your best to zone out the treasure placement in your territory to keep them in as awkward of places as possible. Placing some in neutral gives you a bubble of two hexes stretching into your territory that can’t have any further treasures placed, and then by placing deep in your territory you can have a four hex dead zone between them.

Supremacy: As mentioned above, this objective wants treasures in the opposite places as some of the previously discussed objectives. It’s not really feasible to try and place tokens with the intent to deny Supremacy, so I will be focusing on trying to play around the others.

Pillage and Plunder

While this deck doesn’t want the player to hold treasures, it is very concerned with getting onto them and delving. In a way, it’s like holding treasures but you don’t have to stay on them after doing your delve which makes it more resilient to disruption. Additionally, most of the objectives don’t care which territory the tokens are being delved are located in. There’s a reason Pillage and Plunder shows up constantly.

Playing as Pillage and Plunder:

Claim the Prize: Scoring the baseline version of this card will require delving in enemy territory, so much like the surges in Emberstone Sentinel, you’ll want to try and set up a treasure token right across the neutral territory line to land on. There is more flexibility depending on how fast your warband is and how far up your starting hexes are, but the ideal setup would be something that allows a fighter to hustle up to it on the first turn and delve it away. If you are placing the first token, it’s sometimes possible to have two landing zones in enemy territory so the opponent can’t easily block if they get first turn. It also helps with…

Desolate Homeland: This commonly taken objective will automatically score if you only have one objective in your territory. That’s pretty great, and getting glory for doing literally nothing is a nice bonus. An example of forcing this situation can be seen in the following example where you have the top half of the board. If you have the first token, place it in neutral territory (#1), your second in enemy territory (#3), and your third either in enemy territory (if your opponent put one in yours) or in your territory (if your opponent put their last one in their own territory) (#5). The specific places your opponent can place tokens doesn’t matter if you’re just trying to make sure Desolate Homeland can auto score. If you are placing second… sorry. You’re going to need to delve a bunch of your stuff the old fashioned way.

Playing Against Pillage and Plunder:

Claim the Prize: If you have three tokens, take note of the movement speed of your opponent’s fighters and zone out where they can place their one token in your territory. If your first is in neutral and your second is deeper in your territory, you can create a large null zone combining the two neutral tokens (your first and the opponent’s first) and this one (your second). I think it’s possible to deny the move 3 warbands from being able to do this on the first turn with most of the layouts and utilizing your own fighters to body block in their starting hexes. Anyone faster makes it more difficult but you can at least lock them down to a single option – one you could move onto in your first turn if you’re concerned.

Desolate Homeland: If you’re on three tokens, you can drop two (or three) in their territory to make them have to delve more. If you’re on two tokens, you just have to hope they put their first or second one in their territory so you can place your second there. Whether or not this is worth it is going to depend on your own game plan since you’ll be ceding control of a lot of tokens to the player who wants to delve them all away.

Countdown to Cataclysm

Countdown has a small package of objectives that care about treasure tokens, but they’re pretty solid options.

Playing as Countdown to Cataclysm:

Shocking Assault: More treasures in neutral territory simply make this harder to score. The ideal situation would be limiting it to a single treasure in that territory, which can be trivially done if you are placing three tokens with just your first placement. If you are instead placing two of the treasure tokens, you’re once again unable to influence this. Prepare to delve and/or devote more fighters to this surge.

Set Explosives: Conveniently, this objective also rewards you for having a single treasure token in neutral territory. It’s also going to be a easier to score if you only have a single token in your own territory. If you are placing three tokens, you can follow this diagram to start with (assuming your territory is on the left) to force both a single treasure in neutral and a single one in your territory. Just keep dropping further treasures in the opponent’s territory. They’ll either put the single one in your territory or you’ll be forced to for your last token. If you’re on two tokens, this will (surprise) be difficult to control.

Playing against Countdown to Cataclysm:

Shocking Assault: If you have three tokens, then forcing two into neutral territory is just as easy as it is to force only one. Simply place your first token in neutral. Your opponent must place their first in neutral. Ta-da, you’re done. You can even place your first one in a spot that’s adjacent to one of your starting hexes to really add insult to injury.

Set Explosives: A goal to aim for when trying to counter CtC objectives would be one in your territory, two in neutral, and two in enemy. When you have three tokens, you can do this by placing the first in neutral, their first also has to go in neutral, then your second goes into their territory. If their second is placed in your territory, just place your last one in theirs and vice versa.

Edge of the Knife

This barely counts as a “sometimes” treasure deck, but it does have two surges that really compliment the strategy if another feature token focused deck is paired with it in Nemesis.

Playing as Edge of the Knife:

Aggressive Defender, Behind Enemy Lines: The first of these is exactly the same objective as in Emberstone Sentinels while the second is very similar to Sally Forth, so the strategies above also apply here. Behind Enemy Lines is a little more restrictive in that it requires a tempered fighter to be holding (but also more flexible because it can be holding the cover side or the treasure side), so consider how you want to deploy your fighters and make sure a tempered one can reach this objective. If you have three tokens, it’s going to be trivial to set up one or two landing zones. If you only have two tokens… you know the drill by now. Cross your fingers.

Playing against Edge of the Knife:

Aggressive Defender, Behind Enemy Lines: Zoning out easy-to-reach areas with your own token placement (in neutral territory or deeper in your territory) is the plan here. Easiest when you get three tokens and first choice, next to impossible to guarantee if you have two. There’s a pattern emerging here.

Realmstone Raiders

Realmstone Raiders is the newest of the decks that could conceivably be used with a token focused strategy. It has a couple of objectives that work toward this goal, but none of them care specifically about where the tokens are located which makes it less defining for token placement. In Rivals, don’t worry a ton. In Nemesis, focus on the other deck paired with Realmstone Raiders.

Playing as Realmstone Raiders:

Hoarder’s Hovel, Roused Violence: Put the tokens somewhere your fighters can reach them. Since you don’t know the values before they’re placed, do what you can to prevent any from getting really far flung so you can match bounties with treasure values to score Hoarder’s Hovel. Having centrally located tokens also helps you reach them to delve the others away to make Roused Violence scorable even if you’re getting unlucky on raiding.

Playing against Realmstone Raiders:

Hoarder’s Hovel, Roused Violence: If your opponent is pairing Realmstone Raiders with something like Emberstone Sentinels or Pillage and Plunder (which makes you suspect they’re doing the hold plan), you can try to isolate a token or two to make it harder for them to reach for these two objectives. I’d focus primarily on countering their other deck pairing with the token placement and relying on decisions made in-game to counter these two objectives, personally.

Treasures Were Covered In This Feature

This article would be drastically different if the token placement rules had not been changed in the Spring 2025 update. You may have noticed a lot of “if you have three tokens, you have ultimate control” and “good luck if you have two tokens, buddy” and that’s because the player with two tokens just doesn’t have much influence on the layout of the board. I assume this is intended to be a counter balance to orienting the board, but that was kind of already the case when the “winning” player only received two tokens to place instead of three. By also limiting one of these tokens, it’s a weird situation where a player who wants to utilize this strategy is going to be praying that they lose the roll off at the start of the game. Neither player can influence this roll, but it still feels wrong to hope that you lose the first roll of a game just to have a decent chance of your strategy paying off. It is slightly ameliorated in best-of-three or best-of-two formats where each player is guaranteed to have boards once and tokens once (with a potential for another roll off in best-of-three if it reaches the third game), but it still means one of those games will be stacked against the token focused player from the start.

Regardless of how you feel about the recent change, I hope you have been given some food for thought. If you have any insights to token placement, please share them! The Goonhammer Discord has an Underworlds channel, you could drop them in the comments here, or send an email to the address listed below. I’d love to hear from other players on this topic.

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