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. Let’s crack open the Spitewood Expansion Set and check out what is changing with the rules as well as take a look at the brand new board our warbands will be fighting on in the future! 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

Spitewood Contents

The first thing I noticed when cracking open the box was the decision to keep plastic, aside from the models, out of the packaging. This isn’t anything new for GW – I remember calling it out in the Embergard unboxing – but I do appreciate the fact that all of the packaging material in here is easily recyclable. There is a potential downside to not shrink wrapping everything in layers of plastic, however. The paper band that bound one of the Rivals decks had come loose during the shipping process and the entire deck of cards was rattling around at the bottom of the box. They all survived unscathed (or is it unSkaethed?), so it wound up not being an issue in my case. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that some folks receive cards with minor wear, but considering the fact that it’s basically mandatory to use opaque backed sleeves in this game anyway, I think we’ll all survive.

If you’re a weird box hoarder like me, you might also be sad to note this is the same somewhat flimsy cardboard box style that Embergard came in. I have (almost!) all of the old first edition boxes on my shelf and they’re the sturdy type of box that can be reused to haul models or boards around in. Meanwhile, my Spitewood box already has some beat up corners just from shipping (while nestled inside another box with packing padding). I’m sure this is due to a reduced amount of material to make it cheaper to produce and ship and, ultimately, as long as it delivers the contents whole it doesn’t matter.

The sprues for the models are nestled safely in the middle of the box. Mine all arrived without any damage which is always nice to see. It’s doubly impressive considering these are sprues with some considerable height to them. The Kurnoth’s Heralds sprue in particular has a centaur leg that sticks out over half an inch from the plane of the sprue and there are multiple spindly bows, braids, and hoofs poking out but they all survived without any bending or breaks.

My copy of the punch out token sheet was a little banged up in one corner, so one of the double sided guard/stagger tokens has a curled edge. Chances are slim that I’ll ever need all 8 copies of those tokens in a game (and I can almost do a Scrooge McDuck dive into my existing pile of tokens) but it would be unfortunate if the other corner of the board had gotten dinged up because that’s where the treasure tokens are. The treasure tokens themselves are a nice visual departure from Embergard’s. We’re trading out the very definite underground mining motif in Aqshy for some green and blue weird Ghyran stuff – plenty of plants, glowing bugs, and what I can only assume are barrels of Malört. There are also two additional hexes here that are the Aqua Ghyranis Feature Tokens which we’ll talk about in more detail shortly. These are technically double sided in that they have different pictures on each side, but the Spitewood booklet points out they’re functionally the same. The “limpid pool side” is used for the new Spitewood boards while the “lifewater vial side” more closely matches the aesthetics of the Embergard board, complete with chunks of orange emberstone.

Looking at the rest of the contents aside from the models and tokens, it’s clear why Games Workshop has made conscious effort to refer to Spitewood as an Expansion Set and not a replacement for the Embergard Core Box. Embergard has been and will remain the starting point for anyone coming into the game, and nothing makes that more evident than the fact that Spitewood doesn’t even contain a rulebook or any dice. There is a 16-page booklet in Spitewood, but only two of those pages have rules on them. One page is dedicated to explaining how the waystone hexes and Aqua Ghyranis Feature Tokens work (which is duplicated on a warscroll sized reference card also included in the box) and the other rules page is an identical copy of the reference page on the back of the Embergard rules booklet. The rest of this booklet has a few pages of lore, some images of the models, and brief descriptions of the warbands and decks contained within to give people a rough idea of how they function.

Fortunately, the rules remain free online at the Warhammer Community page, so anyone who accidentally picks this up thinking it’s a starting point won’t be completely out of luck… aside from not having any dice. I can already see this being a gotcha that will confuse someone picking this box up, but hopefully between the big “Expansion Set” lettering on all six faces of the box and the fine print on the back stating “Warhammer Underworlds Core Game: Embergard required to play” will save some headaches.

Hexa-gone? No, Hexa-here!

The new hex types–waystone hexes and Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens–were revealed in the teaser article a while back, but as a refresher there are two new types of hexes in Spitewood. There’s even a handy reference card (see above) that you’ll find in your own copy of Spitewood that will probably come in handy for the first few games.

Waystone hexes have a green border and are printed right on the board, much like the stagger and blocked hexes we are accustomed to from Embergard. They confer an attack or save re-roll benefit to any fighters who are standing on them. As we’ll see in a minute, the two sides of the Spitewood board have either two or four waystone hexes. These are going to factor heavily into positioning decisions both during the game and before it even starts while treasure tokens are being placed. If your goal is to hold treasure tokens, it’s going to be much harder if your opponent can park a fighter on one of these fancy hexes to make their drive back attacks more accurate.

The other new hex are Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens. These are feature tokens akin to the double sided treasure/cover tokens and get placed on the board during setup after all the treasures have been placed. There are the normal restrictions on where it can go (not in a starting hex, blocked hex, stagger hex, edge hex, or a hex that already has another token) but the big one is that you have to place your Aqua Ghyranis in your own territory. Being restricted to placing it in your own territory is key because the benefits granted by Aqua Ghyranis only apply if the fighter standing on it is in enemy territory, so you’re going to want to place your token somewhere inconvenient for your opponent to get to. The benefits for holding your opponent’s Aqua Ghyranis in the end phase are substantial – a heal for the fighter standing on it as well as an additional glory point. Looking at my spreadsheet tracking my games for this edition, about half of them have had the final scores for each player within 3 glory of the other. Having a potential 3 glory sitting on the board waiting for you to pounce on (and also deny to your opponent) is notable.

Every warband is going to need a plan to protect their own Aqua Ghyranis as well as infiltrate the opponent’s. It’s a pretty cold take, but I predict that push effects which can hit the enemy are going to raise tremendously in value, so staples like Confusion and Lure of Battle will become even more important to draw during games.

A Strange New Land

I know there are people in the community who have been frothing at the mouth for Chaos Dwarves, but having new options for the playing field has to be my most anticipated addition to the game from this release. The Embergard board has performed perfectly fine, but the variety that another board offers is lovely.

It’s worth noting that the Spitewood box doesn’t have any indication of how or when you pick which board to use. I assume we’ll be getting an update to the Tournament Companion and Organized Play documents any day now, but my completely unsubstantiated guess is that the player who wins the roll off and determines territories will also be picking which board to use at that time. It seems like the Spitewood boards aren’t fully replacing the Embergard boards considering the Aqua Ghyranis tokens have an opposite face that’s intentionally designed to match the Embergard boards. This also means that we’re likely to use these new feature tokens even on the old boards, so despite them having been kicking around for about a year at this point, games will be shaken up a little bit when playing on them.

Another minor bit of disappointment from me is that these boards continue to not have names in the rules, so there’s no definitive way for players to refer to them. Different communities tried coming up with names for the Embergard boards (myself included) but nothing really stuck. Most of the time I just call them “the one with blocked hexes” and “the one without blocked hexes” which isn’t catchy but gets the point across. Luckily, these two Spitewood boards have an obvious difference between them and that’s how I’ll be referring to them in the meantime. We have the Brown Board and the Green Board!

The green board had already been revealed in full with some of the promotional material, but the brown side had been partially obscured until now. Feast your eyes upon the seasonally-appropriate spooky battlefield.

I’ll do a deeper dive on the boards later on similar to what I’ve done in The Boards of Embergard and the Turn Zero series, but here are a few surface level observations that I think are interesting.

Green Board

The only board option with a single stagger hex, this board will shake things up for decks that packed cards which rely on them. There are fewer options for Tunnelling Terror or Violent Blast, but since the stagger hex is dead center of the board those cards could be more relevant as the game plays out.

This side also has the most waystone hexes at four. They’re spread out among the corners of the board, meaning it’s pretty unlikely that a brawl can occur and not have someone benefiting from rerolls.

One of the stand out difference with this board over any of the others in the game so far is that there are two starting hexes that, if the board is oriented in the nines layout (so that there are nine hexes in neutral territory as opposed to five), each player will have a starting hex that is adjacent to the other player’s starting hex. Range 1 melee fighters can come out swinging without having to move which can either be great or terrible depending on your strategy.

Brown Board

This board has a more familiar split with four special hexes, one in each quadrant. The first thing that stood out to me is that each of the waystone hexes is adjacent to three starting hexes – these waystones are going to be prime charge destinations for aggressive warbands. Imagine being able to charge into the enemy, getting a reroll on your attack and save when they try to fight back, and potentially having three juicy targets to pick from. Each of the waystones is within four hexes of a starting hex on the other side when the board is oriented in fives, or shorter if there’s not an enemy fighter body blocking the path.

As far as starting hexes go, each quadrant has a pair that start adjacent which can be pretty beneficial for some warbands and decks. This is also the first board that doesn’t have any starting hexes on the edge. Perhaps not super relevant, but it does mean there’s no chance for any fighters to start on the far back line.

I also can’t stop seeing an infernal Cookie Monster in the bottom right stagger hex. Am I crazy? Is this a result of me writing this article while on cold medicine?

That’s the overview of what is in the Spitewood Expansion Set. If you’re still eager for more details about the contents or the other releases coming out at the same time, dive into the rest of the Goonhammer coverage of the Spitewood releases!

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