Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. I’m approaching Underworlds with a focus on improving gameplay and building communities. We recently had a teaser of some upcoming Warhammer Underworlds releases during the Games Workshop Open in Tacoma and I’m pretty dang excited. Let’s take a look at what was shown, guess about what could be to come, and otherwise just get hyped up about new toy soldiers in the wizard poker board game!

There are two sources that I’ll be referring to for this article. The first is the preview stream that can be found over here on the Warhammer Community page (the Underworlds coverage starts at 01:06:30). The second is the write up on Warhammer Community about the Spitewood (and other) releases that are on the way. Between these, we have some real goodies.

Expand Your Mind

The biggest news here is Spitewood, the first Expansion Set for the Embergard boxed set. “What is an expansion set?” you may ask. Well… we don’t know for sure! This is a new product type of Underworlds so we don’t have anything to go off of historically, but it seems to be something akin to the Embergard boxed set writ smaller. Last year, when Embergard was still being teased, one of the talking points was that the Embergard core box was going to be the starting point for the entire edition and that there would not be a new season starter box every six months. It sounds like even after Spitewood releases, Embergard will still be the default starter box for the game. There is (speculative) evidence that Spitewood is not meant to be an entry point to the game based solely on what is listed as the contents for the game. Taken from the Warhammer Community page:

Designed as an expansion to the Embergard boxed set, Spitewood contains two brand new warbands, two new Rivals decks, a new double-sided board, and a token board that includes new feature tokens representing deposits of Aqua Ghyranis.

Notably missing from this list are dice and a rulebook, both of which are pretty important to have when learning to play the game. Sure, anyone who has been playing Underworlds for an extended amount of time is probably swimming in spare dice (and if not, eBay is full of listings) and the rules are available online, so it’s not a hard no as a starting point, but signs point to it not being the intended place for newcomers to enter the game.

Since we called out what actually does come in the box, let’s take a closer look. Literally.

Here’s our first glimpse at the new board but also teasing images of the fighter cards, warscrolls, and what looks to be a reminder card for how the new hexes/tokens work in Spitewood.

Hex Education

This reminder card is clear enough to be made out if you squint extra hard, so I’ll spare everyone the time and retype it here:

Waystone Hexes
Hexes marked with a green border are Waystone Hexes. Waystone hexes are treated as blocked hexes for the purposes of placing feature tokens.
Each time you make an Attack roll or Save roll for a friendly fighter in a Waystone Hex, you can re-roll 1 dice in that roll.

Aqua Ghyranis Feature Tokens
After treasure tokens have been placed, starting with the player who placed the last feature token, each player places 1 Aqua Ghyranis feature token in an empty hex in friendly territory that is not a starting hex, a blocked hex, a stagger hex, an edge hex, or a hex that already contains a feature token.
In the end phase, after both players have followed the end phase sequence, if a friendly fighter is on the Aqua Ghyranis feature token in enemy territory, heal that fighter and score 1 Glory point.

Well this is neat. I wasn’t playing the previous edition of the game super early on, but my understanding is that there was a period of time in the game’s history where players would place additional lethal or cover hexes on the board in some of the early seasons. I was hoping this would make a return as a way to shake up the battlefield even more considering the comparatively limited board options we have currently. This was before seeing we’d get an entirely new board, so that’s doubly welcome.

Back to the hexes, it appears that the Waystone Hexes are printed on the boards so they’ll be in fixed locations. We only have one full side of the board shown so far and not only is it a lush green which is a welcome change from the dingy caves of Embergard, but it also features a whopping four Waystone Hexes on it. The other (browner, drier looking) side is mostly obscured in the preview image, but it shows a little less than half the board and there’s one Waystone Hex visible. The board layouts have been at least somewhat symmetrical (in as much as having special hexes spread out) so my guess is there will be another Waystone Hex (and stagger hex) on the other half of this brown side of the board.

Re-rolls on both attack and defense are quite valuable – they’re available in upgrade forms that cost one or two glory, and baking in re-rolls on attack is basically the entire draw of the latest Raging Slayers deck (check out our review here if you missed it last weekend). A huge amount of scoring in this game hinges off of landing attacks, whether that’s scoring bounty for slaying enemy fighters or meeting criteria for making successful attacks on objective cards. Being able to reliably hold these hexes will considerably boost your fighters’ power and conversely, also make any of your opponent’s fighters far more problematic.

There’s some interesting push/pull on the value of these hexes. They’re incredibly valuable, but only if you are able to leverage the re-rolls. If you have a fighter standing on a Waystone Hex but they neither have any enemy fighters in range, nor are attacked by the enemy, the hexes functionally won’t do anything. Maybe instead of becoming focal points for conflict on the board, they’ll instead be dead zones where both players try to avoid in order to deny potent bonuses to their opponent? Or a bit of both where players race to secure a kill zone around Waystone Hexes and the other player evacuates to nullify their opponent’s advantages in that area?

The Aqua Ghyranis hexes are also fascinating. They don’t provide any offensive bonus, but rather a defensive one and quite vitally, a scoring one. The heal here is going to be useful, but I imagine it’s going to be the after-thought of these tokens quite often. Currently, games are pretty dang close in terms of scores at the end. Just looking at my last 40 games played, 22 of them ended within a three glory difference, so the impact that these glory points from the Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens promises to be incredibly impactful. Elite aggro has traditionally had a few aspects that favor it compared to horde warbands, but I feel like this might help tip the scales over to the horde style. A player will need to be able to dedicate two fighters to holding these feature tokens if they want the glory, and dedicating 66% of your warband to stand on something doesn’t seem feasible. Having more spare bodies will likely aid in securing this bonus glory.

Speaking of glory, the wording on Aqua Ghyranis hexes is interesting. They’re explicitly called feature tokens in the explanation card shown in the preview image. There are multiple existing objectives and warscroll abilities that key off of holding feature tokens, not necessarily treasure tokens. The introduction of two Aqua Ghyranis feature tokens to the five previously existing treasure/cover feature tokens will give more avenues to score cards like Share the Load and Behind Enemy Lines. It also increases the utility of cards like The Extra Mile or Burrowing Strike. I appreciate a tweak that can have reverberating impacts on existing components which causes at least some amount of reevaluation. It’s not exactly adding new game pieces to the environment which can help keep overall complexity down for onboarding new players, but it does cause enfranchised players to take a second look at previously familiar tools to consider them in a new light.

Between the two new hex types, there are plenty of places on the board to fight over. Previously, the main things really dictating where the action occurred were the treasure tokens, and those weren’t even universally important to all warbands and decks. Now instead of five points of interest, the lush green previewed board will have eleven and the brown, dry side will have nine! That is more hexes than any warband has fighters, so forces are going to be spread thin. Even assuming a case of two warbands who don’t care at all about treasure tokens, there will be four to six tokens for all-out aggro to factor into their gameplay.

Having hexes that reward players so much for holding them will also skew certain aspects of the game. Being on guard prevents drive backs, so a fighter on guard on these new hexes isn’t going anywhere unless they are outright slain. Going on guard will also bolster the holding power of any fighters on these tokens considerably – either the re-roll of the save dice from a Waystone Hex (which has even more successful faces while a fighter is on guard) or the heal from an Aqua Ghyranis hex to restore a fighter who has been a punching bag (or discourage any attacks from the first place, since the opponent may not want to waste their time potentially not slaying the holding fighter). I expect players will be taking the guard action a little more than previously, and it will also further bolster the value of guard ploys in various power decks.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of how these new hexes are going to impact gameplay. I’m eager to get more information about how they’ll be handled so we can all dive deeper into it. Questions linger like, “Will the old board have Aqua Ghyranis tokens placed when used?” or “Is there a back to Aqua Ghyranis tokens so we can delve them?”

Spitewood? More like Spitewood You Like a New Board?

A new board! This is exciting. Not only do we have new hex types and the ability to place additional feature tokens to shape the battlefield, but there are two whole new battlefields to play on. I’m holding out hope that somewhere in the packaging, these two board sides get names so discussion about them can be easier. In the meantime, I’ll probably just continue to refer to them as the “green side” and “brown side” based on the little bit that we’ve been able to see in previews.

The green board has a whopping four Waystone Hexes present as well as a measly single stagger hex in the dead center. Let’s start with the familiar with the stagger hex. Previously, all the boards had two stagger hexes which impacts not only applying stagger to fighters but also the utility of cards like Tunnelling Terror and Violent Blast. The fact that there is only a single stagger on this board will in some ways reduce the utility of these cards, but the fact that it is so centrally located means they might come into play more often. The chances of getting to use Tunnelling Terror to escape a nasty situation are reduced but likewise Violent Blast is probably going to have valid targets in most matches, particularly given how much of neutral territory it takes up.

Looking at the Waystone Hexes on the green board, I noticed they are quite spread out. If fighters concentrate action on and around these hexes, they’re going to be further away from neutral territory as well as being closer to edge hexes. This could make scoring cards like Wrack & Ruin’s Unsafe Grounds easier while at the same time making it less of a conscious sacrifice to play around the same deck’s Stay Close.

The starting hex distribution is, unsurprisingly, different on these boards compared to the ones from Embergard. One of the most notable facts is that there are four pairs of starting hexes, so friendly fighters can start adjacent to another in their warband fairly easily which is good news for some warbands and decks. There is even a pair of starting hexes that allow you and your opponent to have fighters start adjacent to each other when oriented in the 5s direction – in some match-ups, this is going to have a tremendous impact since even range 1 fighters can start smacking each other without having to move.

The Waystone Hexes on the green board all have some number of starting hexes adjacent to them which can make early game aggression quite brutal – the ability to charge a fighter onto a Waystone on turn 1 to grab re-rolls on attacks into fighters who haven’t even activated yet as well as having re-rolls on their save dice when weathering the clap back will hurt. One orientation of the board in particular presents all but one starting hex as being adjacent to these impactful Waystone Hexes, so this could be a useful factor in choosing boards when playing as or against an invasive aggro opponent.

It’s a lot harder to theorize about the brown board, so we won’t spend a lot of time here. My guess is the stagger and Waystone that we can see will be mirrored on the other side of the board that is hidden. This stagger hex layout is similar to what we have on the current boards and the visible Waystone is fairly centrally located, so this feels like a middle ground between our current boards and the new, wild environment of the green board.

Oh Deer, the Chaos Dwarves Are Back!

Woohoo, two new warbands. I know some folks are going nuts for the return of the chaos dwarves (or as they are now known, the Helsmiths of Hashut) in this setting especially after various teasers have been floating around for months. I hope all the fans of giant hats on tiny angry grumps are happy with the Blood of the Bull. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to them because the old aesthetic didn’t really grab me, but I am pleasantly surprised by how the models turned out. They’re not going to rocket into my top 10, but they’re firmly in the middle of the pack in terms of looks for me.

Mechanically, we only have a small blurb in the article to go off of. It sounds like the Blood of the Bull will be joining the ranks of warbands like Zondara’s Gravebreakers and Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz in that they have innate mechanics that incentivize you to delve treasure tokens. The act of delving treasure tokens is said to grant something called daemonforge dice, and the article says these “can be added to Attack and Save rolls” to boost the warband’s power. Squinting at the promotional image makes it look like their warscroll doesn’t have any single use abilities, so I’m assuming these daemonforge dice will be involved in some other abilities as well.

There’s a surprising amount of detail visible on the fighter cards for both warbands in that same image. I’m going off the assumption that they’re accurate, but that’s no guarantee so I’ll only briefly touch on the stats we can see easily. The biggest shocker to me is that the Blood of the Bull seem to be a warband of 3 move fighters. The other dwarves are all stuck on 2 move and man, being on 2 move is painful. Even just a single hex increase makes a tremendous difference and I feel like this will make playing a warband that wants to scurry over to treasure tokens less unpleasant.

Kurnoth’s Heralds are my personal favorites in this box and have me pumped. They have that otherworldly weirdness that I like to see in fey creatures. They’re more interesting to me when we have some twisted creature that feels familiar yet alien at the same time instead of the fairly common “very pretty person with pointy ears” that gets done to death. The glowing belly button piercings are a little strange, sure, but I’m willing to overlook it.

I’m also looking forward to learning more about their gameplay. I tend to favor smaller warbands a and three fighter warband which has been stated to have solid movement and some kind of “redeployment” sound like my jam. In the video, they were stated to play as a “very defensive” warband that focuses on “their own area of the board” (presumably meaning friendly territory). I hope there’s a little more to it than what is revealed in the article, because being immune to flanking while in friendly territory isn’t a terribly flashy ability.

Flipping the image and squinting even more shows that the Kurnothi look to be on 4 move which isn’t as fast as I would have expected. They might also all be getting some kind of antler headbutt type thing because it looks to me like each fighter has a range 1, 4 sword, 1 damage attack with grapple. Interesting. I’m not going to ruin my eyes trying to read these tiny images until we get more details, though.

Warbands aren’t the only new goodies in the Spitewood box, however.

The Rival of My Rival is My… Nemesis?

Two more Rivals decks are also packed in this box. As usual, we know very little about the decks themselves. Presumably this is because they’re not as exciting to preview compared to gorgeous models, so I guess I can’t blame Games Workshop. What we do know are their names and archetypes.

The first is (yet another) strike deck. Hunting Grounds will be the fourth such deck in this edition, proving that arena combat is a bloody pastime after all. The teased info we have on this deck is that it, like the Kurnoth’s Heralds, it supposedly focuses on staying in friendly territory. The vast majority of decks, Strike or otherwise, currently incentivize players to leave their territory – either to be on treasures or make attacks in enemy territory, or to simply be spread out among all three territories. In the previous edition of the game, there were times where an overly passive “sit in my corner and score glory” mode of play was not only viable but preferred because of how safe and reliable it was. I would initially be wary of revisiting this uninteractive play style, but given that this is a strike deck and is presumably going to focus on making attacks and killing fighters, maybe it could work out.

The other deck in the box is Deadly Synergy, a mastery deck that sounds quite strange. All we know is that it cares about “arranging your warband in specific formations” and has an emphasis on flanking. I imagine the formations will be something spelled out on a plot card, which feels safe to say considering this is after all a mastery deck. They can (and usually are) a little weird. Caring about placement and fighter positions probably means it would have tools to aid in that, which has me interested. Extra movement, pushes, and teleports are phenomenally powerful tools to have in a tool kit.

My only disappointment is that we are getting a fourth strike deck before a second take-and-hold deck. The people yearn to stand on tokens, Games Workshop. Give us another treasure token deck, please!

That’s a lot of exciting new stuff and I, like the presenters on the stream, expected that to be it. But nope, Games Workshop is sneaking in just a few more things…

Sweet(er) Sixteen

Good grief, a full sixteen new(ish) warbands are also slated to drop with Spitewood. This release continues the pattern from Embergard’s initial release where there are four boxes, each containing four warbands, that are grouped into the different grand alliances of the Age of Sigmar. These warbands are ones that were released initially in first edition and have since been given a makeover with a new set of rules.

Unlike the first four releases, these warbands have all been present in some way or another in this edition – either as digital only releases (legal in Organized Play with bespoke warscrolls but no way to buy the miniatures from Games Workshop) or as “Legends” style releases (updated fighter cards, but had to use one of the generic warscrolls for their grand alliance, still no way to purchase from Games Workshop). I’m interested to see how much these warbands change from their current iteration to the updated one.

I expect some drastic changes for the warbands who had to use generic warscrolls. Some of these were honestly silly – take a look at Spinefin from Elathain’s Soulraid or the complete absence of the trap from Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers – but they all had little to no of their original flavor come through. That’s not really a surprise and is probably working as intended; their inclusion in the Embergard release was almost surely a stop gap measure for folks to continue using models in their collection, after all.

Perhaps more interesting is how the five digital rules warbands that exist in the current Organized Play environment will handle getting a physical release. The Thricefold Discord, Thorns of the Briar Queen, the Skinnerkin, Mollog’s Mob, and Zarbag’s Gitz are all fully playable now and, in fact, see regular play in many events (well… maybe not Skinnerkin). Will their fighter cards and warscrolls simply be printed in a physical form to be sold alongside their models for the first time? Or will these warbands receive some tweaks and changes before they are remade? The jaded-by-capitalism side of me suspects there will be enough changes made to invalidate the current (free) version of the rules and require buying in to get the new version, but that could just be 2025’s dystopia really getting into my head and bleeding through into the more pleasant realm of Spitewood. It’s a definite “time will tell” deal here and I look forward to finding out.

As for specific warbands, I’m only going to briefly touch on them. Expect more details on these as they become available.

Order will be getting the adventuring party style Xandire’s Truthseekers, the shadowy Shadeborn, the fan favorite lizards of the Starblood Stalkers, and the moist elves with a crab of Elathain’s Soulraid. This is also the only box to have fully new-to-Embergard warbands.

Chaos receives reinforcements with the Clan Eshin of Skittershank’s Clawpack, the menace-of-their-time Gnarlspirit Pack, the returning Thricefold Discord, and the obnoxiously hard to get ahold of Wurmspat. The latter two warbands alone are probably going to cause this box to sell well just for collectors and painters because those are some banger sculpts that don’t really have similar representations in the existing Games Workshop lineup.

Death raises up two returning and two, uh, differently returning warbands. Thorns of the Briar Queen and Skinnerkin are both legal to play now, but the Exiled Dead and Sons of Velmorn are fresh to Embergard. The Sons of Velmorn are also some bonetastic models and I’m glad folks will be able to get their hands on them again.

Finally, Destruction mimics Death in having a 50/50 split. Mollog’s Mob will continue to be around, waving that club and making people scratch their head about Stallagsquig (substantially less now thanks to erratas, though). Zarbag’s Gitz… yeah. They’re back. Excuse me if I don’t jump for joy. Additionally, we will get Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers and Rippa’s Snarlfangs.

If you happen to already have all or most of these warbands like a true sicko (it’s me; I’m a sicko), there will also be a pack of just the cards for these 16 warbands sold as one item. Unless things have changed since the Warbands of Embergard, the Warbands of Spitewood set of cards will be a GW direct product so make sure you chat with your FLGS to see if they are able to order it or not before preorder day comes up. I do hope that one thing has changed since the Warbands of Embergard and that these warscrolls don’t turn out to be slightly different sizes than the ones that come with models… not a huge deal in the end, but weird and kind of annoying.

Prepare for Your Spitewood Vacation

As always, I’ll be here being way too obsessive about any tidbits of news that get released and over analyzing teasers that Games Workshop puts out regarding these upcoming releases. Expect much more to come as we get closer to the release of Spitewood!

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