Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. This time I am talking about what I’m calling the misfit cards of Underworlds. If you want to go for an all out aggro plan, it’s pretty straightforward to pick up any two Strike decks and mash them together. If you want to do some feature token based stuff, you grab Emberstone Sentinels, Countdown to Cataclysm, and/or Pillage and Plunder. Most of the other Rivals decks in the game also have a distinct theme to them and the bulk of the 32 cards in each of these decks are focused on that particular theme (being in a territory, standing near friends, etc.). However, these decks also have a few cards that stand out for doing something a little bit different. Something out of line with what the rest of the deck does. These are the misfit cards of Underworlds.

The Island of Misfit Cards

“Why are you even bothering to talk about these cards, Jake?”

Good question, made up reader. There are a few answers that I’ll give you before going into examples of these cards.

The first reason is that I like exploring individual facets of this game. You just have to go back to the Weapons of Underworlds write up that I did to see evidence of that. I think it’s a fun activity and helps me to get a little more familiar with the decks even if they’re ones that I’ve been playing for about a year now. Examining the game from different angles is one way that I keep it fresh and stay engaged with it, plus it’s just fun to do.

The second reason is that by taking look at the non-obvious themes of a deck, you can come up with some weird pairings for the Nemesis format. I find bizarre and unintuitive combinations exciting to think about. In the Underworlds community, they’ll also pop up and win events more often than you might think. Pairing (the old version of) Mollog with Reckless Fury and Realmstone Raiders is not something I would have come up with, but Andrew did it and won the Tacoma Open. Likewise, I don’t think most people had it on their BINGO cards for Raging Slayers (a deck that bakes in being unable to stand in one spot) to pair with Emberstone Sentinels (a deck that really wants your fighters to stand in certain spots) but G did it and took 4th place at NOVA this year with Knives of the Crone. Proven decks and combinations are good because they’re proven to be reliable, but you can also take people by surprise and discover some hidden gems with some creative thinking. Maybe one particular warband can leverage a card in a deck that most others can’t, making it a useful diamond in the rough.

I think it’s worthwhile to take a look at the following cards and file them away in your mind. It might unlock an oddball Nemesis pairing that could be fun (and maybe even strong). Maybe another format will be introduced – something like the old Championship from first edition or even a fan-made format like cube drafting à la Magic: the Gathering. Being familiar with these often overlooked cards could give you a head start in those situations.

The final (and most important) reason is that I just can’t stop thinking about these two cards from Realmstone Raiders deck: Hoarder’s Hovel and Manipulated Fate. They’re so good in a vacuum! I keep trying to find a way to cram them into a deck but so far I’ve yet to succeed. I don’t even like the Realmstone Raiders deck – I feel like it adds a ton of undesired bookkeeping to the game, but I just can’t stop thinking about these two cards much to the annoyance of anyone who is polite enough to listen to my crackpot ideas.

I’m going to try to avoid cards that are generically useful for any play style. There’s no need to point out that Sidestep is an all-time champion of a card, nor that being able to teleport your fighters around the board can be helpful. If you weren’t already aware, movement and positioning is key to every game of Underworlds and any tools that help with it are to be highly valued, regardless of your play style. There are a few entries on the list that might not feel like a clear misfit but the good news is I can make up my own criteria because I’m the one writing the article. Hell yeah for creative freedom.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the first few decks and pick out the oddballs within them. Today we’ll cover the Strike decks, which are ostensibly about running forward and hitting the enemy warband.

Blazing Assault

The first of the Strike decks released this edition, Blazing Assault is chock full of solid cards and has seen a ton of play since its release in the Embergard box about a year ago. If you want to hit things, Blazing Assault is here for you – the deck has objectives based on hitting enemies and power cards to support that. But what else does it have?

For starters, Blazing Assault currently has what I’d consider the best guard ploy in the game. It has no restrictions – simply pick a fighter and give them a guard token. Other decks can do similar things, but the fighter has to be on a feature token, have a charge token, or be united. Blazing Assault doesn’t care and can plop that defensive boost down to any of your fighters at any point. This is great for plans that focus on being in certain spots – whether it’s in a particular territory or on top of a feature token.

Reckless Fury

Continuing the dive into Strike decks is the second one that was released this edition. Reckless Fury made quite a splash and, as of the time of this article, is still the only deck with any cards that were deemed so powerful that they are banned in Nemesis. There’s a huge emphasis on charge tokens in this deck – nine objectives and about fourteen power cards care about them in some way. However, there are a few cards in here that I don’t often see make it to the table in an aggressive Nemesis build but have cool utility.

This is a great example of a misfit card because in a vacuum, it’s a good surge objective. It just happens to go against the gameplan of the rest of the deck. The ideal strategy for most Reckless Fury games is to charge, charge, and charge some more. Getting two movement tokens onto one of your fighters is pretty rare because it explicitly goes against this gameplan. There are some warbands that can make good use of this and almost freely score it, however – warbands with movement built into their warscrolls like Zarbag’s Gitz, Kainan’s Reapers, Zikkit’s Tunnelpack, and Hexbane’s Hunters are all going to be tossing out move tokens already. Watch out for any decks that come out which include out-of-sequence movement attached to a ploy or for more warbands to join the ranks of the previously listed ones with movement on demand.

Lost Legacy is a weird ploy that could shine if we ever get another upgrade-focused deck like the Malevolent Masks or Rimelocked Relics decks of the previous edition. Decks where the majority of scoring and some utility are baked into upgrades would benefit from being able to rescue an upgrade on the way to your discard pile – and then Lost Legacy is considerate enough to replace itself in your hand with another power card from your deck. Even a deck with a couple potent weapons could lift this up from obscurity into finding a place in a Nemesis pairing – Spiteclaw’s Swarm would love to throw a disposable rat missile equipped with a crazy weapon (knowing Skaven, maybe it’s a literal missile) and then recycle both the minion and the weapon to be reused.

Raging Slayers

If the theme of Reckless Fury was charging, the theme of Raging Slayers is… charging but in an even angrier way. This deck is all about the enrage tokens you can choose to place on your fighters when they charge – multiple objectives want you to have enraged fighters who are in particular territories or doing certain actions. The power cards treat the tokens as resources, with many requiring you to spend an enrage token to trigger whatever ploy or upgrade you’re utilizing at the time or others needing an enraged fighter to work at all.

Given the theme of “always attack and be grumpy while doing so” that the rest of the deck has, Slayer’s Arena is an odd inclusion. This card specifically punishes failed attacks. Sure, the deck that gets a free re-roll baked in is going to be slightly more accurate at attacking, but you know what’s even less likely to miss? Not making an attack. This card would be a potential inclusion for a passive deck that’s focused around standing on treasure tokens or scooting fighters around into various territories because it can punish your opponent for trying to hit you. Highly defensive warbands like Blood of the Bull can make the chance of a free stagger even more likely.

An upgrade that makes a fighter immune to pushes and stagger tokens would be a solid inclusion in most decks… it just feels kind of weird here. The downside for fighters being enraged is that your opponent is able to push them around, even after a failed attack, so this card basically just exists to negate the baked-in weakness of the deck. I won’t say it’s impossible to build a Nemesis deck focused on holding treasures – just check the Knives of the Crone list earlier in this article – but it does mean this card is incredibly niche in its uses. When it does line up, however, this feels like a bargain of an effect for only 1 glory.

Hunting Grounds

One of the two newest decks, Hunting Grounds has a strong theme of being in friendly territory and fighting with your opponent while there. The entire premise of the deck is kind of a misfit if you think of it. It’s a Strike deck, so it needs to engage with the enemy to get anything done. However, it’s all keyed off of being in friendly territory, so you have to wait for them to come to you. The focus on this theme is so strong that there really only one card that stands out for being off-theme.

Balance of Ghyran is one of the few cards in this deck that doesn’t even have the word “territory” in its text box. It’s uniquely suited for warbands with one or more incredibly tough nuts to crack – think Mollog and Blackpowder, or the trio of the Wurmspat. If you plan to score points by parking a big beefy body onto a token somewhere, it’s generally in your opponent’s best interest to try and shift that fighter – typically through attacks and either driving them back or outright killing them. In that case, Balance of Ghyran directly punishes your opponent’s attempt to answer your scoring plan. This upgrade works even better in a Take and Hold strategy than it does in a typical Strike plan since your opponent can’t just run away and ignore your wrecking ball if they want to deny you points.

With the Strike decks all taken care of, let’s look at the other end of the playstyle spectrum. These Mastery decks tend to have clearly defined themes to the point of needing a plot card to lay out additional rules and criteria for all of the deck’s mechanics. There’s also

Pillage and Plunder

This is quite the generalist deck without a key theme aside from “delve a bunch of treasures.” Since it has such a loose theme to begin with, it’s difficult to call out many of the cards in here as being misfits. There’s a reason Pillage & Plunder sees play with so many warbands — it can really do almost anything.

The biggest outcast of the deck would have to be Frenzy of Greed. In any other deck, this would be considered a solid defensive option — being able to turn off cleave, ensnare, and be immune to gaining stagger tokens is something an aggro player would appreciate to keep their fighters hardy, or a hold player would utilize to securely stand on tokens in enemy territory. However, it’s in the deck all about delving. Delving requires the fighter to gain a stagger token. This upgrade locks your fighter out from doing the one thing that Pillage and Plunder wants to do. What an oddball.

Realmstone Raiders

We’re finally getting to the deck that’s responsible for this entire article. I have tried many times to make a Nemesis deck with Realmstone Raiders that focuses on holding treasures, solely due to two of these cards. They’re so good! They’re just not at all what the rest of the deck wants to do, so it’s a stretch to find a home for them.

Roused Violence is a 2-glory end phase objective that’s just begging for a delve heavy gameplan. Sure, you can try to get there “fairly” by just raiding an awful lot during your turns, but the easy method is to just delve away all the treasure tokens. It’s like a mini Strip the Realm, and given how popular that card is in its own home, Roused Violence would likely be played if it just wasn’t burdened with all the raiding baggage that Realmstone Raiders brings along.

Emberstone Sentinels has a set of “Hold Treasure Token X or Y” that are all worth a single glory, and in most warbands Hoarder’s Hovel is a strictly better version of that. Sure, you’ll run into seven fighter warbands where everyone is only a single bounty, but in almost any other case you can have a split of fighters worth 1 and 2 bounty, or 2 and 3 bounty, which makes this a nice juicy chunk of glory that’s not unreasonable to obtain.

The recent deluge of Spitewood releases shows that the design team seemed to have liked the idea of effects that grant pseudo critical results to trigger Stand Fast and Overrun. This was the first showing of such a mechanic, and it’s such a doozy. Being able to reduce damage by 1 and prevent drive back on demand, without telegraphing it to your opponent, is huge. Any hold deck would love to have this tool to protect their fighters and securely hold positions.

Deadly Synergy

One of the two newest decks, Deadly Synergy is intensely focused on your fighters being united (i.e. having a friendly fighter standing next to another friendly fighter). It’s such a prevalent theme that only two cards out of the whole deck feel like they’re even slightly out of place.

Well this one isn’t subtle. Timed Strike is specifically for a non-united fighter, meaning it’s explicitly going against the theme of the deck. It’s a solid ability – most decks have some kind of way to gain a bonus attack dice – but the fact that it’s limited to fighters that aren’t lining up with the rest of the deck makes it feel pretty out of place in the rest of Deadly Synergy. It doesn’t do anything unique like that other entries in this list do, so it’s less of a misfit toy and more of a

I guess you could argue that this is kind of like a push to keep your fighters united, but where it really shines is clearing enemies off of feature tokens and planting yourself on them instead. Emberstone Sentinels or Pillage and Plunder would love to have a tool like this to guarantee* (terms and conditions apply) removal of stubborn enemies from tokens so they can score their objectives. Deadly Synergy does have a few objectives keyed off of drive back, but nothing on par with the previously two mentioned decks.

Alright, that does it for this week. We looked at an even dozen misfit cards that would all be comfortably at home if they were able to move to another deck. Have you seen any of these break out in a game to prove surprisingly useful? Have you been able to build a Nemesis deck that leverages one of the Rivals decks mentioned here to play counter to what it’s stated plan is? Should I finally give up and stop trying to make Take and Hold decks using Realmstone Raiders?

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