Welcome to another installment of Starting Hex, a series about Warhammer Underworlds. We have all recently seen the new contents of the massive Spitewood drop so there’s plenty to talk about, but I wanted to focus on something found in both of the new decks as well as some of the older decks – weapon upgrades. We are up to eleven different upgrades which grant new attack profiles to the equipped fighters. They’re a pretty distinct type of upgrade and have a variety of uses, both obvious and potentially a little less so. Grab your sword, axe, and bow! It’s time to look at the weapons of Warhammer Underworlds.

World Class Interlude

Real fast, before we delve into the topic of today’s article, I wanted to do a shout out to the team that’s going to be covering the World Championship of Warhammer (Underworlds) this year. Phil (from What the Hex?!) and Jerod (from Battle Mallet) will be live streaming the Warhammer Underworlds event during the Games Workshop World Championships of Warhammer held in Atlanta from November 6th – November 9th. I’m excited that this event will get covered again this year. If you didn’t tune in at all last year, I strongly encourage you to pop in at some point during the event just to say hi and check out the solid commentary from two players who are quite knowledgeable about the game. Additionally, if you wish to contribute to their travel funds to make it less of a financial burden for them to grab airfare and hotels, you can send whatever you’re comfortable with via Paypal to @TheMortalRealms and include a note saying “This is for Underworlds coverage at WCW!”

Back to talking about weapons!

Familiarize Yourself with the Armory

For the purposes of this article, I’m referring to all the upgrade cards that grant additional attack profiles as weapon upgrades. I don’t think they technically have a name, but this feels pretty intuitive. Once Spitewood becomes available, there will be a total of 11 different weapon upgrades in Underworlds spread out across seven different decks. So far the most a deck has is two, so even if you pick a deck with “a lot” of weapon upgrades you’re not actually getting a ton. In Nemesis, the most you could potentially pack into your power deck is four which is a fairly big chunk of your approximately 10 upgrades, though.

Looking at them in roughly release order, we have the following:

Pillage & Plunder

These two weapons have the benefit of both having some extra range on them as well as the potential of both being fairly accurate. They both have a fair bit of utility from that and Burrowing Strike even deals 2 damage which is a nice upgrade for many fighters who only have 1 damage attacks. Due to the gameplan of Pillage & Plunder, Burrowing Strike is often able to pick up that extra attack dice while Excavating Blast’s conditional stagger has rarely come up for me. I’ll be honest, I think I’ve simply forgotten about it in many games.

Countdown to Cataclysm

Another pair of weapons from the original release, Hurled Weapon and Desperate Rage also show up a fair bit in Nemesis decks. Hurled Weapon is a valuable ranged 3 attack that’s occasionally more accurate than its 2 hammers would imply (which is already a baseline of “not too bad”) and Desperate Rage uniquely is the only weapon so far that has a natural 3 damage – that’s a substantial hit and it does come with a downside of hurting your own fighter, but for 1 glory it’s still one heck of a bargain.

Edge of the Knife

This weird weapon has still yet to find its home. In theory, you could put it onto a high health fighter who has taken a lot of damage to have a very accurate attack… but it’s only 2 damage. Most fighters who can take 3-4 damage and still be alive and kicking already come with profiles that are as good as this or better. It’s definitely one of the weakest weapons with the least utility in the game as of now. If anyone’s found a use for Fuelled by Pain, I’d love to hear it – drop a line in the comments or hop into the Goonhammer Discord to tell me.

Realmstone Raiders

Emberstone Edge is a fairly niche weapon. One of the main things that makes it unique is that it’s an Emberstone Upgrade and thus interacts in a special manner with its deck’s plot card. I believe the design is intended so that you have access to a reliably accurate melee attack once you pick up the bonus attack dice which will enable future raid triggers. If you’re taking a warband with a few low accuracy fighters in the Realmstone Raiders deck, this could come in handy presuming you want to use it to score – damage wise, it’s nothing impressive and it’s also tied for the most expensive weapon upgrade at 2 glory.

Raging Slayers

Angered Swing is another weapon that interacts in a special way with its deck’s plot card. By itself, it’s not too bad in terms of damage or accuracy but once you unlock the full attack dice re-roll through the Raging Slayer’s plot card ability, you can do some fun stuff with it.

Hunting Grounds

Two brand new weapons crop up in the first of the two new decks. Both of these have a little more going on than their earlier compatriots. Crippling Blow has an incredibly unique mechanic attached to it. Throwing out move tokens to enemy fighters regardless of whether the attack hits plays strongly into Hunting Grounds’ theme. Hidden Traps is a highly accurate attack – comparable to the empowered version of Emberstone Edge – and can even serve as a damage upgrade for many weaker fighters in the current feature token dense meta.

Deadly Synergy

The final entries come from the other deck in Spitewood. Coordinated Deathblow ranges from an expensive somewhat-accurate attack for 2 damage to a highly accurate, heavy hitter once the united state is reached from Deadly Synergy’s plot card. Its strength depends heavily on how well you can reach and maintain that state (being adjacent to another friendly fighter) with the deck. Entangling Strike trades out the damage for accuracy. It’s already quite an accurate attack at the baseline, but if the wielder is united then it’s reaching top tier levels of ensuring your attack can hit.

Ideal Weapon Wielders

There’s a bit of a conundrum when it comes to these weapon upgrades. For the most part, weaker fighters in the game are going to benefit the most from having a better attack profile. Consider the weaker petitioners from the Sepulchral Guard, the minions from Spiteclaw’s Swarm, or all the gnoblars from Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers. These fighters have attacks that range from “bad” to “I really hope you’re never in a position to rely on this” (sorry, Bushwakka). The natural downside to giving these fighters a substantial upgrade to their attack profile is probably evident just from looking at their fighter cards. These fighters all tend to have low health and poor save values, meaning if you decide to gift the Rising Petitioner with a Coordinated Deathblow then it’s quite possible you’ll only get one swing with it before the petitioner is reduced to bone dust.

On the other hand, the beefier fighters who can reliably stick around while getting pummeled tend to have better attack profiles to start with. This means the delta between what they have and the weapons you can give them is narrower, or even nonexistent. They don’t even have to be the nearly one-man warbands that Hrothgorn or Mollog are, either. A lot of the three or four fighter warbands already have options similar to the available weapons, so spending one of your 10 upgrade cards for a minor increase isn’t always worth it.

When you put weapons into your deck, you’ll want to ensure that you can make use of them. I like to make sure I have multiple fighters who can take advantage of any particular weapon. It does me no good to include a range 3 weapon upgrade in my Ephilim deck with plans to put it on Apo’trax (since that’s the only model without a range 3 attack) if Apo’trax happens to die early on. Instead, I want to have a few potential fighters ready to pick up whatever weapon I draw to make sure that even in the mid- or late-game I can find a use for it.

Other good options are when you are covering the a weakness that your warband happens to have. If you are taking a warband that’s all or mostly range 1 fighters, those Hurled Weapons and Excavating Blasts can come in handy when they are doubling your threat range or allowing you to safely attack from a treasure or cover token that you don’t want to vacate. Conversely, a ranged heavy warband like Thundrik’s or Ephlilim’s can surely find a use for a 3 damage weapon like Desperate Rage or Coordinated Deathblow since they’re mostly restricted to fairly low damage attacks.

None of this is particularly ground-breaking, but it’s still worth consciously considering if you haven’t already. I also like to put my vague instincts into words because it helps me evaluate whether it’s a good rule of thumb that I’ve internalized or if it is in need of re-evaluation.

When to Draw Your Sword

There’s a concept that I picked up in Magic: the Gathering decades ago where in most cases, the correct play is to wait until the last possible moment to play a card as long as you aren’t sacrificing any benefit from doing so. Playing something early before you can benefit from it is providing information freely to your opponent and putting your resource at risk of being answered. This concept transfers over fairly well to Warhammer Underworlds. Weapon upgrades are inherently offensive cards. None of the current suite of options offer a defensive boost to your fighters. There are nearly no reasons for you to play a weapon upgrade during your power step (aka right after you have taken an action and are going into your opponent’s turn). If you do this, you are giving your opponent multiple pieces of information that they can use to influence their turn – namely you are telling them what one of the cards in your hand was before you immediately gain benefit from it (the weapon you played), you are eliminating what other cards in your hand could be (there are fewer chances that you can play a timely Confusion or Sidestep because that’s one fewer power card in your hand), and you are strongly telegraphing what fighter you plan to attack with in your upcoming turn (the one who just picked up a new weapon).

Information is strength in this game, and giving it away for free is weakening your position for no reason. Don’t do this. For what it’s worth, I still do this from time to time on accident despite having learned this lesson longer ago than some of my readers have probably been alive, so don’t fret if you aren’t perfect.

One way to look at it is to treat your weapon upgrades as if they are a ploy that’s buffing your next attack. Hunting Grounds in particular has a lot of these effects but there are a few warscrolls with abilities that also enhance attacks in the next turn but need to be played in the power step preceding that turn. If you can shift your thinking from “play this upgrade out ASAP” to “treat this upgrade as a one-time benefit for your next turn that sometimes sticks around” then you’ll be withholding that extra bit of information as long as possible while also keeping your options open. Think about how much it’d suck to play out something like Coordinated Deathblow only to have that fighter sniped by a Wings of War charge before they ever get to swing it.

This doesn’t apply only to weapons, either. Play your defensive upgrades in your power step to go into the opponent’s turn with them active. Hold effects like Headlong Charge or Great Speed until the turn before you plan to move the fighter to not telegraph your intention and be able to catch your opponent off guard with a surprise long distance charge.

Versatile Multitools

So the most straightforward way to use a weapon upgrade doesn’t need much explanation. You put it on a fighter, you attack with that fighter, and hopefully you do a better job with the weapon than that fighter would have without it. I trust all of my readers already know this and don’t need it spelled out.

However, weapons have other uses that can warrant them being included in a deck. Here are just a few ways to leverage a weapon to your advantage:

Score objectives: There are quite a objectives in this game that key off of attacks. Some, like Best Foot Forward, want you to make a successful attack so by tooling up a fighter with a more reliable attack you can stack the odds in your favor. Other objectives key off of specific dice results on the attack – you’re more likely to score Critical Effort with Angered Swing (potentially rolling 6 dice) than you are with any fighter’s native attack options. Sometimes just giving a fighter a longer range weapon like Hurled Weapon can allow them to even be able to make an attack in the first place and enable scoring potential you’d otherwise not have. Finally, in some cases for recent objectives like the surges in Hunting Grounds, you want to make attacks that drive the opponent back. You can’t drive back if you outright kill an enemy fighter, so equipping a lower damage but still accurate weapon can give fighters a non-lethal option to ensure objective scoring. I know I’d be willing to “downgrade” the attack of someone like the Wielder of the Blade if it means I can score 3+ glory from various objectives like Pinned!, Hands Off!, or Outmuscle.

Leverage warscroll abilities: Many warscrolls offer unique benefits for their fighters making attacks, but some of them are also transferable to attacks made with weapon upgrades. The new Skittershank’s Clawpack for instance allows all friendly fighters’ melee attacks to apply barb tokens that damage the enemy if they move. This isn’t limited to their fighter card attacks, so you can take one of the two ranged-only fighters in this warband and equip them with an Entangling Strike or Hidden Traps to give them some highly accurate melee attacks to hand out barb tokens. Likewise, all the ways the Skinnerkin can spend haunch tokens to enhance their melee attacks can also work with weapon upgrades – add a re-roll to Coordinated Deathblow or Desperate Rage to get some reliable damage 3 attacks or tack grievous onto Angered Swing for a different route to the same reliable 3 damage. Carefully read your warband’s warscroll abilities to see if you can leverage weapons to help them out.

Apply tokens to the enemy: This one is more limited because currently only Excavating Blast and Crippling Blow do it, but you can equip these weapon upgrades to enable your fighters to apply stagger or move tokens respectively. The stagger token can do normal stagger token things like helping set up your future attacks to be more accurate, but it can also work with the Exiled Dead to juice up your conductive fighters’ damage – and you can start a Danse Dynamic attack option out with it to benefit immediately. Using it against the Blood of the Bull can hamper their ability to generate daemonforge dice as well. The movement token from Crippling Blow can put a real hamper in Reckless Fury’s scoring where so many high value objectives need fighters to have charge tokens; this is much more difficult to pull off when they can’t charge. Or more simply, just use it to prevent charges from any opponent to limit their options in general.

Tempt the opponent: Sometimes you want your opponent to go after a certain fighter. If you have a key fighter that’s going to score you some objectives in the next activation, you can “soft-protect” them by making another target more tempting to go after by giving the bait a weapon upgrade. Sure, you’re potentially throwing away an upgrade before you’ll be able to benefit from it, but if it furthers your plan then it’s worth it in the long run. When your opponent has to choose between two targets and one is menacingly waving around Desperate Rage, that can tip the scales in your favor. Or maybe you want your opponent to “waste” one of their activations by killing a zero bounty fighter on your team. Sometimes this is a little sidekick style fighter that starts at zero bounty, other times it’s a fighter that you have already raised, but often times opponents don’t want to spend one of their 12 precious activations killing a fighter that won’t give them any reward. Suddenly, they are rewarded by getting rid of a weapon upgrade, so that can skew their calculus.

Hopefully you have picked up at least one new way of considering these 11 upgrades. Take note of how their use impacts the games that you play, either as tools in your own tool belt or how your opponent makes the most of them. These guidelines can also come in handy when evaluating new decks that contain weapons.

Equip those fighters and get to playing!

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website, and more.