Warhammer Underworlds: ‘Harrowdeep’ Adds New Rules & More To The Game
Games Workshop has some previews of the new rules that Harrowdeep is adding to Warhammer Underworlds. Come see what’s new!
The Harrowdeep is coming soon to Warhammer Underworlds and it’s looking to shake things up a bit. Not only are we going to get new Warbands in the box (along with many more to come), we’re also getting some new gaming boards with new rules, a bunch of cards, and some new effects that impact your game play. This new starter is looking pretty exciting in terms of keeping things interesting and accessible as well.
So let’s get into some of the mechanics and rules getting introduced into the game. Starting with…
Gloom
“The Realm of Shadow will affect how games are played. For instance, the mists and murk of Harrowdeep are reflected by new gloom tokens. If one of your fighters stands on one of these tokens, they are enveloped by the darkness and can count double support rolls as a success on their defence dice. “
It’s also worth noting at all the features tokens in Harrowdeep start off as gloom hex tokens as well. So will have lots of opportunities to take advantage of this new style of cover. Another new mechanic is that you can flip the Gloom tokens over in your Power Step to convert them into objective tokens or back to gloom. Neat!
New Grand Alliance Cards
“Alongside the universal and warband-specific cards that you know and love, Harrowdeep introduces new objectives, ploys, spells, and upgrades that are specific to each of the four Grand Alliances. Only warbands which belong to a particular Grand Alliance can use these cards in their decks. “
The concept of unique Grand Alliance cards should also help to diversify the warbands even further. It’s going to be interesting to see what strategies come out of the deck building now that the card pools are getting some granularity based on Grand Alliance. This is a clever way to increase and restrict the card pool for warbands as the same time. Let’s just hope they got the mix right. On the plus side, if GW does have some outliers, they aren’t afraid to put cards on the banned/restricted list for Warhammer Underworlds!
New Keywords
“Harrowdeep introduces a number of new keywords – some just make gameplay clearer, while others add new tactical options.”
Anytime games make an attempt to help clarify and clean-up their rules, I’m for that. These new keywords do just that in a good ways. I’m glad to see the new keywords and I’m also glad they clarified exactly what they mean, too. Good move on GW’s part here.
New Illusion Upgrades
“As any Warhammer Underworlds player knows, upgrades are often the margin between victory and defeat. However, in Harrowdeep not everything is as it seems. The new Illusion upgrades might not cost any glory when you apply them, but if your fighter takes any damage they lose the upgrade. How will you balance that risk/reward?”
This is another interesting mechanic. It reminds of “Glass weapons” from other games. These items are typically above average quality and provide solid benefits, the trade off is that they typically break easier. These new Illusion Upgrades seem to fit that same build. They don’t cost you any glory (the benefit) and probably on par for similar upgrades. On the other hand, if the fighter takes any damage, these upgrades go away. That’s a big trade to consider!
Rivals Format
Harrowdeep is also introducing another new mechanic for the decks called the Rivals Format. This format includes some pre-made decks and it’s supposed to allow players to get into the game quicker – which sounds like a good thing. it’s also a “new way to play” but that’s all we know for now. We’re just as curious as you are to learn more about this new format for Warhammer Underworlds.
Harrowdeep is coming out later from Games Workshop!
The next season for Underworlds will be here before you know it!
