November news edition!
Welcome to this month in Warhammer Underworlds for November 2020. This is your one stop shop for everything Warhammer Underworlds related and once again there’s been a lot of news for our favourite competitive arena combat game.
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Grand Avatars
As part of the continuing 2020 roadmap for Warhammer Underworlds, the free game mode; Grand Avatars, was released! This new way to play allows people to create their own warbands from the already available Warhammer Underworlds warbands, based around each of the 4 core Grand Alliances (Order, Chaos, Destruction and Death) from Age of Sigmar. Each player also has a Grand Avatar based on their Grand Alliance which gives out varying buffs but also has a health pool, when it reaches zero, you lose.
Grand Avatars is fun and actually pretty balanced. The interesting thing is how GW pointed each fighter which helps keep balance in-check. Still it’s a nice casual game mode and great to see from Games Workshop. More of this please.
If you want to do something pure crazy instead of over powered, here’s my Zarbag’s Monsters: Zarbag, Thrafnir, the Squigs, Bat Squig, Stalasquig and Spiteshroom. 7 fighters and 9 points. Can you inspire? Not really. Can you hold objectives? If you believe hard enough. Will you win? OBVIOUSLY.
Khagra’s Ravagers
During the November Warhammer TV preview, Khagra’s Ravagers were announced! They’re warriors of Archaon from the Slaves to Darkness faction. So basically, StD in my the Direchasm! Anyway, Khagra’s Ravagers will be the 3rd Direchasm warband to be released. We know they contain Khagra – their leader, a chaos female wizard Zashia and then 2 more generic chaos warriors with one bearing a striking resemblance to SLAMBO! Canny people have already noticed that some of the shown off cards talk about desecrate. Desecrate my Direchasm. Okay, I’ll stop now. How will they work? Well only time will tell. Khagra looks like a solid beat-stick with 3 damage base and Zarshia hits on channels but at a cost.
Warhammer Underworlds 2021 Roadmap
One of the biggest pieces of news for November was the announcement of the Warhammer Underworlds 2021 Warband Roadmap. In this it was revealed what warbands are coming in Direchasm. What warbands? Well, their faction images are pretty clear. Still, I can’t confirm anything yet, even if it is very obvious what warbands are coming. January sees Khargra’s Ravegers, February has the Starblood Stalkers, then we have 4 more warbands for the remaining 4 months.
I’m not a fan of monthly singular releases. While it’s great for my content and views, it’s really bad for the consumer and game. We won’t have a stable meta till the end of June. Balancing will be a nightmare with a constantly changing meta. Then there’s the entire risk of consumer burnout with monthly back-to-back releases. Warbands work better in pairs anyway.
Finally, the warcom site talks about monthly articles every first and last Friday of the month featuring a revamped Katophrane Chronicle. It’s interesting to see how this all plays out but it’s awesome to see more detail and planned out content from Games Workshop.
WUO News
Er, there were some patch updates.
Podcast Corner
For podcast corner in November, Path to Glory kick things off with 2 episodes about the cheating from October’s Italian Grand Skirmish and then about Nightvault rotation.
Battle for Salvation’s November episode is all about Arena Mortis and its effect on the game as well as possible events and musings about Direchasm.
Next we have Crit ! Cast episode 5: How to Create Your Own Game Modes for Warhammer Underworlds. In this episode I talk to Derek about how to create your own custom game modes for Warhammer Underworlds, whether they be for single player, multiplayer or whatever else you have in-mind.
Tournaments and Events
November saw the last of the Beastgrave tournaments for Warhammer Underworlds before the Direchasm opens. Firstly we have the November Vassal Clash which saw 54 players duke it out for victory. After a day 2 cut in Grand Clash format, Steffen won with his Wurmspat.
The final webcam tournament for Beastgrave also happened with a total of 16 players and 4 rounds of best of 1 games. In the end, Paul won again but this time using the Grymwatch for his 3rd webcam tournament win.
Finally we have my Underworlds UK Masters 2020! This tournament saw 8 of some of the best competitive UK Warhammer Underworlds players duke it out for the position of Grand Champion! After a tough slog of games, Jay with his Wurmspat narrowly managed to beat out Tommy with his Thorns of the Briar Queen to claim the top spot. I’ll post the final placings after 3 best of 3 rounds but other notable placements include Rob winning most Sporting Player and David for winning Best Painted. Thanks again goes to all the players and everyone who watched, peaking at an awesome 60 peak views. It was tough but fun. I’ll be posting the streamed games up on my YouTube soon so don’t worry if you missed the live Underworlds action.
Summary of my content for November
November was a limited month of content for me as that’s when I managed to get my PC back. Apart from that I mainly posted an article introducing each of the players from the Underworlds UK Masters and episode 5 of Crit ! Cast as well as the This Month in Warhammer Underworlds for September and October. I’m still catching up with my content and December is packed with Direchasm content. Everything should stabilise for me in the new year.
Closing Crit
Once again we have had another loaded month for Warhammer Underworlds. Grand Avatars, MORE Direchasm reveals and tournaments. December will see the Direchasm core set drop containing all the juicy new cards and warbands that it entails.
Before I go please feel free to click my affiliate link to Element Games. Any purchases you make after clicking through the link help support myself to help bring high quality content along with being at no additional cost to you while also granting you a 15 to 25% discount on all things Warhammer Underworlds and hobby related (like the new warbands)!
As we say farewell to Nightvault and look back at the cards rotation will take away from us, don’t forget to keep asking; Can You Roll a Crit?
Can You Roll A Crit? 
Great update. With a new season arriving, would you consider an article or video covering which of the older warbands are still worth buying? My sense is that games workshop are slowly upping the powrt of the newer bands to encourage people to keep buying, but as someone who has been playing less than a year, I don’t have the history with nightvault and shadespire to know which warbands are still worth a look. I do like the look of the slave band gitz warbands! Thanks.
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I could but my getting started buying order article basically covers that. Just always go for the newest and don’t buy anything that is from a rotated season
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