Catch the monthly recap of February Warhammer Underworlds news!
Welcome to this month in Warhammer Underworlds for February 2021. This is your one stop shop for everything Warhammer Underworlds related, recapping everything that has happened in the past month and once again there has been a lot of news for our favourite competitive arena combat game.
If you prefer watching in video format, I’ve made a YouTube video on the subject which can be watched here:
Khagra’s Ravagers Released
February, technically, saw the official release of Khagra’s Ravagers! This is our 3rd Direchasm warband and the warband looks overall pretty solid, at least as a new player. I won’t go into too much depth here as my reviews cover that information if needed which you can check out in the episode description below. Desecration wasn’t nearly as game shattering as the Warhammer Community site hinted at, in fact it feels incredibly weak and almost acts as a handicap for the warband. Still, I stand by that they are a great warband for learning the game with and do have lots of character.
Warhammer Community also posted a deep-dive into the Desecration mechanic with the January Kataphrane Chronicle, written by head games designer Dave Sanders. It’s a pretty good thorough look behind how Desecration was developed and evolved. I was honestly surprised to see them so open about it, which is great. These kinds of insights help us understand warbands and choices better. We can clearly see why they toned down Desecration so much as it was better for overall game health.
If you want to see how Khagra’s Ravagers performs in-game, I’ve uploaded 3 battle reports from a best of 3 set I recorded live via webcam on my Twitch stream at twitch.tv/canyourollacrit. These battle reports can be found on my YouTube channel under the Battle Report playlist.
Hedkrakka’s Madmob Revealed
Hinted at on Warhammer Community and then fully revealed during their February live Twitch stream, Hedkrakka’s Madmob will be the 5th Direchasm warband! It is also the 4th 4 fighter warband of the 4th season of Warhammer Underworlds. 4. Their trailer showed off all their fighter cards, revealing that this warband is tied to the Primacy mechanic, for better or for worse.
Image Credit: Warhammer Community
For the fighters Hedkrakka gets +1 damage to his spell attack action for adjacent enemy fighters (gaze into the fist of GORK!), Toofdagga can push up to 2 friendly Hunter fighters at the start of the game except for Hedkrakka (as he is not a Hunter), Wollop Da Skul (on top of his amazing name) gets +1 damage to his Chompa against 4+ wound fighers and Dakko can fire his Stinga Bow for a second time after an activation if he has no move or charge tokens. They’re all pretty nice really, although were still missing their full fighter cards to see what stats they have. Also I pretty much like the models apart from the fact that they all oddly have no toe nails but do have claws and I am just not a fan of Hedkrakka’s mask, it just looks so…flat. He is gripping onto a big snake in one hand though, oh my.
Hedkrakka’s Madmob are due out in May 2021 so were still quite a while away from more greenskins. Some may be disappointed but I’m always happy for more GREEN representation in the Underworlds.
New Starter Set
That same Twitch live stream also announced a new starter set for Warhammer Underworlds. Does it replace the Direchasm starter set? No. It will just…exist alongside main season starter sets. This box comes with only faction cards for the 2 warbands included, which are the Storm of Celestus and Drepur’s Wraithcreepers who are Stormcast and Nighthaunt warbands respectively. These are also not new models as they originally started as easy to build models for Age of Sigmar 2nd edition.
From the image shown we can see that the boards are reprints from Shadespire and Nightvault (Cursed Oubliette and Shyishian Stardial) while all the cards feature brand-new formatting. While the new style of objectives and power cards look nice, I am not a fan of the fighter cards changing so that all the characteristics of a fighter are now above their attack actions.
As for when this will drop, maybe May I guess? In regards to price, based on the cost of Champions of Dreadfane, I expect this to cost £40 to £45 sadly. I’ll be happy if I’m wrong but we can only wait and see. As for whether this product is even needed, I’m not sure really. Only time will tell.
New Warband Teased
February had the 2021 roadmap update again, this time with a spooky change. What does this new warband in May herald? I cannot say. It does look like a massive BONE guy who is cosplaying as some kind of REAPER of souls. A complete mystery. This big boi will be debuting soon after Hedkrakka’s Madmob. Will they be another 4 fighter warband?
WUO News
Stormsire’s Cursebreakers Released
Warhammer Underworlds Online saw the launch for Stormsire’s Cursebreakers. It was an…interesting release shall we say. The warband dropped with a plethora of severe bugs, these were quickly patched out again for the most part but some still persist. I mention this because it did have a big effect on the release with Rastus having the wrong attack actions and spells still not properly triggering partly due to the whole warband being wizards. As for how Stormsire’s Cursebreakers perform in-game, well, they’re fine. Their main weakness is missing all the universal cards they need to function, which is currently a problem the majority of the other warbands face too. Unfortunately, their only successful competitive build revolves around sitting at the back of the board casting spells. It’s a shame but it really is the only way the warband can play reliably to survive matchups against Magore’s Fiends and other aggro warbands.
Also emotes were added too. They’re…something at least. No love heart emoji sadly but you can spam the crit ghost one. Every time you roll a crit. It is the law.
Podcast Corner
For Podcast Corner in February 2021, Path to Glory has their episode of the month focus on their Warhammer Underworlds Alliance format league, their thoughts on how Primacy works and impacts the game overall in addition to their usual podcast coverage.
Battle for Salvation have their February episode dedicated to all things pure and Aelven. They go over Myari’s Purifiers thoroughly with their special guest Steffen.
Finally for February there is me with Crit ! Cast Episode 8: Learning Different Warbands. I’m joined by Warhammer Underworlds veteran Aman as we go over how you can best go about learning to successfully play new and different warbands, covering the many reasons why you should, how to overcome difficulties related to it and how doing this can benefit you overall competitively.
Tournaments and Events
Tournaments for February saw the Straight Outta Shadespire webcam tournament continue with its monthly schedule of 4 best of 1 rounds. The player named Orktim won with his use of Morgok’s Krushas in a group of 19 players. The next tournament is due on the first week of March. As it is the special 13th tournament, Val has all 23 players locked in already as each player has to use a different warband and no duplicates can be taken. If you want to watch the tournament live on Saturday the 6th of March, I’ll be livestreaming the tournament on my Twitch channel at twitch.tv/canyourollacrit.
The 2nd Vassal Skirmish took place in February with 30 players. This best of 1 event saw Jan with his Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers prove triumphant after 7 rounds. Jan was tied for 1st place with Steffen who was using Morgok’s Krushas but won via tiebreakers due to having a better glory differential. For those interested, Jan was running a Feed the Beastgrave deck which is an interesting pick currently due to the mainly aggro meta and subsidence of hold objective play.
Summary of my February Content
February 2021 was actually pretty busy for me. Despite no Starblood Stalkers pre-order for February, I covered the January 2021 news recap, posted episode 8 of Crit ! Cast, wrote my event review of the Underworlds UK Masters 2020 covering who won along with a look at the decklists, published 3 video battle reports for Khagra’s Ravagers and posted my new article series on the Warhammer Underworlds Tier List where I rank all the warbands from S Tier to E Tier for competitive play which I plan to update every quarter.
Closing Crit
February 2021 was an odd month. Khagra’s Ravagers technically dropped and we got a look at more warbands due in May as well as another starter set for Warhammer Underworlds. Online tournaments were still as active as ever, continuing to help keep the game alive. No Starblood Stalkers pre-order as we were all hoping for so we now wait to see when they will drop in March.
Before I go please feel free to click my affiliate link to Element Games here. Any purchases you make after clicking through the link help support myself in order to 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)!
Chaos continues to desecrate the Direchasm. While we wait for the purifying power of the star-born Seraphon, future visions herald warnings of Soulblight vampires and savage Orruks. Even more deathly visions seep evermore. Still, we have one thing to give us hope and keep us safe, the ability to roll a crit!
