It’s time for the monthly news April recap!
Welcome to this month in Warhammer Underworlds for April 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 want to watch this in video format instead, check it out below!
Crimson Court Released
April kicked off with a huge Warhammer Underworlds release starting with the Crimson Court. One of the most anticipated warbands, the Crimson Court are an interesting rules-heavy warband that tries to do multiple mechanics within a single team. They seem solid at a glance, but deeper looks will show how they struggle to do anything decently outside of their turtle Hunger control build. Bloodthirsting and focusing on Hunger generation is just easier and builds more glory, while their aggro inspired builds suffer mostly from fighters having only range 1 attacks. 4 wounds apiece across the board is great and the warband is still solid, they will just struggle to deal with the stronger warbands in the game currently.
Their dependence on Hunger brings doubt onto the lifespan of the Crimson Court if Hunger gets no more support after Direchasm and is rotated out but that is something to wait and see. The warband is still amazing to paint and pushes Warhammer Underworlds to the limits of what fighter cards and warbands can do. If you want more of an in-depth look at the Crimson Court, I have multiple reviews and battle reports for you to check out on the blog and my YouTube channel.
Warhammer Underworlds Starter Set and Essential Card Pack
The Warhammer Underworlds Starter Set also dropped for April. This starter set comes with 2 warbands: Drepur’s Wraithcreepers and the Storm of Celestus. It also has no universal cards and has reduced core rules along with 4 reprinted game boards. The reduced rules cut out stuff such as magic, lethal hexes and scatter but still have the core rules needed to play the game.
Drepur’s Wraithcreepers are oddly vulnerable to lethal hexes but have a very easy inspire condition and excel at doing persistent aggro pressure. They need lots of +1 damage cards to get into 4 damage zone but are incredibly accurate as a warband. The Storm of Celestus feel a bit more constrained as their Thunderhead Greatbows can only be fired once per round but they come with more depth and balanced Surge hold objectives.
Overall the Warhammer Underworlds Starter Set is a great purchase for new players. Even veteran players can find usage from the new warbands.
As for the Essential Card Pack, this product brings back 60 universal cards into Warhammer Underworlds. It contains a bunch of useful cards and helps buff hold objective play while also bringing back some aggro staples. It’s also competitively priced at £12.50 whereas Power Unbound was £15 for 60 cards too! It’s a great value and something I highly recommend to new and old players alike.
For more in-depth reviews on each product, I once again have reviews for the Starter Set and Essential Card Pack you can checkout.
Designing Hedkrakka’s Madmob
Warhammer Community dropped another Katophrane Chronicle, this time about the main rules for Hedkrakka’s Madmob. Once again, Dave Sanders drops the knowledge which gives another great insight into their creation. Hedkrakka has an interesting spell attack action which does more damage at range 1, going to 3 damage while inspired. Tireless Trackers is Toofdagga’s ability which lets you push Wollop and Dakko 1 hex towards an enemy leader at the start of the game. Wollop gets +1 damage against 4+ wound fighters with his Big Chompa, effectively making him damage 3 without upgrades when attacking those targets. Dakko has Primal Pace which lets him get you the Primacy token after his move action while holding an objective in enemy territory with no enemy fighters within 2 hexes. Strong and punishes targets who try to hide back against the Madmob.
I love these as seeing developer insights as to why rules have been written the way they are is just great to read. It helps understand the strengths and weakness of the warbands more as well as general design principles.
Mengel Miniatures Warband Showcase
Warcom also showed off Tyler Mengel’s Warhammer Underworlds warband collection. While not a major news item, it is one awesome gallery of painted warbands. Mengel does some amazing painting tutorials which I’ve used myself regularly. It’s just a great look and shows that we can do more than just game with Warhammer Underworlds.
Warhammer Fest 2021
Another short news item but May sees Warhammer Fest 2021 become a week-long online presentation. Thursday is Boxed Games day and, ergo, Warhammer Underworlds day but what will we see? Likely just the reveal of the final Warhammer Underworlds Direchasm warband. WHO COULD IT BE? UNDER THE SEA? DOWN WHERE IT’S WETTER, IT’S ALWAYS BETTERRRR.
Warhammer Underworlds Online News
Warhammer Underworlds Online in April saw the joint release of Drepur’s Wraithcreepers and the Storm of Celestus for the game. This was a great move and it will be interesting to see if future warbands follow suit. The warbands dropped with bugs but were thankfully fixed fairly quickly. While fun and great to play, however, they have kinda warped the balance of the game. This sort of thing is inevitable sadly when you add in a season 4 warband to a mostly season 1 game. The Shadespire universal card interactions just do them no balance favours either. Incredibly fun but just RIP to the older Shadespire warbands.
Warhammer Underworlds Online also completed their first online ranked season! They plan to reset this yearly and you get free DLC progression bonuses based upon where your final placing was and how much you progressed compared to the start of the season. I managed to snag 1st place in the world, again, just before the season ended but there are no rewards for finishing 1st or even in the top 10 for the world. It’s strange but what can you do.
While I love the rewards and reset for rank play, ranked still has the problem of actively discouraging you from playing once you get high-ranked in Exalted levels. The problem is you get anywhere from 1 to lest than a third of a point for winning a game but end up losing 20 to 30 for a single loss. As I’m now currently ranked 1st again, it’s safe just to not play as a single loss can destroy several games of work. This is a criticism many other players have shared with me too. I’d much rather get rid of the Exalted points level and just go with something like platinum tiers which other competitive online games do.
Podcast Corner
For Podcast Corner in April, Path to Glory kicks things off with a deluge of Warhammer Underworlds content! Their first episode is their monthly recap, going over their results in the most recent Warhammer Underworlds webcam tournament as well as the new releases. Their following 5 episodes then cover all the new releases for April.
What the Hex bring their look on the Essential Cards Pack for Warhammer Underworlds, going over their favourites from days past in the Mirrored City.
In a new addition that I only recently found out about, the Burning-Crow Wargamer Podcast have 2 episodes on YouTube dedicated to the new releases and warbands for Warhammer Underworlds.
Finally there is me with Crit ! Cast Episode 10: Warhammer Underworlds Sportsmanship. Me and Rob Howard go over all the general principles and guidelines for sportsmanship, covering what you should do and watch out for. After all, Warhammer Underworlds’ greatest strength is the comradery within the community and this a topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a while to help more people see that we’re friendly despite our desire to win!
Tournaments and Events
Tournaments and events for April kicks off with the Straight Outta Shadespire webcam tournament for Warhammer Underworlds! This 4 round best of 1 tournament was once again Highlander format, for there can be only one. Out of 18 players, Aman fought his way to victory with Skaeth’s Wild Hunt! If you’re interested in seeing how his games went, I have posted one of the streamed games on my YouTube channel.
The April Vassal Clash had 32 players fight it out in best of 3 combat for victory. After 2 days of crit-fuelled combat, Krzysztof claimed victory with his Rippa’s Snarlfangs!
As for the next iterations for both these tournaments, the May webcam tournament is using a custom FAR list whereas the Vassal Clashes are on-hold until Games Workshop update the FAR list. Both actions speak of the long gap we have had in balance updates that Warhammer Underworlds dearly needs. Hopefully it is updated soon otherwise more custom FARs may be the future for the game.
Summary of my March Content
For the summary of my April content I kicked things off with SPACESPIRE! Warhammer 40k in the Underworlds! Next I had the March news recap, and then all my many in-depth product reviews for Warhammer Underworlds. I also had Crit ! Cast Episode 10 drop along with a deluge of YouTube battle reports and Twitch livestreams!
On a side note, I’d like to thank all my fans again. For YouTube, I have hit the 1,000 subscriber mark which now allows me to make community posts and make money off of my YouTube videos. This would not be possible without all your support, so thank you again for helping me bring the high quality Warhammer Underworlds content I always aim to deliver.
Closing Crit
For April we have been swarmed with new Warhammer Underworlds content and warbands. Now we eagerly wait for the double warband drop in May to give us Hedkrakka’s Madmob and Kainan’s Reapers!
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 and the channel 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)!
The Crimson Court stalk the shadows of the Direchasm. Yet they are not alone, being joined by the eternally hunting Drepur’s Wraithcreepers while the noble Storm of Celestus surge forwards to purge the Direchasm of Nagash’s cursed power. This rise in action has not been ignored. Death stirs once again into action along with the primal power of the Orruks. The only thing that will be clear in the future is the power to roll crits!
Can You Roll A Crit? 
I’m new to Underworlds and really enjoyed reading through pretty much your whole back catalogue here.
Have you ever considered writing an article on Underworlds Multiplayer? I’d be interested to know more about it and the thoughts of an experienced player on it as most of my gaming is done with 3-4 people, so the option is very appealing.
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Ah nice dude, hope it’s helping!
Multiplayer is difficult to talk about because it’s so hectic compared to the main game. I’ve only played it like once myself.
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