Review the new warband and rival deck for Warhammer Underworlds!
Welcome to my review of the Warhammer Underworlds Grinkrak’s Looncurse as well as the new Rivals deck Fearsome Fortress! I cover both the new warband as well as all the new faction and universal cards. Check out how the newest Goblin warband and rival deck shape up! Before we go further, thanks goes to Games Workshop for giving these to review for free. As always, I aim to be honest, impartial and constructively critical.
If you want, I’ve done a more in-depth YouTube review which you can watch here:
Miniatures
Grinkrak’s Looncurse are a 7 fighter warband that puts them on the largest size for a warband. This means that they’re a swarm/horde warband that excels at swarming points and objectives on the board. The miniatures come in goblin green plastic, which is a switch from the yellow of Zarbag’s Gitz. Otherwise miniatures go together easily as per their small stature. My favourite is easily the leader. He bleeds classic Night Goblin feels and can be used a such for your respective armies.
Fighter Cards
Grinkrak the Great is your leader. 3 wounds and 2 block with an alright attack. His ability is dub that inspires a friendly fighter after you score a non-quest objective. Not a fan of this but it seems to have this limitation for possibly balance reason. He inspires when 3 or more friendly fighters are inspired which is too high a cost.
Inspired he goes to 3 smash on his attack from 2, meaning inspiring him isn’t that important at least.
Grib is your Squig knight with 4 movement. He has an alright range 2 lance with the Squig horn that gains +1 damage on a charge. He shares a unique inspire condition with the rest of the warband where they can inspire upon completing their own quest objective.
Upon inspiring he goes to movement 5 and 2 dodge, with the lance going to 3 fury and the horn to 3 smash. You want to inspire him ASAP.
Pointy Burk is your general fighter, with a weak attack profile.
Inspiring makes him go to 2 dodge with 2 damage.
Moonface is exactly like Burk. However when he inspires he goes to 3 fury instead of 2 damage.
Skolko and Pronk have a decent range 3 attack action but with movement 2. The attack can only be done once per turn and gains +1 range if they have no move or charge tokens. On a crit it breaks an objective.
Inspiring makes the attack go to 3 fury and they gain 2 defence.
Pokin’ Snark has a rather weak attack that breaks an opponent’s upgrade on a successful crit.
Inspiring makes him increase to movement 4 with an extra attack dice for the spear.
Snorbo has a trumpet with is 3 fury with range 3 and 1 damage as well as stagger.
Inspiring makes the trumpet gain cleave which is weird and funny.
Objectives
Objectives are a mixed bag. Quest objectives can be played in the power step and equipped to a fighter, returning to your hand if a fighter does with one that hasn’t been scored. The rest of the objectives aren’t that great too but aren’t horrible.
Gambits
Gambits are better with some better positional and attack boosting ploys but some confusing ones like healing cards on fighters that generally have 2 to 3 wounds.
Upgrades
Upgrades are where the real power is at. Lots of sources of +1 damage and either +1 wounds or -1 damage. These are what makes the warband viable.
Fearsome Fortress
Fearsome Fortress contains another plot card, meaning it can’t be mixed with other Gnarlwood rival deck cards for Championship. This deck’s theme is to focus around feature tokens within 1 hex of no one’s territory, which is…really weird but unique I guess.
Objectives
Bold Sortie and Earthworks are good objectives but the rest are way too situational for use, even within the rival deck.
Gambits
Gambits share a similar problem with basically only Redeploy and Take Your Positions being the only good cards for this section.
Upgrades
Upgrades fare even worse with only Hardy Scout being good for sue.
Overview
For the overview we have a real mixed-bag. The warband fits the theme of Goblin knights and looks great but really struggles on the table. Poor stats, a weird clash with the leader and quest objectives, along with a mixed-bag of power cards leaves them in a bad spot. Hard to justify taking them over Zarbag’s Gitz.
As for the Fearsome Fortress rival deck, this is sadly a step back into old times. After the 2 great rival decks from the Gnarlwood box, this deck is pretty horrible. While it has a unique theme, it struggles to pull it off reliably and is filled with mostly bad cards with only 2 or 3 standouts. It’s a real shame.
Pros:
- Grinkrak’s Looncurse are very thematic and fit the look of knightly Goblins
- The leader makes himself a great choice for being a leader in your main Goblin army
- Fearsome Fortress has a unique gimmick
Cons:
- The warband struggles due to poor stats and overall poor cards
- Wants to be an aggro team with little damage threats or mobility
- Fearsome Fortress is one of the worst rival decks yet
So, would I recommend Grinkrak’s Looncurse? If you’re playing casually and only in rivals or nemesis format, sure, as you’ll have an okay time with them. I wouldn’t advise them for competitive players unless you really love the faction/warband but then it would be more advisable to play Zarbag’s Gitz instead. As for Fearsome Fortress, no. The Gnarlwood rival decks are much better.
If you want to pick up the Gnarlspirit Pack, you can find them in Warhammer Underworlds Gnarlwood which you can pre-order it directly from the Games Workshop website or use my affiliate link at Element Games to net you a 25% to 15% discount at no additional cost to yourself while helping to support me and my work.
Check out my Discord as well as my Patreon too if you want to give me some more support!
So until next time, once again big thanks to Aman. Even when being stalked by the ravenous Gnarlspirit Pack, remember there is always hope as long as you can roll a crit!
Can You Roll A Crit? 