Intro
Welcome to our review of Ephilim’s Pandemonium! We’re going through all Warbands in the new edition of Warhammer Underworlds, and here we have Tzeentch’s favored team for the first season of Organized Play. Led by the mysterious Ephilim, the Pandemonium is a group of Daemons looking to achieve their master’s enigmatic goals and spread a bit of warpfire to the city of Embergard in the process.
Warscroll
Let’s start by looking at the Warscroll Card for the faction. As usual, this is broken up into a few parts. Let’s start with the Inspire condition. Pretty simple, your Leader (Ephilim) gets Inspired when two Minions are Inspired. How do two Minions get Inspired you may ask? Well, that’s where the first Ability comes in! Honestly you can’t really talk about the Inspire without talking about Glorious Change.
Glorious Change says that after the first Action Step (so after the first player each Round does something), you Inspire one Minion and Stagger one Minion. Notably, these can be the same Minion, if you really want to just Inspire a safe one that isn’t going to be anywhere near the fighting and not Stagger any Minions out front. Or you can Inspire one Minion that is going to do work with their buffed stats and Stagger a poor sap that is going to either do nothing this round or just take a hit like a champ.
So the question comes: Which Minion should you Inspire? What you Inspire and when is going to come down to a lot of factors, including how fast you want to get Ephilim Inspired. And we can’t really answer that question until we talk about the fighter cards and one more Ability, so let’s put a pin in that until the final part of this review.
As a whole, though, Glorious Change and the Inspire condition are pretty nice. Yes, it comes with a Staggering downside (har har), but the Inspiration effects for the team are pretty good, and you have more control over it than most teams in the game. Very cool.
Then we get Power Leech. This is a simple, yet powerful, ability. Card Draw is good, and while you don’t particularly want you Minions to die, they’re going to. There is the point of having to be near your Leader to get the Draw, but honestly I think that’ll be a pretty common occurrence due to the range of the fighters giving you positional advantage. Spoiler Alert: The next Ability also makes this better. Just remember that Power Leech exists, because plenty of times I forget and don’t Draw!
This brings us to our final multiple use Ability, Summoned Abominations. And boy howdy, is it also good. A free Raise! Every Battle Round! Yes, they come back Vulnerable, and they come back in predictable locations, but few factions even get to bring back fighters. Not only is it amazing as you are effectively a 6-8 Fighter Warband instead of a 5 model one (assuming your Leader survives, naturally), but it’s also quite flexible. Raising an Inspired Minion who died can ensure your Leader Inspires next turn. As you Raise after an Action, you can still play Ploys to Push the Raised Minion onto an objective, or next to an opponent, or into a territory of your choice. This ability is amazing and probably Faction defining.
Those are pretty awesome Abilities, but we’re not quite done yet. We still have two more Abilities, though these ones are single-use per game.
Fires of Change is… fine. It’s ok to just be fine after the stuff we’ve talked about. Sometimes this Ability will deal damage. Sometimes it will even deal a good amount of damage! But a lot of times it’ll be hard to use beyond the minimum, and sometimes even that. If your opponent spreads out well, or is just Elite with good positioning, getting to use it will take some doing, but generally you should be able to get one use out of this per game. It’s a “slow” ping that takes time to apply, but more damage is more damage. And if you can get 2 enemies hit with this, it’s great. If you can get 3, you’re a hero!
Shared Mutations is also a ping, really solid to have two on one Warscroll. And Shared Mutations is much, much better. You should be able to relatively easily get 2+ damage off this every time you use it unless you’re in a really bad spot. Move onto enemies, or be on Guard against Range 1 Attacks, or use Pushes to tag multiple opponents, there’s lots of ways to become adjacent to multiple things at once. Now, once you do, you’re really vulnerable as your Fighters are fine but not exactly built to brawl, but if you can spread out damage and then Raise any fighters to die to the counterpunch, you’re in a really good spot. As we will see, this will combo well with how the fighters in this warband operate.
Overview
Phew, finally through that! It’s a pretty hefty Warscroll, but let’s look at it holistically. You have two pings, one better but both fine, a draw on death, and a free Raise. How you Inspire your fighters and which one you Raise will depend a lot on the boardstate, but ultimately you want to make sure you Raise enough Inspired Minions to Inspire Ephilim, you also want to Raise in positions where you can take advantage of your Ranged Attacks and your pings.
But none of this means anything without the Fighter cards, so let’s look at the second part of this warband.
Fighters
Starting with Ephilim, they have a fairly wonderful statline. 4 Health on 2 Dodge is a great place to start, and that is paired with a good Range 1 attack and a reliable Range 3 Ping. Since you should almost always get Inspired on Range 2, it’s worth noting that this Range 3 attack becomes Extremely Reliable with 3 Hammers. They are a really good fighter that is well rounded, but isn’t particularly amazing in any one area.
This is going to be a theme for the team, so I’ll talk about Range 3 now. A lot of these attacks are good Range 3+ attacks, but are only Damage 1. This means the team will lack the explosive damage of certain teams (looking at you, Gorechosen), but will have reliable ways to poke and chip Health while staying safe. This playstyle is… somewhat contentious. It’s good to stay safe, and there’s a number of Objectives that even reward you for simply making attacks and not necessarily getting kills. But in a rushdown matchup where the opponent bears down with good Health and Damage? It can get dicey. Keep that in mind.
Spawnmaw is traditionally the second-in-command when it comes to the Tzeentchian Daemons. She has a pretty mediocre statline of 3 Health and 1 Dodge, with a good but not great melee attack and an unreliable Range 3 shot. But Inspired, she really takes off. Her melee gains Ensnare (very good into certain teams), her shooting gets that all important third dice, and her Save goes to 2 Dodge. I like Inspiring her for the much improved statline, though to be honest it’s still a bit lackluster since her melee doesn’t get any more accurate. Still, it’s a solid jump that makes her a serious threat with a good Save, which is really, really nice for your team.
It’s also worth noting that Spawnmaw is the only other 2 Bounty Fighter other than Ephilim, so perhaps keeping her safe is good, though as with all things, she comes back with 0 Bounty when Raised. So there’s some Glory considerations to think about.
Flamespooler retains the same defenses as Spawnmaw both Inspired and Uninspired, but is a tad slower and lacks the melee attack. In trade, you get a good Range 3 attack to start that goes to Range 4! The Save jump is the best thing about Inspiring here, so I’m not sure the Spooler will often be your first Inspire target, but it’s pretty darn good at proccing Fires of Change, even early on.
Apo’trax rounds out the 3 Health fighters, also going from 1 Dodge to 2. He gets the same melee attack as Spawnmaw, but goes to Cleave instead of Ensnare and lacks Range 3. Apo will be a great Inspire target when up against Block teams, especially with Fly giving somewhat surprising mobility, but less of a priority into Dodge teams or stuff you want to poke at before closing distances.
And the resident lil guy is Kindlefinger. The only 2 Wound fighter, he also starts with 2 Dodge, which is nice on an Uninspired fighter. That side also has a bad melee attack and a pretty ok ranged attack, which I think is enough to keep him around without Inspiring early. Inspiration brings him to a slightly less terrible (but still bad) melee attack and boosts that ranged attack to Range 4, which is cool.
Overview
Ultimately this team lacks a bit of damage. Having the reach with Range 3+ on most fighters is great, but you will often struggle to take down 5 Health or greater enemies unless you really commit your valuable fighters. That said, the stats aren’t terrible, as you have lots of 2 Dodge, lots of Range 3+, two Pings, and that awesome Raise. You’ll need to be patient, make a plan (very Tzeentch-y), and burn your opponent down over time rather than exploding them early like some teams enjoy.
My gut reaction with the team is some blend of Flex and Take & Hold. While they’re not particularly amazing at T&H, ranged attacks mean they can contribute to damage while Holding and the Raise can be used to snag Treasure in a pinch as well. They really want more damage, so I could see using Wrack and Ruin for some more pings and trying to use them to whittle down opponents over time.
So make a plan and beseech the Changer of Ways for blessed luck as you go on your Path to Glory!
