Sons of Velmorn Spitewood Edition: Generational Trauma Continues
Well, boy, I was excited when I saw this warband was getting redone in this wave of releases. One of the best sets of sculpts in Underworlds, the competitive performance never quite came to match that quality in first edition, so getting a second bite at the apple is a chance for a bit of a boost. As you’ll see in my review here, I’m not entirely convinced that is going to be the result, but let’s dive into the warband and you can draw your own conclusions.
Warscroll: Old Bones, New Rules
After a friendly fighter’s successful attack, the attacker inspires together with any friendly fighter(s) adjacent to the target. Thankfully, this is far easier than it used to be in the first edition, where you needed a critical hit in the attack instead, so you should be inspiring guys more reliably than you once did. Notably, the requirement for other friendlies to be adjacent to the target is a little bit different as well, as this better accounts for scenarios where your opponent might have a card like Brawler which prevents them from being flanked/surrounded that would otherwise have stifled your inspiration in the past. Not the easiest of inspire conditions out there, but certainly not the worst either.
Deadly Command
This is probably the ability I am most upset about in this release cycle. For folks who didn’t play in the first edition, this is functionally similar to how the ability worked when the warband initially released (except previously your leader just counted as “supporting” friendly Grave Guard, both defensively and offensively). Getting flanked on most of your attacks is a pretty good ability, but we’ll see later how heavily it is baked into the warband’s stats. However, the inherent problem that arose in the first edition with this ability (and will likely crop up here too) is that it pretty much forces you to use your leader first every round. This resulted in some extremely clunky play lines and lots of wasted activations. I was optimistic that we had learned from this mistake given that the ability was eventually changed via official errata to start each round with a token. Spoiling ahead, there’s not much in the way of “spending” the counters now, but this is simply repeating a mistake from the past and I believe will lead to the reemergence of those clunky first turns every round if you want to get the most out of the warband, particularly given that their offensive stats (we’ll get to those shortly) are clearly assigned with the command counters factored in. The one upshot here is that any core ability you are able to resolve in a power step will get you a counter as well, making cards like Improvised Attack extremely valuable in situations where your opponent took the first turn in the round, particularly since it can feed more inspirations too.
Rise Again
Rise Again makes a return, but now as a core ability for your leader to raise your Grave Guard fighters. While it does cost a command token to use, the fact that your leader would be resolving a core ability means he can just instantly reclaim one via Deadly Command. The extra clunk, pursuant to my earlier comments, is what happens when you need to resurrect a fighter in the first action step of a round? Oops, you can’t! You have to do something with your leader first to gain a command token, but that something can’t be anything that gives him a charge token, because then you’re not raising anybody this round either (unless you are playing with a card like Scream of Anger). The Grave Guard fighters definitely have some value, but resurrecting them is going to be very costly in terms of action economy, as this is by far the least efficient resurrection mechanic we have seen in the second edition. I would rather this have just be a once-per-game you could use in the power step (independent of charge token status), even if it meant not getting your command token refunded.
Raise Shields!
Raise Shields is a reusable surge ability for your “bulwark” fighters (i.e., any of the ones that are carrying a shield) to gain a guard token after an enemy fighter’s attack any time the Save roll contained a crit, even if the attack succeeded. Cheating ahead a bit again, 3 of your 5 fighters have the bulwark runemark, and two of them actually start on 2 Shields for their Save characteristic (the third also inspires to have 2 Shields). This is actually a pretty nice ability considering there are now some potentially meta-relevant objective cards built around driving fighters back in addition to the importance of feature token control we have seen to-date, which should only grow with the introduction of Aqua Ghyranis tokens. You’ll be relieved to hear I have no complaints on this one.
The Velmorn Curse
Back to complaining, next up we have The Velmorn Curse. Pinging an adjacent enemy fighter after they slay you with an attack is a solid ability. Doing it only with a raised fighter makes it significantly worse. There is already a built-in disincentive for killing raised fighters in that they no longer yield any bounty. Why do we need to add a further disincentive? There are few situations where you very badly need to kill a raised fighter these days and, in the rare case that your opponent really needs to do so, this is a telegraphed warscroll ability, so they’ll know to try and kill you from 2 or more hexes away (if the ping actually matters). The threat of it may do something sometimes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you walk away from a lot of games not having used this ability. The only potential upshot here is that you can use it as many times as you get the opportunity to do so.
Surprise Swiftness
Well, I don’t know how surprising it is as a power step ability visible on the warscroll, but even just a once-per-game +2 Move from Surprise Swiftness is pretty good for a warband locked into 3 Move across the board. Not too much to elaborate on since your objective/board state needs are going to drive exactly what you want to use this extra movement on, but it’s a nice option to keep in your back pocket.
Fighters: Heirs of a Fallen Line
Starting with the leader, as per usual, Morlak sports your average leader profile of 3 Move, 1 Shield, 4 Health, and 2 Bounty when uninspired with a decent attack profile at 1R/2H/2D with critical grievous. In addition to some reasonable base stats, he is probably the easiest fighter to inspire in the warband thanks to the Deadly Command ability, which turns his attack into flat grievous and gives him a critically important extra die on his Save roll. Given how important he is to the core function of the warband, you’ll need to be extremely selective with where and how you use him. I expect your first action step in the game will almost always be to take a Guard or Move action with him to get the command token online, then you do your best not to expose him, at least until he has inspired. It is a clunky and sadly familiar play line, but you’re going to get absolutely steamrolled if you lose him too early in the game.
Jedran is our first bulwark fighter in the warband and is also the bulkiest, with a physical profile of 3 Move, 1 Shield, 5 Health, and 2 Bounty. His weapon is pretty boom-bust at 1R/2S/3D, particularly since he does not have the Grave Guard runemark, meaning he cannot benefit from the accuracy boost bequeathed by Deadly Command. His poor accuracy means that he will be pretty tough to inspire on his own attack, but if you manage to get him there, you are rewarded with an extra die in the Save roll again here. I wish he at least swapped to hammers when inspired, but he can definitely tank some hits in the mid-board if you need him to do so.
All of the Grave Guard fighters have the same physical profiles at 3 Move, 2 Shields, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty. Our first among them is Faulk, who is our second “bulwark” fighter and also sports a 1R/2S/1D with critical grievous weapon profile. Here’s where you really see the baked-in command token in the stats, but even effectively a 1R/2H/1D attack with the potential to do 2 is a pretty below-market attack profile. Those attacks where you don’t get a crit will feel pretty awful, but at least you’ll inspire for a significant boost on your attack profile, going up to 1R/3S/2D while retaining the crit grievous. Once inspired, he is probably the best of the little guys, but they are all good at something different, which I appreciate.
Speaking of, Helmar shares the same uninspired (and uninspiring) weapon profile as Faulk and is our last “bulwark” fighter. However, he similarly gets a pretty significant boost to his weapon when inspired, finishing at 1R/3S/2D with cleave, making him the priority inspiration in matchups where that will have an impact (particularly against some nasty Chaos dwarves). I like how they decided to not have him be strictly better than Faulk this time, they each have a different role to play.
Finishing out the warband, we have Thain, the only of the Grave Guard to hit for base 2 Damage at 1R/2S/2D with crit stagger, leaving him as my primary candidate to be making uninspired attacks to try and get others inspired, since he can at least have a reasonable expectation of dropping a Git or something. I’m kind of surprised that he also gets to be 2 Shields given that his mini is holding a two-handed weapon, but I will absolutely take it. When inspired, he also goes to 1R/3S/2D, upgrading to flat stagger on his weapon. His role seems very focused around setting up the others in the warband for their own inspirations/kills, which is kind of fitting narratively for a youngest brother eager to prove himself.
Verdict: The Line Falters but Endures
Overall, I’ve not really masked my disappointment with the warband. Considering how bad they were on initial release in first edition, I’m pretty concerned to see a lot of similar issues in their second edition version, particularly with the clunk of Deadly Command and Rise Again leading to a lot of tempo attrition throughout the game. That said, there are some reasons for optimism here. The access to 2-Shield Save characteristics and the manageable inspire condition should cut down on some of the casino-y elements the warband used to struggle with, and their inspired stats are generally pretty good (at least, when you can access the flanked from the command token).
As far as Nemesis pairings are concerned, I think there’s quite a bit of inclination to play Emberstone Sentinels with these guys. Supremacy can potentially get a bit dicey with the raised fighter issue, but needing to bin some turns doing less than inspiring things with your leader anyway lends itself well to moving onto treasure tokens. Similarly, CtC offers some passive scoring that can supplement those less-than-optimal on-board actions. It also has Improvised Attack and Countercharge packed in there to give you extra chances to inspire fighters as well. One of Hunting Grounds or Deadly Synergy should also slot in well here, though I don’t know if the combination of both is something I would try for here. Frankly, there’s not too many decks the warband can’t play, my issue is more just finding something they can do better than other warbands. In particular, Blood of the Bull just seems like they do everything this warband can, but better and more efficiently. Short of some significant buffs, I unfortunately think we’re again looking at a warband that struggles to compete at the top of the meta.
That’s all for this one, I really hope someone can crack the code on these guys and push them further than I am currently forecasting. Let me know if you find something interesting with these guys, I really want them to be good, I’m just struggling to see it. Until next time, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
