Intro
An exciting time to be an Underworlds player! Not only do we have the brand new Headsman’s Curse and Voidcursed Thralls Rivals Deck being released, but we also have a new Starter Set. For the first time ever, this box returns two familiar faces with the Sepulchral Guard and Farstriders. While I initially expected, at best, that they would update all of the cards to the new format and apply the new keywords to their fighter cards (mayyyybe complete their Rivals decks), the development team actually went a step further and redesigned each warband! While they obviously retain most of their original identity, I was thrilled to see the number of changes they made to modernize and upgrade these warbands and I would love to see them do this more often. For this article, we’ll be focusing on the Sepulchral Guard, reviewing the changes to the fighters, Rivals deck, and overall playability of the warband. In cases where I am covering changes to old cards (like with the fighters), I will just highlight the changes (or lack thereof), I won’t do the whole usual rundown. Let’s jump in!
Fighters
As usual, we’ll start with the leader, The Sepulchral Warden we all know and love. However, it seems he’s remembered his shield this time! Yes, he now defends on 1 Shield instead of 1 Dodge. A minor improvement, but we’ll take buffs where we can get ‘em! Unfortunately, the buff does come with a nerf, as his inspired attack profile dropped from 3H to 2. While you don’t often attack with him anyway, that definitely stings a bit. For inspiration, you previously inspired if you give a fighter a Raise counter after having already given a fighter a Raise counter. There is now a subtle nerf here where you only inspire if two or more friendly fighters have Raise counters or an inspired friendly fighter is given a Raise counter. Assuming this follows the “have to be on the battlefield to count unless otherwise specified” rule, you need the two fighters in the first half to both be surviving, which means your opponent could theoretically disrupt you in situations where they might be able to kill a raised fighter before you are able to raise a second and inspire. That being said, it will be very rare that you run into this issue and you will still largely inspire the second time you raise somebody, just like normal. The biggest change to discuss is that his on-card action to make two move actions with two other friendly fighters no longer requires them not to have a Move/Charge token. This is a significant buff, especially because you can even do it with fighters you’ve already charged. Send in Harvester to scythe, then move him away in the next activation. Spoiling ahead, they’ve also updated the wording on Ancient Commander to match, so that upgrade and this ability are now some of the most consistent action economy in the game. If you want to play HO, it is going to be difficult for your opponent to keep up with how many fighters you are able to scramble onto tokens if you just spam the multi-move action. Despite the slight nerf to his inspiration and losing a die on the inspired attack, I think it’s a buff overall to the leader here on the multi-move alone.
The Prince of Dust saw a good number of buffs, going from 1 Dodge to 1 Shield while jumping up to 2 Damage on the uninspired attack profile. Additionally, he tacks on stagger to his inspired profile. That’s a pretty nice set of little buffs. I think there’s legitimate parity now between him and the Champion in terms of utility.
Speaking of the Champion, he is wholly unchanged! I think this is fine though, he was already quite good and will still be a great offensive piece, especially with that cleave even while uninspired.
Harvester is also unchanged, but they did actually put his brawler keyword on the card, which is nice to not have to reference the errata anymore. Still a great piece and a key part of your offensive pressure, especially when facing off against horde warbands.
They actually named the Petitioners! A very nice touch to differentiate them in name even though the models were already sufficiently distinct. They also received a small buff across the board by bumping up from 1 Dodge to 1 Shield. Unless the erratum takes precedence, they actually gave them their own keyword instead of minion, which does prevent some universal synergies with cards like [
We Stand Together]. They did make up for that with some neat options in the power deck though.
Overall, the changes to the fighters are slight enough that it really doesn’t change the identity of the warband, which I like. I think there were the perfect number of small tweaks here to make the warband more playable without imposing drastic changes.
Objectives
Our first card here is A Challenge Unanswered, which scores 2 glory in the end phase for having more enemy fighters out of action than friendly fighters. It seems like this was probably an evolution of [
More Able Bodies]. With the resurrection tools available, it should be rare that you have more than 2 fighters out of action in an end phase while your leader is alive. While this does mean you’ll have to actively work towards engaging and killing your opponent, there are going to be some situations where this just scores 2 glory for one or two enemy fighters being out of action. With how good some of the other objectives are, this one may not quite make the cut, but it’s still plenty usable.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Sepulchral Guard has surges now?! Thank goodness they redesigned the Rivals deck to be more in line with the current power level, it’ll be great to see the warband have a whole new wave of players picking them up to find they can actually hang again. Anyway, our first surge is Battle Without End, which you’ll remember previously as an end phase card. Now it scores immediately after an activation or power step in which you give a second or subsequent friendly fighter a Raise counter in the same phase. Feeding back some of that kill bounty is a welcome way to catch up without having to do much outside of your normal gameplan. This will likely be tough to score Round 1, especially since you’ll often be going second, meaning you’ll likely have 3 activations to raise 2 fighters while non start out OOA). However, it figures to be pretty doable in the later rounds as long as you keep your leader well-protected and manage your resurrection timings. With [
Partial Resurrection], Restless Dead, and even [
Bonds of Death], you should have some nice options at your disposal to score out-of-sequence too.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Eternal Legions is the “checkers” card for the warband as a 2-glory end phase for having three or more friendly fighters in enemy territory. While the warband is obviously as slow as all get-out, the improvement to the multi-move action could help tremendously here in conjunction with the amount of mobility tech available now. I’m not sure it will generally synergize with the classic HO gameplan these guys still do quite well, but it does open up the potential for a more aggressive Daring Delvers style of build, which is maybe not a way you’d usually expect this warband to play in the past.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Grave Reprisal is another surge (gasp!) for taking an enemy fighter out of action with a friendly fighter’s attack action if that friendly fighter had one or more Raise counters. GW is loving their puns lately! I’m sure Harvester will probably do this most games, but the timings of having a kill surge like this in your hand when it actually happens can be a bit clunky sometimes. It’s perfectly scoreable, but I think there are better kill surges out there, and there are definitely better surges available that don’t require kills.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Invigorated Dead got a very nice face lift! It’s still a 1-glory card, but it can be scored in any end phase for having a number of surviving inspired friendly fighters equal to or greater than the round number. I think there is a bit of concern these days that you might want to just sit back and try and out-passive an opponent’s passive warband (such as Stormcoven), so I worry you may not always get the level of engagement required to score this early. Should be pretty automatic against aggro matchups though, not bad by any means, it’s a decent way to recoup some of that glory you’ve been bleeding a la [
Unsurprising Fate].
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Land of the Dead is a surge scored immediately after an opponent’s activation if you hold two or more objectives and the total value is 6 or greater. This is basically surge [
Stockpile] and, of course, is also basically [
Hidden Purpose], so it’s fantastic! I’m glad they caught that it needed to be scored after an opponent’s activation step to give them some kind of opportunity to respond. Since the general goal with Sepulchral Guard is generally to hold three objectives, this should be pretty easy to accomplish, especially if you decide to go with the Fearsome Fortress + [
Dark Inversion] combo to make sure you get access to the numbers you need.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Lay Claim to It All is clearly an homage to [
Claim the City], which they’ve redesigned into a much more palatable 1-glory [
Dominant Position]. While you’d love to have the 2-glory payoff, holding more should still be easier for this warband than most, I think 1 is a fair payoff.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
March of the Dead got a very nice buff, now only requiring 5 or more friendly fighters to have one or more Move/Charge tokens rather than each fighter in your warband (at least 5). It can now cover for resurrecting fighters without tokens on them and I think it’s actually fairly doable, given the improvements to the Warden’s action and some of the other card support/changes we’ll see in the deck. You’ll run into some trouble scoring this if your opponent manages to divebomb your leader early or has a lot of good scything/attack action economy, but that’s nothing new for experienced SG players anyway. For a pretty reliable and uninteractive 2 glory, I think you’re taking this now.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Retake What is Ours is a slightly worse version of [
Supremacy] that you can score for holding 3 if one or more of those objectives is in enemy or no one’s territory. While you’ll often just pull from the Essentials Pack first, the ability to double up (or even triple up, if you also take [
Forbidden Ground]) could result in an absurdly high glory ceiling. Imagine dropping that fat 9-glory end phase for holding 3 objectives, disgusting. At least it forces you to come forward a bit though and holding 3 is by no means trivial, especially with cards like [
Hidden Lair] floating around.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Skills Unforgotten is relatively unchanged. Kill surge for your leader’s attack action taking an enemy fighter out of action. Meh. You generally don’t want your leader to be in a position where he has to be making attacks and you’d rather spend his activations making multi-moves or resurrecting fighters anyway. I’m passing on this one still.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1
They Keep Coming! is our next card, a surge for giving a friendly fighter a Raise counter while one or more other friendly fighters also have one or more Raise counters. Score 1 glory for playing the game? Yes, please. Might be a little slow to score in Round 1, but it should be pretty much automatic in Rounds 2 or 3 unless your leader has met an unfortunate end. Really good card, and again one that your opponent will have a lot of trouble actively denying.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
For those of us clamoring for a [
Swift Capture] reprint, Undying Watchmen was probably not exactly what we expected. Paying off 2 glory is pretty nutty for this, but it is again wisely balanced by only scoring after your opponent’s activation. The low Move characteristics of the warband will also present an issue for this, but there’s a surprising amount of movement shenanigans in the universal pool right now, even in Nemesis with cards like [
Conqueror’s Circlet]. With the improvement made to the multi-move and those mobility tech cards in mind, I think this seems worth taking as well. Nice that it forces you to go up and interact too, if only we had a universal version for 1 glory…
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Our Favorites
- Mark: Undying Watchmen
- Aman: They Keep Coming!
- Zach: Land of the Dead
Gambits
Bone Shrapnel is unchanged and it’s still fine. The adjacency can be tough to set up and there is more reliably ping in the game these days. Probably passing on this one still.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Ceaseless Attacks is also basically the same, with a slight nerf. You can now only react with this after an activation step rather than after any attack action you make. This means you can’t use it to react during power step attack actions or otherwise, but that is a pretty edge case. Still, getting to make an out-of-sequence attack on demand is very strong, still a super good card.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Inexhaustible Warriors is a much-needed movement buff for +1 Move for the entire round. It’s no [
Eternal Chase], but the difference between 2 and 3 Move is a huge deal, especially when you start trying to score some of the enemy territory stuff. If you run Daring Delvers, you can also stack this with [Conqueror’s Circlet] and it double-dips the benefit just like [
Audacious Move]. Great synergy with the improved multi-move action as well, hard to see ever leaving this at home.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
No End to Our Duty further plays off the multi-move, allowing you to make a move action with a friendly fighter that already has a Move token. The restriction is a bit unfortunate, as it not only means you cannot reposition fighters with 0 tokens, but also stops you from using it on fighters with a Charge token too. Could be some interesting support for a card like [
Tireless Explorer], but even that has you waiting until after an activation to score it. I think if you want some out-of-sequence movement tech, you are probably better off with the cards in Voidcursed Thralls.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Love the art of the skeleton just falling apart on Pitiless Command. A 2-hex [
Sidestep] where the only requirement is that the fighter have a raise counter is pretty solid. It does seem a bit underpowered in Round 1, but it’s a pretty remarkable push in the later rounds, especially considering the poor innate mobility of the warband.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Restless Dead also took a nerf, pretty significantly in this case. It now gives the resurrected fighter a Charge token, so no more charge Harvester, die, res, and do it again the next activation (outside of [Partial Resurrection], of course!). This is a pretty major nerf, but non-action resurrection is still a very powerful effect. The token even makes it synergize a bit better with March of the Dead. I think the warband can afford a bit of a loss here given how many other aspects of it were bolstered with this redesign.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Startling Reformation is a post-resurrection reaction to dump a raised fighter into enemy territory with a Charge token as payment. Hilariously enough, this is not actually a downside if the resurrection came from our previous entry. I think you might consider this one if you are trying for a more “checkers” playstyle, as it again has some synergy with cards like March of the Dead, [
Lengthening Shadows], [
Taking Advantage], etc. However, it does still feel like HO is going to be the primary way to go and I don’t think you can fit this on that build. Even in that scenario, the upside is not tremendously high.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Another card taking a nerf, Terrifying Screams is now [
Hypnotic Buzz] instead of [
Distraction]. Still very solid enemy push tech, but I cannot overstate the value of previously not being range-limited, especially on such a slow warband. It’s still very good in the right spots, but now forces more interaction to benefit from the effect, which you’re not always going to want, which does cut into its effectiveness.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Continuing the nerf train, although this one not quite so severely, The Necromancer Commands is now restricted to only when you have the Warden on the battlefield and he cannot make use of the card himself. I do think this is more thematic and he’s probably not making the majority of your attack actions anyway, so I’m cool with this change. Interestingly, they moved up the reaction step to after the defence roll, presumably to allow you to still chain Ceaseless Attacks afterwards. Nice catch by the design team.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Worthless Chaff is an interesting attempt to make the Petitioners more useful, a bit like what they did with the dogs in Hexbane’s Hunters. Historically, a lot of people would just elect not to resurrect them because of all the glory bleed. Not giving up bounty on an at-risk dongle could be the difference between an opponent deciding to kill your fighter or not, especially since they know the effect will be persisting until the end of the round. Given some of the HO upside of the warband, you can potentially leverage this fact to rip off some surge glory before your opponent decides to react. If you’re playing against this, I think the best play will often just be to break the effect immediately, if possible, unless you know they’ve already cycled their HO surges. Of course, you could also just take the route of ignoring it, depending on the board state, and farm some glory elsewhere, just be aware of the surge and end phase glory those fighters are potentially being used to score.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Our Favorites
- Mark: Inexhaustible Warriors
- Aman: Worthless Chaff
- Zach: No End to Our Duty
Upgrades
Our first upgrade is a new one with A Familiar Face, which makes the equipped Petitioner yield spent bounty rather than unspent. Well, it’s certainly no [
Expendable]… I think sometimes the designers may overestimate the impact of spent vs. unspent bounty. Unless you happen to get this out early in the first round, you’ve not really created much disincentive with this card. Spent glory counts just the same as unspent when you’re tallying the score, and most meta-relevant decks, even in Nemesis, don’t often struggle so hard to score that this will move the needle much anyway in terms of upgrade timings. You’ve also got plenty of other fighters they can go and farm glory from if they really need the unspent bounty. I guess the hope is that they pursue those instead and allow you to hold a critical objective with the equipped fighter, but I feel like that is a pretty telegraphed intention too.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
As I hinted at earlier, Ancient Commander got a nice little buff by being able to work with fighters that have already been given tokens. While it’s not going to be as crazy as something like Varclav’s push action pre-nerfs, the ability to scramble 3 fighters onto feature tokens over and over again can be some insane action economy for a warband that’s built around HO anyway. I particularly like the ability to relocate charged fighters as well, since you can rush in for that Harvester charge while still having the flexibility to scramble him onto a token afterwards. This also mitigates the downside of the Restless Dead charge token to some extent to still get some use out of the fighter. I know it wasn’t necessarily that popular before, but I think it’s worth taking in most decks now, especially with some of the great post-action reactions you could pair with it.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Deathly Charge is largely unchanged (maybe technically slightly nerfed). Working only on the Champion is just such a tough restriction when there are more universal damage upgrades you can take instead. He’s a great fighter, but you might’ve considered this a bit more if it also worked on the Prince of Dust, at least.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1
Frightening Speed got a great buff by being non-fighter restricted! You still probably use it most often on one of the three 3-Wound skellies, but the flexibility to slap in on whichever fighter needs it most at a given time is great. It’s also a super nice combo piece with [Conqueror’s Circlet] on the Warden, if that’s the route you want to go.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Next up is another attempt to make the Petitioners more useful as a Warden + Prince of Dust-restricted upgrade in Legacy of Dust. This creates a 2-hex bubble around the equipped fighter which grants the Petitioners +1 Damage on their Range 1 attacks and lets them count as supporting those fighters (both offensively and defensively). Combining the abilities of Torka, Aemos, and [
Dynamic Enhancer] into one card is pretty neat, even if it is just with your 3 less useful fighters. This basically turns their attacks into 1R/2H/2D, which is really not bad for the dongles on a 7-fighter warband. I didn’t like this card at first, but I think you could definitely consider just plopping the Prince of Dust right in the middle of a 3-objective triangle and supporting your Petitioners as they scramble onto those tokens. It will probably end up getting cut in Championship, but Nemesis offers limited enough options that this could definitely return some value.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
No Vitals grants the equipped fighter -1 Damage from attack actions (no range limit!), with the exception of attacks that have cleave or knockback. I love the design of this card. It’s still a great defensive upgrade to slap on your fighter (probably your leader) while adding a thematic element of just cleaving through or shattering the bones to ignore the effect. Perfectly executed and also one you’ll always want to slot into your deck.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Petitioner’s Oath is basically a Petitioner-only [Bonds of Death] (though ever so slightly not as good, since that card works after any attack, not just those that happen during an activation). If you are going for things like Invigorated Dead or A Challenge Unanswered, keeping the Petitioners alive will be a key part of that gameplan. Still, it does mean that you keep offering them up for additional glory farming, so you definitely need to take something like Worthless Chaff (or the next upgrade) with it. It’s not bad by any means, but I think there’s a bit too much competition in your upgrade slots to fit this card.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Spark of Independence is more Petitioner support, granting the equipped fighter +1 Dice (no range limitation), +1 Wounds, and prevents driveback. Of course, it breaks if the fighter dies, but this is a pretty neat set of bonuses. I could see parking a petitioner on an objective and bombing away with [
Enshrouded Shot], for example. It’s again tough to say you’ll find space to fit this if you think you’re going to be focusing more on beefing up the 3-Wound skellies, but there’s certainly a space in which I could see this providing some value.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
The Warden’s Command is a leader-restricted upgrade which allows you to resurrect two fighters in a single action at the cost of giving your leader a Charge token. This helps you to keep up with your resurrections without needing to burn as many activations doing so. I like the idea of a very HO-centric build doing the Ancient Commander action 3 times then finishing with this action for a very productive round. The token doesn’t feel like much of a downside to me since you still have access to your normal resurrection option in the earlier activations of the round. In fact, there are a lot of times where you don’t end up moving your leader at all, so the token could actually support a March of the Dead score too. You won’t always need to res in bulk like this, but if it saves you even 1 activation over the course of the game to do something else, I think that is great value.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Undying is unchanged and still great! +1 Wounds is always nice and there are a few very solid targets you could pick.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Our Favorites
- Mark: The Warden’s Command
- Aman: Spark of Independence
- Zach: No Vitals
Conclusions
I am super excited to try these guys out again! Just having actual surges in the deck (and some good ones, at that) is such a massive playability improvement. While the objectives do seem to be the strongest aspect of the deck (which is good, given the projected glory bleed) you’ve still got great options in the gambits and upgrades too. I think they did a great job maintaining the identity of the warband while breathing some fresh life into them as well. I also like that they’ve added some more incentive to use and resurrect the Petitioners. I feel like some of this stuff they may secretly have stolen from Wathlab’s revamp of the warband (have you been designing for GW without telling us?!) and that’s fantastic because it’s exactly the kind of design philosophy we love to see in the game. I do wish they were selling the cards separately for those of us who already have the models, boards, etc., but I can understand from a business perspective why they would take this angle. Still, warbands that are underperforming getting a massive face lift like this is exactly the kind of thing we love to see as players. It gives new players an opportunity to acquire previously OOP options while injecting new purpose into the experienced player’s older plastic. I really hope we see this happen regularly going forward.
Until next time, best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
