Preamble
Before we get started with this review, I wanted to give a quick summary on how we are “grading” releases in the new edition. I will copy/paste this into all of our articles for this release series for reference, so feel free to skip over this section if you’ve already read it in another post!
With the myriad of items being released as Warhammer Underworlds begins its second edition, we have a lot of changes that have not only affected how we play the game, but also how we write review articles! The most notable thing, as it pertains to warband reviews, is the lack of a faction Rivals deck (which I am a bit sad about). However, these have been replaced by warscrolls instead, which detail the abilities unique to the particular warband you are using. While my card ranking system will be mostly the same for the universal Rivals decks (cards which are duplicated from one deck to another will just receive the copy/paste treatment), warscrolls will receive a similar treatment to fighter cards in that I will simply discuss my feelings on them in text, rather than giving them any kind of numerical grades. Additionally, because almost everything interesting about a warband comes on their warscroll, I’ll be covering that prior to jumping in on the fighters.
Intro
In any case, let’s get into the topic of this article, which is Zikkit’s Tunnelpack, the long-awaited Clan Skryre warband! If you’ve listened to the podcast, you’re probably sick of hearing me wish for a Skryre warband. Thanks to the release of the Tunnelpack, I can finally shut up about that (at least until that itch needs to be skritch-scratched again) and instead get to enjoying these absolute loons. While I do have some apprehension about their warscroll abilities (we’ll get into those shortly), I must once again commend the sculptors on these guys, they look phenomenal. Even if they end up not being the strongest around, you can bet I’ll be playing a good number of games with the warband. Let’s jump (or skitter) in!
Warscroll
Inspire Condition
After an Action step in which a friendly fighter was dealt damage or slain, you get to inspire one other friendly fighter. This certainly has echoes of 1st edition Hexbane’s Hunters and Thricefold Discord inspire mechanics, although the Tunnelpack player is granted a lot more control in this case. Rather than having some intricate web of inspiration, you now have the option to pick that fighter you most want to inspire (I do already have one in mind) and have them come online very early in the game. As we will soon see, the warband does have a few mechanics which can contribute to this inspiration themselves, but the obvious play line here is just to deploy such that your opponent’s early charges will be targeting your more expendable fighters rather than those whom you really want to get going first. For those playing against Tunnelpack, what this means is that you’ll want to prioritize killing their scarier fighters first, leaving only the less threatening ones inspired for later in the game. Easier said than done, given that going after one scary fighter will mean instantly inspiring another one, but knowing what the Tunnelpack player’s desired inspire sequence is should pretty heavily influence your target prioritization in the matchup.
More-More Power!
The primary ability the warband has at its disposal, More-More Power! allows you to, when charged out at the start of your Action step, remove the Move and/or Charge tokens from a friendly fighter. After that Action step, there’s a 50/50 chance that fighter just dies. While this definitely has the “go big or go home” kind of flavor that you’d expect from Skryre, this is a pretty messy value proposition. To start off, I think it is pretty unlikely you have the option to use this in the first round, unless your opponent is hunting your non-charged fighters, due to having 5 fighters in the warband. However, even if you do, the odds are not high that risking losing an additional fighter at this stage of the game will be worth it. In fact, I have a hard time seeing this ability as anything other than a late-game desperation play, where you are close to tabled and essentially need to bank on not dying from this ability to win the game. Alternatively, you may also value what that fighter is going to do so much that it is worth their bounty even if they do die. While the game is obviously in a very new place, I have a hard time seeing this being more than a niche consideration. Given that the charge out rule is still present, I would much rather rely on power deck support to reposition my fighters to make attacks rather than take the 50/50 they die just to make one more charge. While I am focusing pretty heavily on that activation being a charge, there is really little else that would compel you to try and pull off your tokens in this way. I’m going to bet that 90+% of the time I’d rather just attack, move, focus, etc. rather than risk handing my opponent a free kill and free bounty off this ability. Note that you do have one fighter who offers no bounty and wants to blow up anyway (we’ll get there shortly!), but even then, I think it is often a waste of an Action step to have charged with him in the first place. I just don’t think this is a very good ability and, in terms of gameplay, it only barely offers them additional options compared to the rest of the field, and at a pretty steep risk. I’d be much more intrigued if they could do this at any time rather than just when they are charged out.
Skitter
Our first once-per-game ability on the scroll is Skitter, which does essentially what you’d expect, allowing you to react after your Action step to move a friendly fighter that has no Move or Charge tokens. Movement economy is always nice to have in a warband that has more than 4 fighters, so this feels pretty nice to me, especially if you are able to pack in power card support that augments the value of your move actions. While you’d love to have the opportunity to move during the activation to set up support like DKK, Kainan, Gitz, etc. used to do, setting up for additional activations and/or scoring is certainly valuable. Comparing to gambit cards or Power step abilities that simply allow fighters to make move actions, an additional upside here is that you can pull off favorable positioning before your Power step actually begins. This potentially means moving up with a fighter to deliver the effect of a powerful gambit (such as a ping card), before your opponent has the opportunity to react. That being said, it’s a bit of a shame that you can’t use it with fighters who’ve moved/charged already, nor can you react after your opponent’s Action step. I’m sure players will get some nice value out of this one, free moves are always solid, I just want it to be a bit more flexible than its current conditional usage.
Warp-charged
Warp-charged grants you cleave, ensnare, and brutal for a single attack action with a 33% chance of dealing two damage to yourself after the attack is resolved. Back in the day, this would potentially be a very nice accuracy boost, but, per the rulebook, only one of these three weapon abilities will actually apply to your attack. Sure, you get to pick which one and there will generally only be one that makes sense, but it makes you less dangerous to on-guard fighters, for example, than having cleave+ensnare used to do in 1st edition. While the risk is relatively low, 2 damage also seems extremely punishing given that the payoff is pretty meager. I think grievous should have been an option on this ability if you wanted to make it more compelling. As written, I think there will end up being a lot of games where the Tunnelpack player never encountered a situation where the risk was worth the reward for this one. That being said, the silver lining if you do clap yourself for 2 damage is that, if the attack was made during an Action step, you actually get to inspire one of your other fighters, which might actually be the most intriguing aspect of this ability. Overall, if I had to rewrite it, I’d love to just see it do 1 damage, but all the time, then add grievous to the list of options from which you can choose. It would make using it a lot more valuable to get the inspire down without really breaking the warband all that much.
KABOOOM!!!
Our final entry in the warscroll is KABOOOM!!!, a Tik Tik-restricted ability that allows him to, if he has no Move or Charge tokens, run up and go boom, rolling a number of dice equal to the round number and potentially dealing 1 damage to each fighter within 2 hexes on a roll of a hammer, or 2 on a roll of a crit. Obviously, this results in him being slain, but given that he is your only 0-Bounty piece, you probably don’t mind as much, especially since there’s a lot of upside here. To me, this is by far the warband’s most intriguing ability. While the prospect of rolling poorly and not actually getting to lay any damage onto enemy fighters is a bit unsettling, you are, at minimum, getting to inspire another one of your rats (if you have any left to inspire), which is still an attractive trade for a fighter that otherwise is not so useful anyway. Still, you definitely want to get some upside out of this. It probably peaks in value during Round 2, where you could conceivably still have a fighter or two to inspire, your opponent likely has enough fighters that you can target multiple of them, and where you now have a 75% chance to at least deal 1 damage to each targeted fighter, as opposed to the 50% you are looking at in the first round. A further upside to this, in the context of scything no longer being a thing, is that this can potentially act as great counterplay vs. opposing horde warbands, especially those which cannot resurrect their fighters. If you’re able to target something like 3+ fighters, this is likely to generate significant value just in terms of raw damage output. Even in Round 1, if there is a juicy enough spot to dive into, I would consider making use of this just to get down an early targeted inspire with some serious upside. I do think this could have felt a little better for everyone from and NPE perspective at a guaranteed 1 damage only to adjacent fighters, but at least there’s still enough potential here that I think you should be aiming to use this in every game you play with the warband.
Fighters
Starting, as always, with the leader, we have Zikkit Rockgnaw, who sports a pretty typical leader physical profile of 4 Move, 2 Dodge, and 4 Health. He’s got two weapons at his disposal, the first being 1R/2H/2D, which is nothing special, but totally serviceable. What’s a bit more unfortunate is his Range 2 attack, as 2R/2H/1D is a pretty wet noodle swing. You’re definitely encouraged to be making that Range 1 swing where you can, but at least having the option to throw Range 2 means you can potentially gain some positioning advantage in cases where 1 damage will do the trick. When inspired, he swaps from Dodge to Shields while also gaining an extra die on each of his weapons, making him a nice early choice for inspiration due to the extra survivability and especially the notable accuracy bump. While I would have liked him to hit that Move 5 at some point that we have come to expect from Skaven, he’s got a pretty solid stat block overall, particularly inspired, and Move 4 has definitely gotten a bump in value with how engagement-focused the new boards are. That being said, he gives up a whopping 3 bounty when he dies, which is just rough for a guy that’s only got 4 Health. You want to be able to play him more aggressively because he’s got one of the better attack profiles in the warband, but the risk of handing over 3 glory means he’s going to merit a much safer deployment and likely only be used very late in the 1st round, if at all. For this same reason, you’re probably not trying to risk a More-More Power! with him either. What a phenomenal miniature though.
Next up we have Rittak Verm (a.k.a. Rittak VROOOM), who’s got a physical profile of 3 Move, 1 Shield, 4 Health, which, while it is decent bulk, is a bit of a shame from a threat range perspective. However, this is notably the only fighter in the warband to sport a 3-Damage attack right at the start of the game at 1R/2H/3D, which has historically not been a common attack profile granted to 5+ fighter warbands while uninspired. He is also certainly in contention for gaining the most out of an inspiration, jumping up to 5 Move, 2 Dodge, 4 Health but also swapping from 2H to 3S on his attack (technically a slight accuracy downgrade, in a vacuum) as he finally seems to have gotten his mini doomwheel running. I hinted at this earlier, but Rittak is my primary inspiration candidate for this warband. While the additional survivability is great, it cannot be understated just how valuable a Move 5, 3-Damage fighter is early in the game (just ask 1st edition Looncourt players). 2 Bounty feels a bit more fair of a payout here in the context of Bounty re-structuring, especially given the threat he can pose very early in the game.
Krittatok is next, and he’s doing his best Jagz impression. Starting at 4 Move, 1 Dodge, and 3 Health, he’s pretty squishy. As it turns out, he can also be a bit toothless as well, throwing just 1R/3S/1D with crit Grievous. He does bounce up to 2 Dodge and a flat 2 Damage when inspired, but I’m likely not targeting that inspiration in the early rounds unless I happen to have lost one of my two key pieces earlier than I had planned. Worth noting he is just 1 Bounty as well, so that makes it a bit less urgent to tack on the survivability he gets from inspiration than it is for either of the previous fighters we’ve covered. Still, I do think that this is a candidate for dangling during deployment.
Our final “big” rat is Nitch Singesnout, our local demolition specialist/arsonist (depending on his mood). He sports the same physical profile as Krittatok at 4 Move, 1 Dodge, and 3 Health, so nothing too crazy there, but he is notably the only fighter in the warband with a Range 3 attack at 3R/2H/1D. His inspiration looks very similar as well, going up to 2 Dodge, but adding an extra die to his attack rather than an extra damage. While you’d love to be able to put out 2 damage from Range 3, this can make for a nice accurate piece that can swing more positional play than the other fighters we’ve discussed. Being able to stand on one objective token while threatening another has always been a potent thing in Underworlds and I think that will continue into the new edition, particularly with what appears to be a general decrease in lethality. For cases where you’re looking to take that one token while driving your opponent off of another, inspired Nitch is going to be your guy. Last note, of course, is he also only has a Bounty of 1.
Last, but not least, we have Tik-Tik, a very good boy who unfortunately may not have realized that the big-tall rats have made him the canary in the coal mine except, quite notably, he’s not being sent in to check for safety so much as to ensure that the mine is unsafe. Stats are very much not where he is going to shine at just Move 4, 2 Dodge, 2 Health with a 1R/2S/1D attack profile, but, as you may have guessed from the miniature and the rules we’ve already covered, his job is not to be some brawler in the middle of the board. He is almost exclusively to be used for exactly what you’d think. My initial take is that the preferred play line will be to use your other 4 fighters in the first round, Skitter this little guy into position (if needed), then go in for the big KABOOOM!!! at the beginning of the second round. He does inspire like the rest of the warband, but only swaps from swords to hammers, so there is really no point in doing so unless he is your last surviving uninspired fighter. Additionally, he has 0 Bounty, so he creates an interesting conundrum for your opponent where they may need to risk a lower odds attack into a fighter that gives them no glory just to deny you from booming and ruining their day. He feels kind of like a better-executed version of 1st edition Skritter from Plaguepack in terms of the Catch-22 he presents, so I like him quite a bit.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m very excited to finally have a Skryre warband enter the Underworlds! However, this excitement is tempered by a few notable concerns. Firstly, the warband has only two fighters who reliably pump out 2+ Damage when uninspired, yet they account for a massive 5 out of 7 of the warband’s total Bounty. I feel like this may leave them feeling very pillow-fisted in Round 1 if you take a more measured approach or cause you to feel like the warband is rather swingy when you play more aggressively and lose one or both of them early. Furthermore, while we’ve obviously got a lot of new warscrolls in the pipeline to evaluate, my initial feeling is that this is going to be one of the weaker ones we’re likely to see. Their only reusable ability is, in my opinion, quite lackluster and fairly niche, while the only one-time use ability that really jumps off the page to me is KABOOOM!!!, with Warp-charged in particular really looking unappetizing. While I think the designers have delivered in terms of giving the Skryre some very boom or bust abilities, the risk-reward is just way off on most of it for me when taken from a competitive lens. Given their stats and mechanics, it seems quite likely that they’ll be most successful in more of a traditional “fight and die” aggro type of setting, so my guess is that they’ll see their most consistent success as a “Strike” warband, but 2 Defence dice and the mild bump in positional play from Skitter may be enough that you can lean into “Flex” as well, which would potentially let you construct a slightly less kill-reliant deck in Nemesis. Given how gorgeous the models are, I very much hope I am wrong (and very well could be given that I still have some of my 1st edition goggles on), but my suspicion is that this warband is going to struggle competitively.
That’ll cover it for this one, thanks very much for reading and we wish you all the best of luck on YOUR Path to (warp-charged) Glory!
