Zondara’s Gravebreakers Review

Intro

Now we have the long-awaited release of Zondara’s Gravebreakers, a warband whose unique mechanics immediately piqued a lot of interest upon their reveal (myself included). I tend to be a bit of a sucker for death warbands, specifically ones with lots of skeletons, but I quite like the look of these despite the fact that they’re not my traditional boney preference. I think they slot very nicely into my Venn diagram of interesting aesthetic plus interesting mechanics, and I think people might actually be sleeping on them a little bit. By no means do I think this is yet another OP death warband, but they look perfectly serviceable to me, and I do think they add a new flavor to the Grand Alliance as a whole outside of just being another warband that raises its fighters. So grab your significant others, pets, or whomever your true love is and let’s dig in!

Fighters

As usual, we’ll start with the leader in Zondara Rivenheart, who is also a level 2 wizard. Her uninspired stats are just that, pretty uninspiring. 3 Move, 1 Shield, 4 Wounds with a 2R/2S/2D attack are fairly lackluster (if not subpar) on their own, but I think she makes up for it with her abilities. Stolen Knowledge allowing you to spread heal or ping, as desired, is one of the best reusable spell reactions we’ve seen on a fighter card. I do wish the ping had a bit more range on it so that you could attack with her, drive back, then still ping, but the flexibility is great. I’ll cheat ahead and discuss Tragedy now as well, which basically states that you can cycle objectives in the power step which specifically name Zondara or Ferlain if one of them (and I stress one of them, because you can’t use abilities on out of action fighters unless otherwise stated). This is fantastic activation efficiency and certainly allows you to take some greater risks in your deckbuilding. While this is obviously important for cards that need both of these fighters alive to score, it can even be valuable for cards that only require one of them. If you lose the fighter you think was best equipped to score that particular card, you whether can leverage that with knowledge of your deck to decide can get more value out of cycling a card rather than attempting to and/or failing to score it. While I wouldn’t go too crazy with my objective deck, this might be the kind of thing that makes me try out playing 13 objective cards. One last quick note for you rules lawyers out there, but I’m 99.9999% certain this ability applies only to the rules text on the cards, not the flavor text. Back on Zondara herself, she very thematically inspires once Ferlain has two or more upgrades (other than illusions). I always love to see new and unique inspire conditions like this that are born from existing rules rather than just creating some artificial counter system. In any case, inspiring her looks like it’s going to be priority number one in a lot of games, as she becomes a lot more survivable at 2-Shield defence while also adding a significant accuracy bump, going to 3 dice on her base attack profile. Once inspired, she is a very solid piece, and you have enough control there that I think you’ll be able to deploy her a bit further back initially, then start to play her more aggressively after you slap those first couple of upgrades onto Ferlain.

Speaking of Ferlain, he’s our next fighter and, as you might expect for a wolf-man, he has pretty good base stats. A beast with 4 Move, 2 Dodge, 4 Wounds is a solid physical profile and his base attack at 1R/3S/2D plus grievous is about as good of an uninspired attack profile as you could expect to have. We’ve already discussed the Tragedy ability with the leader, but of course just remember he is the other half of that puzzle. That being said, I do feel the need to reiterate how fantastic this is at capturing a tragic love story as a game mechanic. His inspire condition mirrors hers as well, inspiring instead when Zondara has two or more upgrades (other than illusions). In his case, he only bumps to a flat 3 Damage (instead of relying on grievous) and goes from 4 to 5 Move. As fantastic as his inspired stats are across the board, the fact that he’s already pretty close to them when uninspired means that I am likely prioritizing Zondara’s inspiration most of the time. That being said, if you happen to have some good leader-specific upgrades in hand off the rip, I don’t hate the idea of actually being able to one shot those stinking Changers with somebody. One very niche note to watch out for, but that I felt the need to mention because it is funny, is that giving Zondara the [Perfect Blade] will prevent Ferlain from inspiring until it is broken.

For the zombie minions—Pikk, Cracktomb, and Toyle—it really only makes sense to discuss them collectively, since their core mechanics are split across each of their fighter cards here. The quick summary is that they are all beasts and minions that start on 3 Move, 1 Shield, and 2 Wounds with basically unusable offensive stats across the board. They each inspire when given a raise counter, gaining an extra Wound and becoming slightly less horrendous offensively (although they’re still not very useful on that front). The main feature here is their Gravebreak mechanic, which allows them to, as a reaction to their own activation in which they did not make a superaction, place an objective token from their hex into an adjacent hex, then Exhume or Unearth. As you might expect, the former allows you to raise a friendly minion (if Zondara is still alive) and place them next to the fighter who used the reaction. Note that this means you probably want your minions very spread out at the start of the game. I’m not messing around with a single scything attack potentially destroying any potential for me to resurrect fighters later. The latter option, as I hinted at earlier, actually lets you dig up a specific upgrade card from your power deck that has the warband symbol and add it to your hand. While the intent here seems to be to make sure you have upgrades to feed to your two main fighters, the draw consistency makes it very hard for me to imagine a scenario where I’m not doing this in my first activation every time, assuming my hand isn’t already full of upgrades. So often we talk about cards that only work as part of combos or that provide significant value only if they come out early being too inconsistent to merit inclusion in decks, but this precisely fixes that problem (again, specifically for the warband’s upgrade cards). Raising fighters is cute and all, and the warband is definitely going to need bodies on the field, but the draw is definitely the prized part of this reaction. I do wish this could just be any feature token or that you at least wouldn’t have to move the objective token, but I love the creativity behind the mechanic and I think they did a decent job balancing its effect with its opportunity cost. I also feel I should address the direct synergy here with Daring Delvers, as this does have the place keyword, so you will increase your exploration count each time you do this, making this possibly one of the best suited warbands to score the Exploration count package (including maybe even [Uncovered Secrets]). Similarly, you can also leverage this in Fearsome Fortress to move tokens into the “within 1 hex of no one’s territory” space, granted that you can’t reliably pull off the HO scoring in that deck. While I would love to still be able to use Gravebreak after superactions, I think this is another tool that will reward players for planning out their activations in advance, as well as those who are able to effectively diagnose what upgrades they need most for a given matchup.

Our Favorites

• Mark: Cracktomb (there’s just something about that goofy grin)
• Aman: Ferlain
• Zach: Zondara
• George: Ferlain

Rivals Deck

Objectives

Our first objective is Cruel Hope, a surge scored immediately after a power step if Ferlain has two or more upgrades. As I discussed earlier, I do think inspiring Zondara ASAP is going to be your best play line, so I like that this objective is encouraging you to follow that path. If you remember back to the [Show of Force] days, this kind of surge can get really trivial in a hurry, but the notable exception here of course is that you’re relying on just one fighter to score it. Remember also that he can’t score this while he is out of action. Notably though, if Zondara is still alive in this case, you could use the Tragedy ability to cycle out of it in the power step. I’m a bit back-and-forth on this one, but I do think it ultimately will be worth the risk. If Ferlain dies too early, your warband loses a lot of teeth (God, these puns write themselves…), so I think early Voltron on him is a perfectly reasonable play line. You’ll just want to make sure you have some very consistent surge glory elsewhere, as this could get stuck in your hand otherwise.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Desperate Inspiration is another surge, this time for casting your second or subsequent spell with Zondara in the same phase. This one is likely going to be a bit more build dependent. While I don’t think Seismic Shock is a good fit for these guys, Force of Frost is definitely worth considering. You could very well end up trivializing this between her spell reaction and a number of the other power cards available to you. However, given that I only expect to be activating her once in Round 1, I’m not entirely sure their in-faction spell support is good enough for me to take it without some additional support from my universal deck. However, the thought of scoring it off something like [Tome of Shattering] immediately followed by her spell reaction is very appealing.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Dreamer’s Respite scores in the end phase for having both Zondara and Ferlain surviving, either granting you 1 glory in Rounds 1 and 2, or 3 glory if it’s Round 3. This is another great example of a risky card where you can use Tragedy to mitigate the downside. Assuming both of these fighters don’t die at the same time (to scything or such), you can just immediately cycle in the power step and try for something else. The modality of the card is also great for you to decide whether to try and hold it for the full payout or simply take the score when you can get it. Given that the true fail state of the card (both fighters dead while/before it is in-hand) is also pretty much an auto-loss state for the warband as a whole, I think it’s worth rolling the dice on, although I do think you will often be forced to play it safe and take the 1-glory score).

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Ever Searching scores for making your second or subsequent Gravebreak reaction in the same phase. I do like that you can pretty much just force this if you need to score the surge, but I’m not madly in love with the idea of needing to take a minimum of two minion activations in a round just for 1 surge. It’s certainly scoreable, but I think there are times, especially if you don’t draw this in the first round, where you’ll be making suboptimal activations en route to doing so. If there were some power card support that allowed you to make free Gravebreak reactions, I would consider it a little more, but it is potentially a solid passive score.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Fates Entwined pays out 1 glory in the end phase if Zondara and Ferlain are within 2 hexes of each other or they are both out of action. As I mentioned earlier, both of them being dead probably means you got absolutely trounced anyway, so I don’t think 1 glory is really going to fix that. If anything, you’re taking this for the first condition as some early game passive scoring. However, unlike Dreamer’s Respite, there’s not really enough upside here to offset the risk of this just being Tragedy fodder. I think I’m passing on this one.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Life and Death is a 2-glory end phase this time for having more surviving inspired friendly fighters than there are surviving inspired enemy fighters. In addition to this being a big-time meta call, I don’t think this warband really inspires easily enough to make this worth considering. Yes, you might get one of your two primary fighters inspired in the first round, perhaps along with a minion, but I think betting on those 2-3 inspired fighters being both alive and enough to outpace your opponent’s inspirations is going to be way too inconsistent of a gamble here.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

No Stone Unturned is obviously some more Gravebreak-focused synergy, scoring 2 glory in an end phase if you placed 3 or more feature tokens in the preceding action phase. Note that they’ve expanded to feature tokens here instead of just objectives, so things like the plunder reaction or any number of the universal cards found amongst the Rivals decks can help score this. I think I’d like this most in the FoF and DD pairings, since you’re focusing the placement of additional tokens there quite frequently, but I do think it will start to lose a lot of value if we ever lose the ability to place temporary blocked hexes. Even as-is, this is very vulnerable to disruption from opponents playing FF, or even just a savvy opponent plundering some cover tokens. If you’re forced to make this work off of 3 Gravebreak reactions, it’s going to make you give up a ton of tempo.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Reckless Effort is another 1-glory end phase, this time for if each surviving friendly non-minion has one or more Charge tokens. While I do think it’s ideal to get a charge action fired off with each of these fighters per round, I think this warband is going to have to play things pretty cagey to reach its scoring ceiling, and so they won’t always be committing this hard. For 1 glory, there are much better options out there these days.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Soulbound Killers is a kill surge for Zondara or Ferlain taking out an enemy fighter with an attack action, granting you a second glory if the other actually supported that attack. Given that most of your offensive presence is gated behind these two fighters, I like this quite a bit for a kill surge. It reads like a more flexible [Savage Exemplar] that also has more upside, if you happen to pull off the support. Due to the movement shenanigans present in the deck, VCT seems like a natural pairing on this one for a much more consistent 2-glory score. Cursing Zondara might not even be such a terrible downside, as she could theoretically take [Unnatural Resilience] then just keep healing herself after her activations. Worst case, if one of the two is dead and you doubt the other is going to kill something, you could always just use Tragedy to cycle through your deck instead.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Strength of Despair is another kill surge, this time for Zondara taking an enemy fighter out of action with a spell. While it’s cool that this one doesn’t have to be an attack action, I really don’t like the idea of relying on her for this when she doesn’t even have a spell attack action on her fighter card (just her reaction). You might be able to consider this in a FoF build due to some of the ping gambits available there, but I think you need to look elsewhere for more consistent surge value.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Tireless Revenants scores 1 glory in the end phase if each of your minions has one or more tokens. If you have a lot of out-of-sequence token generation (most notable would likely be Move via voidcurse), maybe you consider this, but I don’t like the potential decision points that may arrive where you have a clash between wanting to raise a fighter but also wanting to make sure they all have tokens. Still, this could be fairly trivial if you only have one minion left, I just think there are still easier 1-glory scores out there if you need the conservative payout.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Wrest from the Realm is our final objective, rounding out our surge package for making a Gravebreak reaction if the fighter is in enemy territory. Sure, I’ve talked about playing conservatively with this warband, but I think that mostly only applies to your two main pieces, I have no problem shambling a zombie forward with my first activation just to score this for me while drawing a key upgrade. Even more conveniently, by executing this you will already have the glory to spend on that upgrade. I don’t think I’d rather have any other faction surge in my hand to start the game.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Our Favorites

• Mark: Wrest from the Realm
• Aman: Wrest from the Realm
• Zach: Ever Searching
• George: No Stone Unturned

Gambits

Atavistic Creativity is a gambit spell reaction that casts on a lightning after you place a feature token to hand out a free upgrade. On back-to-back cards, you have a neat little combo you could pull in the early game to quickly drop two upgrades on your key fighter to inspire the other. Do note, however, that I am pretty sure this reaction would create its own reaction window within Gravebreak following the placement of the feature token but before you would Unearth, so I think you technically cannot use this to apply an upgrade that you intend to pull via Unearth. That being said, free upgrades are very valuable things to this warband, so I think this could still very well merit a slot. Additionally, nothing on the card requires you to be placing this token as part of a Gravebreak, so you could theoretically activate this after a plunder reaction or placing a token via power cards like [Temporary Haven], for example. If the intent was that this should synergize directly with Unearth, I think the card increases in value even more, but definitely worth considering even with my current reading of that interaction.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Blind Devotion is another reaction, allowing you to push a friendly fighter up to 2 hexes (or 4 if it is Ferlain) to end adjacent to an enemy fighter that ends their move action within 2 hexes of Zondara. Thankfully, this does have the fighter restriction, so you can just salvage it if she is dead. I like this as a sort of more flexible [Countercharge] option, especially since there is a lot of out-of-sequence move tech that your opponent may be packing these days (VCT in particular). I do want to point out a couple of rules items here. Firstly, if your opponent is making a move as part of charge action, keep in mind that they are allowed to re-target whichever fighter you push into range. Conversely, if they have simply declared a move action, they are not allowed to change their mind after your reaction and decide to take a charge instead. I think these cases are where you’ll get a lot of low-risk repositioning out of the card, particularly for setting up your Ferlain charges. I don’t know if this makes every deck, but I like the flexibility and potential to set up supported attacks in your ensuing activation.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Our next card, Bond Unbroken, is restricted to Ferlain, but really only does anything if both he and Zondara are alive. Defensive re-roll for her and offensive re-roll for him for an entire round is actually a phenomenal effect, but I don’t love the fact that you can’t salvage it if only Zondara is out of action. While I do think accessing a lot of the warband’s ceiling is only possible when both fighters are alive, your opponent will be attempting to make sure that is not the case, so the risk of a fully dead card here is problematic to me.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Cobbled Corpse is reaction speed resurrection for the price of a Move/Charge token and a slight positional requirement. While I do like the idea of having a resurrection gambit in warbands like this, I would almost invariably prefer they be at standard gambit speed. It’s annoying to me that you could potentially draw into this after you’ve already lost the fighter you want to bring back and not be able to use it on them. One benefit they’ve added for this cost is that you can pull this off even if your leader and/or all of your minions are now dead, which is something you couldn’t do otherwise. Still, I do think this is one of the only resurrection gambits in the game where it’s not an obvious inclusion. I could see leaving it at home, especially in Championship where you have so many strong gambit options already.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

In what may be a first for Underworlds, Curious Remnants is a hybrid gambit that offers either a push or a heal for a friendly fighter within 1 hex of a feature token. If you are remembering to plunder and/or place tokens via other means, this can actually account for a significant portion of the board. While I think pushes are generally the higher value and more oft-used option, the ability to flex into a heal instead is a nice secondary option, especially since I could see there being a lot of instances where one of your fighters tanks a two damage attack which you could heal up with this card plus a Zondara reaction. I like this one quite a bit and I love the design space.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3

Devoted Strike is a [Determined Effort] that Zondara cannot benefit from herself, but with the upside that if she is within 2 hexes of the target you get to add cleave. This warband is pretty desperate for accuracy, so I think there’s good odds you’ll want to include this one. I’ve mentioned VCT as a possible pairing for this warband and this card is a great example of the synergy there. Curse an enemy, give your leader one of the “refashioned” upgrades, then charge for a likely attack with +1 Dice, cleave through their now 1-Shield defence, and maybe even add support. I like that you can still at least make use of it even if your leader is dead too.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Multiple sidesteps in a single card is almost universally a fantastic card, and we have one here with Driven Lurch. I should note again that you must push each of your surviving minions when you play this card (if you can). If you have any kind of positional scoring in the deck, I think you’re going to need this one, especially since your minions will often end up next to feature tokens rather than on top of them. That being said, unless your objective token placement was not very good, I think you’ll often be able to reach wherever you need to just with move actions from the minions, and I think I’d actually rather have pushes my two more critical fighters could leverage, even if it’s just something like [Well-trained]. That being said, you can really trivialize scores like [We Stand Together] or [Brave the Rootmaze] with this one, so I think it’s going to find its way into a lot of decks.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Maniac Pursuit is sort of a hybrid of the [Refashioned Reactions] move and [Rush of Sensation], having two different triggers you could leverage here. While I do think the post-move reaction will likely be the more frequently useful of the two (especially if somebody is attempting to outmaneuver you via VCT shenanigans), I could definitely see cases where the second condition is also great. If you really want to get onto a particular token your opponent is holding, a kill into this reaction is a nice way to pack in some extra mobility. It’s also noteworthy that you could very well pull off your own VCT shenanigans with this card to create a sneaky outmaneuver or target swap on an opponent’s charge. I’m all about the out-of-sequence move actions lately, so I’m sure this will find its way into most of my decks.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3

Rite of the Unbound is a tad nebulous on wording, but if I am reading it correctly, you get +X Move and +X Grievous, where X is the number of successes and critical successes you rolled. The +Move I am certain stacks, the English is just not 100% clear as to whether the grievous does as well. For the case where you just roll one success, I think there are better gambits out there that don’t require a casting roll. However, if you are playing more spell-heavy builds where you can wrap in re-rolls or extra wizard levels, the spike potential of a +2 or even, in very select cases, +3 on each of these could be wild. I do hate grievous stacking—it’s just too swingy for me—but I could definitely see cases where it is worth pushing for this spike, especially if you are able to combine it with additional dice gambits/upgrades.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1

Wild Incantation is our final gambit, this time a spell casting on lightning for double support counting as successes on friendly attack actions for the round. While I would much prefer this to just count as having an additional supporting fighter, I am glad they used the double support symbol on this one, since it can still stack on top of a single-supported attack. Given the poor accuracy of the entire warband (particularly when uninspired), this is fairly attractive. My primary concern, however, is that you’re probably going to be using Gravebreak once or twice around, which means you are likely to be forgoing attack actions in those activations quite often. Still, given that the warband is all hitting on swords, this will be about as good mathematically as +1 dice in a lot of cases, unless you are consistently setting up double-supported attacks already. I think it is unlikely to make the Championship cut, but I could see it in Nemesis builds with universal decks that have a weaker gambit selection or those where you’re trying to hit certain casting benchmarks.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Our Favorites

• Mark: Maniac Pursuit
• Aman: Curious Remnants
• Zach: Curious Remnants
• George: Atavistic Creativity

Upgrades

Amberbone Infusion is our first upgrade, fairly straightforward in that it sets the equipped fighter’s Defence characteristic to 2. While it’s not fighter-restricted, this is effectively a card for your minions, as Ferlain already starts the game with 2 Dice, while Zondara inspires to 2 and we’ve already discussed how much I think you ought to prioritize that inspire. This could be an ok way to try and keep at least a single minion alive so you always have potential to Gravebreak, but having upgrades in hand that mostly don’t benefit one of your two key fighters, particularly in the early game, sounds highly undesirable.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2

Next up is a Zondara-restricted upgrade in Borrowed Power, granting her cleave and grievous on her attack actions. When inspired, this brings her to the point of 2R/3S/2D with cleave and grievous, which is a pretty decent attack profile. Note also that this works with attack action upgrades, so it can be a good way to juice up Range 3+ attacks to have a bit more value. I do like the idea of giving her a weapon like that just to create additional opportunities to use her spell reaction and she is basically half your warband’s offensive presence already, so I think you probably try to carve out a spot for this in all but the most upgrade-tight Nemesis builds, although I do think it misses the cut in Championship.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Then we have Broken Heart, a sort of backup plan for what happens if you lose one of your two key fighters. While a flat +1 Dice is fantastic, especially paired with the reaction to grant it for free if one of the two dies while you have it in hand, I really don’t like the idea of planning to use this card. While thematically I get that the card only makes sense if one of them dies, I would have liked from a game mechanic standpoint to see this still have some lesser effect if they were both alive, which I’ve already discussed as being pretty much the core objective of the warband. It would be nice to try and just farm kill glory with the additional accuracy if things don’t go according to plan, but I again don’t like the idea of a basically useless upgrade for your two key fighters in Round 1 (or possibly even later into the game).

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Cursed Flesh is a +1 Wound upgrade that breaks when the fighter is taken out of action, essentially preventing you from adding “extra” on top of the +1 by putting it on a zombie and resurrecting them multiple times. If we still had the old Large rules, I would say this is perfect for the warband, as you could just throw it on Zondara or Ferlain without having to worry about the extra bounty. However, given that this will now increase their bounty to 2 and turn off the potential to use a number key universal upgrades restricted to non-Large fighters, I’d be a little more hesitant to include this one. Given the warband’s access to heal tech and heavy reliance on two particular fighters, I don’t totally hate the idea of running this card and just accepting that one of them will become Large, I just would prefer defensive tech that can provide a similar bump in survivability without pushing you into that domain.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Then we have Cursed Power, another Zondara-restricted upgrade, this time for +1 Wizard level in exchange for eating backlash on a single crit in your casting rolls. Short of having another upgrade which prevents you from taking damage from backlash, I think this is just bad. Yes, you increase the reliability of getting your spell reaction off, but you’ll likely just end up healing one fighter while damaging her instead. If she at least had a Range 3+ spell attack action, there might be some reason to take this, but I don’t see this ever being worth the risk when the spells you want to cast with her will always be 75% chance, at a minimum. It seems like this was mostly designed around juicing up Rite of the Unbound and, in addition to not liking what would effectively be a 2-card combo in the first place, I don’t think there’s enough upside there, even with Gravebreak.

Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1

Cursed Strength is a [Great Strength] that deals the equipped fighter 1 damage after they make a Range 1 or 2 attack action. Extra damage is always great, and you do have the ability to heal afterward if, for example, you were to hand this to Zondara. That being said, I strongly feel that this should only have damaged you after you made a successful attack action, as it is going to feel really painful when you miss and hurt yourself. Still, I think you have trouble skipping this, the warband is pretty hungry for extra damage.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Excavated Bludgeon is a minion-restricted (and beast-enabled) attack action upgrade at 1R/2S/3D. While the accuracy here is certainly not great, I like the idea of having another fighter capable of dealing big damage with this warband. Yes, charges don’t synergize well with Gravebreak, but I think that you can afford to have one minion be something of a beater while you rely on the other two to resurrect and dig for upgrades. In particular, I think that if you decide to play Beastbound Assault with these guys, the extra potential for accuracy in that deck, combined with incentive to use your minions, can certainly be worthwhile. However, it does still run into that issue with being something that your two key fighters can’t use.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2

Speaking of having a spell attack action for Zondara, the Reshaped Darts are a Range 4, 1 Damage option that casts on lightning. I do like the idea of setting up a turret Zondara just to spam that spell reaction afterwards. Furthermore, this helps support the couple of surges that require her to be casting spells and this is modifiable by Borrowed Power. You can even dig that combo out with early Gravebreak reactions to maximize that turret potential, if needed. Sure, it’s only the 1 Damage, but throwing out that plus a ping or a heal is pretty reasonable activation efficiency.

Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3

Salvaged Intelligence is a really interesting design space as an upgrade for Ferlain, making him no longer a beast and also allowing him to react to make an action after Zondara activates if she did not make a charge. While this does notably occupy the same reaction window as her spell reaction, this can add some serious activation efficiency. Is this finally the card that encourages us to barge? Well, perhaps not, but one fun thing you can do on VCT builds is barge with your leader, react with one of the “refashioned” upgrades to move Ferlain up to that fighter, resolve the stun, then react with this card to make an attack action. A bit convoluted, but it could be decent support for Soulbound Killers in that respect. The alternative (and far less niche) use would be to simply use this as a mini Danse Dynamic to either set up positional scoring by moving both fighters or to make an attack action with each fighter if both are in position to do so. As good as her spell reaction is, I’m sure there will be plenty of cases where neither option on it is super useful, so the option to instead tab in some extra activation efficiency is attractive to me. I think this is one of the prime candidates to pull out of your deck via Gravebreak except maybe in cases where you are playing Beastbound Assault. I also like the idea of pulling out upgrades for Ferlain immediately to try and force the inspire onto your leader.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2

Speaking of other good Gravebreak candidates, Undying Love is some neat tech to try and keep your two key fighters alive, allowing you to heal each of them both when you play the upgrade and at the start of each round if they are both alive. Additionally, you may then push one of them up to 3 hexes toward the other, which is potentially a massive mobility boost. My only concern here, if I’m reading the card correctly, is that I think you have to be able to heal at least one of them in order to execute the push, which is very annoying. I think they really missed an opportunity to say “you may heal…” here. That being said, if you have any damage reduction cards built into the deck, this can become very annoying to your opponent, especially when combined with your leader’s existing capability to spread the heals out. Assuming my read is correct, I hope we see an erratum that makes the heal optional in the future.

Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1

Our Favorites

• Mark: Salvaged Intelligence
• Aman: Salvaged Intelligence
• Zach: Broken Heart
• George: Salvaged Intelligence

Conclusion

I am very excited for this warband. In addition to my love for the models and theme, I think there’s some very underrated tech here. Unearth is one of the most unique abilities we’ve seen on a warband for a while, and the deck-thinning/combo reliability I think will ultimately be a great way to improve the consistency of each of your power cards. Tragedy also seems like fantastic control over your objective hand and grants you the ability to greed for certain faction objectives that would otherwise be a bit too risky for me. That being said, the warband does lack a lot of the things that make for a top tier meta threat. They have fairly lackluster stats, underwhelming end phase cards, and none of the gambits really popped to me. In fact, this might be the first time I have given a Power Ceiling rating of 2 to every single gambit a warband has. I think you could cut or include any number of them and I probably wouldn’t bat an eye. I do think they will be significantly better in Nemesis than in Championship, as +Damage cards are harder to come by, which will make their innate healing tech that much more impactful. Furthermore, most warbands are forced into some form of greed in their objective deck in Nemesis, but at least you have some potential to audible if a game is not going according to plan. As far as pairings go, I hinted a few times that I think Voidcursed Thralls is an intriguing option for them due to the need for extra movement economy and some better end phase scoring. Beastbound Assault certainly makes sense as well, since only Zondara would need a denizen upgrade to unlock a lot of the end phase scoring there. If you want to go more casting-focused, Force of Frost is by far my preferred option, as there is far too much of an HO subtheme on Seismic Shock for this warband to use it effectively. However, with all that being said, my initial take is that their best pairing will likely be Daring Delvers. The ability to so easily rack up exploration count via Gravebreak unlocks a lot of objective cards I wouldn’t ordinarily consider very good in that deck, as well as trivializes those that are already solid. It also gives you a backup plan into things like Fearsome Fortress or Force of Frost that might deny you the ability to drop as many available tokens as possible. [Quickroots] and [Flame Wisps] are also great options to compensate for the general lack of damage output from the warband. I would be very surprised if they make their way into being an A-tier competitive option, but I would certainly not be surprised if they landed themselves somewhere in the B-tier. Let’s see what the others have to say:

Aman: I must applaud the design team for pushing the envelope with this design and coming up with something so creative and fun. While I think the execution was missed in terms of the fighter’s stats and intended game plan, I can’t help but really appreciate what they tried to do here. I really hope they continue to explore more design like this in the future! That being said, I am a bit concerned on the longevity of both Ferlain and Zondara on the table. I’m hoping someone can prove me wrong! 

Zach: Anyone who has listened to the show knows my love of Death warbands. Skeletons, Ghosts, Zombies, and Vampires are all near and dear to my heart. Zondara and her Gravebreakers are no exception to this! I do find them quite interesting – they’re clearly one of the more unique teams to make it into Underworlds so far, with one of the best instances of Tutoring we’ve seen in the game, as well as a very interesting flexible play/scoring pattern. While I’m not sure of their overall power level (they’re not going to be automatically dominating any Grand Clashes any time soon), I do think I’ll be playing them a lot and trying to dig up some wins!

George: This warband has my heart tugged in two directions. I see a lot of similarities with the Exiled Dead in that we have some very unique, off-beat sculpts and a really daring mechanic design. Whether the overall power is there remains to be seen but I am happy to see that 50+ warbands on, there’s still unique design space being explored.

As always, thank you for reading and we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to True Love—er—I mean Glory!