Intro
Zondara and Ferlain are a classic story of romance, loss, determination, and… Necromancy. These two lovebirds (or love… dogs? Beasts?) lead the Gravebreakers deep into Embergard in search of powerful magics that will heal Ferlain of his affliction. In the 2024 edition of Underworlds, let’s take a look and see if their story will have a fairy tale ending.
Warscroll
Inspire
First, we get the Inspire condition. Zondara and Ferlain, our Destined fighters (awwww) Inspire when the other one gains their second Upgrade. Which is good, since you don’t really want to give Upgrades to Minions. Since Upgrades are cleared on being Slain, even though your Zombies can be Raised (more on that later), their Upgrades will be gone, so just focus on giving them to Zondara and Ferlain. It’s a nice bit of design synergy.
Pikk, Toyl, and Cracktomb all Inspire when you give them a Raise token. Simple as that, they just come back better after they die.
Gravebreakers, Exhume, and Unearth
Since we’ve talked about Raise a couple times, we need to address three Warscroll Abilties that tie into one another. Gravebreakers, Exhume, and Unearth. When you Delve during the Power Step, you can react with Gravebreakers to either Exhume and Raise a Slain Minion, or Unearth and draw cards equal to the number of dead fighters. There’s a few interesting things here.
First, this is perhaps one of the more natural Raises introduced in the digital warbands. As it’s not a Core Ability, it only marginally interrupts your gameplan, and you can use your Raise while still taking 4 other Actions per turn. You can, if the game allows it, simply park one of your minions on a safer token and Delve it whenever you have a need to get a fighter back! Additionally, there is at least one deck in the game at time of writing that rewards you for doing Delves. So the synergy is pretty solid across the board for this ability. And Raise is great in general in this edition, since you come back and are worth 0 Glory, so the fighter you Raise can just come back and start doing stuff on the board immediately, and if your opponent kills them again, they gain no Glory benefit from it! This is a very, very good ability.
Now, what about Unearth? Why would you Draw when you can Raise? Well, like anything in Warhammer Underworlds, it depends. It doesn’t only care about Slain Minions, so if one of your Destined fighters dies, you can use Unearth to Draw and get some solid value. Also, Drawing Cards is Good. Just in general, getting through your deck is solid. If you think you’re in a position where the Minions on Tokens are safe for a Turn, consider using Unearth to draw, waiting til the next Power Step, then Delving again to get the Raise. The flexibility of this ability cannot be overstated.
Destined
While Gravebreakers and the two related abilities are what I would consider the faction-defining Abilities of this Warband, we also have two other notes. Destined gives a nice boost to whichever Destined fighter remains after the other dies. Speed and accuracy that will just come in during the natural course of the game is really good. While you don’t have much control over this, you’ll benefit from it almost every game, and when you don’t, it just means your best two fighters are still alive, which is awesome.
Undying Love
And finally, we get the only real Active Ability for the faction, Undying Love. A heal is great to have. As this Ability doesn’t work after one of them has been Slain, I would recommend using this early for the Heal and Push, lest they die before you get a chance to use it. It’s very flexible, though, so you can sometimes take a risk to try and use it in a more powerful way when the Push would be more impactful. But even if you’re just using it for a modicum of movement and a quick heal, it’s awesome.
So a really solid Warscroll Card! Let’s look at the fighters.
Fighters
Zondara is your Leader, she’s got a pretty good profile. A Damage 2 Melee attack and a reliable Ranged 3 attack is pretty standard for Wizard types, it would seem, but Zondara does something interesting. Upon Inspiring, she doesn’t actually gain any stats, her Accuracy profiles simply swap. Uninspired, her Ranged is good and her Melee is more accurate, while the opposite is true when she Inspires. So depending on whether you want to use her for a ranged support piece that fires off 3 dice attacks or a melee piece that charges in and gets her hands dirty, you might consider Upgrading Ferlain slower or faster to make that a reality. Her damage cap doesn’t really change, though with no Runemarks on her attack, she takes Great Strength quite well or can stack defensive upgrades to stay alive and keep Raising.
Ferlain is our other Destined fighter (awww) and he’s our melee powerhouse. Double Dodge and 5 Health is a great defensive profile to start with, and Inspiring gives him an extra Hex of movement and makes his damage boost flat instead of relying on Crits. Personally I think you try to Inspire Ferlain first, as that baseline Grievous is really powerful to have. He’s not really a complex fighter – he goes fast and hits hard. You’re going to try and use Undying Love to either get him a solid attack without Charging, or to pull him back after an aggressive Charge. Either way, he’s the backbone of your team in terms of damage in durability, but don’t be too careless with him!
Cracktomb, Pikk, and Toyl round out the fighters. While their stats are technically different, they really fill the same role. All of their Uninspired attacks are, well, uninspiring. Either they’re 2 Swords and therefore fairly innaccurate, or they’re 1 damage and fairly weak. Toyle and Cracktomb get pretty solid Inspired attacks, while Pikk only picks up Cleave as an accuracy boost, which may or may not matter depending on your opponent and the dice. While these guys can deal some damage to keep things moving on the board, I personally think they’re better spent on board control via controlling Tokens. They can hold, they can Raise, and they can block your opponents. Move 3, 2 Health, and 1 Block isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s pretty ok given everything else in the warband. These guys will do the digging and zoning while your Destined fighters do the heavy lifting in terms of interacting with your opponents.
Conclusion
Overall I think this warband is quite good. Their Raise mechanic is solid, Ferlain is an unholy terror on the field (quite fitting), and Zondara brings some solid support on all fronts. Games Workshop lists the Gravebreakers as a Mastery warband, and while I think these tags are a bit reductive, I do think that’s an ok way to think about it. They’ll need some reps to completely figure out, and they’re not really a hard-aggressive Strike team. Nor are they really a team that wants to just sit on Tokens and play slow Take & Hold. They need to protect their Destined Fighters and make sure not to lose every Minion before they get a chance to start Raising.
With the decks we currently have, I think Pillage and Plunder is obviously where they mesh the best – you want to Delve anyways for their mechanics, and the Flex nature of it is good for a warband that wants to control Tokens while also punching hard with Ferlain or shooting with Zondara. I think the stats and mechanics of the warband really want a deck that is full of flexibility and trickery, so we will see what other Mastery and Flex decks take shape in the future!
Best of luck on your Path to Glory!
