Today we will cover a method for teaching Underworlds to younger players (or those who have no game-playing experience).

I’d like to give a shoutout to Reddit user Hawkstrike6 who introduced me to this strategy, lovingly referred to as “Kidspire” or “Kidhammer Underworlds”. I’ve tried it a couple times now with decent results, and hopefully you can use the same to share this wonderful game with the people around you who could use a little extra help learning the ropes.

Many of us either have or will find ourselves in a situation where we have a child, a friend, a partner, or a spouse who wants to play with us (or we are trying to coax into playing!), but they’re simply not advanced enough or experienced with games enough to enjoy themselves and understand in the Warhammer Underworlds ruleset, at least at first. The WHU starter set is rated for Ages 12+ though of course the ability to pick up the rules of this game, which can be somewhat complicated, is going to vary person to person. As is the ability to sit through the explanations! Younger folks may want to play the game with you before they’re ‘old enough’, or perhaps you have a partner or friend who is not a ‘games person’, or doesn’t have the patience to suffer through a 20 minute rules overview and/or is only doing this at your persistent urging. (I’m just speculating, having never tried to coerce my wife into playing with me, of course. Just trust me bro!)

This Kidhammer simplified game mode and phases of progression can help bring your younger, fresher, or more ‘casual’ players up top speed in a graduated fashion, which should hopefully ease their way and increase your odds of getting them to stay in it for the long haul! It’s also a great way to get that curious player who “just doesn’t have time for a game today” to dip their toes in quickly.

In terms of warband selection, I would recommend choosing a force that is interesting to the new player if they have a preference. It might require working around some mechanical challenges, but if Oliver likes the comedy of goblins or Sofia thinks vampires are cool, if can still be worthwhile explaining those respective warbands’ quirks since they’re more likely to be more emotionally invested. For a player who doesn’t know where to start or doesn’t have a preference, the best warbands are likely the most straightforward ones you have available. The Embergard starter set warbands (they’re in the box for a reason!) will work fine. There’s some benefit to choosing a warband they could buy for themselves that day if you’re playing at a shop too. You’re going to want to pick something that has relatively few models to keep track of, each with a similar ability (or no special ability) and hopefully a reliable attack on their inspired side so they feel like they’re able to hit something. Everybody has more fun when they succeed!

For at least the first few games, skip the pregame setup ritual and just arrange the board and treasure tokens for them. It’s likely best to go fully overlapping on the wide side (no offset and definitely no longboard), and preferably boards with few or no features like lethal or blocked hexes to prevent overcomplicating things. Drop two objectives on each side and one in no man’s land, and place their fighters for them so all they have to do is get charging. It’s up to you whether to have a roll-off to start the game, or simply let the new player go first to begin the first action phase.

From here, we will progress in complexity through a few levels.

Level 1 – Fighters only
The first game or two will be played with no cards, and all fighters will start the game on their inspired side. The rules for activations are the same (move, charge, guard, etc), but skip the power phase and any card cycling activations. Score bounty for taking a fighter out of action, or holding atreasure toekn at the end of the round. This approach introduces the round structure, actions, and combat. You should forego delving as well and just use the objective facing on your feature tokens.

Level 2 – Warscrolls
You could start here, or try this for your second game if it seems like too much to handle. Here you’ll use the fighter cards as well as the warband’s unique rules for their warscroll to add some flavor and variety to play rather than simply stat blocks. Use the same scoring situations as before (bounty for slaying and a glory for holding a treasure token), but you get to add a few extra things. You could choose to begin inspired or work towards the warband’s inspiration, depending on your players’ level of comfort. The goal is not to overwhelm them, so season to taste here.

Level 3 – Objective Cards Only
Once they are ready (likely after just one or two games), you can advance to the next stage. In the following game(s) introduce just the objective cards from a single rivals deck. You will want to remove any objectives that specify power card requirements such as “has 3+ upgrades” or “has 5 ploys in your discard pile” etc. to reduce friction and confusion seeing as we won’t be playing with the power deck just yet. Still start with all fighters inspired, and still avoid the delving discussion unless their warband has special mechanics or the deck has cards that involve flipping a feature token.

Level 4 – Power Up
In the following games(s), introduce the power deck and inspiration. Start on the uninspired side of each player’s fighter cards, and explain the conditions under which the fighters in both warbands inspire. Some players may struggle with gambit cards and the various conditions they trigger in, so you could consider playing with only the upgrades in their power deck for starters, and add a level 4.5 where gambits are brought into play.

Level 5 – The Full Experience
From there, you can move into the complete ruleset with picking and orienting boards, objective placement, delving, etc. I would stay with the rivals decks you’ve been building up through to this point, at least for the first game. Your player will have an easier time understanding the full ruleset if they aren’t also having to read and interpret new cards at the same time.

By this point, they are hopefully hooked (or at least have been convinced that Underworlds isn’t all THAT bad!) and you can open the conversation into their preferred aspects of the game – do they enjoy aggro, hold objective play, control, or some other aspect of the game? Do they enjoy trading kills or would they prefer having their fighters die less often? Thinking about these details can dovetail into trying out a different warband, or can inform what nemesis deck pairing they might want to work up towards in the future. Try to be supportive of their preferences and don’t discourage them just because something might appear to be a suboptimal choice – we’re not here to build the next grand clash winner just yet!. For now we should be satisfied simply to have introduced a new player and helped shepherd them through what could have been an overwhelming or confusing experience, and brought somebody into your gaming group that might otherwise have been turned off by things being “just too hard”.

War Unbound
A new way to play introduced quite recently, War Unbound is an official play format that does not use cards (aside from fighter stat cards) and is much more of a pure miniatures game. If you’re playing with somebody who is coming from a different skirmish game such as Warcry or Kill Team who might be intimidated by the deckbuilding or card game aspect, this is a great choice to ramp them up into the game’s core mechanics. It could also be great for people new to board games or miniatures games in general, younger players, and more casually interested people who want something with less complexity. The rules were released in a White Dwarf article, but you can read a text version here

Thanks for reading, and as always I welcome your ideas and feedback. But for now, my glory is spent! Until next time, friends.