As previously discussed, with the new Relaunch of Underworlds 2.0 with the Embergard edition, this game is going to be fantastic for returning players looking to get back into the swing of things. There are a ton of players who checked out of the game for one reason or another and have a renewed interest and want to see how best to return to Underworlds. This is great! I know that it can be difficult to pick back up afteer time away, and there can be some confusion – that it’s not clear to many of them just how to do that, what this whole ‘rivals’ thing is, whether their cards are valid, and so on.

If that describes you (or somebody you know) – I have good news to share – it is easier to rejoin the Underworlds community now than it ever has been before. You can use your old toys, and in some cases won’t need to make any new purchases at all beyond a single card pack, provided you have a friend with the Embergard box to play with. Simple as that! Scroll down to the subheaders below based on when you last played, and I will cover the basics of what you need to know to get back into the action. If you need help finding a local group of people to play with, check out my online groups directory and see if there’s anyone in your region (or make one yourself and I’ll add you to the list!)

If you’re a brand new player, check out the New Player’s Guide here

Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

If you’re looking to get back in, check out this guide to the most cost-effective ways to begin

The main thing I want to convey is that YES, even if you have old and outdated stuff, you can still play. Every single warband is supported at launch in this new edition, so no matter what you own you can play with just a deck of cards, a board, and a friend. Maybe you have older warband laying around, or perhaps got one second hand from a garage sale. While these items are out of print and the universal cards have been ‘rotated out’ – you can still play with the old models – you may simply need to purchase a card pack to go along with them and you’ll be all set. For more information check out this article on older warbands, and as I work through more of the older seasons you can look there as well for similar information. HERE is the new rulebook if you want to check it out. Additionally, Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

If you want to see the new game played, there are plenty of “how to play” videos available online if you’re a visual learner. Here’s an excellent overview of Spitewood by Agents of Sgimar. This page has an official how to play video from games Workshop if you’d prefer the source material.

The sections below are for players who haven’t played since:
1) Shadespire or Nightvault
2) Beastgrave, Direchasm, Starter Set, or Dreadfane
3) Harrowdeep or Nethermaze
4) Gnarlwood or Wyrdhollow

I haven’t played since Shadespire or Nightvault:

The biggest thing you’ll need to be aware of is a concept called “rotation” -All cards you have from the Frist Edition of the game are gone now. Your warbands are still ok to use, and many of them are even still valid for tournament play, so while you can’t bring Ready for Action or My Turn anymore (sad, I know), your favorite warband’s models are still fine to use. There now exist multiple formats with different deckbuilding rules which I have covered here. The easiest way for you to get back into the action is by using a format known as “Rivals” where you pick up a single card pack (known as a ‘universal rivals deck’) to make your usual 12 objectives, 10 upgrades, 10 ploys deck you’re used to. That’s it! you’ll only need to make one deck purchase, and you’re right back into playing the game. Just slap your fighter cards into the box and you’re ready to roll some dice. In this game mode, you’ll use your warband’s fighter cards and a faction specific ‘warscroll’, but all your objective and power cards will be from that universal rivals deck you’ve selected. The First Edition cards you have are no longer legal. If you want help choosing a rivals deck to pair with what you have on hand, All warbands now have been assigned a designation of Strike (Aggro), Flex, Take and Hold (Hold Objective) and Mastery (other). Snap up a Rivals deck with that same designation and you should be good to go immediately.

Another format you can try is called “Nemesis”, where you combine any two of these ‘universal rivals decks’ to make a deck that combines your favorites from the two sets. That’s it! you’ll only need to two decks and your warband card/scroll and you’re right back into the deckbuilding experience. You’ll want to be aware of a few restrictions (mostly that you’re limited to no more than 6 “surge” objectives, or cards that say ‘score immediately’ rather than in an end phase, and you can’t include multiple cards with the same name like Great Strength), but the deckbuilding experience looks a lot like it used to, only it’s much more limited – you will NOT need to ‘buy everything’ to get caught up. Battlemallet which has a repository of community made nemesis decks ++HERE++

or more information Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

There are some rule changes that change how the game works as a whole, but it’s worthwhile checking out the new rulebook in the Embergard core box, which you can do by reading here. A super fast summary of the major differences are:

• If you don’t like your opening hand, you can still mulligan as before. Now though, you shuffle the cards back into the deck after you draw replacements rather than discarding them.
• You can now continue to move after you have a move token (but not charge)
• If ALL of your surviving fighters have charge tokens, you can activate one of them again (but not charge again) in subsequent activations, which means you’ll still have stuff to do in round 3 when you’re low on fighters.
• Cleave still exists, and another keyword ‘ensnare’ exists, which works similarly but ignores dodge instead of block. Plus damage (such as on Great Strength) is now known as Grievous, and there exists Brutal which acts like cleave for supports. You can only apply one of these effects per attack, so if you have multiple options, choose wisely.
• Fighters can be staggered which grants a single die reroll to attacks against them. There are stagger hexes that do this as well.
• Treasure Tokens (what you used to call Objective Tokens) can be flipped to the other side in the power step by ‘delving’. Your fighter will be staggered if you do so. The other side of an objective will be a ‘cover’ hex. Being in a cover hex means you count full supports as successes on defense, and does interact with some cards.
• Fighters now have variable Bounty, so depending on the fighter slain, the other player might get 2-3 glory for the kill rather than just 1, or even zero in some cases.
• The actions “Draw a Power Card” and “Cycle an Objective” have now been combined into the “Focus” action, where you discard any number of either kind of card, then draw replacements for everything you discarded as well as one additional power card.
• There now exists an “Underdog”, which is the player with more bounty in fighters out of action – if you have more dead stuff or more valuable dead stuff, you’re the Underdog. This is a tiebreaker for roll offs and activates a few effects on a few cards.
• Roll offs now are done with a single die, with Crit>sword>Hammer>double>single support.
• You no longer spend your glory to purchase upgrades – instead you now just can’t have more upgrade cost than you have glory. If a fighter dies, you discard their upgrades and are effectively ‘refunded’ that glory. Some upgrades have variable costs as well.
• Critical successes no longer trump other successes, and crits just count as one success like a hammer of shield might do. If one player has more crits in their roll, they can activate critical abilities. The default ones for this are Overrun on attack (you can push into the space your target used to occupy) and Stand Fast of defense (You can’t be driven back and the attack does one less damage to a minimum of 1).
• You no longer each take a board and roll to align them, you simply share a single large board and roll off to determine who gets which half.
• You place Treasure tokens with some new rules – there has to be at least one in both players’ territories at the end.
• Warbands now all have Warscrolls where the special rules for the models go, often containing special single use effects you can conceptualize as 3 free ploys you’ll get at the start of every game.

I haven’t played since Beastgrave or Direchasm (or only have the “Old” Starter Set/Dreadfane Barnes & Noble Box):

You’re possibly already familiar with ‘rotation’ – it’s a new edition, so all your old boards and cards are done now. Your warbands are still valid, and many of them are even still valid for tournament play, so your favorite warband’s models are still fine to use. There now exist multiple formats with different deckbuilding rules which I have covered here. The easiest way for you to get back into the action is by using a format known as “Rivals” where you pick up a single card pack (known as a ‘universal rivals deck’) to make your usual 12 objectives, 10 upgrades, 10 ploys deck you’re used to. That’s it! you’ll only need to make one deck purchase, and you’re right back into playing the game. Just slap your fighter cards into the box and you’re ready to roll some dice. In this game mode, you’ll use your warband’s fighter cards and a faction specific ‘warscroll’, but all your objective and power cards will be from that universal rivals deck you’ve selected. The First Edition cards you have are no longer legal. If you want help choosing a rivals deck to pair with what you have on hand, All warbands now have been assigned a designation of Strike (Aggro), Flex, Take and Hold (Hold Objective) and Mastery (other). Snap up a Rivals deck with that same designation and you should be good to go immediately.

Another format you can try is called “Nemesis”, where you combine any two of these ‘universal rivals decks’ to make a deck that combines your favorites from the two sets. That’s it! you’ll only need to two decks and your warband card/scroll and you’re right back into the deckbuilding experience. You’ll want to be aware of a few restrictions (mostly that you’re limited to no more than 6 “surge” objectives, or cards that say ‘score immediately’ rather than in an end phase), but the deckbuilding experience looks a lot like it used to, only it’s much more limited – you will NOT need to ‘buy everything’ to get caught up. Battlemallet which has a repository of community made nemesis decks ++HERE++

or more information Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

There are some rule changes that change how the game works as a whole, but it’s worthwhile checking out the new rulebook in the Embergard core box, which you can do by reading here. A super fast summary of the major differences are:

• If you don’t like your opening hand, you can still mulligan as before. Now though, you shuffle the cards back into the deck after you draw replacements rather than discarding them
• You can now continue to move after you have a move token (but not charge)
• If ALL of your surviving fighters have charge tokens, you can activate one of them again (but not charge or do another ‘superaction’) in subsequent activations, which means you’ll still have stuff to do in round 3 when you’re low on fighters.
• Cleave still exists, and another keyword ‘ensnare’ exists, which works similarly but ignores dodge instead of shields. Plus damage (such as on Great Strength) is now known as Grievous, and there exists Brutal which acts like cleave for supports. You can only apply one of these effects per attack, so if you have multiple options, choose wisely.
• Fighters can be staggered which grants a single die reroll to attacks against them. There are stagger hexes that do this as well.
• Treasure Tokens (what you used to call Objective Tokens) can be flipped to the other side in the power step by ‘delving’. Your fighter will be staggered if you do so. The other side of an objective will be a ‘cover’ hex. Being in a cover hex means you count full supports as successes on defense, and does interact with some cards.
• Fighters now have variable Bounty, so depending on the fighter slain, the other player might get 2-3 glory for the kill rather than just 1, or even zero in some cases.
• The actions “Draw a Power Card” and “Cycle an Objective” have now been combined into the “Focus” action, where you discard any number of either kind of card, then draw replacements for everything you discarded as well as one additional power card.
• There now exists an “Underdog”, which is the player with more bounty in fighters out of action – if you have more dead stuff or more valuable dead stuff, you’re the Underdog.
• Roll offs now are done with a single die, with Crit>sword>Hammer>double>single support.
• You no longer spend your glory to purchase upgrades – instead you now just can’t have more upgrade cost than you have glory. If a fighter dies, you discard their upgrades and are effectively ‘refunded’ that glory. Some upgrades have variable costs as well.
• Critical successes no longer trump other successes, and crits just count as one success like a hammer of shield might do. If one player has more crits in their roll, they can activate critical abilities. The default ones for this are Overrun on attack (you can push into the space your target used to occupy) and Stand Fast of defense (You can’t be driven back and the attack does one less damage to a minimum of 1).
• You no longer each take a board and roll to align them, you simply share a single large board and roll off to determine who gets which half.
• You place Treasure tokens with some new rules – there has to be at least one in both players’ territories at the end.
• Warbands now all have Warscrolls where the special rules for the models go, often containing special single use effects you can conceptualize as 3 free ploys you’ll get at the start of every game.

I haven’t played since Harrowdeep or Nethermaze:

You’re likely already familiar with ‘rotation’ – it’s a new edition, so all your old boards and cards are done now. Your warbands are still valid, and many of them are even still valid for tournament play, so your favorite warband’s models are still fine to use. There now exist multiple formats with different deckbuilding rules which I have covered here. The easiest way for you to get back into the action is by using a format known as “Rivals” where you pick up a single card pack (known as a ‘universal rivals deck’) to make your usual 12 objectives, 10 upgrades, 10 ploys deck you’re used to. That’s it! you’ll only need to make one deck purchase, and you’re right back into playing the game. Just slap your fighter cards into the box and you’re ready to roll some dice. In this game mode, you’ll use your warband’s fighter cards and a faction specific ‘warscroll’, but all your objective and power cards will be from that universal rivals deck you’ve selected. The First Edition cards you have are no longer legal. If you want help choosing a rivals deck to pair with what you have on hand, All warbands now have been assigned a designation of Strike (Aggro), Flex, Take and Hold (Hold Objective) and Mastery (other). Snap up a Rivals deck with that same designation and you should be good to go immediately.

Another format you can try is called “Nemesis”, where you combine any two of these ‘universal rivals decks’ to make a deck that combines your favorites from the two sets. That’s it! you’ll only need to two decks and your warband card/scroll and you’re right back into the deckbuilding experience. You’ll want to be aware of a few restrictions (mostly that you’re limited to no more than 6 “surge” objectives, or cards that say ‘score immediately’ rather than in an end phase), but the deckbuilding experience looks a lot like it used to, only it’s much more limited – you will NOT need to ‘buy everything’ to get caught up. Battlemallet which has a repository of community made nemesis decks ++HERE++

or more information Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

There are some rule changes that change how the game works as a whole, but it’s worthwhile checking out the new rulebook in the Embergard core box, which you can do by reading here. A super fast summary of the major differences are:

• You can now continue to move after you have a move token (but not charge)
• If ALL of your surviving fighters have charge tokens, you can activate one of them again (but not charge or do another ‘superaction’) in subsequent activations, which means you’ll still have stuff to do in round 3 when you’re low on fighters.
• Plus damage (such as on Great Strength) is now known as Grievous, and there exists Brutal which acts like Cleave for supports. You can only apply one of these effects per attack, so if you have multiple options, choose wisely.
• Fighters can be staggered which grants a single die reroll to attacks against them. There are stagger hexes that do this as well.
• Treasure Tokens (what you used to call Objective Tokens) can be still flipped to the other side in the power step by ‘delving’. Your fighter will be staggered now if you do so. The other side of an objective will still be a cover hex.
• Fighters now have variable Bounty, so depending on the fighter slain, the other player might get 2-3 glory for the kill rather than just 1, or even zero in some cases.
• The actions “Draw a Power Card” and “Cycle an Objective” have now been combined into the “Focus” action, where you discard any number of either kind of card, then draw replacements for everything you discarded as well as one additional power card.
• There now exists an “Underdog”, which is the player with more bounty in fighters out of action – if you have more dead stuff or more valuable dead stuff, you’re the Underdog.
• Roll offs now are done with a single die, with Crit>sword>Hammer>double>single support.
• You no longer spend your glory to purchase upgrades – instead you now just can’t have more upgrade cost than you have glory. If a fighter dies, you discard their upgrades and are effectively ‘refunded’ that glory. Some upgrades have variable costs as well.
• Critical successes no longer trump other successes, and crits just count as one success like a hammer of shield might do. If one player has more crits in their roll, they can activate critical abilities. The default ones for this are Overrun on attack (you can push into the space your target used to occupy) and Stand Fast of defense (You can’t be driven back and the attack does one less damage to a minimum of 1).
• You no longer each take a board and roll to align them, you simply share a single large board and roll off to determine who gets which half.
• You place Treasure tokens with some new rules – there has to be at least one in both players’ territories at the end.
• Warbands now all have Warscrolls where the special rules for the models go, often containing special single use effects you can conceptualize as 3 free ploys you’ll get at the start of every game.

I haven’t played since Gnarlwood or Wyrdhollow:

You’re likely already familiar with ‘rotation’ – it’s a new edition, so all your old boards and cards are done now. Your warbands are still valid, and many of them are even still valid for tournament play, so your favorite warband’s models are still fine to use. There now exist multiple formats with different deckbuilding rules which I have covered here. The easiest way for you to get back into the action is by using a format known as “Rivals” where you pick up a single card pack (known as a ‘universal rivals deck’) to make your usual 12 objectives, 10 upgrades, 10 ploys deck you’re used to. That’s it! you’ll only need to make one deck purchase, and you’re right back into playing the game. Just slap your fighter cards into the box and you’re ready to roll some dice. In this game mode, you’ll use your warband’s fighter cards and a faction specific ‘warscroll’, but all your objective and power cards will be from that universal rivals deck you’ve selected. The First Edition cards you have are no longer legal. If you want help choosing a rivals deck to pair with what you have on hand, All warbands now have been assigned a designation of Strike (Aggro), Flex, Take and Hold (Hold Objective) and Mastery (other). Snap up a Rivals deck with that same designation and you should be good to go immediately.

Another format you can try is called “Nemesis”, where you combine any two of these ‘universal rivals decks’ to make a deck that combines your favorites from the two sets. That’s it! you’ll only need to two decks and your warband card/scroll and you’re right back into the deckbuilding experience. You’ll want to be aware of a few restrictions (mostly that you’re limited to no more than 6 “surge” objectives, or cards that say ‘score immediately’ rather than in an end phase), but the deckbuilding experience looks a lot like it used to, only it’s much more limited – you will NOT need to ‘buy everything’ to get caught up. Battlemallet which has a repository of community made nemesis decks ++HERE++

or more information Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

There are some rule changes that change how the game works as a whole, but it’s worthwhile checking out the new rulebook in the Embergard core box, which you can do by reading here. The major differences are covered in good detail on Path to Glory, but the quick rundown is:

• Plus damage (such as on Great Strength) is now known as Grievous, and there exists Brutal which acts like Cleave for supports. You can only apply one of these effects per attack, so if you have multiple options, choose wisely.
• Treasure Tokens are the new name for Objective Tokens. They still stagger you when you delve, but you can continue to delve while staggered now.
• Fighters now have variable Bounty, so depending on the fighter slain, the other player might get 2-3 glory for the kill rather than just 1, or even zero in some cases.
• The actions “Draw a Power Card” and “Cycle an Objective” have now been combined into the “Focus” action, where you discard any number of either kind of card, then draw replacements for everything you discarded as well as one additional power card.
• There now exists an “Underdog”, which is the player with more bounty in fighters out of action – if you have more dead stuff or more valuable dead stuff, you’re the Underdog.
• Roll offs now are done with a single die, with Crit>sword>Hammer>double>single support.
• You no longer spend your glory to purchase upgrades – instead you now just can’t have more upgrade cost than you have glory. If a fighter dies, you discard their upgrades and are effectively ‘refunded’ that glory. Some upgrades have variable costs as well.
• Critical successes no longer trump other successes, and crits just count as one success like a hammer of shield might do. If one player has more crits in their roll, they can activate critical abilities. The default ones for this are Overrun on attack (you can push into the space your target used to occupy) and Stand Fast of defense (You can’t be driven back and the attack does one less damage to a minimum of 1).
• You no longer each take a board and roll to align them, you simply share a single large board and roll off to determine who gets which half.
• You place Treasure tokens with some new rules – there has to be at least one in both players’ territories at the end.
• Warbands now all have Warscrolls where the special rules for the models go, often containing special single use effects you can conceptualize as 3 free ploys you’ll get at the start of every game.

I haven’t played since Deathgorge or Wintermaw:

ou’re likely already familiar with ‘rotation’ – it’s a new edition, so all your old boards and cards are done now. Your warbands are still valid, and many of them are even still valid for tournament play, so your favorite warband’s models are still fine to use. There now exist multiple formats with different deckbuilding rules which I have covered here. The easiest way for you to get back into the action is by using a format known as “Rivals” where you pick up a single card pack (known as a ‘universal rivals deck’) to make your usual 12 objectives, 10 upgrades, 10 ploys deck you’re used to. That’s it! you’ll only need to make one deck purchase, and you’re right back into playing the game. Just slap your fighter cards into the box and you’re ready to roll some dice. In this game mode, you’ll use your warband’s fighter cards and a faction specific ‘warscroll’, but all your objective and power cards will be from that universal rivals deck you’ve selected. The First Edition cards you have are no longer legal. If you want help choosing a rivals deck to pair with what you have on hand, All warbands now have been assigned a designation of Strike (Aggro), Flex, Take and Hold (Hold Objective) and Mastery (other). Snap up a Rivals deck with that same designation and you should be good to go immediately.

Another format you can try is called “Nemesis”, where you combine any two of these ‘universal rivals decks’ to make a deck that combines your favorites from the two sets. That’s it! you’ll only need to two decks and your warband card/scroll and you’re right back into the deckbuilding experience. You’ll want to be aware of a few restrictions (mostly that you’re limited to no more than 6 “surge” objectives, or cards that say ‘score immediately’ rather than in an end phase), but the deckbuilding experience looks a lot like it used to, only it’s much more limited – you will NOT need to ‘buy everything’ to get caught up. Battlemallet which has a repository of community made nemesis decks ++HERE++

For more information Click HERE for a list of every warband in Second Edition, as well as tips for their best use

Click HERE for a similar list of Rivals Decks in Second Edition, and how to play them

Many of these older warbands have free online rules now, which can be accessed here. Be aware not all of them are ‘tournament legal’, but for casual play you can absolutely use any warband you like.

There are some rule changes that change how the game works as a whole, but it’s worthwhile checking out the new rulebook in the Embergard core box, which you can do by reading here. The major differences are covered in good detail on Path to Glory, but the quick rundown is:

• Plus damage (such as on Great Strength) is now known as Grievous, and there exists Brutal which acts like Cleave for supports. You can only apply one of these effects per attack, so if you have multiple options, choose wisely.
• Treasure Tokens are the new name for Objective Tokens. They still stagger you when you delve, but you can continue to delve while staggered now.
• Fighters now have variable Bounty, so depending on the fighter slain, the other player might get 2-3 glory for the kill rather than just 1, or even zero in some cases.
• The actions “Draw a Power Card” and “Cycle an Objective” have now been combined into the “Focus” action, where you discard any number of either kind of card, then draw replacements for everything you discarded as well as one additional power card.
• There now exists an “Underdog”, which is the player with more bounty in fighters out of action – if you have more dead stuff or more valuable dead stuff, you’re the Underdog.
• Roll offs now are done with a single die, with Crit>sword>Hammer>double>single support.
• You no longer spend your glory to purchase upgrades – instead you now just can’t have more upgrade cost than you have glory. If a fighter dies, you discard their upgrades and are effectively ‘refunded’ that glory. Some upgrades have variable costs as well.
• Critical successes no longer trump other successes, and crits just count as one success like a hammer of shield might do. If one player has more crits in their roll, they can activate critical abilities. The default ones for this are Overrun on attack (you can push into the space your target used to occupy) and Stand Fast of defense (You can’t be driven back and the attack does one less damage to a minimum of 1).
• You no longer each take a board and roll to align them, you simply share a single large board and roll off to determine who gets which half.
• You place Treasure tokens with some new rules – there has to be at least one in both players’ territories at the end.
• Warbands now all have Warscrolls where the special rules for the models go, often containing special single use effects you can conceptualize as 3 free ploys you’ll get at the start of every game.

That’s a wrap! as I said, in many cases the only thing you will need is the Embergard Core Box (or a friend who has one), and maybe a Warscroll/fighter card pack for your old warband if you don’t want to print out a copy from the internet. Let me know if there is anything I missed, or you have any questions about what steps you should take next. I hope to see you on the Underworlds tables soon – now get out there and spend that glory!

^{Well, apply it in a refundable fashion to your upgrades, anyway}