A common situation new players find themselves in (as well as some returning players who have been out of the game for a while) involves what to do with older warbands they’ve gotten second hand. Maybe you found an old box laying around, or you got something on a great deal from eBay or a garage sale etc. It’s not any of the newest season’s stuff, so that can leave people scratching their heads, asking the questions of “hey, I just picked up this old warband, are the cards legal, and is there anything I need in order to be able to play? Also, what new products should I try to match them up with in order to be more competitive?” These are very common questions that I hope to be able to help with here. So let’s dive into the first in a series of articles: “Can I Use This Old Warband? A Beginner’s Guide to the Shadespire Season”

You can find my other seasonal overviews here:
Nightvault (Season 2)
Beastgrave (Season 3)
Direchasm (Season 4)
Harrowdeep (Season 5)
Nethermaze (Season 6)
Gnarlwood (Season 7)
Wyrdhollow (Season 8)
Deathgorge (Season 9) and Wintermaw (Season 10)

Overview:
Everything from Shadespire (Season 1) is able to be played in the current game of Warhammer Underworlds. The only cards you’ll be able to use are the newer cards from Embergard, which have been released in the new edition of the game. All of the cards and boards from this season have been left behind as editions changed, so all you’ll need to hold on to are the minis themselves.

Most of the Shadespire warbands (except for the updated/re-released Spiteclaw’s Swarm, Sepulchral Guard and Farstriders) are in the “other warbands”/”legends” category in that they aren’t valid for competitive play and have to use generic warscrolls, but they’re still totally fine for learning the game and getting some casual games in.

Steelheart’s Champions

Steelheart’s Champions are a 3 fighter warband that hits like a truck and can take a punch, but has some challenges with being slow. They will do best against warbands that come to them, especially when they are able to set up some scoring in their own territory such as standing on objective tokens. The biggest challenges a new player will have to face using this warband is the fact that you are working with only 3 fighters who largely will be restricted to range 1 attacks, so you have less you’re be able to do, especially if the opponent doesn’t engage you with your low movement. While your defense and health is pretty good, once you lose a fighter things are going to be a little rough and many of your cards will be harder to score. But their stats are solid, cards are straightforward, and the playstyle isn’t overly complicated, so you’re in an OK place for a new player to get the hang of things

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include Blazing Assault, Reckless Fury, and potentially Countdown to Cataclysm. You could opt for a Take and Hold or Flex deck but their limited numbers might make that more challenging.

Garrek’s Reavers

Garrek’s Reavers are a 5 fighter warband that has the advantages of being quite fast. They also have access to some good starting damage in Blooded Saek, but your fighters will die quite quickly and things will really start to fall apart for you if your leader goes down. Options for your playstyle are a ‘glass cannon’ or ‘suicide aggro’ build where you charge with reckless abandon to try and kill them before they kill you, or utilizing your superior speed and higher fighter count to play a flexible hold objective game.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include Blazing Assault or Reckless Fury. There’s an angle for Countdown to Cataclysm Pillage and Plunder, or even Emberstone Sentinels, though the Strike plan will probably work best for this band. Wrack and Ruin could be tough, but doable.

Ironskullz Boys

Ironskullz Boys are a 4 fighter warband that isn’t concerned with much more than getting a few punches in and taking a few back. They are a great beginner warband in the sense that it’s all relatively simple – just try to pull off four charges each round – but they do struggle a bit competitively. Your leader, Gurzag Ironskull, is a solid fighter who will be doing most of your work, and you really won’t get as much mileage out of Hakka and Basha as you might hope without weapon upgrades. Your general plan is going to be ‘invade enemy territory and make as many attacks as possible’, which will be hindered by the low speed of the warband.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury. I suppose you could try some counterpunch flex builds, but that’s not really on-brand for Gurzag and the Boyz.

The Sepulchral Guard

Note that this warband has been updated in the thirteen that have been carried forward into Embergard with free digital releases!

The Sepulchral Guard is a 7 fighter warband that can work in a number of different playstyles, but generally does best while working from a ‘Take and Hold’ goal. The fanciest thing this warband can do is resurrect their fighters, which allows for a model that was taken out of action to return to the battlefield (becoming inspired when they do so). Your leader, the Sepulchral Warden, has the ability to move multiple fighters around the board at once, which will help you get fighters on the feature tokens you need more efficiently – this is offset by a lower movement characteristic. You can play them as an aggressive combat oriented warband, but should beware of their generally lower defense and health which may lead to your opponent simply farming glory off your fragile skeletons.

Their warscroll abilities generally seem to favor this combat oriented style, but without the stats to reliably pull it off you’re likely better off working towards board control instead of fighting. Grasping Hands lets you count a target as surrounded for one attack per game, Relentless Blows lets you attack with a second fighter if the first one failed, but you have to target the same enemy (good luck with that). Bone Shrapnel is really the only universally useful one – you can deal a damage to somebody (with no range restriction) when they slay one of your fighters. It’s worth noting that none of these three effects actually help you play Take and Hold, so this warband has a bit of an internal conflict. You absolutely MUST protect the Warden, or you’ll have remarkably limited ability to keep the ball rolling regardless of which strategy you go for.

Rivals decks worth pairing with the warband include Emberstone Sentinels, Countdown to Cataclysm, and Pillage and Plunder. Get on token, stay on token. You can watch Aaron of England compete with them at the World Championships of Warhammer here, and he combined Emberstone Sentinels x Pillage & Plunder for his nemesis pairing. Check out his Love Letter to the warband here for more inspiration. You can also make something work with Edge of the Knife – you have six Tempered fighters that can be raised and some movement economy, so score those positional Objectives (and enjoy actually wanting to make attacks with the lil’ guys).

The Chosen Axes

The Chosen Axes is a 4 fighter warband that generally wants to be holding tokens, but can scrap if you need them to. You do have huge potential in your leader, Fjul-Grimnir, though Fyreslayer expert Wathlab cautions against going too leader-centric with the warband and wants you to know that Tefk is almost as important of a fighter. Their best playstyle is a hold objective/counterpunch defensive strategy, but with the right cards they can become invading aggressive blenders. Just be prepared for a steep learning curve.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include really anything, sicne they have the flexibility of choosing either of the Order generic warscrolls, but I would lean towards a midboard-control Flex or Take and Hold deck. Emberstone Sentinels could be tough with their movement, so maybe go for Pillage & Plunder.

Spiteclaw’s Swarm

Note that this warband has been updated in the thirteen that have been carried forward into Embergard with free digital releases!

Spiteclaw’s Swarm is a 5 fighter warband that has been recently updated and now supposedly is in the ‘horde aggro’ playstyle; Games Workshop has designated them as Strike. That said, I don’t believe the warband has the stats to support that. The advantages to this warband is fantastic speed and the ability to bring your lesser fighters back to the battlefield on any starting hex, including in your opponent’s territory if you so wish. The leader is a solid fighter as well (In fact, Skritch is the greatest, yes-yes), and should you lose him while Krrk is alive the leader runemark swaps over to him. They inspire when a ploy card “picks” one of your fighters, so you have some decent control over who inspires when, assuming you have the card support for it – though minions are resurrected uninspired so probably don’t waste it on them too often. Their warscroll gives you access to a few things that support the flex/hold play more than strike – a positionally dependent push, a positionally dependent guard token, and the ability to swap two adjacent friendly fighters. Tragically none of these are particularly powerful, and none of them are ploys and therefore won’t help you inspire. The one piece of Strike they really have is the ability for the two main fighters to gain crit grievous if the target is flanked, which is not only somewhat difficult to achieve but also not much of a payout for the effort.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include Blazing Assault IF you want to try the strike plan (which I would recommend against) – it has 6 cards that ‘pick’ a fighter. You’ll want to take the pushes to position minions to support the big boys for that crit grievous from the Scheming Pack ability – the best use of the Skitter warscroll ability is probably to run a minion adjacent before a charge from Skritch. That said, you’ll die easily and won’t probably be able to do enough damage against most targets, so I would actually prefer Flex or Take and Hold decks. Emberstone Sentinels has 5 ‘pick’ ploys and Pillage & Plunder has 6. Here’s a video of Pavel from Poland taking them to the World Championships of Warhammer, pairing with Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage and Plunder while managing to take a game off of a Dromm player who made the top 16 cut.

Magore’s Fiends

Magore’s Fiends is a 4 fighter warband with a playstyle that is simple – get into a fight. All four of your fighters have good stats, and when inspired become even better. The limitations of the warband are that they have low speed and may struggle to reach opponents who don’t want to engage, and that they are very dice-dependent; if rolls don’t go your way early on you’re liable to have a hard go of things with a generic chaos warscroll.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include any strike deck – likely Blazing Assault or Reckless Fury will do well enough. They could certainly play flex as well.

The Farstriders

Note that this warband has been updated in the thirteen that have been carried forward into Embergard with free digital releases!

The Farstriders is a 3 fighter warband that is a decent beginner’s starting warband, especially when you accept that the leader’s two swords attack is a typo and it is supposed to be two hammers. All three of your fighters have good stats and the added benefit of each having a ranged attack, allowing you to generally be able to make an attack action every activation. You still have the drawbacks of slower a three fighter warband – once you lose a fighter you’ll be in a bit of hot water. The warscroll also encourages you to invade enemy territory, but that puts you in harm’s way so the challenge with this warband is how to manage that risk/reward scenario. If you manage to get the “I’m inspiredand vulnerable in enemy territory so I get to ping you” option that’s great, but I absolutely wouldn’t depend on it. Playstyles generally are aggressive invasion of enemy territory, though with the potential for some defensive ‘kiting’ with low damage pistol shots.

The warscroll itself has you inspire a fighter after their second attack in a round made with different weapons – unless you find a way to attack in the power step, you will at best be inspiring two fighters in round 1. Their warscroll abilities are a little lackluster – the first and probably best one lets you push every friendly fighter as many hexes as the battle round, but you have to end in enemy territory. If you save this for the end game it’s a big push 3 for 1-2 fighters, but I would suggest using it in round 1 when you’re more likely to have more fighters alive, after you’ve gotten them into enemy territory to either occupy tokens last minute, get adjacent to set up for next round, or get away to protect your fighters. You have a free move (if the fighter is NOT in enemy territory) which can help you get over to the fight. You also get to pout a wounded friendly on guard provided they’re in enemy territory. The direction is pretty clear – head over the line and start mixing things up.

Rivals decks that you could consider pairing them with include any of the current decks in full honesty – I think these guys are relatively flexible. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest you aim for Pillage and Plunder as that deck has a little more ‘be in your home territory’ stuff. Reckless Fury is a good option to make some more action economy and inspire more fighters, and Emberstone Sentinels actually could be quite strong as they want to be in enemy territory anyway, and have a few tools to help them hold treasure. Having ranged options on all three fighters means you can potentially sit back on tokens and let them come to you with a counterpunch approach, or camp on a forward treasure and still get some attacks off. Wrack & Ruin is potentially interesting from the ‘get a lot of people damaged’ perspective, as you’ll likely get hurt, and with accurate attacks and the deck’s pings you can probably make that happen.

Wrap

Ultimately, Any and all season 1 warbands are playable in the Rivals or Nemesis formats if you pick up a universal rivals deck. You absolutely can play with those old toys you’ve just acquired, and in some cases still do pretty well with them. You’re likely safe to toss the ‘extra’ cards that come with them if you own any first edition stuff. Until next time, I hope you enjoy spending that glory!