Today’s article is the first in the series of Love Letters written by the Warhammer Underworlds community, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The Love Letter Series was kicked off by this post encouraging people to play the warbands they love and tell others about the experience, inviting readers to contribute their passion to this website. The hope is to improve visibility of some lesser-player warbands or playstyles, as well as promote the wonderful people who make up our community that you otherwise might not hear from. Mikkel from Denmark, who also goes by Konsul on Discord, has some serious Heart Eyes for the Eyes of the Nine and has prepared his Love Letter to kick off the series for us. He’s generally a Championship player, so the article is written from that perspective. Without Further ado, let’s open our first lipstick-sealed Love Letter and read about “The Eyes Behind the Mask”
Who are you, and where are you from? How did you get into Underworlds? Do you have a local group you play with, and if so, do they have an online presence to help people find you?
I’m Mikkel from Denmark and my local meta is based in Copenhagen. For a good while we’ve been a group of 10 or so players but recently we’ve seen a bit of rise in players at our monthly game nights so we’re more along 15 players. Hope to see more growth in the future. I’m on most of the discords and go by Konsul/Mikkel.
I was introduced to Underworlds by a friend with whom I’ve played a lot of different board games. He had bought Nightvault and a few warbands. For a while I just played with him since he bought and painted everything so I just had to show up and roll dice. After a while and after digging into blogs like Can You Roll a Crit (now doing Killteam), Steel City Underworlds (R.I.P) and Hexes and Warbands (now Path to Glory) I wanted to try and build decks myself. I’d also become a father and the prospect of getting back into the hobby and painting minis for the first time in some 15 years appealed to me. I bought Direchasm and in spring ’22 I started going to monthly events.
What’s the warband/deck/pairing you love, and how did you two sweethearts meet?
So the warband is Eyes of the Nine. I was always very fascinated with them.. I played them quite a bit in Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire edition during some of the COVID lockdown periods. I remember hearing Erikerik (who has also moved on) retelling glorious victories on Vassal in some of the podcasts and from time to time other people have managed to make Eyes do things they really shouldn’t be able to when you look at what they have to work with. In a lot of ways they’re very hard to love. Their stats, inspire conditions and cards for instance.
Sadly they often end up as the Underworlds version of Saturday morning cartoon villains: grand and delusional schemes, picked apart and having everything thwarted by an incompetent inspector Stormcast Eternal or three. There is a real “next time, Gadget” feel to playing them at times. All of those carefully woven schemes and then a hammer to the face remaining conscious just long enough to see everything unravel.
But there is something to love and it’s name is Blue Horror. It’s the original control piece in Underworlds and it’s just such a fun force multiplier that’s almost impossible to really evaluate. I see Eyes as a warband that excels in positional play and not necessarily as a magic focused band although that certainly can work to a degree. Being able to summon it on any starting hex is great. It is also often possible to use the horror in a way that makes attacking it bad for the opponents action economy is great. Being able to bring it back while Vortemis lives is also great.
So on to the deck.
What makes the deck so fun to play in your experience?
Whenever a new deck or core box comes out I check the cards to see if it allows for fun new tricks with the horror. Malevolent Masks got me fired up. One of the key weaknesses of Eot9 is the dependency on Vortemis – if he’s alive, you can guarantee two fighters, if he goes down the Horrors are not coming back either. Maskborn means, that if you manage to put a mask on Vortemis you will have a chance to get the horror back in play even after you’re completely tabled. That sent me off on (another) trip to Janksville.
The main point of the deck is to guarantee that the horror is alive throughout the game. The next point is not to expect anyone else to live. The third piece of the master strategy is to make the opponent work for their kills. The fourth is: get a mask on Vortemis as quickly as possible and get a mask on the horror as quickly as possible after that. Getting masks out early can make or break the game for this deck. Fifth and final piece of overall wisdom is to try and stretch out across the board – horror in one end, Vortemis in the other. And be mindful of opportunities to use deceitful step or displacing figure to get Vortemis to (relative) safety once the opponent has committed enough fighters forward.
I have tried to put in as many objectives as possible that can be scored with just one fighter: Beating the odds, survivalist, hooded stranger, audacious aspect, vision of success, stoic appearance. I also have chasm key to sneak in an extra glory from the horror. I tried also putting Silver Tether in but that took too much utility out of the upgrade deck.
Add to this that several objectives do not require any surviving fighters in my warband: cold of the void, devoted offerings, taking advantage.
The things I don’t love but haven’t really found replacements for:
- Stealthy advance is not great. It’s easy enough but it does not fit well with the overall strategy of playing hard to catch. It also ends up being tough into token-happy warbands and these are already a weakness of this deck.
- Brave the rootmaze requires three living fighters. Not great in round 2 and 3
- Places of power: very difficult round 1, usually impossible in round 3.
- I’d probably take out Daylight Robbery for something like Center of Attention or another push
Here is a link to the Deck “Eyes Behind the Mask”
How have you found success and/or fun with the deck?
First and foremost the deck is fun. It is a bit of a brain burner but it actually works very well into elite aggro, slower warbands and bands that play for Pure Carnage. I have not faced Hexbane but I actually don’t think it’s as challenging a match-up as many other warbands would find. I prepared for Voidcursed Cyreni and also think this deck might be able to out-passive Cyreni in a longboard setup with the horror acting as a Hammertide shield.
I have played one test match with the game and took it to our monthly tournament (4 games, best of 1) on the 7th of February. Went 2-2 and one loss was tight and I made a very critical mistake in round 1 that seriously disabled my scoring. A bit more testing and a few adjustments and I think I could get a pretty reliable performance out of this deck in the sense of giving opponents close games.
One of the best things about the deck is not having to care in the slightest about dice. I’m not looking to make attacks and not counting on my defense rolls succeeding. That aspect is incredibly relaxing. I’ve built the deck to handle being blown up by aggro.
If I score a surge and an end phase in round 1 I have enough to get going. If I have two fighters alive in the second end phase everything must be going great. Even with just one fighter I might have a chance if I got to deny some of the opponent’s glory while losing fighters.
What advice do you have for other players who might want to try your warband on for size?
This deck is prone to bricking if you don’t get masks out to start cycling through objectives. Several objectives are also depend on timing, some are easy enough early and almost impossible later or the other way around.
One of the reasons I have 13 objectives in the deck is to be able to drop either Claim the Prize, Cold of the Void, Beating the Odds or Places of Power in matches where I had Beating the odds in my hand too early. In some match-ups you need to up the glory ceiling and in others it’s fine to ditch objectives as long as you’re also starving the opponent.
Always try and have a way to get a mask out round 1. It will allow you to quickly churn through objectives like audacious aspect, vision of triumph and set up for hooded stranger etc. if you draw into it.
Be mindful of what objectives you might be able to deny your opponent from scoring. Both variants of Hurricane Force are pretty easy to stop with the horror for instance. You also have enough tools in the deck to mess with some big HO-scores when facing flex decks.
Try to avoid fighting. A lot of warbands have reactions to attacks, some will score off their own guys getting wounded etc. Not attacking can brick both their power cards and their scoring. Run away instead of attacking. I’ll give an example: in my test game against Rippa, Mean-eye jumped in and attacked Turosh in one of the first activations, gaining a momentum counter in the process. I pushed Mean-eye into a lethal via impetus and he was now on 3 wounds. I chose to send in K’charik for a chance to kill off a wolf. That would have been a really big swing, reducing Rippa to two wolves would mean they would have a much harder time covering the board. I missed and instead K’charik was now in Rippa’s charge range. He made a supported attack and scored a bunch of stuff, wounding K’carik and biting killing Turosh with the bite. The moral? Don’t attack. Spread out, get on tokens and make them work for interaction.
Once Vorty and the horror have masks, don’t be afraid to either switch them out if you have a mask with the sort of utility you need. Echoguise was really the mvp and great for scoring visions of success, audacious aspects and even setting up claim the prize by delving a token and switching a cover hex for an objective token that was hard to get to. And also don’t be afraid to pop a mask on Turosh, Narvia or K’charik if that could somehow aid your plans. You have masks to spare and the main reason to have four is to up the likelihood of drawing masks early and often.
Final piece of advice: play all your cards and don’t be afraid to use an action to draw until you have Maskborn in hand.
What threats do you find most challenging to face? Are there any warbands or strategies that others can use to beat this warband or pairing?
Not having a real strength to lean into means you’re trying to shore up a lot of weaknesses which in turn means you’re not going to be able to account for everything. There are just too many variables in this game and the mask-strategy is pretty card-intensive.
Fast aggro like GSP and Soulraid that threaten Vortemis from the get go are hard opponents. Luckily they will often prioritize making quick work of Narvia and Turosh which hopefully gives Vortemis an opportunity to set up the horror and move to a safer spot. The 3 dmg threat of K’charik also means that a lot of people will be a bit wary of just yolo’ing in for a kill. Take advantage of this and buy time.
HO-bands that specialize in taking control of and remaining on tokens. I got majorly outscored by an FF Dread Pageant at the tournament and we also had HO-focused SG and Gitz which I luckily dodged.
I have not faced voidcurse with the deck but obviously of Vortemis gets cursed it’s game over as it disables his summoning action. So that is kind of a nightmare, really. It’s also really much harder to avoid interacting with an opponent who gets extra moves from refashioned upgrades, forced movements etc. On the other hand you can make Uncounted Cost pretty hard to score R1/R2 and you have options to try and block threatening presence. But it’s going to be uphill and you never want to have Vortemis anywhere near an objective token.
Anything else you’d like to tell the community?
I’m sure Eyes can be decently fun in nemesis with either Force of Frost and Seismic Shock. They might even be able to pull off Masks in nemesis, biggest issue is going to be getting the early glory to get the ball rolling.
Playing Eyes is really a puzzle and even though they are severely underpowered and have really bad internal synergy in most departments they also have a lot of cool tricks and options that you can unlock by giving them a try. If nothing else they will make picking up a functional and modern warband up so much more satisfying after a while.
So there you have it! Thank you to Mikkel for cooking up this guide for us, and inspiring me to pull my Eyes off the shelf and give the positional/hold objective style a try. I always used to Voltron Vortemis and hope he could turret if K’Charik could buy him enough time, but this is a new way to play for me. Let me know if this has caused you to give them a try as well!
While there are a few more Love Letters in the works, there is always room for more. I’d love to hear your thoughts about an older or lesser or weird warband/pairing, what drove you to fall in love with it, and how you’ve piloted it to success – and especially piloting it to fun. I’d also love to hear things you’re afraid to see across the table and strategies/opponents that have been able to counter your playstyle if you have that insight. And of course, we always want to see pictures.
Send me messages on Discord where I go by Fishmode, on Facebook where I post as Michael Fisher (very smart of me I know), or by leaving a comment here with a WordPress account so that we can talk about what your guest article/content might look like, and let’s spend some glory together!
Spent Glory 
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