Today’s article continues our Love Letters Series, in which readers of the page submit an ode to their favorite warband. 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 – if you have something to say, by all means let me know wherever you found this posted or by emailing me at SpentGlory@Gmail.com.
Aaron was one of the representatives from England at this most recent World Championships of Warhammer, sporting the Sepulchral Guard and ending up winning Best in Faction for his efforts. Aaron qualified with the skelly boys back in the first edition of the game (defeating a field of 90 other competitors!), and opted to stick with his favorite warband despite the rules changes. The things we do for love (letters).
If you’d like to see Aaron compete on the live stream at the World Championships, here he is! This match was from the third round of pool play where he faced off against Filip of Poland with Thricefold Discord (Countdown to Cataclysm x Blazing Assault) – a difficult match for anybody to face!
My name is Aaron, I’m from England and live in the greater London area in Essex. I’ve got a few groups I play with, in the London underworlds Facebook group I play webcam games with a London group there run by a pillar of our community Laura. (Editor’s note: if you want to hear about Laura’s webcam setup, read here about how she makes it happen) I used to play with the LWG group at 7 dials and have started playing with the Agents of Sigmar group.
Sepulchral Guard were my first love back in Shadespire, I loved that they could take the hit and just keep coming, raising skeletons back and spreading across the board, putting your opponent in the position of needing to knock you off, essentially dictating their moves somewhat. I never did very well with them but played them none the less!! Then lightning struck and the Rimelocked Relics deck was released in the beginning of April ’24 and I immediately saw a deck that could have 2 versions of supremacy as well as easy surges that just require you to stand on tokens. I didn’t realise quite how good it was until I went to Warhammer World Grand Clash at the end of April with over 90 players attending, and gave it a rigorous test, and found that I went undefeated with the best glory count for the win and acquiring my golden ticket to worlds!!!
I loved Rimelocked Relics with Sep Guard because of the deck’s simplicity; you can sink all your activations into one task, standing on 3 tokens, by either moving multiple fighters or raising more fighters to stand on tokens. By keeping the plan uncomplicated there’s very little wasted activations and you can give more focus to countering your opponents cards.
Here’s the deck, Emberstone and Pillage, focuses on treasure tokens and Delving. In theory the deck works great, the cards can be very easy to score, but as they say, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face, and the challenge is trying to move around the board taking the tokens while trying your best not to get smashed to bits.
You can also click here to see the deck in Underworlds DB
My favourite thing about the deck is the surges. Through the Warden’s action “forward” moving 2 fighters at once, 5 of the 6 surges can be scored easily enough, Careful Survey and Share the Load being two of my favourites. Delving for Wealth is easy enough – Delving potentially the same token with someone hiding at the back, and Claim the Prize has a very easy underdog condition for Delving in your territory, which you often will be as all your fighters bar the Warden have 2 life. The end phases again just require you to stand on or delve the tokens. The dream opener is a few surges and end up with Torn Landscape and Broken Prospects at the end of the 1st end phase, both of which can be scored by just Delving 3 different tokens. Iron Grasp and Slow Advance are both easy enough to score using things like Hidden Paths and Canny Sapper to get to the enemiy’s side of the board, or just charging with a fighter then moving them with the Warden to reach further back tokens. And of course, Strip the Realm will just score on its own sometimes, or you can spend the last activation of a round trying to knock a fighter off or a cheeky confusion to clear the rabble off your tokens!
Now as for fun, yes I had lots of fun and enjoyed playing this deck, it has some good pay off but as for success not so much. I found a week or two into my practice that Sepulchral Guard weren’t going to be the cream of the crop, but only had a few more sessions to practice and didn’t want to panic switch so I stuck with my guns and stayed with the team I love!! I was very happy to take home Best in Faction even though I came 42nd, which was above the other two poor souls who took my beloved team. My hopes and prayers are that they revert the rules around raise so I can take supremacy, that would be tremendously helpful but who knows how things will shape up in the future.
Something of note about this deck is that it did manage to beat two Dromm players in the best of 3 (barely) both of which ended in the top 16. So it was fun having a chance against the strongest team and being a bit of a giant slayer. The wins came about purely by taking advantage of the fact that Strip the Realm is relatively easy to score and also they will end up missing some attacks, and if they can’t do enough to kill the Warden and stop scoring, we easily counter some of their cards like Arena Mortis and Unrelenting Massacre which become much harder to score against us.
My advice to others wanting to try this is do all you can to keep the Warden safe with Hidden Paths and extra save dice etc, but accept that some games you’re just gonna get splatted, like my game against Phil with Thricefold on stream. He took me apart, handily killing the warden in the 1st round both games with 2 successful attacks each time. This meaning you’re gonna be in trouble, but as was the case in many other games that plan won’t always work and you can move your skellies across the board which is great fun! Just be prepared for a hard time in certain games, and have fun where you can! Without long boarding in the game anymore it’s hard to keep the Warden safe with cards like Headlong Charge and Wings of War etc making life very difficult.
Any warband that can easily dive the Warden is a serious threat, so Dromm with their extra charge in the power step via Enrage or even Emberwatch with their Vanguard Advance to access your backline provide a tough challenge. But there’s always dice involved, sometimes they will just fluff the roll or you get some clutch saves so never give up!
Worlds was an absolutely amazing experience, unfortunately I lost my voice and had a nasty cold which meant I wasn’t quite as lively as I would have been, but was honestly surprised by how chilled out everyone was. When me and my opponents made small mistakes or mistimed a card everyone was very forgiving and happy to let the opponent alter the move, so the mood was no where near as cut throat as I thought it would be. I felt we were all just happy to just be part of it, made some great friends and met many great people.
Huge props to Aaron for gutting through a really tough field with this team and managing to scrape some wins against incredibly potent opponents. How many of us could come home from that and say we beat two of the 16 best players in the world who were using the Gorechosen of Dromm? And so have done it with the Sepulchral Guard? Tremendous effort and a testament to the power of playing the thing you love whether it’s a top competitive choice or not.
While there are a few 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. If you have a warband you’d love to wax poetic about and serenade the wider community, let me know! I’m always accepting new submissions at SpentGlory@gmail.com. Until next time, grab the warband you love, a couple friends, and Spend some Glory!
Leave a comment