2024 Warhammer Underworlds Year in Review

Today’s article marks the second time I have had the pleasure of writing about a year in review. It’s been a big year for me personally, having 2024 be the first full year this site has been in operation, and I wanted to mark a few of the bigger occasions across Warhammer Underworlds itself as well as my own experience therein. For those interested, here’s the link to the 2023 review.

Before we dive into the recap of what all was released this year, I wanted to refresh myself on what I played personally. Looking through my log I found that I played 238 games total this year, 225 in the First Edition and 13 in Second Edition. I played the Farstriders 37 times (mostly while I was prepping for and playing in the Tacoma Open), the Grymwatch 18 times, and Gryselle’s Arenai 16 times. Nothing really dominated my attention this year, which was great! I got to experience many different warbands.

For the Rivals Decks I played this year, I had 42 games with Rimewyrm’s Bite (again mostly with this Farstriders deck), Malevolent Masks 26 times (mostly with the Maskwatch), Breakneck Slaughter 24 times (for LVO with Gryselle’s Arenai) and Paths of Prophecy 14 times while I was putting together this fun little guide on how to best make use of the deck.

In 2024 I also painted 25 models for WHU from 6 warbands, but several are in process and should be finished soon!

Now that I’ve effectively closed the book on First Edition for myself (save for the occasional Arena Mortis or exhibition match), I took a quick peek back at the games I played since Nemesis emerged in the Gnarlwood. My record is actually pretty good! Maybe I was ok at this game after all.

Unfortunately my second edition stats aren’t shaping up to look even close to that strong so far… It will be interesting to compare this to next year’s endpoint.

I really can’t give this yearly review without noting the gargant in the mines – Second Edition and the release of Embergard. I’ll touch on it more below, but so far I’m pretty pleased with the changes even in the aspects I initially had reservations about.

It’s pretty apparent looking back on the past year that a bunch happened in Underworlds, most notably an edition change which has breathed a lot of life into the community, but loads of cool things came out in the months prior to that update as well. Let’s dive into what came out this year, in order.

Releases:

Daggok’s Stab-Ladz came out around the new year and opened up a few goofy play styles that involved face down cards. The models were really cool and it was always fun making Yu-Gi-Oh noises with my friends trying to figure them out.
Malevolent Masks, among my all-time favorite rivals decks, was also released at the start of the year. This deck was phenomenally fun and I enjoyed it in so many different iterations, most notably the Maskwatch
Rivals of the Mirrored City dropped completely unexpectedly: Zarbag, Mollog, Briar Queen, and Skritch all got glow-ups and were brought into the modern era with full decks and mechanics better suited for the current game. Awesome to see old favorites have life again.
Zondara’s Gravebreakers were announced at LVO and gave us the first love story in the game with incredibly evocative miniatures and some really interesting mechanics as well.
Rimelocked Relics was a deck that offered some interesting play lines and really came into its own once the Wintermaw season was released and you could utilize it against the newest matchups, as well as being the best representation of Flex play we had seen in some time.
The Wintermaw Core Box and rules updates shook things up a good amount with two new warbands and rivals decks and a few minor rules updates.
Brethren of the Bolt were a very interesting puzzle with some cool looking models
The Skinnerkin brought a lot of fun to my tables with a straightfoward playstyle and significantly more passive glory than you’d expect an aggro team to have
Rimewyrm’s Bite was a beautiful new approach to ‘field hazards’ and opened up some new ping-related ways to play control and aggro, and made everyone acutely aware of their board choices. I enjoyed this one a lot and even took it to the Tacoma Open Grand Clash, giving The Farstriders their last hurrah
Hungering Parasite was a meta-defining deck, dramatically increasing Aggro’s accuracy and also including a ton of really interesting play lines with some phenomenal and unique cards. I, among others, wrote about how to counterplay the Bane of Heroes as it was incredibly important to winning that matchup.

The spat of Rivals Deck releases were so awesome I had to give a round of applause to the design team and we were really headed somewhere great at full speed ahead.

Then, silence. Really feeling the Cold of the Void, even. Eventually we heard “Plenty Happening Here”. People began to get anxious, and even worried the end of Underworlds was coming. Would it be Gone Without a Trace? I wrote about that, saying Underworlds wasn’t going anywhere and I’m glad to say that there really was plenty happening in our favorite game.

Embergard released late this year and we’re officially in a whole new era. The Core Box (not a season, but apparently good for three years) had four new rivals decks, two new warbands, 16 re-released warbands, 13 carried forward, and generic rules for everything else, as well as a fully redone rule set that feels like the best parts of the old game and some great QOL improvements. The Emberwatch feel like the Farstriders always should have, Zikkit’s Tunnelpack is a fun and somewhat intricate risk-taking warband, and the four rivals decks all do a pretty balanced job or representing different playstyles. Shortly thereafter we got two more warbands and decks, the Jaws of Itzl, Reckless Fury, Grandfather’s Gardeners, and Wrack and Ruin.

It’s been a very short time and we already have quite the robust spread of options for second edition, and I can’t wait to see how the meta shakes out in the coming months. Who can say what’s coming next? This game has a fresh coat of paint and can go in so many directions right now, and I expect 2025 will be full of fun surprises.

There were also tons of major events around the world, with many more acting as World Championship Qualifier events than the year prior. As a result, the World Championships of Warhammer had something like double the attendees compared to last year’s tournament, and was able to have a top cut of 16 competitors rather than 8.

I also had the great honor and absolute pleasure of sitting alongside Davy of What the Hex to help commentated on matches for the first ever Worlds Stream, which across every match we cast was viewed over 13,000 times. He’s an absolute hero helping to make that happen along with the rest of his team and I’m very grateful to have been along for the ride.

The content creator scene grew this year as well. We have had steady output from the ‘usual suspects’ of What the Hex, Battle Mallet, and Path to Glory on the podcast front, and in blogs we have seen plenty written by The Monkey’s Hex, Staggerers, Jon Grant Miniatures, Critico y Culo, Handful of Dice, and The Magmahold. An old favorite Set the Tempo returned to life in second edition and has been moonlighting on Path to Glory. We also saw an incredible effort to perform some real community statistics out of Borni, who now also officially lives at PtG as he works to define the meta in Embergard after having been so very informative for first edition. Also, to my great excitement, we now have a mole on the inside of Goonhammer who makes them write Underworlds content again!

The video folks in our community continued to make loads of stuff to watch on Youtube as well! Agents of Sigmar posts all sorts of things with regularity, and the Critical Focus Channel posted multiple interviews, battle reports, content reviews, painting guides, and more. We also saw plenty of new channels popping up for Underworlds Content: Iba’s Underworlds, HVN7ERX, Shadeglass Reflections, M2on2, Random Wargaming, and Cinderfall Gaming to name a few I’ve been checking out.

Underworlds Underground put out a handful of episodes, including our most fun and most popular “Tier List” episode covering the first edition Rivals Decks in terms of fun and vibes, rather than competitive strength. We’ve been quiet for a few months, but don’t worry, as they say – Plenty Happening Here. Look out for Season 2 of UwU to launch in the near future, and we’ll have a more streamlined format and more frequent episode releases in 2025.

I (mostly) published things on Spent Glory here twice a week this year, putting out 99 new articles (this one will make it 100!) and updating several old ones. I started a few series that have been fun and occasionally even useful for people: The Love Letters Series, The Spent Glory Heroes Series, ‘Avin a Good Time, Sleek’s Bowl, and The Hobby Series. I continued to post things for the Monthly Web Roundups which have been a lot of fun, and continued to create and update the “Can I Use This Old Warband” series as well. This year I also completed the Contender Series for first edition, and am plotting and planning to do one for Embergard once I understand how to get good. Might be a minute!

Eventually the output on this page got noticed and to my surprise and bewilderment I’ve been rolled into the “Warhammer Insider Programme” with GW, meaning I’ll be able to get some review copies of Underworlds releases and will post stuff on or around the embargo date to help inform you about what’s to come and how I see if being fun or useful for your games and hobby engagement. I’m still cooking up ideas on how to present these new release previews in a way that both beneficial to the reader and also not just a duplication/pale shadow of what you can read from better players, so if you have any ideas on how you’d like to see this stuff in the coming year don’t hesitate to reach out by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com

As cool as it might have been to be recruited as a Warhammer ‘insider’, I’d like to close out this year in review by giving thanks to you, the reader, for what’s honestly among the most humbling things that’s happened in my hobby career. I got an email from WordPress just a few weeks ago to inform me that this silly website, which I honestly started just so I wouldn’t feel like I had to type out as many long Facebook comments, officially registered 100,000 views.

Tens of thousands of people read this page. And I’m just some guy ‘avin a good time.

Thank you, each and every one of you, for helping to make this such a great year for Warhammer Underworlds. Whether we face off at the Las Vegas Open next month, chat online, or don’t interact at all while we roll dice on our separate tables scattered across the world, I’m happy to be sharing a community with you, and I hope you enjoyed spending your glory as much as I have.