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. That said, this one isn’t so much specifically about a warband but a concetp = that of Home Brewing, or creating your own custom game material.

Today’ article is written by Ben, a competitor at the World Championships of Warhammer this year who I had the pleasure of showcasing on stream. I was really impressed with his level of play and his positive attitude throughout the event, and reached out to him for a potential Love Letter so that he could share his thoughts on a favorite warband. Instead, he decided to cook up this call to action for our community to engage more in custom content, game modes, and narrative play, and I couldn’t be happier to help him raise that banner. As Ben himself says, GW does plenty of the work for us and tells us ‘how to play’, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also innovate on our own as a community. Ben observed an innovative community-driven spirit in his time playing the game Malifaux, and wrote this up to help inspire a few of us in the Underworlds community to seek ways to replicate that for ourselves and homebrew some goodness down in the mines of Embergard.

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A Love Letter to … Malifaux(?)

So instead of talking about the amazing people who me along my path to worlds (special thanks to Jules, the Calgary team Derek, Yury and Peter, Dave up in Edmonton, and the Vancouver crew, Julian and Andy for amazing ‘teachable moments’) 

And not talking about how I only picked up the game back in March 2024, and made it to Worlds the same year. 

Not even a think piece about the nature of living games and how seasons reflect the somewhat tidal pattern of popularity.

I want to talk about Malifaux. For those who have not tried it, its a skirmish wargame on a 3x3ft mat. You build teams of fighters using Soul Stones, and any leftover stones are used as a resource in game. Each fighter has a lot of unique abilities on their fighter cards, many with additional qualities that react to your ‘flip’. Instead of rolling dice, you flip cards, looking to beat a target number, or your opponents flip. These cards have suits, which correspond with those extra powers as well, allowing for some spectacular combinations if you get lucky (or are better at the game than I ever was)

One of the big complexities of the game, and the factor that gives it so much depth, is the synergies. Each team has a leader, and depending on the leader you pick, and the faction they are in, you can select between a lot of other fighters – minions, brawlers, henchmen – of different styles and qualities. But finding those perfect synergies is where the game comes alive. Like pairing the Dread Pageant to Rimeworms’ Bite in V1, using the ploys to ping damage on your own fighters to inspire, Malifaux allows you to take fighters that heal through being poisoned, and others that exude auras of poison. 

Overall, it’s an incredibly complex and in depth game, leading to headaches, buying individual models from stores at vastly inflated prices, and long, hard games. 

So why am I talking about it? Malifaux is a smaller game system, it’s rare to see it being played in game stores, and even the biggest tournaments are at the small end. But that has made the community work so much harder for the game. While Wyrd (the people behind the game) do an amazing job at community support,  the community themselves are what keeps the game interesting, with different game styles, short fun multiplayer mods, and different ways to win at tournaments. And that’s why I love it. It’s not constricted by the rulebook, but enabled. We can use this, and so many other games, to inspire us to bring something new, exciting and fun to Underworlds. And hopefully, that can then bring in more new players.

GW supplies us with plenty to spend our money on, but we can do more. We have the All-Dwarf-Season pack, some amazing Vassal tournaments and leagues (thanks to those folks in charge) but I’d love to see even more. What The Hex!?! has a narrative event coming, and there’s the pods event at Adepticon as well. Perhaps we’ve got a year of innovation ahead? We also have a whole bunch of old boards and cards, there must be something we can do with them. Most of all we have the potential for so much depth. A huge range of fighters from all factions and Alliances, a tonne of boards and cards, and a solid set of rules that work and can be adapted.  I would love to see a multiplayer brawl game mode, options to play multiple warbands in tournaments (pick a Grand Alliance and go!), home-brew dungeon crawl co-op scenarios, and now with 2e, the simplification of fighter cards gives us even more freedom to open things up and create some amazing alternative ways to play.

So let’s open it up to the community – Can you think of a framework using old boards to build a dungeon, with upgrades found in treasure tokens, random warband enemies running on pre-written AI and ploys being earned for kills. I feel like we may need to stack the deck with healing potions, but there’s a lot of possibilities. 

As for a brawl – pick a fighter, stick ’em on the new board with all your friends, and figure it out from there!

We’ve been given a sandbox, let’s get building!

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Thanks to Ben for sharing that call to arms. There certainly is plenty we can do as a community to increase our variety of play and flex our creative muscles. There were tons of alternate play modes in first edition of the game, several of which I shared in this post that we could theoretically flex into second edition/Embergard if anybody was keen on porting them over. I was particularly smitten with Arena Mortis and believe it could fit in second edition with relatively few changes. But there’s also space for brand new game modes! I would love to showcase some of these on Spent Glory if you or your play group put any together.

Some custom, fan-made things from first edition as potential inspiration for you home brewers out there:

2v2 teams match as described on Underworld Underground

A solo play mode called The Amber Army

A Solo Campaign document was penned by Anthony Nunes/King Toko 

What the Hex did a ‘Trashfire Tournament”

Nick Bayton’s Pandaemonium where plays swap warbands and decks at random

The Chaos Draft tournament structure by R77

Custom Warband example from first edition

Beardgrave, an entire custom season of first edition (which is remarkably balanced and refined)

The Shadewyrm, a free-for-all vs a giant monster

The Shadespire Sentinel – another kill the big monster group game

Habitat cards for fun twists in any variety of game

Thanks to Ben again for spurring us on to more creative outlets. Lets’ make some cool narrative/alternate play modes for second edition, and then get down to spending some glory! I’d love to hear your ideas at SpentGlory@gmail.com