Howdy Gang! as I’m sure many of you know by now, Games Workshop released a Balance Update last month that shook up multiple warbands and a handful of cards in response to the prior 4-5 months of information. I didn’t put anything out right away for a couple reasons: my hot takes are generally not great, I had a few other scheduled things I didn’t want to delay too much, and I wanted to play with the new changes a couple times so I could give a more informed assessment of how I think it’s going to affect the game’s balance.

Other faster and smarter people have of course gotten to this before me, and you can read their thoughts here. My takes might still be wrong!

Critical Focus Channel
Staggerers
WHU Statistics Project
Agents of Sigmar
Starting Hex on Goonhammer
Path to Glory Podcast
What the Hex Podcast

Winners

The Grymwatch – with the change to Underdog, there’s a good chance that they will be Underdog when it matters most to them: having a slain fighter or two. Being able to use In the Name of the King twice as Underdog is pretty powerful for them – kill a ghoul early game and watch it return inspired, kill two and watch them both come back. It’s a little bit spooky to see that a warband with a 60.2% winrate in the prior meta might have just gotten better; I have still managed to win relatively easily with silly pairings like Wrack/Edge so they might not even care about CtC/PnP taking a hit. I’m not suggesting that every warband winning over 50% needs a targeted nerf, but if you’re cracking 60% and all of your competition got cleaned out, maybe you could use one too? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Grymwatch perform VERY well in the coming months.

Hexbane’s Hunters – The dogs can move along with an Agent Azyrite so long as they don’t have a charge token. Working more like first edition, we can hope this will bring them from ‘bad’ to decent – more opportunities for flanking attacks, snagging tokens or territory, etc. Now that persisting abilities also last all game, a ‘Marked’ fighter doesn’t get to escape their mark because the round ended. I’ve won with them before in second edition but it is been a rough task – hopefully this brings them more in line with other warbands. Playing a test game with the new rules felt better, and I even managed to go to a tiebreaker against Gardeners despite pairing with Edge of the Knife – a very rough matchup. While the warband still is held back by weak fighter stats I would expect their presence in the meta to increase.

Sepulchral Guard – Raised fighters now come back full health instead of vulnerable. While that’s only 2 health, it’s still something and in some matchups could be a real difference maker. The more interesting thing to me though, is that instead of their difficult to use and rarely impactful ‘relentless blows’ ability, we now can teleport the Warden next to two of his homies in the power step once a game. Worried he’ll get nuked by their headhunter? Jump to the other flank. Want to make a risky charge? Not so risky when you can withdraw immediately afterward. You do take a Charge token for your trouble and then can’t do Warden things, but it does open up more play lines and flexibility the warband really needs. Bone Shrapnel is nice too. They lost a touch of power in the Wrack and Ruin pairing since you won’t be dishing out damage every time you raise and getting vulnerable fighters for free, but overall they’re in a much better spot than before.

Brethren of the Bolt – There were two printed changes to FAQ questions and one maybe unintentional benefit based on persisting abilities. First, they’ve decided you actually can use heaven’s charge right after inspiring a conductive fighter. Second, you can use it even on an uninspired fighter. This opens up flexibility and more use cases for their warscroll ping, which is cool and hopefully makes them hit a little harder. The most major change however, might not have been intentional: their hymns now do not end when the round finishes. You just pick a new one for round 2, and will have both effects. If you still have two surviving friendlies in round 3, you get all three hymns active simultaneously. If this really is how it works, and RAW it seems like yes, it’s a serious boost to their power. Not enough to make them tournament winners, probably, but they’re much more viable now.

Blackpowder’s Buccaneers – two of the warscroll abilities, Swag Mortar and Swag Blast, now grant +1 damage in addition to their other bonuses. This means Blackpowder has the only range 3+ damage 2 attack in the game, though only twice a game. Still, this increases his threat somewhat and could potentially bring the pirates into a little more competitive relevance. Can you imagine blowing a bunch of swag and firing off a range 6 damage 2 shot? Avast, me hearties.

Da Kunnin’ Krew – The warband is easier to inspire now, which is nice since the attacker inspires when slaying an enemy even if there were no flanking fighters. They’re also easier to reposition now since Mannok doesn’t require a move token to give his Kunnin’ command. This was my biggest gripe with them before – you’d have to move with your leader, and then can’t charge with him, and couldn’t push minions into supported/inspiring attacks if he was only standing still. This overall will improve their action economy/token management options, and could potentially put this warband in a podium-contention conversation with the right pilot.

Crimson Court – a very reworked warscroll means they have a different path to inspiration and savage, which is now called Bloodthirst. On one hand, you don’t have to throw cards away anymore, but on the other you’ll have a harder time forcing an inspire or bloodthirst early. You Hunger token manipulations are not optional either, so you’ll potentially have some hard choices to make when selecting who to attack with. I’m pretty confident in saying this new warscroll is better and more playable than their original, but it will be hard to say whether it’s enough to matter as it doesn’t seem all that much stronger. I have played against it twice and won comfortably both times, but not by as much as I would have previously and my opponent told me they had been ‘treating (him) well, relatively speaking’. Give them a spin!

Reckless Fury – Bladecatcher is back! It’s restricted, but a banger of a card and a welcome re-addition to the pool since as we have seen RF fell off pretty hard due to the prior balance update. Having now played with RF in the new ruleset where Bladecatcher was allowed, it felt fine; the card isn’t as busted when it doesn’t also stack with Utter Ignorance. Now that CC and PP are less potent, we might see RF make its way back up the ladder in terms of play frequency if not competitive success.

Toss ups

Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz – On one hand, abilities are clarified to persist all game unless specified otherwise, so Da Trophy does indeed give +dice across every round. Most people were playing that way already, so it’s not really a boost to them. Additionally, Dregg’s ranged attack is officially ranged, so if you were playing rules lawyer to use him for ‘melee’ attacks, those days are thankfully behind us. Generally speaking, this update shouldn’t change Borgit’s power much in any direction.

Morgok’s Krushas – Some FAQ answers to how exactly Shut It, Pipsqueak works which technically increased its power slightly, but the applications are pretty niche.

Grinkrak’s Looncourt – quests have been clarified so that you can only abandon one in the power step. A very mild nerf if anything.

Mollog’s Mob – Stalagsquig finally got the clarification we needed. Seeing as nobody could agree on how to actually play it, it’s hard to assess whether this change makes him better or worse; it really depends on what your local scene was doing beforehand. Regardless, the change shouldn’t make a huge competitive difference for most players.

Wrack and Ruin – while technically it got a ‘buff’ in the sense that you could ping yourself with Misfortune but not take the damage with Unstoppable, and then still pass the Misfortune off to another fighter, I don’t really see the value. It’s a pretty niche interaction that really only helps you potentially score Living on the Edge (which is quite rarely taken) and Bloody and Bruised (which already isn’t that hard to score). The other ‘buff’ the deck got is the fact that it is now one of only two decks without a Restricted card, so it might be a tiny bit more favorable for some warbands. The impact on the meta may not be very large so I’ve put it in tossup, but with most other decks taking some degree of nerfing, WnR might see a relative increase in strength.

Losers

Take and Hold (Especially Emberstone Sentinels) – with the change to token placement, the player with two tokens now must also place one in neutral. The player with three tokens can, if they’re smart, force any given territory (including neutral) to have three tokens. If you were planning to hold 2-3 in your territory and don’t get the right roll-off result, you’re in trouble. Add this to Supremacy getting Restricted and Emberstone Sentinels is in a really rough place right now. ES/CtC, which previously was the standard Hold combo, took a huge combined hit and will be tough to succeed with for the foreseeable future. Here’s to hoping we see an upcoming Take and Hold Rivals deck with some good tools.

Zarbag’s Gitz – it’s arguable that this round of nerfs didn’t go far enough, but we will have to let the data speak for itself in a few weeks. Squigs can’t delve or hold, which might be the biggest hit to their power. This is of course assuming they’re still going to play PnP/CtC but reduces the number of useful pieces for that plan. The warband also now gives up 9 bounty should you so happen to table them – but considering there were no stats changes they’ll still be able to kill you faster than you kill them so it will likely not come up very often. Finally, they only inspire if the glory count is greater, rather than greater than or equal to their surviving fighters. A slight slowdown there, and it’s hard to say how much impact that will have.

Thricefold Discord – the smallest health pool in the game just got smaller, with their evasive fighters only being able to escape danger if they have no move or charge tokens. On one hand I don’t feel this was necessary – sure the warband is good, but this one will hurt them a lot on top of the hurt they already took last balance update. On the other hand, they did have a 60.9% (nice) win rate according to the statistics project so they may have needed another adjustment. My concern is that the things that make them strong (Lascivyr’s ping and Vile Temptations) haven’t been touched. Their Evasive hasn’t felt like an issue these last few months to me at least.

Countdown to Cataclysm – CtC didn’t lose as much as I would have hoped, but did take a slight hit. With Spread Havoc restricted yet also close to the best card in the game, you’ll be taking a big risk if you take any other R’s from your other deck pairing. Additionally, since you must advance the tracker now, you’ll have a harder time scoring Wreckers. I still expect the deck to be quite strong and the ‘best’ Plot-locked deck, but it’s hopefully less oppressive than before.

Pillage and Plunder – Delving for Wealth being restricted and underdog changes making Claim the Prize a little tougher will reduce their glory output a little bit, but not dramatically. What really hurts them is the token placement changes, as they’ll have a 50% chance to have minimal control over where those tokens are. That said, they’ll also have a 50% chance to have huge control over token positioning. It’s a nerf in reality, but not nearly as hard of one as the deck probably needed and will still probably be a pretty consistent scoring package.

Edge of the Knife – while the only change Edge saw was Mobbed getting restricted, it’s rough. You’re already taking a hit playing an underpowered deck, and now you possibly won’t be taking their best card either. Sure, Mobbed is very strong, but in the Nemesis ecosystem it’s already limited by the rest of the deck’s power and the R felt like an unnecessary burn to a deck that struggles already.

Elites in General, Aggro Specifically – a potentially unintended knock-on effect to the Underdog changes, Elite Aggro got dropped down a peg. When you have 3-4 beefy bodies charging with intent to kill, there’s a very good chance that your opponent will have more out of action bounty than you. This means you’ll effectively never be the Underdog unless you’re playing into another 3-fighter strike team, in which case you’re on the back foot. This becomes an issue for Elite Aggro (Especially the Blazing/Cata deck that has been so popular) as several cards from their preferred pool won’t benefit from Underdog as often. Surges (the most important card type) that got hit include Collateral Damage, Branching Fate, Vicious Brawl, Unsafe Ground, and Power in Numbers. Ploys (the second most important slot for elite aggro) that are weaker now include Determined Effort, Healing Potion, and Outburst. So not only has the reliability of your two best card types gone down, but you’re also likelier to lose the initiative roll-off and will have less chance of shutting the door on an opponent in round 3. All this while possibly behind on glory.

What I’m Happy For

Making more warbands ‘playable’. Sepulchral Guard really just didn’t feel like they did what they needed to, and while a teleport for the Warden and raised fighters getting to be 2 health instead of vulnerable aren’t gigantic boosts, they won’t feel like a self-destruct button anymore. Similarly, Crimson Court were quite different from last edition’s identity and were underperforming in part due to the clunky, semi-nonfunctional warscroll. While I don’t expect them to suddenly be Grand Clash winners, CC won’t feel as bad to play and it’s nice to see a much-loved warband get to hit the table again and play for real. I’ve already played against it twice in the new form and it was better!

Bringing up some of the bottom and filling out the middle: A few weeks ago, Path to Glory put out a discussion on the C-Tier warbands. Of the 6 warbands in that discussion, 4 of them (Sepulchral Guard, Crimson Court, Hexbane’s Hunters, and Brethren of the Bolt) saw some legit buffs in this balance update. a couple of the modestly performing warbands (DKK, Blackpowder) also got a boost. It’s easy to see a Balance Update’s main goal as knocking down the overpowered stuff, but this round we also saw some of the weaker elements get brought up. You can level the playing field from two directions, and I’m, glad to see what got a bit of both this time!

Digital-only warbands getting positive attention?! It makes sense that some of the ‘bad’ warbands from the Grand Alliance 4-packs needed help. People just spent good money on these and finding out that Blackpowder, Kunnin Krew, Crimson Court, and Hexbane’s Hunters were sort of non-starters is something GW obviously needed to fix. What I didn’t expect, however, was their decision to lavish some attention on the ‘afterthought’ digital-only bands. Who expected Brethren to get something, or Sepulchral Guard? Regardless of whether those bands got enough juice, I’m happy they got any attention at all when they would have been pretty easy to forget about.

What I’m Hesitant About

I do wonder if Zarbag took enough of a hit. Scurry hasn’t been touched, their damage output is still really strong, and while they’ll be marginally delayed in inspiring, you’re still never killing enough for the bounty change to matter. PP/CC being hit alongside them means that specific combo might not be the beast it once was, but Gitz will probably still outperform other warbands in other niches based on fighter stats and scurry. Especially considering the ‘winners’ from this balance update were not very strong beforehand and didn’t gain a ton overall, there’s the possibility that Gitz PP/CC will still be the strongest combo in the game. Time will tell, of course, but I am concerned it will still be a relatively oppressive warband to face.

The new token placement: while I do appreciate the fact that one player ‘wins’ by getting to pick the board and the other ‘wins’ by having more tokens AND not having to place the neutral territory one, there is an issue with this new version. The three-token player now has effectively free choice of how many tokens go in each territory, and can force 3 in enemy, friendly, or even neutral. While this potentially was to dampen down some of the Pillage and Plunder efficiency, the PnP player will get that excessive control 50% of the time – will this change be enough to dethrone PnP? In my test games I was able to force a center-board scrum by putting three in neutral, and another time force my Emberstone Sentinels opponent to trudge over to my side of the board where three tokens were hiding. The prior setup rules definitely favored the roll-off winner too much but this might have swung too hard in the other direction. Time will tell, of course. I do still wish the roll-off winner got to pick which role they wanted during setup.

Underdog Changes: there’s an argument that being down by one glory isn’t really an ‘underdog’ and that it could be gamed, required lots of back and forth tracking, and so on. The idea was nice but a little undercooked, and so they’ve changed it to ‘who has more dead bounty’. The challenge with this, which became immediately apparent in my first test game, was that it works potentially much worse as a rubber-banding comeback mechanic now. It might have been bad luck, but at one point I was winning by 10 glory with no underdog as nobody had been slain. Later I was the underdog despite being ahead by 8 because I had one more bounty in slain fighters. Our new rules mean the player who has fewer tools on the table has a better chance of wining a roll-off which may have been a nice change, but this sort of rewards passive scoring or at least strategies that slay less often. It’s way too early for me to judge, but it doesn’t feel like Underdog got any better, and might have gotten worse.

What I Wish We Saw

Anything about our newest releases: Realmstone Raiders and Knives of the Crone don’t feature anywhere in this document. I can understand if the team wants to watch them perform out of the box for a while to decide what balance changes might be necessary, but an FaQ or three could have been helpful. We still don’t know if Realmstone Raid requires three fighters to raid, or if you can score it with two – if those fighters both need to hit, or if they just needed to attack. We don’t know if you count as having Raided if you hit a zero-bounty fighter. Does Grievous affect the ‘damage characteristic’ with regards to Brightstone Vigour or Armour Piercer?

We don’t know if/how Foretold Protection ‘stacks’ when playing Knives. I would be very hesitant about taking RR to an event if I didn’t know how a T.O. would rule any of that, and while Knives are probably fine either way, it would be nice to have clarity sooner rather than later.

Countdown getting hit harder: The deck that was a main competitive problem did take some nerfs, but were they enough? My test game into Countdown did show that I was able to counterplay Wreckers by forcing the counter to advance, which is nice. Spread Havoc is still among the best cards in the game and will score two glory even more easily now that you aren’t holding back advancement of the tracker. Restricting it means little since it’s so much better than pretty much every other R card aside from maybe Supremacy.

Skinnerkin getting some love: The arguably worst warband in the game saw no benefits of any kind and took a hit with their best deck pairings having restrictions and balance changes to bring them down. Their real only specialty in being token thieves will be even less useful in a landscape where Take and Hold is seen less often, and I don’t expect to see the ‘Kin doing much at all for the foreseeable future.

Grymwatch hit with something to take them down a peg: The warband has been winning >60% of their game according to the stats project, and was the warband that came away as the winner of the largest tournament of the year when Volomir took the WHW Grand Clash. Now that other top warbands in Gitz and Thricefold have been hit, and Grymwatch have a potential improvement with the new Underdog rules, there’s a real chance that a warband that was already too powerful will be even more so.

Power boosts to some underperforming decks: Edge of the Knife and Wrack and Ruin have both struggled somewhat competitively. Emberstone Sentinels wasn’t ‘bad’ but it wasn’t great either. It seemed like most every ‘good’ nemesis deck took one or more of Blazing, Pillage, or Countdown, and while those decks took a little bit of a hit, the worse performing decks didn’t really get much to compensate upwards to even the field. Making Tempered fighters those with 3 health or less might have been too much, but Edge could have used something to help out. Instead it just got Mobbed thrown on the Restricted list.

Wrap

While last round I worried the balance update went too far, it ends up I was wrong. So this time when I worry it didn’t go far enough, I’m going to reserve judgement and let the meta play out for a while. Maybe making the cataclysm tracker’s advancement non-optional is a bigger deal that I think. Maybe the squigs losing the ability to hold or delve is a real game changer. Who knows? What I do know is that I’m happy we got a balance update of any kind, and am excited to see how it all shakes out. Join me in the Embergard and let’s Spend some Glory (maybe even on Bladecatcher again)!