Today’s article is a little bit of a thought experiment. Don’t take this as some sort of crystal ball – I have no advance information about anything beyond the occasional imminent product release and have no idea what the game’s long term plans/goals might be. I have not heard anything about whether this will ever happen or not. That said, it’s still something interesting to think about!

Background

For some context, back in first edition of the game there existed set of cards called Grand Alliance cards, with two sets of releases in both the Harrowdeep and Nethermaze core boxes. These each featured a given symbol in the upper corner to designate them toward one of the four Grand Alliances. Each warband belonged to one of these four: Order, Chaos, Death, and Destruction, a carry-over from Age of Sigmar and grounded in the lore behind the game. The subset of cards in these Grand Alliance packs could only be used with warbands from the corresponding faction.

Lore-wise, while each warband had its own reasons for being in Shadespire, Gnarlwood etc, and each now has its own reasons for being in Embergard, they each belong to a larger group (say, the Seraphon) which each in varying degrees is buddy-buddy with other factions under the same Grand Alliance (say, Order). While the Dread Pageant had a closer bond to one another than to the generic Hedonites of Slaanesh, that affiliation granted them some degree of kinship with Khagra’s Ravagers since they both were Chaos Warbands; that obviously didn’t stop them from killing each other in the Direchasm!

The Grand alliance Cards provided a cool deckbuilding wrinkle – the Underworlds design team could make cards that were only useable by roughly 25% of the field. You wouldn’t need to be afraid of making a card that was monstrously abusable by Mollog, for example, if you made sure it didn’t go in his Grand Alliance’s set. Most of these cards saw little use at the time (save for a Death card that let you resurrect things even if they normally couldn’t be), but the concept was always really interesting to me.

Current Situation

Now, in Embergard, we still have a holdout for this idea. Each warband does belong to a Grand Alliance still, and you can play them with the generic Grand Alliance warscrolls. These vary pretty wildly in power and were primarily used to let you take the ‘out of rotation’/’legacy’ warbands that didn’t get specific rules with the launch of second edition. I can still play the Sons of Velmorn, but I can only use one of the two Grand Alliance: Death wasrcrolls for them.

In our current game rules, deckbuilding variety has been somewhat reduced by increasing universal access to cards. A major balance problem in V1 was the fact that each warband came with its own warband-specific cards, some of which were substantially better than others. We’ve gotten away from that now with every warband having access to the same card pool, but it does mean that for some players, things can feel a little ‘same-y’. If you want to play ABC aggro, just make a BA/RF deck and pair it with whatever warband you like. While BA/RF Morgok’s Krushas do differ from BA/RF Gorechosen of Dromm, the difference is not nearly as large as would have been in first edition. I have an idea that might totally upend balance in the game and be a terrible idea, but could also spice up deckbuilding options and diversity on the table.

Proposal

What if there was a 4-pack of Rivals Decks released, with one being designated for each Grand Alliance?. If the ‘best deck’ can be played with any warband, we risk stagnation. Restricting some cards to some teams might allow for a wider variety (but could also make even fewer teams eligible to play whatever the ‘best deck’ is).

Looking at current warscrolls as well as the prior Grand Alliance cards from Harrowdeep and Nethermaze, there could be:

An Order deck focused on defensiveness, perhaps through healing and/or guard tokens, as well as a focus on Treasure control, particularly in enemy territory. This could theoretically pair well with Emberstone Sentinels and provide a much needed boost to Take and Hold strategies.

A Chaos deck that rewards aggression, invasion, and taking damage to deal damage. It could work well with Blazing Assault, Reckless Fury, or Wrack and Ruin and in the right warbands Edge of the Knife as well. We would have to be cautious giving Gorechosen too many tools though, so potentially feature cards that ask you to have 3 or 4 fighters doing something, limiting the elites’ potential.

A Destruction deck that rewards delving (as a callback to removing tokens from the board), movement shenanigans, application of stagger, and even potentially breaking upgrades. They are, you know, the GA of Destruction, after all. It could go nicely with Pillage and Plunder. We would have to be careful not to give too much juice to Zarbag’s Gitz and potentially Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz though.

A Death deck that plays on minions or at least the smaller/raisable fighters, granting the ability to raise in the power step, provide bonuses to movement economy, and potentially give rewards for their (generally very scary) leaders getting involved on the front lines. I’d imagine Countdown to Cataclysm and Edge of the Knife might work well here. This one might be hard to balance between the disparate flavors of Death – hold horde vs elite aggro.

Assessment

Some potential pros I see for this idea:

• Expand the number of rivals decks in the game and thus variety
• Increase variability in the competitive format as a ‘compromise’ between first edition faction decks and second edition universals
• Provide incentives to play lesser-played warbands/Grand Alliances
• It’s fun!

Potential drawbacks:

• Potentially challenging to balance
• There is a risk of a ‘rich get richer’ effect
• A single dominant card only being available to 1/4 of the field might hake that 1/4 the new kings until the cards is balanced
• Warbands within a Grand Alliance have vastly different skills and would benefit from very different cards. It could be a challenge to make one unified deck that fits all without being soo weak/contradictory
• Might have to be ‘Nemesis only’ to be effective/useful

Wrap

What do you think? Would you enjoy Grand Alliance-locked decks for variety, even if they weren’t eligible for competitive/matched play? Do you think it would make the game more fun, thematic, or narrative? Or would it lock your favorite warband out of access to some cool stuff? Let me know your thoughts, and if there’s enough drive behind it, maybe we even design a community-built set of four Rivals decks for a Custom Rules segment in the future.