Today’s special article is part of the Custom Rules series. Click here to see other custom rules we’ve put together!

One of the hesitancies I have heard about Embergard from first edition fans is that it fully abandoned the Championship Format, which was a favorite among some players. Towards the end of first edition, Championship was relegated to the ‘Relic Rules’ document as the designers were pushing the Nemesis format as the primary competitive way to play.

For those unacquainted, Championship was originally the only format for the game back in the original Shadespire days, and after the introduction of Rivals and Nemesis, remained the ‘principal competitive format’ for some time. Championship allowed players to construct a deck using any universal card in rotation, so long as you didn’t take duplicates (or later, more than one plot card), and had a limited number of restricted cards.

While I personally enjoy Nemesis (more so than I did Championship, especially by the end), there’s a hole that the existing formats simply can’t fill for some old timers. Some new players of Warhammer Underworlds might want another way to play, especially if they come from other card games with much larger card pools to draw from. Championship at its best is a format that allows the greatest expression of creativity and deckbuilding skill and allows for the most diverse combos. I wanted to take a stab at giving the community a new way to play second edition.

In order to keep the game reasonably balanced and create more meaningful card choices, we would need a much more comprehensive FaR list than the one currently in place for Nemesis play. I will propose my own below, but absolutely welcome feedback and refinements. Your play group is of course free to make your own FaR list if you disagree with this one.

Custom Rules: Embergard Championship Format

Championship is broadest format of Warhammer Underworlds, letting players build decks using their entire collections. Use this unrivalled flexibility to make a deck that’s entirely your own, build powerful combos, and find new ways to win.

DECK-BUILDING

The deck-building rules for Championship are as follows:

• Choose 12 or more objective cards. No more than 6 of those cards
  can be surge objectives. This is your objective deck.
• Choose 20 or more power cards. No more than half of these cards
  can be ploys. This is your power deck.
• Neither deck can include more than one card with the same name:
  each card in both of the decks must be unique.

You can only use one plot card. This means that you can only use one Rivals
deck that uses a plot card (and any number of Rivals decks that do not use plot cards) when building your deck.

All Warhammer Underworlds cards with the Embergard Symbol are allowed, with these exceptions:

• ‘Forsaken’ cards (see below) are not permitted

FORSAKEN AND RESTRICTED CARDS

Cards are added to the Championship Forsaken or Restricted lists to improve the experience of playing the Championship format of Warhammer Underworlds. When a card has a pronounced effect on the game world-wide, it will be added to the appropriate list.

This list was last updated in August 2025.

FORSAKEN CARDS

The following cards are Forsaken. They cannot be included in any deck used in a Relic format event.

Objectives:
Spread Havoc

Ploys:
Get it Done

Upgrades:
Fury of Aqshy
Utter Ignorance

RESTRICTED CARDS

In games using the Embergard Championship Format, you cannot include more than five (5) restricted in a Championship deck. The following cards are Restricted.

Plot Cards
Raging Slayers – which counts as two Restricted cards towards your full allowance

Objectives:
Aggressive Defender
Best Foot Forward
Critical Effort
Claim the Prize
Delving for Wealth
Get Stuck In
Low on Options

Ploys:
By the Numbers
Confusion
Fireproof
Healing Potion
Honed Reflexes
Illusory Fighter
Improvised Attack
Manipulated Fate
Sidestep
What Pain?

Upgrades:
Agile
Bladecatcher
Canny Sapper
Gloryseeker
Great Fortitude
Great Strength
Haymaker
Keen Eye

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As commentary, I have chosen to restrict the ‘obvious staple’ cards such as some of the Greats, Keen Eye, Healing Potion, Sidestep, and so on. My reasoning for this is to increase diversity in deck builds – anecdotally in first edition Championship play my personal experience was that nearly every single deck took the same handful of ‘best cards’ – you’d be a fool not to include Sidestep in your deck, or so the theory went. Today in the Nemesis format, you rarely if ever see those same cards left out when available in a pairing, though it’s more understandable with a limited pool of choices.

Now, if playing Championship, you can still take those cards but will have far fewer of the other ‘awesome’ cards to choose from. I have expanded the number of restricted allowances to 5 because I have made the list rather full, but I dream of a world where some players opt not to bring Great Strength.

The Raging Slayers Plot is legitimately hyper-powerful, especially in a format where you can ignore most of its bad Objectives and choose from several other decks. As such it is included here as two Restricted cards – if you take the RS plot card, you’ll only have 3 Restricted cards to choose from afterwards. This might need to be upped to 3 or even 4 if it has too much potency still.

I’ve chosen to be more lenient on Take and Hold flavored cards in order to help balance out the current metagame disparity favoring other playstyles. Supremacy, for example, does not appear on this version of the FaR. Should this balance shift, the list may need to be re-addressed.

Wrap

This article was part of the Custom Rules series. Click here to see other custom rules we’ve put together!

What do you think? Is Championship something you’d like to try out again? Does my list have obvious bias, horrible choices, and braindead justification? I would love to hear how to refine it, especially if you get a few games under your belt and have some experience that a card combo is too powerful or if I need to lessen the restrictions, etc.

However you play, in whatever format, I hope you enjoy Spending your Glory!