Xandire’s Truthseekers: Sometimes You Need a Second Date by Bryce Martin

Hello Spent Glory Fans, this time we’re back with another of our Love Letters written by the Warhammer Underworlds community. 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. Below is some sweet affection from Bryce Martin, who has had Xandire seeking his heart for a while now.

Bryce played the Ringer at the World Championships of Warhammer this year, after having been unavailable to compete last year when he qualified (with Xandire!). You may recognize him from that Love Letter he wrote in first edition. Let’s listen in as he describes his views of the warband in second edition, his original deck composition, run at Worlds, and subsequent modifications to his deck.

Pre-Date Jitters: Getting Ready for Worlds

My name is Bryce Martin and I’m pretty sure that’s my Discord handle as well. I was a very competitive player in Underworlds first edition and one of the top players in the Southeast United States. Second edition had me cooling on the game a bit, with other skirmish games grabbing my attention for a while. However, I was very excited to be the ringer for the 2025 World Championships since I won my ticket last year and had to miss the event due to family medical issues. Plus, the release of Spitewood brought back my favorite warband: Xandire’s Truthseekers!

Readers of Spent Glory will remember that I won my ticket to Worlds in 2024 with Xandire back in first edition with a Breakneck Speed deck combo. So, I was excited to bring back the team who earned me a ticket to worlds and hopefully do them justice. Also, I was interested in one part of Xandire’s warscroll card in particular: Seeker’s Strike.

Seeker’s Strike is a new ability that states: Use this immediately after a friendly fighter’s successful melee Attack if the target was on a feature token. Flip that feature token. You can only use this ability once per battle round. Now while this isn’t delving, this got the gears in my head turning. This was a way to remove treasure tokens from my opponent when I made successful attacks, especially if I drove them back off the token as well. I could flip the treasure token and make them have to delve it back for scoring hold objective cards or get me off the treasure token if I Overrun onto the token as well. Plus, forcing the opponent to delve meant they would stagger and I could have rerolls to help get them back off the token and make my lower dice attacks more accurate.

With this in mind, I decided that my first deck I wanted to bring was Pillage and Plunder. If I was able to flip tokens without delving them, it made things easier for scoring things like Torn Landscape or make Strip the Realm a bit scarier if I could knock enemies off the tokens and hold them after I flipped them. However, the second deck pairing was harder for me to settle on. My main goal was to get into enemy territory and make sure I was flipping tokens in their territory instead of staying in my own territory. To me, this meant I needed to get the most scoring out of my activations and I would be in enemy territory most of the time, mostly charging since I was range 1 on a lot of my fighters. Due to this, my final pairing was going to be a deck that I like messing with: Reckless Fury.

This was my hope for worlds based on my look at the new Spitewood warscrolls: I would see Hold Objective and elite warbands like Wurmspat, Soulraid, and Shadeborn in most cases. Maybe some horde, but I thought that we would see more 3-5 model warbands with the changes to Gitz in the new season. So with that in mind, I thought it would make Pillage and Plunder harder to stop with less enemy models to delve. Plus, I could get in and stay in the enemy territory to score points by charging. With that in mind, this was my final build I took to worlds:

With a high glory ceiling of 18 glory, cheap upgrade costs, and some great ploys, I was ready to take on worlds. I was the ringer, so there was a low chance of me playing unless we had an odd number show up. With my luck, 65 people showed up. I was number 66 and I was going to be able to play.

First Date: Not Bad but Not as Planned

However, my run at the world championships was not as I planned. In total, I played only eight rounds of the ten due to a drop on Saturday. Of those rounds, I won 1 round and lost 7 rounds. My games were close in most cases even when losing, mostly by 2-4 glory every game. I played into Zarbag’s Gitz round 1, Zondara’s Gravebreakers round 2, Starblood Stalkers round 3, Thorns of the Briar Queen rounds 4 and 5, Kurnoth’s Heralds round 6, Kainan’s Reapers round 7, and Skittershank’s Clawpack round 8. I don’t want to talk too much about the games, but I want to explain the lowest point I had during the world championships. I played the perfect game into Kainan’s Reapers in our first game, controlling Kainin from doing anything but one attack that missed all game and I scored my entire deck except Strip the Realm. It was the best game I played in my life potentially of Underworlds.

I lost by two points.

It was at that point I knew that I was correct on a statement I said to my friends the day before: I think this deck I brought is bad. Looking back at it, I do not think this deck is bad. But I think Xandire’s Truthseekers is not the best warband for this deck. Also, my favorite warband lost a lot in the shift to the second edition with their new cards. (Editor’s Note: Spent Glory agrees. Check out the product review from the Spitewood Launch). While we gained things like Dhoraz going to 3 hammers on the inspired side, losing the 2 block we had on our inspired side in the first edition was rough. Our fighters die much faster than you expect into aggressive warbands and we don’t have ways to increase our damage potential with this pairing. Also, no chances for additional dice besides Keen Eye in our build made a lot of these 2 dodge warbands I was running into harder to hit if I rolled slightly poorly (which was frequently of course). All in all, I learned a lot about the warband and I am ready to try them again with potentially new pairings.

Second Date: Let’s Do Something Unexpected

I will be playing Xandire’s Truthseekers in Underworlds for as long as I can. I love the warband and I find them absolutely fascinating to play. However, I wanted to end this article with something different: if I had expected the horde and aggro meta that I ran into, what would you have changed in your deck with the pairing you chose?

I had a lot of people expect me to be running a lot more of the Reckless Fury end phases than I actually brought, which is probably what I should have built the deck around. I think the fear of Pillage and Plunder would make them have to try and stop things like Strip the Realm, when in reality I was looking mostly to get in and charge out. Also, I could still delve a bit and try to score some of the easier end phases in Pillage and Plunder. In the end, this is the final build I came up with:

This one is more built around me doing the charging game plan and still scoring some points out of delving a few tokens. I have yet to test this out, but I think it would have been better for me into the hordes that could easily flip a token back or send someone to sit on a treasure token for the whole game. If you get a chance to test it, let me know! I would love to try and make this build work with my favorite warband. Maybe I’ll even get to play them at worlds next year!

Thanks again to Bryce for sharing his experience with this until-now-overlooked warband, and thanks for being the living embodiment of Love Letters and their commitment to playing what you like, rather than what’s ‘good’, even at the literal highest level of competition.

While there are a few more Love Letters in the works, there is always room for more. I’d love to hear your thoughts about an older or lesser or weird warband/pairing, what drove you to fall in love with it, and how you’ve piloted it to success – and especially piloting it to fun. If you have a warband you’d love to wax poetic about and serenade the wider community, let me know! I’m always accepting new submissions at SpentGlory@gmail.com – Until next time, grab your favorite warband, a couple friends, and Spend some Glory!