Today’s article will focus on competitive play and is largely tailored to the Nemesis format. If you’re planning to play with Hunting Grounds or find yourself playing against it, you may benefit from considering the passive scoring and invasive pressure you and your opponent will each have.

Hunting Grounds benefits dramatically from fighting in the player’s friendly territory, but struggles if they have to fight in neutral or enemy territory. This opens up a bit of a conundrum for both players when HG is in play. As an HG player, can you afford to hang around and wait for them to come to you if they’re comfortable scoring in their own territory? For the opposing player, are you safely able to outscore the HG player if you refuse to engage?

This brings up the topic of ‘the beatdown’ (long form definition here) – commonplace in other games and frequently applied in first edition Underworlds, the beatdown is the player who is compelled to be the aggressor and initiate the action – failure to do so will likely result in their being outscored. Whoever is not the beatdown might actually worsen their chances if they do engage, since they allow their opponent more opportunities to score. This is incredibly prevalent now in matches that utilize Hunting Grounds.

Whether you’re taking HG or playing against it, you’ll need some rough napkin math to help you decide whether you need to do some invading, or if you can hang back and force them to do it.

The Community has come up with a bit of a “Rule of Thumb” based on no hard numbers: Emberstone Sentinels or Pillage and Plunder, as well as potentially Countdown to Cataclysm might have enough passive scoring to allow the HG player to sit still, at least depending on the opponent’s pairing. But when is that true, and when is it not? For this, we will need to assess the makeup of each deck.

I’m planning to run through the degree of “Invade Tech” in each deck that necessitates going into enemy territory to score and/or make use of. The more of it your deck/pairing has, the harder it’s going to be to avoid going into HG’s lair. Conversely, I’ll also look at the degree of “Passive Tech” that either can be done with home territory and/or is territory agnostic – particularly if it does not require an enemy fighter to accomplish (i.e. no attacks).

When pairing with HG, you will want something that has lots of passive tech to compel them to come to you. When pairing against HG, you’ll want something with a lot of that as well, so that you don’t feel like you need to. The HG player will need to be aware of whether or not they’ll have to abandon ship and invade to stop the passive scoring engine the other player has, and the HG’s opponent will need to know whether they can safely sit back and outscore without risking enemy territory invasion.

This obviously will depend on card choices, but as a general scope I’m going to include every card so that we can get a rough estimate of the passivity and pressure they will each put on an HG player or the HG’s opponent.

In order to best assess this, I’m going to only include things in the home objectives count if they can be scored with literally no interaction. If neither player crosses the line, no enemy fighters are within x hexes, and no attacks are made, can you still score it?

Blazing Assault

Invade Objectives: 1 for 1 glory (Get Stuck In)

Passive Objectives: 2 for 2 glory (Go All Out (for some warbands), Denial)

You need to be making attacks, and in some cases getting hit back. This will require you to invade in most cases. Maybe you can score a few with ranged attacks (Branching Fate, Perfect Strike, Critical Effort, etc) but it’s not reliable.

Emberstone Sentinels

Invade Objectives: 5 for 6 glory (Sally Forth, Stand Firm, Step by Step, Careful Advance, Slow Advance)

Passive Objectives: 5 for 8 glory (Hold Treasure 1/2, Hold Treasure 3/4, Hold Treasure 5, Iron Grasp, Supremacy)

While you won’t get all the right numbered treasures each game, most warbands can get 7 passive glory pretty reliably even with only 2 tokens on your side, and you do have a ploy (switch things up) to help score the hold X cards.

Pillage and Plunder

Invade Objectives: 3 for 3 glory (Aggressive Claimant, Claim the Prize (maybe), Careful Survey)

Passive Objectives: 5 for 5 glory (Against the Odds, Lost in the Depths, Desolate Homeland, Delving for Wealth, Share the Load) Maybe Broken Prospects and Torn Landscape depending on the token placement. Strip the Realm is theoretically possible but very unlikely.

If you’re lucky enough to get 3 tokens on your side of the board, you can run around and delve in your territory without wasting attack time and with the right cards get up to 9 glory while never interacting with your opponent. Even with just 2 tokens, you can still grab 5 glory no problem.

Countdown to Cataclysm

Invade Objectives: 2 for 2 glory (Shocking Assault, Nowhere to Run)

Passive Objectives: 3 for 5 glory (Spread Havoc, Set Explosives, Loaded for Bear) and maybe Uneven Contest but it’s unlikely

CtC is a pretty strong contender for passive potential, as not only are there 5 glory baked into the ‘stand in my own turf and otherwise do nothing’ strategy, they’re also very reliable.

Reckless Fury

Invade Objectives: 6 for 7 glory (Best Foot Forward, Bloody Momentum, Frenzied Rush, Living Bludgeon, Sally Forth, Savage Sprinter)

Passive Objectives: Technically 0, though Arena Mortis is possible if you have good ranged attacks

You have to charge, and in many cases do things in enemy territory. You’ll be invading in the HG matchup, or you’ll be losing. There’s potential for ranged attack warbands to score a little bit without entering enemy territory, but it will be a tough sell.

Wrack & Ruin

Invade Objectives: 5 for 6 glory (Careful Advance, Living on the Edge, Out of the Frying Pan, Spread Out)

Passive Objectives: 6 for 8 glory (Alone in the Dark (maybe), Low on Options, Ploymaster, Predictable End (maybe), Stay Close (maybe), Unsafe Ground (maybe))

This one is a little harder to rate. There are several things that could be scored passively, assuming the opponent stands in the right spots and/or you’re able to use the deck’s power cards effectively to deal damage or push fighters. It’s possible to do a decent amount passively, but by no means guaranteed.

Edge of the Knife

Invade Objectives: 4 for 4 glory (All In, Behind Enemy Lines, Risky Position, Two-pronged Assault)

Passive Objectives: 1 for 1 glory (Power in Numbers (maybe)) – I can’t count Calm Before the Strom since you’ll need to find a way to damage somebody and the deck doesn’t help with this much

This deck really wants your guys tempered, which may require you to take damage. IF they won’t come to you, you’ll have to go to them so they feel comfortable hitting you. Additionally, there are many ‘be in enemy territory’ scores. This deck pretty well needs to invade vs HG.

Realmstone Raiders

Invade Objectives: 1 for 1 glory (Pillage)

Passive Objectives: 1 for 2 glory (Hoarder’s Hovel) – I can’t count Certain Aggression or Roused Violence as they require Raiding

Since so much of the deck is tied to making successful melee attacks, you’ll need to cross the line if your opponent won’t come to you. This is an invading deck in the HG matchup.

Raging Slayers

Invade Objectives: 6 for 7 glory (Aggressive Expansion, Best Foot Forward, Coordinated Assault, Into the Fire, No Escape, No Respite)

Passive Objectives: 0

RS absolutely requires you to make attacks (specifically with charges) and heavily incentivizes doing so in enemy territory. There are few routes to victory in a passive standoff for RS players, so they will have to deal with HG’s advantage in order to score.

Deadly Synergy

Invade Objectives: 1 for 1 glory (Infiltrate)

Passive Objectives: 0

While deadly synergy doesn’t explicitly need you to invade, you definitely do need to be making attacks, so the impetus will likely be on the DS player in a passive standoff.

Hunting Grounds

Invade Objectives: 0

Passive Objectives: 1 for 1 glory (This is Our Turf)

If you have ranged attacks, specifically with your leader, and your opponents do the right things, you can score Hands Off, Lead by Example, and Spoiling for a Fight for potentially 4 more but I would certainly not count on it.

Scorecard

Assessing each deck’s ‘Passive Potential’, I’ll take the number of passive glory and subtract the number of invade glory to get a rough net passivity. This obviously isn’t a perfect metric. I’ll include the net score, and then the pure passive in parentheses if you lean maximally into it for nemesis purposes.

BA: +1 (+2) with potential for more if you have good ranged attacks
ES: +2 (+8)
PP: +2 (+5) with potentially more (9 or 10!) based on token placements
CC: +3 (+5)
RF: -7 (0)
WnR: +2 (+8) but you’ll need luck and power card support. However, the ‘better’ cards are the passive ones anyway.
EK: -3 (+1)
RR: +1 (+2)
RS: -7 (0)
DS: -1 (0)

This means, as community consensus has already figured out, that HG will probably want to pair with ES, PP, or CC in nemesis to compel some action, and probably in that order. The question is, if you’re the HG player and have done that, what nemesis pairings might you face that would make you interested in invading?

In the most generous estimates, HG & something good can score 6-10 passive glory with a touch more using ranged attacks from their side into the other side. If the opponent’s nemesis pairing has a higher cap than this, they can somewhat comfortably not invade, and the HG player will become ‘the beatdown’.

So, as a shorthand: HG can play defensive against most combos assuming they include ES, PP, and maybe CC. However, those decks will likely lose the passive scoring race to the following Nemesis pairings:

ES/PP 13-18 passive (though Restricted cards cut this closer to 10-16)
ES/CC 13 passive (though Restricted cards cut this closer to 10-11)
PP/CC 10-14 passive (though Restricted cards cut this closer to 8-12)

It’s a bit of a coin toss based on token placement, power cards, and warband comp, but ES/Wrack, PP/Wrack, and CC/Wrack can potentially grab enough passive glory as well, though it is more counter-playable and less reliable. If you assume the minimum ‘guaranteed’ of +2 for Wrack, then ES/Wrack and PP/Wrack can still outpace some ‘good’ HG pairings.

PP or ES and either BA or RR can also potentially beat out the passive scores HG pairings can muster, but it’s going to be a closer call and you’d hate to pick wrong…

Wrap

Obviously, there’s substantially more nuance to the beatdown calculation than what’s been presented here. HG players will likely have maximized their passive scoring in their second deck, but their opponents won’t necessarily have done that. Sure, ES/PP could score ~16 passive glory, but maybe they included lots of the invade cards, get poor token placement, and so on.

Regardless, I hope I’ve been able to provide a yardstick for determining whether or not you’ll need to be the aggressor in your nemesis matches that involve HG. Whether you’re blitzing over the line or hanging back, I hope you enjoy spending your glory!