With Spitewood’s release, including two new board sides and new feature tokens, it’s time to give a light refresh to the Custom Rules for multiplayer games. I figured I would also take this opportunity to share some reader-submitted feedback battle reports using these game modes!

To see the original Free for All Multiplayer Rules, Click Here
To see the original 2v2 Teams Multiplayer Rules, Click Here
If you’re interested in reading other Custom Rules for Underworlds, click here

Updated Rules for Use of Spitewood Boards

Updates to the rules for multiplayer FFA and 2v2 are pretty limited, but Spitewood boards change a few things.

• When selecting boards for any of the multiplayer game modes, players get to choose and orient any two different boards (no duplicates) and are not restricted to blocked and open side of the Embergard board.
• If using the Spitewood board with a single stagger in the center, both warbands can use the single stagger as an entry or exit for any of the other staggers on the other board.
• Place Aqua Ghyranis tokens on all 4 board halves.
  • In the Free for All mode, holding any AG tokens not in your territory will grant the healing and glory (including the Scrum).
  • In Teams gamers, you must occupy one in the other team’s territory to qualify for glory and healing.

Community Feedback

Multiple people have reached out over the past few months to say that the game becomes burdensome with 3 and especially 4 players due to length of the rounds. As a result, I am introducing the following optional rule for multiplayer games:

• The game will last two battle rounds instead of 3.
• The second and final battle round is considered to be both the second and third battle round for the purposes of any rules that refer to battle round. i.e.
  • Players using Cyreni’s Razors can select 3 fighters to inspire in that round
  • Players using Elathain’s Soulraid use the effects of both High Tide and Ebb Tide as well as having all fighters inspired for round 2.

When playing 3-Bounty Deathmatch, it has been proposed that battle rounds consist of only 3 activations rather than 4. If players both agree, you may use this truncated round length for your games.

Battle Reports!

A few of you have reached out with battle reports and stories of your experiences playing some of the custom rules on this page. I love to hear about them, and am always happy to hear about more! I’ll share some of the ones I remembered and could dig up for this post; if I left yours out, I’m sorry!

2v2 Teams Multiplayer

Pyriphery played a 2v2 game and had the following to say:

“We played the 2v2 version following the rules explained above. It was actually quite fun. We played with emberwatch & zicket against dromm & gardners. Emberwatch played with BA+ES, Zicket with PP+RR. Dromm played BA+RS, gardners with CTC+WR. It was really fun play and you really need different tactics then in the 1v1 version. So, it becomes a very different (but with the same feel) game. Some things to improve (just proposal, feel free to disagree):

• if in abilities or cards absolute numbers are used as targets, we should double them in 2v2. Eg, Dromm expires all friendly fighters with 8 blood tithes, this is really easy (if all players attack and succeed, you inspire in the third turn…).
• the game took a long time. Due to the fact that we had to figure out some mechanisms, but also due to the fact that you take a lot of actions. 4 players, with 4 actions per round for 3 rounds, that are 48 actions. We played only 2 rounds for a little less then 3 hours…
• objectives which refer to “the battlefield” are much harder to fulfill and you really need to work together to achieve them. One could say, that you can refer to one of the boards of the battlefield, although, one could also argue that you need to cooperate a bit better
• I would also limit a plot card to the fighters that have brought the plot card into play.
• Anyway, if you are looking for a fun twist with this game, this feels very nice.
• Congrats to Fishmode and Spent Glory…

The Madison/WtH crew ran a teams game and told me: “the board tunnels are great. Tho it may be interesting to play as all tunnels are connected. Loved deploying across both friendly territories. Somehow we didn’t do that in V1. We definitely put a few of our own familiar twists in from V1: skip round 2, so the game is played in a reasonable time frame. In the setup, draw extra cards(+1 obj, +2 power). Mulligan decision, then discard one of each(obj and power) This is because one less round to see cards. Let’s people discard cards that clunk in the format.”

Free For All

Philip Lancashire sent me the following message:

“Big fan of your content, my groups plays your multiplayer rules all the time. So we had a three player multiplayer today. Velmorn, Jaws and Gnarlspirit. It turned out we all had aggro combinations, so it became a massive bloodbath 🙂 We were discussing the fact one of the new boards only has one stagger hex, only one route in and one route out. Could make for some interesting play if people try to block the tunnel with fighters etc.”

Glenn Dean’s Narrative Campaign

Previously, Glenn provided us with this awesome rules pack for narrative progression and linked games.

After that went live, Rolltop Realms has begun the campaign and filmed battle reports for us to watch, including some custom terrain pieces. Check out part 1 here, and once that’s done you can see the interlude where fighters battle a fomoroid crusher in a solo game followed by the second mission. Great stuff!

Wrap

Please reach out with comments, suggestions, or more battle reports at SpentGlory@gmail.com. I’m glad several of you have been having a cracking time with multiplayer custom rules, and hope that the Spitewood rules and boards give it even more flavor and variety, as well as tons of new warband and deck combos to abuse in teams mode! Until next time, I hope you enjoy spending glory with multiple friends in the Spitewood!