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.

We continue the series today with another entry from Stormcast Diehard Bryce Martin. He’s penned two previous love letters for Xandire’s Truthseekers, one of which covers their original ruleset from their re-release in second edition. With the changes to the RS plot card and the bonkers potential it has for Ironsoul, he decided to see just what he could do with it.

Below is ‘perhaps the strongest thing (he) has made for second edition’: Ironsoul’s RS/Nexus, falling just shy of a World’s ticket last month. Enjoy!

Who are you, and where are you from? How did you get into Underworlds? Do you have a local group you play with, and if so, do they have an online presence to help people find you?

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 and it reignited my passion for the game to try and get a ticket for worlds in Barcelona this year.

What’s the warband/deck/pairing you love, and how did you two sweethearts meet?

After the world championships, I fell in love with Thomas AKA Saxthom’s Shadeborn deck that he piloted at the world championships. He was running a combo of Blazing Assault and Raging Slayers, which I found to be very good at taking out enemies quickly and getting glory fast through SLAYING (Editor’s Note: we also won the SoCal Open with the same deck shortly thereafter). However, the plot card change to Raging Slayers going from a reroll to shifting a success to a critical success was a change that happened right before the Cherokee Open in February 2026. Unable to shift to a new deck, I played the Shadeborn and the changes hit me hard as I lost in the finals due to rolling at most one success on many of my attacks. This led to me looking at other options to win a ticket to the world championships.

Around this time, the deck Nexus of Power was coming out and I made the comment to my friends that I bet Ironsouls Condemnors would love this deck, giving them a chance at extra range for their range 1 attacks and their ability to not be pushed while they have no Move or Charge tokens. Combine that with Raging Slayers, which allows them to inspire on Attacks by turning a single die to a critical success, and you had basically three models who could easily inspire and deal good damage while sitting on tokens.

(Just as a note, there has been some talk online about whether or not Raging Slayers would trigger the inspire condition for Condemnors or if the check for inspire happens before the dice is changed by the Raging Slayers plot card. Both myself and the tournament organizers I have talked to agree that you can inspire off the Raging Slayer changing the dice but talk with your tournament organizer beforehand until we get an FAQ clarification from Games Workshop).

With that in mind, I wanted to play something aggressive that could take a hit and allow for some fun positional scoring in enemy territory. Also, Ironsouls have an amazing warscroll ability set. Access to once per game extra dice for Brodus, once per game removal of weapon abilities, and once per game +1 range on attacks are some of the best we can have.

What makes the deck so fun to play in your experience?

As a lover of Xandire’s Truthseekers, Ironsouls gives me the staying power that I have been looking for in this edition. While they have no access to ranged attacks and their movement stat is slow, they are a nightmare to take down in combat if you aren’t able to put out high damage or have access to Cleave both in the warband and in your deck. Two fighters inspiring to two Block and all three fighters with 5 wounds means you have a tough chance of getting through their wounds quickly. Ironsoul’s are also very accurate, with access to three hammers on their attacks either from the beginning or on their inspired side. This means that you are very accurate, having a higher chance of rolling multiple hits in combat and getting to change one to a Critical Success from the Raging Slayers plot card means your inspiration can most likely happen first activation of each model.

But this is not just about the warband, this is also about the deck. What makes this deck so fun is how irritating you can make it for people to hit you in combat or finish you off. With access to an upgrade card that heals and a heal card, plus defense rerolls, you can make it very difficult to finish off your Condemnors. Plus, if you cannot get me off the treasure tokens, I am scoring glory and hitting you over and over from range 2. And if you have the need to drive me off tokens, I can use Overrun in most cases and push myself back onto the treasure tokens. That is the power in this deck, making it hard to finish you off and allow you to score from being in enemy territory and being near but not always on treasure tokens.

Link to the deck on either UnderworldsDB or Wunderworlds.club and then describe your theory behind it

Deck Link

As I said before, my main goal with this deck was to provide easy scoring inside my opponent’s territory and to make it hard to kill my models. However, I want to talk about each deck and why I made the card choices in my overall deck pairing.

For Nexus of Power, the biggest thing is that I took cards that cared about you having covetous fighters but only one card that required me to be on the treasure token, the end phase Skin of Their Teeth. For a fighter to be covetous, they have to be within one hex of a treasure token. So even if I am not on the actual treasure token, being next to it still scores a lot of my objectives since I only need to be covetous. I do lose out on the additional range on my range 1 attacks though, so I do try and get on the tokens. However, my slow movement can sometimes make that hard and just getting in range to be covetous helps me score more than having to get on a treasure token and hold it indefinitely in my opponent’s territory. Surges like Breakout become easy once you get across no man’s land into your opponent’s territory and Raging Slayers makes Calculated Strike an auto-score as long as you can get covetous status. Also, Close the Vice can be hard to score once you lose a model but this deck thrives on trying to keep models safe and alive. Ploys like Dig-In and Into the Deepwoods make it harder for your opponent to get through your defense with rerolls and guard tokens, while upgrades like I Like Those Odds for Brodus making all your fighters having two block and Inviolate making it so horde warbands and those with Flanked access with warscroll abilities or upgrades less likely to succeed on attacks into you.

In terms of Raging Slayers, besides the obvious instant inspiration with the plot card, this is all about being in our opponent’s territory and hitting them as hard as we can. Surges like Coordinated Assault and Blinded by Rage become easy once you have your fighters in enemy territory and can hand out enraged tokens to your other fighters when you charge, while our high accuracy means we get a better chance of scoring Best Foot Forward. Also, we hope to force our opponent to charge out due to most models being dead, leading to us scoring Unrelenting Massacre, and we can focus down most enemy leaders to score No Contest. Where I think this deck really loves Raging Slayers though is in the defense tech it can provide. We have access to the domain Honed Reflexes, which allow enraged friendly fighters to reroll one of their Save dice in a Save roll, and that is very good on a warband with mostly two block for their Save. Also, we see less domains than normal and most people do not have counter-play by playing another domain to cancel ours out, meaning we get a whole round of rerolls usually. Plus, What Pain allows us to heal our bulky fighters at the end of a round if we need it or even give us some middle of the round healing to stop a kill from happening. Finally, Raging Slayers upgrades give us access to Agile for more Save rerolls and Gifted Vitality to heal a fighter at the end of the battle round. We also get access to Keen Eye for more dice and Haymaker for massive damage output when needed.

With their already incredible stats, Condemnors just get such a boost from this pairing. You are able to make them even more tanky and harder to kill, plus giving them tons of positional play with Overrun happening more often. I love when my opponent thinks they are safe but I move onto a treasure token and Brodus is attacking from two hexes away to get the kill I needed. Even better, they try to come into my warband and I have a full set of rerolls on my models so they have to get either more dice or a spiked roll to get in any damage. It just feels like how I expect Stormcast to be in the lore, tanky and protectors of the realms.

How have you found success and/or fun with the deck?

I have taken this deck now to one tournament and I unfortunately lost in the finals in best of the three, winning only one game that match. However, before that finals, I had played multiple games with best of three and best of one. After this tournament, I am now 12 wins and 2 losses in games, with the best of threes and best of ones putting me at around 20 games won and 3 games lost. It is one of the strongest pairings that I have personally created in second edition and the second best games with a warband record I have.

The big thing that this deck does is survive. In all of my games, I have lost one model about half of the times and I only have ever had one game where I lost two models. Most games, I have not lost a model and I have very little damage marked on me. I think a lot of the strength of this deck is definitely in the Nexus cards being so new and people not knowing about all the different abilities on the plot card, but I think you can still find success once people get to know the deck more.

What advice do you have for other players who might want to try your warband on for size?

The biggest thing about playing this warband is token placement. The more tokens you have in your opponent’s territory right across the line and spread around, the better. Also, I have had a lot of opponents not flip the correct tokens or choose not to flip as many depending on their pairing and their need to use treasure tokens. Also, play the Spitewood boards and place yourself as far forward as possible. You HAVE to be in your opponent’s territory to get off some of your scoring and it also can pincer them into their own territory out of fear of getting murdered by your Stormcasts. 

The other big thing is learning when to get enraged tokens and when to spend them on your cards. Sometimes, you don’t need the crit as much and would prefer to not have the required push from the token after an attack into you. I usually only get them when I know I need to Overrun or I know that I have objectives or power cards left in my deck that require enraged tokens. Plus, once you inspire, the change to a Critical Success is less of a requirement.

What threats do you find most challenging to face?

Anything that can easily get free movement to go delve treasure tokens or wants to be flipping tokens can be tough. Pillage and Plunder can be a challenge if they flip all their own treasure tokens and never flip them back. Also, anything with cleave is rough for us since we do not usually stick close together to get flanked and surrounded on enemy models so we have to rely on Critical Successes for our defense rolls. Finally, the biggest thing you want to do is high damage instead of chip damage over time. Killing a single Condemnor takes time if you aren’t putting out a lot of damage and I am probably killing you faster and more efficiently at that point. However, things with three damage can be scary since they only take two hits to kill me and not three hits like most fighters with two damage.

Are there any warbands or strategies that others can use to beat this warband or pairing? Anything else you’d like to tell the community?

For the community, I think people are sleeping on Nexus of Power and the different ways to use it. While this deck is great with Ironsoul’s, I think any elite warband that is mostly range 1 and/or relies on critical success weapon abilities will like this deck. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Wrap

There you have it! A crazy combo of charging but also holding, auto-driveback but not caring either. Even if an FAQ comes out that says ‘no, sorry, you don’t inspire for free’, I still think this deck has juice and should be loads of fun regardless.

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!