I recently purchased my ticket for the Warhammer Underworlds Mini Clash at Warhammer World in June. I’m still pretty new to Warhammer Underworlds but purchased the Direchasm boxset when it launched purely for The Dread Pageant. I had a game or two around that time to see what it was like and really enjoyed it but then it went in the box and whilst The Dread Pageant regularly make my Age of Sigmar Hedonites lists (I think they’re a great second choice to go into ambush alongside Sigvald when running Lurid Haze!) it wasn’t until I grabbed the Harrowdeep core box that they had the chance to strut their stuff on that hex dancefloor again!
One of the things I love about Underworlds is that it’s such an accessible game. There’s huge amounts of strategic and tactical depth when building decks but also at it’s simplest it’s quite easy to pick up and play and as a result one of the few games that my kids join in with. This gives me the opportunity to tailor decks to go against my Dread Pageant to let me try going into some different styles of play and most importantly is just really valuable for getting the reps in with The Dread Pageant as my preparation for the Mini Clash!
I bought my ticket and read through the Tournament Pack before the announcement of Nethermaze but assumed it wasn’t too far off so my starting place for a deck was to have as few Direchasm cards in there as possible so that I could flex into whatever the new season threw out there without having to relearn my deck from scratch.
I really enjoyed reading baconborne’s deckbuilding exercise on the Illusion cards over on the Determined Effort blog and my initial thinking was to lean very heavily into the illusions in a similar way but my final Direchasm/Harrowdeep iteration of the deck ended up as the below:
This means it’s only Dominant Position that I have to cycle out and I’m at quite a high glory total so there’s no pressure to have to pick something high scoring to take its place from amongst the new cards. Sinking Feeling stands out as probably the next obvious choice before I see any of the new cards from Nethermaze or The Exiled Dead. I’m also at 2 restricted cards so hopefully some room there as the new season kicks in too!
There’s also the small matter of getting The Dread Pageant painted up. This shouldn’t be too big of a deal but it’s such a long time since I last finished painting a mini let alone a few (I have aspirations of doing a little display base / diorama for the Warband as well but I’ll start off with the smaller goal of just getting these to a tabletop ready standard for now!)
It’s very early days on that front and just blocking in the base colours for now but if I’m going to chronicle my prep for the Mini Clash I guess it’s only right to also show my progress (or lack of!) on the painting front.
Next time I’ll have a look at the cards from the new season that I’m considering cycling into the the deck, update on the painting progress and explore any trends from my preparation games.
slowandpurposeful 