New Underworlds Content (by You)! Homebrew Deck Template

Warhammer Underworlds has been in a content slump since May 2026, and the last Rivals deck release was even earlier, in February. There are also no new releases on the horizon any time soon, which is a much lamented fact in the community. The game feels stale and the same deck combinations and warband choices might get repeated again and again. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

The community could step in and create its own content. Underworlds seems like a pretty ideal environment for homebrew designs, as its mechanics are clearly defined and there are different kinds of modular building blocks one can target: decks, warbands, and boards. As long as one sticks to the basic rules language and mechanics, custom content seems pretty easy to integrate. The challenge, of course, is that Underworlds is also a pretty crunchy and competitive system, which is highly dependent on precise rules, rules interactions, and balancing across an almost inconceivable number of possible variations.

Personally, I’m pretty sick of most of the available decks. This is my primary motivation for what I’m releasing today: a homebrew deck template! I know that many people are more interested in creating custom warbands. Having a new team is exciting, and designing characters is flavorful. But looking at the numbers:

• A new warband would create 66 new combinations
• A new deck would create 672 new combinations

So if we’re approaching a fix for the content drought from an efficiency standpoint, the right path is clear.

Previously, I found designing decks cumbersome: available templates were image-based, and we lacked an easy way to add all the specific symbols Underworlds uses. Usually, the kind of repeated layout found in a printed deck is created in layout software like InDesign, which provides clearly defined presets for every component.

This is where my template comes in. It is ready to use: all you have to do is enter your text into the cards and add card art if you want. Some design considerations:

• Purely vector-based instead of using bitmaps, so the design is razor-sharp and can be scaled to any size
• Grayscale instead of color. Homebrew content likely needs many design iterations, and for testing, cards need to be printed and cut. So saving ink seems of prime importance to me. Striking a balance between colors is also way harder to do. So is creating and adapting high-quality bitmap textures.
• Special symbols should work like ordinary text, rather than like image files. I created a custom font that matches symbols like Surrounded and Critical to letters on the keyboard, so that you can simply type the symbol you need.

The only prerequisite is that you download and install the free software Affinity Canva. Then, you can download the project I put together and get started!

What the project archive contains:

• The design template itself
• The custom font
• Information on all other fonts used
• All assets used, supplied as vector files

I also thought about card art. Coming up with 32 pieces of artwork if you don’t have a photography or illustration background is challenging. The example design I include employs my own photography, some photo editing, and simple vector shapes. But I also included image generation workflows, which work pretty well.

Hopefully, this groundwork will lead to a new wave of homebrew content for our beloved game! Of course, this is strictly a fan project and not in any way affiliated with Games Workshop. I see it as a service to the community, and including work on upcoming content built around this release, I have invested around 20 hours. What is still in the making:

• A hands-on tutorial for using the template in Affinity for all the people who have never used this type of software
• Statistics on the design characteristics of existing decks that can be used as design guidelines
• A first attempt at creating rebalanced cards for the Embergard Core Set decks

But first and foremost, I’m looking forward to what the community comes up with design-wise. If you do some homebrewing, be sure to mention my work on the template and tell the community about your project on Reddit or the Discord.