R77

Click- and rage-bait title, but I stand behind this proclamation. I don’t even think it’s a hot take among people who have played the game over multiple months and have expanded beyond the Embergard core set.

I deeply love this game, and there’s no other just like it. So this is an attempt at therapy, not destruction. But love can fade unless you get your partnership in order.

I’ll break this down into several points and end with some ideas of how the game and we as a community could make things spicy again. Also, this is a discussion piece and I would appreciate your input on this.

Efficiency Is What Makes Fun In Underworlds

This isn’t a fluffy, narrative game. It’s also no game that is primarily about rolling dice and seeing what happens. It’s about scoring points meeting certain conditions in the most effective way, and the rush of adrenaline and dopamine is released by making really strong turns. So in order for something to be fun, it has to have great efficiency and power. Of course these metrics can be tied to quite specific conditions and mechanics, but in Underworlds, you don’t usually play something just for the sake of it, and having bad turns just because you played something strange and inefficient won’t be fun after a couple of rounds.

The Core Decks Are Too Good and Too Popular

Everyone who knows most of the decks knows this. All 4 can be combined with basically every other deck and will play the leading role of the duet. Even better, you can combine 2 core decks, so you don’t have to bother with strange, more specific mechanics of the others. These 4 musketeers are pure efficiency.

Only one of the twelve most dominant deck combinations doesn’t include a core set deck.

Most Warbands Are Vanilla And Work With Everything

This is hyperbole, but I can’t think of a warband that won’t play at least decently with e.g. Blazing Assault and Countdown to Cataclysm, or Blazing Assault and Pillage and Plunder. And if we’re honest, being a smartass and playing something more niche in many cases will fall short of these combinations.

The second point is that few warbands have a clear playstyle baked into them. This is mostly due to the preponderance of single-use warscroll abilities and unique mechanics that don’t provide much interactivity or strategic complexity, like Ylthari’s growth counters. Mostly, playstyle is decided by fighter count and fighter stats, and as most are in the 4-5 range, you can make them work with most if not all of the 4 starter decks.

The Game Is Caught In A Self-Referential Nostalgia Loop

This is an unpopular opinion, but to me the re-releases were mostly middling to boring. I tend to think that the development time would have been better spent on new ideas.

The same with decks: They’re all clearly inspired by 1st edition ideas. They feel more like slight remixes to me, some more than others.

The Rest of Decks Are Either Too Weak Or Too Niche

I would argue that the last good double release of decks has been Reckless Fury and Wrack and Ruin – despite the design of Reckless Fury being halfway broken. Since then, there have been a couple of underwhelming releases. Edge of the Knife only really works great with large warbands with multi-move effects and even then it all boils down to “move small guys across the line”. Realmstone Raiders is deeply unfun and pretty bad. Raging Slayers is a copycat of 1st edition Breakneck Slaughter and is still way less prominent than Reckless Fury or Blazing Assault. Deadly Synergy is the level of release I would like to see! Hunting Grounds has a passable concept but no way of creating pressure.

The weaker releases can work for very specific warbands, but they failed to create an ecosystem of interesting combinations and playstyles beyond the core set. To put it bluntly: In most cases, it doesn’t make much sense to not play at least one of the core decks.

Two Major Playstyles Basically Have No Options At All, And Another Is One-Dimensional

Over 1 year after the release of 2nd edition, we still only have a single! deck that cares about treasure tokens, and only one deck that cares about delving, even though multiple warbands have mechanics that force them to delve.

At the same time, we have multiple aggro decks that don’t really provide depth to the playstyle. Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury, Raging Slayers and Reckless Fury, Blazing Assault and Raging Slayers, these all play very similarly. Deadly Synergy and Hunting Grounds switched up the formula, Deadly Synergy more so in practice than Hunting Grounds, as the latter will likely remain in obscurity.

The Restricted List Is A Joke

I would argue that in its current form, it basically has no impact. You tend to avoid combinations that have 2 restricted top-tier cards, but that’s about it. It didn’t change much in the popularity of the core decks.

The End Result

The end result is that looking at my large pile of warbands, I mostly see the same old deck combinations and the same old turns being played. I mostly see these old habits being slightly reskinned based on the warband I bring, but no major alterations to playstyle. I can think of more unique deck combinations, but most of them are subpar. And at this point, I have basically decided to not play warbands anymore that have no flavor except for 3-4 single-use abilities out of which at least 1 is shit.

Future

Again, this all has been the dark side of the moon. Second edition also had great and unique releases, e.g. Grandfather’s Gardeners, which I think is one of the most interesting warbands ever created. I also think that Spitewood was an overall good release, and in principle, Embergard is the perfect starting point for new players.

But for me to feel the same thrill I once felt, a major shake-up would be needed.

The easiest step would be to greatly increase the number of restricted cards across the core decks. The issue is that a) holding treasure tokens is limited to the core set and b) delving is as well. The community could step up and cook up a list of their own.

Another way would be to simply agree with your gaming group that you don’t play with the core set anymore. But alas, the other decks could be too limited and niche to come up with viable, varied combinations.

The reality is that the core decks won’t go anywhere, and that new releases can’t be on the same level for the game not being an arm’s race any more than it currently is. So designing interesting alternatives to core set principles and making the core set decks more restricted seems like the only viable way forward.

When looking at the Underworlds' game design over the past year, it seems clear to me that the designers have other intentions: new decks are supposed to complement the core set, and enable specific weird, niche combos. I also assume that the design isn’t oriented towards people who know the decks and can gauge their efficiency. This is a valid strategy, but it might fail to retain the interest of new players 2-3 months into their Underworlds journey.

Personally, I for now will limit myself to warbands that don’t have single-use abilities and preferably work well with decks other than the core ones.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Can Underworlds still capture your imagination?