Trying out Warhammer Underworld - Shadespire

So it happened.  Past friday at the local Games Workshop, Noshi bought the Shadespire boardgame, her first step into dabbling with GW.

So past weekend we sat down and tried out the game.  We did make a few mistakes, but I`ll get to those at the end of the article.

So she sat down that friday and assembled her figures, punched out the cardsheets, and sleeved up the decks (it helps on that last part that you still have a gazillion of those things from your Magic days...)

The tutorial

The very first thing you play in Shadespire is a quick tutorial game, which is a bit "pre-programmed" and gives you a sense of how movement and combat work.

Noshi took the Stormcasts, and I ended up with the Khorne Berzerkers.  It was short and bloody, and I realised that the little bloodcrazed weirdo`s would have a hard time against the boys in blue.

Stormcasts hit more with their hammer symbol, and save easier with their shields icons...

The Game

So we proceeded to play our first game.  The decks where dealt, and I decided to go to focus on my objectives, in order to pay for the various upgrade cards I bought. 

Objectives where then placed on the map and the game was underway.

Noshi had centralised her models together, while I was setting myself up for the objective card where I had to charge three times in a turn.

One of my warriors quickly charged a stormcast in order to just push him of the objective and refusing her a victory point.

Only to be smashed down in the next activation... those Khornite dudes where tinfoil armour and dodge as well as a loaded oil tanker with a sprung leak.

I managed to snap away some objectives mainly due to my superior numbers.  The benefit of the cult is seemingly that you can dictate where the action takes place, as initially (before they start dying that is) you have more models then activations.

Stacking cards, my axe wielding hero took down a Stormcast.  His skull now litters the throne of Khorne.

As do those of my band...

In the end, my single model left sneaked in her territory for another point, and I won 7 - 1.

What did we do wrong?

Well, afterwards and with the help of the october issue of White Dwarf that focussed on the game, we found three big boo-boo's that could have changed the outcome.

* the ! symbol rule, on which we still aren`t clear to be honest.
* we dealt damage for each success we threw during an attack, instead of getting the most successes of attack vs defence and then doing just once that amount of damage of the attack stats line.
* we played our cards during an activation instead of after, which is a huge difference.  Now we rushed in and boosted our models, while you have to set him up actually for the next activation you have, giving the opponent a turn to either take him out, or do things like moving out of charge range.

All in all, I liked the game, it played rather fluently and the rules engine is rather smooth and simple for some quick games.  I only hope they will release a couple more bands or rules for them at least through for example White Dwarf, because I`d love to field a Free People band for example...

And "the moment", just for the sake of prosperity...