Warhammer Underworlds Battle Report: Sharpening the Razors

 Time for another casual meeting week report, and this time we started the night by playing Cyreni's Razors in the Nemesis format, with a deck build of her rivals and the Force of Frost universal.

 

 

Now as this was a bit of a last moment decision to take them along, the deck is build around staggering and spellcasting objectives, so let's see how it goes.

 

The first game of the evening was against Michael and his Starblood Stalkers, who mixed in the new Rimewyrm's Bite deck.   The Starblood Stalkers are all about speed, and objective scoring, so my aim was to go for the little ones as soon as possible.  With the boards staggered, this did limit my Hammertide action though.

But that was never the less the first thing I did, and then a Thrall followed up, finishing of the first skink and first blood to the Idoneth.  However, his Saurus warrior quickly avenged the little guy, and getting inspired in the process knocked my warrior out.

Using it's superspeed ploy, the leader of the Stalkers raced over the whole board, scoring an objective in my half (and preventing me from scoring one for not having enemies in my half), but the first round ended with a 4-2 lead for Cyreni's Razors.

In the second round, my squid and thrall decided to make total idiots of themselves, as the combined attack failed to take out a single simple skink.  Luckily Cyreni did better, Pelagic blasting the skink leader out of the game.

But this left her exposed to the big Saurus, and even the thrall that came to the aid couldn't stop the big beast, leaving her exposed for the charge in the third turn, but we still barely led with 6 - 5.

 

I had to take a gamble though at the third turn, because to be able to play some ploys I needed to not be inspired, meaning I had to pass first turn to the Lizardmen and hope he would miss.  He duly did with his main attack, but the bite pushed me back into the lethal hex and took Cyreni out, damn.

With the thrall also being eliminated after some epic misses, it was poor Cephanyr now alone on the board to salvage the situation... and he failed to take out the chamelon skink even with his 4 dice and ensnare.

 

The result, an 8-8 draw in the end and a lot of internal cursing on my side of the many botched attack rolls.  But it was a fun game, and some lessons are being learned as we go.

For the second game I faced Peter and his Godsworn Hunt with Malevolent Masks.  He had taken this deck as the masks are easy upgrades to inspire his fighters, and again a staggered board.

The game started well, with a thrall immediatly taking down his javelineer, as the others advanced but didn't cause any more casualties bar some wounds left or right. Peter in return focussed all his efforts on Cephanyr, downing the squig.

But in return, as I could now activate again, I killed of his leader Thedra, and the second game where Cyreni takes out her rival.  Jealous little girl I have here on my hands it seems.

The first round ended at a 5-3 lead for the Idoneth as a result.

The second round saw Cyreni take down Grundann, but he returned from the dead, making a final attack and downing Cyreni.  This caused her though to unleash her Final Curse, and her fourth spell of the phase, scoring me big as Grundann also allowed me to score the card for three fighters out of action.  This means 5 points in her final moments, an honourable death indead for my leader.

With this epic dual, a massive 15-7 lead was now on the board for the Razors, and it would be a matter of holding on to this during the final turn.

A final turn that would be fought by the two lone survivors, Shond on his side, and Renglaith at mine.

Renglaith managed to wound Shond, but with some pushes coming into play could't avoid him and was taken down.  The Hunt / Masks combination started to use it's final activations to score some more cards, while I cycled through the remainder of my objective deck.

Peter scored all the way up to 14 points, but even while that was not enough, I could also score the no enemy in my territory, and ended with a 16-14 victory.  The Razors had held on, but only barely, in the final turn and brought back their first victory home.

What did I learn first and foremost?  Compared to Elathain's, they have far less effective defence, with only a single die for all the three Idoneth, wether inspired or not.  On the other hand, the fact they are more frequently inspired then Elathain's does give benefits.  They are also a lot less aggressive to play though, so I need to think a bit more carefully in future games, softening up big enemies with my reach attacks, while keeping an eye on the easy pickings as I do 2 damage across the board standard, perhaps stepping away from my Elathain tactic of grabbing the little one first...

But another fun night, and see you back next week for more Underworlds goodness normally.