We’ve got a guest article diving into the nuts and bolts of upping your Shadespire game brought to us by Dave!
Warhammer Underworlds (WU) is a tournament game, and because of that some of us who love the game, play to win. We test decks, play tons of games and polish the proverbial turd into soul crushing, take no prisoners, game wining, gut punching decks. On our team we have three of the top ten ITC players (and probably one more after Frankie uploads the SoCal open scores), we play each other a lot, we’ve all won local/regional tournaments, and one of us has won more shadeglass trophies (7) than he needs. We’ve come to recognize that maybe some of that hyper competitiveness scares away less competitive players, and in our chat, we’ve talked about limited format nights at the club to encourage more people to play, more in a future article. Basically, we love this game. Unfortunately, this weekend at The SoCal Open there were only seven Underworlds players, six day one and four day two. We were sad. A few weeks earlier we played in a tournament at The Realm, Games and Comics with 12, and at Gamer’s Haven with eight. Our team was excited to play at SoCal with different players and our rivals to see how good we really are, and we basically played each other.
During and after SoCal we wondered why people aren’t playing WU as much as we had hoped. The Second season (Nightvault) just dropped with two new war bands a week later. The buzz online was good, old players were coming back after the drought at the end of Shadespire. How could there not be a good crowd at SoCal? At Kingdom-Con this spring there were (I think) almost 20 players. So I asked, “Where are our community leaders, who is our Frankie, our Reece?” Not long after the answer walked up. A cast member of Claim the City (CtC, the only WU podcast I know) wondered by and we talked shop for a few minutes, yeah, he was playing 40K. For the Kingdom-Con WU tournament (which they ran) CtC hyped it up for weeks. Could it be that simple? In our discussion and on the cast, he made the case that WU really needs a tournament format, and I agree that would make running events a breeze. From what I can infer/remember their idea would be to use no neutral cards from season one (Shadespire). He had additional reasons for playing 40K at SoCal that I respect so no hard feelings. However, I disagree, and hope to make an argument for why that makes sense (since you’re not in my head).
First if GW comes out with a tournament pack I’ll embrace it and play the game how they want us to play. However, GW sold us WU Shadespire as a complete game designed at once with 8 war bands, 437 cards, plus the 60 leader pack cards, season two (Nightvault) isn’t done or complete until all the war bands and cards are released. For one Shadespire war bands don’t have magic, and the magic we’ve seen is damn good. Shadespire war bands therefore need the cards they were designed with to compete in an open competitive format. Are there powerful cards in Shadespire? Yes, but if Shadespire war bands don’t have those cards can they are compete. Shadespire cards can also be used with the Nightvault war bands so everyone has access to those same tools. Now I will admit if we get more expansion packs like Echoes of Glory as they re-release the season one war bands Claim the City’s proposal makes sense. But to do so prematurely puts the season one war bands at a competitive disadvantage.
Nightvault has been a great shot in the arm for Warhammer Underworlds I’m excited to see where the rest of the season takes us, the cards and combos we’ll find. Get out to your local club and bang out a few games. Put you head together with your friends and find a deck that hits hard, but most importantly get your tournament organizer to upload their tournament scores so we all can collect those juicy, juicy ITC points.
What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear how the community thinks we can grow the competitive WU scene.
Play more games and I’ll see you in Vegas.
About Dave:
He’s taller, and more handsome than you, but also a little over weight. He helps raise two wild little ladies with his wife and runs a little place called Gamer’s Haven in Colton, CA.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
