Our next encounter would once again feature the ranged hunters of the Stormcast Eternals, The Farstriders. This time facing an entirely different foe, David’s Lumineth Realm lords “Myari’s Purifiers”
The purifiers are considered a more traditional war band with 4 characters featuring a mix of melee and ranged attacks. Their inspiration relies upon successes on all attack dice when rolling.
A combination of gritty determination and foolish perseverance led Stuart to continue the aggressive approach with the Fastriders bounding into enemy territory trying to do damage, gain glory and get inspired! Sadly, the dice were against this tactic and left the Farstriders as sitting ducks. The lack of early glory resulted in no upgrades and very few objectives scores in the round.
The purifiers faired much better in the early combat doing damage and causing wounds. Some good dice rolls led to inspiration conditions being met and the Purifiers pushed on the offensive. The Fastriders failed to occupy enemy territory objectives, leaving the Purifiers to claim these and the associated glory. The end of the first round saw all Fastriders wounded, 2 of the Purifiers inspired and upgraded. No glory was scored by the Farstriders, whilst the Purifiers obtained 5 glory points.
One thing that’s become clear in Underworlds is that once momentum is gained, it really makes a difference both on the board and mentally from a tactical perspective. Inspired warriors with upgrades become far more dangerous and help you make more decisive attack decisions. This is precisely what David did, turning the screw in round 2 and taking out two of the Farstriders. There was a brief glimmer of hope when the dice actually decided to roll in Stuart’s favour and some damage was done, killing Bahannar and inspiring the remaining fighter Elias Swiftblade. However, it was a mere consolation as David had pulled significantly ahead with 11 glory points to 4.
The final round was a formality with the Purifiers decimating poor Swiftblade with a brutal onslaught killing him, gaining more glory and sealing a decisive victory for David. After some further objectives were scored in the end phase, the battle (if you can call it that) was over. Once again David had reigned supreme with a convincing one-sided victory 16-4.
Despite the outcome there were still important learnings from the game. That’s the beauty of Underworlds. Every game you play, you learn. The mechanics of each war band you play differs, but also who you’re playing against. This combined with how your deck of cards unfolds makes the format exciting, immersive and tactically it keeps you guessing. You can definitely see which war bands would have an edge in the rivals format, but expanded to the nemesis format where you can choose another universal deck we could see how a war band such as the Farstriders could still be deadly and competitive.
In our next report the Purifiers get a much bigger taste taking on Domitans Stormcoven, which promises to the the most fiercely contested battle yet!
