How to Play Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire & Review

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire is a dice-rolling, arena combat game.

Title: Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

Year Published: 2017

Designer: David Sanders

Publisher: Games Workshop Ltd.

Players: 2

Game Time: ~30 minutes

Set-up Time: ~1 minute

Ages: 12+

Theme: Warhammer Fantasy

Mechanisms: Deck Construction, Dice Rolling, Modular Board, Variable Player Powers

How to win: Have the most Glory at the end of the game by killing opponents and completing Objectives.

Game Description

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire is an action-packed combat game for two players. Gather your Warband, enhance your warriors with unique skills and upgrades, and lead them to victory against your foes.

How to Play Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

Round-Up

There is a lot to like about this game.

Size

Firstly, it’s small so it’s portable. You can fit the boards, rules, tokens and at least 2 Warbands with their cards in very easily. The box is roughly Pandemic sized so you can throw it in a bag with no problem.

This is because the play area is so small, especially compared to other skirmish games like Malifaux, which require a decent-sized area and scenery. just being able to pull this out like any other board game is an advantage.

Ease of Play

It’s also easy to play. Having a hex grid board with easy movement and line-of-sight rules help a lot. The stats and abilities on everything are very easy to understand and clear. Again just like a board game rather than a miniatures game. Shadespire is almost on the same level as games like Arcadia Quest.

Game Length

Games are VERY quick. With a single game lasting around 30 minutes, it’s easy to play and play and test your deck. It also means if you’re playing a tournament or a league you can do a round-robin and not take all day. One of the reasons I don’t play Blood Bowl is due to the game length and difficulty in getting a consistent group together.

Customisation

Another reason is that while I like gaining experience and levelling up my players in Blood Bowl, I also like the deck construction part of Shadespire. This means 2 players playing with the same Warband could have different strategies and tactics. This does lead to a ‘net-decking’ issue where tried and tested decks are copied but that’s OK, it’s been around in Magic the Gathering for years and that’s still going 🙂

Collectibility

One downside to this deck construction part is that cards are required. Now, they’re not in booster packs randomly, but they are in Warbands that cost around £16 each. To get all the cards, you need all the Warbands. At the time of writing, there are 8 Warbands in total, 2 in the box and 6 expansions. That means the game is around £130 and that doesn’t include sleeves and additional dice.

You can compete without a full set but you miss out on building an optimal deck and in a tournament, everyone has an optimal deck.

Rating

A very fun semi-collectable game with great gameplay

I give it 7/10

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire Initial Review March 2018

So a tournament isn’t the best time to play a game for the first time. But that’s exactly what I did here.

(I confused the ‘Inspired’ effect of the Orcs with the Dwarves, sorry :))

My first impressions of Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire including a brief overview of gameplay followed by my final summary.

Jesta TheRogue