Kablooie! Insert Michael Bay explosion here! What a few weeks we’ve had!
Three new warbands!
80 new universal cards!
A new rulebook!
A new FAR!
It’s been a lot to process. Now I’m not here to review individual warbands or cards. Other bloggers and podcasters have done a great job of that. I’m here to make some bold predictions of the meta. I have very little data to work with, so this is, honestly, speculation and a set of hypotheses which will be proven or disproven as people play games. There are, as we know, sooo many moving parts to this game that it’s hard to predict the impact of just a few changes. Therefore, I don’t expect to be 100% correct, but it’s fun to think about so here we go!
New rules changing the meta?
Big Bois are dead, long live big Bois!
So the biggest change coming out of the rule book is that 5 wound fighters will give you two glory (or bounty) when you take them out of action. Krusha’s are the obvious “losers” here as each fighter can give you two glory. However, I would argue that the main difficulty when facing Krusha’s, is not that you can’t score enough from killing them, but that they block objectives which require a kill. I expect Krusha players will also be more willing to take extra wounds now that they don’t have to worry about going to 6 wounds (the previous large fighter threshold). However, for good measure, GW also introduced a beta rule to Krushas – they can only get waagh counters from chargers (outside of cards). This is probably the end of top tier Krushas. I can maybe see some weird passive build but I think it would struggle to compete. Byeeee.
But wait, Krusha’s aren’t the only large fighters to worry about. Hroth and Mollog were, and still are, large fighters that can definitely compete in the meta. This change doesn’t hurt them and they got some very scorable objective cards in the universal set as well as useful gambits and upgrades. They had Healing gambits restricted (rightly so in my opinion) but I think what they gained outweighed the losses. No, big Bois aren’t going anywhere and you should be on the lookout for both Hrothgorn and Mollog. We don’t talk about the pirate.
There is the additional indirect impact that the large fighter change has on 4 wound fighters. Players will have to reconsider taking an extra wound as it can cost them an extra glory if it doesn’t save the fighter. Destruction players (pretty much all the big Bois) can luckily run Instinctive Shield to avoid this of course. If you were to ask me, I will still run wound upgrades on my 4 wounds fighters. Getting to a 4 damage attack just isn’t that hard so you are risking a key fighter who can still score you a few objectives or make a kill (to deny your opposition objectives). Making an opponent complete two successful attacks can use 3 activations. Not to mention the extra activation you get out of your opponent. That is worth a glory. You can take defence upgrades, but a crit can always bypass your defence when it can’t bypass a wound unless you are running Silent Helm but that takes up a restricted slot. Some Warbands such as Shadeborn can easily get their fighter defending on every side of the dice and then maybe you don’t worry about extra wounds, but in most situations I think it is still worth more than the glory you give up.
New cards changing the meta?
I’m not covering all the cards, I think other blogs have done a great job. I just want to cover the most meta impactful cards and why they are relevant.
Sudden Revelation and Ever Downwards. I think these two surges are great. Sudden revelation is the easier of the two but ever downwards is very scorable by a lot of warbands. They are good for the meta for two reasons. First, they give warbands without strong faction surges something to work with that doesn’t involve hoping to kill a 4 or 5 wound fighter. This opens up the meta lot more and doesn’t make just the strong warbands stronger. Secondly, they enable more play styles because They can be scored without charging into the enemy. Alongside more pushes and other tricks, these cards finally give control more options to be a relevant style again. Moreover, I think the cards are quite balanced as they require a few activations (or cards) to score, they can put you in a worse position from flipping to an objective to lose the cover bonus, and your opponent does have a chance to counter them in the power step (which was not the case for Hidden Purpose).
Shadow Elimination. Ok so this one is less impactful but really good for Mollog and even Hroth so I thought it was worth noting for the meta. Especially when combined with Ever Downwards. Whenever those two fighters get cards to work with, you need to start thinking about how you can kill, or avoid, a 6/7 wound fighter.
Heave Ho. This card is primarily for Rippas. Why do I mention it? Because Rippas were in the top tiers and I think still are (although see my notes on Exiled Dead). So a card which takes their wolf bites to damage 3 is a big deal. However I will say that I haven’t seen Rippas played much recently though, I think people might be bored of them. Sorry Matt!
Cryptic Clues. Similar to Sudden Revelation, I think this card opens up more playstyles so I like it. It’s balanced because your opponent really can disrupt it, and it may even help them score chum the waters or lost in shadow. You’ll see it in a lot of 3 and 4 fighter warbands.
Chum the Waters and Suffocating Mists. There’s suddenly a lot more ping damage about. And now that most good healing is restricted it’s hard to stop. Shadeborn will obviously take all 3 ping damage cards.
Instinctive Shield. You’ll see this card in every Madmob deck, and in a few of the other destruction decks. It makes sense in Gitz, but because Zarbag isn’t that central to their plans, they are often better off with other upgrades that can buff up the attack profile of any of the nine (!) fighters. It will still go in most other destruction decks though. Unfortunately, this card does break against Exiled Dead.
Dark Inversion and Step Between Shadows. I’m a big fan of these two cards. Dark Inversion makes a lot of hold objective styles more viable, including enabling supremacy again! Step Between Shadows is fantastic against invading aggro and passive strategies – just yeet your fighter to the other side of the board to hide or fight. Combined with the new objective surges and stand on feature end phases, we could see a few new styles opened up.
Ferocious Bite. We’re going to see this card everywhere. +1 dice, even when restricted to range 1, is an excellent improvement in your attack odds. Unless you have a number of range 2 and 3 fighters, you should be running it. Along with the Brawler upgrades and gambits, it’s quite easy to get a range 1 fighter rolling a lot of dice. This could make a few warbands relevant again.
New warbands changing the meta?
So I’ll do the easy one first. I don’t think Skittershank will have an impact. I’m honestly not sure they do much different or interesting to fast aggro. They have some great gambits and they’re fast but that’s about it. Rippa is still the best for fast aggro in my opinion. Change my mind. I’m not even sure that they’re better than Spiteclaw’s Swarm. They’re not bad, I’m not putting them low tier because they have speed and good gambits. I just don’t think they will have a meta impact. Beautiful models though.
Shadeborn is more interesting. Their ability to get around the board can mess with any pre-conceived plans you may have. They can build a decent, reliable surge pool supported by some very scorable end phases. I think you do need to consider how to play into them and this makes them very meta relevant. But that one dodge and 3 wounds is going to limit them to widespread play and dominance. Which is good, it’s a sign of a balanced Warband. There will be some skilled pilots who make them work very well, but my hypothesis is that we won’t see them cause a big shakeup. I do expect them at the top tables.
Exiled Dead are the most interesting, and from what I’ve seen, the most divisive in the community. Great. That makes for a fun discussion. I’ve now had some games with them and they are extremely meta relevant. Probably the most meta impactful Warband since Hrothgorn. You need to have played some games against them. And then rethink your objective deck because they will prevent you from scoring cards like Demolish the Opposition, or Clean Kills. Thankfully there are now good objective cards which means you don’t have to run right into them, but they can just keep running at you. I’ve built a great aggro MadMob deck but I’m honestly a bit scared of running into those zombies en masse because they will just keep coming back. They can kill cards like Smash Em too. Their reaction blocking will impact the meta too. Dying Curse no longer works, and the same for Screaming Demise.
Be very wary of them if piloted well. My recommendation will always to be offset the boards or longboard them. That is honestly their biggest weakness. I’ve personally enjoyed playing with them because it’s a big positional puzzle. I may even take them to the UK Game Expo hmmmm.
So in short, I think Exiled Dead will have the biggest impact against anything that has to engage them in close quarters or cannot take down Deintalos. However, at the same time, we’ve now got more cards which will reduce the need to do invading aggro. And we saw in the Adepticon meta that people have already adapted away from it. The Exiled Dead, however, could put a stop to it as a consistent option. Let’s see.
New FAR changing the meta?
Short one here really – not really. I think forsaking Scant Resources was an interesting choice. My experience of it was that generally both players scored it and it was negated out of the game anyway. I know other players who say they enjoyed trying to deny it and it had counterplay but that never came up much in my matches. The introduction of new end phase cards will quickly replace it in most decks.
The objective nerfs against Soulraid and Crimson Court won’t make much of a difference now that there are other cards to take, and the same goes for Kainan’s. There are a lot of good cards you can replace them with, or drop another restricted card for.
The Shadow Keeper change does impact the meta slightly. I was considering Cleave and Ensnare upgrades just to deal with it. But with Nether Defense and Unfazed about, you still need to consider dealing with high defence fighters.
Restricting Healing Potion and Spiritcomb will have the biggest impact. Those cards were very strong on any 5+ wound fighters and dangerous with Instinctive Shield being introduced. So I think it’s good they got restricted, but otherwise, they weren’t widely played.
Taking it all in – meta predictions
Alright, let’s do a tier list. I know you all love them ya filthy animals. Here is how I view tier lists:
S = should win ~50% of all tournaments
A = Capable of winning a tournament with no awful matchups. I expect most tournaments to be won by these warbands
B = Can win a tournament but has hard to win matchups
C = Can win but needs a very good pilot and some luck
D = I’d be very surprised to see them win
E = Ye, <1% chance of winning
For this, I used the free tier list maker on https://shadeglass.eu/, which is also a tournament organiser similar to Underdeckers or BCP, but looks more versatile. Just needs a bit of polishing and better translation. Go check it out.
I have not ranked the warbands within tiers. Also, this is just my opinion! I have not played with all these warbands, and there are so many factors to consider that I’m sure I’ll be wrong somewhere.
There are too many warbands to go through here. My main observation is that I don’t think we have any S tier warbands right now. Soulraid is probably still top of A tier but not OP. Otherwise, we have a very fat middle, and that’s great. As I write this I know Condemnors have already won a decent sized tournament in Prague ( I’m not moving them to A though because I still think they need the right matchups to win). Exiled Dead are probably on the cusp but I’m not convinced they don’t have some awful matchups that rely on board roll. Kunnin Krew is also one I think could easily be in A tier, I just don’t like all their end phases right now. I’m also likely too bullish on Madmob, but I can’t help it because when I play them the lucky paint works and I win.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll be at the UK Games Expo on 3 June – come along if you can! I’ll try and do a better job of photographing and recording my games so I report back here.
Set The Tempo 