The tokens are really good quality and come off the board with only a little push. There’s no real risk of little carboard tabs being left on the counters, not the finish snagging and ripping, so each one of these should come out without issue. Cards It’s a deeper, darker, more forbidding area of the (already pretty deep, dark, and forbidding) region in which the current season of Underworlds is set in. Warhammer Underworlds: Nethermaze Review – What’s New Rob has spent most of the last 15 years playing World of Warcraft and writing stories set in made-up worlds. At some point, he also managed to get a Master's degree by writing about Medieval zombies. Way of the Lashing Tail– Skaven never fight alone if they can help it; this two-glory objective card scores when you have three fighters adjacent to the same enemy fighter. Rumours abound of powerful relics to be found in the ever-shifting labyrinth known as the Nethermaze, located in the deepest layers of Harrowdeep. At Morathi-Khaine’s command, the penumbral Shadeborn venture into the darkness to find remnants of the shadow magic used to construct it – but little do they know the devious Clans Eshin have their own schemes afoot.

Shroud Queen Slythael takes this power one step further – being in a cover hex bathes her in shadow, allowing her to teleport to edge hexes and other secluded spots. Below even Harrowdeep’s ocean-floor dungeon, the titular Nethermaze is a vast labyrinth, wrought by shadow demons from the moon, intended to lure in mortal souls for them to eat. Atits core (supposedly) is a realmgate portal that’ll take us to freedom – but where, who knows? Given that we’ve managed to do a playtest of every recent Underworlds release over the past year or so, it felt only natural that we continued the tradition within this review. So, my long-suffering partner and playtesting duo extraordinaire, Lizzie, took control of the Shadeborn whilst I took the Skaven (she’s giving up her Sunday afternoon for this; I wasn’t going to make her play with the rats). The Warhammer Underworlds: Nethermaze box comes with a pair of game boards printed to look like the swirling, spooky underwater depths that reside deep beneath Harrowdeep. A few notes, though. First, we realised in our final Round that neither of us had actually Delved on a single Objective hex. This left us feeling a bit bewildered, and concerned that we’d done something wrong. All that set-up with the various hexes and by the end of the game neither of us had used any of them for anything. It felt very weird. There’s also absolutely no real information on this in the Rulebook. The Rulebook explains the placement of Objective Hexes and how to “Delve” into a hex to reveal it, but doesn’t actually say what happens next.We’ll have a closer look at everything in just a moment. Warhammer Underworlds: Nethermaze Review – Literature The duardin of the Mortal Realms are a proud but divided people who hold certain shared legends in common – including an aged traveller, a wanderer whose timely arrival will avert calamity and right intractable wrongs. Grombrindal: Chronicles of the Wanderer follows the legendary White Dwarf as he travels around the realms, meeting his people. There are two things in the wallet: the all-important rulebook as well as the assembly guide for the miniatures. The guide is only one sheet of A4 as the miniatures are push-fit, so super easy to put together. Nethermaze’s new Grand Alliance cards include three gambits, three upgrades, and three objectives for each of the four Alliances – here are a few of our early favourites:

The leader of this 4 model warband is Shroud Queen Slythael. She wears a faceless mask and seems to float on her cloak while it is turning to smoke, an impressive feat of miniatures design. Be careful with her staff though, this is one of the thinnest pieces of plastic I’ve ever seen. The other Shroudblades are armed with a mixture of blades and a crossbow pistol, which should make for plenty of gameplay options.Six warbands originally released for Warhammer Underworlds are coming out without their cards, so you can add them to your Warhammer Age of Sigmar army. Grab the Starblood Stalkers for your Seraphon , the Crimson Court for your Soulblight Gravelords , Khagra’s Ravagers for your Slaves to Darkness , Hedkrakka’s Madmob for your Orruk Warclans , Kainan’s Reapers for your Ossiarch Bonereapers , and Elathain’s Soulraid (including should-have-been Miniature of the Year Duinclaw) for your Idoneth Deepkin . Sons of Behemat – Japan Only Still, at the end of the round I was still 1-0 up.We drew and discarded as appropriate, and the groan that came from Lizzie as she flipped her Objective and Gambit/Upgrade cards over told me that I was, perhaps, in a good position going into the last round. Round 3 The miniatures in the box are really excellent. I’m a big fan of a sculpted or scenic base, and the Skaven figures have absolutely crushed this. That the figures are push-fit also means that they’re blissfully easy to put together, so much so that any idiot could assemble them with absolutely no trouble whatsoever. The path to glory is tumultuous, littered with the betrayed and the broken. Khagra’s Ravagers are named after Khagra the Usurper, who – through duplicitous means – wrested control of the warband from her sister Zarshia. Talk about nominative determinism. Following these squabbling sisters are the brutal warriors Cragran and Razek. The Crimson Court

The very first thing players need to do before they can begin playing Nethermaze is set up the battlefield. The battlefield is made up of the two double-sided boards that come with the box. Each side is covered with hexes which divide up the battlefield. Some of these hexes all have different rules applied to them. This is Underworlds’ biggest selling-point: the game has a very understandable rhythm to it that’s very easy to get into. The more rounds you play, the easier and easier players will find it to get into the game’s swing. Our final Round only took us about ten minutes, as we were well into the pattern of how the various turns progressed. A few more points of damage were allocated across the board, but beyond each warband losing their leader, there were no further significant changes to the board. They’re also super badass on the tabletop, with a bit more melee punch than the Skaven, and a whole range of abilities and cards making use of the Cover Hexes, added to the game in Harrowdeep. These folks like to slink, hide, teleport, swap places, and generally get up to shenanigans using the shadows.But other than that, these models are very easy to build. As mentioned, each figure is push-fit, so can be assembled without blue (though gluing in a few places will just help ensure there are no gaps on some of the models). x Grand Alliance cards – gambits, objectives, and upgrades that can be used by any warband belonging to that Grand Alliance

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but hopefully we’ll see some more horrible little rat-men like this in the future! Warhammer Underworlds: Nethermaze Review – Playtesting Finally, we have 36 Grand Alliance cards (these are the yellow ones second from the right). Again, these include gambits, objectives, and upgrades, just like the Universal cards did, but these ones can only be used by warbands belonging to a particular Grand Alliance.That said, as seasoned modellers ourselves, we suspect newcomers mighthave a stressfultime putting these together. While it’s nothing short of wizardry to produce modelsthis acrobatic-lookingthat can be assembled without glue, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily easy to build, or that you can’t very easily bend or break a few spindly bits. Agile and super-fast-moving, these insidious rat-men are laser focused on killing the enemy leader(s), with assorted ways to outmanoeuvre and/or Stagger and mob their foes, on the way to their true prize.