For veteran player of Warhammer Underworlds who’ve been wondering about the “why” behind these update Games Workshop has you covered.
Warhammer Community sat down with the game designers for Warhammer Underworlds and asked them some questions that I think a lot of folks have been wondering. From a game design or creation perspective this interview really shines a light on the reasons they not only made changes to the new edition but also some pitfalls to avoid in the future. If you’re an aspiring game designer or game producer you need to give this one a read.
“Curious to find out more about these important, yet carefully made, decisions, we put on our game faces and asked the Warhammer Design Studio a few questions about the reasoning behind them.”
Major Changes And Pitfalls To Avoid
The first and maybe most interesting question is basically “why reset the card pool?” and the answer is pretty clear: accessibility.
There’s a few key parts of this response that are worth highlighting. The rules being nearly 50 page is kind of a shocker — but it makes sense. As the game grew with more warbands and cards they were basically bolted on to the existing game. And first edition saw a LOT of mechanics added to the game. Essentially a new one was added almost every season. Furthermore, each warband also had their own decks with unique cards. This would lead to some problems later as things fell out of production.
A key pitfall to avoid in the future is a way to ensure everyone has access to the card pool for the life of the edition. While the answer is “just print more cards” I don’t think that works when the cards are tied to specific warbands. Perhaps this new model will work out better for the long term health of the game and player pool.
At the end of they day the designers recognized that locking players out of content is a great way to kill enthusiasm for new players. If they don’t have access to the same card pool then they really aren’t playing on an even playing field. That’s just not going to work for a competitive game.
Crits And Boards
Another big question was regards to both change to criticals and the board itself. Those have both been toned down. The answer to this one was enlightening.
The long and short of these changes was to remove some “negative play experiences” from the game. If you ever found yourself apologizing for a lucky crit or having to play on a board layout that was a hard counter to your warband then you know what they were talking about. Personally, I think the shift to crits is a great move — they are still impactful but not so dominating. And the board changes are also fine in my opinion. Hopefully, we might see some new boards or board layouts in the future, too.
As far as the rest of the interview, if you’re into game design or want to know more, it’s certainly worth a read. Personally, I like these sorts of “behind the reasoning” type interviews as we get to learn about their thought process. It helps to get some context to the game designers perspective — even if you don’t agree with them 100%. It’s good to know these changes just don’t come out of the blue and that thought went into them.
Are you going to take the plunge and try out the new edition of Warhammer Underworlds?
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Writer, Editor, Texas Native, and now Tex-Pat, Adam covers all things Tabletop Gaming. Which includes Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, D&D, Board Games and everything else that involves dice, boards, cards and a table.
A hobbyist, player, and collector of miniatures and games, Adam’s current obsession are his Death and Chaos Armies for Age of Sigmar, his Blood Angels and Tyranids for 40k, an expanding collection of Marvel: Crisis Protocol minis, and his ever growing Arkham Horror: The Card Game Collection.
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