Warhammer Underworlds Hexbane's Hunters Preview

Warhammer Underworlds is a competitive skirmish wargame that combines board and card game elements. Set in Games Workshop's fantasy Warhammer Age of Sigmar setting, it launched its sixth season recently with a new starter set Nethermaze, which gets its first expansion with Hexbane's Hunters. In this article, we'll take a look at what's in the warband pack, and our favorite cards from the expansions.

To use the product in this article, you'll need a copy of a Warhammer Underworlds starter set, and if you don't already have one, either Nethermaze, Harrowdeep, or the Warhammer Underworlds Two-Player Starter Set will work, but Nethermaze has the latest rules, boards, and tokens. For more details on Warhammer Underworlds, including how it plays and what a season is, check out our Warhammer Underworlds Nethermaze Preview.

Who Are Hexbane's Hunters?

Haskel Hexbane leads a band of hunters, part of a secret organization tasked with rooting out evil in the Nethermaze. These members of the Order of Azyr bring light to the dark places in the Mortal Realms.

Hexbane's Hunters expansion comes with the 6 miniatures that make up Hexbane's crew, their stat cards, and a ready-to-play Rivals deck (we discuss the Rivals format below). It also comes with an additional set of cards that can be used with any warbands, to add to decks in the other game formats.

Hexbane leads a warband of 3 fighters and 2 loyal hounds. They're not very fast or durable, but 3 of them have ranged attacks. They have a mix of inspire conditions, the hounds and Quiet Pock inspire when one of them is taken out of action. Aemos Duncarrow inspires when Hexbane is the target of an attack and Brydget Axwold inspires when Hexbane inspires, who inspires when they take an enemy out of action. The 4 human fighters also have a Price of Victory reaction, which lets them gain an upgrade for free, or remove of charge or move counter, boosting them for taking a loss, because sometimes, a sacrifice is required to get the work done.

Hexbane's power deck has some damage mitigating, gambits that can stop opponents using spells and boosting attacks, as well as extra ways of boosting surviving fighters. Their upgrade cards increase stats and add new attacks. Their objective cards are an interesting mix of hunting enemies and upgrade your own fighters.

What Cards Do Hexbane's Hunters Have?

Our picks from Hexbane's Hunters warband cards are:

• Circle of Silvered Gravesalt - A Domain Gambit card that means enemy fighters treat hexes adjacent to friendly hunters as lethal hexes. It very thematically persists until the end of round, or another domain is played, or if it deals damage to an enemy fighter or until a friendly fighter moves, suggesting they breaking the circle.
• By Order of the Vault - A gambit that lets you give a fighter an upgrade for free, and then spend a glory point to draw a card. Very helpful for the free upgrade, and also the deck cycling.
• Cold Iron Nails - A very thematic upgrade that allows a hunter to gain an additional glory point when a range one attack takes a fighter out of action, or stop them from being raised.
• Lives Well Spent - A dual two glory objective that requires you to score three objectives, and have two or more friendly hunters out of action.
• Due Process - A single glory score immediately objective for either making four attacks in a round or two successful attacks. Easy.

Hexbane's Hunters also includes 32 additional cards, 11 gambits, 11 upgrades, and 10 objectives. These include neutral cards that can be used by any warband, and a grand alliance restricted card for Order, Chaos, Death, and Destruction in each card type.

Our pick from Hexbane's Hunters additional cards are:

• Breathing Tube and Drowning Warriors - These ploy and gambit cards are both incredibly thematic, playing into the watery element of the Nethermaze/Harrowdeep. Breathing Tube is an upgrade that stops damage from Lethal Hexes and Domain Gambits, and Drowning Warriors is a reaction ploy that can be played after a domain gambit that reduces damage from all attack actions by 1 until the end of the road.
• Blind Gamble - Randomness is always a risk, and in a competitive game probably best avoided, but sometimes it can be fun and Blind Gamble lets you try to guess the objective number of a feature token that either a friendly or enemy fighter is standing on. You can know this, either through a process of elimination, knowing the other numbers on the board, or having seen the number after a flip earlier in the game. If guessed correctly, a friendly fighter can make a move or range 1 or 2 attack actions (as long as they don't have a move or charge token) and an enemy fighter takes one damage.
• On The Scent - This 1 glory objective can be scored in an end phase if one or more friendly beasts/companions are within 2 hexes of an enemy leader, or if one friendly fighter are adjacent to an enemy leader. Easy to score for aggressive warbands, and great for Hexbane's Hunters who have two companions.
• Bastion of Light - This Order restricted 1 glory objective can be scored in an end phase if your inspired leader is holding an objective in enemy territory. Very useful for warbands that like to push forward.
• Threshing Throw - This Chaos restricted upgrade gives a fighter a range 1, 2 damage attack with dice equal to the number of adjacent enemy fighters. Can do some real work against swarm warbands, especially with low warrior warbands like the Wurmspat whom this is clearly intended for as a Nurgle fighter using this attack also gets ensnare.
• Grave Baron - This Death restricted upgrade allows you to cycle a card from your discard pile (not scored objectives) with one from your hand. Very handy for getting later round objectives out of your hand, and possibly cycling them back in later.
• Flying Bludgeon - This Destruction restricted ploy allows you to discard an attack upgrade, to deal 1 damage, and stagger a fighter within 3 hexes of a friendly fighter. Stagger allows you to reroll dice attacks against that fighter, so this can be powerful for setting up some devastating attacks at the cost of an attack upgrade.

The Hexbane's Hunters expansion includes a great warband with some fantastic miniatures that will see a lot of use outside of Warhammer Underworlds, possibly in future Cursed City expansions, or in a new line of miniatures for Age of Sigmar.

The copy of Warhammer Underworlds Hexbane's Hunters used to produce this preview were provided by Games Workshop.