So warhammer games. There have been loads of them and if I am honest most have been pretty dire, especially those released as mobile games or souless reskinned shooters. There are honourable exceptions and in recent years the quality has generally improved; though there does remain the odd train wreck such as necromunda. Now I do, or rather did, play tabletop but I have always been fond of the GW’s specialist games range (now boxed games) but I had never really looked at Warhammer Underworlds. I did have a painted warband bought as a palette cleanse but had never actually played it. A while back though I came across Warhammer Underworlds Online on a steam sale so bought it along with one extra DLC; the wraithkeepers. I like the occult aesthetic and if I ever did get into AOS then it would be nighthaunt. The game then languished, like so many others, in my steam backlog for months until last weekend when I actually did a social thing and arranged an online game with a friend. At this point I had never even booted the game up and hurridly had to patch it before we started.
First impressions were good. The game loaded fine, looked great (I am running an Acer Aspire 5 entry level gaming laptop) and did not seem to hit my CPU and memory that hard. Indeed the only issue was the default volume which seemed to be extremely high and my friend had the same issue. We both had to change the settings to actually allow us to hear the other on our discord voice chat. Settings though were easy to navigate but I had to turn the volume a long way down. Other than that things were fine. I had my DLC installed and my friend had the game out of the box with the two free warbands. Whilst he was setting up on his side I reviewed a few other screens and saw that I could review my deck and warband; which seemed to have two options, default or agressive. I had never played the game, not played the tutorial so I was resolved to going with beginner.
So the first game was set up with us using an agreed code to join but you can also search for steam friends by default and I like this. There is also general online matchmaking and AI opponents if you want to play offline; so even though this is primarily an online game there are plenty of ways to play. Set up a board and added our objective markers and curse hexes and then we were off. The board looked fantastic; a 3d representation of the characters and the board with animatics when the units move or attack. You can see your card hand at the bottom with glory objective cards on the right and tactics/upgrades on the left. Each player activates a character and moves, attacks or guards and this looked solid and ran well. Dice rolls are automated and the results likewise which was great for me who had no idea what they meant (on me not the game). Then we hit the first issue; on my turn I had played a card which then needed a follow up click on a unit or hex but either I had missed the text description or it assumed I knew and never presented it. What followed was a few minutes of me clicking around until I was finally able to get things moving again. This may have been more on me that the game and if I had done the tutorial then I may have known what to do; but the UI could have been a little clearer here. It’s a small thing but my friend said the same thing as he could not actually see what we were waiting on; there was no ‘waiting on your opponent to do something’ text which I think would have helped. This game ended badly for me with a total loss but by the end I had started to grasp the UI.
Break for beer and a chat but as doing this I saw that I had unlocked some cosmetic enhancements for the warband. Turned out that just by playing I had gained what I suppose was XP and this gave non-boosting extras. I like this as it gives you something for playing and even if you loose you still get something back. Game two and this time I was more comfortable with the UI and was really enjoying the little animations; especially the drummer in my warband who beat his little drum with the corresponding sound effect. A nice touch which really added to the immersion. This game went much better for me and there were none of the freezing moments whilst I figured out what I needed to do next. Indeed the only issue was that in roll offs my friend sometimes saw both dice rolls before I even had one. Not sure if this was a lag issue on my end or not but it was really a tiny thing. Two games down in about two hours and much fun had (and two steam achievements for me for rolling criticals).
After the game I put out a tweet saying I had played it and got the response below from the developer.
Again, I really like this as it shows they have an interest in new players. Out of curiosity I asked if there was a road map for the game and if more warbands would be added and got the below,
This, I have to say, is a real shame because this is a good game. I had a lot of fun playing it and I have to say it was the closest I have ever come to playing tabletop without actually playing tabletop. It’s not quite as good as the real thing but with a discord chat on I feel it was a worthy substitute. More importantly it gave me a taste of underworlds the game without me having to spend a lot of money and then finding I didn’t like it. Whilst I do think there a few UI and quality of life enhancements which could be added this is pretty much a perfect casual game; and even skipping the tutorial didn’t slow me down to much. That’s always the sign of a well designed game for me. I will certainly look into some bot games and expand my roster to get the briar queen when I next get paid as this was an enjoyable experience.
So is it worth a go? If you are tempted by or already play IRL underworlds or want a game to play whilst chatting with a friend on discord then definitely; but be aware that there may not be much new content in the future.
Score 8/10
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