Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire Revealed At AdeptiCon!
March 23, 2017 by brennon
The new game from Games Workshop, set in the Age of Sigmar, has now been unveiled in full. Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire takes a little from deck builders and a little from miniatures gaming with their new competitive, organised play experience.
You can learn more about the game from BoW Dawn and Gianna's first impressions over on our Facebook Page where they set up a live discussion about the game. Designed to play in around forty-five minutes and with a handful of pre-coloured (easy to assemble) miniatures, this sounds like it could be a blast.
The game is based in the city of Shadespire within the Mortal Realms...
"The game is set in the Shadespire – an ancient and damned city, cursed by the Lord of Undeath to eternally sit in limbo between the realms of Light and Shadow – a haunted metropolis of mirrors, unquiet spirits and ever-shifting chambers."
...and you'll be battling it out, at least to begin with, using the Khorne Bloodbound and the Stormcast Eternals with some fancy new sculpts. These are some early shots here below and I hope the final product will be a little crisper.
What is really exciting me (apart from the Female Stormcast Eternal of course!) is the fact that there is this deckbuilding aspect to the game where you prepare a set of skills and abilities which you then take to the tabletop to do battle. Each deck will be somewhat unique to the factions involved and should provide you with different play experiences.
Interestingly, this seems like it will unlock more of the 'new' factions for Age of Sigmar even before their main army releases and should pave the way for some interesting models!
According to what we heard from Dawn at the event, the characters will be transferable into Age of Sigmar proper but not the other way around so that means a lot of new sculpts on the way we reckon.
This sounds rather awesome to us!
"Each deck will be somewhat unique to the factions involved and should provide you with different play experiences..."
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Hang on, the female Stormcast is exciting you? Well. Whatever gets you through the night I suppose 😉
A big lady with a hammer…just right 😉
Lose the hammer perhaps.
@brennon Don’t you mean a short bearded lady with a big hammer?
Even better!
I’m tapping out
It’s about time they had some female figures in the range – there’s no reason to have everything continue to be all male after you re-boot the whole universe.
I was expecting to be underwhelmed with this …… but I am strangely intrigued …… It is possibly the allure of a lady with a big hammer *shiver *sigh
Oh and one of the things I liked about he announcement was that they were going to do factions that are not in the game properly yet
Women?
Oh they have done SOME women. Well at least two off the top of my head…….(yeah they need to do more women) To be fair given the mode of dress for the Khorne lads in the starter box above it would be hard for them to do women……… especially if they are trying to attract young players to the game,without raising “outraged parent ” issues .
It can be done tastefully however. Have you seen Alarielle? Now she is a well constructed miniature. 😉
They don’t NEED to do more women. Some people might WANT them to (although I maintain that the overwhelming majority of collectors don’t actually care). My parents were never outraged by any of the models I bought growing up – only the money I spent on them. The cost of the hobby is the most likely source of outrage
Well no, they don’t need to. I hope they do for the sake of the young lady (a female wargamer… I’ve only ever met four) who was trying to find something to appeal to her 7 year old daughter to ween her off pretty dresses and handsome princes, in the GW store the other day. A lady with a big hammer could do just the trick … it sends all the right messages. 🙂
Are women a faction now?
Gateway drug … I like the idea
Yes, the need a few of these that are board games with minis Hammerhal feels like another gateway game now that I have it – there isn’t much variety in the chaos forces, its essentially 10 blood reavers, 10 kairic acolytes and a unit of 5 blight kings.
One of the nice touches with the female Stormcast is that the armour doesn’t look too different from the males’; as far as I can tell she lacks the ‘boobs of steel’ that are so prevelant on female fantasy figures.
There’s definitely a lump in the right place…
one lump, not two.
hold the cream.
Hence why I used the phrase *not too* ;). While there is a shape, it’s nothing like the armourded melons that are prevelant on fantasy females (so much so I’m fairly sure there’s a trope about it).
It’s kind of half way. It’s sort of one and a half. There’s no cleavage is probably what people mean.
It would have been good to have a head with hair rather than a helmet, but I guess a conversion is straight-forward
To be honest, I hate the Stormcasts with out helmets because they’re too human. They now feel more like Space Marines than ever before. Previously I thought they were the souls of fallen warriors encased in a suit of armour (i.e. beyond the armour they had no corporeal form). Now they are basically just super humans, aka Space Marines. I tried really hard to defend the Stormcasts but their concept just drifts closer and closer to Space Marines with each new release
There is always green stuff……
@brennon, Regarding the model quality, these look like early prototype casts. The Warhammer Community article mentions push fit assembly, and coloured plastic, so I’d expect that the final model quality will be on par with other releases like Blood Bowl. Gameplay wise, if players have a deck of action cards, then it sounds almost similar to the action cards for Gorechosen. The exception being that each player possibly brings their own custom deck of action cards to a game, and draws their hand from those. Sounds interesting. The only thing I can’t see is a points system, so I wonder… Read more »
Aye, I assumed as much – they look like quick photos from the test ones used at AdeptiCon.
The painted versions in the video (for the Stormcast) look a lot nicer and crisper. Loving the look of this so far.
Dawn said on Facebook that these are early 3D prints specifically for demonstrating the product at Adepticon.
Ah, so these minis are in scale with AoS? Phew.
I couldn’t tell from these pics and was afraid they might be smaller like the ones in that “Chaos in the Old World” game.
Good that I can have more bloodthirsty Khorne folk to fit right into my horde then.
the big question for me is will there be blind buys like booster packs of cards or not. and if so,
what about rarities? Will there be pay to win features like rare cards being significantly better than common ones?
is this akin to magic the gathering with added minis on a board or more like a boardgame with minis and a fixed set of cards either that both draws from or to choose your own playdecks from?
I imagine you’ll have a pool of cards from which to build your deck from and it won’t come close to anything MTG-esque beyond both systems using cards in some way.
According to Dawn’s live video on Facebook, no there won’t be blind buys or booster packs. But there will be expansio. I expect that there will be additional heroes available for purchase much like X-wing has additional ship packs. Obviously that’s speculation but I think that seems to fit more with what GW are about – they will still want to sell miniatures.
Well Mordhiem its not, but an arena battle?
Not firing up the must buy impulses for me, there’s no narrative. However I can see why this will become the flagship organised play. Less Mordhiem and more MOBA in gameplay, which has proved popular in electronic gaming. but then with the Warhammer world moving on from the Old World I suppose that they couldn’t resurrect Mordhiem in a format us old guard would look forwards to.
There are some good ideas here and it is a smart move by GW. I won’t be investing myself because I find the whole AoS thing a bit naff and without character, but I can see the attraction.
It’s nice to see that there is a real person under the stormcast armor, but I’m still not buying the helmet size. It looks now as if they are wearing a spandex mask rather than a metal helm that would have to be large enough to slip over (from above) the head or the face (from the front). Shame, too, not Mordheim with a chance at spiffy new terrain. Maybe that’s what all these new board games are lacking: a true 3D rendering with some nice walls, doors, and such. And, shame again, that this is just another board game,… Read more »
From disinterest to “late 2017, oh come on!” in one video. I like the mechanics being hinted at, hopefully the story tends more towards mordheim and less towards gladiators.
I like the look of this. If it retails at a decent price I will probably get it. Looks to me like there is lots of room for development regarding new characters, decks, and matts. I can see terrain being incorporated into it too. My gut feeling is that this will develop into a Mordheimesque game over time depending on its popularity.
didnt try gae yet but haos looks fantastic, is it prodos unicast ? or plastic.
Those models are 3D print prototypes created for Adepticon, the final models will be hard plastic, push-fit models probably in pre-coloured plastic
Seems as expected, I am not hopeful but will see, genuinely interested to see what they put out as a competitive game.
is the stormcast leader surrendering?
“Heroically posing”. Which has become a bit of a staple of GW. Check out Ulrik the Slayer in the Space Wolves faction for the 40K version.
he don’t look Heroic.
The female Stormcast is very cool. As for the game it looks interesting but I don’t think its for me, reminds me of Magic the gathering with models or in other words Wamachine and I’m not a fan of either of those games. One is ok if your playing casually and the other has a pretty good fluff and a few cool models but I could never get into it. Thats ok tho as I like and play most if not all of GW’s other games and am excited for Armageddon so it will be nice to have one I… Read more »
Anyone else find it surprising that they chose Age of Sigmar as the IP for this rather than the more popular 40k?
I think they need gateway games for both if anything, there is a bit more for 40k as it stands, though I’m guessing 7 models will take them around the £35 price point, for which there is only the Khorne- only Gorechosen.
This isn’t a Gateway Game, I suspect this is aimed predominantly at competitive, organised play. The kind of person who plays that is unlikely to progress into Age of Sigmar. The Warhammer Quest series is closer to the gateway game you’re talking about.
GW going all FFG, this should be interesting
admittedly, i was hoping for mordheim anew. but i’ll settle for 40kmunda.
this has my interest, but will wait and see
GW got smart and started to look what other succesful companies on the miniature games market are doing. At the moment X-Wing is doing fantastic thanks to tournament orientation a game that has rules simple enough to start playing in a few minutes but complicated tactics that challenge the best players, and is constantly adding new extension packs that add to that complexity, while maintaining equilibrium between factions, using regular FAQs and Errata rulings. Robust, growing number of players who buy new extensions to keep up with the changing tournament meta gives great sales results. So GW decided it want… Read more »
Love the female stormcast and glad she isn’t sexualised. Hope it’s the first of many!