Hello! Today we’ll be taking a look at the universal cards that came with Starblood Stalkers expansion. If you’re interested in my review of the warband itself you can read it here.
While scoring the cards I will be following rating system as below:
1 - a very powerful card. You should take it in nearly every deck. A staple.
2 - a very strong card that you should consider taking. Might not always make the cut, but should usually contend with other options.
3 - a situational card that might prove to be good in certain situations or with proper card support
4 - a weak card. You might find use for it, but in general most often you’ll be better off with other picks.
Universal Objectives
Bold deeds - This is a very solid aggro card. If you’re playing hard aggro teams you’re very likely to get two or more kills in a game. This card is also well known to any Rippa players, as it is essentially a reprint of Cruel Hunters with a bit more demanding secondary condition. Bold deeds require you to have all of your fighters in enemy territory, not at least one. This means scoring this will require additional planning and will be harder the more fighters your warband has. Still - if you’re playing more elite teams then this objective is for you.
Rating: 2
Bristling with weapons - End phase Show of Force for hunters. It’s far from SoF power level - not only is it not a surge, but also requires you to have hunters. Also its alternative condition is pretty much dead. It could be considered if you’re looking for a relatively easy Hybrid option to fulfill Adaptive Strategy or Set The Tempo. Or if your game plan revolves around stacking upgrades. Overall not a great card.
Rating: 3
Clean Kills - So… this is the card that - I must admit - has given me a lot of trouble while trying to rate it. In theory this card is great - get 6+ wounds worth of kills and you’ll get a two glory for it. Sounds amazing for any aggro player. The only challenge here is the bit about surviving fighters not having any wound counters on them. On one hand it’s great that there’s a viable counterplay to stop this objective. On the other hand I don’t really like how there’s very little that you can do to prevent that counterplay. Overall though I’m really tempted to score this card high. Experience might prove it is too easy to stop to be included though.
Rating: 2
Growing Hunger - I feel that we’re missing a part of the picture here. I don’t believe there’s enough hunger generation in game to fulfill any of those conditions in at least a semi reliable way. Until more cards release (vampires?) this is a very poor card. Might get better later on.
Rating: 4
Hunger for Power - This is a very similar story as with Growing Hunger. The hunger based condition is at the moment nearly dead. However the second way of scoring this objective is a viable one. Getting two or more upgrades will happen if you’re playing Lost Page build or you would like to do something with your wizard in general. This is also a very cool card for Cursebreakers (for them rating is probably 1-2).
Rating: 3
Martial Mage - It is another Cursebreakers card. You will score it playing CB - even if you’ve gone for hyper-defensive build. Another beneficiary of this surge might be upcoming vampire warband. Outside those two warbands this is a poor option as most of other wizards are not amazing melee fighters. Again - CB will rate this differently than the rest - it’s 1 for them. I love aggro CB, so more of those things for them please!
Rating: 4
Prized Kill - It’s yet another objective in this pack that revolves around killing an enemy leader. Previous two were faction objectives for seraphon. I get that there are attempts made to encourage killing enemy leaders. But one glory surge that also requires you to make the kill with a hunter is not a compelling option. If we had a good ‘kill enemy leader” objective it would be something more akin to Victorious Duel.
Rating: 4
Punctured pride - To score this from a first condition you would have to lose one of your fighters first. And lose it in the way that makes sure the opponent has got a primacy off it. So.. you’re potentially giving up 2 glory and a fighter to get 2 glory in return. That’s far from ideal but could work in something akin to amberbone gitz. Second condition is even more horrible. You’d need to kill an enemy leader with a damage from a warband (so gambit, upgrade trigger etc) or with a lethal hex. Easy isn’t it? Wort whole 1 glory.
Rating: 3 (but for most people closer to 4 really)
Swelling Pride - This might be a pretty neat card for aggro warbands that are hitting hard enough to generate multiple primacy tokens. Orks, Mollog, Hrothgorn might be in game for this one. Others not so much unless they invest in primacy tech. Good thing is that such tech becomes more available.
Rating: 3
The Greater Hunt - An objective tailored for The Grymwatch and Starblood Stalkers - assuming they’ll stay alive long enough. Wild Hunt and Rippa are other good candidates as they’re having a decent number of hunters and a good way of reducing the ranks of enemy hunters. For them it could be a good card. For others it would be difficult to score.
Rating: 3
Universal Gambits
Abasoth’s Smothering - this might be a nice spell to neuter high accuracy attacks. Offensively it’s not great unless you can bump your accuracy somehow. In the end playing this card brings the chances to hit down unless you can factor in rerolls or sneak some dice in. Casting roll isn’t stellar - this has about 75% to fail. So overall the power if this card isn’t great.
Rating: 4
Compelling Hunger - as it is now hunger tokens are pretty difficult to come by. This card is effectively a Distraction and Sidestep married together as you can push any fighter that has a hunger counter. It would’ve been super strong if not that hunger requirement, but for now it’s pretty useless.
Rating: 4
Delicious Morsel - for now it’s a “heal one wound” card. Nothing to write home about. It becomes more interesting if you can get a hunger token onto the target somehow. Heal 2 is far more useful - especially on big models with damage reduction. So this has a potential to be really nice on Mollog or Orks once we’ll get more hunger generators. But for now it’s just a weak card.
Rating: 3
Living Land - You can either flip a token with a round number or move one objective token in your territory by 1 hex. This is actually a really good card that can both disrupt or help holding objectives. I like the fact that it can be equally useful both defensively and offensively. Please do note that you can’t flip back an objective that already has been flipped as it is a feature token at this point in time and is not an objective token.
Rating: 1
Lost in reflection - This is a pretty fun card that can delay Mollog or similar kind of fighters. When played right might have a big impact on the game. It’s mostly useful against warbands who are good at primacy. Secondary option on this card is fairly weak - even versus elite warbands. Still it’s a really nice tool for warbands full of weaker fighters - because they’ll for sure give up primacy token - they have a potential to control a big fighter really well with this card.
Rating: 2
Outrun Death - A very nice variant of Spectral Wings. It is actually even better than the original. They will not get their wounds lowered like in case of Malkyn Grace nor they have to be a hunter to get a full benefit. In addition they will become a quarry which can be a negative thing, but this also can be used to score objectives that require your fighter to be a quarry - for example play this on your big, mean guy to make a long distance charge and kill enemy hunter for nice 2 glory from The Hunter Hunted. Can be also used to make your fighter a quarry for Absolute Stillness.
Rating: 1
Predatory Form - Unless you’re desperate to make your wizard a hunter don’t take this. It’s pretty weak - your level 1 wizard has only 50% chance of casting it, 2nd level roughly 75%. While being a hunter is pretty beneficial there are generally better ways of achieving this. But might come in handy if you really want that hunter keyword quick and casting a spell helps you somehow.
Rating: 3
Pride Before a Fall - My main issue with this ploy is that if the opponent has a Primacy token he’s very likely to simply one-shot your models omitting the drive back step. This means it's likely you’ll not get to the point where you’ll be able to play this card.
Rating: 4
Starvation Snare - eh, it’s super hard to judge this card. Based on our current knowledge you don’t really want to give the enemy hunger tokens. They’re fairly beneficial as they can fuel effects on the ploys or upgrades. So you’ll likely use this to remove those tokens. But as of now there isn’t enough hunger tech in the game to justify bringing this tech on board.
Rating: 4
The Trap is Sprung - again, for now it’s not very useful. In theory it might be cool, but then you realize that you have to play two of your gambits to get this effect. As of now only Slickrock is worth a slot in your deck and that means your ability to play this is fully controlled by your opponents actions. Not ideal.
Rating: 4
Universal Upgrades
Colossal First - The idea how this upgrade could be a useful one escapes me. What we’re getting is an upgrade that grants magic attack action with range 1 and two damage hitting on focuses. This means your level 2 wizard will get the r1 equivalent of hitting on two hammers, just without the benefit of support and with the risk of getting hit by a backlash. Vast majority of wizards in the game have some sort of range 1-2, 2 dice and 2 damage melee attacks already. Or an equivalent one like Zarbag who has range 1, 2 damage and hits on 3 swords. So… pretty much all of them have an attack action that is comparable to Colossal Fist or better. There’s literally no reason to take this. Even things like Martial Mage can be scored with r2 staff hit if you want to play it. Most often you'll prefer to keep your wizards safely in the distance rather than commit them into melee range for some stacked range 1 hit effectively sealing the deal on Fist.
Rating: 4
Eagle-eye - I wish this was not limited to attack dice only, but allowed also magic dice. Still - range based fighters like Thundrik, Lund, all of the Farstriders are happy to have this. Not only are you getting a re-roll for your ranged attacks, but you’re also becoming a hunter. Amazing package wizards are envious of..
Rating: 2
Flight Before Food - So this is effectively a quarry tech that adds +1 move and removes the model from hunger games. First two effects aren't huge, but can find some uses - especially in hold objective decks. The part about hunger is pretty difficult to rate. As the game stands now it is pretty useless.
Rating: 3
Haughty Resistance - Oh boy… All the big guys just got another way to gain primacy tokens and on top of that the possibility to mitigate some damage. Imagine Hrothgorn with Toughened Hide and this one equipped. You’re not killing him in this game. Super strong for any bigger model who has the ability to reliably generate primacy. It’s even nice on your 4 wound fighters as a way to gain primacy or keep the model alive for longer vs smaller attacks. Full value comes for big guys though and for them it’s a must have.
Rating: 2
Hungering Harpoon - Right off the bat it’s so inaccurate that you’re not likely to bother with it. If you’ll get to three hunger tokens however this becomes a pretty decent ranged attack. If you’ll be able to get those three hunger tokens in a decent way then this can become a really nice upgrade. Because this upgrade grants one counter you’ll still need to find the missing two. For now though Hungering Harpoon is just poor.
Rating: 3
Keen Hunger - reaction to get a reroll for one hunger token. If you have a surplus of those then it can be pretty good I guess. For now I can’t see the use for it.
Rating: 4
Labyrinth Boots - A new incarnation of Faneway Crystal. More limited and ties your fighter to objectives for the rest of the game. Because of how the movement with this card works your opponent will always know exactly where the fighter wearing those boots can go. He can then effectively stop that fighter from moving at all. Still - it can be used to jump around objectives and mess with your opponent if he will let you.
Rating: 3
Proud Runner - If you have at least one model with movement 4 this card is for you. It’s an amazing tool to claim primacy. You’re playing against some primacy warband? Just move this fighter as the last activation and steal that token! More aggressive and fast warbands like Rippa and Wild Hunt just got a tool to easily claim primacy and maybe even fuel some of their surges off it. One of my favourite upgrades so far.
Rating: 1
Savage Visage - If you’re stacking some hunter tech on one of the fighters then this card is amazing. A single reroll is granted off the bat - and it’s not limited to attack dice. So your wizards can reroll their magic dice during spell attacks too! This can also lead to a fighter being able to reroll all of his dice during an attack. And that’s pretty damn scary.
Rating: 1
Voidsphere - If persisting gambits will become a thing then this might be a sweet little piece of tech. Right now it can disrupt asterisms, Glorious Triumph and some of the gambit spells from most notable things. That’s not really a thing that would warrant this card getting a slot in the power deck. Attack action from this upgrade is so irrelevant that you might consider it only in deep desperation.
Rating: 4
Closing thoughts
And that’s it when it comes to universal cards from this expansion pack. Overall you can find there several very nice cards that are very powerful or good enough to make you consider them. Gambits and upgrades are having several very cool options introduced to the game. Objectives are a bit on a weaker side - at least as for now, however even there you’ll find some very interesting ones. So overall this expansion seems to offer a pretty good value in terms of universal cards.
Having said that there’s one thing that is baffling to me. Out of 30 universal cards 8 were printed with hunger tokens in mind. And they were introduced in such a fashion that 6 out of them are pretty much unplayable at this point in time and 7th one is useful only if you’re having a wizard in your warband. That’s almost 25% of the pack being filled with the cards you won’t use right now. I’m a little bit confused by this decision. I feel that this area - the order at which warbands and universal cards are introduced to the meta - still needs some improvements. In Beastgrave - thanks to that order - we’ve had most of the season dominated by the ghouls and the ghosts. Only towards the end of it we’ve got some much needed tools to break that stalemate.
Now we’re getting the pack where the 4th part of it is useless just because those cards need some extra pieces in the game to make them work. It’s not cool for the players. It also makes it super difficult to rate the cards for us, the reviewers. Some of those cards are looking like they could be very relevant in the game should hunger become a popular thing. And I would really love to do them justice while rating them. But it’s just not possible to guess how easy hunger tokens will be to get and what it will entail for the model to have them. I’d rather get some more cards that we could make use of immediately than keep this many of them waiting for the rest of the tools to be released.
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