Warhammer Underworlds has many formats which players can choose to play in. Having said this around 99% of people defaults to Championship format (and for a good reason). Other modes of play that players can choose from are: Vanguard, Arena Mortis, Alliance and Relic. Of those only the Alliance format has seen some tournament support before, but in general all of them gather an anecdotal level of play.
For the Alliance format we’ve seen at least two team based Grand Clashes (although I’m not 100% sure if they did follow Alliance format rules back then), there was a Polish Team Championship that did follow the official rules, and most recently we’ve had my friends from Path to Glory run PTG Alliance League that is currently close to conclude its second season. Soon we will get the opportunity to compete in the German WTC/GTC Online tournament that has also decided to support an Alliance competition.
It can be argued that apart from the Championship this is the most alive format currently in the game. Polish Team Championship has gathered around 50-60 people divided into 3 man teams. PTG league has had 10 teams in the first season and went up to 16 in its second installment. This level of interest is very respectable as these events are gathering the numbers similar to the “main” events. Yet this game mode still remains a very niche option as there are very few events that are supporting it.
So what makes it so special? Why is Alliance such a standout while other formats failed to gather an audience? A lazy answer would be to say that Arena Mortis and Vanguard are very new ways to play that had no chance to gather tournament support just yet. Covid times are not making it easy to host an event. Relic and Alliance had the opportunity to be hosted as in-person tournaments… but yeah, you might ask what about Relic then? It is continuously failing to gather any respectable numbers and we’ve even seen events being cancelled due to lack of interest.
Problem with Relic is that the game has moved on and in general improved a lot. There’s plenty of old cards that are very powerful or ones that we do miss… but that we don’t necessarily want to deal with again. Building a decent deck while having all that big pool of cards is no small task and in the end it is not that rewarding.
Another thing is that most people prefer to play with the most current set of cards and avoid a wild west of uncharted relic meta where anything can happen. And that’s why in my opinion Relic will continue to struggle.
About the Alliance format itself - players are asked to form a three man team that will build three lists for themselves to play with. The trick is that each and every card can be used only once across the three decks. So essentially your team gets an entire pool of the cards for them to use and it’s up to you how you distribute them among the decks. No repeats of the cards allowed. Later, once the teams are matched against each other they get to select who will face who. Here the rules differ from event to event, but most often whoever won the roll off gets to choose the first pair.
The first time I have been asked whether I would like to take part in an Alliance tournament I was not thrilled. The card pool limitation felt to me like a massive handicap that would lead to playing some of the supremely subpar decks. This has happened not long after The Beastgrave released and Shadespire block has just left the pool of available cards. Admittedly at that point in time my assessment on the matter was probably not far from the truth. Card pool was very shallow and we haven’t had an entire season of Beastgrave warbands with their rich in-faction card support. I’ve passed, but the event has gathered a very respectable number of players and was a success.
My second contact with the Alliance tournament was around August 2020 when guys from Path to Glory have launched their first edition of the league. My reservations towards the format were still a thing and I did hesitate whether I want to engage that project or not. As it has happened I’ve been invited to join the team with the two of my fellow players whom I have always liked and respected a lot. That was an incentive good enough for me to agree. And it was a very good decision. This time around Beastgrave has been pretty much complete. Card pool has expanded and we’ve had a number of new warbands to play with. More importantly those new warbands came in with much better faction card support than most of the bands from previous seasons.Without wasting time the three of us started drafting the decks. And that’s when we’ve discovered the strength of this format.
The beauty of Alliance mode is that while it is an offshoot of Championship format it’s more loosely connected to the general meta. Yes, you could take a top performing Championship deck and slot it in for one of your team’s decks. But the other two decks would have to pay the price of not having access to all of the best cards. Individual players piloting that warband would likely win their game, but the team would be very likely to lose the match as other players would struggle with their games versus more balanced opponents.
So… your team is presented with a set of very meaningful choices from the very beginning: are we making three equally strong decks and trying to win with them? Or maybe de-power one of them and hope for the other two to use the advantage and win their games? What archetypes are we selecting to play with?
The third question is very exciting. It does open the space for less used archetypes to come back and maybe even thrive in this format, while they’re absent from the Championship. The reasons for this being possible is the fact that typically it will be difficult to build two decks of the same archetype that are strong enough for everyone’s liking. This means that players will go searching for niche picks that would work in order to gain an advantage. For example during Beastgrave people often would run setups consisting of the three archetypes: hold objective, aggro and magic. Those not only are possible to be built in a decent way with a very little overlap in good cards, but also were allowing the team to access the widest variety of strong cards that were available. Every archetype has a possibility to open up a selection of cards for you to use. For example: if you decided to not go for a magic focused warband you would have lost access to all the strong magic based objectives and gambits. This would mean that your effective card pool is smaller than it would have been should you choose magic. You have less cards to choose from and you still have to distribute them across the three teams. It is more likely that the density of strong cards in your decks will be lower because of that. It is however important to note that if none of your players feels comfortable with a given playstyle it might be better to look for a different niche or create slightly weaker decks rather than risk making someone play something they don’t enjoy and haven’t practiced with.
Then there are the mind games.
Certain warbands are flexible enough that while everyone expects them to be played in a well established way, they very well might shift into a different playstyle. Pairings before the match are often done on a guess. If you see a warband that is traditionally holding objectives you’re likely to try to pair it with one of your warbands that can handle or even counter this playstyle. Trouble starts when you’ve been tricked by your opponent and that Hold warband is strongly flexed into aggro instead. This can have big consequences. Not only is your counter pick spent and tied into not very favourable matchup, but also there’s a good chance that there’s another strong hold objective warband out there that might go into their own favorable matchup.
Another story are warbands that are flexible enough that they usually are an open question. Good example is Hrothgorn. When you see the ogre you cannot be sure what his game plan is. He can go hard aggro and try to kill all opposing fighters, he can focus on a passive build that draws cards and build an Avatar or… he can go full objective removal to score objectives like Feed the Beastgrave. And yes, FtB is the build you can meet in this format. While not very popular it is a more challenging, but nonetheless viable option to consider.
Once players have collectively decided what they would like to build it’s time to prepare lists. Very often this is the time when you’re placed in the position where a certain card is being contested by 2 or more players. And it is the time when the team has to make the call where this card would be used best. On top of that the team has to find an alternative option for the decks which now have to work without that card. It is a very creative moment - especially when often there are no obvious alternatives. It’s when the digging begins. Goal is to find the card that will fill the gap while bringing the value to the deck (or in worst cases - while it won’t hinder the deck too much). This is when players tend to have a second or even third look at the cards they’d normally omit right off the bat.
Once the decks have been set it is time to meet your opponents and agree on pairings within the match. It is a very important step as getting the matchups you like can make victory much easier. Here you’re presented with a choice - do I choose a good matchup for my team or do I remove a bad matchup for my team? You have to answer yourself if there are any traps? Looking at composition - are there any potential flex warbands that could surprise us?
After pairings are done and the round is played it is time to reflect on the choices made during pairings and how the games go. It’s an important moment, as soon your team will be playing another round and those choices will be relevant once again. It is also important to evaluate how the decks play. If the strengths of your team’s composition are where you’ve anticipated.
If you’re playing the league that allows changes of the team composition after every round it is an exciting time where you can re-evaluate your choices and introduce changes to warbands or the decks as needed.
What is interesting about this format is that the preparation phase itself is equally (if not more) interesting as the playing the game itself. In fact we could already observe certain players joining the team to fill the role of a substitute/coach, where the player actually prefers brainstorming team builds over actually playing the game later on. Those people will put all their effort and experience to try to build the most successful team composition, most solid decks for every warband and then will try to help figure out the preferred pairings. But they will not feel the need to actually move the models on the board letting others do it instead. And they will still feel the satisfaction after every team victory knowing they did contribute to it in a significant way.
There are some shortcomings - luckily only a few though. First of all - this is a team based mode to play. Resources (warbands and cards) are limited and can be contested. It is very important that your team is able to reach a consensus. If the players end up feeling that they’re given “worse” options to it might lead to some upset. This is however an element present in every team game.
Second weakness is how the format can struggle during early stages of the expansion. Card pool is very shallow then and it is sometimes very difficult to build three decks. Also the variety of the warband selection between the teams is very limited at that point in time. This format is very taxing on the card pool as you need to use 96 cards as opposed to 32 for a solo event. Here very helpful is the new design philosophy for the warbands. Starting from season 3 all the warbands come with a full 32 card faction deck. This is adding a great value as you often need way less universal cards thanks to faction ones being decent.
Coming back to the question “why should you try it?”. The answer is simple - Yes! This is the most creative and deep variant of the game. There’s no possibility to bring a net decked list and be successful as a team. Alliance format is all about selecting three solid warbands and utilizing the card pool to build three strong decks. So if you like the deckbuilding aspect of the game and you like to experiment with less optimal ways to play that would likely be very suboptimal in Championship then Alliance format is for you. If you enjoy having additional layers of complexity, ability to impact how pairings will be looking like and you enjoy teamwork - this is the game mode for you.
I can recommend anyone giving this mode a try. You might discover a few fun cards or ways to play. And you’ll certainly have a lot of fun even without touching the miniatures or dice.
Have you ever tried to play in an Alliance event? How was it for you? Share your thoughts!
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