Hello! Today we will be taking a look at the universal cards released with Kainan’s Reapers expansion pack. As always, we have here 10 objectives, 10 gambits, and 10 upgrades. At the end of the card-by-card review, I’ll present my top 5 cards of this expansion. If you’re interested in my review of the warband itself you can find it here.
While rating the cards I will be following the 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 a use for it, but in general, most often you’ll be better off with other picks.
Universal Objectives
Formidable Prey - stacking 2 or more upgrades that give quarry is most likely going to be counterproductive, so I wouldn’t consider the first condition as a viable option. The second condition is more interesting. Put a Strenght of Terror on your Mollog, Kainan, or Hrothgorn and it’s a free glory. This objective might also go up in value if Silent Relics will get some decent objective to support them as an archetype. With them, the first condition becomes pretty much an auto-score. Overall, from a universal perspective, it’s an OK card, but you’ll not put it in most of the decks.
Rating: 3
Futile Hunt - this kill surge requires your fighter to be a quarry or your target to have at least one hunger counter. Unless you’re playing against Crimson Court, your first condition is going to be the best bet for scoring this. This could go well in hand with upgrades like Strength of Terror or Augmented Limbs. Overall I believe this is too niche to consider - especially given the choice we have in terms of kill surges.
Rating: 3
Immortal Hunger - yeah… good luck scoring that one. Stacking 4 hunger counters on every fighter is a hard task by itself - it requires considerable investment even for vampires. And then we’re having the second condition where we cannot lose too many models. Three glory is nice, but this one is simply too hard.
Rating: 4
Peerless Hunter - to score this card you would need to have at least one hunter, who is still alive at the end phase and has Ensnare or Cleave. On top of that, you’d need to have a Primacy token. While possible, it’s an awful lot of requirements to score a single glory.
Rating: 3
Perfect Strike - I would like to love this card. Two glory surges are very rare and very powerful. Perfect Strike is a merge of Precise use of Force and Steady Aim, where both conditions need to be fulfilled at the same time. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. My main issue with this card is my love-hate relationship with Steady Aim. You can have games where it won’t go off for 1-2 rounds, or even at all. However, in the current meta, it’s not that difficult to get enough re-rolls. There’s a negative correlation taking place here where increasing odds of success on one condition (by adding dice, to land an attack) is actively decreasing chances of success on the other (the more dice, the harder it is to have only successes). Overall with enough re-rolls, this should be scoreable - especially on 2 dice attacks.
Rating: 2
Primal Assertion - I’m not a big fan of this one. It takes too much setup to score this - first you have to gain Primacy token, then ensure you’re holding most objectives, and then get the opportunity to discard your token. Effectively this is a quasi-end phase card, as the easiest way to discard the Primacy token is to keep it until the end phase and discard it while scoring spent glory from it.
Rating: 3
Proud Commander - it’s a bit sad that this is only 2 glory. Overall I like this card - scoring 7 objectives in a modern Underworlds game is something that will happen unless you’re having a disastrous game. And if you do, but you’re playing a big boy warband, then most likely your leader will be able to go into enemy territory to score this. The major problem of this card is the 3rd end phase thing in conjunction with a 2 glory payout. It’s simply not good enough to compete with a multitude of 2 glory end phase options we’re having in the game right now. So while technically pretty scoreable, it’s not the most attractive option you could get.
Rating: 3
Sated Hunger - it’s not easy to remove three hunger counters in one go. It’s even harder to first accumulate three counters on one fighter. So... if you’ve built a deck to gather this many counters it means you want to do something with them and not simply dump them for one glory. In theory, this could work for the Crimson Court, but even there it would be very situational at best.
Rating: 4
Scant Resources - the first condition is Coveted Spoils. It’s quite OK for Feed the Beastgrave decks or in HO heavy meta. The secondary condition requires players to have no unspent glory points. This is fairly hard to do - the highest chances of this to happen are in the first round and when you’ve had an initiative. Otherwise, it is unlikely you or your opponent have spent all your glory. Overall - while quite possible to score in certain decks, it’s unlikely to be selected in the majority of cases.
Rating: 3
Tale of Victory - an even harder Annihilation. Not only you’d have to kill every enemy fighter, but on top of that, all of your surviving fighters have to be hunters. While 6 glory is super tempting, this is bordering on impossibility.
Rating: 4
Universal Gambits
Call To Hunt - a bit better Hunting Season effect, but at the cost of having to discard the Primacy token. That’s a high price for an effect that can be achieved with another ploy.
Rating: 4
Carnivores All - This card has two uses. The first one is to generate hunger tokens for your warband. If you’re aiming at some hunger builds this is pretty neat. The other use is to inspire the entire Spiteclaw Swarm with a single ploy. Overall the most interesting use is the second one, but this card is super limited.
Rating: 3
Eternal Chase - what an amazing card. This is a fantastic mobility tool for slower warbands. It’s especially useful for dwarves, but multiple other fighters will be happy to have this in play. What’s more interesting is the fact that this ploy completely shuts down the speed package. If you see your opponent play Spectral Wings, respond with this and he’s down to Movement 4 that cannot be modified any further. Implications are huge. Not only Spectral Wings fumbled, but also your opponent is not going to score things like Cover Ground or Gathered Momentum. Turning fighters into Hunters and Quarries is just a nice finishing touch. Very strong card.
Rating: 2
Great Tremors - it’s a very random objective flip card. With luck, you could score Feed the Beastgrave in the first round. Odds are minuscule, but it’s possible. On average you should expect to flip one objective with this card. Two things worth noting are: you can use this defensively to flip back a token… and this card can flip any token - no restrictions apply (range, territory, unoccupied hex, etc.).
Rating: 3
Keila’s Clarion - the effect is good and could be tempting. But the casting requirement is too high to consider this card. It would take a dedicated wizard deck to be able to get this off in a reliable fashion.
Rating: 4
Mazzig’s Machinations - with very good positioning and well-placed feature tokens, you could flip 2 or more of those tokens with a single spell. This could be a Ylthari-limited card. And even for Ylthari, it would be useful only in the Feed the Beastgrave decks.
Rating: 4
Quintok’s Quarrel - I don’t like this card - has two failure points: first, it has to be cast, then you have to win a roll-off to instill the effect of the card. The effect itself is very strong, but this card is just not reliable at all.
Rating: 4
Roar of Defiance - discarding the Primacy token for a Guard token is not a good bargain.
Rating: 4
Sanity Siphon - with this ploy you get a chance to redirect an attack action from a charging enemy fighter. While this sounds nice - you could protect an important fighter - it’s very difficult to execute. Not only you’d need to have another fighter in range of a charging fighter, but also you need to roll a channel symbol on a dice. That’s a 33% chance for it to happen.
Rating: 4
Untapped Resources - this is an interesting card. You have to hold at least two objectives, but then you can use it to either gain Primacy Token, or draw three cards. Very decent for any warband that wants to hold 2 objectives. But it is not a drawcard for everyone, like Quick Search or Frenzied Search.
Rating: 3
Universal Upgrades
Armour of Disdain - the protective effect from this upgrade would’ve been nice if there was enough ping damage in the game. There’s not though. The secondary effect that prevents the modification of multiple attributes is more of a handicap than a help.
Rating: 4
Driven by Envy - +1 Move is not that hot. The ability to gain +1 dice and cleave vs leaders is more interesting. But unless you’re facing Mollog, Hrothgorn, or Kainan it’s not worth the slot.
Rating: 3
Driven By Hunger - while the concept is interesting, I’m trying to figure out where would I play this card. Crimson Court is a natural first choice. Thing is that this card is good for them only as an inspiration mechanic. You don’t want it in your hunger build. And once your fighters inspire there’s no hunger to fuel this upgrade. But in theory, you could use it to score the speed package from your hunger and then inspire.
Rating: 3
Eye for Weakness - an upgrade with a “Hrothgorn effect”, but limited to models who have hunger counters. Some upgrades simply make enemy fighters a Quarry and they are not seeing play. So I don’t think this will either.
Rating: 4
Inured By Hunger - this is another hunger spender card. Its issues are similar to Driven By Hunger, but its effect is much more powerful. Overall this is a very nice card to be put on your important fighter. You might need to spend all the hunger to keep him alive, but that’s still better than losing the fighter. The presence of this card might also serve as a deterrent and make your opponent choose some less important fighter for his attack. I really like this one, even if its applications are limited.
Rating: 2
Painful Brilliance - if you can get a hold on Primacy Token then any attack made against your fighter has -1 dice. That is huge. If you don’t have the Primacy, then only attacks from range 3+ are affected, which is not that good anymore. This is a fantastic card for any warband with a voltroned fighter, who can get a hold of Primacy token.
Rating: 2
Primal Lunge - oooh, I love this card! A new Ready for Action. Extra attacks are always very high in value. And this card lets you make one. Or make a move action if you need to. It’s a perfect card for stacked fighters, who are very likely going to have a Primacy token. With this card, you’re getting extra value out of your fighter. It allows you to make an attack even if you’ve charged already, which is huge.
Rating: 1
Silent Shield - if you’re in no one’s territory you’re getting a two shield defense. And if you’re having two or more silent relics you’re on guard. The first effect is not that interesting - while good it’s too limited. The secondary effect is more tempting, as being on guard can be very helpful. Alone this card is not worth the slot. But combined with Silent Helmet can offer a very strong defensive boost for your fighter.
Rating: 3
Soundless Step - an improved Duellists Speed that works after any activation made by the fighter. It’s neat. Could be especially cool for hold objective players, where you could go on guard and react to get onto the nearby objective token.
Rating: 2
Wicked Leash - this could be turned into 4 dice, 3 damage attack if your target is wounded and you’ve got a lethal hex in your path. If you have a two wounds fighter, then this is an upgrade for you. It helps to turn your small fighter into a threat. For more durable ones it might not be a good option.
Rating: 2
My Top 5 picks
I can feel I’m going to hate this card sometimes. Just as I’ve hated Steady Aim. But at the same time, it’s going to feel great once this goes off. The amount of rerolls that are available to us now makes me hopeful about this objective.
I love how well-rounded this card is. You can use it to boost the mobility of all of your fighters, which is very valuable. But the fact that it can also prevent your opponent from scoring his speed surges is massive. In some corner cases, you could even reduce his ability to reach your fighters. I’m loving this.
While this might not be a very strong card, I do like it. I’m sure going to try to play it in some decks just to see it go off with 3+ crits. The reaction of my opponent is going to be worth it for sure.
This is an excellent defensive card. I do like to play big boys, who are stacked and scary. This is a perfect card for them.
Aggro dream. I’m 100% sure it will hit the restricted list sooner than later. But until then this + Vision of Glory is going to ruin someone’s day not once.
Closing Thoughts
Overall I think this expansion is fairly mixed in terms of universal cards. Again we’re seeing the pattern where objectives, in general, are pretty bad, but power cards are strong. Especially upgrades are having very strong options. A similar pattern we’ve seen in the Silent Menace deck and the Crimson Court expansion.
Kainan’s Reapers are bringing us one potentially very good objective and a few mediocre ones that might see the play. In terms of gambits, the situation is a bit better, but it’s the upgrades where most of the power is hidden. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this expansion would be called the “Primal Lunge and Perfect Strike” expansion.
We’re getting here a very strong and fun warband, but the universal section is somewhat underwhelming. Still, it’s worth buying if you do care about aggro. You’ll benefit from the cards in here a lot. In other cases? Not so much, unless you want to play Kainan’s Reapers themselves.
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