Hey all! Today is the day we’ve been waiting for - contents of Harrowdeep have been spoiled for us. In my next few articles, I’ll be going over the contents of the box. For today I would like to show you my perspective on the new rules and some key changes that took place with the advent of the new season.
Harrowdeep has introduced a good chunk of new rules. I’ve been addressing the concerns about the sheer volume of those new things in one of my recent articles. As it turns out the number of new rules has been even higher, but overall I stand by my opinion that while there’s a lot of them, most of those changes are not that difficult to grasp and are good for the game, as they do help to keep it fresh.
So… let’s kick it off and take a look at what Harrowdeep has in store for us. Since I’m not a beneficiary of the review copies, all the pictures of the items from the box come from my friends at Path To Glory Podcast - they’ve been very kind to allow me to use their images while I share my thoughts with you. Big thanks to them - be sure to check out their content if you haven’t yet, it’s one of the best sources of WHU stuff out there.
Grand Alliances and GA Cards
This one is fairly straightforward. In AoS all of the factions are grouped in four grand alliances: Order, Chaos, Destruction, and Death. Since WHU is grounded in AoS lore this also does apply to warbands and going forward that fact has been used to provide us with some additional mechanical options. Right now we’re getting a bunch of cards that are customized for their respective grand alliances and only warbands belonging to that alliance can include them in their decks. This opens up the possibility to give interesting cards targeted at certain alliances to complement their general strengths and playstyles. It is also a clever way of making sure that certain strong cards are not becoming staples played by virtually any deck - most of the warbands will not be even able to include them. This is however a danger as well - if one of the alliances will get a significantly better deal than the others it might lead to a major unbalance in the game and frustration for players who like other options when it comes to alliances. I feel that the first signs of that are here already, but I will shed a bit more light on this topic in my Grand Alliance cards review once it’s up.
Trait symbols
My speculations were correct - the symbols we’ve seen on some of the cards did work as a keyword for the fighters. They’re mostly there to streamline the rules for all of those fighters, but also help to free up the fighter cards from repeated rules. I’m 100% behind this rule. What is notable is that the flying trait does not protect from the damage from lethal hexes if your fighter is being pushed into one. So your bird can get its talons scolded if you distract him into a lethal. Fun stuff.
Objective deck size
Objective decks can now contain more than 12 objectives. They’re still limited to 6 surges though. I think this is a fair amount of surge objectives and I wouldn’t be happy if that did change to a lower number. The general direction of the surge cards recently seems to point to the fact that they’re not as easy as they used to be before, which is fair. Still - having 6 helps to improve your deck consistency - even if you have to work for your surge some more.
The change to remove the limit of the cards in the power deck is very interesting. I believe that overall you’ll want to keep your deck lean and mean, but I can imagine some builds aiming at one or two extra objectives if their creators felt that they’re confident they can score those… or maybe they simply want to take a risk for a possibility of raising their glory ceiling. It’s an aspect I will be very keen to explore in the coming weeks.
Cover hexes and Gloom tokens
We finally know what those dotted lines on the boards do! Those are cover hexes. Fighter standing in a Cover hex can treat double support results in their defense rolls as successes.
Gloom tokens are new tokens that replace the lethal hex tokens. All feature tokens are now Gloom tokens/objectives as opposed to having a lethal token on the reverse side during BG/DC era. Gloom token is a Cover hex while it is not flipped on an objective side.
It is an interesting change. I think it is a major buff for 2 dice fighters - especially in the warbands that do like a more control-centered playstyle. So if you meet a Lady Harrow player you can expect some banshees taking cover and laughing at you.
I don’t like the fact that we’re done with placing lethals in favor of going for more defensive options. Hopefully, there will be ways to turn those covers into an advantage for the aggressive players as well.
Feature token placement
Tokens are now placed Gloom side up. This means you don’t have full information on where exactly some of the objective numbers are. While this is not an issue in the majority of cases, it might have an interesting impact on the games where one of the players does care about holding an objective with a specific number. There’s a potential that they’ll have to search for it. Another implication is that there are no active objectives on the board at the beginning of the game. So, it will take a bit longer to score hold surges. Your fighter will have to get onto one first and then flip it during the power step. This gives an opponent some more time to try to stop that surge. It is a nice thing, I approve of that.
The second big change is that it will be much harder to place a token on an edge hex. This is super cool - it makes it much harder to deploy defensively if you’re holding 3 tokens. Less turtling up at the back of the board! But also more chances to claim 3 objectives if you’ve been unfortunate enough to lose the roll-off and you’ve got to place the boards when you wanted tokens instead. That 3rd token is very likely going to be much closer to the center of the board now. And that is a good thing.
Do-Overs
This is hands down one of the best changes in this season. Do-overs were one of the pain points this game had - I’ve been discussing those in this article. I’m super happy this change has been introduced. Basically - now when you decide to do over your hand you will show the current cards to your opponent and put them aside, draw up a new hand, and then shuffle previously drawn cards back into the deck. This is beautiful. Thanks to a solution like this it is very unlikely you’ll be put into a spot where you have to decide how badly screwed you’ll be for the rest of the game. Don’t be fooled - while there is a certain amount of skill involved in the decision whether to do over and lose 3-4 glory and/or a good bunch of important power cards, it is not something that was healthy for the game. Being put into a very tough spot before you even got to place your models on the board is not fun or good for the competitiveness of the game. And before someone will come to say “just build a better deck” - I’m sorry, but even the best decks can brick or slow you down so much that you might be out of the competition before the game even started. And especially now, when - as mentioned before - the game seems to be shifting to a bit more demanding objectives. So bad hand draw will most likely mean glory or tech loss tax which is super huge at a high level of play. Losing a single game of the match can mean missing the cut during the Grand Clash. And that’s not a cool feeling to know that you’ve played your best, but got eliminated because of some bad draws at the start of the game.
With that change, it’s much easier to have a more even playfield at the beginning of the game. This change is also going to adjust the perspective we’re having while looking at the 3rd end phase objectives. It does make them a lot more viable than before. You can cycle them if drawn on first hand. Did the game become easier because of that? Somewhat yes. But it is a small tradeoff for the benefit of having more viable card options and for having fewer chances of being screwed before the game even began.
Are there risks that people will fish for a perfect hand? Yes. People may try to abuse the system and get a better hand. But both sides can try to do it, so it’s fair. And it does introduce a new skill check - deciding whether to go for a do-over while having a decent hand. You might draw up a better hand, but at the same time, you could land with a worse deal as well.
Inspiration Sequence
So this one is cool because it’s now clarified when inspirations do happen. It’s especially good because now we know that, for example, Skaven will inspire after the power step, not during it.
Power Step Priority
The order in which players get to play their ploys during the power step has been reversed! This is a very important change. Now the player who’s going to activate next gets the chance to play a ploy first. So if you’re planning to hit an enemy fighter and then finish him with a ping ploy or push him into a lethal… you might not get the chance because your opponent will get the chance to do something during the power step first! This will be very important if we will get a decent amount of ping ploys.
Reaction timings explained
We’ve got a fantastic chart explaining when all of the reaction windows happen! So now if you’re in doubt you can refer to the rulebook and have everything explained. I love it!
Stagger
Stagger is a new keyword and it has a stagger token associated with it. It is a new mechanic introduced to us already in the WarCom articles - staggered fighter receives a stagger token. This means he will lose the Guard token if he had one. Also, any attack made against a staggered fighter benefits from a single dice re-roll. It is a very neat mechanic that helps overcome some of the more defensive fighters.
Grievous
Same as with Stagger - this is a keyword that has been revealed to us already. Successful attacks with at least one critical success in the roll deal +1 damage. It is a sweet damage boost, but it is highly dependant on the dice.
Vulnerable
Again, an already revealed thing. A fighter with one hitpoint left is considered to be vulnerable. Nothing super fancy about the mechanic itself, however, there seems to be quite a few cards that interact with this status. I’m not 100% sure I like that fact, but it might get better as the season progresses.
Illusion Upgrades
Illusions are the new kind of upgrade. At first glance they did sound great - cost no glory, but can fall off. A perfect way to buff up your fighter before you’ve earned some glory. But the trouble is that it is super easy for them to be removed. They’ll fall off if the fighter has been targetted by a gambit, has received damage, or the end of the action phase has come. This means even an enemy push will strip your fighter of his illusions. It does reduce the appeal of those cards to me. They’re still okay I guess, but I feel that they might be a bit too easy to counter. And that’s not a great thing about them.
Assassin and Brawler
New keywords for the fighters. They seem to be a new twist on the Hunter/Quarry, where innately those keywords do nothing, but they do fuel objectives and power cards. It is way too early to tell how this will shape up, but there doesn’t seem to be any interaction between the two. So no back and forth between brawlers and assassins as we were supposed to have with hunters and their quarries. Hopefully, this will work better than early iterations of the hunter/quarry tech.
General Thoughts
Overall I think all the marketing stuff about the new season being big was not empty talk. We can see that Harrowdeep has introduced a lot of changes on top of a quite filled core box. How do I feel about those changes?
I love the fact that the team behind the game did move in the direction of streamlining the rules and wrapping them under keywords or traits. It is a very good move that will make the game a better one.
The change in the do-over is awesome, I love it. And you’ll love it too. It makes games more fair and opens up more deck choices - you don’t have to be super conservative anymore. This may lead to more 3rd end phase cards seeing the game - which is a good thing.
What is very big is the fact that objective tokens now start the game as gloom tokens and it takes some time to flip them. This means hold objective warbands won’t have as explosive starts as they used to have in the Beastgrave or during Direchasm. The fact that the last token cannot be placed on the edge hex (unless there’s no other option) is also great - it will bring those warbands more forward. It’s not only good for aggro teams but will also make life a bit easier for opposing hold objective warbands. So very positive thing.
What makes me a bit sad is the fact that we won’t get to place lethals anymore. This used to be a very cool option to help yourself in killing enemy fighters early on - or to help defend your positions. Instead, we’re getting something that feels like predominantly a defensive option in form of Cover/Gloom. And while some cards do add offensive punch for the fighters inside the cover I fear that it won’t be good enough to compensate.
Assassin/Brawler do concern me a bit - in the first 2 warbands only 1 out of 9 models has one of those keywords. So unless more of those (or a viable way of turning a fighter into one) will come, this will be a very niche mechanic, and most of the cards referencing it will be dead for the majority of the warbands out there. I’m hoping that it will not be the case, but for now, I remain very careful about this bit of the game.
Overall this season doesn’t feel like one where hold objective will be a dominant force. This can, of course, change with new releases, but so far it feels like this playstyle has lost a lot of power. And I’m happy about it - they’ve had their moments of glory, let’s see what will emerge now. If the game will shift back to a more skirmish and brawl-heavy theme, then it will be a good time. The rules seem to hint that this will be the case, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed!
As usual - I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on this subject. Let me know in the comments how do you feel about our new ruleset for season 5!
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