Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire – Sepulchral Guard

In addition to the starter box for Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire, I'll cover the expansion boxes for the warbands in sets of two. This week it will be the Sepulchral Guard and Ironskull's Boyz.

I actually bought this warband box before I even got the starter box. It was the starting point of a fantasy warband, in combination with the Deathrattle boxed set. Now you can buy the Sepulchral Guard without the Shadespire content as an easy-to-build kit as well.

But let's get back to this warband review. Games Workshop offers these expansions for 22.50 EUR each (20 EUR without the Underworlds cards) and the Sepulchral Guard is the largest warband of the first wave expansion with 7 miniatures.

There is a card deck of 67 cards included with this warband, 7 cards for the characters, 29 are unique cards for the undead warband and 31 universal cards (split across objectives, upgrades and ploys) to be used with any Warhammer Underworlds warband.

The miniatures are spread across two sprues and are easy-to-build / push-fit, so you don't need any glue to assemble them. The plastic is pre-coloured in a matching skeleton bone tone. Casting is good, with only minor mould lines and a slight black discolouration on the back of one of the petitioners bases (just the colour, no warpage or something and as you're going to prime / paint them anyway, you'll never notice afterwards).

The leader of the Sepulchral Guard is the Sepulchral Warden, with a spear and cloak. As the spear is a long weapon, he has reach 2. The whole warband has a medieval dark fantasy setting to them. With the rugged clothes, worn and battered gear, it gives them a clear evil and unique look, not just undead troops of another race. The warden is the most important figure of your warband, even more important than other warbands leader, as he is able to resurrect fallen undead warriors. And it is the condition for him to be inspired, that two warriors of his allegiance were brought back into the game.

Wearing a metal band crown and wielding a mace, the Prince of Dust is second in command to the Warden. He is getting inspired by being resurrected, like all of the Sepulchral Guard.

The Harvester - a classic among the undead poses, the Grim Reaper with a large scythe. You would expect it to have a larger range, it does in a certain way. But instead of having a reach of 2, the attacks affect every enemy in contact with him.

Wielding a heavy great sword, the Champion has the ability of cleave against his enemies. Making it harder for them to block or dodge his attacks.

The rank and file soldiers of this warband are the Petitioner, three different miniatures but all using the same rules. I really like the second and third pose. The second for looking like these classic skeleton warriors from the stop motion movies and the third for the sequence of rising from the grave. Showing the undying will to come back and covering the special rule of this warband into a miniature.

And the whole warband of seven undead warriors.

Overall the design department did a great job on these. Dynamic and alternating poses. But two miniature poses are a bit fragile. This is comes from the "petit" bone structure, so you have to take care with the undead. Especially with these two, the shield arm of one of the Petitioners and the thighs of the Harvester are quite thin. You'll notice they bend a bit, so take care. As this is plastic, it can be glued, but if you want to strengthen the bond, you maybe want to add a bit of green stuff racks to support those parts or just be extra careful.

A brief comparison with other undead or skeleton miniatures, from left to the rights, a Frostgrave Undead Cultist, a Mantic Games Kings of War skeleton, the Shadespire Undead and a classic Warhammer skeleton warrior.

About the cards, you can take a look into the card library to browse through the whole deck. The warband of the Sepulchral Guard is the most numerous, and they get inspired by being resurrected, so you want your first wave to die to bring them back stronger. That thinking is resembled in most of the cards, so instead of making them tougher / harder to eliminate, the majority of upgrades benefit your damage or movement. If you think, ha! I'll use my numbers to just snatch the objectives, remember that the uninspired undead only have a movement of 2, and with a Shadespire match only going on for three turns, you have to have a proper plan. Use your actions wisely, combine your plots and upgrades to move your undead horde where you need them. For some guidance in deck building you can visit the community page for Shadespire and browse through a couple o suggested deck builds, among them the Warhammer World Grand Clash I - Top Build.

To sum up the review, pictures of the whole warband. You can see the slight discolouration on the back of one of the Petitioners bases, but as mentioned above, after priming / painting I won't see that anymore.

Conclusion
With the lore of Shadespire being a city, cursed by Nagash, it makes absolutely sense for an undead warband to be part of the game. And with the "twist" of being able to reanimate fallen warriors this warband plays different to any of the others and is very true to their background.

As the warbands are 22.50 EUR each and include everything you need to bring them into the game, I think of it as a fair price point. Especially with this box of seven. It is slightly more expensive than a box of Skeleton Warriors at 20 EUR, but you have heroes and unique poses, that would cost more individually. Compared to Blood Bowl and Necromunda, where you have to buy the card stacks etc. on top of the team boxes, Shadespire is one of the cheapest skirmish games from the Citadel miniatures range.

Miniature wise it is well done box. You have dynamic, frightening poses with quite realistic proportions. Casting was on the level that you would expect by Games Workshop and the push fit is really easy to assemble. As for the "stability problem" of the bones, that is something undead players always have to deal with, unrelated of the system / manufacturer, unless they go with a much more bulky design in skeletons. If you get yourself a proper foam tray and handle them with care, you should be able to avoid any damage.

Warhammer Underworlds is a brand by Games Workshop.