Hello! Wintermaw is just around the corner, which means Nethermaze is going to go in Championship! Today I wanted to commemorate some of the best/most memorable cards from this season as well as provide some viable alternatives to these cards to ensure they won’t be fully missed!
Drifting Tides – One of the only Domains played regularly. This card made-or-broke HO. It could provide a clutch objective in the end of the round, but it’s biggest strength was the fact that it could steal objectives from under enemy fighters. Even if you had no objective you needed to move, you could instead play a free upgrade. Overall a great Domain, with a lot of disruptive potential as well as very helpful for HO. An alternative today can be Shifting Shards. It can still move tokens around, however the token must be empty… it could still be used to setup some Supermacies or Claim the Prize!
Weighty Blessing – The best Grand Alliance card for Chaos. Cleave or an extra defense dice at a very little cost (-1 move) was huge. Sure, lots of warbands ran it for the defensive buff, but I have seen cases where even the Cleave came in clutch. This card has certainly saved a lot of Chaos agents – it will surely be missed. There really is no card today that can do all this card does without spending glory – however the defense buff can be found in Breakneck Slaughter, with Tumbler and Moving Mark. Cleave is much rarer, unfortunately (?) there is no easy access, long lasting Cleave in the game right now. This shows just how good this card was.
Death’s Soldiers – This cannot not be mentioned. Many fighters are still alive (or still less dead than they should be) because of this card. The ability to give all your fighters tehcnically a +1 wound for the whole round was insane. The thing that made this card even better was the fact that you can choose AFTER the attack roll whether to use it or not. Modern-day alternatives include Frostwyrm Cloak, as well as Iara’s Resitstance in a gambit form to some extent.
Corrupted Companion – A super easy access to +2 dice at the cheap cost of 1 wound. Sure, this card did occasionally lead to some pretty big mess-ups, and it got played even less once the ping meta came. However, +2 dice was and still is nothing to sneeze at. There is currently not a single +2 dice ploy in Championship rotation. However, if you do like dice, alternatives include Determined Effort as well as Internal Surrender from Tooth and Claw. Upgrade wise, we have Gifted Ferocity, Guided by Fate, as well as some cards from the new Rimelocked Relics and Wintermaw decks.
Quintok’s Bubble – This card became played much less in the ping meta as well. However, during the last couple weeks, I have seen many more wizards running this card. An additional damage to kill you could and often is the difference between life and death, and it being so easy to cast made it a viable choice. The fact that it also gave you flying was often overlooked but ended a lot of lives as well (Kainan being the biggest offender… randomly taking flight through his Mortek swarm). Modern day alternatives include (once again) Frostwyrm Cloak and the new Snowblind Cloak from Rimelocked Relics.
Reflecting Mask – As a swarm enjoyer, I am legally obligated to mention this card. The fact that it could be given to Large fighters made it so much more annoying to deal with than it should have been. A lot of fighters cannot attack an enemy with this without dying in the process. Sure, in Wyrdhollow the Range 3 meta did tone this card down a bit. However, it was still a pain to face. Modern day alternatives include the Malevolent Masks if you like the mask aspect of it, and Instinctive Reprisal from the new Parasite deck if you like the damage reflection aspect.
Mask of Shadows – Another mask, this card quickly grew more relevant in the Range 3 meta of Wyrdhollow. Making yourself untargetable if your opponent wasn’t adjacent may not sound like a lot but I can safely assure you that this card saved way more lives than it ended. Sure, the fact that it was an Illusion made it last typically one attack, but the ability to deny an attack was insane most of the time. There really is no modern day alternatives to the ‘can’t be targeted’ aspect of this card, unless you count Aspect of the Unseen Stalker from Wyrdhollow.
Darkwater Anchor – I bet a lot of you are missing this card already. On paper, to me this card seemed super niche. Opponents typically don’t push you and Range 3 attacks don’t do damage anyway. In practice, this card has prevented many of pushes into lethals, messing up of your positioning, and deaths from random passerby magic bolts fired by Ephilim. Modern day alternatives that both block damage and disable being pushed (by enemies only!) include… nothing. Cards that do each individually include Rimewyrm Skin Boots for the no push and Frostwyrm Cloak for the damage.
Dark Parasites – One of the best +1 damage cards ever printed. +1 damage, as well as Grievous, at the ‘terrible cost’ of taking 1 extra damage from Range 1 attacks was insane. Especially considering the fact that the only Range 1 warband that didn’t oneshot you realesed during Nethermaze was the Exiled Dead, this card’s ‘tremendous downside’ was mostly negated. Modern day alternatives include Great Strength (obviously) and if you like the potential for more than 1 damage I suggest you try Bestial Transformation from Tooth and Claw. Super situational… but it works.
Cursed Boarding Pike – Quick honourable mention to Cursed Boarding Axe/Cutlass as well, but Pike is the most iconic of the trio so got to go with it. Back in Nethermaze, 4 dice was not seen too much. Therefore when a Range 2 4 dice 2 damage weapon dropped naturally everyone stared using it. The downside of it giving spent glory over unspent was easily overlookable when compared to the killing potential of it. Overall an amazing weapon, modern day alternatives include Swordbreaker for a pretty accurate 2 dmg weapon or Venombite Shank for mega accuracy but only 1 damage.
Sudden Revelation – This card had the biggest rollercoaster of popularity out of any other card in Nethermaze. When printed, it was easily one of the best surges in the game. Back in Nethermaze, one can delve without being staggered as well as multiple times per power step, so this was basically ‘hold 2 feature tokens’. After GW finally dropped a restricted list sometime mid to end Nethermaze, Sudden Revelation got restricted, mildly dropping it’s popularity. Then, Gnarlwood dropped, and with it the change to delving that made you staggered when you delved. Most people then forgot about this card, due to the stagger and restriction being too much to work with. However, when the next restricted list dropped, nerfing GSP and Hexbane, Sudden Revalation got unrestricted again. This led to yet another rise in popularity, however less than it’s peak, due to cover hexes now being face down. Finally, Wyrdhollow knocked this card off of it’s high pedestal by not allowing warbands to delve more than once per powerstep. This card quickly became unplayable and faded into nothing, where it remains today. Modern day alternatives (for it’s initial power level) don’t really exist!
Blood in the Deeps – Another card with a rollercoaster of power comparable to that of Sudden Revelation, just in reverse. This card was printed super badly. When printed, it read ‘Score this in an end phase if one or more enemy fighters were taken out of action in the previous activation step and one or more friendly fighters are within one hex of a feature token’. This was naturally super bad, as you first had to go second and get the last activation in the round, and second get a kill specifically in your fourth activation, all for 1 glory. Then, a little later, this card got a big buff, now reading in the preceding action phase rather than activation step. This quickly sent it’s popularity up, becoming really good for any aggro player as it was super simple to score. Modern day alternatives for easy objectives to score for aggro include Chill of the Grave. Ironically, it’s actually 2 glory but still super simple.
Chum the Waters – Not the best of cards on paper. However, during the ping meta, it quickly became much more popular. It was a decent end phase for 2 glory. Shame it has to rotate now, just as HO is getting more popular… There aren’t really much alternatives for this card.
Unsanctioned – This one became quite popular in Wyrdhollow! A really well designed card, with an easy condition in some matchups, but an alternate condition to score it in matchups other than those! Shame it was restricted to Order warbands, I know I would have liked it in my other decks. A great alternative today exists in Corralled Like Sheep, at least for the first condition.
Shifting Walls – Our final card, this card was scorable even when tabled and led to some crazy mind games. Do I charge into the edge hexes and risk getting trapped to deny Shifting Walls, or do I play it safe and maybe yield 2 glory? It lost popularity as more reliable 2 glory end phases were printed… but an alternative to this mind games card exists in Cold of the Void.
And that’s it! I hope you all enjoyed the article! Hopefully the next decks released bring us some alternatives to these great cards.
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And with that, I hope to see you again soon!
Staggerers - A Warhammer Underworlds Blo 