Credit for this reveal goes to countbeningnito with this post over on reddit.
With the Q3 tournament kit arriving in some stores we have our first images of cards from the last two expansions, Ylthari’s Guardians and Thundrik’s Profiteers respectively. At this point it is reasonable to assume that both of these expansions will drop sometime in April, roughly following the same release schedule as last year. This means that anyone practicing for big tournaments in May, like for example the TWO Grand clashes that we will have in the UK, should be extremely interested in the contents of those boxes, especially for the neutral cards that could give you the edge needed to win. So lets get on with it and talk about these two ‘advanced spoilers’ that we have today.
I will be rating the cards from 1-5 according to the Official Steel City criteria(which I keep having to update because of the BAR):
- 5 – Best in class effects that should go in basically every deck that can take them (Ready for Action, Hidden Paths, Faneway Crystal)
- 4 – Powerful or versatile effects that are extremely strong in a particular archetype or pretty good in any deck (Abasoth’s Withering, Superior Tactician, Bag of Tricks)
- 3 – Solid effects that will find a place in many decks (Haymaker, Sidestep, Strong Start)
- 2 – Limited effects that might be useful in some specialised decks (Earthquake, No Time, Grand Melee)
- 1 – Just plain bad cards (Curious Inversion, Interdiction)
Silence – Rating 2
Lets get the boring one out of the way first, Silence is simply not very good. Generally speaking your opponent will only cast one spell in the power phase and you have to go first with Silence in order to disrupt their plans as well as predicting that this is what they will do. It can be used as a reaction to your opponent playing something like Gather the Storm or to a lesser extent any of the Innate upgrades (like Eye of the Storm) which will probably stop your opponents plans. I say probably because the Innate effect will persist into the next activation phase and if not used into the power phase after that, where it can once again be freely used.
The best case scenario for Silence is that your opponent plays one of the above cards in the last power step of a turn and you react with silence. This shuts them down from using any spell gambit cards they had in hand until the next turn, which could stop them scoring big from an objective like Magical Mastery or just be used to stop them playing a powerful spell in its own right.
However, once your opponent see’s this trick they will play around it, so for a best of 3 its at best a good card in a set of very specific circumstances and that’s assuming that your opponent is taking a warband with magic in the first place. Gambit slots are hard to come by and I just cant see Silence being good enough to take one. If you want to play good anti magic tech because you are worried about a lot of Cursebreakers showing up to ruin your tournament then I would advise taking the often forgotten No Time or Warding Scroll. No Time is a much more versatile effect that can be used against non magic warbands while Warding Scroll is a reaction that lets you pick your poison and stop that one spell you really don’t want cast from going through (including spell attack actions).
Well of Power – Rating 4
Spell dice. Spell dice everywhere.
Well of Power is an extremely powerful card for magic based warbands. Level 2 Wizards can start rolling 3 dice whenever they want to cast a spell, for Stormsire and Vortimus this not only means casting spell gambit cards but also improves the accuracy on their spell attacks, essentially going from 2 hammers to 3. Some of the more difficult to cast spells, 2 focus ones, now become very odds on if you combine this with Arcane Focus.
Will we finally see Cursebreakers try to combo the dreaded double Shardgale? I can hear the sound of a million Gitz players crying out in pain from the very idea of that one. If you do go down that route then you really have to build a deck for it, I don’t see it being an option for the versatile style of Cursebreakers that Bryce won the Warhammer World Grand Clash with. However an all in magic type deck might just about have enough tools to work with now, Magical Mastery (shown above in the Silence section) is certainly a goal that’s solid to aim for and if you can kill all 2 wound fighters on the way then you are having a good time, could we see a return of the dreaded defensive deck at the end of season 2?
It’s worth mentioning that the fighter has to be inspired to use this upgrade, which once again benefits the Cursebreakers over the Eyes of the Nine, as they have a much easier time inspiring. For any Cursebreaker deck I think this card is an autoinclude, for any other deck that can get over the inspired hurdle and would like a permanent extra spell dice, you should also include this card. Yes if you build for it then Thredda can be rolling 4 magic dice and that’s not counting re rolls.
Out-tro
Sorry I have been lax on the updates recently, I’m starting to get ready for those big Grand Clashes that I mentioned and this means keeping all my secrets to myself, although this time I will be testing my crazy decks out at the tournaments I will be attending. For the last Warhammer World Grand Clash me and Tom ruined our practice by being too secret and tailoring decks to just beat each other, this time we are going to play the field a bit more. So apologies in advance to anyone I face in a tournament over the next month, my serious game face will be on.
With the new expansions so close to dropping there will be a bunch of stuff that I can talk about coming up, so expect to see all the usual pouring over every detail article popping up on Steel City over the coming weeks.
At Steel City we would love to have your feedback. If you have something to say about a specific article then feel free to comment below, if you want to get in touch about the blog in general, or just prefer to communicate privately then you can get in touch by emailing us at team@steelcityshadespire.com
Steel City Underworlds 
Leave a Reply