I got a chance to play Games Workshop’s Warhammer Underworld: Shadespire the other day and that is a fine little piece of miniature bliss. The last GW game I played and enjoyed was Space Hulk 3.0, but I don’t own it. I own a copy of Dreadfleet but it is still in shrink and I haven’t gotten enough of a push to rectify that. Shadespire, however, seems right up my alley.
Shadespire is a skirmish board game set in the Warhammer world. You run a squad of 3 to 8 figures on a hex map trying to score glory (VPs) in three brief and bloody rounds. Glory is gained by killing foes or achieving objectives from a hand of cards. The interesting point of the game lies in the objective deck that is specific for your faction and one that you customize before the game. Another deck, the Power deck, is also customizable and specific to your faction. In many ways, this runs similar to Fantasy Flights’ Imperial Assault skirmish but has more card-driven focus.
Due to the deck customization, board options, and objectives, the game packs a lot of variability in a small package. The setup time and game length is easy enough to fit in a little over a half hour, which makes it great for a “night cap” game with miniatures and mayhem.
I don’t need another massive army game or system with wave after wave of new figures and scenery to create so I could see adding this to my collection if just not right now… We’ll see. This might be the game that breaks me after 3 months of holding back.
But… the sculpts on those figures are just so fine and red is my color…
To flip over to something I am still acquiring, I did get in some of the new Dropzone Commander Famous Commanders that came out.
The models look like a lot of fun so it’ll be nice to divert my attention away from the Shadespire temptation and get these ready for the table.
In other, other news, we saw some Walking Dead All Out War previews at Mantic’s Open Day but Miniature Market opened up their pre-orders with some new kits and images of their own. The UK Expo is underway so the release of the pre-order options may have coincided with that. I’m not sure if there were any previews at that convention but I’ll keep an eye out. All images below are from Miniature Market.
First up is a small kit previewing “Chris, Leader of the Hunters.” I assume this set will come with more than just the single figure but at least we get to see the sculpt.
Next is the full expansion set with all the Hunters. This set will likely follow the same pattern as the others with a new set of scenarios, map, and rules to use in the game.
Also up for pre-order was the Abraham set that we saw in the Open Day images as well as two image-less products simply named:
- Rick, Leader of the Survivors
- Maggie & Glenn on Horseback
It’s nice to see more horseback models and hopefully we can get more rules around how they should operate in the game. Another Rick set is fine but the “Disfigured but Determined” version covers the whole Hunters arc:
It would be weird if they were jumping to the Leader of Alexandria bit (the card of which was previewed in the Eeny Meeny Miny Moe resin set). I guess we’ll see soon enough.
Lastly, the latest resin set detailing the Governor and Michonne face off will be available. This set is retro since the events of that showdown have already been covered in the game so it’ll be interesting to see if they add any new cards like last time.
Sean Gewecke
I recently picked up a copy of Shadespire based on some conversations with a few friends. I look forward to painting up a couple of factions and trying my hand at some deck building.
Christian
Nice! I’ve only got the one play to go off but it was quite fun. And with the game mainly being in the cards, once you have a set of minis painted, you’re good go even when expansions come out (which sounds like they will be card-based).