Hexbane's Universals

Hexbane’s Hunters are here and some Universals snuck in with them. Let’s get into it! You can find the Hexbane Faction Cards at this link.

First Impressions

[D]AVY & [P]HIL

Couple bangers in here, but by and large, nothing that’s going to shake up the meta like Sudden Revelation did. But let’s take a closer look.

Oof. This is Plant a Standard (that allows neutral territory objectives) that requires inspiration. Seems rough.

Someone convert their Khagra to look like this, please.

This might have some play? Especially in an illusion heavy deck. Or if you build heavy on friendly choose options. But any time you’re giving me a chance to score a surge based off of power cards, you’ve got my attention.

One glory end phase makes this suspect. Casually scoreable against some warbands with beasts, but no guarantee you’ll play against those.

There could be a critical mass where enough stagger cards exist to play this. Who’s gonna be that mad scientist. Too bad Clawpack are in the wrong Grand Alliance for this one.

With that armor, they could probably just wait for Aemos to drown…

Definitely going to have play after some rotation. Similar to, but harder then Orchestrated Kill. Orchestrated Kill has the advantage of working if you “cheat” supports out with power cards, or if you’re using range 2+ attacks to land hits on supported targets. This has the much more niche advantage of working with ping or lethals (as long as you have two adjacent to the lethals.

Ghost card! They’re the ones bringing flyers in bulk. Although… this is probably more attractive to warbands that inspire swathes of dudes at once. For instance, Gitz might like it if they didn’t already have a plateful of higher glory options.

Gotta be humiliating to be Dhoraz. You’re a brawler and made it to the card art, but are getting punked instead of smashing fools.

Obligatory warning about one glory end phase cards. Brodus can score this with a quick scything attack. In fact… there’s plenty of scything brawlers. The second half is often going to score off of warbands that like to voltron a Range 2+ fighter.

The Redkap v. Dibbz saga, as begun in Vicious Struggle continues. I look forward to episode 3.

Best part of this one is the card art. Worth nothing that you don’t need a guard token, so fighters intrinsically on guard can score this, which isn’t always the case with these guard objectives.

The best boys are gonna go find some replacement eyelids for Pock.

This is weird, right? Like someone with a bunch of companions or beasts should find this super easy. Exiled Dead can pretty casually score this, I think? But I wish there was a caveat for if the enemy leader is out of action.

Feels real reasonable in a passive control deck. Scoring without interaction is often the name of the game. Worth noting that I’m pretty sure the way this reads is that every one of your fighters with two or more upgrades needs to be holding an objective.

Holy crap. Aemos does NOT like Blackpowder. This is the second card where he’s just yeeting the ogor’s right arm off.

Hatchi Matchi! Shadeborn get a real gift here! If you’ve got room for accuracy gambits you can’t do much better than this if you’re assassin heavy. Innate support has play outside that too, especially with no range restriction. Hexbane’s dogs, or Spinefin can set this up.

But of course, we all know the real power here is setting up the Lethyr super attack.

WOW! This is like Twist the Knife out to Range 2, but it damages the attacker. I would take this in most Chaos warbands, but this goes into crazy town for Slaanesh. Giving Slaanesh fighters an cleave after you see if it’ll make a difference? Sweet. Playing it in a warband that might want the extra self-damage for inspire? Awesome. Playing in a warband that could self heal this damage immediately? Get in my deck. I’m not one to get hyperbolic about things, but this is my lead candidate for a restriction in this set.

She’s pointing at Elathain, but you know she’s thinking about Snirk.

Needing focus means you probably want a level 2 caster which are pretty sparse in death warbands. This is a rare enough effect that I’d give this a long look as thorns. Cutting inspire out from under someone can really wreck plans. But this is one of those cards that feels like it “Does a cool thing, but doesn’t directly help my gameplan” and as a result may not see play for that reason.

If you’re wondering what in the sweet hell Torka is carrying, scroll down to the upgrades section real quick.

I actually think this might be decent. A range 3 ping is great and if you’re running weapon caddies, you often end up in situations where they’re unlikely to survive the counter attack. This one’s got some game, in my opinion.

Whoa! You’ll see this in Championship play. Probably not from me, because my perpetually sleep deprived and aging brain can barely remember which hex is an objective, much less which number it is. The no move/charge restriction is significant, but the payoffs are substantial. Especially solid for warbands with Range 2 fighters that can do work. I’m thinking Shadeborn especially like it, courtesy of Drusylla, Slythael and extra incentive to ping.

Cool tech piece. Happens after all other cards are played, so you can make sure you have the final say. Notice it refers to objective tokens, not feature tokens. I think some specific hold builds will reach for this. Even better if you’re flipping to objectives and leaving them flipped.

The first clause (about upgrades) feels like more of the consolation here, though it may contribute to a stand-off control playstyle.

The more of this kind of card you see, the closer passive Steelhearts become a reality and we can awaken the sleeping form of Michael Carlin.

That’s a powerful effect. Gating it behind a Domain gambit is a big challenge, though. Means you’re probably going to want at least three of those, and I don’t know if there’s three out there that would play to this style yet.

The double caveats make this a little tough to justify. I’m not totally seeing the builds that want this, but it’s a good get for double dodge warbands. I’m not gonna say bad, but if it’s got play, it’s in a blindspot for me.

Stagger on demand? Used early, this can be a round-long accuracy benefit. And someone more “mad scientist” than me can see if it sets up that fabled stagger build.

In what world did you need -2 Defence to hit Zarshia?

Two or more hexes away just means they can’t be adjacent to any friends, which isn’t too bad. It feels kinda rare that you’ll have a target on 3 defense… which means you should probably generally judge the card on it being -1 defense, and in that case, it’s roughly worth an extra attack die. With positional restrictions.

Something to keep an eye on in metas where defensive dice stacking becomes prevalent. Sure would be nice to drop Snirk to one defensive die if he ever stayed in his own territory.

Speaking of messing with Snirk…

I don’t know what to say here. If you’re trying to force a brawl in the middle, then this could do the trick. It’ll mess up a lot of skittish Skink moves. If you hid at the back of your board, people couldn’t push once they were past the midline? Messes with drivebacks…

A card that really disrupts the mechanics of the game, but the question is whether you can find a way to take advantage of that change.

Yes, Myari, get to range 1 with Morgok. Let me know how that works out for you.

Well now. Fairly accurate. Not amazing, but it can interact with things like Feral Symbiote and Great Strength, which can in turn unlock a surge like Magical Mauling. There may at some point also exist a critical mass of Backlash prevention that could make Vaults Mysterium viable.

Wait, this isn’t the end of the Redkap, Dibz saga, is it?

If I’m reading this right, this attack action will get less accurate as you kill or drive back fighters early in the scything action, which is kinda weird.

Extra scything in the right meta isn’t terrible, but I’d be surprised if this sees a lot of play, even in Nurgle for the extra ensnare. As always, I’m happy to be proved wrong, though.

I’m wondering if this was ever a design that allowed you to score the same objective twice? The cost of an action is really, really steep. I can only see it if you had lulled someone into a false sense of security by discarding something like Claim the City. Like, using this with a super greedy, big swing objective deck. But that’s a real stretch. I think your energy is better put towards making a smoother objective deck.

I mean… kinda cool actually, especially with a warband that is using defensive dice to prevent death. Or maybe you can let fighters get vulnerable for other reasons with more impunity? But not Dread Pageant because this is GA: Destruction. With a lot of ping damage in the mix, maybe you look at this? But getting to vulnerable and no farther is kind of a gamble. Probably better if you have something like Narrow Escape or Skin of their Teef to make it more likely that you will have an opportunity to use it.

I dunno, seems like a “More cute than good” to me right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mad science deck that busts this out.

OH! Pair this with something insane like Burning Wrath! There’s your mad science. You can have that one for free. You’re welcome.

Could be a breathing tube. I like to think it’s a super long skeleton finger and Valyssa is about to get got.

Ohhh kayyyy? Who’s going to be the person with the 72 page hand-written manifesto on why a domain deck is actually going to work? That person is in on this card, probably.

Guess Khorne isn’t going to voltron these maps. And so dies the dream of the totally passive build for Magore. Alas.

So only the Detailed Map Fragment will list the “break four maps to get 2 glory” reaction, which is fair.

Uh, but yeah. Doesn’t look like the actions on these maps are in danger of being OP. Yikes. Sometimes the actions on these can help with doing things like scoring Great Gains with low risk. So maybe something is cooking. We should see at least two more, and sometimes there’s a surprise standout in these “sets”.

Torka might have had the right idea with Flying Bludgeon

Range 4 is awesome. Two damage is even more awesome. The bounty restriction is fine. Two fury is not great. Breaking on your first shot is roooough.

There’s a circumstance where sufficient accuracy boosts and such might give you a good hit with this, but it’d be awful tough to make space for it.

I do like that this season’s weapons (Cursed xx) are a further departure from the sword/axe/spear, etc we’ve seen in the past.

Domain build!!! Get on it now! I joke. But do I? Yes, I do.

Hey what’s up with Domain Upgrades though? We’ve seen a few of those, but nothing that interacts with them yet?

There’s some good weapons set to rotate with Direchasm. Maybe this gets another look at that point.

Stupid reaction blocking keeping me from machine gunning Exiled Dead during a danse activation.

Once upon a time, we saw builds that really leveraged this sort of third end phase extra glory. The timing is such that you can use it to score things like Great Gains too.

Resurrectable fighters seem like a good landing spot for these. Ione might be wandering around and flailing helplessly, but she’s got this key tucked in her front pocket, and that’s all she needed to do.

I hope this is a reflection of a fighter we’ve yet to see. That’d be amazing.

My first read said this would be good for replacing Dying Curse of Screaming Demise when Arena Mortis 2 rotated out. Or just supplementing them.

But no. The timing on this means the targeted fighter needs to survive. So this is going on bigger fighters to dissuade attacks. It’s pretty solid, and I think you’ll see it. It can smoke smaller fighters (but not Exiled Dead, le sigh) or bring a bigger fighter into kill range.

I think you’ll see this for sure.

Eesh. This is a significantly more restricted Fighter’s Ferocity. It lets you double down on the effect, though, so might see some play in warbands that lean into range 3- Thundrik’s? Hexbane? Farstrider?

Summary

One choice that looks way powerful (Sadistic Stab), some solid hotness (Blind Gamble, Disciplined Strike) and some stuff at a tier further down. And a fair amount of cards that might bubble to the surface if the meta shifts one way or the other. These are first impressions, so I look forward to field testing proving those early opinions wrong. Get out there and get after it!

The Mortal RealmsAugust 13, 2022Comment