The Tabletop Heaven Blog Post #2
Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave Fully Painted Unboxing
Welcome back to the Tabletop Heaven Blog. This week we are going to take a look at Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave. But this isn’t going to be like every other boring unboxing article. We are going to be looking at a fully painted Beastgrave core set. But wait, there’s more! We are also going to look at a fully painted set of Beastgrave Primal Lair scenery tiles. The level of awesomeness is off the charts when you add these 3D elements to your Warhammer Underworlds gaming board. All these models were painted by Golden Globe Gaming, a commission painting company. Here at Tabletop Heaven we have partnered with Golden Globe Gaming to bring you some exciting and beautiful content to check out here on the blog as well as gorgeous models for in store demos and pro painted models to give away as contest prizes.
Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave comes with everything you need to start playing the game. It comes with the rules, dice, tokens, game boards, cards and 2 warbands. The warbands, Gashrak’s Ravagers and Skaeth’s Wild Hunt are unassembled and unpainted.
Let’s get started with the components in the Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave core box. Let me just start by saying this set comes in an attractive and sturdy box that looks good on your shelf with the rest of your boardgame collection. Opening the box you’ll find the rules booklet right on top. Clocking at 40 pages this is not the beast of a rulebook that Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 players are acquainted with but it is more substantial than your typical board game. It starts out with 8 pages of background story on the setting and the warbands. Then you get about 30 pages detailing the warbands, deck construction, game setup, game mechanics, and alternate rules. At the back of the book there is a glossary with page references and a reference aid on the back cover. In addition there is a separate Learn to Play booklet which has useful symbol keys and a game play tutorial. There is also an assembly guide for the models.
Now for the cardboard components. There are 2 double sided game boards which fold out to 18”x11.5” each. The boards have a hex based system printed on them. Hexes with thick white borders and red borders identify impassible and lethal hexes. These marked hexes are where you can choose to place your 3D tiles from the Primal Lair set.
Those of you who have some Fantasy Flight Games titles in your collection are familiar with high quality, thick cut cardboard tokens. A lot of tokens. Beastgrave follows that model with 3 punch boards of double sided tokens. There tokens for wounds, activations, special actions and glory points. There are also a number of hex tokens to place on the board including objectives and lethal hexes.
The dice are 6 sided dice but they do not have the standard numerical pips. X-wing players are familiar with having a set of attack dice and another set for defence. Beastgrave also has a third set for magic spells. All three sets have symbols for critical success and regular successes as well as support successes which only come into play when your models on the board are positioned to provide support to the attackers or defenders. The warband reference cards have the matching attack, defence and spell symbols next to the respective action on the card.
Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave is a tactical card game. The core box comes with three card packs. The first two contain the Fighter cards for your warbands as well as pre constructed decks for the two warbands in the core set so you can just unwrap the cards and start playing. The third card pack is labeled Extra Cards and contains additional power cards and objective cards for the two warbands as well as a dozen universal cards that can be used by any warband.
And finally, the models. If you are a miniatures enthusiast like me this is arguably the most important part.Games Workshop prides themselves on making “the best models in the world” and they are justified in that feeling. The two warbands in Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave are designed to showcase what GW can do with their models. As a hybrid board/card game Beastgrave is targeted at Tabletop gamers who may not be miniature wargamers(yet). The hobby is a central part of all Games Workshop games and that is still true for Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave. But in Warhammer Underworlds the hobby barrier to entry is significantly lowered. The models are all push fit models that snap together and are a breeze to assemble. All the sprues are colored plastic so each warband is a thematically identifiable color which differentiates it from your opponents models. And the models have the high level of details and dynamic poses that you would expect from the company that makes “the best models in the world.” One bit that particularly impressed me is that all the bases for the models are on the sprues and have scenic elements molded directly onto the base. I’ll be going into greater details on the models in future articles so stay tuned to this blog for more in depth articles on the hobby aspect of the models in Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave.
That’s it for the unboxing article for Beastgrave but I do have a few other reminders for you. Tabletop Heaven partnered with Golden Globe Gaming is running a contest for the month of July to give away a pro painted The Light of Eltharion model from the new Lumineth Army Box. We will be running additional giveaway contests every month. The prize model for August will coincide with the 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000 release. We have a pro painted Warhammer Underworlds warband on the list of giveaways as well as some limited release models. The best way to find out about the upcoming contests is to sign up for the Tabletop Heaven mailing list. You can also find us on Facebook.
