I've played 5 games of Shadespire so far with just the base set I've been very impressed with how the rules play and how concise they are. (They don't suffer from endless tables to look up and have few moments where you just don't know what to do.) The models are GW's typical quality, and as they are coloured plastic, you can play right off the bat. All the components are of high quality. I think the game has great deal of scope to improve and new tiles, cards and warbands will really improve the game. The only shame is that warbands are not configurable, but this has helped the speed of games and also helps to keep it competitive.

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire is the new miniatures board game from Games Workshop, clearly intended to go up against properties like Fantasy Flight's X-Wing Miniatures Game as a competitive, head to head experience that doesn't need a giant board full of terrain and a whole afternoon to play. Despite using both cards and miniatures, as well as custom dice and printed gameboards, Shadespire is actually really quick to pick up and learn, which is definitely its main strength. The game itself is interesting enough, with a good bit of tactics and some light resource management, as well as the ability to customise your own deck of cards. One potential issue is the inclusion of neutral cards that can be used by any faction in the expansion boxes, which means that to access all the cards when deckbuilding you will need to buy the entire range. Only eight miniatures for $115 isn't great value compared to the more expensive Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar starters, but the quality of the game components is excellent, as are the sculpts. If you're a veteran of miniature wargames, Shadespire might not be exactly what you're after, but it seems like a great way to introduce kids or boardgamer friends into the wargaming hobby.

This is a great introduction to Games Workshop's Age of Sigmar setting with a small scale one-on-one (expandable to up to 4 players with a second set) tactical board game which does a great job of easing players into some of the more complicated aspects of tabletop wargaming. The eight miniatures included are incredibly detailed and require no glue to assemble (again, another easy stepping-on point to the hobby aspects of wargaming). They are molded in different coloured plastics for each faction so that they don't need to be painted (but those willing to take that extra step will end up with some great models). The gameplay is snappy with three turns of combat and objective gathering playing out in under an hour but the addition of customisable objective and power decks creates a depth and variety of play.