In game where an early Contested Stronghold was Pillaged, I was severely crippled and more often than not could not come back if they followed that up with a few 2 attack creatures. It was even worse if they went first, started off with a Greyseer, and then did a turn 2 Pillage + Clan Moulder's Elite. I still feel the Unitless BT deck is the best deck, but if decks are starting to adapt to it's existence, then it starts to become much less attractive. That said, if people are going to stick to Dark Elves in tournament play, I see no reason to NOT play the BT deck as you can go get a snack from the concession stand, take a nap, then come back and destroy the DE deck so bad they won't even know what hit them. They have no Pillages (unless they severely want to cripple their resource base), and no real way to ever disrupt you. Yea, sure, they have Hate to mess up your first or even 2nd turns. BIG DEAL. They do nothing at all of any consequence to you in these turns anyway. Sure, the Thanquol, double Elite draw will beat you still, probably, but that's true of any Skaven deck regardless of capital board.
On to the real subject: Dark Elves.
I see why people are playing these guys in tournament play. They have all the tools to beat any unit based deck, which is pretty much every deck right now. To me, the most attractive feature of any DE deck is the card Hate. Hate is absolutely abysmal to play against and even more so if your opponent can turn that resource into a Chittering Horde or other value play. I've been playing Chittering Horde and let me tell you, Hate into Chittering Horde is one of the best plays in the game.
Oh, random sidetracked thought; I need to give a lot of props to Clamatius and his play group. I do not know these guys personally but they have to put a lot of time into this game just based off their refined deck lists. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go to deckbox.org, do a people search at the top for Clamatius, and you get to see his decks, regular and single set. The guy is a beast. While I don't always agree with his card choices, he definitely knows his shit.
End side thought.
Yea, Dark Elves. If you're truly expecting a field of Dwarves, Orcs, whatever else plays Units, this is the deck you should be playing. There's enough subtle card combinations in the deck to satisfy any player that needs to whet his appetite for control. There are a few things I don't understand though:
1. Caught the Scene is awful. Unless you're not running any Skaven in your deck, the triple loyalty cost is an absolute nightmare. Unless you get a Har Ganeth + Walking Sacrifice hand, you can't feasibly cast the card for 2. Even casting it for the absolute minimum still isn't very good most of the time. If you could only ever draw 1 card a turn in this game, I'd be all for the card. The fact that any reasonable deck is going to be drawing 2-3 cards a turn is a real big turnoff.
2 . 3 Har Ganeth is a must. I can't believe I've actually seen DE decks with zero to two of this card in their decks. Yes, it's unique. No, I don't care. Play three. You need games with this deck where you can go t1 Har Ganeth into your Kingdom, Innovation into Vile Sorc. into your Quest. You can't really do that with 2 Har Ganeth and even with 3 it doesn't happen THAT much more often. 2 Walking Sacrifice seems perfectly legit, but 2 Har Ganeth is not. If you don't know how it works with Vile Sorceress, then you don't need to be playing the deck.
3. The deck has soooooooo many tricks with Deathmaster that's it's not even funny. All the minus HP effects are mind boggling. At times, I think there are too many, but it's probably necessary and what makes the deck work so well. Redundancy is pretty important in card games and boy does this deck pack a ton of it.
4. Finally, do not try to play Dark Visions in your deck. I know the card is really appealing, but it's not that good really. The loyalty cost is annoying as you can't play it off of a turn 1 Hate unless you went first. It really turns into the Chittering Horde vs. Dark Visions argument and that's a loooooooong discussion. I'll side track myself to point out a few things:
- Chittering Horde - Forces you to play Skaven like Poison Wind Globadiers. While I don't think this is entirely all that bad, it is less than desirable at times.
- Dark Visions - All but forces you to play 3 Walking Sacrifice. Again, not an entirely bad thing, but again, that's less than desirable. Also, can't play off a turn 1 Hate. Which is the biggest kick in the ass.
A lot of these are points that most of you already know, but I always feel the beed to point out the obvious to me because what's obvious to me might not be to everyone. As usual, questions, comments, and concerns can be published directly to this blog. Just click the "comment" button and we'll talk about it.
- SF
I've been called many things in my life, most of them not very flattering. I do not think I have been referred to as a beast at any point.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, I don't think that the Dwarf/Orc matchup heavily favours the Orcs as much as you do. Dwarves are my favourite deck in Standard, although I think the Thrower deck is the best if you don't have sideboards. Dwarves vs. most Orc lists seems around 50/50. Troll Vomit does seem to help the Orcs win in situations where they otherwise would definitely lose.
I am not surprised that not many people are playing the Thrower deck in tournaments. It's hard to play and if you make a mistake you usually lose. Having said that, with correct play your matchups are very good.
I am not seeing significant netdecking in tournament reports. It seems that people would rather play their own design than copy someone else's. On a totally unrelated note, a lot of the decklists that I'm seeing seem pretty bad.
As for me, I haven't been playing much standard WH:I constructed recently - instead, I've been playing Core Set draft and Single Set. I haven't figured out the best answer to Orc rush in Single Set, although I suspect that there isn't something that beats it reliably. When Mining Tunnels comes out we'll see if Dwarves become competitive with the Orcs.