Warlord Babble

Affecting the Cost Structure

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:53:14 GMT

I love playing Blue.

Magic: the Gathering was, like for most, my first CCG. And I loved playing Blue. Messing with my opponent's plans, countering what they wanted to do, and generally just being a nuisance was great fun. I usually combo-ed it with Red or Black, because those were the two fastest colors in support in early Magic, and as I've said previously, Speed Kills.

But how to do that in Warlord? The cost structure is vastly different (Rank & File versus Mana) and countering things is almost impossible. For a long time, there just wasn't a way to do it. Then, the Deverenians gave us redirect and cancel of strikes, and it was good. I really enjoy playing Devs, as they are very much a tactical 'no' faction. But I still couldn't touch the cost structure, and this sort of annoyed me.

Then I tried Keira Syneri during one of our Summer Warlord Leagues. And found my answer.

The great thing about our Summer League is that it gets us to break out of our mold and try something different. We try to take Warlords that we don't play very often, who have completely different play styles to what we normally play, and try them out in a restricted environment where you've got time to test ideas against similarly powered decks before taking on massively fine-tuned decks. I chose Keira just because I thought the idea of taking control of an opponent's character and beating them over the head with it was a fun idea. But she turned out to be so much more. She opened up an entirely new way for me to mess with my opponents.

Eventually, I settled on my preferred play-style with Keira. Rank Manipulation. But not my ranks, oh no. My opponent's. You see, when you Mind-Wipe (tm) an opponent using Keira's ability (I know, the Kiera Knightly fans call it 'charming,' but I find that so dull) they are no longer a part of your opponent's army. They're your character now, stealthed into your opponent's army. Viola! No longer are they a part of your opponent's rank structure. Meaning they can't hold ranks. Meaning you've essentially 'killed' a character, and messed with the cost structure of the game, the ranks. Wheee!!

So, here's a Keira Syneri deck who's primary purpose is to mess with your opponent’s rank structure. Is it tournament winning? Not really. It might give a run on the Orm drops, as they will hopefully not be able to build back nearly far enough to get their big bruisers into play, but it loses hard to weenie blitz. So essentially, Freeks own it. But it's still fun to play.

Starters:
Keira Syneri
1x Talyn
1x Eirlas
3x Javvyn

Javvyn is another key card for manipulating your opponent’s ranks. A character who kills them has to attach them, and then that character no longer counts for preventing the rank behind them from being illegal. So even in victory, they work towards your ends. Talyn is discard tech for early Tybasts, and gets me two shots to boot. Eirlas is almost a no brainer, as he allows for early pressure, and possibly into my opponent’s second rank if they take a poke at him. And Keira can usually mind-wipe a low level character early, to give me more offense and take away more of their rank structure.

Characters:
3x Sebes
3x Dex Glyn
3x Kyra Squib
3x Tybast
2x Jevae
1x Nekrast
1x Crimson Rigel
2x Elwyn Rowan
1x Olivark the Quiet

Sort of a hodge-podge of characters, many of them usual suspects in an elf deck. Tybast for skill debuff to my opponents. Javae for weenie clearing. Dex Glyn for rank shoring/hard hitting. Kyra Squib for easy recursion, Sebes gives me some durability. Elwyn Rowan is to help my little plebes hit a little harder, as well as give some skill debuff to opponents. Olivark is in there to help me see how well he works. So far, I like him. Crimson Rigel and Nekrast give me a couple of tool-box characters to solve some of my biggest weaknesses with the deck, hitting high AC and recursing characters to maintain ranks.

Items:

1x Blackruby Helm
3x Living History
1x Kaballite Charm
2x Wand of Negation
1x Fortune Lost
1x Death’s Call
1x Rod of Lore
1x Dythanus Mantle

More toolbox. Some scribe, a few skill-check offensive items, some rank holding in the History, and a pair of Wands of Negation, to mess with the opponent’s items. I’ve considered the Figurines, but that’s a few too many level 8 items. I’d prefer to not be running back and forth all that often, if I can help it, and Living History works just fine for the rank-holding and extra weenie.

Actions:
3x Ball Lightning
3x Stolen Substance
3x Consume from Within
3x Frozen March
2x Death or Glory

Ball Lighting gives me some order offense. Stolen Substance makes more characters useless for rank holding, very handy if you need to get one more character out of the way to drag the opposing Warlord to the front for your plebes to munch on. Consume from Within saves your own rank-structure, or if you can manage to get it on an opponent’s character, it’s an intimidating presence that they have to plan for in their own ranks. Frozen March is some offense or stall, and with Tybast and the skill items in the deck, gets very hard to resist, and Death or Glory can clear out an opponent’s hand, or serve as some end-of-turn surprise offense to plink your opponent.

Playtesting has shown that, as I feared, a low-level blitz eats this deck for lunch. And spell blitz isn’t much happier. A win in these situations is only going to come if you get a fortuitous opening draw. But on the plus side, there are few ways to win that are more entertaining than taking over your opponent’s strongest soldier and beating their Warlord over the head with it. Good times. Good times. Any of the higher-level decks will have a very hard time holding ranks long enough to get their beefy characters into play, though.

Winter’s Chill is a fun card that has come in and out of this deck several times. It continues to mess with the opponent by denying a just entered character from performing any actions. Often, your opponents will put someone into play in a high rank with the intent of falling them forward to help reconstruct their ranks structure and get more high-level characters into play. But Winter’s Chill shuts this down cold. If you want to test it, I recommend removing one Frozen March, and either Blackruby Helm or Dythanus Mantle to make room for a couple.

Tournament Deck Construction

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:16:30 GMT

One thing that's noticeably absent from my decks that I build here are 'tournament staple' cards, such as Olivark the Quiet or Veiled Passing in cleric decks. This is because in most of these decks, rather than include those cards, I put in other cards that allow me to test various strategies to see what works best. Once these are tested, I tend to slide to one of these strategies for a tournament, and add some of these cards in. But not always.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of 'tournament staple' cards. They will often dilute your strategy, in an attempt to defend from possible threats that may or may not actually materialize. A card will have to be tremendously impressive to convince me that it must be included.

As an example, Wand of Negation. This is a card that can almost always have a good use, and so if I'm playing a wizard I will include it 90% of the time. Many decks, particularly in the current EE environment, utilize item cards to make their characters more powerful. Negating that card will take a large chunk out of what someone is trying to do. On the other hand, Veiled Passing is slightly less useful. You must have a trigger to use it, it can and should rarely be saved if it goes unused. VP only makes my decks when I have no other cards for that slot. Unless, of course, it's vital to my deck's strategy.

When preparing for a tournament, test your deck thoroughly. Consider what is being used in the environment, and what your deck needs to accomplish to win. Do your best to streamline the deck, making sure that each card contributes to your victory condition. And most of all, play something you'll enjoy playing. It's very tempting to copy the 'flavor of the month,' but if you don't enjoy playing it, you'll miss out on the full value of the tournament experience.

Syvonne Strikes Back

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:40:37 GMT

I've decided to take on Syvonne Ashenstorm as a project. Largely because it's seen as a Fool's Errand. She is incredibly difficult to build for, and get to operate properly. She screams out for Siege characters, as her ability just makes them ridiculous. At the same time, a deck built entirely of siege engines is going to get obliterated, as without support characters they are just too weak on their own. An impressive array of siege characters and siege support characters have come out for the NoThRoG in Epic Edition, and narrowing down the choices to get a well-running deck is a massive chore. Nevertheless, it's one I'm willing and eager to take on, because it's great fun trying to take a sub-par Warlord and make them, if not a tournament winner, at least competitive. And it's not like people are going to see her coming, so if she runs well it'll be a surprise that few are ready for.

Wow. Every time I think about this it gets a little overwhelming. I think I'm going to go with a mix of Siege characters. Some melee, and some ranged. One nice thing about the NoThRoG siege characters is that they tend to have more durability than their sentient counterparts. With a wizard like Syvonne as my Warlord, having more durable people between me and the opposing army is a good thing. A very good thing. But, as always with the 'Throgs, the best defense is a superior offense. So we're going to try a spattering of spell blitz to go along with the heavy damage siege characters. Alright, we've got something of a framework to go with. On to the deck!

Starters:
Syvonne Ashenstorm
1x Hellbringer's Quill
1x Temb'w'bam
3x Gunda

Gunda for durability in the first turn. I've also tried Vaxxon. Not sure which I like better. At least I can get some offense out of the Gundas. The problem is I have to stabilize my formation by the end of the first turn or everything falls apart quickly. An opening hand of no characters is a death sentence for this deck. Temb gives me a spell-slinger off the start, and is great for some early pressure into my opponent's second rank if I need it. Comboed with the Quill, which benefits from Syvonne, I can reach out and touch my opponent's second rank if I can get their Warlord to spend. The start itself isn't overwhelming, but it's main purpose is to just hold the line until my Siegemaster can get the big engines moving.

Characters:
2x Wheeled Pikes
1x Sakal
2x Goza
2x Brel
2x Jinkini
1x Strak
2x Blacksand Cannon
2x Machine of Lukkot
2x Flamespitter
2x Light Catapults
1x Syvonne's Secret

Whew. That's quite an eclectic character base. I'm not sure I like Wheeled Pikes in this deck. They are useful, and coming into play in the first rank to do two wounds is great, but they are not very durable at all. Mostly, they're in to counter multi-HP starts from my opponent. I can start a couple of these to kill off Brine Fiends. Again, this deck is going to have to be fairly blitzy to compete, and I can't have my opponent hiding behind a meat wall if I can help it.

There are 9 higher level siege engines. Ideally, I set up Blacksand Cannon for the kill-shot, but there are (hopefully) not a lot of players that are just going to fall into my lap on that one. Hence the Flamespitters and Light Cats. High-pressure characters that can inflict massive amounts of damage. When drawn early with a Phantom Steed, they're game-breakers. Why not add more? Because of the mix of characters needed for Syvonne to be successful. The two Machines and Syvonne's Secret give me some melee punch, and Machine's 16AC and 2HP make for a very durable character.

Support wise, I've gone with the Brel and Strak standby characters. I'd gladly drop Sakal for another Strak, but it seems that I've been extremely unlucky in my ToL pulls. :P At any rate, Sakal does give me a surprise recharge for an expended Blacksand Cannon if necessary. Goza also makes an excellent finisher. Many a time I"ve fired off a spell from a spent Goza in the front rank and nuked an adjacent Siege character FTW. Jinkini is the last addition I made, and I've loved it. With him, my siege characters can hold the line for a much longer time, and he has even had the duty of healing my Warlord on occasion. Or drawn first turn can keep a Gunda around for the second round, a rare feat indeed.

Actions:
1x Ball Lightning
3x Fiery Bolts
3x Final Power
3x Phantom Steed
2x Dimension Door

A mix of spell blitz and spell cavalry. I have wizards to put pressure on the opponent with the order spells, and the movement spells get those hard-hitting siege engines into position quickly to inflict damage on my opponent. Final Power and Fiery Bolts are awesome to throw with Goza, giving me late heavy-hitting power if my opponent is foolish enough to wander into my trap. Why the single Ball Lightning? Because I wanted another order spell to cause damage to my opponents.

Items:
3x Ring of Vorn
3x Living HIstory
1x Kaballite Charm
2x Wand of Negation
1x Calavera
3x Figurine of Wonder

In an attempt to shore up the weakness of a NoThRoG army, that being lack of durability, I have added six character creating cards in the Figurines and History. If I had any spares, I'd put Nodwick in, but since he's in other decks currently, I had to go with Calavera to get the item-characters back from the discard pile. One upside is that with Calavera instead of Nodwick, I get Scribe for some of those movement spells that don't have a good target. I've got plenty of other wizards to bear Living History, what with the Figurines acting as additional spell casters. Ring of Vorn helps me to move my siege engines forward quickly, and I can often get a chain going with Syvonne and Goza or a Figurine. Wand of Negation helps me deal with pesky items, and the Kaballite Charm allows me to control some of my opponent's character movement.

I can see dropping the Charm for another Ball Lightning, and I might drop a Ring as well. They are good items, but I don't really need 3 rings, and the Charm is more of an annoyance factor than outright offense.

In the end, I really feel that Syvonne is still a card or two away from being really competitive. She's got the background for it, but really needs an Isadra type character, and that just hasn't come through yet. Nevertheless, she's an effective Warlord, and can take the unprepared by surprise. Give her a try, and as always, if you have observations or thoughts, feel free to share them.

Stunties on Speed

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:06:58 GMT

Dwarves. If you've read some of my earlier entries on my particular play philosophy (Speed Kills) then I'm sure you can understand that I have never been a huge fan of the cave rats, who for a long time claimed as their particular niche the ability to tank up and sit there, absorbing shots from your opponent and healing them away. Were they effective? You betcha. One of the individuals in my play group played Dwarves almost exclusively, and I spent many an hour beating my head against the flesh wall he put up in front of me. More often than not I came out victorious, but it was almost more than my sanity could take.

However, with late Campaign and on into Epic Edition, the Dwarves have got a brand new bag. Ready-tech. Seems that the Stunties are good at getting that axe back into position to swing it again in a round. Sure, they don't swing all that many times with an attack, but when you get to attack twice at +7, that's not too shabby. This little trick has been something that I've been looking forward to exploiting for a while now.

It would be easy to build a cleric deck for this one. Priam gives you some nice readying to go along with his healing. But I still have a personal aversion to Dwarven Clerics. Call it a bias if you wish. I do. We are what we are shaped to be. Parak Soulsaver has a wonderful readying ability, and can uber with just his order alone. But I have an even greater aversion to unnecessarily putting my Warlord in harm's way on the front rank in the current environment than I do to Dwarven healers. The Dwarven rogues look very cool, and Trespass has been quietly poking me in the back of the skull with a sharp knife to build a deck for him, but they're very 'me' oriented, and I'm in a 'we' kind of mood. So, as I look through my card binder of EE Warlords, my eyes fall upon Jorn of the Summit. Here is a cool character. Although a fighter, he can play a support role extremely well. His react to add +1 to a character's level for equipping an item and readying that character can serve as a form of movement, and get my heavy-hitting Dwarves ready to inflict more punishment on my opponents. I can stick a Light Crossbow or two in there to give ol' Jorn something to do from the third rank, besides inspire my other Dwarven warriors to greater courage. Yes, I believe we'll go with Jorn.

I'm still jazzed about the Artificer's Set, and think it can be useful here. I recall someone on the Temple speaking about the fact that Opal Gargoyle readies Dwarf fighters with one printed melee strike. Even though the Artificer's Set changes their base stats, it can't change their printed stats. Excellent. Utilizing the Opal/Focus combo, I can set up some readying for single-printed strike Dwarves that can go off for two, three, or even four strikes at the end of a turn. The deck starts to come together, and it looks very entertaining.

Now, a word of warning. Most of the decks I build, I build with a heavy eye towards fun. While they usually do well, they are not necessarily OMGSekritTechBBQ type stuff. But many of them form the core of what could be a tournament contender, and most of them are not your usual run-of-the-mill type stuff. Pick apart, examine, and infuse your own play-style into something you see here, if it catches your fancy. And don't worry about giving me credit. But if you use an idea or two in a deck where you play, I'd love for you to drop a comment and let me know what worked, what didn't, and what changes you might make. I've always enjoyed communal deck tweaking much more than building in a vacuum. Anyway, on with the deck!

Starters:
Jorn of the Summit
1x Demented
1x Focus
2x Serpentscal Gargoyle
1x Opal Gargoyle

This start provides several key components to the deck. It gives me three single-strike fighters who can be readied with Opal, and characters to equip early items to. When Opal bounces to my hand after the initial draw phase, I've got two 2hp characters holding my front rank, and another in the rank behind. Demented is also great for slowing down the opponent if they're hitting an early rush, by stunning one of their quick hitters upon taking a wound. While I would of course prefer to not be equipping my Artificer's items to either of the Gargoyles or Demented, in the event of no higher-level characters in my opening hand, they are not terrible candidates for the Artificer's Items.

Characters:
3x Crux
3x Lodestone Gargoyle
3x Prince Alaric
3x Korin Blackstone
1x Duri Earthwalker
1x Arla Favorsight
1x Focus
2x Denali Sagebound
1x Drea Nexus
1x Mentor

I'm not entirely sold on my character mix here. I keep thinking about switching out cards to get Nevan Mendlight or Cuirass in there. Mentor gives me a back-up ready-er, and I don't really think I need Arla Favorsight for anything but uber decks. I really feel though that Cuirass might make the deck flow better. I'll have to mess with both set-ups and see which works best.

Crux is a potential MVP. Two wounds when adjacent to two Dwarves, and able to ready with Opal for more swinging. He can overwhelm any healing build out there once he gets going with the Artificer's Items. Everyone else is pretty much in there to support the army. They're useful, and can serve as good back-ups, but my primary focus will be to get Crux going.

Having said this, why not start Crux? Because he's not durable enough on his own if facing a blitz. Demented just makes it easier to tank up and wait until everything gets running properly. This is a deck that can afford to wait a turn or two to get going, as only Duri requires a significant rank structure to support.

Actions:
2x Well Supplied

Yep. That's it. With Jorn, it's not like you would want more actions, really. This one thins your deck, equips your plebes quickly, and gives you an opportunity to use Jorn's react if you've been saving it up to this point. If Focus is still in, you get all kinds of bang for your buck. Mentor is right out.

Items:
3x Destroyer's Armor
3x Madman's Blade
1x Maker's Gloves

The Artificer's Set. Only one glove, because drawing it early without one of my fighters is bad news, and I'd really prefer to keep the Artificer's stuff off of my Warlord. If it becomes desperate he can equip the full set and get beefy, but I'm going to make darn sure I'm not approaching the front if there's item removal tech in my opponent's deck. Mostly, this stuff is to make my one-strike wonders into massive beat-sticks.

3x The First King's Crown
2x Improvised Shield
3x Griffon of Misear
1x Pike
1x Light Crossbow
1x Hammer of the Tribes

Toolbox items. Crown helps with survivability, as does Shield. Griffon for some bonus movement, and the lone Pike so that I can have Duri or Crux reach out and poke wizards hanging out in the second rank. Crossbow gives Jorn a chance to effect the battle from the third rank, and Hammer of the Tribes gives me a bonus wound if I need it. Plus, I consider all of these items to be expendable to Denali's order.

2x War Spikes

This is a substitute for Maker's Gloves. It doesn't add a melee strike, but it does give that crucial third HP to a plebe with Armor and Blade equipped. Or, on my Jorn it makes The First King's Crown have +2 HP. I don't mind the reduced AC when I'm hanging in the third rank anyway.

1x Dragon Buckler
1x Battle Rhino
1x Kyne

Warlord or Duri items. Kyne will almost assuredly go on Jorn, particularly against snipers, so that I've got healing in the wings. Duri can make good use of the other items

This deck has seen very limited testing in a slightly different form. If you try it out, report your findings back here to share with those watching. Good luck with the Stunties on Speed!

Poll

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:53:43 GMT

So I'm trying my hand at creating a poll. Give me an answer, if you see this.

View Poll: Who's Next?

Building a Better Level 1

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:12:39 GMT

Temple of Lore gave us a fantastic set of items to complement a high-level blitz without having to actually play high-level characters. This is the Artificer's Set, made up of Destroyer's Armor, Madman's Blade, and Maker's Gloves. Using a few low-level fighter actions, I can turn a lowly Level 1 or 2 fighter into a lawnmower of destruction. Instead of dedicating tons of cards to moving high-level characters forward, you can bring in the Artificer Items and use the rest of those action/item slots to support and beef up your newly minted level 3's, 5's, and even 7's. And one of the wonders of these cards is that, while they change the base-stats for your characters, they do nothing to the text boxes of said characters, making for some interesting possibilities.

For my first little venture into this type of deck, I decided that I wanted to go with a cleric. The cleric class called out to me for several reasons. One: Clerics can be effective from the third rank. With the power of snipers in Epic, the further away one is able to hide one's Warlord from the front, the better. Two: Clerics can heal my wienies, in whom I am investing quite a few resources to make them more useful than normal. Three: Clerics can support my wienies, buffing them with spells and making them far more fierce than their stats would normally warrant. Naturally, if I'm looking at buffing characters, I'm going to put a premium on the Cantor sub-class, as they're the best at making characters better.

Naturally, this lead me to Cardinal Creigh, and Samuel. Samuel's ability seems more in line with what I'm trying to accomplish, but I saw a few glaring weakness that I wanted to avoid. First, he could only buff characters within one rank. This put ole' Sammy squarely in the sights of any sniper warlords that might be running amok. Second, his low armor class made him less than survivable in a danger situation. Creigh has a higher armor class, and his ability, while more reactive than Samuel's, essentially gives a bonus to every character in my army that is swinging at a priority target in my opponent's army.

Another consideration is the army that each of these warlords gives me access to. The FreeKs have some excellent low-level fighters, but most of that excellence comes from stats, not text. Granted, Jeffrey is the hotness when equipped with even just the Destroyer's Armor, and Jal Forsythe isn't too bad either, but I think the Deverenians have the edge when it comes to low-level fighters with sweet abilities. Ghed Carel can become a 13AC Astral with the Armor, Squire Dashiell can pump his attack up. The real winner though is Lady Helene. She's going to need a bit of work to fully kick her ability in, but if you can get it running, it'll make her even more ridiculous than just the items themselves. In the meantime, Keepers and Apprentice Trist, along with some of the other Dev redirect tricks, can keep Helene alive until she becomes a machine.

With these thoughts in mind, I pulled out my Cardinal Creigh and began to construct a deck. Here's the list, along with some of my thoughts about actions and items. This deck has gone through several revisions at this point, but here's where it stands currently, along with some of my thoughts on the cards and how it works.

Starters:
Cardinal Creigh
1x Alexa Genecourt
1x Caleb the Shifter
1x Lady Helene
2x D'Ilchant Keeper

I start with the two Keepers adjacent to each other, then Helene on the end. I don't separate the pair because together they allow me the opportunity to crit-fail one of my opponent's early rolls, whereas if they were separated by the Lady Paladin, they'd be meat for destruction. Caleb allows me to shift the second strike, again keeping Helene alive for the upcoming buffing. Alexa Genecourt has several purposes for this deck, and works incredibly well. First, she can be a backup to equip Madman's Blade if I draw it without an Armor. Second, she can protect Caleb with her cancel ability, and third she gives me an extra defender if my ranks start falling quickly. Finally, Alexa is great for sniper decks, as her cancel ability is not once per turn. Opposing Warlords are going to have to deal with her before going after Creigh in later turns, or risk having their kill shots fizzle on the heavy armor of my Defender Paladin.

Characters:
1x D'Ilchant Keeper
2x Lady Helene
3x Ghed Carel
3x Apprentice Trist
3x Squire Dashiell

Level 1 fighters that can come into play and take immediate advantage of any Lift Up Your Voices I have active, or benefit from The True Word. Also, Carel makes an excellent back-up beat-stick if Helene's are dieing. Their Astral trait and crit-fail causing react give them a bit more staying power against blitzes, and they can hold up wonderfully well. Trist gives me some more redirection from my power characters.

2x Alexa Genecourt
1x Caleb the Shifter

These guys are in here for the same reason they're in my starting army. Redirect and cancel. They help me to keep Creigh kicking against sniper types. At some point in the game, I prefer to move an Alexa back a rank to stand next to Creigh, and will even sacrifice having one of my plebe lvl 1s to support the rank structure. This both keeps Creigh in a rank further back from snipers, and puts the canceling right next to him for deterrence.

3x Cardinal Bromin
1x Ghed Morak

Cardinal Bromin is in for buffing Lady Helene. The bonus sticks for an extra turn, meaning she'll get her two strikes at +5/+4 most likely, particularly in light of the fact that I can redirect any dangerous shots at her. I'm not entirely certain Ghed Morak is a good include, and am looking at dropping her for a Veiled Passing or piece of the Neus' Set. While an excellent character, keeping a Bromin in the third or worse yet moving my Alexa back a rank to support Morak's entry to the field is painful. Plus, when drawn early she's basically a dead card. When I'm in a really goofy mood I consider making her a Brother Dominy.

Actions:
3x Quick Strength
3x Lift Up Your Voices
1x Mentorship
3x Leveled!

I wound up leaving out the healing in favor of buffing cards that would help me get Lady Helene to critical mass as quickly as possible. The advantage of two early heavy strikes are almost too good to pass up. Leveled! makes her very difficult to take out, particularly if I can get it on before equipping Destroyer's Armor. But it also just makes my ranks more durable, which is very important when dealing with quick blitz decks. Lift is also an excellent card for increasing the survivability of my army, and even helps out with my crazy defend checks to make my opponent's life miserable. Mentorship is right-out, and outstanding fun to get on to Helene, giving her 5 strikes when she has the Blade and Armor equipped.

Items:
3x Destroyer's Armor
2x Madman's Blade

For a deck that was supposedly about using the Artificer's Set, there isn't even a full playset in this deck. In fact, there isn't a single copy of Maker's Gloves. Why? Well, I don't have anyone to put the Gloves on if I draw it first hand, and I don't even have any back-up high-level fighters to put it on if one of my lower-level plebes gets nuked. So, no Gloves, and only two Blades. It's still enough, and Helene gets down-right scary about turn 3.

2x The True Word
1x Dythanus Mantle
2x Litany of the Dead
1x Corinth Ward
1x Nodwick
1x Neus' Armor
1x Godly Protection
1x Hammer of the Tribes

Items for Creigh. The True Word is another buffing card, one that works great with Caleb or Alexa depending on which bonus I need (Skill or ATK, respectively). Sometimes both if I'm not facing a sniper, or I manage to get the ranks built properly. Dythanus Mantle lets me go get one of my killed Helenes or Carels, sometimes even a Keeper to keep the defensive abilities going. Litany of the Dead is a great card, one which I didn't give enough credit to when it first came out. The ability to stop a character or two dead is awesome, particularly when I want to control the board as much as possible. Corinth Ward is some healing for Creigh to use when I don't have Lift or Mentorship to spend for, and the Neus' set gives me survivability, (Godly Protection,) buffing, (armor,) and more punch for my characters (Hammer).

The deck does very well in play-testing, and is a blast to play. Give it a shot if you're looking for something new to try. And if you spot anything that you think might add to it, please feel free to share.

Ch-ch-ch Changes

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:32:08 GMT

You may notice my LiveJournal now includes advertising. Woot! :P

Actually, I did it to increase the functionality of my account. Sorry for the problems, and I hope it doesn't cause you any undue mental stress. However, I can now host pictures and such to the account, post polls, and do all kinds of crazy stuff that I didn't know I had access to.

So, I'm going to check it out and start playing with the features. Wish me luck. Perhaps I'll be able to post game situations, visual puzzles, etc. Who knows?

Another Return?

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:28:17 GMT

So, I haven't posted to this journal in over a year. I stink. At any rate, I'm bringing it back, with a look at Epic Edition.

Oof. Epic Edition is a dangerous environment, particularly for front-rank Warlords, especially fighters. Rogue snipers and Wizard beat-sticks just make the front very dangerous for anyone to hang out in for long. Even cleric stun-tech makes for a rough road for fighter warlords, who's generally low(ish) skill makes them easy targets. And when the fighter warlord is usually the primary source of your offense, those types of decks are largely shut down.

There are a few ways around this problem. The Deverenians have a plethora of cancel/redirect that help to keep front-line warlords alive and kicking, and are probably the best faction to play if you really want your warlords up front and smashing. The NoThRoG aren't bad, in the sense that they still have the hardest hitting characters in the game. Unfortunately, without much in the way to defend themselves, they run the risk of getting sniped if they don't manage to break down the opponent's ranks first.

Essentially, if you want a competitive front-line Warlord, you're looking at a major blitz, as you have to keep their shooters/spellcasters in the front where their ranged-strikes can't get you. No easy feat.

Plane of Secrets is releasing soon, a set that promises to be rediculously powerful. Each faction gets a weak-class warlord, which will please some of the whiny beggars out there. Me? I actually liked the fact that each faction was missing a warlord of a given class. You had to work around those missing links to do something really different and special with your decks.

Ah well. PoS does look like fun, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the set as much as I have the last couple. Epic has been more than entertaining, and it has gone a long way towards making me revise my play style. I find myself playing a lot more wizards and clerics, where I used to be a rogue/fighter type of player. And anything that makes you stretch your mind is good, right?

Right?

Back to the grindstone...

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 16:48:28 GMT

Well, after a long absence while touring the great state of Kansas, I'm back at work and at play. I'll be writing some new articles soon, but just wanted to let you know that I haven't disappeared forever!

Just for fun...

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:23:36 GMT

Have you ever tried doing theme games? You know, games played just for fun, where you and your playgroup make decks based on a theme of some sort and have it out? One of my coworkers and I have decided we need a bit of catharsis, so we're playing a goblin horde game today after work. Basically, we're just building NoThRoG wienie blitz decks with Fighter Warlords and unleashing the trapspringers at each other after work today. This type of game is a great time, because it doesn't really matter if you win or lose, it's just fun to see what your opponent comes up with in regards to the theme. A few themes to try out with your playgroup sometime:

Goblin Hordes (NoThRoG Wienie Blitz)
Monsters' Ball (75% of characters must be monsters)
Wizard Melee!! (No spells, all characters must be wizards or multi-class wizards)
Chasm Duel (No melee strikes allowed)
Highlander (Only one copy of any card.)
Battle in the Caves (From the old Warjournal. No more than 5 characters in any rank.)

There are many others. If you think up some, please post them here. Fun for everyone!

Speed Kills: Swing Away!! (Part II)

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:05:20 GMT

In the last article, I wrote about how you can have a very fast deck using Wienie Blitz, and having your Warlord be the heavy kill shot at the end. Today I'm going to look at how you can use a high level blitz to attempt to bring extreme pressure on your opponent using mightier characters.

The Wienie Blitz is great, but tends to lead to two very different styles of decks. Either most of your actions and items support the wienies in an attempt to make them more powerful than they usually are, or you use your actions and items to enhance the abilities of your Warlord, just using the Wienies as a distraction and harrasment. The high tempo pressure is great, but these decks don't usually do too well in long games, as the opponent will have stabalized and probably found a way to trash your weak army.

A high level blitz deck alleviates some of the problems of wienie blitz. High level blitz uses steeds and movement actions, or readying tech, to get high level characters to the front and swinging as soon as possible. The upside to this is that your high level characters will often provide card advantage in that one high level character can often account for at least a couple low level characters, and they tend to have more survivability when withstanding attacks. The down side to this is that you must devote a portion of your deck to supporting those characters in terms of movement or readying.

The key to a high level blitz is have your big beefy characters attacking as soon as possible. The most common way to do this is with movement, usually in the form of steed items, but sometimes with actions, too. Fighters have the most steeds, and therefore the most opportunity to switch a spent steed out for a ready steed, much in the manner of the old Pony Express. Many of these steeds give stat bonuses or feats to the character equipping them, and they can be used in a later turn if the character hasn't quite reached the front ranks yet. Using one steed, a level 4 character can be in the front rank swinging the turn after he comes into play.

The problem with steeds is the same problem with any item. Tempo. It takes an action to put a steed item on a character, then another action to use that steed's order to move forward. With movement actions, a player saves a turn of tempo, but usually doesn't gain any lasting abilities or stat bonuses on the character using the action. Often times though, this tempo can save you a heap of trouble later, in terms of getting more HP in front of your Warlord, or just getting more strikes to the front before your opponent can respond.

Recently, some amazing effects have come into the environment that help a high level blitz deck. I've been a big fan of the Gahid Cavalry decks since about Tooth and Claw. When Revan, Lance, and Mounted Charge came into the game, it became impossible for me to resist. Gahid gives you initiative tech, and Revan and a bunch of steeds made those high level Dev's an amazing power house. Count Damien and a Lance was great fun, but using those with the Iron Duke or Master Anandale was also a good time. Now, with Oubliette Hounds, the Deverenian Cavalry blitz is even faster than before. You regain some of the tempo lost by equipping an item by using the Hounds to move a character forward immediatly after equipping the item, and sometimes the character can be in the front swinging on the turn the come into play, with just a single steed. With the powerful Level 4 Dev's moving forward and striking so quickly, it becomes a lot of pressure for the opponent to deal with. This deck can be pulled off with any of the Dev Fighter or multi-class Fighter Warlords.

Kara Wadreth can also do a hard hitting high-level blitz, with her built-in movement ability. She can also include characters like Jack Casey, and if she wants to stick to level 3 characters, Roland Tzin to move characters forward at astonishing speeds. She can do this without steeds, giving her more room for offensive actions and items in her deck. While she will be discarding resources to power her ability, being able to get those beefy high level characters forward faster makes up for it.

The Dwarves, with their ability to ready characters can perform a different type of high-level blitz. They received a big boost to this type of deck in the two most recent sets, Hero's Gambit and Dragon's Fury. They have Opal Gargoyle for readying single-strike fighters, Roar who can ready equal or lower-level characters, and their various Warlords who can ready characters make it possible for the Dwarves to get some big beef up front and swinging.

Blitzing with high level characters can allow you to establish a very powerful board position within a turn or two. Also, with a high level blitz you can utilize your Warlord for offense early, and then pull him back to protect him while your back-up beefies carry the fight through to the end. These characters can make use of the extra items in your deck, allowing you to build up a second or even third high powered character as primary offense.

Speed Kills: Swing Away!!!

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:01:05 GMT

For Speed decks, you need to be causing damage as quickly as possible. This means that, as much as possible, your characters should be striking on the turn they enter play. This allows you to put consistent and constant pressure on your opponent, thus dictating the tempo of the game. There are a couple of ways to do this, and today we're going to look at the Wienie Blitz.

The wienie blitz is a very easy deck to construct, and gets better and more flexible with every set. Basically, you just grab as many level 1 characters with decent stats/abilities you can find, and jam them in a deck along with any level 2's you dig up that can swing or shoot the turn they enter. Now obviously some discernment is necessary here, to make sure you're not pulling in absolute garbage, but the basic premise is there.

The main weakness of the wienie blitz is that low level characters generally can't hold out if your opponent has enough time to get some higher level characters in play, particulaly if they are using movement to get those characters swinging early. The wienie's ATK numbers are low, on average, and healing can bring the wienie blitz to a screeching halt as very few wienies have multiple wounding abilites, or acces to multi-wound actions and items. They also tend to have low armor classes, making your Warlord more vulnerable.

The strength of the Wienie blitz is that you are able to use all your resources immedieatly. There are relatively few opportunities for play errors with a wienie blitz, and with proper deck construction, you can make some of those wienies pretty powerful.

Running Teufeltiger's Lies in a cleric wienie blitz deck is a great way to shore up the weaknesses of this type of deck. The Lies gives all those characters +3 ATK, and they do an extra wound, allowing you to overpower healing, and lay the smack down on high level characters. Because you are unleashing so many strikes, the bonus compounds. You can also run Glyph of Faith to add some survivability to the plebes. This is not a new deck type, and an example that did fairly well at KoHIT can be found here. The problem with this deck is ensuring the survivability of your character wielding the Lies, usually your Cleric Warlord. Atu has some built in defense, and Volda doesn't care if she's dead. If you are going to try to run this deck out of another faction, you will probably need to have back up clerics to step in if the heat gets to be too much for your Warlord, or devote some space in your deck to extra healing/defensive cards.

The new Champion Warlord, Tavis Jape, can also run a successful wienie blitz. His ability to add 3 to all die rolls made by his army, or subtract 3 from the opponent, makes him able to improve his minions to the point where they can inflict some damage even on higher AC characters. Be aware that without the Lies for multi-wounding, you may suffer lock-down from healing decks.

The Nothrog can unleash a very impressive wienie blitz. They have some of the most powerful level 1's in terms of ATK, and several Warlords who can support them. Ar'tek can allow you to blitz with a high level character as well as the wienies, Uthanak can move the strong level 2's forward, Arkon can ready a character after a higher level character dies, and De'zicrah can shoot when they come into play.

The goal with a wienie blitz should be to enhance the abilities of your low-level characters, either through stat buffing and healing, or using them to hold off and harras the opposing army while you set up a kill shot with your Warlord. Ideally, you will put so much pressure on your opponent that they will have to follow your lead, rather than being able to dictate the pace of the game themselves.

Speed Kills: Initiative

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 19:37:57 GMT

How many times have you had a game that was decided by a final initiative roll? If you win the roll, you have a large chance of winning the game, but if you lose the roll, your opponent has an equally high chance of winning. I hate this situation with a passion. A 50% chance to win a game, based on a single roll. For this reason, I often place a fairly high priority on controlling the initiative roll, or being able to act first.

I've long been drawn to the Deverenians, and a big reason why is because of their ability to influence the initiative roll. The first card that could influence the intiative roll was also one of the Deverenians first Warlords, Lord Gahid Rellion. Now with Rellion Guard, Taika the Disjoined, Justinian, Initiate Boralis, The Beast Knight, Baron Fabrice Rellion, and Acolyte Dorra have made it possible for the Deverenians to dominate the initiative roll to an impressive degree.

You don't have to play Deverenians to win initiative (although it helps!). There are several cards that can give you bonuses to initiative, or allow you to act before the opponent does. Haste and Secrets from Beyond are two actions that can add to initiative, while Quick Shot, Fire at Will, and Victory to the Bold allow you to perform actions before the opponent does. Sword of the Storm can also give you an intiative bonus if you are playing Paladins. The Elves and Mercenaries can get in on some of the intiative action too. The Elves can park a Phon in the same rank as the Warlord, adding 2 to the initiative roll, while Mercenary Warlord Tavis Jape adds 3 to his intiative roll when good and subtracts 3 from the opponent's roll when evil.

Being able to control initiative gives a tremendous advantage. With a good board position, you can make the last attack of one turn and the first attack of the next, allowing you to break ranks with much more consistency. Getting the first swing before your opponent can bring in reinforcements will often make the difference in a game. If you are playing against a build/stall deck, you must get the early strikes to stay ahead before your opponent can bring in the big beef.

To be honest, winning intiative isn't absolutely vital to speed decks. It is a tempo device that allows you first shot at actions and reacts. When I play, I like to have that control at the start of turns, as I believe that it helps me to dictate tempo more effectively. Experiment with initiative control some, if you have room in your decks. It can be great fun going first.

Speed Kills: Economy of Card Usage

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:02:48 GMT

To be as fast as possible, you need to make use of every card you draw in a turn, preferably to create offense. Although it is not necessary to create offense, at least make sure you get some use out of your cards every turn. For this entry we're going to look at some of the cards that can help you with Card Economy, and the principles behind making sure every card has a use.

Sometimes, your deck needs to include meta, which is a way to shore up weakness in your deck. If Ar'tek is a major force in your play area, you need ways to slow him down such as Rough Road and Exhaustion. If you play against Dwarves or Ready Jackie, you might want Mjol's Hammer or Certain Doom. But what if these (granted, highly situational) cards come into your hand against a different deck? What good are they then?

First, let me say that these are extreme examples. I rarely include meta cards, (excepting Exhaustion, which isn't really meta anyway,) in my speed decks because they are so situational. My goal is to kill my opponent as quickly as possible, and not being able to use a card in a turn means that I am that much slower in conquering my foe. But sometimes I do have to include some situational cards to shore up weakness in my decks. Elves are very susceptible to blitz decks, as their tin-foil armor and dearth of hit points makes them very easy to crush in an early blitz. Therefore I include some cards that will slow down my blitzy opponents. Other times I might include several duplicates of items, knowing that I won't be able to play them all based on my build. But what to do with those "useless" cards when I draw them? Do I just let them be dead cards?

For this reason, I often include cards that allow me to get good Economy of Card Usage. Rough Road isn't useless against Dwarf decks if I discard it to Ahdre's ability to add +5 to a ranged strike, is it? With Kara Wadreth, that Certain Doom can become an extra Keep up the Pace, usable by anyone.

There are several Warlords who, by their very abilities, can give you excellent Economy of Card Usage. Dallen Stormlost, Ahdre, Brownen Tansiq, Cairbre Netheryn, Lekar Osud, Rathe, Raziel, Captain Dukat, Kara Wadreth, Caitlyn the Free, and Crucin Bascar all have a discard mechanic built in, thus allowing you to use otherwise "dead" cards to generate effects. I find these Warlords are much easier to include meta and multiple items in, as they can always get some use out of the items.

There are other characters who can also make use of their abilities to get you extra effects. Bishop Ionna, Cador, Humility, Qadlin, Quilian Adinerach, Severed of Bone, Talyn, Marius Dela, Ivaas, Spirit Wing, The Restless, Ma'Ken, and Varin all have great effects that can be activated by ditching those otherwise useless cards.

There are some items that can also help out with Economy of Usage. Cloudracer, Kama, Ring of Movement, and Shadow of Greed are good ones, although highly restricted by class. In Open, I rarely make a rogue deck without Angel's Tears, a card that turns your extra cards into strikes.

One of the best ways to win is to make sure that you make better use of your resources than your opponent. In order to get the most possible out of your resources, you need to make sure you have a way to get some use of every card that you draw, preferably the turn you draw it!

Who is this AdamShadow???

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 21:09:08 GMT

There has been some confusion as to who the heck I am. Not a problem, I'll try to clear some of it up.

On the Temple of Lore, my handle is Windson. Mostly, I lurk; especially now that the site has been blocked by my school district's web filter. :(

I am an AEG Bounty Hunter, and operate in Northern Colorado, primarily at Game Castle, a gaming store in Loveland. I've been playing Warlord since Saga of the Storm came out, well, actually since the demo decks that were released in the various game magazines. I've been a Bounty Hunter since right before Assassins' Strike.

Most recently, (I guess,) I won the Denver City Championship during the Denver Warlord Invasion. Yay me... :P Someday, if my wife will allow it, I'd like to make it to one of the major conventions, just to help out with the AEG booth and events. I don't even care about participating, I just wanna meet some of the cool Warlord people and players I've been exposed to throughout the years.

Oh, and no, Adam Shadow is not my real name! :)

Champions Warlords

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 20:55:04 GMT

Holy moly! The Warlords in the Champions set are amazing! I've just been playing with the decks straight from the kit, without any changes, just to gain a glimpse into the minds of the creators. All the decks are good right out of the kit, but I would make changes to all of them. Not because they're "bad," or because I'm "better," but mostly just changes to suit my particular play style. At any rate, the decks are fun to play.

Honestly, I've only really had the chance to mess with the Trevaine Cartwright and Tavis Jape decks at present, but they are fun. Probably one of my favorite moments with the Trevaine deck was when my opponent had a Jin Valford in Elephant form in the front facing off against Mr. Cartwright with his Black Steel Daggers equipped. My opponent played Primal Rage, and when I followed that by attaking with a plebe, his response was, "Why aren't you more nervous than that?" When I reacted to his first melee strike with a Too Fast to See, and followed up with Reposte and Treviane's react for the win, it all became clear...

Tavis is fun with Opposition Talisman abuse. I took a Feyd Rowan out of the game for several turns thanks to this little beauty, and Tavis can use the thing regardless of what alignment your opponent is. Now to find the level boosters... Of course, Tavis is just good, period, with his ability. If you use him for a Dishonesty deck, it could get pretty interesting. Tavis doesn't have the sheer survivability of Atu or Volda, but there are plenty of Mercenary Clerics who can equip the Lies while Tavis plays some healing/buffing tricks, or just uses his ability to improve his army's survivablity.

For the record:
Teufeltiger's Lies
Level 6 - Cleric
While Teufeltiger's Lies is ready, other characters in this rank have +3 ATK, -5 AC, and inflict an additional wound when they hit with a melee strike.
Order: Spend Teufeltiger's Lies.

I haven't had a chance to experiment with the other Champions decks yet, but I look forward to trying them out. My only concern is that each of the Warlords seems a bit above the curve as far as the Campaign format is concerned. If they are at or below the curve for Epic, the environment could be about to get really fast!

Speed Kills: Deck Size

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:15:48 GMT

When building decks under the "Speed Kills" philosophy, deck size is vitally important. Often, beginning deck builders will try to pack all the cool cards they own into a deck, thinking "If I can just get this card in and ready, I'll win for sure!" They will also be reluctant to trim out any cards that they think might be useful, and so the deck ends up clogged with useless cards, or diluted to the extent that the deck can't accomplish what it was constructed for.

When building for Speed, we want to get to our kill cards as quickly as possible. This is facilitated by bulding our deck with the legal minimum, or 50 cards. It is also facilitated by including 3 copies of every card that we feel is vital to our strategy. By using the minimum deck size and as many copies of the important, game breaking cards that we can, we will make it much more likely that we will be able to smash through the opponent and win quickly.

We must also make some sacrifices in terms of flexibility. For instance, defensive cards like Too Fast to See are great, but too many defensive cards cuts down on our ability to generate offense, especially if we are trying to keep the deck down to a 50 card size. I'm not saying do completely away with defensive cards, as a well timed one will win you games, but I am saying that you should not obsess over defense at the expense of your offense.

Recently, Zechnophobe addressed using "3 of" cards in one of his Warlord Blargh's. This article really got me thinking about my own deck construction. I had previously always said that "3 of" any of your power cards is a good thing, because then you get to them sooner. However, Zech's article has caused me to rethink this line of reasoning. I still include 3 copies of order cards and non-spend react cards because they are cards I can use in my opening hand regardless of other situations. However, I have lowered the number of high-level spend orders in my deck, because I do not want to end up with dead cards. Dead cards are the bane of speed decks. Dead cards do not generate offense, and therefore do not help you defeat the opposing Warlord.

As an example: my Lord Gahid Cavalry deck. This deck used to run three copies of No Prisoners! and Gahid's Stand, to go along with my three Outmatched's and various steeds. It also started 3x Oubliette Hounds. Now I've trimmed out one No Prisoners!, and one Gahid's Stand, in order to make room for other offensive cards like Dragon Buckler, Gloves of Mercy, and Throwing Daggers, while one of the Oubliette Hounds was replaced by Cador, giving me an option for those extra steeds I occasionally draw. These are items, which are a bit slow Tempo wise, but they help the deck to generate much greater offense. I also make a point, on Zechnophobe's advice, to not include more than 2 of any one item. This decreases the chances of drawing too many copies of the same steed or item, and not having enough characters to put them all on, thus creating dead cards. Remember: Dead cards are bad! :)

To summarize, when constructing your decks under the Speed Kills philosophy, try to keep the deck size as small as possible, and make sure that the cards you draw are going to be useful. Include more non-spend reacts and order actions, and don't overload on duplicate items in your deck that may be useless when drawn.

For more information on deck size and how it affects drawing characters or specific cards, visit this article on the Warlord TaKtiX page. Warning!: This article gets into some serious number crunching, so be ready for some hard-core math.

Speed Kills

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:13:45 GMT

My personal play philosophy leans towards the idea of very fast decks that win games in a short amount of time. This philosophy is shaped by my circumstances, as often I try to sneak a few games in during my half-hour lunch break or in a couple of minutes after school gets out. In this type of situation, it is frustrating to play decks that take a long time to win or lose, because you rarely see the end game in a half-hour or less.

Because of these limitations on my play time, I have adopted the credo "Speed Kills."

In Warlord, there is one way to win... kill the opponent's Warlord. OK, this is not the only way to win. You could go for the Prophesy Fulfilled, or the Negotiated Surrender, but these decks are almost impossible to pull off with any consistency, especially in tournaments. So, that leaves us back where we started; you must kill the opponent's Warlord. Obviously, the first person to kill the opponent's Warlord wins, so the faster you accomplish this feat, the faster you win, and you reduce your opponent's chances of fulfilling the victory condition first.

Because this is my primary play philosophy, most of my decks are very fast, or what is described as "blitz" decks. There are many ways to build blitz decks, but they all share a primary goal of attempting to disrupt or destroy your opponent's ability to get his or her resources into a position where they can take control of the game. These decks are very aggressive, and usually are not for the faint of heart, as they must often make extensive use of the Warlord for offense, because the Warlord is the most powerful character that you are guaranteed to have on the first turn.

Blitz decks also have a glaring weakness, in that often if the opponent manages to stabilize their formation through healing or high AC, the blitz deck can falter in the mid to late game. Quite often, these decks are decks that win or lose in the first couple of turns. The trick to blitz decks is to either make sure that you unleash such a hellacious assault on the first couple of turns that there is no way the opponent can recover, or have a back-up plan in place in the event the game goes to longer lengths.

In the next several entries, I will discuss some of the important things to keep in mind when playing from the Speed Kills philosophy. I'll look at how one can design decks built to take advantage of the fastest cards and abilities in the game, and how to make efficient use of the cards that you place in your decks. Hold on, we'll be going pretty fast... ;)

Overlord?

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:31:25 GMT

So, I played the Kara Wadreth Monster Masher deck in a Xaxxon tournament yesterday. The biggest challenge was a well built Karkos Tzin deck that seemed to be using Nothrog Daggers as the kill mechanism. Kara won one game before going to time, enough to place me in first. I took the first shot at Xaxxon, and confirmed one very important thing about the Xaxxon decks. They are weak.

Xaxxon is pretty much the sole offense in the deck. If you can manage to stun or spend him, you have pretty much shut the deck down. Alert doesn't even really help him, as usually the Alert goes off to ready Xaxxon, then the stunning blow takes place. Boom, stunned Overlord. In fact, I had Xaxxon on the ropes and almost gave the game away. I had just put four wounds on Xaxxon with double Infinitiy's End, but had spent Kara in the front to kill enough characters to make Xaxxon nervous and move up. Then, like a moron, I attacked Xaxxon with Shomari, before moving Kara back to the second with Celinar Guard, allowing Xaxxon to Alert. Lucky for me, he rolled a 2 on the Alert check, and I followed with a 17 with Shomari, placing the fifth and final wound on Xaxxon. Just goes to show you that you should not ever put yourself on auto-pilot! :)

Throwing Daggers were great in the deck, giving Kara a variety of ways to kill opponents. When facing off against Karkos, I had to balance the use of ranged strikes against the Halo of Secrets/Debt of Blood tech Karkos had going on. Thankfully, backup shooters like Ruannad allowed me the flexibility to choose the attack style most necessary at the time.

Anti-Monster bashing?

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:37:12 GMT

"What about using anti-monster characters and items to go after Xaxxon?" Hmmm... an interesting question. There may be a few possibilities here. For instance, Ruannad Wadreth can hang out in the second rank, plinking down two wound shots on Xaxxon, while staying safely hidden from Xaxxon's fury. Of course, you have the problem of hiding your Warlord somewhere, and making sure you don't spend anything else thus allowing Xaxxon to go insane on you, but it's a possiblity. I like this idea more than trying to stuff Lady Tornhawk into a deck, so let's just run with it and see what we come up with.

I think for this type of deck, Kara Wadreth is a great warlord. Running her allows you to play with some pretty hefty meta to help keep Xaxxon in check. Xaxxon is the meat of the offense for the Overlord deck, so controlling him is a must. Exhaustion, Rough Road, and possibly even Certain Doom to stun Xaxxon may not be a bad idea. Also, don't forget Infinity's End, for the double wound pop after Xaxxon uses his abilities twice. Sure, this is a lot of meta, especially when you start adding in the actions and items that will actually do the damage to the deck. I would probably plan a fairly traditional Kara-Darkwood spear deck, including the usual Gloves of Archery/Hawk Hatchet tricks. This will allow you to snipe in the tournament, and hide from Xaxxon in the challenge. Using Kara will also help you to get your Xaxxon kill mechanism, Ruannad with Gloves of Archery, into position a turn earlier, which is vital against a fast Overlord like Xaxxon. For extra tricksinesses, consider adding Tanning Knife. Extra woundage to Xaxxon if he shows his face near your threat...

Beating Xaxxon: Part II

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:05:23 GMT

Rather than going with the meta route, I thought I would try to just out-blitz Xaxxon. If I can get him spent (or better yet, stunned) to the front in the first turn, that's a few free shots I can take on him. As I said before, I'm thinking of going with the Deverenian beat sticks, and I've settled on Lord Gahid.

Using the Gahid-Oubliette Hound blitz, my hope is to smash the Xaxxon ranks early. Using Gahid means that I am more likely to win initiative, allowing me to swing and manuver first each round.

Starting Army:
Lord Gahid Rellion
2x Taika the Disjoined
2x Oubliette Hound
1x Cador

Taika's bonus to initiative makes it very likely that I am going to win the initiative rolls, and her react lets me fling spells at react speed, thereby increasing the damage potential and speed of the deck. The deck is quite character lite, including Xaros the Mist, Lestan Drac, Ghed Nuri, and Ianavae the Condign. Against Xaxxon, I want to stop his strikes on my spent characters, and using Ianavae allows me to cancel the strikes, thus stopping his react of "I discard cards to blow you up." A first hand Steed, No Prisonsers, and then any 2 or three react speed spells or Outmatched can often have the opposing warlord stunned to the front by the end of my second order. Hopefully using the Ghed Nuri's and Ianavae's, I can keep Xaxxon's strikes off of my warlord, and just pummel him to death.

First Entry, Xaxxon

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 17:48:24 GMT

I've been trying to figure out the best way to beat Xaxxon, the newest Overlord for Warlord. His text follows...

Xaxxon
Level 8 - Rogue - Evil
ATK: +14 AC: 19 Skill: +12 Hit Points: 5
Free Kingdoms Overlord * Monster
May not equip steeds. Inflicts and additional wound when he hits a spent character with a melee or ranged strike.
Order: Twice per turn: Move forward or backward one rank.
React: After killing a spent character, discard a card: Perform a melee strike.
Edition: SPECIAL - 028 - Promo
Illustration: Steve Argyle
CE legal

Now, usually the first thing I think about when looking at beating Overlords is the meta that would help to defeat that Overlord, and by extension, which Warlords can best make use of cards that may be useless otherwise. This means the Warlords with discard mechanics are often my first choice. These Warlords include Raziel, Ahdre, Rathe, Bronwen Tansiq, Dallen Stormlost, Kara Wadreth, and Crucin Bascar. Of these, I usually prefer Ahdre, Raziel, and Dallen. This is where I started my search for a Warlord to defeat Xaxxon. I had been having success with Raziel against Overlords, and figured he would be an excellent choice to go after Xaxxon. Of course, that was before I saw the special rules for Xaxxon, which prevent an opponent from targeting the discard pile. This shuts down a big part of Raziel's advantage, as he can't remove vast parts of Xaxxon's deck using discard mechanics and Devourer. Raziel still has the tremendous ability to discard Xaxxon's cards to slow him down, but you have to deal with the rest of the FreeK's in the deck tearing through the tin-foil armor of the Elves and eventually sending Raziel plummeting to the front where Xaxxon will eat him for lunch.

Instead of going at it from an angle of meta cards, I thought about trying to take advantage of the relative weakness of the Free Kingdoms army in regards to AC and HP. I think that one of the best ways to slow Xaxxon is to try to take out the army early, breaking his ranks and spending, or preferrably stunning him to the front for a couple of turns of pummeling. Toward this end, I decided to go with the high speed beat sticks of the Deverenians, notably Lord Gahid or Chyre. In my next entry, I'll address the thoughts I went through, and some of the tactics I'm thinking of using against Xaxxon.