Hi guys,

we had our first league night this week and i thought i might bring you some info about what was played.

In total 11 players showed up on time (3 others coming too late to catch up with us). Out of these..

5 played pure Empire

2 played pure Dwarves

3 played pure Chaos

1 played Orcs with splashed in Bloodthirsters (Combo with Rip dere eads off)

I made some statistics of race against race win/loss ratio and Chaos turned out to be the best with Empire coming as a close second. Both Dwarven decks were utterly crushed with a score (counted in burnt zones) after 3 rounds of 1:12. Yes, in 6 games the dwarven decks combined managed to burn one enemy zone.

We have seen a lot and i mean A LOT of Verena's Judgements combined with some crazy development moving and the player with the best individual performance that day played a pure Empire deck which for me is now the "Deck to beat".

We have some special rules just for the league and some story line (fighting around Praaag and finally the siege of this proud Kislev city) with maps. During a league night we play 3 rounds of 1v1 and than as many as possible 2v2 (Destruction vs Order).

Hows your metagame?

At first, thanks a lot for the nice meta analysis, I like this kind of threads

Anyway, I don't have an "actual" local meta yet, but in an italian point of view, I can say that Orcs and Dwarves seem to be the most appreciated...There are differente Mono/Dwarves and Mono/Orcs that seem to be pretty powerful, but I'm talkin' about the results of some online and/or occasional games, no tournaments yet.

BTW; i guess it's still important.

I'm going to be both a Heavy Empire and Chaos player: during playtesting, Chaos managed to win most of the games (in a 3/5 ratio), but I've to say that I'm still fine tuning the Empire deck and I'm tryin' a couple of "weird" combinations.

Dwarves wins against Chaos with 4/5 ratio and against Orcs with 3/5...

Empire and Orcs seem to be very balanced: 1-1.

In the end, Chaos is pretty strong, but not so popular.

If I understood correctly the game, I can tell, by a little experience, that the Empire will be a deck to beat almost everywhere, but I'd not understimate Chaos.

Our local meta is orks seeming to dominate with chaos and dwarves bringing up the middle ground. Our empire players just seem to not have it together yet.

DB_Cooper said:

You got a tool to play online?

I cannot reveal my home secrets... Anyway, I'm not playin' it online...I've just tested an experiment with a couple of friends...

Maybe we'll se something in the future, who knows.......

DB_Cooper said:

Imho this due to Chaos having a apperently 'weaker' unit base then the other three.

Their cheap units (savage gors, cultists of slaanesh and savage marauders) only have 1 HP and the dark zealot is the worst of it's kind (For 3 gold empire has a unit with scout, the orcs +1HP and dwarfs have Troll slayers and the engineers which are all potent cards) The nurgle sorceror isn't exactly cheap with its 3 loyalty icons and the 3 resources are a steep cost for using him frequently. With him having only 2 hitpoints he doesn't combo as well with Nurgle's Pestilence.

That only leaves Festering Nurglins, Fledgling Chaos Spawn and Chaos knighs as their 'normal' units.

The chaos knights are imho one of the best Chaos Units at the moment, most of the times you'll be able to play them after the first turn since they require only 1 more Chaos card on the table and 2 more resources and they boost every area signicantly with their 3 power and 4HP, making them a powerfull and dangerous damage soak early on.

Fledgling Chaos Spawn is a bit special. it can be good but also ineffective and even counter productive. Most of the times it's a convenient free loyalty symbol (will be important when we have more 3cost 2 loyalty cards that are great early on) and a 1 time damage soak(which means that later in the game it can be more usefull as a development) It's special ability is only when it itself is in the battlefield zone and in my experiences this zone often doesn't get attacked alot. Against orcs being forced to deal 1 damage might even have dire consequences, against dwarves it can be ineffective due to toughness or damage that gets bounced back and High elves already have reactions when they take damage and acces to healing. Even empire if they have church of sigmar, warrior priests or sigmar's blessed can make it less effective. But for a free creature you can't complain, it also combo's nicely with culling the weak, nurgle's Pestilence and the Blood Thirster( or other sacrifice effects chaos will probably receive later on).

Which leaves Festering Nurglings.
Just like Chaos knights it's a staple in chaos decks and will be for a long time. It's their best low cost unit, with a board changing entering play effect. Currently corruption is the strongest decktype chaos can make imho. . This brings us to the heroes.

Both of them need corruption to be decent. Melekh the Changer is very straightforward and almost always goes into my battlefield. In a dedicated corruption deck he can cause huge power swings. With festering nurglins and seduced by darkness you get cheap, quasi unconditional corruptiosn which can leave zones exposed/undefended while he increases in power.

Valkia The bloody is a bit too conditional, she needs to be in the quest zone, have damage on her, have a corrupted unit on the field and being able spend 2 resources. But in a pure chaos deck it's still a 2P/4HP for only 4 (most of the times) which is decent enough.

Which leaves the Bloodthirster

A monster in every aspect: damage, HP, cost and upkeep. Getting this one out will often win you the game unless your opponent has some decent counters. Always worthy enough to include in your deck. (ironicly due to most of chaos lower cost creatures 'lower perfomance' you'll lose(on average) less then your opponent when you have to pay it's upkeep.)

Units are almost always the first thing a player looks at because they are the 'bread and butter' of almost every deck and since Chaos is apparantly a bit lacking and special(in the way you have to play with them) don't attract as much playerattention at first.

But their apparant weakness is more then made up for by their access to corruption, potent attachements and very potent tactics.

Having access to 3 types of damaging spells and being able to keep opposing creatures out of combat make them very flexible and can suddenly grab a victory or change the board dramaticly. In addition they can have very annoying effects(warpstone meteor, sadistic mutation, horrific mutation and slaanesh domination)

Their quest is a bit weak though, it's the most expensive and since your opponent has 3 turns to empy his hand (more or less) it's effect can be abit minimal. You can use it before an attack to limit the surprises your opponent had in store for you but every tactic he could have payed will still be played in reaction.