As the name states this deck is about the Jumping Jacks "Johannes Broheim" & "Pistoliers" boosted by a Shrine to Taal powered by City Gates.

Units:
3 Huntsmen - you will need the combo cards, so you need a cheap card draw engine
3 Warrior Priest - protection against attacks, annoying orcs
3 Sigmars Blessed - the same and even useful in late game against big enemys
3 Pistoliers - what it is about, be aware to not overmove them
3 Free Company - early attacker to disrupt enemys hand
3 Reiksguard Knight - defense
3 The Greatswords - really powerful with pistoliers and Johannes.
3 Nordland Halberdiers - instant defense
3 Johannes Broheim - together with pistoliers the game winner

Support:
3 Contested Village - cheap boost
3 Shrine to Taal - main combo part
3 City Gates - additional combo card
3 Abandoned Mine - you will have much developments in kingdom due to city gates and playing them there yourself, look at them and get them back

Tactics:
3 Demoralise - disrupt enemys calculation
3 Innovation - get free resources for your developments
2 Infiltrate - reduce enemys options
3 Forced March - you dont like the enemy attacking you, move him away. Or move your own units in the battlefield at the end.

50 cards - 3 CS + 3 BP 1 needed

Gameplay:
Play every turn a development in your kingdom zone. Shrine To Taal and Innovation will thank you. You can even get them back later with abandoned mine, if you need them back. Defend against the enemy with the annoying Warrior Priests, Sigmars Blessed, surprise them with Nordland Halberdiers until City Gates stand and Shrine To Taal is boosting one of your Jumping Jacks. Take 1/2 turns of full resources+cards and build an offense to smash the enemy.

Strengths:
If the combo is running it will often be an easy win.

Weakness:
Sometimes hard to defend until that point.
Can run out of cards fast, if you are not aware of it

It's quite nice. I would probably get rid of the Halberdiers, and add some hunstmen, or some other cheap unit.

And also quite likely I'd add that support card that lets you move a unit at the beginning of your turn.

I have a similar Empire+Dwarf deck, consisting of 76 cards, which is basically an 'upgrade' of yours - ie same strategy concepts, but implemented using more cards.

Talabehien detachments. They suit this deck well.

Huntsmen are in.
Temple of Shalya is a bad replacement for Pistoliers/Johannes and it never worked well in the games I played.
Detachments will be included, when I have the second battlepack, but I am forced to switch to german cards, so I will have it in February.

Yeah the detachments will work great.

I would keep one copy of that unit moving kingdom card. It does help a little, sure its not as handy as pistols or Johann. But if you get it in your first darw or a few turns in and get it out early, it does give 2 handy resorce points, and can play the part till the otyher units step up. Handy to use deffedning the battle zone to hop in to get your more cash or cards. If you draw it mid to late game, where IMO its less usefull, heck you always need developments, so there you go.

I understand maxing deck effiency, but I don;t mid a handful of situational cards, cause you need development bait anyways, and it you draw them at the right time, its monney.

I definitely think Abandoned Mine makes City Gates too good to pass up. I would lose the Free Companies for Nuln Tinkerers to accelerate the combo. I don't really see any reason to pass up Judgment of Verena/Will of the Electors. Abandoned Mine only makes it better by letting you pull whichever card you need into hand. To make room, I would lose the third copy of a couple cards (Halberdiers, Sigmar's Blessed, Forced March) and the 3 Demoralize. I might be tempted to run this deck at 54-56 or so. You'll need to draw a relatively large number of cards early on in order to set up; so, while you can turn off most of your card draw, you might end up with a Huntsmen/Contested Village or two (and City Gates). The extra 4-6 cards could mean another turn or three to finish them off, which could matter if they have shenanigans to deal with your first couple of big attacks.

Mine is actually in. I experienced that experienced players are going to play at least 3 developements in each zone. The possibilty of having judgement in your deck is often thread enough.

The 3 Demoralize are going to be replaced with Talabheim Detachments and Free Company perhaps with Nuln Tinker and the 2 Infiltrates perhaps with something else.

Yeah, I saw you already had the Mine; I was just saying that I was kind of on the fence about City Gates before the Mine was released.

You're right that experienced players will try to minimize their vulnerability to Verena, but it takes *nine* turns to get every zone up to three developments. Even then, you can play an extra Electors and hit any zone with four or fewer devs. I don't really see the value of Detachments; they can work as an expensive Greatswords pump, I guess. They obviously wouldn't keep the Taal bonus after they leave the table... unless a very strange ruling has been issued. They are good against removal effects, but I think the other Empire options at 2 just crowd them out.

Good deck! It's very similar to what I'll be playing for Empire when I get my extra BPs.

Talabheim Detachment is certainly not as good as the other 2 cost Empire units, but that is mainly so because all 2 cost Empire units are extremely powerful. On its own I consider Detachments to be a good card, because it can often buy you some time, which seems to be quite importan for most empire decks.

cyberfunk said:

I think the threat of Verena forces opponents to have to deal with the card. I run twin-tailed comet in my Empire deck and I have won many games with a multi-will of the electors, twin-tailed comet and judgement in one turn to wipe out at least 2 zones. Mid to late game is devestating wiping out the kingdom and battlefield zones. If you don't win with your subsequent attacks, the opponent will usually get decked before they're able to rebuild.