'Boyz I've discovured one 'ting - we boyz be 'da best ! So that's my point in orcish what are the best viable deck types right now ? Can anyone truly challenge the tyranny of orc rush decks ? Let's list up first the decks:

- orc rush
- dwarven development
- jumping empire (mixed with dwarves if preferred)
- mono chaos
- sniping chaos/dark elf

I think that all the others are in pretty good balance, but the orc decks generally just tend to - - - rush... The only way to win in my opinion is that the orc player gets really bad starting hand you get good one. Even if you slaughter everything on the battlefield the orc player tends to keep couple small critters in his hand and then waagh = 'nother zone burning ---> he wins. All other decks have the chance of winning, but surviving for the first five turns can turn out to be quite a challenge. The game seems right now just a little bit imballanced, but I hope the future battlepacks tip the scales for balance.

For now I'll just say (yell): WAAAAGH !!!

I went to an invasion event last night. One 5 games stright with a orc/skaven mix fast fast deck. The wins were so big that I switched decks to something more fun for oppenents, then lost two games with empire/dwarf

That being said, letting a friend play my same orcs, I beat it every single game with the DE/Chaos snipping deck. In fact had a game of that match up last night. Orcs hit quest for 6, then moved on to battkfield (I threw big units in quest, I had nothing in battlefield) and burned it. however at that point I had a vile sorc in play, and a nurgle sorc and the pus lord. I DID in fact manage to stave off destruction, snipping units, I was snipping 2-3 unit a turn and still sneaking another unit on the board. A well timed pestilence, and voila, orcs are going down. My starting hand was not that great either, but got draw up fast and got the right cards.

I am confinced a DE heavy snipping deck does very well vs orc rush, just finished them before they draw troll vomit and push the re-set button!

Even so, the snipping deck has to be played very well, the player has to keep his cool, not react wrong to teh orc attacks, and take risks... ie letting the orcs through and keepign your draw/barrels high. If you react to there attacks and let there cheap hard hitters kill your pricey deffenders, and you lose your draw and resource, you are finished.

I have not tried the match up enough, but I THINK a fast empire deck can survive the early rush, although the all-favorite judgement deck is not the answer here.

As bad as the fast orcs are, they do not appear to be winning every game, they ae beatable.

Like yourself though, I hope to see other expasions either slow them down a tad,or give ways of other decks to speed up. I worrey about what the upcoming rat ogres will do for the skaven/orc rush!

What we have so far for the DE makes me think the DE will be a very very good anti rush deck. Its the lack of cards and homeboard the keeps them with chaos which at this point is slowing them down, allong with there hunger for DE symbols.

HE, I hope they get something goind with them, so far the seem very week, splashing them in any deck just makes said deck weaker and slower!

I will make this point, Orc rush will be the favored deck of beginners, its as easy to play as it is effective. I do think vetern players (As many as there are in a game this new, but with the number of games I got in, I got to consider myself) will grow to prefer decks that have a little more controll and resilence. Personaly I like decks that CAN play a fast game, but can hang if they get slowed down and still preform. Likey why I like the snipping deck so much, plus I like DE's.

I like playing dwarfs with a few empire, they seem able to hold off a rush if played right.

I also think i have apretty good luck at drawing keystone forges, i useally get two of them on before things get to out of hand. Also heroes, if the dwarf heroes are played right they can make a timely atack and win the game. I have had several matches wher durgnar the bold pops up and adds 4 power (special ability) and ends up crushing the last enemy zone, for they do not see 4 power instantly hitting them, especially if i throw a striking the grude and a few units of troll slayers, already from three units, a dwarf player could dish out 12 damage! not to mention dwarfs have good health, able to take quite the amount of damage.

A trick i do is shrine of tall on some ironbreakers (say 4 developements, they would have six power and 4 toughness, thats really good!) then use church of sigmar, i believe, from there mover the ironbreakers wherever they are needed most.

Aggro decks are always the easiest to play. Toss stuff onto the board and hit the ground running. Very little thought is involved beyond, how many resources do I need for the average unit, how much draw do I need to keep drawing units? The problem is when a deck like this doesn't finish out the game by turn three it starts to stall against a very strong control player, and if you haven't wiped him out by turn five you might as well quite and go home.

Control decks require a lot more skill to play because you have to manage so many more moving pieces. End result is because so many people have been playing this game for about 3-4 months with an average of 2-4 games a week, most people are still new. They have not developed the in game tactical mind to weather the rush without breaking.

I predict we won't be having these discussions every couple of weeks in about two months, regardless of what cards are released. "Old time" players (say those who have been playing since Gencon release, play testers, or people who play 6-10 games a week) have already discovered that there are giant holes in the Orc rush build which each house is more than capable of exploiting. All that said, any rush deck no matter the race is going to be a force to contend with in any meta. Orcs just happen to facilitate this build better than anyone else right now.

I do agree that Dark Elves will probably be a serious thorn in the side to this build. The Orc rush characters tend to be cheap with low HP and work best when swarming. A Vile Sorceress or two with a splashed Horrific Mutation will utterly destroy this deck unless the builder also has put in some units with staying power (high HP) or a way to get rid of specific units... all of which of course runs the risk of slowing the rush down. Since DE will be "new" you can expect to see a fair amount of them when the set is released.

Also with the healing and restoring we've seen from the HE to date, they may also be able to defeat the rush (especially if splashed with some Dwarf cards like Keystone Forge) with some regularity.

Well said as usual mouse.

I fall into the 6-10 games a week crowd. Sometimes more. I have over a dozen regular oppenents, and whats also nice, is they are spread among three different game groups, which adds to variety in experience, as you play groups that have different experiences with the game. Being the guy bouncing arround from group to group, and playing the most, I fimnd myself being the guy bring ideals and experience from one group to the other, so I had a very fast learning curve with the game.

Most intersting thing, is between the 3 groups there were different views on which race is most powerfull and what is unstoppable, this tells me that there is at least a resonable amount of balance between the races at this point and that play style between groups is the biggest factor.

One group is playing with just a single core set with one pack of each expansion. They just play for fast kicks and just fling decks together without much optimin build effort. They find Orcs pretty much unwinnable. There orcs are no faster then the other races and lack the controll tools the others have, they have just about given up on the orcs as a playable race, although they see the potental of a fast deck.

Another group is leaning towards the power cards and charcters. Warhammer FB players adapting to invasion. They tend to like there decks staying within reason with warhammer themes, this combinec with the love of the big stuff, tends to make for heavy, slow decks, and games that can be won and lost with decking. Play an orc rush vs them and orcs will never lose.

Last group is a bunch of hardcore gamers that hang out and play 15-20 games a week. They all have three copies of the box set and of each expasion. (Or between them mixing and matching they do, they are all buds and help each other out, but between them they average 2.5 copies of each set.) These guys likey are reading this forum and play highly tunned very well designed decks. Orc rushes win a lot, but by no means do they win all the time.

Basically, W:I is a brand new game, with a brand new meta.

The fact that AGGRO archetypes like ORCS are stronger than all (at least, that's what it seems) is pretty normal. We have a small pool of cards and a game that is going grow up...

At the beginning (that's the same for EVERY card game) the most basic mechanics are the most efficient, ever. If damage dealing is the basic focus of the game right now, I think it's normal that Orcs have some advantage.

Things will change when players will get a bigger understanding and more cards...At that point, we'll see lots of control decks dominating the format, as well as some combo decks (this game's going to be pretty comb-ish, IMHO).

We've just to wait for more interactions and more viable options: then, orcs power will be orcs weakness: they rush.

Dywnarc said:

Was it your Orc deck that I almost beat except for my final card draw?

That is correct, which makes my point. Orc rush is not all sure thing, although it is powerfull and easy to play.

Well even if the victory isn't 100% sure with the orcs they still seem to be the most sure deck to win right now. Yeah, the other decks have the CHANCE of winning, but there isn't something like 50/50 ratio. Right now if you play well with orcs and know your opponents strategy so you can hamper them down with pillage or two you'll have pretty high chances of winning.

So what I'm saying is that other decks are okay, but mathematically orc deck just tends to win so much more it's no point to think about playing other decks in tournaments. I am aware that this will change (hopefully) with more battlepacks (those vile sorcerers indeed hurt), but orcs just dominate right now. And by the way I've always found it harder to play with aggro decks my mind is twisted somehow...

Well I dissagree. Pixel geek can attest, that the Orc deck I was running is truely as fast as they get, its pretty ugly, YET it CANNOT beat my snipping chaos deck, well it can, and the snipper deck often barely hangs on, but the snipper deck so far beats my orc deck 80/20.

So if I was playing in your neck of the woods, where everyone brings orcs to a tournemtn thinking they rule, I would kick royal butt! Untill I meet the fast dwarf deck that the snipper deck seams to struggle against, the same orc decks that get overrun by orcs........

When I hand over my orc deck to others, so far they have been less experienced players then me, and I know the orc deck very well, so it is possible its not being played optimaly, but then again, I have not scene any serios errors.

Dywnarc said:

And it had some problems with my Dwarf stall deck as well. I was actually hoping to try it against my DE/Chaos Sniping deck as well since I really do think that is one deck that is very well suited to dealing with Orc rush decks.

lord nekrah said:

At the moment but the last battlepack added a lot of good cards to use with the other factions and players are getting more and more experienced with the game and how to play.

I had issues with Orc decks previously but in my last two games against them I can happily say that both wins were a result of my draw and one clear game play mistake I made and not simply being overwhelmed by a green horde.

Orc decks are simple, with minimal moving parts. This feeds into the rush and makes it a little harder to make drastically bad mistakes.

That said, I've seen an Empire deck which wins 75% of the time against them, and the Chaos/DE decks I've seen tend to fair a bit better than that against an Orc rush. Control decks as a matter of course usually beat rush decks, because rush decks require the right cards in the right amounts to pull off that quick victory. A stall or bad hand causes severe problems, and as such they must be maximized for success with most if not all cards x3... which of course means they have little if any flexibility, and a talented control player recognizes that they just need to disrupt one piece of the rush to halt it long enough to get their lock in place.

I've played against a ***** Dwarf/HE control deck that was just ludicous. I'm not sure it has ever lost to the Orc Blitz style decks. It just throws down development after development and supports and toughness units and with one zone burning and 4-6 HP on another zone (and in some cases both other zones) it still pulls out the win, eventually getting enough pieces in play to heal up or move existing damage, canceling incoming damage, and then just grinding away the Orc deck in a battle of attrition it can't win.

Orc Rush is not unbeatable. In a single copy format (1 copy core, 1 copy each BP), Orc Rush is definitely stronger. But with multiple copy format, there are plenty of good decks that can compete.

Speaking of decks...I haven't been modifying/updating any deck lists recently. If someone wants to try their hand, here are some potential deck builds.

-Indirect Damage/Control Order Deck

-Skaven/Chaos Corruption Deck

-Removal/Corruption Chaos/DE Deck

-The Swords (Greatswords/Sellswords) Order Rush Deck

-Jumping Sellswords Mill/Control Deck (move sellswords to quest zone for hilarity)

-Cancel Attrition Order Deck (toughness, cancel abilities, heal)

FiendishDevil said:

Just checking. You know that sellswords jump over at the end of the turn, and not the begining of the turn, so they will effectively not boost the greatswords when they jump?

Yep. But it's still 2 power for a cost of 0 the first turn you play them.

Okay, I guess I'm outta the loop, despite having played this from GenCon on and quite frequently at that. Though I only have 2 main opponents that I play, other than playing Nate (French) a few times at his apartment a while back (actually won a game, yay!), so perhaps that's why I'm unfamiliar with this term being tossed around - sniping?

What the heck is that? Never heard of this deck type.

I'm also of the mind that there's not enough cards right now to really make clearly delineated decks. I'm sure I'm in the minority saying that but my decks tend to be rather large (65-85) at present and they do tend to feel similar (within each faction).

Sniping = Chaos/DE Nurgle Sorcerer, We need your Blood. The DE card that destroys a damaged unit. Targeted destruction of individual units.

Other features of a snipping deck may be VIle sorcs, call for blood tactic, some like blood for blood god, but I do not, but you may also see cload of flies on either valkry the bloody or on bloodsworn. Throw ALL those into the same deck, you have a snipping deck. Some may splash in curroption aspects like shrines of nurgle and pestilence.

I have to disagree WyteFang, the card pool is big enough now to make very specific deck types

Sniping can also be referred to as pinging ala M:tG terms (it's like Prodigal Sorcerer and Royal Assassin).

In reference to W:I, sniping specifically involves pinging a point of damage or corrupting to "mark" the target, then killing the unit. As opposed to direct damage which would deal all the damage to the units to kill them. It is essentially a form of conditional unit removal.

The current snipe decks revolve around We Need Your Blood, Call The Blood, Vile Sorceress, Chosen of Tzeentch , and Nurgle Sorcerer. Powerful support for the deck include Bloodsworn, Cloud of Flies, Seduced by Darkness, Shrine to Nurgle, Bule Lord of Pus, Warp Lightning Cannon, Festering Nurglings, and Nurgle's Pestilence.

As you can see with those 13 core cards, you can already have a deck of 39, needing to only add 11 more cards to get a very streamlined and efficient deck.

Well if we want to get technical sniping comes from the term sniper and refers to them shooting at someone or something. It is not as limited as just damaging a unit for a single point of damage to mark them, nor is it automatically as major as destroying them outright with a single effect, but it is any form of directed damage that is used to singularly or in combination with other effects used to remove threats or potential threats. Hitting someone for one damage to corrupt them with StN would qualify as sniping. Destroying a hero with Flames of Tzeentch would also be considered sniping.

The smaller cumulative or combo effects to remove a target more generally get the referral because they are easier to pull off than outright major destruction, which tends to see itself more heavily in "murder" or "aggro" decks, but that does not discount them.

Fiendish doesn't know me that well (how could he, of course, we only interact briefly on a game forum) or he'd know that I detest any terms linked to M:TG or for that matter, to any other pre-existing games being applied to this great, NEW game. I believe a game has the right to have its own terms & vernacular developed for itself.

That being said, I agree that we're starting to get to a place where different decks are becoming more possible but based on how I've seen this game develop and how it plays (at least to my less-than-great understanding, LOL) - I still think we need more cards before truly distinct decks are developed. I do respect your viewpoint, however, Fiendish, as I know you love the game and you know your stuff too, so I'm not trying to argue with you, per se. Just sharing why I think a bit differently.

I do, also, agree with Dormouse, that people are trying to take the M:TG or basic CCG model with their deck-building (multiples of a specific tight group of cards with a low card count to enhance draw-percentages) and I don't think that'll be the long-term, most successful way to build a deck for this game. I think that players who don't worry so much about the ratios and sprinkle a bit more variety into their decks will do just as well, if potentially not better, down the road. Just a hunch, though...I have no facts to back me up at the moment.

I know you dislike the likening of WI to MtG, but I like to make similarities because usually, more often than not, the way to attract new blood to a game is to get it from old games that people have played before

Hence, I often convert terms from other games into WI terms for easy translation.

As far as the deck building methodology, I firmly believe that all card games use the same basic deck building methods.

• Powerhouse units
• Unit removal
• Resource destruction
• Deck destruction
• Hand destruction - option limitation
• Acceleration - option increasing
• Optimization - option consistency

whats the general Orc build? I just picked up 3x of each Pack and 1 core set. I don't mind playing against the boogeyman... lol

if i get enough players to play with me we can test and see were the deck takes us, I know a few spikes that would like to play said deck.

im excited this game seems like a lot of fun.