Wytefang said:

I guess the reference was to the cardtext change from "damage during combat" to "combat damage", which undoes the "Shrine + Pestilence" combo.

Chaos is in no way an "auto-loss" to Empire. Shrine to Nurgle + Pestilence was a fun little combo (if you allowed it) but was hardly central to Chaos's strategy. The Bolt Thrower is just downright bad for six. Even if you somehow muster the resources to finance it, the list of cards that shut it down is just too long (Urguck, Warrior Priests, Valkia, anybody with toughness, any of the random Dwarves that do stuff when somebody dies, any of the random Orcs that pump with damage....) Yeah, you can win with it after an Electors/Electors/Verena sequence, but you can win with pretty much anything after that. The key for Chaos is keeping Empire off of six resources, or preventing them from getting those three cards in hand at the same time. They can do this about two-thirds of the time in my experience.

cyberfunk said:

If you think that Valkia or Urguck could stop the machine-gun (as we call the Bolt Thower) then you are wrong. On the 5th round my opponent poured out 15 indirect damage, and another 20+ (thank to two Innovation) in round six.

Wytefang

Your logic, that "because there is only 3 of it, it could not be overpowered" is completely wrong. In that way no card could be overpowered... ever. A free cost card should have a somewhat limited one shot effect (as Vaul Unmaking), or should have some drawback (Cloud of Flies). Before this Seduced by Darkness was the best 0 cost card, but even that not this multifunctional.

BTW, as I stated Empire already seems the most powerfull in our group thank to Shrine to Taal (a 2 cost support giving more than 3-4 power regulary) and Judgement. Any boost to them while none against these things seems too much to me.

With a chaos deck you could not remove supports... so you must remove the creature gaining Taal bonus. But you will run out of removals before he run out of Talabheim Detachment (which is basically... never) and every other unit he draws.

Empire is not unbeatable... if you have a very lucky draw and he is not. But currently the strongest archetype in our gaming club.

cyberfunk said:

Martin_fr said:

Why would the wording change make Pestilence not work? I guess I'm not seeing what the big deal. It's not that great of a combo, anyway, if you ask me.

Cain Hu, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think that anyone who has a good feel for this game AND who doesn't liken it to other games in how they handle the strategy and gameplay of their cards, should have no issues with 3 cards. Considering that if a deck is about 60-70 cards, that's around 5% (give or take) of the cards in a deck and you can easily see why it's not a big deal. Sounds like you might just need a bit more experience and/or practice with the game (I mean that with no disrespect intended).

Wytefang said:

Combat damage is damage dealt by Units in combat. Pestilence is now non-combat damage. Old Shrine + Pestilence could corrupt 5-10+ Units for 3 Resources, easy.

Wytefang said:

Pestilence does still work, but pestilence played during combat does no longer trigger Shrine to Nurgle, which it did before the FAQ.

Right. The Chaos deck I was playing before the FAQ used the Shrine to corrupt anything attacking either via pestilence or Nurgle Sorcerors. You just had to shoot the attacking unit for 1 to stop them attacking, you didn't need to kill them, so the high cost of the sorcerors was doable. Pestilence was used as a global reset in case they could play lots of units in 1 turn to try to rush past a sorceror. I used Chaos Knights or a Bloodthirster as finishers but you could use pretty much anything. It was extremely effective - the only issue was toughness where you had to get a Bloodthirster down fast to get control of the board. Now the deck doesn't work and against Empire they win the long (and often not-that-long) game.

To actually get back on topic, the Iron Discipline card seems decent but honestly nowhere near the power level of Judgement or Shrine to Taal.

Oh, interesting. But that's a cheap, rather lame way to get a bunch of corrupted units on the table and I doubt that was a combo that they'd wanted to have happen. This sounds like a great change. There are now plenty of ways to corrupt units for Chaos so this isn't as upsetting as it could be, imho.

Still sounds like an interesting interpretation (originally speaking) of the intent of the rules - in Spellfire you used to be able to do someting annoyingly similar. You'd push forward a champion to fight over a realm and once your opponent put forth his champion to defend, you'd play the Event card "Cataclysm" which destroyed a Realm. Since you destroyed a realm in combat (technically speaking), you'd get a Spoil of Victory (a card draw). Totally not in keeping with the spirit of what was intended but stupidly allowed since it didn't specifically violate any rule.

So I'm glad this ruling tweak was made. Good call on this one, FFG.

Wytefang said:

Chaos still lacks an allaround reset cards (Judgment, Troll Vomit). This BP gives them a semi-reset, though for the BZ only. Yeah, Dwarves have no reset card, but they don't need as much help as Chaos does/did.

Cain_hu said:

The problem here is the 15 resources, not the Bolt Thrower. Two Greatswords and a Pistoliers actually gets you a slightly *better* ratio of resources:damage, and you even get to pick where it goes. And those cards can do other useful things, like defend your zones or draw cards. The thing that's easy to forget in this game is that It's not about how big you win, when you win (Empire certainly takes the cake there), it's about how often you win. I'm having a hard time even imagining the Bolt Thrower (again, at six it could be good at 3) turning a loss into a win.

Clamatius said:

Well, you don't have to keep them off of six for the whole game. Just long enough to build up your developments. And you don't have to keep them off of six at all if you can squeeze their Quest. Empire can get some really sick starts, but they are generally pretty fragile. They have to put Gates + Shrine + Dude to kingdom early. Obviously, removal on their guy in Kingdom hurts pretty bad. And, because they have to put a lot of cards in Kingdom, they are often relying on Huntsmen/random weenies in the Quest, which means that Nurgle's Pestilence rocks them. Meanwhile, Chaos is playing Savage Marauders and Warpstone Meteors, which are card-efficient and more difficult to disrupt.

I run something like 2-3x Flames of Tzeentch, 2x Nurgle's Pestilence, 2x Pilgrimmage, 2x Chosen of Tzeentch, 3x Lobber Crew, and 2x Pillage in my Chaos build. Seven of these cards are virtual locks to set them back a turn on getting the Shrine combo off and several others can do so with some frequency. Pilgrimmage will now turn off the Shrine for a turn even if they get more than one guy to Kingdom (you can play it in phase zero).

Re: Shrine "Nerf"

Lobber Crew + Pestilence is, IMO, way better than Shrine + Pestilence ever was. Not as cute, but more effective. They correct way to play it is, obviously, to activate the Lobber Crew and then play Pestilence in response to cull the weenies. The main problem with Shrine / Pestilence was: if you were attacking, there was a good chance some Savage Gors and/or Savage Marauders were involved, and so corrupting all their guys also meant lowering your attack pool. And, if you played it in combat, you obviously couldn't play guys after the Pestilence resolved. I still think it was probably a good idea to change/clarify the Shrine, as it definitely had the potential to get more abusive.

Yeah, I finally figured it out. I went 3-1 against Empire today with my revamped Chaos deck. A win seems to look like:

T1: Marauders to kingdom, develop kingdom.

T2: Wolves of the North to Quest, develop quest, Chaos Knights on Wolves (and optionally Innovation & Flames on their guy in kingdom).

T3...end: Draw many cards. Blow up stuff they play with Flames, Pestilence & Cloud of Flies. Hit them with the Knights. Repeat.

A loss is where you can't disrupt them on turn 2 or 3 and they get to play Will + Verena in the same turn. That buys them enough time to get the Shrine to Taal up and you lose. Maybe that's enough to make Iron Discipline good - if they can counter your first Flames they're in much better shape. We'll have to try it more in the Empire deck. Seems like it would generally be nowhere near as good in other matchups though.

Yeah, that's definitely the issue for Empire. Iron Discipline is great against Chaos, but a development in every other matchup. And there aren't many discretionary spots in Empire: 24 or so assorted units, then 3 Villages, 3 Gates, 3 Shrines, 3 Verena, 3 Electors. Sigmar's Intervention, Innovation, Infiltrate, Forced March, and Abandoned Mine are already more than enough to fill out the deck from there. So, you've got to jettison something pretty good to squeeze in Iron Discipline. I think I'll probably make room for 2 when I pick up the BPs, but I'll be cursing them against Orcs and Dwarves.

Alright. Here's a question. Playing a development, support or unit counts as an action. So then I believe you can counter an Orc player attaching a Choppa to his unit with Iron Discipline, right? Would make ID a lot better against Orcs if that's true (and I think it is).

I assume that you can cancel a Choppa since it uses the word "target." You could also cancel a splashed Seduced By Darkness. I didn't really mean to say that it was not theoretically playable against Orcs/Dwarves. It's just going to be the weakest card in your hand almost every time, so it's going to end up as a development.

cyberfunk said:

That is a good question. Playing supports counts as taking an action but is NOT an action as defined in the rulebook. I don't believe it is a valid target of this card. I'd send it to James if I were you.

dormouse said:

Hmm. I think it seems really sloppy to have a distinction between "Actions" (capitalization mine) and "taking an action," especially given that the section in the rulebook entitled "Actions" actually uses the phrase "take actions." Still, I can see where you'd get the idea. The "Actions" section says that Actions are denoted by a boldface "Action:" and that certainly isn't the case for game-based actions such as putting a card into play. If they want to make this distinction, then I vote for a change in terminology. Other rules questions could arise:

If I play a unit (taking an action, but not an Action), can you play/use an action in response, or can you only respond to other Actions?

Perhaps I will send it to James.

cyberfunk said:

According to the FAQ (page 1 of the printer-friendly version) playing a unit, support, development or quest is an action to which every player can respond with actions. However unit, support, developments and quests cannot be played in response. Whether Iron Discipline can cancel an attachment, I'm not sure. Sending in a rules question would be a good idea.

I think it does cancel the acton of puting the choppa in play. But keep in mind that supports don't go to the discard after use (like tactics), so the player wuld keep the choppa in his hand. So i'm not considering this a good counter (since in most cases the orc player can just play the coppa on another unit, and one resource is not that big of an hit).

cyberfunk said:

There's really no automatic or perfect build for Empire. There are plenty of permutations to go with. In fact, looking at your line-up, I was shocked that you'd only have a single Innovation. I consider a 0-cost Resource generator to be nearly a must-have in any deck at 3 copies, for example.

Wytefang said:

There's really no automatic or perfect build for Empire. There are plenty of permutations to go with. In fact, looking at your line-up, I was shocked that you'd only have a single Innovation. I consider a 0-cost Resource generator to be nearly a must-have in any deck at 3 copies, for example.

I think Contested Village beats it in terms of a "fits in every deck" card. Innovation fits in any deck that's going to play developments. I don't think you want Innovation in a pure speed Orc build since the only reason you're playing developments in that deck at all is as a figleaf defense against Verena.

I sent this in via the Rules Questions:

I have a question that in this case is for Iron Discipline, although there are a few other similar cards that may be affected.

#45 Empire Tactic - Iron Discipline - 0R/1L - "ACTION: Target one unit. Until the end of the turn, cancel any other action that targets this unit unless the action's controller pays an additional 4 resources (per action)."

What counts as "any other action" for this purpose? For example, can I play Iron Discipline on an opposing unit in response to a Choppa being attached to prevent the Choppa being attached if the opponent chooses not to pay the 4? If so, does the Choppa go to the discard?

Aykenger said:

Ah, good catch. So, what is the case for this not working, now? Play a support = action; Choppa = support; Choppa = target. I can't really see how it wouldn't work without a wording change. Looks like somebody else is on it, but for the future, what is James's e-mail? Or do people just send him messages through his account on the site?

Wytefang said:

I would definitely run more than one Innovation in Empire. I would run between 1 and 3 copies of all the cards I listed without number (Innovatioin, Intervention, Infiltrate, Abandoned Mine, Forced March). You'll notice that if they were all singletons, I'd have less than 50 cards. I was trying to point out that these last 10 card slots were not set in stone, but if Innovation is a "must-have" 3-of, maybe I was wrong.

There is a link called Rules Question at the bottom of each page. There you can the game for which you have a question and enter the question. After some time James will send you the answer via E-Mail.

Clamatius said:

Wytefang said:

There's really no automatic or perfect build for Empire. There are plenty of permutations to go with. In fact, looking at your line-up, I was shocked that you'd only have a single Innovation. I consider a 0-cost Resource generator to be nearly a must-have in any deck at 3 copies, for example.

I think Contested Village beats it in terms of a "fits in every deck" card. Innovation fits in any deck that's going to play developments. I don't think you want Innovation in a pure speed Orc build since the only reason you're playing developments in that deck at all is as a figleaf defense against Verena.

I'll agree - Contested Village is great for nearly any deck - a fair point. I think, however, that even in an Orc deck it's supremely useful for two reasons (one of which is, admittedly, situational):

1. When playing against Empire or Empire/Dwarf hybrids, you're going to need a Development down in each Zone lest you get wiped by Judgment of Verena - so you'll have some developments down in that scenario and can benefit from Innovation.

2. It's free and provides Resources (or even 1 free resource if you only toss down 1 development) - most Orc decks are all about speed so anything that can give them more resources to get cranking more quickly is a great thing. In that regard, I would definitely consider it a must-have card.

Really the only reason not to run Innovation is so you can run Pilgrimage. Innovation is way better for Order; it tends to be pretty close on Destruction, but I often favor Pilgrimage.