I built a fairly streamlined indirect damage deck. Empire with a splash of He and trying to use the reapter bolt thower and indirect assult.

I found it to hold on surprising long, a little bit of damage cancellation, some city gates and the sheer number of developments in play and damage cancellation made a deck that held out for silly amounts of time, but I just could not get it to win. Fun to play though.

Problem is that by the time you can build up enough developments to make the bolt thower and/or the surprise assults to work, the oppent had enough units in play to asbord the damage pretty good.

I was holding off a deadly chaos deck, when I got built up to 7 develpments with the bolt thower in play. Fired the bolt thower and with help from innovation had enough to fire off surprise assult twice, for an impressive 21 poins of indirect damage. But by this time he had enough units to apply them arround, in fact that assult saved his ass cause he was close to getting decked!

Bottom line is, is anybody yet able to make a dck work arround indirect assult. It woudl like work vs some of the early decks I played against, but I play in a fairly tuned deck environment, and I think the game is not ready for that deck to work......yet....

I, too, am looking forward for a competitve Indirect Damage deck, but they are just too few cards to support this strategy within the current card pool (just like for a decking strategy).

The article about Assault on Ulthuan introduced the High Elves with these words : "The High Elves are a proud, powerful race who rely on card denial, cancellation, healing, and ranged attacks."

Ranged attacks... Indirect damage ?

I really hope this faction will focus around those damages : it's gameplay would be very different and interesting.

At our group Repeater Bolt Thower just ruled our last gaming day... it was 10:0 against Chaos and Orc players.

Forget the Supprise Assault, they are not compatible with the Thrower. For the later you need just 1-2 developments in BF (except against dwarwes), which is useless for Supprise Assault.

Use the machine gun with the Empire jumping packs... Shrine to Taal, City Gates. Use Innovation too. With a single City Gates, 1-2 Shrine and innovations you should be able to deal 15+ indirect damage pretty soon.

BTW, the guy at our club didn't played any other HE cards above the Bolt Thower, and used only a single development in BF. (there was no toughness around)

I did it with the sumping empire. How was it beationg orc decks? Chaos was the only deck I found it could do well against. I tend to have a knack for this game, yet I struggled to make this work. I even ahd all the cards your buddy did, although I did have the surprise assult cards, which I actully found to be very good.

I just can;t see how it can beat an orc deck though unless the orc deck is not tuned to the 9's

I think right now Indirect Damage needs to be a subtheme of a greater denial deck. Run a deck that denies resources and use the indirect damage to deal with the limited number of units the opponent can play. Eventually they will have to start spreading it to the capitol.

I'm playing a pretty effective version of this deck. This what I've learned.

You need a lot of power. Keys to power are developments, city gates, shrine to taal, inovation and contested stronghold. After a decent build up I can get 20 to 30 power a round which you dump into the bolter. Few opponents can last two rounds of this.

Empire jumping jacks are a key additional theme to this deck.

I also have the following sub themes. Gates of sigmar for some damage cancelation.

Counterstrike units with Greater Heal to damage opponents, absorb damage and not die.

Archmage of Saphery and Thyrius Gorman (pardon the spelling on all that).

Silver Helm Brigade block and absorb damage for additional card draws.

Abandoned Mine to access developments.

Will of the electors and judgement of verna as a get out of jail free combo.

Lots of power allows you use Greatswords and place a large number of additional units in a turn to gain a significant boost to power.

Some thoughts,

Wraith428

I respect your opinion and see whats right in your advice, I am telling you though, in a tuned deck invironement, there is no way a game is going to last long enough for someone to get 20-30 points gather in the kingdom phase.

That would be a pretty isolated play pool where one would have time for that to work. I am not shooting down the advice, not by anymeans, cause you are on the right track, that is pretty much the path I took, it just will not work vs fast decks. Perhaps at this time an indirect damage deck can;t play vs the fast decks,a nd a few more expnasions may chance that. We will see.

I will keep working on it and keep yeah all posted.

I seen that it not as hard as it seems for the first look. And don't forget, that it's easier to draw multiple innovations, shrines, gates when you have jumping packs working.

Also, after a well timed Judgement+Electors your opponent won't have much units to absorb damage.

Against orcs he once used a 3rd or 4th turn Judgement+Electors and they could not recover fast enoght. In the other game jumping packs+thower+innovation for a wn (that mach was close)

Dywnarc said:

I'm very curious to know more about how to play an orc rush deck as I haven't had a huge amount of success with them... however I do not want to hijack this thread so I am going to start another in the deck building forum. FYI for those interested in this look to the deck building forum "How to Play an Orc Rush."

Wraith428

Well I worked on it more and have a deck that appears to work, won a game with the indirect damage route, and had a lot of close ones I could have won if I knew the deck a bit better, so IMO it is a viable, if barely, deck build. Even the games it looses it hangs in there a long time cause it gets so many developments out.

3 shrine to taal
3 contested stronghold
2 city gate
3 arbalette
11
3 judgement
3 innovation
3 will of the elector
3 master rune of valaya
3 steel bane
26
2 siver helm brigade
3 archmage of saphery
3 talabheim detachement
3 thyrus gorman
2 johannes broheim
3 pistolers
3 reiksgard knight
2 nuln tinkerer
3 huntsmenn
50

This deck make a good performance.

Arbalette = Repeater Bolt Thrower

K I am getting it to work, and it even worked vs some fast decks.

My list is very simaler to Renju's a little different.

I did not bother with judgement, one cause my judgment cards are in a "judgment deck" I do not want to pull apart, and I would liek to try to pull it off without them.

I only have 2 copies of Bolt thower- I will draw it soon enough. with draw management.

I do have that new high elf card that cancells all damage and turns it into resources. that card is monney in the deck. Nothing like letting through a big orc waaah, loading up 30 odd barrels and fireing off the bolt thower 10-15 times!

I am now winning game with this deck.

As an aside, perhaps its my lack of judgements, but I do find myself almost in danger of decking myelf with this deck, has no happened yet due to draw controll, but close, then again, those are the same games I tend to get the job done with. Fun to play with anyways.

I find it to be rather "shady" that you can use the bolt thrower more than once a turn. It makes it so there is little reason to take your battlefield developments above 1 (2 or 3 if the opponent has sufficient toughness effects).

I dont get, how u can use your boldthrower for 15 shots while only having 1 or 2 developments in your BF.

You can use a action multiple time in a turn, so the repeater bolt thrower.

I definitely think the Bolt Thrower is working as intended. As Renju notes, It's got "repeater" right there in the name. Even If I just have a Hammerer of Kazak Arul or Big 'Unz sitting there, you are doing half damage with two developments. Anybody with real toughness makes the card unplayable unless you develop the zone every turn from the outset, which you probably don't want to do. I still think the card is, at this point, a borderline alternate win condition for Verena decks. It's maybe worth it against Dwarves because of Valaya. It's not worth it against anybody else.

cyberfunk said:

I think you are wrong. dwarves have got the most toughness to make indirect damage meaningless.

As you can see in my previous posts, Elven Machine Gun was very effective against chaos and orcs at our gaming club.

Big uns is for my , the ultimate nemesis of the repeater.

1 big uns 4 others unit with 2 or more hit point and even a 5 devellopement repeater would do no damage.

Cain_hu said:

Cain_hu said:

Dwarfs have that Mountain card that nets you 3 development cards aswell. that ran in 3x's is good, sure you have the chance of getting something you dont want as a development but who cares the point is you only need 1 thrower anyways.

i have a similar deck with pistoler and the swordmaster (gets 1 hit point whenever a character comes into play) with the character that bounces himself back up you can easily get a 6-8 powered character with out much card use.

Cain_hu said:

Yeah, I realize the Dwarves' toughness is an issue, I'm just saying that you sometimes can't kill them as Empire because you've taken a long time to set up and they've had time to draw their Valayas. That means as many as five turns to win, which could push the game to decking territory, especially if you have City Gates going. If you can make sure you hit their Ironbreakers/King with Verena, the Repeater can be pretty good. They still might have an answer for it (Stand Your Ground on a big guy or something), but it is at least another way you can win.

Orcs should not really be losing to the Repeater. If you wipe Orcs with Verena, you can twiddle your thumbs to victory with huge Pistoliers or whatever. If you don't get off a big Verena, they're going to have some combination of Big 'Unz , Urguck, Pillage, Grimgore, Rip Dere 'eads Off, Smash-Go-Boom, etc. that is going to make the Repeater bad, and are also going to be beating your face while you're paying 4-5 for a card with 0 HP.

Chaos is more vulnerable than Orcs, but they still have Valkia/Bloodsworn and Bloodthirster, which can soak a lot of damage without sacrificing hammers. Bloodthirster also shuts down Valaya, making it risky to skimp on defense to pay for the Repeater.

I think what people are missing with Suprise Assault is the synergy with City Gates and Shrine to Taal in the BATTLEFIELD. Most Empire players have become so accustomed to the standard model of huge Kingdom, late turn smash that the utilization of those support cards in the Battlefield isn't even considered.

There is a deck locally that utilizes Suprise Assaults to devastating effect. It is a much more agressive empire build. By playing the City Gates and Shrine to Taal in the battle field aloong with cheap disposable units you get attacks each turn that quickly grow in power. Adding 5 or 6 to a Peasant Militia by turn 4 is pretty standard. By turn 6 I normally end up facing at least one Suprise assault for 8-10, normally doubled in effect by Sigmar's comet followed up by an attack for 10-12 power. That's tough to absorb even for dwarves considering you have been attacking every turn up to that point. I have seen games where he plays 2 Suprise Assaults an one of them get's forked by Sigmar's comet so I'm forced to assign 30 indirect damage, knowing full well a beefy unit is still available to finish off a zone. Harsh.

Once he's willing to share his decklist I'll be sure to post it. The core is pretty small and there is a lot of room for extras (Will of the Electors / Judgement).

I forgot to add that the addition of the beginning on turn phase allows the Pistoloers to be played to the battlefield, be targeted by Shrine to Taal and with only one resource remaining from the previous turn they can be moved to the Kingdom for normal "jumping jack" madness.

I've certainly put Shrines in the battlefield before, but I haven't played Empire a lot since the FAQ. That's a good point that you no longer have to develop Kingdom all the way due to the weird barrel hangover/phase zero situation. Going Kingdom does open up Innovation and Contested Stronghold, but in some builds you can really use those BF developments (especially if you're splashing Troll Slayers or Ironbreakers of Ankhor). And I do like Surprise Assault a lot better than the Repeater. Still not sure it makes the cut for me, but it's worth considering. I think you need to be doing 5+ damage (after toughness/misc. negation) for SA to be worthwile; that'll happen sometimes, but not all the time.

If you devote the deck to Suprise Assaults and place your CIty Gates in the Battlefield, you will have 5 developments by turn 3 or 4 at the latest and often earlier. You do forfeit developments in the kingdom (and the support cards that key off them), but what I've found is the game goes much faster and playing defensively isn't really necessary.