Dam said:

You'd be surprised, a slow grind strategy might sound dull, but it's surprisingly effective in a number of CCG's I've played.

If I can kill off your units though indirect damage from the repeater bolter and other cards like Shadow Warrior I slowly just pick you apart while you ineffectively wail in what is effectively a Soft-Lock. Soft-Lock strategies would require the game to be considerably longer than what we currently experience. My current games only make it to around 5 turns. 6 turns is a long game is a rush dominated environment. A high Elf deck might slowly grind out 10-12 turns for the win.

Here you get spanish translation for those who hear: www.edgeent.com/V2/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Nice review Bountyhunter, appreciated as always

Dam said:

I see where youre coming from, but the first HE deck type im gonna try out (and probably majority i'd guess) is going to be based on returning units to hand w/ indirect damage so that they don't have units to soak up Repeater bolts. i'll try using HE units for defense & their abilities mainly so they augment the bolt thrower, instead of relying mainly on them to deal damage. the rub there is to last long enough to pull it off, and luckily HE come with rush control

Do you think the anti-HE meta will soon come with heavy Support destruction then Artemus? With HElfs using Repair the Waystones, opposition in return sniping the Questing Unit? I agree RBT seems like the top candidate for them, but so far all other factions can dish out damage with Units, which is where the HElfs seem very weak at this point in time. Do they even have a single 3P Unit for them?

In a healing based deck you can boost units in bf with ishas gaze. But a max of 3p is still low compared to the other fractions.

I appreciate having a possibility to counter judgement. With burn it down or demolition you have quite a chance gainst ordinary empirelists. You can also use your dev in the bf for the RBT for burn it down.

Nice analysis Bountyhunter. I am not sure I agree with this part:

#15 Temple of Vaul (High Elf Support) 3-H

3/0. Building.

Forced: At the beginning of your turn, deal 2 damage to your capital (you choose which section(s)).

An oddity until you consider the #10 Wake the Dragons and Gifts of Aenarion combination. Once you have the infinate Wake the Dragons and Gifts of Aenarion cycle going this card effectively gives you another 2 resources a turn. Making it a 3 cost 5 hammer card. Other than that combo, I can't see a reason to play it though.

The Temple is a Forced effect, which means:

Forced effects are denoted by a bold “Forced:” trigger
on a card. Forced effects are triggered by specific
occurrences throughout a game, and they occur automatically,
whether the card’s controller wants them
to resolve or not. Forced effects always occur immediately
whenever their trigger is met, and they cannot
be cancelled or interrupted by other actions.

(emphasis added)

Therefore I believe you cannot us Gifts of Aenarion Action: to convert the damage

i meant i'm sure im not the only one to try out the approach i mentioned; no idea how well it'll work and if it'll affect metas...

But if most decks you play are relying on Units to deal their damage, and you on a support card, with several ways to return their units to hand, you nullify the fact that their units do more damage than yours. Sure, their units don't really go away and just slows them down especially with cards like Asuryan's Cleansing, but I've seen what happens when you slow down/lock up a rush deck. Without relying on units and being able to keep their units at bay, you gain a huge advantage, if you can capitalize and deal damage - which you have RBT luckily. yeah, maybe more pillages & such will come out; HE have Disdain. Ok then devel. destruction/movement as well. You put down more from all the cards in your hand. But at that point they're weakening their rush decks by putting in defensive/preventative cards youre still gaining advantage over rush.

so yeah, IF they consistantly beat orc & skaven rush by beating them early, meta will change. i think it has a possibility to.

RexGator said:

I enjoyed reading your comments. Here are some remarks.

Bountyhunter said:

I'd play them. I don't think you can compare it with the other cards. They serve different purposes.
High Elf Spearman is the order version of Savage Marauders. Play it in your kingdom on your first turn and get five resources on turn two. Play it early in the quest zone to quickly draw three cards. It can also be useful in the battlefield, late in the game, when you need just a little more power to burn a zone.

Bountyhunter said:

Order version of the Orc's Followers of Mork.

Bountyhunter said:

This one was featured in a card of the week article. The wording is right. If the opponent wants to keep the unit in play he has to give you two of his resources. You actually make money out of it.

Bountyhunter said:

It might work well with a couple of Keystone Forges.

Clamatius said:

I think our disconnect is on the issue of timing of Forced effects versus Actions at the beginning of the turn. I posted on the thread in the rules debate as well. Going to submit to James (although it has been a while since has has answered anything)

Maybe working on FAQ 1.1

I really hope so.

Dam said:

That is a major translation mistake. I thought the same about the usefulness but the german version really reads: heal all dmg on one unit that you control. It would be good to see german clarification to this but afaik even the official faq didn't make into a german version

grille said:

You mean the German text for Greater Healing states heal all dmg on one unit? If so, then I understand the dilemma.

Yes and the text is quite exact so there is no way to interprete the text wrong. In german it says "a unit you control" or "one unit you control" (not really sure if there is a difference between the translations) and not units.

Like i said, its the same for Gift of Life. "Bring back one character" not one "unit". In german i´d say this means something like a special character, heros etc. We´ll see how other players react when i bring back some units with this card

Review Part 3

And now the final part of my drivel :-) The cards for the starter races. All round I'm very impressed by this expansion and I see it as possibly a huge shift away from the rush environement (PLEASE LET THIS BE THE CASE! :-) )

#43 Slayers of Karak Kadrin (Dwarf Unit) 2-DD

1/2. Warrior.

Battlefield. Action: Sacrifice this unit to destroy one target attacking unit.

A useful addition to the dwarfs early defence and a good solution to a hefty mob like the Clan Elite, or indeed, just a goblin with a choppa. Excellent anti-rush.

#44 Mountain Barracks (Dwarf Support) 2-D

1/0. Building.

Your Dwarf units in this zone gain Toughness 1 (whenever this unit is assigned damage, cancel 1 of that damage.)

Many Dwarfs already get toughness by the addition of this makes them just a little more hefty. Very low cost, has a power symbol. How much play this actually see’s I think depends on how much the High Elves see play, who seem to be the masters of indirect damage. Certainly Dwarfs and they’re layers of toughness present a large problem to an indirect damage deck. Though overall, this card is just a solid addition to dwarfs. I don’t rank it like card #43 Slayers of Karak Kadrin though because Dwarfs problem isn’t a lack of good support cards; it’s a lack of anti-rush.

#45 Lure Them Out (Dwarf Tactic) 1-DD

Action: Choose two target units, each in a different battlefield. Each target unit counts its power and deals that amount of damage to the other.

I can see this getting played, and certainly it has very strong anti-rush and anti-unit possibilities which pure dwarfs decks seem to need. It has problems due to its exact wording of battlefield (though in multiplayer games I can see that as pretty funny) so in 1 on 1 games its probably you sacrificing one of your units for theirs. I think this card has a lot of possibilities outside of Dwarf decks in other order decks too, certainly if the unit in your Battlefield has either damage cancellation (Dragonmage) or similar this card will be very useful.

#46 Gold Wizard Acolyte (Empire Unit) 2-EE

1/2. Mage.

Battlefield. Action: When you declare this unit as an attacker, one target unit cannot defend against this attack.

When is corruption not corruption? This is an excellent low cost addition. Particularly if High Elves start using the Defend Tor Aendris + Dragonmage or similar combos you can simply choose whoever is on Defend Tor Aendris. I can see this as a good staple card in Empire decks tbh. Low cost, decent survivability, decent power/cost ratio and fantastic ability. Beyond Empire I think any Order deck which wants a good way to deal with Defend Tor Aendris infinite damage cancellation decks will be hard pushed to justify why they haven’t found a space for this card.

#47 Battle Standard (Empire Support) 0-E

Attachment.

Attach to a unit you control.

Action: At the beginning of your battlefield phase, you may move this unit to a different zone.

Spoilered and already discussed, but and excellent and outstanding addition to all order decks. Dwarfs and High Elves will love this low cost card. Being able to move your key units around, and the ability to switch them from Building in Kingdom to attacking on the battlefield is very useful.

#48 Surrender! (Empire Tactic) 1-EE

Action: Return target defending unit to its owner's hand.

Boomerang. But a bit more targeted as it has to be a defending unit. Gives Empire another tool in the box to destroy any Defend Tor Aendris decks and all-round just another great card for them.

#49 Wyvern Rider (Orc Unit) 3-O

1/3. Calvary.

Battlefield. This unit gains one power if you have no developments in this zone.

High cost (for Orcs) but for that cost you gain durability Personally I’d still have Spider Riders with a Choppa and another low cost like #50 Scrap Heap as my opening hand instead of these, but if anti-weenies becomes the norm this is a strong Orc unit to counter that with..

#50 Scrap Heap (Orc Support) 1-OO

0/0. Siege.

Orc units in this zone get +1 hit points.

And the card just mentioned… Makes your lowbies pretty tough and is amazingly costed for its value. If games start to extend to be a bit longer and blitz decks which ignore blocking gives way to more balanced Orc strategies which actually block, will see a lot of play.

#51 Foot of Gork (Orc Tactic) 2-OOO

Play during your turn.

Action: Destroy one target unit with printed cost 2 or lower.

Boom. An outstanding card for destroying your opponents early (or indeed mid game) questing units. It’s high triple Orc symbols will mean splashing your Chaos deck for it will be pretty costly. But still it may be worth it depending on how strong or weak quests become next set (I’m predicting strong!). Is the Orc solution to early Defend Tor Aendris before the opponent gets a big fattie like the dragonmage on there

#52 Maledictor of Tzeentch (Chaos Unit) 4-CC

2/3. Mage.

Forced: At the beginning of your turn, this unit and one other target unit each take 1 damage.

And just when you’ve had enough of TIM. TIM’s self destructive older brother comes along and bores you with more talk of MTG. NO TIM, I don’t want to hear of you amazing combos or how you are an expert marksman/sniper, it’s dull OK?....Maybe his self destructive nature is a drinking habit or something?

#53 Blood Frenzy (Chaos Support) 1-CCC

Attachment.

Attach to a target unit in your battlefield.

Attached unit gains one power for each resource token on this card.

Forced: Each time an opponent's unit enters a discard pile from play, put a resource token on this attachment.

Yes, indeed, Blood for the Blood God. If you can pull off some sweeping board killers which leave the guy you attach this too alive you can have a very strong uber-powered unit. Invoke Khaines Wrath and take the hit, then reply in your turn with this? Synergizes well with a number of the Chaos cards, should go well in sniper decks.

#54 Tzeentch's Firestorm (Chaos Tactic) 4-CC

Spell.

Action: Deal 2 damage to 2 different target units.

Weenie killer for the Chaos generation. A mini and targeted Pyroclasm for those MTG players out there. It’s cost is mid range though and won’t be played till turn 2-3. But hey, that just measn your opponent has given you more to aim at, right? Good to see anti-rush for Chaos, not that Chaos control really needed it tbh.

#55 Treasure Vaults (Neutral Support) 3

1/0. Building.

Kingdom. While you have 3 or more developments in this zone, each Building support card in this zone gains a power.

Wheres the Dwarf Symbol? :-) Will fit nicely into Dwarf decks that run Wake the Mountain! And any deck using a Kingdom heavy strategy in general. Cost is good for the power and ability.

#56 Ancient Map (Neutral Tactic) 1

Action: Search your deck for a quest card, reveal it to each player, and add it to your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.

An excellent card which pushes Quests in a huge, huge way. Personally I think this should have a 0 cost to push Quests even more, but we can’t have it all. Any deck which is using a Quest strategy will want to be using these to “go fish” for the quests.

#57 Innovation (Neutral Tactic) 0

Action: Gain 1 resource for each development in your kingdom.

As someone with 3 copies already, not exactly happy they re-printed this. Does it even have different artwork? Probably not. Disappointing.

#58 Boar Attack (Neutral Tactic) 3

Action: Choose an opponent. That opponent must either deal 3 damage to an undeveloped section of his capital, or sacrifice a unit or support card in any developed zone.

A solid all round card, which will be a real annoyance when played. It will synergize well with a damage/denial control deck like Chaos.

Just a quick note, before digging in to read other player's thoughts on this set now that I own it (got it yesterday!), I've been consistently impressed with how quickly many of you are able to assimilate these new cards while also coming up with great new card combos and strategies. It always takes me a few weeks of playing with the new cards to really figure everything out.

With old age, comes a bit of mental slowness, I guess.

Wytefang said:

It's a practice picked up from far too much time spent playing card games over the years and far too much boredom. I should really be finishing off the reference list for my PhD, but it's so mind crushingly dull and tedoius that considering cards and card interactions is a useful way to keep the brain from spurting out my ears to escape.

I also spent quite a while as a playtester for the Raw Deal CCG card game in which we where basically sent card lists in pretty much that list form and expected to have such an encycolopedic knowledge of the cards in the game that we could spot card combinations straight away and without playing the cards see potential issues and synergies. Old habit's die hard.

Bountyhunter said:

I think it's more than just funny, since with (possibly) 3 resources you got a two card swing in a painful way: you steal your opponent's attacking character, only to use/abuse it, then sacrifice it for even more sadistic fun before the end of turn. As you've mentioned, there should be a plenty of dark elven sacrifice effects lying around for the job.

Heck, in a mirror match, you can even have the poor sod Bathe in Blood.

If there ever was such a card, I think the Take Captive! card defines what Dark Elves are and are capable of in a quintessential way, much as Waaagh! sums up the Orc in a tidy fashion. I have to put this to play a few times to gauge its efficiency, but in the meanwhile I hope the mixbag feeling when glossing over this race will take a perverse turn for the better in the near future.

grille said:

It did in parts. Phase 0 got in the reprinted CS. So it is likely they will release some full FAQ in some time.

Played several games with one copy of the new expansion.

Played some constructed and a draft.

In my plays, I was testing High Elf very thoroughly. And using only 1 copy of the expansion, High Elf was VERY powerful, A constructed High Elf Indirect Damage deck almost took out a Skaven/Corruption deck, one more turn and High Elves would have won (Skaven had 1 damage left on every single one of their zones).

I happened to draft a High Elf deck as well. Won two games with a drafted deck against a Destruction deck centered around orcs and rush/aggro damage. One game, managed to stall the Destruction deck from burning a zone (with a heavy hitter on Wolves of the North Quest and a 12 power Beardburner + weenies in the Battlefield) over the course of 3 turns!

The High Elf hero Caradryan is VERY effective. Being able to discard a card and rearrange the other two is a huge advantage. Not only do I know what is coming up next, but I get to ditch something that could prove troublesome too! Getting him out early which is possible when playing a High Elf Capital, is wickedly powerful.

I had the chance to play both High Elf Quests. They are extremely broken when combo'd with the right units and/or tactics in discard pile.

Anyways, I definitely foresee a shift away from rush meta. But this doesn't mean that orcs are still not competitive top tier decks. Orcs are amazing with their way to destroy all supports, developments, and units. The "slow" orc aggro will be replacing the orc rush.

Skaven is still good, but I don't see Skaven rush being as formidable. I see Skaven/Dark Elf - Deathmaster/Lokhir Fellheart sniping decks abound in the future.

There are far too many deck possibilities now. There is a counter to every deck type and there is no "best" deck now. Or at least, that is my opinion.

And that is what we want yes?!??!

badgertheking said:

Of course

But there are still decks out there that are dominant and decks that are clearly sub-par.

I guess its a matter of how competitive a person is in deck building.

Bountyhunter said:

I'm pretty meh on this card, actually. It's very useless until the mid-game and at that point, there's a ton of other stuff going on. Plus it can lose it's power. Considering that there are several other Units that don't penalize you while giving you a 1/1 card for 1R, this seems unfortunately limited.

Bountyhunter said:

I suspect that you're missing out on the utilitarian nature of this cool card AND how useful it can be as a speed-bump, of sorts. Put it on your opponent's Unit in his Quest or Kingdom and you've just slowed down his economy. It's less useful when used in the BF than the other two zones, imho. Cool card all around, imho. Had you said it was just average, I'd have been a bit more in agreement but even then it's still better than average, all things considered. (Again, imho.)

Bountyhunter said:

Not meh at all, imho. Much like Mind Killer (above), it depends on where you use this card. Play it on the KZ or the QZ and it could help you make that final push at the end of the game. It can also push one of your BZ units far enough to help you win the game at the last minute.

excellent to hear

I too was also thinking skaven builds are going to start featuring dark elf over chaos or orc at least for now...

i cant wait to get my 2 copies...Caradryn + Disdain....Dragonmage+Defend tor aendris....etc. just straight up awesome. I was totally wrong in thinking Dark Elves were gonna be running all over Ulthuan

off topic, proxied the Mining Tunnels card for dwarves last night in a few games - it makes a HUGE difference for them.