Toberk said:

I think running Deathmaster in any Destruction deck right now is good. And as for your win %, decklist or GFTO. :

Right now, the decks that I have that are in the 50% range vs. the original list (i.e. wins come down to luck and skill):

Repeater Bolt Thrower (this is our #1 tournament deck pick atm)

DE Skaven

Chaos Skaven

Mono Dwarves (f*** yeah!)

Orc Control (ish, haven't tested this enough to know for sure)

so things are not quite as gloomy as previously thought. Sure,3/6 are Skaven, but hopefully Skaven don't get that much on the upcoming BPs... Did I mention that I love the Dwarf deck? It's awesome from the fun perspective - even the games you lose are typically really good. Deathmaster still sucks. Every deck still has 3x Warpstone, 3x Contested Village, 3x Innovation.

Everything else is currently in a "tier-2" state vs. the Orcs, i.e. you can win if you get lucky but don't count on it. I tried the Empire deck that did well in the UK (thanks!) but it did not do too well if the opponent had tested the matchup. Came down to the Judgement lottery overall.

Hey Clamatius, any chance you can post or send me the Dwarf deck list? I'm goin to the Barcelona (Spain) regionals and want to try something different from skaven or bolt thrower decks

My email: xevi.corral || @ || gmail.com

Clamatius said:

I'm surprised that you rate Bolt Thrower so highly. We find that in every single game there's a turn or two where you just cross your fingers and hope that you draw a fog otherwise you lose. You can also play the deck perfectly and still lose based on the blitz player's opening hand becasue they drew into that crazy start. I think that Bolt Thrower is a tier 1 deck, but blitz is currently sitting in a broken tier 0.

I agree with Dwarves however. It sucks a bit that you can't play any on the bigger Dwarf units, but they have an effective build against a lot more of the field than people imagine.

I find it amusing that they preview a Skaven support that costs 4 and effectively produces three resources each turn (plus lets you play Chittering Horde in your opponent's turn for free) and our general opinion of it is that it's too slow. That says a lot about the environment.

Clamatius said:

Every competitive deck is likely running these cards. 41-card decks are the forseeable future.

Clamatius said:

I approve of this phrase being used.

The rush decks are fast enough that virtually everyone can lose to one of their really good draws. I've found that the harder ones to win aren't necessarily the fast starts but the ones where they just open on something like t1 alliance, spider rider, t2 lobber crew, pillage. You need not just a good turn 1 but effectively 2 good turn 1s to come back in time. 2 Warpstones to Quest on turn 1 also means they probably just won - I haven't beaten a double warpstone start from the Orcs in a long time. If they get a really fast start you can often win if you happen to have drawn a Vomit, Judgement, Pestilence, etc.

Playing the bolt thrower deck, you certainly do get the issue where you draw 6 cards and don't find a fog. Abandoned Mine helps a lot with that. It's very important to be parsimonious with your fogs and don't use them unless you really have to.

I think the thing you're really worried about with the bolt thrower deck is probably the 6-scout DE skaven. I suspect that's the hardest matchup and people seem to be running that kind of thing reasonably often. However, the big advantage you have from a tournament position is that non-rush decks are virtually a bye. It also helps that I do not think that most people have tested their matchups against Thrower in depth because the games are pretty dull. It's pretty easy to punt a game against Thrower by over/under-committing units, not developing, etc.

I agree that the Skaven support seems like it would be too slow, although free Chitters on their turn is pretty good. I think you may be able to play it in DE/Skaven but Altar of Khaine may be better if you're going that route. Orc/Skaven is too fast to want it and Chaos/Skaven would rather run Warpstone Meteors.

We found that scouts are a nightmare for Bolt Thrower, unless it can get some really strong card draw set up quickly. I don't think that there's much you can do about it either, especially early game.

Yeah, I have also found that scouts can completely wreck unitless bolt thrower

After a brief test of DE scout vs. bolt thrower, I am dubious as to the effectiveness of the scout plan, unless you also run pillages (to hit abandoned mines), which is probably not the case in a world without sideboards unless you want to give up a lot of equity vs. other decks.

More testing is definitely needed, but I suspect the people claiming bolt thrower loses to scouts arent investing in quest enough, and are probably misplaying their fogs/abandoned mines. You are only in really bad shape if you draw 3-4 fogs in the same turn and risk losing 1-2 of them. That's pretty rare, especially given that the scouts are by no means guaranteed to hit the fog. And even then, you can often force a critical turn before you run out of fogs anyway.

Again, more testing needed to say for sure, but my initial impression is that Orc/Skaven is better vs. bolt thrower on account of speed - setup time for the DE/Skaven deck is considerably longer, and I feel like the negative equity of the bolt thrower's "all fogs and no business" draws is mostly if not entirely offset by the DE/Skaven's no-scout draws.

crowdedmind said:

Can you share it ? It seems I can't do anything worthwile with them.

Thank you.

I would not say Bolt Thrower is bad against scouts. Repeater is bad against them. Reaper has less problems.

jogo said:

Now that I believe. Reaper decks win by killing your units rather than preventing damage and bouncing them like repeater decks.