Defending Tor Aendris...

By Clamatius, in Warhammer Invasion Deck Building

...is a *****. You just can't get the staff these days. Always slipping into bed with those Destruction hussies! I must have a word with those annoying priests of Isha to see if they have any chastity belts left...

Alright. Let's get down to business. Disclaimers first:

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Playing This Deck In Tournaments May Lead To Involuntary Game Losses

2 Defend Tor Aendris
-- 2 quests

3 Innovation
1 Master Rune of Valaya
1 Blessing of Valaya
2 High Elf's Disdain
1 Judgement of Verena
2 Demolition

-- 10 tactics

3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Blessing of Isha
3 Contested Village
3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance
2 Keystone Forge
-- 14 supports

3 Envoy from Avelorn
3 Shadow Warrior
2 Slayers of Karak Kadrin
3 Zealot Hunter
2 High Elf Spearmen
3 Silver Helm Detachment
1 Mountain Brigade
1 Illyriel
3 Sword Masters of Hoeth
3 Dragonmage
-- 24 units

Your plan is to ramp up quickly, park a Dragonmage, Mountain Brigade or something similarly irritatingly hard to kill on Tor Aendris while your Swordmasters, Spearmen and Silver Helms do the dirty work. Slowly. Needless to say, this deck is looking forward to Charge of the Silver Helms - if there's a deck where that card is good, this will be it.

Blessing of Isha is pretty terrible but it's a necessary evil here. It serves 3 purposes:

1) playing on Deathmaster Sniktch because your Zealot Hunters are busy assassinating the rest of the Skaven. Deathmaster is really, really bad for Order decks and this deck is no exception.
2) playing on a Dragonmage in a crucial defending spot.
3) emergency restoration of a defensive unit you had to play where there was a Warpstone.

Mob Up! is pretty bad for you and will probably kill you. I recommend that you use High Elf's Disdain on it - ok, let's be honest, you probably lose to people with 3x Mob Up! - but at least Disdain gives you a dream of surviving it.

Vile Sorceress is also really bad since you can't kill it if they have a DE board and it singlehandedly kills an alarmingly large number of your units. Zap it with Blessing of Valaya? Lose? If they get 2 out you are probably about to take an express trip to scoopsville. Similarly, Bloodthirster is a disaster. As for Har Ganeth, save your Demolitions for that against Dark Elves if you can.

You may also be wondering why there is a Judgement of Verena in there. The answer is: keeping them honest and making them develop their zones. People don't usually see it coming (the first time) and it's a blowout when they don't. If you want to have this work more often, you need to run more Demolitions, but I don't think I recommend it.

Oh, and why no Temple of Vaul? Because this deck is slower than a tortoise with no legs. The Temple is a great card but it will kill you if you play it in this deck, Keystone Forges or no.

If you are playing against Empire, do not play your Shadow Warriors unless you like losing. If I have to explain why, you need to play Empire more.

If you want a bit more offensive punch at the cost of some defence, you can try running a couple of Runesmiths. I haven't tried it, but in theory it should work.

So there you go. Fun, but not terribly competitive. You can beat the Skaven decks with this list - I've done it plenty of times - but your win % is not great. If you want to actually win a lot with a HE board, play a dedicated unitless bolt thrower deck - but stock up on No-Doze, it's no fun at all.