Like any deck posted here, this deck is hardly fail-proof against the dreaded and ubiquitous Orc/Skaven or DE/Skaven builds, but my previous build of it did win 3 out of 8 against a solid Orc/Skaven deck (the one that Clamatius posted here), so it's worked fairly well all things considered. I suspect that had I brought it to the recent LCG tournament, I'd have probably gone much farther. I should have been bolder (sigh). Anyway, I did just recently tweak this deck so I can't totally claim that it'll be AS effective as the last iteration was. Enjoy.

SUPPORT (18):

• 2x Great Book of Grudges
• 2x Keystone Forge
• 1x Mountain Barracks
• 3x Grudge Thrower
• 3x Contested Village
• 3x Warpstone Excavation
• 2x Dragon Mage Awakening (HE)
• 2x Blessing of Isha (HE)

TACTICS (11):

• 1x High Elf's Disdain (HE)
• 3x Master Rune of Valaya
• 3x Demolition!
• 2x Stand Your Ground
• 2x Innovation

UNITS (24):

• 1x Hammerer of Karak Azul
• 1x Dwarf Miner
• 3x Dwarf Cannon Crew
• 3x Slayers of Karak Kadrin
• 3x Shadow Warrior (HE)
• 3x Dwarf Ranger
• 3x Zhufbar Engineers
• 2x Zealot Hunters (N)
• 1x Troll Slayers
• 1x Durgnar the Bold
• 1x Dragonslayer
• 1x Mountain Brigade
• 1x Gurni Thorgrimson

TOTAL DECK SIZE : 53 cards

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The Slayers of Karak Kadrin are awesomely great deterrents for Rush attacking decks (or any attack where the opponent has units that they don't want to lose) and matched with the Dwarf Rangers , they're even greater bang for the buck. Then toss in a Stand Your Ground and they become even more unpleasant for your weasely Rush-using foes. Same goes for the Zhufbar Engineers . You can even use your Slayers of Karak Kadrin to kill off one of your own Attackers, preferably a Zhufbar Engineer to get your Rangers' effect into play so they're fairly useful in a variety of opportunities.

The Zealot Hunters along with Blessing of Isha (which you can play on an opponent's units) and Dragon Mage Awakening help counter any Deathmasters you might face - plus they're not that expensive to get into play and once you have one of them down, any others are free and provide loyalty for my Shadow Warriors (who add more nightmares to a Rush players deck once they arrive on the scene).

One flaw I discovered with a very early build was a lack of attacking firepower so I've added the one-offs such as Gurni (who will benefit from the many attachments in this deck), along with the Troll Slayers and Durgnar the Bold. The Dwarf Cannon Crew is nearly always super effective since there are no Support cards in this deck that cost more than 2 Resources and their presence helps boost the overall speed of this deck, in general (an important consideration when going toe-to-toe with fast-attacking Rush decks). Originally I had my doubts about including the Warpstone Excavations , both thematically but more importantly for the nasty Corruption drawbacks but with a couple of Blessings of Isha , that effect seems mitigated. Plus I figured that the treasure-digging Dwarves might (on occasion) run into a Warpstone Excavation . Yeah, it's a thin connection to using them but it works for me.

Finally, no deck is quite complete without an Innovation or two (for emergencies and to help with the potential for a faster start). I like having a tiny splash of High Elf's Disdain to counter an untimely opponent's Tactic (though I do question the usefulness of having only 1 copy BUT at the same time I dislike having a deck with even a few cards that just sit there waiting to go off based on what my opponent does). The Master Rune of Valayas are there to keep me alive long enough for this deck to actually start firing off on all cylinders and Demolition! always comes in useful (though I could perhaps go with 1 less of these). I'm also considering the addition of adding another Stand Your Ground but in testing, it only seemed functionally useful with 2x copies - once I had 3x of these, it always seemed like I had a wasted card in hand.

Previously this build did not have the 3x Grudge Throwers , so I'm interested to see how those pan out for me. The Keystone Forges also help keep me alive a tiny bit longer (having seen how important even a single point of damage could be in a Rush environment during the recent tournament, these seemed like a very worthwhile addition going forward). Mountain Barracks is only there in minimal amounts (1x copy) but could help stall things out a bit, also. Finally the Great Book of Grudges is...well...great! Nothing is as nasty as facing a Slayer of Karak Kadrin with one of these (or a Zhufbar Engineer ).

I previously toyed with including the excellent 0-cost Neutral Quest, " Prepare for War " (allows the player to recycle discarded cards back into the draw pile) and/or the excellent Dwarf Quest, " Reclaim the Hold " (which recycles any discarded card into its current zone as a Development) but using that particular Dwarf Quest nearly required the addition of a couple of Abandoned Mines (a support card that allows the reclamation of previously placed Developments) and thus pushed out other potentially better cards for this build (imho). I'm still sort of enamored at the idea of using either or both of those cards because mixed with the Slayers of Karak Kadrin or the Zhufbar Engineers and Great Book of Grudges , they make for some nasty recycling.

I look forward to hearing others thoughts on this particular build. I quite enjoy this deck - much more so than my Orc/Skaven or Orc Rush decks.

Don't all rush in at once to comment...tone down that rampant enthusiasm. DOWN BOYS! DOWN! ::: cracks whip frantically :::

It looks good to me. I was looking at demolition but the achilles' heel of skaven/orc or any rush deck for that matter is card draw. They need to draw a lot of cards to make up for the quality of their units. You can use Demolition to take out the things they play in the quest zone to keep them only drawing 1 card a turn. That makes for a tough decision when they plop down a Lobber Crew as to use it or leave it for card draw. Either way it is probably better for you.

The only problem I found in testing was that I never had enough resources of my own to play both a demolition and a blocker in the same turn so I was still not able to recover. (always one turn away).

Innovation is good enough that you may want to go to 3x just to make sure you get one early. Multiples are also not that bad.

On a side note, maybe you could try going for more high elf stuff and put in the infinite tactic plan. Dwarves have early stall with Master Rune of Valaya and High Elves get really good later game stall with Gifts of Aenarion.

for me i'd run more disdains, good for taking out those pesky damage ramps or mob ups

Thanks, Darkdeal and Deviant_DJ for your excellent input.

Darkdeal, what is the Infinite Tactic plan? Is that via the HE Quest that recovers stuff? I did try this deck at 3/4ths HE and 1/4th Dwarf and it was far, far worse for me (in my testing, anyway, which wasn't perfect scientifically-speaking, I'll admit).

Deviant_dj, it seemed like they were rarely used against Orc/Skaven or X/Skaven anything. That's why I cut back on them. Still, I'll keep that in mind.

I appreciate all the feedback!

Wytefang said:

I think it comes down to what your local meta is like. I always pack disdain it's always useful to have. Plus second sight is another useful card, it helps you decide what cards to keep and what to as developments

Yes, it is with the HE quest Wake the Dragons. Once you have 3 tokens on it, you can just bring back your Gifts of Aenarion every turn and there isn't much a battlefield oriented deck can do about it. Just have a Disdain in hand for when orcs decides to Mob Up or Troll Vomit.

I've been testing something very similar. My current deck is a straight dwarf deck, I might try out using some high elf cards and let you know what I think.

TL

I would really enjoy hearing your thoughts on how that goes - with your recent tourney success, I'm prone to listening very carefully to what you might have to say, Mr. Vitamin T. (See that was my play off of the whole "Mr. T" thing...I PITY DA FOOL! I PITY HIM!)

I am making your deck now in order to test it. Because of lack of some cards I plan to add some of my beloved HE : Loremaster of Hoeth (to make damage to zones quicker, mine can be easily healed due to supports), tear of ishia (healing is always useful), elves/dwarfs alliance and Illyriel ( to enable myself leaving own units from play to hand). For now only one copy of those, not to have too many cards. I will write the results soon :)By the way, thanks for making such a deck: I had a lot of problems with orc rush when using my previous dwarf/HE deck (and in two weeks time I play during league's meeting).

I have won already two times and lost maybe...3 games. But I will take it on league, it works good. Sometimes I had problems with defence when my opponent had four units in battlefield and let all the damage go into zone. But unless he played single cards I could beat them.