I just finished playing in the Lexington, Kentucky Regional Tournament held on Saturday May 1st at the Rusty Scabbard. It was a good turnout, 12 people from the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia. The tournament was run by Chris who put on a great tournament. The Rusty Scabbard was a gracious host and has plenty of room to hold all the players (even with a game of 40K going on). All the players were well mannered and there was only 1 rules question in all of the rounds, so a well played tournament.

Here is the break down of decks:
4 Orc players of various styles (Pure Orc and Orc/Skaven mix), someone brought the winning deck from the FF tournament
3 Chaos players of various styles (Pure Chaos and Chaos/Skaven mix)
3 Dark Elf players (I did not see one of the decks, but the other two were Rush/Control/Snipe Type Decks, but I could be wrong)
2 Dwarf players - thats right not just ONE but TWO dwarf players

I was one of the Chaos players. I toyed between my deck and the deck Clamatius made in the Deck Build forms. I chose my Chaos deck that I took off of deckbox.org when I was 1st learning the game and adapted it to my playing style. I do need to thank Clamatius and cyberfunk for their suggestions to the deck. Here is the deck list for the regional tournament

Tactics
Seduced By Darkness x 3 (Core Set 99)
Nurgle's Pestilence x 3 (Core Set 101)
Flames of Tzeentch x 3 (Core Set 102)
Innovation x 3 (Core Set 119)
Total Tactics = 12

Supports
Shrine To Nurgle x 3 (Core Set 98)
Contested Village x 3 (Core Set 111)
Warpstone Excavation x 3 (Core Set 116)
Wolves Of The North x 2 (Corruption Cycle 32)
Total Supports = 11

Units
Servants of Khorne x 3 (Core Set 81)
Savage Marauders x 3 (Core Set 82)
Festering Nurglings x 3 (Core Set 83)
Savage Gors x 3 (Core Set 90)
Greyseer Thanquol x 3 (Corruption Cycle 15)
Clan Rats x 3 (Corruption Cycle 16)
Rat Ogres x 3 (Corruption Cycle 55)
Clan Moulder's Elite x 3 (Corruption Cycle 57)
Deathmaster Sniktch x 3 (Corruption Cycle 79)
Total Units = 27
Total Cards = 50

My first round was against a Chaos Players with a little splash of Skaven (Clan Moulder Elites, I believe). He is a Game of Thrones Player that has crossed over. He has been playing a few weeks, but knows the rules and knows his deck. Game One was a very close round that he won. Game Two was a slaughter that I won. Game 3 was another pretty strong win for me. Match Record 1 - 0. Game Record 2 - 1.

Round 2 was against the deck that won the FF Regional’s. My only thought was I hope I can win my next one so that I can maybe get into the final four. Game One was a slow games considering the speed of both the decks. Some how I pulled off the win despite a mid-game Troll Vomit that caused a brutal reset. Game Two was a very quick beat down of which I was on the reciving end. I am talking 3 Spider Riders with Choppas and 3 Clan Moulder Elites with Choppas and a few other things - I am exaggerating but you get the gist. Game three was another very, very slow game with TWO resets due to Troll Vomit, but I pulled off a very close game. Not sure how I pulled it off, but I was extremely happy for the win. Match Record 2 - 0. Game Record 4 - 2.

Round 3 was against a Dark Elf deck that was 2 -0 and seemed to have coasted to this point, Jonathan, had an overall game record of 4 - 0. Round 1 - I had a perfect draw and had the game over by the 4th turn. Greyseer on the Wolves of the North is just about as deadly as it gets. Round 2 - Jonathan had a perfect draw and had the game won by the 4-5th turn. Round 3 - another very long round. I had him beat and then he pulls out a combo that was as well played as I have ever seen - I just had to sit back and stare at the board in wonder. It was a 4-5 chain combo that had his units taking damage and all sorts of other stuff - I cant do it justice so I will let Jonathan post it. I could not recover after this and he nickel and dimed me to death. Match Record 2 - 1. Game Record 5 - 4

I ended up making the final four along with 2 Dark Elf decks and a Dwarf deck. I was surprised that there was not a single Orc/Skaven or Pure Orc deck in the final four. I am glad I did not take Clamatius and suck with my own, but it was a struggle to go with what I knew and not with what was hot at the time. I hope that Clamatius does not take that the wrong way - I love your deck and it has made for some great games between my friends. I want someone to run it in a regional tournament that really knows it to see how it will place.

Semi-Finals. I was playing against a Dark Elf player. Round 1 - I am not sure what happened, but I finally learned my lesson (after this match) to watch a Dark Elf decks resources - Invoke Khaine's Wrath killed me more times than not. I was really sad how many times that I died over this. So, of course I lost his Round. Round 2 I squeaked out a victory with a Skaven Rush. Round 3 I am not sure how I did it, but I did - In a round that lasted 20-30 minutes I pulled out a very narrow victory which came down to some fancy playing on both parts. Match Record 3 - 1. Game Record 7 - 5.

Finals. I played again Jonathan, who I played against in Round 3 of the Swiss. Great here we go again my 3rd game in a row against a Dark Elf deck. Round 1 - Jonathan played his deck expertly and won a narrow game that could have gone both ways. I missed played a card and it cost me - not sure if it cost me the game, but I laid down a card for a development and it was a card I needed to play next round. Round 2 - Jonathan strikes again - this was a man who knew how to play his deck. Not sure how much of it was due to lucky draws to get the 1 card you need at the moment you need it, but I don’t believe that much in luck - so I know when I was out played. I had him on the ropes in game round that we played (outside of the Game 2 of Round 3) and he somehow pulled of the victory. Match Record 3 - 2. Game Record 7 - 7

The 3rd/4th place game was won by the Dwarf Player. So Top 4 was was 1)Dark Elf, 2)Chaos, 3) Dwarf, 4) Dark Elf

I felt good with a 2nd place finish. I feel I played well - I had mistakes - Don’t ever play a Nurgle's Pestilence against a Dark Elf deck, because it will come back to bite you. Overall my deck played the way I wanted it to. I might take out Nurgle's Pestilence and add in Tzeentch's Firestore - could help with those Vile Sorceress' that keep harassing me. I am, also, not impressed with Shrine to Nurgle and might take it out to add in Contested Fortress to help negate some of the damage - in all my games Shrine only helped me play one card due to loyalty symbols and I could have won a few more games if I could cancel just one damage.

I think that Jonathan was the best player in the tournament, so I don’t mind losing to someone who totally out played me. He was a great player and very fun to play against twice. All the people I played against were good sports and I was glad I decided to play in the tournament. Talking to the player most of them said they visit the forms and are going to post their decks, so people can see what is placing in tournaments.

Congratulations on the 2nd place!

Nice report! Thanks for sharing.
Glad to know a Dwarf deck made it to the final four. There's still hope for Order in the Old World.

I agree, thx for the post. It is fun to read about how the tournaments are turning out.

Thanks very much for the report! This is more what I thought the field would look like, not the 2/3 orcs 1/3 DE that we had at the super regional. I knew dwarves could do ok! Suprised that there were no orcs at all in the final 4 though. Big congrats on the 2nd place finish.

TL

Much as I love the idea of a non-Skaven deck doing well it's almost certainly an anomaly (at this point, still). Sounds like a fun tournament, either way.

Wytefang said:

Maybe Wytefang... I could understand him barely making it to the final 4, but beating one of those and placing 3rd tells me he is either very skilled or has a good dwarf deck (or both).

Either way, I would love to see what cards he chose to use in his deck. I was thinking of using a dwarf deck in my tournament just to see how far I could go with it.

BTW, congrats to you for getting 2nd and the DE player that won 1st. I hope he posts something about the tournament as well.

Jason, thanks so much for the kind words. It was great meeting and playing you yesterday. Your deck was quite stout and gave me more than one scare. I'll post a TR a little later.

Here are some of the deck lists.

1st Place Deck: Dark Elves

I am not going to repost Jonathan’s Deck, but here is a link with some tournament highlights and how he plays his deck:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=140&efcid=4&efidt=320437

3rd Place Deck: Dwarfs

This deck was run by Brian. I never had to face it in the tournament, but I did play it afterwards when we were all sitting around. It played well and was sound but the Chaos Gods were smiling on me that game…

Here is Brian’s List. He should post soon to tell you how he plays it.

Tactics:
Stand Your Ground x 3 (Corruption Cycle 2)
Lure Them Out x 3 (Assault Set 45)
Innovation x 3 (Assault Set 57)
Total Tactics: 9

Supports:
Keystone Forge x 3 (Core Set 14)
Grudge Thrower x 3 (Core Set 18)
Contested Village x 3 (Core Set 111)
Great Book of Grudges x 3 (Corruption Cycle 82)
Mountain Barracks x 2 (Assault Set 44)
Total Supports: 14

Units:
Zhufbar Engineers x 3 (Core Set 2)
Troll Slayers x 3 (Core Set 4)
Durgnar the Bold x 3 (Core Set 6)
Dwarf Cannon Crew x 3 (Core Set 8)
Dwarf Ranger x 3 (Core Set 10)
Gurni’s Elite x 3 (Corruption Cycle 1)
Zealot Hunter x 3 (Corruption Cycle 37)
Dragonslayer x 3 (Corruption Cycle 81)
Slayers of Karak Kadrin x 3 (Assault Set 43)
Total Units: 27

Total Cards: 50

My dwarf deck wasn't mine alone. I have to share credit with our store owner Bill from Beholder's Eye in Blacksburg, VA. He has been playing variations of this dwarf deck since the base box came out. After playing against it almost every week since then i decided to make some adjustments and try it out at the tournament. It has a fighting chance against orc blitz, skaven orc, and skaven chaos and i was lucky enough to play 2 of those in my first 3 rounds and win. against everyone else its basically an aggro deck that tries to win quickly before you get locked down and lose board control.

You basically always want to cannon crew on turn 1 to accelerate your resources, all the support cards cost 2 or less for this reason. Get a book of grudges if you can, thats 6 turn 2 resources. develop for innovations if you need them, otherwise 2 in the battlefield for troll slayers. and come across with 3 dmg units and hammer your opponent. troll slayers or gurni's elite or both. save durgnar for when he has 4 power if u can, but him early if need be. You can easily deal 6-8 dmg in one turn. draw cards with rangers or dragonslayers, and attack with the dragonslayers to keep up pressure. use the grudge thrower to boost your damage, trigger rangers to snipe, and or sack your engineers to snipe his lone units. like lone greyseers or deathermasters, or big battlefield units. slayers of karak kadrin are great against blitz, even better with books of grudges on them. and you can use them to destory your own attacking units after assigning damage to trigger more ranger shots if your desperate for 1 or 2 more final damage to win. stand your ground whenever possible to keep key units alive, especially when the deathmaster comes out. Zealot hunter is pure skaven meta. lure them out proved to be amazing. In my third round an orc player went second and dropped spider rider and then basha's blood axe. on my turn 2 i dropped a slayer of karak kadrin and then lure them out to snipe it and took no damage in return. use it after you assign damage on offense or defense, use it to get your own engineers killed, or use it to snipe big units, gurnis elite or troll slayers with a book of grudges or 1 or 2 grudge thrower pumps can take down high hp units as well mid to late game. The mountain barracks were just another 2 cost thing the cannon crew could get, or another turn 1 innovate double 2 with it and a cannon crew hopefully.

It does have some downsides though. most notably being low hp units. I did have issues against dark elf hp reduction tech, All my quest zone units were getting slaughtered, making card draw a constant problem. and dark elves can reduce your hp and bounce your unit back to your hand with har ganeth which wastes the book of grudges.

I took third with it. I hope it helps some order players with ideas. The kentucky regional was a blast. All my opponents were awesome players, easy going, and willing to share ideas.

That is a nice deck, just made a version of it have not got all the cards in multiple copys but replaced with similar alternitives. It just smashed my DE/Skaven deck which was undefeated 2-0. Its speed impressed me. Good work!!

I've been working on a similar Dwarf deck myself. I didnt have the dragon warriors or ghurni's elite even though I think they rock, because I was afraid of DEs and deathmaster. Glad to see something along these lines is did well, I like some of your ideas! (I have been liking Lure Them Out as well)

TL

Brian, that was a really good deck. Thanks for the great games. I love Lure them Out - glad to see it helps as much as I thought it would against Orcs. I haven't tested my version of this deck yet, but after talking about it with you on Saturday, I agree and took out the Defending Tor Aendris and focused on offense. I do think Dragon Mage Awakening or whichever High Elf card gives you +3 hit points seems like it would be good against a lot of decks, and excellent against DE or Chaos, so I'm going to try that. Should be great for your Dragonslayers and other low HP units, which is most of them. I'm also going to try Helblaster Volley Gun since the Slayers like developments already. I'm using Empire/High Elf Alliances instead of the Mountain Barracks to help play them more cheaply as well.

You guys are really just up the road from us - 2 and a half hours. It would be great to have a tournament at your store or ours.

What was the one rules question that came up?

I am curious how you were playing Deathmaster's ability. Were you playing "remaining HP" as meaning HP minus any damage tokens? OR as HP plus or minus any effects that changed HP?

The rules question was whether an action window occurs if the active player chooses not to declare an attack. The answer is no of course. It really only came up because we are all so used to just ending our capitol phases and moving right along into the battlefield phase that we sometimes forget to wait for our opponents to pass. Think we've all done that before. As for the deathmaster we were playing it that damage on a unit does not subtract from its hit points.

Hi,

I really like the dwarf deck, as I'm also experimenting with the same idea.

- I'm running Mountain Brigade instead of Dragon Slayers (I haven't slayers yet, and also I felt that they are easy pickings for Deathmaster and Dark Elves)

- More cheap units (like Mountain Legion, Miner, Defender of the Hold > they work very well with Ranger+Grudge Thower)

- Blessing of Valaya instead of Lure them Out, since it can take out QZ and KZ units (like a Deathmaster, Vile Sorceress or Greyseer... but it was also successfull against Savaga Marauders)

Otherwise mostly the same.

Cain

Unfortunately I was not able to get the tournament, but based off testing with Brian, I can at least comment some regarding his deck.

While testing the desk, the Dragonslayers gave it that extra Oomphf that it needed sometimes to win the game sometimes. Being able to play a card to get card draw and still be able to attack is big. The only time it ever seemed to matter is when playing the Dark Elf decks. Brian made some changes to the desk post tournament which seemed to help, but the Dark Elf deck is still giving it a run for its money. After building a variant, and seeing how everything fits together, the deck is a nightmare to play against. It slays everything that hits the table it seems. Kudos to the winner of the tournament for building that deck and brining it to the tournament.

Testing against it though, it seems like focusing on support cards in the first few turns of the game really help stabilize the Dwarf deck vs the Dark Elf deck. At least while I was playing the Dark Elf deck against Brian, it got much harder to lock the board down once he was drawing 2-4 cards a turn off support cards in the Quest zone. Has anyone else playing a similar deck noticed that it got much harder to lock down the opponent in that situation?

I am curious about the comment about an action window if the opponent does not declare an attack.

I was under the impression the non active player could play actions in the opponents captial phase at any point. I may of course be wrong about that.

chaosvt said:

Page 10 of the FAQ (under timing structure) states:

" If the active player declares no attackers, both players still have the opportunity to take actions during the Battlefield Phase."

So the answer actually is yes unless I'm missing something.

I'd just point out a detail...the COMBAT starts with the declaration of the ZONES you wish to attack...After that step there is an action window, actually.

Then, if you don't declare attackers, the turn goes straigth to the "end of the turn" sub-phase.

Tulsy said:

Cool deck, I think that my Dwarf/High-Elf build (posted in the deck-building area) is a bit more useful against Rush but this one seems very functional, too, certainly. Now I wish I'd tried my deck out instead of going boring Rush at the FFG Regionals, sigh.

Wytefang said:

I have a feeling at the tournament this weekend, Order will be even more represented. It seems like everyone wants to be the person that wins it with an order deck

The one rule question that came to me did deal with Deathmaster. The situation was that an attacke declared where he was attacking and what he was attacking with. The defender used Deathmaster's ability to destroy one of the attacking units. The question came up that if the Deathmaster destroyed the attacking unit would the attacking unit get to add its hammer to the damage pool. I ruled that the unit is removed from play before you go to the step where you count up hammers, so the attacking unit would not get to add its hammers to the damage pool.

Rex Gator:

For Deathmaster we played that it was the total number of hit points the card had, not just what was remaning. So if a Clan Moluder's Elite had only one hit point remaning - the Deathmaster still needed 6 skaven on the board to corrupt and kill the Clan Moluder's Elite. I believe this was a ruling that came down from James that is in the unofficial faq found here - http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=154&efcid=4&efidt=275390.

Deathmaster Sniktch

Q. If I have 1 other Skaven in play and my opponent has a 2 HP creature with 1 damage on it, can I use the Deathmaster's ability to destroy it?

A. No. The Deathmaster's ability only cares about HP, not damage. We don't know why it says "remaining HP" instead of "HP" in the text. James's ruling

Zeruul said:

As an aside, generally the only units that we play on turn 1 against destruction decks are things like Dwarven Cannon Crew or Huntsmen, where you are playing supports too. Against Order you can get away with something like turn 1 Savage Marauders, but against an Orc board you are asking to be Lobber Crewed and against DE they will Need Their Blood.

chaosvt said:

I may be misunderstanding what you are asking/commenting on here, but the Battlefield phase happens regardless if there is an attack declared and as such the phase cannot end until both players have consecutively passed with no actions.

hmm i was under the impression you could choose not to declare an attack at all and just end the phase. But after rereading the rules and faq i guess thats not true. Seems you have to declare an attack at a zone. you just dont have to declare attackers, and therefore theres always at least 2 action windows in the battlefield phase.