Dark Elves

3x Shades
3x Vile Sorceress
3x Walking Sacrifice
3x Clan Rats
3x Gutter Runners
3x Clan Moulder Elite
3x Deathmaster Sniktch
3x Greyseer Thanquol
2x Rat Ogres

3x Har Garneth
3x Contested Village
3x Warpstone Excavation

3x Chillwind
3x Caught the Scent
3x Innovation
3x Hate
3x We Need Your Blood

This is what I feel to be the best version of the standard Dark Elf/Skaven build. The economy is incredibly efficient (it requires only four resources a turn) due to the Skaven and cheap Dark Elf units and it has a decent about of switch potential. It is not as fast as Orc Blitz that gets a good start but nonetheless it can burn two zones in three attack phases if you opening hand suggests a blitz strategy. The reason that I played this over Orcs is that flexibility. You can chose between blitzing and board control which gives you more of a chance against Orcs whilst being able to exploit the vulnerability of Order decks to strong aggro builds.

Apart from the broken cards in the deck (the three Skaven and Warpstone Excavation) Hate has proved to be game-winning. Being able limit or completely cancel your opponent's first turn is such a powerful (and negative) effect, which combined with a cheap and efficient economy can give you the equivalent of half or a full turn of tempo.

It may be a strange suggestion, but with the upsurge of bolt thrower decks, maybe a couple Smash 'Em All! would be good. You can get it online first turn with walking sacrifice and Har Gareth is really bad against a unitless deck. Once you have your scouts going, it would be really hard for that deck to recover from an activated SEA drawing only 1 card per turn.

darkdeal said:

I guess my suggestion is

-1 Caught the Scent

-1 Har Gareth

+2 Smash 'Em All!

I've found that I have trouble getting the loyalty for Caught the Scent, though I do like it.

I, too, love the idea of card-discarding powers like Caught the Scent but whenever I've had it in a deck, it's rarely proven useful...too expensive from loyalty.

Yeah, CtS just seems too slow in most matchups. You essentially have to skip a whole turn of playing stuff to get 1 card from them that they haven't played yet, which doesn't seem worth it. Sometimes you'll get a Deathmaster, Flames of the Phoenix or Judgement just at the right moment, but you draw so many cards in this game that discard effects just aren't as good as in Magic.

As one of the guys playing the unitless bolt thrower deck he needs no help beating me, the scouts will do the job unless thanqual gets there first

His deck is really consistent and really powerful, my fingers are crossed for some powerful HE stuff this month to overthrow those darn rats!

Indeed, I dont think the cards are there yet for unitless bolt thrower to regularly succeed yet.

I played a similar DE/Skaven deck at sheffield (list in the report) and was also matched against the unitless bolt thrower deck. It managed to hold me off three turns in a row with Master Rune but still could not win.

Ha ha that was me!

Now tell them about your twice playing hate into chittering horde into 4 cards (incl thanqual) on my turn 1 ...

I'm not bitter about that mind you - I think your DE/Skaven has the upper hand in the matchup.

Well yes, that certainly helped although the Hate had the gratest impact as it slows you down by half a turn or so. I had drawn other Skaven cards anyway so the Chittering Hordes was simply icing on the cake.

Clamatius said:

Whether or not you can play it depends upon how easily you can get the 3L as the 2C fits my economy quite well. In some games the card was a development because I was holding units that would be a more positive play, but on other occasions it was incredibly powerful, hitting Judgement, Thanquol etc. I use it in the following ways:

1. Dealing with my opponent's power cards (Judgement etc).
2. Turning Har Garneth into a kill action.
3. Forcing my opponent to play Gifts, thus avoiding giving them resources.
4. Reinforcing the hand control the scouts give you.
5. Forcing my opponent to play units that get hit by Sniktch, Vile Sorceress etc by removing the alternatives.

It's certainly a personal choice to play the card however and I could well see another player swapping in Chittering Horde etc. Having that targeted discard suits my playstyle however so it finds a spot over other cards. I probably wouldn't play it if Walking Sacrifice didn't exist and I can certainly see myself reducing it to a 2x or ditching it as new cards are released.

Smash 'em All could be a reasonble choice for an Orc deck, but for Dark Elves it costs 3, which essentially means that it costs 4 and I have to hope that the High Elf player doesn't draw into a Judgement or Flames. Most quests are too slow to be worthwile at the moment.

i always run mob up, it stops most stall decks. i'd maybe lose a har ganeth and a thanqual to get at least 2 in. I'd run chittering horde rather than we need your bloods just up the card draw but again that comes down to personal preferance. I'd also think about trying to get in dark visions to grab those other non skaven cards.

Thanquol is too broken to drop.

I was toying between Chittering Horde and We Need Your Blood and picked the latter, but again I think that it's a personal choice. Dark Visions was Ok, but something had to come out for Hate and it can't be played before your first turn after a Hate (cf Chittering Horde and We Need Your Blood).

I think that you can't play We Need Your Blood after a "before your first turn" Hate unless your opponent plays at least two units, otherwise you wouldn't have the two targets required to play that card.

Correct, they have to have played 2 units for you to be able to play We Need Your Blood (or if you went first and played a unit, that's ok too).

I run Chittering Horde in DE just because it gives you another early play off Hate. Gives you a slightly better chance of drawing Deathmasters in the mirror too, which is pretty important.

Clamatius said:

You can't always play We Need Your Blood before your first turn, but sometimes you can and killing an early unit is very powerful.

As I said, I found it a difficult call between We Need Your Blood and Chittering Horde. I suppose a variant would be to run two of each and a Caught the Scent to make space.

i'm trying out the deck atm with chittering horde and some scout camps to accelerate the search potential,thus far it's been deadly, i'llpost a full list when i have a chance too

I would not run Scout Camp unless nothing in the deck needed more than 1 loyalty. Searching an extra card when/if you play Chitter is really weak compared with getting more loyalty on the deck, in my opinion. If you want Vile Sorceresses, skip Scout Camp and run supports with loyalty symbols.

You could always use hate during their turn and then use the resource that you gained during the beginning of turn step to play dark visions. The biggest issue that I had with playing an early dark visions has been that you will occationally not have the two loyalty.

The biggest problem with Dark Visions is that if your opponent is first, you definitely do not have the 2 loyalty to play it off Hate. If it was 1 loyalty I'd run it instead of Chittering Hordes.

Clamatius said:

Yep, this is exactly the reason I chose Chittering Horde over Dark Visions.

Yeah that is fair.

Dark Visions at 1R1L would be quite broken however, especially in a deck that can steal resources from its opponent. In short: I approve and it would fit the build nicely. I'll go and find some Tipp-ex.