I think that the We'z bigga and innovation argument is done here. I just would like to round off the pillage / lobber crew one. You need to see it in context.

Lets imagine you're going first, your hand is accelleration and men, you as many men onto the table as you can.

Your oppo plays two supports, lets say Har Ganath in the kingdom and warpstone in the quest. He will have 4 resources and 2 loyalty symbols next turn and will start to play his more powerful, higher costed cards.

On your turn you pillage his Har Ganath and hit him with your dudes.

His turn 1 might as well not have happened, he is back to 3 resources and 1 loyalty and has to take another turn to set up again!

Even assuming he does manage to set up again, you get to attack again with the units he hasn't been able to deal with.

The point is that you don't just sit there going "ha ha" I burned your village - you play guys and hit them with them while limiting his power to defend himself.

Childlocksucks said:

This is really what it comes down to. When you go first, Pillage is a monster card because you will almost certainly make four or five barrels in your second turn. This means you can kill an opponent's card that has yet to do anything while still being able to further develop your own board. Pile this on top of a Lobber Crew activation, and you have a big disparity. However, if you go second, the chances of Pillage and/or Lobber Crew crushing your opponent's king/quest is pretty small. If you have to play it on a Village or Warpstone from a turn behind, it almost certainly would have done more as random guy.

I agree that 6 'make a barrel' cards is probably too many for most Orc rush builds. Innovation is necessary in the Skaven builds that can't find enough 1 or 3 cost cards that they want to open (you can't risk opening with just one 2-cost card to the table), but in Orc rush you can run plenty of 1-cost cards. I would much rather open Lobber Crew, Spider Riders than Lobber Crew, development, Innovation, Alliance Banner. I probably like We'z Bigga over Innovation, but I don't think it much matters.

agg said:

First bold, I answer sure, but when you have 3 guys because you play so many non-unit cards and I play 5 guys because I don't play those non-unit cards. You aren't playing the most units.

Second bold, your deck isn't faster. I played the deck, it accelerated into nothing because it doesn't have enough units.

It seems like everyone is attacking me like I killed someones dog. I don't think I should be ridiculed so hard for questioning the card choices of this deck. I played it, and it didn't work as well as other versions I have played. And you are right, the differences are few. I just feel that my version is more consistent where yours is less consistent with the possibility to be more explosive from the start.

I have also tried to disrupt the draw of my rush deck and it just doesn't work. It was always a poor decision over playing a unit to defend with or some other option to race. The damage comes too fast for the draws to be that much. You may get 1 or 2 more cards over the course of the game in most games I've played.

cyberfunk said:

You can still play Pillage/Lobba Crew on your first turn when going second, but it's a much more difficult decision (which is helped by having some acceleration to mitigate its cost directly or indirectly). The Orc deck likely has more cheap cards it can play than its opponent's deck, so reseting the board (especially if their first turn was one unit or support) is not a bad play as you are more likely to have a productive turn two than they are. You have to look at how many cards they have left in hand, try to gauge what their deck is trying to do and read them to see if they are confident making one thing against Orcs.

hey i deffinatly dont want to seem like im attacking you i think its important to think about the cards you put in your deck and find out which you like more and i deff like the fact that i have to think about y the cards are in my deck.

im not sure its about the most guys but rather the most guys the fastest and i think that i can do that better. remember you have to be very aggressive with your mulligans, anything less than the nuts you can ship back easy.

it really comes down to this in the mirror. how many guys you can play vs how many they can. in the fastest way possible waggh wil help you jump the curve a little so if your on the draw you mull for that or a fast start if your going first i would mull for warp stone, pillage lobba crew and as many cheap dudes as you can.

i think in the end of the day we are only desscussing minor play prefrences and in fact the diffrence is small, it wil prob come down to showing each other there hand and seeing who won in most games. its not like there are right or wrong answers to thiese small changes unlike playing more than 50 cards

I'm not sure how aggressive muliganing works when you can only take one. If you have a hand that is average, do you take the chance at getting a worse hand?

As another point, I also think that when considering cards for the deck, you should look at the opponent playing rush first. That Lobber Crew when you go second against a rush deck is typically pretty bad. I love Lobber Crew though as if nothing else, its another resource every turn that can be used for utility if you need it.

darkdeal said:

Normally, yes. You win by being faster than everyone else and so a hand that's average isn't fast enough. Average in the general sense of course. An average hand for most decks is a bad hand for this.

Oversimplification incoming: 4 guys attacking 3 times is better than 5 guys attacking twice therefore we'z bigga and innovation should be in the deck.

A deck of 50 allies is 100% guarenteed to be able to play an ally every turn. A deck with 6 tactics might open with 1 ally and all 6 tactics. This would be unfortunate, but it's a risk I'll take as 99.99% of the time the deck with the acceleration cards will win. The question is where do you draw the line.

No one's attacking you, Dark, I just disagree with your analytical assessment of card choices for the deck and have tried to lay out why so that anyone interested can see why I / we think a card is good / bad.

I am not theorycrafting here. I have played the deck posted. Its less consistent and the chances of getting that explosive start were less than the chances of getting the less than desirable start.

In the end, this is just a game and we can all play what we want. If I ever have the time to get to a tournament, and one happens to be close, I may go and we will see how well I do. Not that one tournament is indicative of much or that rush will even be good when I can get to a tournament.

I don't really that that good of a group of people to test against. I taught them all how to play and they only play passively. They just use my decks as they don't want to invest the small amount of money. Magic is the primary game in my card shop and it usually kills all other games. I would love to get WoW TCG played as well, but people don't want to spend the money on games they can't get money back out of.

I've played it too, might take something similar to regionals here in Aus. I find I win 60-70% of games, against dwarves and Dark Elves. I also like to play Grimgor's Camp if i'm first turn, is that strange? it gets me an extra unit into play each turn, plus i cant attack first turn anyway.

I see a lot of the decks with Veteran Sellswords in them. I understand that it is 0 cost. However I don't see why it is a good card when it is just going to be turned over to the opponent next turn to be used against you. It seems like it cancels itself out. What is the advantage/usefullness of this card?

I've lost on turn two to a turn one x3 spider riders x2 sellsword followed by a turn two waagh. Sellsword is good with Waagh, I dont usually play them myself these days.

they combo well with cards like rock lobba and other unit sacrifices - get one free power in your attack, then some extra resources, damage... whatever, stops them being turned over too.

I've played both versions of this deck extensively (and I was convinced I would play one version at Regionals) and I have to agree with darkdeal. The probability of a "bad" draw is much less with the Orc/Skaven build, i.e. lost of accelerators/tactics and fewer units. I'd like to address one point brough up by crowdedmind:

I really dislike playing units to the battlefield on turn one if I'm going first. They are resources that could be drawing you cards and your opponent can take their first turn seeing what they need to deal with (whether holding resources for We Need Your Blood is a good idea etc). I'd much rather develop my board on turn one when going first and then force out all my battlefield units on turn two and the accerlation of We'z Bigg and Innovation allow that.

The problem with this view is that it become more unlikely you will burn a zone with that first attack. With these "glass cannon" rush decks you really need to burn a zone by turn 2 whether you go first or not and spending your initial 3 resources elsewhere makes it virtually impossible to accomplish.

Yes, it does give your an opponent the ability to react to those units before you have an opportunity to use them, but in doing so he will lose tempo by not developing his own board. Winning on turn three should be the goal of these decks and it isn't as crazy as it sounds. Every extra turn that goes by gives your opponent an opportunity to recover and gain control of the game and your chance to win drops exponentially.

I did not, however, bring this deck to regionals as it struggled against a DE/Skaven deck I had built. Since I was expecting a preponderance of DE decks at Regionals (and I was correct) I felt the deck would be handicapped by being forced to play multiple matches against it's worst match up.

If you expected a lot of DE decks at your event I hope you took the Bolt Thrower deck that plays Reap Whats Sown. That deck is really brutal against DE.

Nope, I brought a DE/Skaven deck which won and I wrote it up in the Orlando Regionals thread. I'm not a big fan of unit less decks and think they are a bit overrated.

Clamatius has a Bolt Thrower list that is far and away better than any other I have played. DE decks have very little chance of beating it and to get the best of 3 is probably close to 5%. It also has a pretty close to even match against a good orc rush deck. Until the meta shifts away from rush and more towards control, the BT deck will be the best.