It seems everyone plays rush or unitless. I want a deck that can beat both of them!

Thoughts so far:

Empire/Dwarf seems like a good idea.

VS Rush

Counterstrike should work against orc and skaven units with low hitpoints.

Sigmars intervention to control where they attack. Ulrics Fury? Rune of Fortitude?

VS Unitless:

Will of the Electors: Move the developments to the battlefield. Hopefully it will decrease resources and make reapeter harder to use.

Infiltrate. Should really slow the deck down.

Scouts. Since the deck never kills attacking units it should work wonders.

Bright Wizard Apprentice. If you've forced the player to have more than 1 development in his battlfield this unit could cancel a lot.

Demolition and Burn it Down

The Rest

Shrine to Taal and Surprise Assault (since you will probably have cards that are not effective you can use them as developments)

or Ancient Map and Infiltrate!?

What do you think? I still don't have a beta of this deck.

Hi!

Just an opening note: I saw the reports and I see lots of decks coming. In our country there are at least 7 different archetypes that we'll gonna meet and things and this game allows them all...Just to say that people is playin' Rush just because they're net-decking and don't think to anything different.

I guess things are gonna change with new stuff coming out. I hope the remaining regional we'll show new builds and that people would try to do something more to evaluate the environment.

Anyway, this is just MY OPINION and a little consideration.

Now...

CAOS anti-rush

You can easily beat rush with a fine-tuning and great playin'. We saw a list winning a recent regional. It's a deck built-up against Rush, but seems to work well even against "big" guys, even if it's not its natural habitat.

DWARVES

I saw a couple of Dwarf deck beat Orcs/Skaven, Thrower decks and other different enemies. Solid Dwarf deck with a bit of "aggression" in the mid-late game, with the fall of multiple powers and recursion.

ORC AGGRO-CONTROL

I used to beat both decks with it (posted the list in the appropriate thread): Vomits, Foots of Gork, Easy Pickins with Grimgror Ironhide to close the deal with Throwers (I can play it by turn 4 and forcing a Thrower player to restart may mean game-win).

EMPIRE VERENA AGGRO-CONTROL

Verena decks are pretty awesome right now, with a bit of "speed" in them (Peasant + Runefang first turn, i.e.). They are definitely a "die hard" oppo to play against and absolutely viable.

I don't say that these are AUTO-wins, but they're very very close to be chosen as the "best" the "meta" killer decks.

Amusingly, for all the hype, I'm not seeing the Unitless Bolt-thrower decks as very good at all. They're totally gimmicky and pulling off that gimmick against any kind of deck that isn't incredibly slow is pretty rare. This deck archetype is pretty much a paper tiger or a blimp (full of hot-air, no real substance).

I think it stops all unit based decks very well..

Wytefang said:

Yeah, I'm finding the unitless deck is working wonders against a rush deck. You just need to survive the first two turns, or use the damage canceling cards at key times, and then you just keep it up and crush. You have to have the damage canceler tactics and play them at the right time, but with all the card drawing and such it should be pretty easy to get that. meanwhile you keep adding buildings and developments. Thanks to the keystone forges I have been able to kill a rush deck and end up with no damage on my capital. I've done this a couple fo times. It requires a lot of choices and skill though. I make 3 billion choices every match of where to put developments, buildings, which buildigns, how many resources to save, etc. It's a lot of think about. But if you can just survive that initial first two turns of rush you can end up crushing.

A major issue is guys with toughness, they really hurt the deck, and cards like Grimgor, that if they are ever allowed to be played your entire structure will get demolished in one turn. But it is a very decent deck I think. Definitely up there in terms of the best decks out there. Unfortunately rush is still so good and a decent draw will most likely have you win most games.

Bolt thrower is the best deck in the format; if you don't think so, you are either massively over-hating it (and dropping a ton of matchup equity vs. everyone else) or you are piloting it terribly. Seriously.

OP is correct to plan to beat it.

I agree 100% with whyte fang regarding the unitless decks being overrated.

I think many many players, so far, are not mentaly prepared for them and play poorly vs them, anyways thats the only theory I can come up with.

I copied a few of the unitless decks posted here, and made a few adjustments I thought might be improvements, and playtesting them vs NOT JUST speed decks, but any of my other ok decks, and they loose. They pull off the odd win when things draw very well for them, and I do think they are still not a bad deck for an event, cause of whatever reason prevents many players from playing well against them, but I am no newbie, and playing with or against no unit decks I am not impressed with them.

I think thrower decks are actually pretty solid and competitive. I'm not a Thrower player yet, I'm just testing it and it's efficient.

The most important thing is that your oppo has lots of useless cards in hand and it's a big portion of the unitless decks strength.

Then, think about the fact that you can just play down the thrower and start "hittin'" your oppo, without waiting turn "x" to do it. It's pretty difficult to deal with it, 'cause you don't know exactly what to do.

ddm5182 said:

No way. I've beaten some of the best unitless BT builds posted here when playing against them as run by a very, very good opponent. Not hating it unduly, just not finding it all that great. Sorry but we'll have to agree to disagree on this type of deck.

Dywnarc said:

Why? If someone's posted a deck and you want to try it, do so before you start changing it. How do you know whether or not you've swapped out a key piece of the deck for garbage?

I'm pretty sure that BT deck is not UNBEATABLE...I just wanna say that it's solid and REAL.

More of 60% of game I've lost (or people lose) ended up bad mostly for mistakes. It's a hard deck to play, more than any other.

Wytefang said:

We can agree that you & your "very very good opponent" had no idea how to play/build the bolt thrower deck, but thats about it I'm afraid.

Excuse my vitriol, but in my defense, the dominance of the thrower deck is a really bad thing that is going to need some banning attention in the near future - yes, moreso even than warpstone, innovation and other degnerate resource producers. People ignorantly claiming the deck isnt dominant is not helping that cause. So, that's why I keep calling you out. The deck is legit.

I believe in the deck's strength but it's really far from being considered a BUG in the meta...Skaven decks ARE bugs, but they're strong 'cause the game is new and aggros have a simplier life...

Even with Skaven dominating the regionals, I defend the balance of LCG as I said in another recent thread and I don't agree that banning is an option.

Thrower deck is ONE of the strongest deck, but keep in mind that we're talkin' about decks made up with a card pool of JUST 350 cards.

Ban is not the solution. Solutions will come with new cards and the expansion of the game.

Sorrey I should have posted better. I played a few of the unitless decks AS POSTED, and after made adjustments, which in fact where more often then not improvements in my experience, although minor, neither here nore there.

So for clarity, I played tested the unitless decks as posted, and modifications there of.

I am not saying they are no good, they certainly can work, can be very frustrating to play against when they got there thing going. I just feel that in a uber compeditve enviroment the rush is what you have to worrey about far more.

As a side note, an error playing vs those decks that I could see coming up, is playing all your stuff all the time. VS unitless decks, especialy if they have some decent removal abaility, sometimes its not best to play all your stuff, just cause you got it in hand.

Anyways, whatever side of the "argument" one is one, its really not helpfull when the claim "your oppenents or you are not good enough" comes up. Its a claim that can be made either way.

Put your claims on the field of battle, thats all I ask of anyone.

If one has the time and inclination and really wants to make there point. Post some decks, and post some GAMES. First three turn play by play. Keep a note book handy and jote things down.

I have done that before, this subject dosn;t interest me enough to bother, but if someone really wants to make there point, it is an option.

I have tested this stuff as well. It seems on further examination that the environment is actually pretty ok. There is a rock/paper/scissor thing going on. The 3 tier 1 decks are DE/Skaven, Orc/Skaven, and Bolt Thrower.

It goes something like this;

DE/Skaven beats Orc/Skaven, Orc/Skaven beats Bolt Thrower, Bolt Thrower beats DE/Skaven.

Orcs are just too fast for the BT deck so they often fell flat. It was really easy to play around half of the prevention cards as well even without things like Mob Up. Speed out some damage onto a zone and burn a zone if you can. If you attack for 6 one turn on a zone, but have more than enough to burn a different zone, we would burn the new zone. That made it so if the BT deck played Flames of the Phoenix, it wouldn't be enough as the Orc deck could just play Units and finish off the damaged zone. We would save back our Innovations (other than first turn accel) to recover better from it. We also played around Judgement and that made it really hard for the BT deck to win many games at all.

The DE deck that I have just beats the Orcs easily. The number of cards that deal with 1-HP units are too many for Orcs to deal with consistently. We'z Bigga was a liability when the DE deck plays Call the Blood. Blowing out the orc first turn with Hate. It was just never close.

The DE deck had trouble with the BT deck though. The DE is just slow enough that the BT deck can stabilize. It is a lot harder to play around Flames of the Phoenix too as the deck doesn't have as many cheap, powerful units. The DE deck also has a ton of cards that are pretty useless against a unitless deck. Judgement was pretty bad here because of the number of useless cards in the DE deck, they had plenty of developments.

Use that however you want. If you can make a deck that is good against all 3, you are doing pretty well. If you can predict your metagame, you can just pick the deck you think will do best and maybe chance a card or two if you fear the mirror match.

Interesting Dark Deal, my testing has come up with the same results pretty much. I have found the deck CLOSEST to dealing with all three, is a fast dwarf deck. It loses to all the noted decks, but seams to have an ok chance. Not to say I think the best deck to bring to an event is the dwarf, it dosn;t dominate any of the above decks, but often does ok.

Another interesting note on it. I have a DE "hand attack" deck, which has a bit of skaven in it as well, but more focused on hand attack, and the unitless decks struggle against it. But I think these cases are more player error, I think if my oppent toke my adive and cranked draw a bit more, story may be different.

My DE/Skaven deck just uses the 6 scouts. I was thinking during playtesting though, the scout effect still works even if they use a Master Rune of Valaya or a Gifts of Aenerion because although they don't do damage, they still survived combat. Unless by combat they only mean if defended against (in that case scouts are really bad and I think everyone would be misplaying them).

I think if all the decks I posted were evenly distributed at a tournament, I would take the DE/Skaven. The orc match is a near bye and atleast you CAN win against the Bolt Thrower deck, although not usually. If you use orc/skaven you will lose to DE/Skaven. If you use the Bolt Thrower deck you will lose to orc/skaven (probably less than what orc loses against DE though).

I just don't think the cards are there yet to build a deck that can compare to these 3. The Bolt Thrower deck really wasn't even good until this most recent BP. Orc control is real close to being there I think, and Empire seems close but still a little too slow.

Some interesting insight but again, from what I've seen with some pretty serious and fairly heavy playstesting, the BT decks are somewhat over-rated, in general. They rarely survive long enough to become too scary. I'm fairly disappointed in them so far - here's hoping that more cards can make it a more potent deck archetype in the future.

I think what's coming to light in all this discussion is that the bolt thrower deck is extremely hard to play well, giving the impression to bad players that it is not the best deck. That's fine I suppose. It definitely is not easy. For those still undecided, I recommend you read Clamatius' thread and insights on how to play it. And, if you can bear it, practice with the thing.

FWIW, in our testing - DE/Skaven does not beat Orc/Skaven. Its close to a 50/50 matchup as all Skaven mirrors are, mostly hinging on who gets an active Deathmaster, but Orc definitely has an edge overall. DE/Skaven being unable to play Pillage almost totally offsets anything they gain from WNYB/Vile Sorcs; while DE can definitely have draws where they get board control, just as often they lose to the speed of the orcs. Without a Greyseer, DE is often just too slow. Not being able to put 4-6 power on the board in a single turn reliably means they will often be outraced even with a spectacular board position. And with cheap Lobber Crews/Pillage, it is Orcs, not DE, who are the most reliably disruptive in the early game.

I would say the meta for the current cardpool is:

Tier 1: Bolt Thrower

Tier 1.5: Orc/Skaven; Dwarf Midrange

Tier 2: DE/Skaven; Empire aggro; HE midrange

Dwarves get the nod as tier 1.5 because they can splash High Elf's Disdain and have some game v. bolt thrower. Skaven have to play Mob Up! as well to get any equity in that matchup - otherwise it is pretty poor. Dwarves have some excellent game against Orc/Skaven as well.

If Bolt Thrower wasnt a deck I would say this was moving toward being a pretty decent metagame.

I'd love to see your group's Dwarf decklist. You should write up a thread like Clamatius' for that deck!

That's his baby. I'm the Skaven pilot that gets beat up by the **** thing constantly

Those are sweet matches though, about 5000x more fun to test than bolt thrower.

ddm5182 said:

The fact that you rank Dwarves above DE/Skaven shows that you are doing something wrong. Bolt Thrower is good, but it is not the best deck like you have here. The Orc/Skaven list posted in another thread is worse than my build as it is slower, so maybe thats why you are losing to BT decks. Even given my faster orc/skaven deck, my DE/Skaven still steamrolls it. Testing is all fine and good, but if you are using different builds, your results are going to be different.

...obviously?

Post your "faster than Orc/Skaven" build for critique please? Or, direct me to it if you already have?

EDIT: also, to be clear, the reason I give Dwarves the nod as tier 1.5 is not because they beat everything below them, it is because they have game against the major decks in the format. Dwarves splashing High Elf's Disdain is probably the best MU vs. Bolt Thrower right now, at least in theory (I'll admit we havent tested that one extensively), and Dwarves definitely are in the 50% range vs. Skaven of all flavors, with a soul-crushingly dominant matchup vs. Skaven if the Skaven player isnt vigilantly playing around their bag of tricks.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=155&efcid=4&efidt=324110

there is the discussion. My lists have changed by a few cards though.