Not the most exciting of decklists, but since we're working on standard again I figure I may as well post the current starting point for testing this archetype.
Units (22)
- 3 Spider Riders
- 3 Clan Rats
- 3 Lobber Crew
- 3 Clan Moulder's Elite
- 3 Greyseer Thanquol
- 3 Deathmaster Snkitch
- 2 Rat Ogres
- 2 Ugrok Beardburna
Supports (14)
- 3 Warpstone Excavation
- 3 Contested Village
- 3 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance
- 2 Orc/Chaos Alliance
- 3 Choppa
Tactics (14)
- 3 Innovation
- 3 We'z Bigga!
- 3 Troll Vomit
- 3 Pillage
- 2 Easy Pickin's
The idea is to move the deck slightly up the curve, reasoning that big finishers like Ugrok and Troll Vomit are the way to get an edge in the Skaven/x "zoo" mirror. General strategy is to play out resource accel, reaching the midgame @ 2 cards/turn & 4-5 resources/turn. Ideally you play a Vomit then start the offense, using Pillage, Crews, and Pickin's to keep them in phase 1 for a couple of turns while you set up your engine. The deck is also capable of your standard rush starts, but can hang in there and keep fighting when dwarves start playing huge guys.
Basically loses to thrower without a nut draw. Whatever. That deck is dumb, and if I'm going to design for standard I have to pretty much ignore it.
Some notes on card choices:
- 2x Easy Pickin's: havent tested this yet in standard. In single-set it was a decent way to play more than 3 Lobber Crews, and it seems reasonable for standard as well given 3x Spider Riders are my only 1-drops, and they don't tend to survive very long anyway.
- 2x Ugrok Beardburna: guy is huge. Very, very hard to deal with for a lot of decks. 2x because drawing multiples of him is no fun.
- 3x Troll Vomit: playing the full set really changes your options in the early to mid game. You really want to vomit after setting up a decent resource base; playing around vomit is often a bad strategic play for order decks, since your card quality is so much higher than theirs that they can't afford to let you draw into your mid- late-game plays. Vs. destruction it is almost better, since they are so limited on quality supports.
- 3x We'z Bigga: with Rat Ogres and Ugrok in the mix, going up to the full set of We'z Bigga seems good. Has tested well so far, almost always finding a juicy target.
And that's it. Basically a small evolution of the last Orc/Skaven lists we posted here, but its a starting point for testing future battlepacks. This deck absolutely must be respected, and I expect it will continue to be one of the strongest options in terms of pound for pound card quality in the format.