By "backs up" only having 2x Throwers, I meant it recycles fogs until you find it (or find the Long Winter to get it into hand). But yeah if someone blows one up early, or you lose it to a scout, you can straight up get them back too.

Gave it a try this afternoon @ lunch, testing this list:

Supports (28)

• 3 Warpstone Excavation
• 3 Contested Village
• 3 Mining Tunnels
• 3 Ancestral Tomb
• 3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance
• 3 Contested Stronghold
• 3 Repeater Bolt Thrower
• 3 Treasure Vaults
• 2 Abandoned Mine
• 2 Empire/High Elf Alliance

Tactics (22)

• 3 Innovation
• 3 Master Rune of Valaya
• 3 Gifts of Aeneron
• 3 Flames of the Phoenix
• 3 Master Rune of Spite
• 3 Order in Chaos
• 3 Demolition
• 1 Long Winter

It was pretty good. Still not completely sold on order in chaos - it felt tricky and gave the deck more access to key cards, but I'm not entirely sold that's needed. It felt very win more vs. Skaven; I was in a situation where I could OIC at the start of my turn to put 2x Innovation back on top the deck before my quest phase for ++++Value, but I opted not to becuase I just needed to draw deeper into the deck to find a thrower. They are very nice with Mining Tunnels and can occasionally be a decent way to get back a fog or recover from being scouted though... maybe I trim down the Abandoned Mine/Long Winter spot and play them as a 2-of (so 2x Abandoned Mine/Long Winter and 2x OIC). Not completely sure yet that they arent just a little too cute.

Not a whole lot of testing, obviously, but it gave a feel for it. ddm didn't mention that Thrower won every game (I think 2 vs. Dwarves and 3 vs. Orc/Skaven w. 2x Grimgor).

Clamatius sleeved up a joke deck today, basically stuffing every hate card we can think of into the deck. And.... thrower crushed it. Haterator.dec did win one game where I ancestral tomb'd both the remaining throwers in the deck (they were right next to each other) into play as developments. Since it was really obvious by about 3-4 turns later when I was drawing 4-5+ cards a go and generating 30+ resources that my throwers were developed, he sat on pillages for Abandoned Mine. I still had an out though, of drawing Long Winter + Flames of the Phoenix before I decked myself. Hit the Long Winter, was 2 cards away from Flames. So I lost.

Every other game was not close. I'll let Clamatius post the list if he feels so inclined, but it was pretty hilariously awful. 6 Scouts, 6 Pillages, none of the units die to Master Rune of Spite, etc.

Changes to the deck... -1 Demolition, +1 Long Winter. Coming around on Order in Chaos, it is quite a versatile answer to scouts or pillage effects.

The resource base for thrower has gotten really tight. I'm not sure what to do. The deck is fast enough now that only the scariest draws from Orc/Skaven rush can threaten it, and MROS completely wrecks that plan. Ramp into Grimgor while putting on pressure seems like the only way to reliably win, and even that is fairly disruptable & can be outraced in a lot of cases.

Anyone have any ideas on what's next?

SINGLE SET UNITLESS ORDER BOLT THROWER!!!...

3 Innovation
3 Long WInter
3 Order in Chaos
1 Master Rune of Valaya
3 Master Rune of Spite
1 Wake the Mountain
2 Flames of the Phoenix
1 Gifts of Aenarion
1 Judgement of Verena
1 Pilgrimage
1 Reap What's Sown
(20 Tactics)

3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Contested Village
3 Ancestral Tomb
1 City Gates
3 Derricksburg Forge
1 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance
1 Dwarf/Empire Alliance
1 Empire/High Elf Alliance
3 Keystone Forge
3 Mining Tunnels
1 Repeater Bolt Thrower
3 Treasure Vaults
1 Abandoned Mine
3 Contested Stronghold
(30 Supports)

:

ddm5182 said:

That's the reason I had been wishing for a card like Long Winter. Sometimes you get everything setup but just need that Bolt Thrower back from your developments and Abandoned Mine takes a whole freaking turn to work! Ughh...

...Starting to like OiC... Cut the Disdains... man, if I could just convince you guys to play Second Sight!! (j/k i've also dropped Second Sight :-)

f7eleven said:

There is NO way that works, lol. But you could probably do a super unit-light version along the lines of my "bolt throwerless bolt thrower" list that is basically just playing control, using Descendant of Indraughnirx3 and some huge dwarves as finishers once we get the next battlepack. I imagine that would work fine in single-set, and not be terribly overpowered (goes back to what you said in the other thread re: winning at action speed vs. using the combat step, and therefore being disrupt-able).

Anyway, where standard is concerned, we are running really thin on ideas to beat thrower. I'd really like to see a viable Grimgor ramp list that doesn't punt to dwarves. Thrower is so fast now that its hard to hang in there if you are trying to play destruction... the fogs + MROS ruin your riderriderchoppachoppa plan unless you also have 2-3 warpstones to go with it, and then I'd like a side order of eggnog to go with my mistletoe. If destruction had a resource base that was capable of hanging with the retarded starts that thrower routinely gets, I'd say there might be something to the huge guy ramp plan that centers on abusing Lord of Change as a card draw engine with a TON of hammers in kingdom (+ Iseara, Wight Lord, Lobber Crew shenanigans). I'd be surprised if it works today though, thrower is just too fast, but that's the next deck we work on I think. Sigh.

Banning bolt thrower would be pretty cool at this point... Either that or borrow from MTG and print Split Second as a mechanic - this game needs Krosan Grip in a bad way. Imagine:

• Annihilate. Dwarf Tactic, 2DDD. Destroy target support or development. While Annihilate is on the stack, other actions cannot be played.

... and Dwarves suddenly have some game against Thrower...

You'd be surprised at how much "game" the Dwarves do already have vs. Thrower, based on what I saw at GC Worlds. But it's still just a horrifically nasty deck, all things considered - to some extent I'm much more a believer in its capabilities than previously but I'll have a good chunk to say about it in my post-GenCon report (writing it later today).

Alright, I finally figured out a plan for Dwarves to beat Thrower that doesn't involve playing a pile of horrendously dead cards. It isn't an auto-win or anything, but at least it gives you a chance.

Recurring Demolitions with Order in Chaos to kill off Treasure Vaults and Contested Stronghold will buy you enough time to beat them up, in summary. I do think it makes the deck significantly weaker against Skaven but maybe MRoS is enough. I'll have to do more testing on that.

I think we played 6 games, with thrower taking 3 of them? Was it 7? In fairness, 1 loss for each deck was due to the other deck having a horrendously bad opening draw, so bad it should just be discounted as variance (Clamatius' opener while piloting dwarves in that game was, after a mulligan, "demolition, go".

Clamatius and I may differ on the significance of the result - I felt like my draws on thrower were extremely poor in 4 of the games we played (1 of which I even won), but we definitely agree that the Demotion/OIC plan gives the deck substantially more game than it had in the prior version. Its a good direction to take the deck really, given that you can rely on the other dwarf boards to almost completely choke out rush.

I still feel like thrower is a solid favorite against dwarves though, which makes it basically favored vs. everyone, sadly.

New brewing at work for thrower, along similar lines...

Empire board

Supports (30)

• 3 Warpstone Excavation
• 3 Contested Village
• 3 Derricksburg Forge
• 3 City Gates
• 3 Mining Tunnels
• 3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance
• 2 Empire/High Elf Alliance
• 2 Contested Stronghold
• 3 Treasure Vaults
• 2 Abandoned Mine
• 3 Repeater Bolt Thrower

Tactics (20)

• 3 Innovation
• 3 Order in Chaos
• 3 Demolition
• 2 Long Winter
• 2 Master Rune of Spite
• 3 Gifts of Aeneron
• 1 Master Rune of Valaya
• 3 Flames of the Phoenix

Oh yeah, something that came up today.

If you are staring at what seems like 22 Dwarf Rangers in their quest but they have no Grudge Thrower, go ahead and play Gifts/MRoV if you were going to anyway before combat. Hell, if they have lethal damage on the table and don't have resources up, you should seriously consider playing it at the beginning of their turn so they can't Disdain the Gifts/MRoV.

That's precisely what ShubFan did to me in our first match (or was it a later match, I forget). Good play on his part because I was just getting ready to draw my resources and had a Disdain in-hand to use.

Clamatius said:

I think Order in Chaos is just as good against Skaven decks in recurring Master Rune of Smite or Master Rune of Valaya. 2x Order in Chaos and a Master Rune of Valaya + drawing 2+ cards a turn is able to cast Master Rune of Valaya every turn for the rest of the game. That configuration works with any card. I think Order in Chaos is strong enough to warrant an errata. Add the text 'remove this card from the game after use'. I am not even sure we have any precedent for a removed from game pile in W:I yet.

Bear in mind that (e.g.) Pillaging a support, Lobber Crewing them in response to OiC knocks out the loop.

I agree that it seems really good but I'm not sure that anything needs to be done about it (yet?).

Clamatius said:

It's really good but the perpetual replay is hard to make work with so much that disrupts it... It works all fine and good if you are looping the same tactic on your turn and drawing with mining/derricks/high elf thingy, but it is a card combo and like any card combo you need good draw and good luck for it to work consistently.

- dut

Honestly, count me in the camp that thinks OIC is a cute trick and a decent way to up your card quality in general, but not nearly as good as I believe some of you think it is. Basically it costs you a card and doesn't by itself impact the board at all. Short term it can be a cute way to replay powerful disruption tactics like Demolition etc, but at the cost of serious tempo and board development. Its at its best when paired with a lucky start that gets you way ahead on board so you can exploit that advantage. Rarely will it allow you to catch up when you are behind.

Right now I'm playing it as a 3-of because frankly dwarf and empire board decks are ridiculous and nearly always have an early advantage to exploit. But, its among the weaker cards in my deck and I could easily see cutting it for the next busted card draw/resource engine that gets printed.