I'm curious to see what people think are "viable" decks in the current meta. My shortlist of the best current decks would be:

• Order Thrower
• Spite Dwarves
• Orc/Skaven rush
• Orc/Skaven "midrange" (vomits, bigger units)

And then these as "tier 2" decks (i.e. they may have a good game against 1 or more of the above, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them at GenCon):

• Wilhelm / Volley Gun Empire
• Judgment Empire
• "No-Skaven" Orc
• Destro Thrower
• DE / Skaven (lots of variants with this one)
• "No-Skaven" DE
• Chaos / Skaven

What did I miss?

Well, Deathmaster is kind of bad against Spite and Thrower, so I think some Orc decks might lose Skaven altogether (except Elites) for a Spite-resistant curve (Spiders/Crews/Elites/Boar Boyz/Ugrock and whatnot). If you stripped ten or so Skaven out of Orc/Skaven "midrange," it would certainly be easier to find room for Thrower hate. Pray for Vomit against Skaven, which you'd probably be doing anyway. You'd have to make sure that the hate you added for Thrower was better than the random blitz wins you were giving up, but it seems like that would be doable.

Not sure if Wilhelm/Judgment is distinct from Wilhelm/Volley Gun, but I'm guessing at least a few people will be packing the full Judgment suite with Long Winter. Seems like LW would be a pretty big boost against Thrower and the deck would certainly rather see Dwarves than Skaven. You would often lose fast when you lost and always win slow when you won with this deck, which is good given the tournament rules.

It's an interesting idea, but I have some quibbles. Spiders and Lobber Crew die to Spite anyway (for the Riders, you just wait till they attack). So that leaves Greyseer, Clan Rats and Deathmaster as the Skaven that can die to Spite. Sure Deathmaster is not good against Thrower - but I still think he's solid against Spite Dwarves just because he almost always takes someone with him as soon as he hits play. And giving up the Greyseer is hurting you against Thrower quite a bit since he's often how you burn zones on turn 2 or turn 3 (the other common way being the riderriderchoppachoppa draw). Not to mention that Deathmaster is amazing against the large category of random decks that just lose to him without having a Zealot in hand (like Empire). You are probably right that the Orc with few Skaven probably should be in the list somewhere though - we've seen that archetype show up in tournaments. I don't think it's a good idea myself, but eh.

I think the best hate you can run against Thrower without going into specialty stuff like Mob Up! or Grimgor is probably the Rock Lobber. I haven't tested 1x or 2x Grimgor but it may well work. Hell, it may be ok against Dwarves - the little bastards definitely like their supports, that's for sure.

As for going back to the Judgement plan with Long Winter, well, it seems like people will run it, I think you are right there, but personally I really do not like the Judgement plan. It takes up so many slots and if you don't draw a Judgement quickly as well as the other half of your combo you lose.

Yeah, probably Dwarf. Dwarf is pretty dumb right now.

Spite or not, I see them doing really well.

If I saw Dwarves saving three, I would probably think about not declaring Spider Riders in a lot of spots, especially if the board were set up such that Spite would already do something. Crews do go down to Spite, but should take somebody with them most of the time (not all the time).

Greyseer is certainly the only Skaven that matters against Thrower. But, in a 2/3, I'm not real happy with Greyseer/Choppa blitz being your only out. If you win game one, you'll definitely have time for a second game. If you lose game one, you probably won't (unless you scoop early).

I was thinking either 2 Grimgor/3 Bloodthirster/3 Rip or 2 Grimgor/2 Mob Up for the Thrower hate package. And, yeah, the thinking was definitely that that stuff would be decent against Dwarf beefiness as well as Thrower. And, just in general, I am liking Rip more than ever with Seduced going from like 95% of decks to 15% of decks.

Judgment deck certainly has all its eggs in one basket. Seems like Winter should mean more games won via two zones being wiped and fewer games lost due to no zones being wiped. Not sure if it's enough, especially with Ancestral Tomb floating around, but I'd probably test it if I were going to play in worlds. Seems like with all the cheap Empire openers, you can just kind of mulligan for Judgment and cobble something together to get your card draw online.

Actually leaving for GenCon shortly and stumbled upon this thread so here goes ...

I think you're pretty spot on about the Tier 1 decks, etc except that I honestly think that Empire is tier 1 now. The argument that it has a bad matchup vs Thrower isn't relevant anymore because pretty much all the tier 1 decks have a bad matchup vs Thrower unless they really change some things.

To the guy talking about Grimgor + Rip, that combo doesn't work. If I'm not mistaken, that's actually an exact question in the FAQ. Something about Grimgor already being in play when he's Ripped so you don't get the effect. If you want to Grimgor a Thrower deck, you have to do it the hard way.

I tested for a good 4 hours last night and here are the conclusions that I came up with:

1. Thrower has no bad matchups. Actual 0. Some matchups aren't as easy as Order control decks, but nothing is less than 60% or so. Is this a problem? Probably, what nothing you can do now.

2. The "Big Orc" deck beats pretty much everything except for Thrower and even still it has a chance. We added 2 Grimgor and 1 Mob Up! to the deck and it was stealing some games. Usually. you actually have to Grimgor twice to win vs Thrower which is real awkward. One time he literally 7 for 1'd me and I still won.

Several things eased my mind in testing: I was terrified of people playing with Grimgor and seeing that I can still beat a Grimgor was really nice. One game I won by bouncing his guys over and over again with Flames so he could never get the resources to play Grimgor and won before he could play it. Though that realistically never should happen, it was still pretty funny. Another thing was that Mob Up! really wasn't that bad. You don't really NEED to fog unless you're dead on board and that's usually late enough in the game where you can leave open enough resources to counterspell their Mob Up. If they want to Mob Up to make sure they burn the first zone, then that's their business and something you don't really care about. It's the 2nd zone you need to hold on for dear life for.

So, what did I gather from all this?

I'm playing Thrower at Worlds unless i lose every pickup game Thursday and Friday. If that's the case, I'm playing the Big Orc deck.

- SF

'Big Orc' is interesting but my gut reaction is it would lose to dwarves and empire. If Empire is determined to keep you off of playing huge guys, they can do so fairly often. You beat them by playing lots of cheap threats, though I suppose your orc deck is probably still packing a reasonable suite of 1 & 2 drops. Dwarves just seems like it has the tools to wreck you... slayers completely denies the "play a huge dude" plan (and slayers + stand your ground is a KICK IN BALLS every freaking time). Would love to see a list if you don't mind posting your thoughts though, even if post-GC.

Agree re: thrower being more resilient to hate than is generally known. We've beaten Skaven w/ 3 Mob Up! before, plenty of times, with the old list pre-mining tunnels. I consider that to be about as close to a 50/50 matchup as thrower has. When we say "haterator.dec" for thrower we do not mean a deck that is basically a decent shell that splashes in a couple hate cards. We mean the 3 shades, 3 gutter runners, 3 pillage, 3 burn it down, 3 mob up! plan, with a side order of Grimgors and probably a couple of cheatyface High Elf's Disdains. Hence, deck that reliably beats thrower = also savagely punts vs. the rest of the field.

Another problem I have with the Orc deck minus non-Elite Skaven is that against other Orc decks you are bringing a spoon to a knifefight. The Skaven vs. Skaven matchup is usually a coinflip based on who draws more Deathmasters - if you don't have any you already lost the flip. Because of that, the Deathmaster is the second to last Skaven I'd cut (Elites obv. being the last because they're just totally undercosted as a straight up unit).

My prediction right now is a solid dose of random stuff (DE, Empire, etc), a fair number of Orcs, a wall of Dwarves and 1-2 Throwers.

As for the Rip + Grimgor, there's a good chance he might have meant Grimgor. And Ripped Bloodthirsters (which punch through fogs).

ShubFan27 said:

I think your Empire list must be a lot better than mine. Dwarves made balloon animals out of my intestines every time I played against them.

Yeah, I'm aware that you cannot Rip Grimgor to wipe Kingdom, but I still like the Rip package. I don't think you can really run 3 Grimgor and 3 Mob Up, just because they're totally dead cards against most decks. But, you can kind of run 3 Grimgor/3 Bloodthirster/3 Rip because flipping over a big guy in front of an attack is always decent.

I wouldn't be excited about playing mono-Orc against Dwarves or Orc/Skaven, but I think it could steal some matches. Against O/S, while you can't win DM coinflips, you can at least make them run out a bunch of guys to bring your beef in range of DM (since you aren't contributing much to the Skaven census), which sets them up for Vomit. Dwarves would be weird; but, in a 1-game match, anything can happen. Vomit or Rip at the right time could give you a cheap win.

If you were playing mono-Orc, it would be because you think 1) Top X will have a lot of Thrower; 2) this deck has a decent shot to beat Thrower; 3) this deck is good enough to beat random stuff in Swiss. I dunno if all that's true or not.

I realize half the fun of these larger tourney is found in the careful determination of what the "Meta" ::: shudder ::: will be like but I'm really agonized over trying to guess what I'll face and how best to face it. Ugh. Such is the cost one pays for not being able to play this game as much (and thus do more testing). Sigh.

I've come around on the BT deck, I can see how (Played properly, of course) it could be tough. And I think that some version of Orc/Skaven, Pure Orc, or Skeven/DE/Orc will be even tougher, in some ways.

I really like Dwarves and have had a super strong build for a while but I'm not sure that they're safe to play yet either.

If you had to list these top 4 deck types (per Clamatius' opinions) vs other decks, how would it go?

So:

Dwarves vs. Orc/Skaven = Wins how many percentage of the time??

Dwarves vs BT = Wins how many percentage of the time??

Dwarves vs DE/Skaven or DE = Wins how many percentage of the time??

Orc/Skaven vs DE/Skaven = Wins how many percentage of the time?

Orc/Skaven vs BT = WIns how many percentage of the time?

Orc/Skaven vs Pure Orc = Wins how many percentage of the time?

Etc...

I'm currently not very sure since I play in such a small gaming environment right now, despite some good experience in general and my attendance at the FFG Event Center regionals.

I have a good Orc/Skaven, a good Dwarf Vengeance deck (Clam would call it a Spite deck), a solid Pure Orc deck, and a mystery deck that could be interesting (and brutal) vs BT but I'm not convinced of how well it could do vs. other decks. GAH!

At some point I have to commit to picking one and sticking to it but this is always a dilemma for me with these kinds of things.

Clearly, you have to assume good play on both sides - there's a whole lot of play decisions in this game so either side can blow it. Now I've got that disclaimer out of the way, here's another one: a few cards difference can make a big difference in a matchup. Grimgor vs. no Grimgor, or Deathmaster vs. no Deathmaster, for example. The longer the games tend to go, the bigger the difference the builds make. That said, here's some ballpark guesses:

Dwarves vs. Orc/Skaven: 60% - 70% in Dwarves favour

Dwarves vs. BT: 85% in BT's favour

Dwarves vs. DE: honestly, I dunno, I haven't tested DE for a while, but I expect them to go down pretty hard here - it's a complicated matchup though for sure and a lot of card choices for DE. DE have a lot of possible tricks and it's hard for Dwarves to play around all of them without knowing the decklist.

Orc/Skaven vs. DE/Skaven: Deathmaster coinflip matchup, largely, but with Skaven on both sides I think Orcs have a 5-10% edge

Orc/Skaven vs. BT: w. no Grimgor, I'd guess 65%-75% in BT's favour, with 2+ Grimgor, I'd expect maybe 50/50? if the BT is running ddm's new plan with triple Spite, although we've only tested the previous version vs. orcs with Grimgor

Orc/Skaven vs Orc: not tested, but I'd hazard 65% in Skaven's favour

Some matchups depend a lot more on play skill than others. Skaven vs. Skaven is less about skill and more about cards drawn, for example. Not to say there's no skill - a good player will always have a decent edge - it's just less skill-based than some other matchups.

For the most part I agree w/ Clamatius' assessments. Basically in my mind the meta today boils down to expecting lots of Dwarves and a fair amount of Empire given they have gotten all the latest new toys. Given that assumption, you could play Orc/Skaven with Grimgor to hate on bolt thrower (since thrower is still clearly the best deck) but then you risk a terrible matchup vs. Dwarves. At least Clamatius found a way to give the thrower a bad matchup by adding Grimgor to the zoo list - but even so, I'd still play thrower most likely unless I went with a dwarf list HEAVILY tuned to beat the mirror. Even so, thrower's winrate vs. dwarves (which I would actually put closer to 90% in thrower's favor unless they are running disdain, then closer to 65-70% in favor of thrower) is really, really tasty given how much dwarves I expect to be played right now.

For freesies, a stab at a dwarf list I might consider... note that this is totally untested, just theory. I call it....

Bolt Throwerless Bolt Thrower

Units (11)

• 3 Dwarven Cannon Crew
• 3 Slayers of Karak Kadrin
• 3 Longbeards
• 2 King Kazador

Supports (22)

• 3 Warpstone Excavation
• 3 Contested Village
• 3 Mining Tunnels
• 3 Ancestral Tomb
• 3 Dwarf/Empire Alliance
• 3 Treasure Vaults
• 2 Contested Stronghold
• 2 Great Book of Grudges

Tactics (17)

• 3 Innovation
• 3 Stand Your Ground
• 3 Master Rune of Spite
• 3 Demolition
• 3 Master Rune of Valaya
• 2 Judgment of Verena

Basically the plan for the mirror is to play the same game they are, but leverage Master Rune of Valaya to help you race, and lean on your superior resource base plus Demolition to get ahead on cards. Verena bumps up to a 2-of to mise, probably more in the midgame with demolition + verena shenanigans than as a turn 4-5 play (though early mising is not to be discouraged).

I have no idea if the unit-lite plan is viable, I just know virtually all of my games as dwarves are won by drawing an obscene amount of cards, getting an obscene amount of resources and dumping Longbeards into the battlefield. So I figured, all in. Master Rune of Valaya seems like sweet tech in the midrange mirror, letting you get away with being slow to get started on offense. Could be terrible though.

I'd want a lot more testing on that - I'm a bit dubious about that deck, but eh. The creature count is so low that the Lobber Crew / Easy Pickins / Vomit decks are really going to suck. edit: oh yeah, also great book of grudges doesn't cut it with 11 units - I'd add 2x Mountain Brigade there for sure.

I should also note that the games we played today didn't agree with what Shub found re: Grimgor. I won within 1-2 turns every time I resolved Grimgor.

Clamatius said:

Hmm, against what Dwarf List do you play? I can most time disrupt them with moving or bouncing. Slayers are made near usless after being moved. And Toughness does not make it because they will not defend.

I was playing against the Spite dwarf list that I posted on the forum here. That list needs some tightening up, but it's decent as is.

I considered Mountain Brigade but honestly 4 resources for 2 power is just underwhelming these days. Yeah they have a huge butt but you have better ways to defend now - by slaughtering everything that moves via MROS or fogging. You draw enough cards when playing dwarf that I don't think being unit light is really going to be a problem, not even for something like the book of grudges. I think it will always find a target, because you just dont need to commit to offense early - I can live w/ a book sititng in hand while I build up quest & kingdom. Plus, more value for cannon crew, etc.

The biggest area where I feel like being unit light will hurt is that your slayers have a pretty good chance of being lobber crewed away, but so what, its still a 1-for-1 trade. You have SYG to offset the power of removal on your big guys anyway, and SYG on Slayers is much a ball-stomping as ever.

Like I said this could be terrible, but I can at least convince myself there's some theory behind the madness. Keep in mind my goal was to build a list that beats the mirror - I admit I am probably costing myself percentage vs. Skaven to do so. Has better game vs. thrower via the Verena plan too - mising their quest zone early (because yeah right @ kingdom) might bump up my win % to like, 5. Which is like a 200% gain. Sadface.

Side note, do we actually have a healthy meta now? Dwarves beats Skaven beats Thrower beats Dwarves????? Not that the percentages are even, especially w/rt tier 2 decks, but still. That's better than its been since Deathmaster's Dance.

ddm5182 said:

One more thing to bear in mind: when I talk about a 85% win rate, that is crushing. That is sitting down, playing 20 games and only winning 3. That is the "I CAN NEVER WIN" feeling.

Matchups do tend to be much more swingy here don't they. Probably a function of a limited card pool - less ability to maneuver your strategy to get an edge in specific problem matchups due to both the hard division between order & destruction, and the limited number of tournament quality cards for each deck.

For reference for those not familiar with the high level MTG tournament scene, if you show up to a MTG tourney as an 85% dog to any deck you expect to see play, you either expect that deck to be a fringe player in the metagame (Dredge or Burn are frequent examples) or you are making a huge mistake in deck selection. In MTG "Deck X beats Deck Y" usually means Deck X has about a 55-60% winrate at best. In W:I, "Deck A beats Deck B" usually means "Deck A THOROUGHLY CRUSHES DECK B'S SOUL".

Eh, I don't think it's quite that pronounced. I would say more that the winrates in matchups are comparable with MtG with the exception of some of the Thrower matchups (where many archetypes have basically no chance other than the deck misfiring). Dwarves vs. Skaven is a bit closer than you think just because of selection bias - when Skaven win, they do it fast and relatively painlessly, whereas the inverse is a mess of losing to drawn out card advantage. You tend to remember the latter a lot more than the former because it takes longer.

Do not agree. Skaven vs. Dwarves is a far worse matchup for Skaven than (to use some current MTG standard examples) "bad" matchups like RDW vs. Mythic or Ascension combo vs. Esper. The only comprable standard matchup right now is Turboland vs. RDW where Turboland loses ~70% of the time.

In fairness, I think sideboards have a LOT to do with that too... thinking about it, lack of sideboards for g2/g3 is probably most of the problem.

Hmmm...sounds like you guys are keen on either BT or Dwarves. Where does Chaos or a Chaos hybrid fit into this scheme? Or what about an Empire build? Do you not expect to see those out there in the GC meta??

I think I have such a hard time picking a deck because I really want a deck type that can handle a bit of everything - which I know is just not possible but it drives me crazy to lose to a deck type where if I just had one card x3, I could've perhaps pulled off the victory.

I expect to see Empire and maybe a little Chaos, I just don't expect them to do well. Empire I think is best if your day job is a croupier.

Honestly, it depends on what you're expecting. Spite Dwarves is pretty solid against everyone except Thrower. It can't really be "hated out" as far as I can tell like the Grimgor/Mob Up! thing with Thrower. Unless you're expecting a whole bunch of Thrower decks (which would be surprising) that would seem like a good pick, if your aim is to do well but you don't mind if you don't end up #1.

All the destro decks (except Destro Thrower I guess) seem weak without a bunch of Skaven - and if you do run a bunch of Skaven Master Rune of Spite is going to be a savage kick in the nuts.

There is no silver bullet. Oh, except Thrower - but we already covered that.

I'm unfortunately not sold (entirely, yet) on BT being the best bet. There are some decent countering cards I think that can be utilized but the question is probably just how many can you run to cover your tracks against BT without ruining your deck, either.

It would be ironic, though, if I decided to try the BT deck and won the Championship or did really well, considering I"m not terribly sold on it being all that great. Still, it's looking more appealing every day (if I'm being honest with myself). Shub will probably do really well with it since he's pretty experienced with it at this point.

Hi,

Theoretically speaking in a BT deck you only have to deal with the thower itself, and you win. There is a maximum 3 such card in that deck, right ? without the Forest Thower they eventually run out of fogs sooner or later. Hovewer it's not that easy in reality. Zapping a 4 support 6 development KZ with Grimgor is great, but not always the best course of action.

I guess we will se at least 1 BT deck in the top 3, because many people won't construct their deck to beat it. In a worst case (but possible) scenairo we won't see even a single unit card in the top 4, which is a joke for a war based cardgame.

Currently while the deck is beateble, you need to mutilate your deck againts everything else to face a BT deck, which is more than sad IMHO. If I would go to a tournament anytime soon I would run an anti-BT deck, that's for sure. (as I guess at least 50% will be such kind of deck)

Now I will cry a little bit, so if you don't want to read this just ignore :

*start of cry*

When High Elf Disdain arrived to the card pool I said it will be an unhealthy direction to the game... now, that order (and only order) has a ridicolous resource engine and much better tactics than destruction it's basically what made BT that tought. It's tier 1 because you could use 47 cards (which, again are much better than anything from destruction) for resources/cards, and you need only 3 to deal damage.

Currently :

- order has a resource engine which is at least 50% more effective in the early turns and 200%+ more effective later than ANYTHING (including neutral cards) what destruction can do, and the same time it is less vulnerable to disruption

- order has better and more global tactics and protection effects, while destruction get no or very limited (narrow) weapons against it.

With destruction your only hope to win against BT is rush, as on a longer game you could not match nor the resource engine nor the damage output, not even with orcs. Pillage and burn it down is useless, as your opponent has much more resources, so always could hold on a Disdain. (which is the most unfair card in the game) Or could play a second BT:

Also many cards in your deck become blank in the instant that your opponent play BT. Things like direct damage, corruption, DE HP reduction become useless... while in theory these should be a centerpieces for those decks ! I consider this a mayor design flaw, even that I know that they wanted to make such unitless decks viable.

destruction also has a bolt thower, but the difference in the card pool is clearly shown by the fact that it's nowhere near to the order version.

*end of cry*

Assumption :

If they continue on this direction then all destruction factions (and maybe unit cards at all) in the game won't be competitively playable in tournaments. Basically Chaos already reached "not for competitive play" status.