A little preamble. I was going to the tournament having played Invasion for a few weeks before, although I bought in and played at Christmas I hadn't played much at all until July and Gencon prep as I call it. I wanted to play an Empire infinite loop I came up with -> Order in Chaos your opponent's deck, Infiltrate them to draw one of the two cards, Order in Chaos your own deck getting back Infiltrate and Order in Chaos, Infiltrate them again, rinse repeat, they never see any 'new' cards in their deck until they run of out discard.

I realized quickly though that I just couldn't build a deck that did that consistently enough and still won games in a competitive environment. As such, I had no idea what I was going to end up with. On Thursday I tested Orcs, and Friday I tested a Jumping Jack Empire deck which won against everything but Bolt Thrower in Teams. I was staying with UFS House, Paul Bittner and Matt Kohls, who were now playing Invasion and Cthulu more than anything. They were both going to run Bolt Thrower, of the Dwarf variety... They wanted me to run Thrower too so that we could 'get it banned' or whatever, just Bolt Throw people to death and have fun with something that should have been errated long ago. Saturday morning, I said to hell with it and after 4 hours of sleep decided to build an Empire Bolt Thrower, prove a bunch of people wrong about Thrower and right about Thrower at the same time (i.e. Empire is best version and Bolt Thrower is broken).

I got to the con at 945 and built my deck between that time and 1040 when I 'started' to submit. I say started because I didn't have a 3rd Bolt Thrower... and I didn't have a 3rd Mining Tunnel (it was missing in action lol). Hata convinced me to go buy them at the dealer hall and in typical last minute fashion I did just that and updated my decklist to include 3 of each, good stuff.

Well, to the guy that asked me just 'what type of players I play against?', after I posted that I run 60 card decks all the time and win almost all the time. My most recent answer - Gencon worlds players are the type I play against, and frankly I was their undefeated King before the top 8. And this is what with (also, an apology is always nice):

Empire Board - 59 cards, Swiss King record 4-0-1 (4 wins and 1 draw), 3rd place finish losing to the overall winner in the semi's.

Units, 4:

2 X Flagellent's (Empire)
2 X Peasants (Empire)

Tactics, 27:

2 X Judgement of Verena (Empire)
2 X Will of the Electors (Empire)
2 X Infiltrate (Empire)
2 X Demolition (Dwarf)
3 X Master Rune of Valaya (Dwarf)
1 X Master Rune of Spite (Dwarf)
3 X Innovation (Neutral)
1 X Reap What's Sown (Neutral)
3 X Order in Chaos (Neutral)
1 X Long Winter (Neutral)
2 X Gifts of Aenarion (High Elf)
3 X Flames of the Phoenix (High Elf)
2 X High Elfs Disdain (High Elf)

Support, 28:

2 X City Gates (Empire)
2 X Runefang of Solland (Empire)
3 X Derricksburg Forge (Empire)
3 X Mining Tunnels (Dwarf)
3 X Contested Village (Neutral)
2 X Contested Stronghold (Neutral)
3 X Warpstone Excavation (Neutral)
3 X Dwarf/High Elf Alliance (Neutral)
2 X Abandoned Mine (Neutral)
2 X Treasure Vaults (Neutral)
3 X Repeater Bolt Thrower (High Elf)

I had never built a Thrower deck before, I had never played one before, I had only read about it here and talked to Matt and Paul about it oh so briefly.

Well there you have it. In every single game I cast Judgement of Verena at least once. It always happened mid to late game, but it was usually - will, will, demo, verena - or - will, order in chaos, draw, will, verena - or - will, demo, winter, order in chaos, draw, winter, verena... you get the jist of it.

Basically, I would survive with fogs, greatly outbuild (except against Tim and his mega demos/burns), and then knock down for the count with verena. Sometimes I looped Verena for turns as I continued to setup enough cash to Bolt Throw, sometimes I didn't need to.

I built the deck to have the faster start, either unit + runefang, Derricksburg + other 2 cost, or just Mining Tunnels for 3... All usually put me ahead.

Almost always I'd Repeater with like 10 or less cards in my deck remaining (rounds 1 and 2 all 3 Throwers were in the last 10 cards of my deck), sometimes I Verena'd my own quest zone to stop from decking myself.

My deck provided me a hell of a lot of control over when to play things and to recur them. Everyone knows about Abondoned Mine and Developments, City Gates made my options mid to late game practically innumerable.

The units were always key to my sucess, whether they were soaking an early 3/4 damage, or just there to reduce my tactic cost to zero/2/3 (with runefang onto them) instead of costing 4/5/6/7 (high elf tactics without loyalty out...)

The deck is pretty much a gross toolbox all leading to mass destruction with verena, or mean card draw stoppage with infiltrate looping, or just survival->thrower.

I really enjoyed playing it, even though it was thrower, granted I love games where I have to really think and manipulate my deck, draw, and resources to find and achieve mass combos (development moves/removal and verena in this case).

I knew my deck had the best matchup against thrower in the meta (at least I thought it did, Tim's probably even a bit better). Reason being all I had to do was build to a midgame combo with Verena such that all the dvelopmetns moved into the battlefield and all the money earning options are destroyed. Just ask Matt Kohls what I mean, even after the worst start possible against him (no playable cards for 4 turns) I still came back and did that too him... I moved 8 or 9 devs from his Kingdom zone to his battlefield and cast Verena mid game.

Not an easy deck to play, but hella fun nonetheless. Any questions, ask away!

- dut

First, let me say that your deck looks fun. I like that you used Runefang and the damage soaking with your units is a great way survive long enough for the final turn.

Just a comment though: You had trouble with the possibility of decking yourself. This may seem counter intuitive but a good way to keep from decking yourself is to actually reduce your deck to 50 cards. The reason being that you had to draw through many cards to get what you needed. You could just draw fewer cards and get what you wanted quicker. This also lets you build up your quest zone less making you even faster in your kingdom.

Of course if someone actually got a viable mill deck working this might change (but I haven't seen one so far).

Thanks for the comments, had I not built the deck that morning I might have made a few changes during playtesting and such, likely getting it down to 55 cards, or 51 cards if I went extreme on it. That said, I am happy with it and what it did.

It wasn't that I couldn't find what I needed (except in round 1 and 2 when all 3 Throwers were bottom of deck), it was more that I had to get enough resources to kill with the Thrower all while keeping enough cards to stay alive/protect my resources with. For this reason I'm not sure making the deck smaller would really help, the first issue is really bad luck and the second is the win condition of the deck, time.

- dut

Some crazy stuff going on in there. Full marks for innovation for sure. I like the idea of recurring Infiltrate against other Thrower decks - and using OiC to effectively double up on Will is nice too. For non-dupotd people, note that Infiltrate shuts out card draw for the whole turn so it stops the omnipresent Mining Tunnels from working too.

I'm not sure if this plan gets there when rush is back (it'll be back at some point, I'm sure) but this seemed like a really good call for the GenCon meta. The Runefang/Peasant plan seems dubious when people are running Lobber Crews but right now there's a helpful wall of dwarves keeping the orcs at bay.

Clamatius said:

Yeah, agreed, a good rush should beat me more than 50% of the time, unless I get lucky with Verena or draw well.

It's not dubious, people killed my peasants with direct damage or whatever plenty, thats when you play the action in response and just play a big tactic or whatever. Almost everytime you still get use out of it, free tactics are free tactics. If you see an early lobber you just don't play an early unit. I agree though, it has a bad matchup against Lobber, but hey it is 6 cards in my deck, and I'm losing a 0 or 1 cost to a 2 cost with a power unit, sounds fair to me!

- dut

Super impressed with your results and your willingness to play a larger deck. Kudos to you, good sir. Also thanks for the more in-depth report, I love reading these. Very cool. You surely deserved your 3rd place finish, I'd imagine. Though I would have preferred you'd used a less annoying deck archetype to do it (but heck, we all wish there was a strong answer to the BT deck these days)!

I really liked your deck sir, I dont know if I would have won if I hadnt drawn so much support removal early. I think this deck could be very good with a little play testing. I had something similarish in the works that I had planned on playing in worlds, but I didnt have enough time to playtest it so I put it on the back burner (good thing for me it turned out). I still had a lot more units in mine and I think your no unit plan is better.

TL

dutpotd said:

Now, the tactic you play with the Runefang is only free if you have the loyalty, right? I think it just reduces the base cost to 0 but you still have to pay the loyalty tax if you don't have all the symbols. I could be wrong on that - does anyone know for sure?

According to the most recent Rules, "Loyalty is a variable that can add to the cost of a card. However, it is not considered part of the cost for the purposes of card effects." So I don't think you'd have to even worry about Loyalty costs with Runefang's usage.

Wytefang said:

Pretty sure you don't pay loyalty, it reduces the cost of the card to zero and that's that. I never did pay for loyalty on a fanged tactic... And Hata was right behind me for about 3 of my matches, I think he likes to correct me lol - calling me sub-boss; silly designers

- dut

Wytefang said:

Now, if James was right there, that's probably how it works, but there's always the possibility that he may not have been paying attention to that detail.

Please post James answer when you ask him at the rules' section.

I sent it in.

Clamatius said:

Also, I think most of the times I did the good ole runefang sac it was actually for Verena or even a Dwarf Tactic. The more that I think about it I wouldn't have done the High Elf ones that often if at all (and High were the ones I didn't 'sometimes' have loyalty for), reason being the Flames is on your turn only and I rarely ever used that off fang if I recall correctly, and the Aenorion only had 2 loyalty symbols and I'm pretty sure I usually had enough for it.

Sometimes I used the runefang for a ditch Master Rune of Valaya, but I almost always had a dwarf icon out what with the Mining Tunnels and Banenrs.

I know when James was there I did it for Verena a couple times, and Forges/City Gates were usually out in at least one copy.

I guess I'm saying maybe I didn't avoid loyalty? Maybe once all tourney in an early round without James nearby...

Sorry for starting the confusion, but knowing the ruling is worthwhile anyways so let's follow it up.

- Garett (dut)

I remember we had this question re: Slaanesh's Domination, but I can't remember if we got a James answer.

I've sent in this question before, but I didnt get a reply. I meant to ask james at the con, but I forgot.

TL

Yeah, I was right. I got the answer back from James today.

Here's the question I sent in to James:

Runefang of Solland's power reads: "ACTION: Sacrifice attached Unit to lower the cost of the next non-Epic Tactic you play this turn to 0."

Do you still pay loyalty or other costs (sacrificing things, etc) associated with the tactic? If not, why not?

and here's the answer from James:

Yes this means that you must still pay other costs associated with the card as well as keep the loyalty of the card in mind. This card effect specifically calls out the cost in the top left portion of the card and lowers it to 0.

Cool, glad to hear an answer on this. I sent the same question in before gencon, but I'm sure that everyone at FFG was just too busy then.