Doom divers is too cute. This deck doesnt play (m)any cards that are just bad by themselves and DD is really terrible without a raise dead and a fatty in hand.

We'z Bigga isnt pulling its weight either. Doesn't do enough. Thinking -3 WB, +1 Troll Vomit, maybe +2 Choppa but that seems bad too. Need to give it some thought... could just end up being a couple of alliances but I like the support base where it is. Maybe +1 Bloodthirster, +1 Alliance.

Testing shows this list quite favorable vs. dwarves, but very easy to misplay. I won a few where Skaven would have packed it in long before this deck stabilized. I also savage punted a couple times. Never felt the game was out of my control - as I get comfortable playing the list I think variance may not be as much of an issue as i thought initially.

Clam, that deck looks pretty nifty. I'm running a more Orc-centric version of this but yours seems far more potent against BT, I'd imagine. Cool deck.

Now if we could only find a way to make Lizardmen interesting and/or useful as a group. I don't see them being cool at all until several more battlepacks come out with new Lizard cards. Tried making several decks for them without much luck. Bleah.

Lizards are fine at what they do, which is kill units. See: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

But given the current state of things, why would you even try to build around lizards, savage, loqzta machine gun, etc since the meta is completely dominated by supports? You won't have any success, and that's fairly obvious, so no one is bothering to do that right now. Just keep in mind that they are good at killing units and come back to that if the metagame shifts away from where it is now.

in other news, "final" version of this deck before Tirannoc ruins the game is -3 We'z Bigga!, +1 Bloodthirster, +1 Troll Vomit, +1 Orc/Chaos Alliance. Handles like a dream, very solid deck. Hard to play well, easy to misplay against. Lots of fun, powerful tricks. Still a goddamn bore to test vs. thrower but wins very often (pre-Outpost), and is better than 50/50 against dwarves. Probably still has *some* game against Outpost thrower but I'm not optimistic that it is >50% winrate. We'll see.

We'll probably have to *sob* test it to find out but I expect it will still come down to getting Grimgor on deck and winning. I think there's a definite chance there.

The Castle Ravenloft board game we played today seems a whole lot more fun than playing Thrower matchups. I really wish Thrower would go away so I could focus on beating decks where you play actual games (like Dwarves, which are really tough but may be beatable).

Clam, what did you think about Castle Ravenloft? It looks super interesting/fun.

DDM, yeah, I should have known better with the Lizzies but they were so tempting to try to play with a bit. Sigh. I'm not even that fond of them for unit killing because they work less directly and require some extra trickery. Meh.

I think the Lizards are actually pretty decent, it's just that they aren't that good against Thrower since Savage is worthless. The Spite Lizard list I have is ok although the little Savage 1 guys need to go.

Alright, off topic. I've only played 1 game of Ravenloft (yesterday) but I was impressed. It has the standard co-op "alpha" problem, but the flavour is good and the mechanics seem pretty tight - pretty simple, a fair amount of randomness, but also a solid number of skill-testing decisions. I especially like that the play time is in the 60-90 minute range as opposed to the 4 hour + marathon that is Descent. The short play time means that I can probably play with my family and when we have fairly casual gamers over, which is a big win.

I like what FFG was trying to do with Descent with the hero vs. overlord system but the rules are pretty flaky and it needs some seriously hardcore players with a bunch of time on their hands to get the best out of it. I could write a really long essay on that game and what I loved and hated about it, honestly.

Random aside... what occured to me just now is that this deck is probably not very fun to play against. It wins by controlling the board in a dominating fashion - staring down Iseara or getting Grimgor'd really is not all that fun on the other side of the table. Its REALLY fun to do but it probably isnt that fun to play against. Clamatius can comment better than I can since I am usually piloting the undead deck.

@ Ravenloft - fun game, a bit on the simple side but that can be a plus in its own right. And it is far from easy, though the skill testing decisions are not always obvious, by which I mean the game can appear quite straightforward, leading to a "huh, I guess we lose" feeling at the end of the game without a ready explanation why when you retrace the party's steps. I could see people playing dozens of sessions and still being terrible at the game.

@ Descent - great game with equally great problems. Much as I like flavor for its own sake, the balancing is so poor that its too frustrating to play most of the time. As Clamatius hinted at, you basically need a group of players all able to play the game at a roughly equal skill level or it rapidly becomes 1v1 with the best hero player dictating the actions of the group. And if your overlord is better than your heroes (or if they resist the "1 hero determines everyone's actions" plan) the overlord will DOMINATE in resounding, very un-fun fashion. Especially RTL... having your party get camped by Alric w/ crushing blow every turn throughout the first phase will very quickly lead to "so, what other games do you have".

Im running something similar, but rather than just ramp up resources, i felt it might be better to use units as well as i can place them in the kingdom if needed. This opens up We'z bigga to use and get units into play easier.

This is my list.

Grimgor's Camp 3

Squig Pen 3

Contested Village 3

Warpstone Excavation 3

Slave Pens 3

Lobber Crew 3

Black Orc Squad 3

Iron Boyz 3

Boar Boyz 3

Grimgor Ironhide 3

Wight Lord 3

Countess Iseara 3

Choppa 3

Pillage 3

Foot of Gork 3

Mob Up 3

We'z Bigga 3

If you are going to use Necromancy then Slave Pens seems to be a must. The Foot of Gork helps against rush somewhat - epecially annoying CME. The Units while on the face of it dont seem great, are solid for their costs and have the ability to go into damage mode with the Choppa's. Kept Pillage as its too important to pass up. The bonus was it was quite good fun to play as it needs a little bit of thought to make sure you play your units into the correct zone. Only problem seems to be that i can fill my hand with high cost units and get a little bogged down although so far it hasnt happened too much as there are a fair ammount of units and supports that i can play straight off the bat. And yes, the Grimgor's camp doesnt work on the undead, but it can let me drop my orc units very cheaply, meaning i can play them in multiples mid-game allowing me to generate either resources or better yet, card draw allowing me to search for what i need. Once this happens i can usually generate a late game rush.

@ "kept pillage because it is too good to pass up" - If your plan is to go bigger than everyone, why bother interacting? You don't just kill units with this deck, you KILL EVERY UNIT THEY EVER PLAY. You don't kill supports, you KILL ALL THEIR SUPPORTS FOREVER BOOM BOOM BOOM. Pillage sucks in this deck, it is never what you want to be casting.

@ your list specifically, I suggest you try the Rip/Raise Dead plan. You will find it better than 1/4 guys for 4. Spider Riders are good too, and generally speaking we've found Wight Lord + Slave Pens to be cute, but almost always win-more. Lobber Crewing a million times per turn is fine. You don't need an expensive sniper rifle when you have a cheap minigun.

Im yet to test this, but i made some changes as advised. This is what the deck looks like now.

Grimgor's Camp 3

Squig Pen 3

Contested Village 3

Warpstone Excavation 3

Lobber Crew 3

Black Orc Squad 3

Iron Boyz 3

Boar Boyz 3

Grimgor Ironhide 3

Great Cave Squig 3

Countess Iseara 3

Choppa 3

Foot of Gork 3

Mob Up 3

We'z Bigga 3

Raise Dead 3

Rip Dere Eads Off 3

Im not sold on Spider Riders. For me they are flimsy and easily taken out. Sometimes theres a lot to be said for some solid HP on a unit. As such ive gone with the Great Cave Squig, a Unit which normally looks like the bad outweighs the good with it. However in this kind of deck i suspect its disadvantage has been circumvented, so it will be interesting to see how they pan out. They might be good and i could still get Spider Riders in by replacing another unit if its deemed necessary.

If you're worried about Spider Riders' flimsy-ness, just use Scrap Heap. Works wonders and the surprise factor also proves helpful at times, since it can be unexpected.

Uh...yeah... no. Playing cards so bad your opponent wouldn't waste cards answering them != card advantage.

As a general rule - don't play terrible cards. Its MUCH easier to beat Master Rune of Spite by playing units with hp > power (or playing guys you don't really care about losing due to how fast they are, e.g. spider riders, so long as you can avoid overextending) than it is to play useless terrible cards you never want to draw or play at any point in the game. Generally speaking, when evaluating card combos you need either tremendous, game-winning synergy between them or you need each card to stand on its own. If your plan to beat MROS is to play garbage like Scrap Heap, you run into the problem of what happens when they demolish it, what happens when you don't draw it, what happens when you draw 1-2 of them in your opener, etc.

MartinSmudge, have you played with our list at all? I'm curious why you want to deviate so far from it, is it based on playtesting vs. any decks in particular? I'd be happy to work with you to tune the build to beat specific decks you expect to see in your meta. But I'd really recommend starting with our list as a base point before deviating into a more unit-heavy approach (and to have a solid reason for wanting to do so, e.g. beating unit removal decks by overwhelming them, or beating decks that are skimping on unit removal to beat thrower, etc).

Pretty much. The reason that the list ddm posted is good is that it punishes your opponent for overextending since Grimgor, Vomit and Iseara reset their supports or units. Grimgor to Kingdom is a savage beating vs. dwarves and virtually a win right there vs. thrower. Iseara is also ridiculously good and Raise Dead means it's hard to keep her off the table.

Now, the reason it's bad is that almost all the supports are essentially kingdom-only or quest-only, which can lead to a fair amount of draw variance.

Dwarves' overaccelerated support base also means that they can just get going much faster than you - but unlike the old Orc/Skaven lists they aren't as good at recovering from resets, so you don't automatically lose just because their early game is better. Longbeards are good but when you can't overcommit to Kingdom due to fear of Grimgor, it takes a while to get your offense going again after Vomit or Iseara's Lobber loop.

Oh yeah, and since Mob Up is only good against Thrower, I don't think you need it. Grimgor is enough, you just need to draw him and the odds are good with 3 copies. Right now this deck has a better Thrower matchup than Dwarves by a fair amount just because Grimgor is much, much better than I used to think.

ddm5182 said:

Well I'd hope everyone understood that. Your particular issue here is that you're mis-categorizing the usefulness of Scrap Heap.

ddm5182 said:

Again, except for the fact that Scrap Heap is cheap enough to not be any kind of serious drag (in most cases) and with the somewhat limited cardpool we still have, it's not as easy as just saying "play higher HP units." I think that's a bit too myopic of an approach here.

ddm5182 said:

All easily answered: the same thing that happens with any card in your deck that you 1. don't draw when you want it, or 2. draw too many of them in your starting hand - since there's a ton of cards that aren't totally useful at any given moment , and 3. that gets demolished - they still wasted a card on it, thus making them use up a valuable support destruction on a helpful support card (if they're foolish enough to do that).

No Wytefang, I don't think you understand the point of what I was saying with "don't play terrible cards". I'm going to waste some energy responding to you here, please don't make me regret it.

You see, oftentimes people will build decks focusing on "christmasland" scenarios of interactions between cards with obvious synergy. (Christmasland is a magical place where your wishes all come true). Sometimes this can be OK - when the "combo" between the cards is powerful enough to justify how bad they are in isolation. A good example early on in the W:I meta was Will of the Electors in conjunction with Judgment of Verena. On their own, both cards are pretty bad most of the time, but taken together they can often be a game-winning blowout. Even so, I'm still not a fan of those two cards. So you can see I set the bar pretty high for bad cards to get played. The trick of a good combo deck (or even just a highly synergistic deck) is you want your cards to be fine on their own, and devastating when paired together. Lobber Crew + Countess Iseara is an excellent example. Drawn in isolation, either piece is a powerful, solid card. When paired, they form a semi-soft lock that can outright win games if unchecked.

Do you see my point? I was not stating a truism when I said "as a general rule, don't play terrible cards." Its actually a valid point for deckbuilding - the trick is to avoid the "danger of cool things" and build a deck that handles well even when all cylinders arent firing. Stability and consistency are often just as important as power in close matchups.

As for the rest of your post - you basically aren't factoring in the cost of a card when evaluating the strength of Scrap Heap. This is usually a sign that you are basing your ideas on speculation and theorycraft rather than actual playtesting. If you had played with Scrap Heap in a deck, you would quickly realize you almost never want to draw it or play it over most all the other cards in your deck - its virtually a mulligan in your opener, and so situational in its usefulness that it really doesn't justify all those times you draw it and are thankful your choice of what to develop this turn is obvious. I get that you see some value in the card when you are scanning through spoiler lists, but in practice, cards that narrow are almost never worth drawing without an extremely powerful synergy hiding elsewhere in your deck.

All this said, if you have a successful, powerful list that uses Scrap Heap to good effect, please post it and I will give it a look with an open mind.

As I've said, it may be useless in an opening hand (to some extent) but then again so are many, many cards in the game in our current rush-rush environment. It's quite nice to have on your units in the mid-game - and yes, I've honestly used it in different decks and against different foes. It's particularly worth its weight against Dark Elf decks (but that should be obvious to all of us).

Wasn't trying to imply that it's totally a perfect match for his particular deck, however, but rather that it's a solution for flimsy units and other than using higher-HP units (which isn't the most elegant solution, here, imho) it's the main one for Orc decks to counter the rushy fast unit's inherent weakness.

The reason id deviate is simply that i had already created my deck and thought i had something similar. I can see that the deck originally posted would be good against Bolt Thrower, but im not obsessed by that deck by a long shot. Instead im looking for something thats simply a solid deck but wont fall down against the Bolt Thrower if it ever comes up against it. Hence i see the point about Mob Up being a waste of time.

I dont have a meta i suppose which is why im just looking at an all round solid type of deck. Im just as likely to come up against a HE deck as a Dwarf one. Hence thats why id rather go with a mix of units (note none of them have less then 3 HP bar the Lobber Crew as DE can take out anything with 2HP or less as easy as pie.) Something ive garnered in my 40 years of which nearly 20 now have been spent playing CCG's is that a no frills deck with solid 'creatures' will always pick you up a fair few wins. I agree totally with the comments about consistency and stability.

Coming back to the issue of Spider Riders, if Mob up is a waste of time then the riders can simply replace it. One for testing methinks.

Wytefang said:

So... show me a relevant deck its actually good in? Are Dark Elves a really threatening deck choice to you right now or something?

And anyway, why post it here if it isnt relevant to this discussion, which has been about how to tune a particular brand of orc/undead deck. Please stay on topic.

@Martin - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well the deck I posted before plays vs. random decks. it controls supports very well vs. Grimgor (surprisingly useful vs. all flavors of midrange/control decks, and even of some value vs. aggro when you hit their quest), and the Iseara + Crew plan is soul-crushing against unit-based beatdown. I see what you're trying to do with the unit plan, but I think a lot of your cards are extraneous to your core strategy - you will suffer a lot from random MROS-fueled Lizardman decks, or any decks packing 3x Troll Vomit, for example, when you could be going even bigger (and more support-focused) to become more resilient to those kinds of strategies - essentially, you get better vs everything that isnt thrower, which you already said wasnt as much of a concern for you.

No harm in giving it a go just to see. Always happy to try out new decks anyway.

Just one thought tho, does the deck really need Innovation. Why i can understand why youd have it, it in essence means you cant play the Squig Pen to the Kingdom which may well be the place you want it most. If you are unlucky enough to draw both then then one of them becomes a dead card, and while i suppose you can play it as a development, id rather have a different card in the deck instead, one thats got use in this situation.

I haven't played a deck yet that didn't get better by having Innovation in it. Seriously.

Just play the Pens to Quest and Strongholds/Vaults to Kingdom.

What do u think is better? Dwarf Deck or this Orc Deck? Havent tested much but need a good deck

for Tourney Stahleck in October

Dwarf is better right now since Reclaiming the Fallen pretty much beats the list we have. Before Silent Forge I think the Orcs actually had a slight edge over Dwarves, but now just killing all their guys isn't enough.

...though honestly, you should just play thrower w/ outpost, or else a 'rogue' deck that beats it with a reasonable frequency. I like Clamatius' High Elf list FWIW, and I'm brewing up some really *really* stupid Chaos aggro and Orc aggro decks too.

Actually, I suspect that Dwarves can still beat Outpost if their list is set up right. I just can't bear the mental anguish of the testing required. I have played enough Thrower matchups to last me a lifetime at this point.

I disagree, in theory at least (same boat as you w/rt thrower testing). Dwarves have some equity in the match when they play nothing but support destruction while applying pressure, meaning I would guess maybe a 40-45% winrate just based on the deck with a +/- 10% for playskill, but that edge is mostly eroded when you consider the thrower's "I win no matter what you draw" hands. Point being - dwarves with 6 support destruction cards will sometimes keep you off 20+ resources while applying enough pressure to win, but they will very rarely keep you off 10-15 with outpost support.

The match gets trickier for the thrower player (the game essentially becomes about sculpting the perfect turn to win on, as opposed to fighting through attrition), but I wouldn't be surprised if a properly tuned (for the mirror) thrower list was heavily favored against even the most hateful dwarf list possible. As a bonus, if thrower adopts the "dodge aggro" plan the matchup is even worse for dwarves - I've mentioned before that I think thrower can play zero fogs in the current meta and win easily.

Just speculation though, to be fair. I really don't care enough to test thrower right now. Would love to hear others' insights if they are working on this problem.