Inroduction:

When i saw the neu Bright Wizard Acolyte in the Fourth Waystone i wanted to make a deck with all the Bright Wizards (Thyrus, Hemmler, Acolyte, Apprentice) to use the High Elf healing mechanism. This is my second post here and my first deck (and with healing as a main theme ^^), so feel free to point out errors, problems etc.

Heal the Wizards combination:

The first combination is using self damaging units in all your zones to power up The Glittering Tower to turn your heals into direct damage to units or the capital zones.

The Glittering Tower
+
Initiate of Saphery
+
Bright Wizard Acolyte*
Loremaster of Heoth
Lion Chariot of Chrace**
Dreamer of Dragons
Thyrus Gorman

The Hemmler combination:

The second main combination is using Friedrich Hemmlers Forced effect (dmg to attackers defenders when opposed) with some cheap units in the battlefield and The Glittering Tower and Greater Heal . This gives you basically a counterstrike X (1+1 for every unit attacking) when defending and attacking.

Friedrich Hemmler
+
Greater Heal
+
Pesant Milita
Flaggelants

Economy:

How to pay for all this units in the battlefield to use the Hemmler combination? First of all i use the High Elf Capital to get their supports out quick.

Temple of Vaul gives you lots of power for cheap and you should do lots of dmg as soon as your Tower is on the table and if not you have Hemmler and Bright Wizards, which is a lot of dmg on its own.

Dreamer of Dragons + Dragonmage Awakening (thx to Kefka) can give you 9 resources in turn 1. And you have Greater heal to do it again in turn 2 and you can get 1 resource and one dmg for every Initiate/Dreamer you have have every turn.

Citadel of Dusk + Envoys of Avelorn Gives you a 5 resource/2 draw start.

How to protect your units:

This is very unit heavy so sniping, unit control, hexes, etc. and most important resets are a big threat.

Order in Chaos: Get your units (Hemmler) back from your discard pile.

High Elfs Disdain: This is your weapon against the big resets and useful in any way.

Pilgrimage: This will help deal with the gigantic target on Hemmlers back. Use it to get rid of hexes or deseases. And get him out of your Questzone (which you do not want) if he was moved there. (Synergy with Loremasters too)

Dragon Mage Awakening: Helps vs master Rune of Spite, and protects you against straight dmg so your heals can do their thing.

Brigth Wizard Apprentice (and every brigth wizard is in the deck Horay!): Protection against unit destruction.

Other Combinations:

Ishas Gaze + Heals: If the Hemmler combination kicks off this could be sooo much power. This makes the deck work even if i loose
the Tower.
Temple Guard : Have a dual use, they use your self dmg when you dont have the Tower up and make you Bright Wizard Acolyte usable in the battlefield with Hemmler even if you dont have greater heal right now.
Order in Chaos + Flaggelants + Temple of Vaul : This makes defending or attacking you battlefield vs your cheap units even worse. You can stop the Temples downside and get your cheap units back to keep the Hemmler combination going. (And it has some synergy with Loremasters and the Citadle of Dusk too)

Deckbox Link:

deckbox.org/sets/22853

Questions:

What do you think? Is Healing as a main theme possible?

This is my first deck and I dont know if this is really fast or way to slow or anything so plz tell me what you think.
constructive critisism is appretiated.

Are my Units like the templeguards useful that work a bit against my main theme but make the deck more robust if my combination gets disrupted?

Especially since I got 55 cards so 5 more? Is there something I should get rid of?

Will loyalty be an issue with the cheap empire units? Do I need an alliance?

Variants:

Citadel of Dusk + Envoys vs Contested Village + Warpstone : Do i need those, everyone uses them and there are some nice starts in
this deck.

Dragon Mage : They would be a nice blocker and work well with the rest of the deck.

Warrior Priests vs Temple Guards : Warrior Priests would be a bit faster, but the Temple Guard can protect my bright wizard acolytes against Hemmler.

Support Hate : Ther is no Support hate in my Deck. i could run Rodriks' Raiders (3 HP unit is great with Hemmler) or Burn it Down since i might need developments in the battlefield anyway to prtect vs Verenas Jugment.

Keeper of the Flame vs Lion Chariot of Chrace : The Keepers would make it faster and give me something vs attachments but the lions give me a great defender and i can use both combinations with them in the battlefield.

Quests : Defend Tor Andris would give Thyrus something to do and defend the Border would help with Vaul Temples.

---

*Empire Unit - Bright Wizard Acolyte - 2R, 1E, 2P, 2HP - "Mage. FORCED: When your turn ends, this unit takes 1 uncancelable
damage." -> Gold Wizard in deckbox
**High Elf Unit - Lion Chariot of Chrace - 3R, 1H, 1P, 3HP - "Warrior. ACTION: This unit takes 1 uncancellable damage. If it does, it gains Counterstrike 2 until the end of the turn." -> Keeper of the Flame in deckbox

Wow, you put a lot of thought into this huh? That was fun to read.

I think it could end up being decently powerful with some tweaking. The first thing you need to understand, is that if you have a combo deck that takes 3+ turns to set up, an efficient rush deck will run you over every time. That being said, this is a theme deck, and for a theme deck it has potential to be pretty good.

Let me see if I can help you streamline it some.

Firstly, you have a lot of cards that are dependent on other cards to work the way you want them to. This means a bad first hand will kill you. Also, lots of out of faction cards and no alliance.

If you want this to be primarily a Wizards Theme deck, run it out of empire. If you want it to be primarily a tactical healing deck, run it out of High Elf.

Also, you're going to need your WE/CV/Innovation in this deck more than any other, so make sure you slot that. If you want to run pilgrimage, you could probably get away with losing innovation, because of both factions efficient early game cards.

Wizards Theme:
I think Empire has enough good cheap resources to offset some of the alliance costs of running the high elf cards.

I would run the wizards, and consolidate your healing to Glittering Tower and Initiate of Saphery. You could probably do Greater Heal too, since the loyalty cost is low, and if you do, consider Runefang of Solland as well.

Really, a resource base of: WE x3, CV x3, Derricksburg x3, Bright Wizard Acolyte x3, Thyrus x?, sounds pretty good if you get the hang of it. Rodrik's Raiders would give you some versatility and give you an open tactic slot where you'd normally put demolition.

Don't worry about overstocking the self-damage guys, Acolytes, Hemmler and Thryus should be fine. I would probably x3 Thyrus, he'd be worth it in something like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the other side of the coin, for straight healing. Go High Elf for sure.

The first thing I would do, is lose Temple of Vaul. That is a hell of a drawback, and very rarely do you come out even on it. I don't think I ever did, really.

For resources, Acolytes, WE, CV, Citadel of Dusk, Innovation are all good.

I would definitely use the Dreamers + Dragonmage Awakening here. One or both by themselves and a WE is an amazing first turn, just beware of Lobber Crew.

I would do healing different in this deck, I would just do the Glittering Towers, Dreamers, and Tear of Isha. Tear of Isha is machine-gun death when you use Dreamers and Glittering Tower. Dreamers netting you 6 hammers, plus an instant heal and zone burn is just a thing of beauty.

If you wanted to try the Initiate or Greater Heal mass healing, that's when I would use loremasters.
An indirect damage subtheme would be nice: Some mentioned Lelansi in tandem with Loremasters in an earlier thread. That would be cool. Skinks of Sotek is nice too, with Lelansi and Loremasters. Adds some utility and has good synergy at the same time.

Overall, something like:

Glittering Tower x3
Tear of Isha x3
Dreamers x3
Dragomage Awakening x3

Loremasters x3
Lelansi x3
Sea Guard Captain x3
Buff Sea Guard Captain x3
That +1 indirect support x3

Just some food for thought: You could do nothing else and add WE/CV/Innovation and it would be significantly better I'd say.

Thanks for the great feedback. Your "Healing with a twist" was my inspiration by the way.

I tried some start hands earlier and I get what you said. I think its one combination too many in this deck for its own good, so it gets a bit over crowded. Especially with the added loyalty costs. But I didn't want to be depend on having a tower on the table. The idea of running an empire and a high elf version might be the best way to go. I will post what i can come up with.

Why Greater Heal?

Running all the Bright Wizard Acolytes without Greater Heal means you cant use the healing to counterstrike an incoming attack. The Acolytes are basically a 1 HP (1 DMG) in my opponents turn, so i cant block with them if I have Hemmler. Greater Heal allows you to do 2 things: First you can use the dmg you have when your opponent is declaring his attackers to kill them off and use Hemmlers forced effect to get new dmg on the table for your turn. Second you dont declare your Acolytes but Hemmler and all 2 HP units as defenders and use all the dmg you already had and the new from Hemmlers forced effect to kill off the attackers. It is Counterstrike X without any restrictions where to put it. With the Temple Guard you can get even more dmg on yout attacks before they can do anything. 1 Bright Wizard Hemmler 1 Pesant Militia 1 Temple Guard in the Battlefield would be like having counterstrike 5 without any restrictions where to put it.

Tear of Isha + Glittering Tower + More than 1 dmg:

Dose this work? "Kingdom. Action: Whenever you heal a unit, deal 1 damage to one target enemy unit or one target section of an opponent's capital." With Tear you heal all dmg on a unit but you heal it once. So you would only get 1 dmg out of a dreamer. You need dmg on a lot of units to get the tower and the gaze to work. Thats why I used the wizards in my elf deck.

â—Kefkaâ— said:

How exactly does the combo work? I can't figure it out. Perhaps I'm just too dumb to count to six but everything I have tried does not come to your conclusion. I'm very excited for an explanation.

Philos said:

You have to have Dreamer of Dragons in play with the +3 HP dragonmage attachment.

You self damage the dreamer 5 times, and then you use Tears of Isha to heal it. The dreamer heals, and as long as you have the Glittering Tower, you can apply 5 damage anywhere you like. I feel like this makes Glittering Tower the best damage dealing card in the game, because you can apply it directly to the zone. The combo is fragile though, so I guess thats the offset.

Just remember to do it before you count resources, so you can get an extra 5 cards or 5 gold, and more if you can heal in the middle.

But Glittering Tower should fire just once because it doesn't heal once per dmg healed or am I missing something? Best use of Glittering Tower (theoretically) should be something like a setup of Initiate and Archmage of Saphery while potentially being able to heal with a Tear of Isha. If there are ways to get that combo going, Glittering Tower would be a really powerhouse. Too bad that one cannot play multiple but maybe it's best for the balance as we saw that some cards have a real impact on themes.

@Threadopener:

This was a really good reading and your version seems like a good theme deck. I really like Alliances because they are decent at the start and they don't draw so much "attention" as some other buildings do.

Considering unit protection, instead of playing Pilgrimage you can also play Iron Disciple which is most of the time for free but you have a point in Wilhelm's annoying action that doesn't directly target. I also really like Keepers of the Flame. They serve their purpose in a lot of matchups wether getting easily rid of Grudgebooks, Choppa, diseases, Hex and Volley Gun.

Maybe you could give moving damage also a try because it works so good with those self damaging actions. I built a HE deck containing Hemmler, Bright Wizard Acolyte, Douse the Flames and Tactical Misdirection cards from empire ( http://deckbox.org/sets/22962 ) if you are interested.

grille said:

It does actually heal per damage healed. If you check out the FAQ, it has been clarified.

Wichtel said:

Thanks! That was a fun deck to build. But man, Temple of Vaul is a tough beast to tame.

I think Healing has gotten loads better in these last few sets, way to rep the High Elves!

I see what you mean about Hemmler + Acolytes, I just got the pack today, so I need some actual experience running the new cards. Be sure to post some updates to your deck if you can, I'm curious to see how it does.

â—Kefkaâ— said:

Can't find any information you mentioned.
Only:
" 13 Glittering Tower:
Should read : Kingdom. Whenever you heal a unit,
deal one damage to target unit or one target section
of an opponent's capital"

Imho, this work like "1 damage per healed unit"

Severance said:

Looks like you guys are right. Sorry about that.

I don't know why I thought it worked per damage instead of per unit. Pays to read your cards I guess.

@Grille

You could use the temple guard to move the dmg around and warrior priests do get the dmg to you opponent. And where do you want to put the Keepers? Because they are problematic in the battlefiled with Hemmler, the new Lion Chariot on the other hand has 3H and counterstrike 2, which means you can kill 3HP Units before battle. That would be great with misdirection.

Heal the Wizards Empire Version

I made an empire version of my deck. I have less self dmg units now, so the focus is even more on the Hemmler combination this time. I ran with Empire because of Derriksburg allows me to use it and any of the 2 cost cards in turn 1, which gives it a robust start. And Steelfang + Greater Heal/High Elfs Disdain was a great idea, having to keep 3/2 resources to use my tactics was a bad. I kept Ishas Gaze to get the focus away from the Tower and Hemmler and Dragon Mage Wakening makes my Wizards survive the early turns before everything is set up and both give me cheap HE loyalty.

here is the deck: http://deckbox.org/sets/22959

But I am over 50 cards again even without innovation. I cut some cards to 2 to get it down to 52, I think it needs some testing to get that right.

High Elf healing Combo deck

The Tear + Dreamer combination might not work, but I think with enough healing sources (*dose not want to include those wimpy 'Archmages'*) it might work anyway.

But I will try to make the old one work just for the heck of it .

just a thought popping up: lion chariot with dragon mage awakening. with 6 hitpoints, even if you get damage from hemmler you still can damage the lions 4 times to get counterstike 8 (or is this too good to be true?^^)

By the way, you mentioned rodricks raiders before. What happens if you target a disease or hex on your own units? You get a free development? In that case you DE or Chaos opponent better not play these in your kingdom with innovations and rodricks raiders in your deck...

Wichtel said:

I oversaw that you had the Temple Guard in it and I will try to include them. Keepers are a solid 2 cost 1 loyalty unit and I like them early into kingdom or quest getting rid or delaying the first Choppa or other attachment things for no cost. I really like support removal and it's better to use Rodric Raiders on threatening buildings instead of attachments. Witch Hags Curse is also regularly popping up (at least in my playing environment) ruining something that was thought to be save. Tactical Misdirection is mainly for Swordmasters and Hemmler (if I can afford to replace him the next turn) but the Chariot could also be attractive for that.

Lizards and dwarfes also team up very well into this healing/moving dmg type decks. I think besides thinking how to defeat dwarf and empirecontrol (seems like a meaningless effort) decks it's very fun to build and play theme decks at the moment because there are a lot of cards that migrate some weaker cards from long before.

I think your Empire version looks really good. How does it run?

The temple guard idea is cool too. It makes me think Empire/Lizardmen would be pretty good. Hemmler + Savage sounds fun.

@Primus_Magicus

"just a thought popping up: lion chariot with dragon mage awakening. with 6 hit points, even if you get damage from hemmler you still can damage the lions 4 times to get counterstrike 8 (or is this too good to be true?^^)"

How stupid can one be. I new I could do this with a dreamer, but totally missed that. Thank you that makes the High Elf and original Version a lot more robust.Now I want a +3 HP Tactic too killing bloodthirsters with one counterstrike just seems so awesome...

@Kefka

Yeah thats my Problem I will need some more stuff before I can build the decks. Thats why I did not post the High Elf one, I need to see them run in practice. I tell you as soon as I have an answer. But feel free to try it your self.

â—Kefkaâ— said:

If the Initiate(s) be on the table then this combo still works with little more than creative timing. Any amount of direct damage on the capital is a good kickback whether it's one or four.

DoD's need to be out and active for a healing deck to win. Their damage pays for the Towers and Initiates, which can then sustain the battlefield. The good thing about a healing build is that your kingdom becomes harder to kill. The bad thing about a healing build is that you might have an empty battlefield for a turn longer than you like. it's not about dealing damage in the first few turns with healing as much as it is keeping your battlefield from being burnt, IMO. I could be wrong. I really only have one or two people to play against where I am.

Yes that's why I put some sword masters in my High Elf Version of the Deck and I need to maybe I need to get the dreamers back in the empire version too...

High Elf The Dream of Dragons

Introduction:
OK this is the High Elf version of my healing combo deck. I think the old High Elfs with Wizards version was ok and the Empire version I made afterwards was good, but the Hemmler combo is a bit fragile. This is the High Elf version and I think it looks just brutal on paper/screen. I cant wait getting everything I need to play it.

Dreamer of Dragons:
The card I build this deck around is the Dreamer of Dragons (hence the name). 3R/HE 1P 3HP Action: This unit takes 1 uncancellable damage. If it does, it gains 1P until the end of the turn. The deck might run without them but this makes it fast and hit really hard.

Dreamer of Dragons + Dragon Mage Awakening . If you charges him to the maximum you can get 9 resources in your second turn, witch is enough to get the full healing combo going). This is really good but its a one turn wonder, unless you can heal him. Thats why there are 3 Tear of Isha in the deck. Every Tear is onther turn with 6 power card. 3 Initiates of Saphery add staying power and turn them into a 3 power unit every turn (4 power with dragon mage awakening). Well cards with 6 Power are nice but surely we can do better? We could add a Temple Guard and redirect some dmg to your other units, lets be realistic and say we can do it 3 time (2 to the temple guard, 2 to a Initiate and 2 to a swordmaster in the battlefield). 12 power here we go. Luckily we have a Greater Heal to heal all that dmg, with means 18 power. And the temple guard can also redirect all the dmg the dreamer is going to take as long as you have resources and units left. Thats why I have 5 additional units with 3 HP in my deck. And if you want to do the same thing next turn just play Order in Chaos to get the heals back or if someone gets him off the table it will get the dreamer and the attachment back.

Dreamer (3) + Dragon Mage Awakening (3) + Tactic Heals (6) + Temple Guard (2) + (Order in Chaos 3)

The Temple Guard:
The Temple Guard needs a special mention: As long as you have resources and 2 HP on units you can redirect dmg from one unit to a unit somewhere else. That means every of your units potentially has HP equal to the HP of all your units, as long as you have resources. He can turn a single envoy in a 5 HP unit for 2 resources.

Heal the clumsy elfs:
Well the dreamer is awesome, but what if they get killed or they hide somewhere in your deck? The deck works even without them because there are other clumsy elfs who injure themselves if they try to do stuff. Keepers of the Flame burn them self and get rid of attachments and the Lion Chariot of Chrace hit each other. With Dragon Mage Awakening you can get the lions to counterstrike 8 which means they can kill a bloodthirster before it can eat you. How do clumsy elfs help us? We can heal them of course. And since its easy to destroy a limited building or a single attachment we have both of them

A: Glittering Tower
Like in the other decks the Tower transforms healed units into targeted dmg on enemy units or capitals. Since you have your clumsy elfs, the dreamer and the redirected dmg from your temple guard, you should have units to heal every turn.

Glittering Tower + Heals + Lots of units we can dmg

B: Isha's Gaze:
The downside is I don't have units with a lot of normal power but we have this attachment and if you get some damaged units on the table you will get lots of power out of this attachment. This will give you your battlefield a lot of punch or help you if you don't have a dreamer for your kingdom/quest zone.

Isha's Gaze + Heals + Lots of units we can dmg

Dead Elfs don't do dmg:
Yes but thats why we will not put them in the discard pile but back on our hand, we have Lelansi after all! And since we have a zone where our units just go back to our hand we will use Skinks of Sotek and Loremasters of Hoeth . Bouncing those is fun, since we can have more dmg on enemy units and we have more dmg we can place on units to heal it. If we want to bounce them but our enemy wont attack the zone we can use the temple guard to kill them ourselves and start something vicious. Loremasters can bounce themselves with Lelansi and as long as you have 2 resources you can keep this going.

Defense:

Swordmasters are the perfect unit to defend the battlefield until all this gets going. Furthermore they are the perfect unit to use isha's gaze on. Since they have 3 HP and can not be damaged in combat they are a great place to store some dmg.

Greater Heal and Tear of Isha can help to save your damaged units in the opponents turn and if one uses it as soon as attackers are declared, it turns into a perfect (splittable) counterstrike. The damage from your heals will also help you to get rid of utility characters.

High Elfs Disdain will help against something like Troll Vomit or other resets.

Order in Chaos will help getting the key cards back we lost or used.

Economy:

This is the part where i am not really sure. I want to use Innovation , since I have no cards that use developments anyway. And they will be useful to get resources in the opponents turn to use heals or the temple guards.

Warpstones are free so i take them too. Envoys (to get the loyalty) + Citadel of Dusk is great and an early boost is all one needs to get this going, but thats 6 cards. Contested Villages are good too. But if we take 3 of everything i mentioned this will get close to 60 and this is a combo deck. Since i have Envoy + Citadel, Dreamers and some weird combos with ishas gaze (+Initiate + self dmg) make a bad turn one but a great turn two i am ok loosing the villages, but only testing will tell.

Deckbox Link:

deckbox.org/sets/22967

I hope you had fun reading this and tell me what you think or try it and tell me afterwards.

Wichtel

PS: I need those cards arggg!

Been trying out the high elf version. Had started a deck design along this line but your breakdown really made it all click. The trick is the Temple Guard.

Once you have a Temple Guard out, a clumsy elf, and a Glittering Tower you're in the money. Use the Temple Guard to redirect damage from a clumsy elf to other units then either Initiates of Saphery or Greater Heal (this is like a Nova card now... one game had five units out and with the Temple Guard and a clumsy elf I was able to get a damage on all 5 units. With one Glittering Tower and an Initiate of Saphery I dealt 5 damage direct to a zone at thh beginning of my turn and using the Temple Guard and clumsy elf was able to damage everyone again and Greater Heal for another 5 burning a zone. Once I had two Gliltter Towers out for a one turn hit of 20 damage to capital, the end.)

Temple Guards also make units survive longer (although I have some questions about that in the Rule Questions section.) Essentially 1 resource for 2 more hit points. Also can keep a unit alive if the opponent only deals the bare minimum damage as you have an action window to use Temple Guard before damage is applied. Pretty awesome.

I haven't found Lelansi all that useful. Her ability rarely comes into play. Typically opponents just ignore her area? Don't see the Loremaster shuffle as all that viable a tactic. Seems like there is always something better to spend my resources on. Thoughts?

Need to try Isha's Gaze with this as well but seriously the Temple Guard is the key to this deck. Awesome find!

Later,

-Wraith428

Don't mean to break your bubble but two glittering towers in play is a no no,they're unique.

Totally hadn't noticed. The unique symbol is pretty easy to miss. Good to know. Sorta a bummer.

Wraith428

slick said:

Mind explosion... I always thought the text looked weird on this card but I was always so distracted by how much the elves sucked at the time.

Here's my varriant on this deck. Fun to play. Description of tactics in the comments section of the deck.

http://deckbox.org/sets/23726

Wraith428