Hey everyone I made a new deck. This time its a Dark Elf deck.

Dark Elf: The Hand of Khaine

Introduction:

I got beaten by a dark elf/skaven rush deck this week and he used dark elf tactics and Druchii Noble to make sure I could not defend. And since he had lots of Skaven he had Gutter Runners and I though that is a combination worth building a deck around. The idea is to emulate something like a corruption overload deck with dark elf power reduction and attack the undefendable zone with scouts to destroy his hand.

Power Reduction

There are a lot of power reduction cards in the dark elf card pool and until now i had no idea what to do with them, because most of them don't work as econemy disruption in your opponents turn or as a defence. What they do is crippling your opponents defence. The cards are: Druchii Noble , Bloodburn Poison , Mind Killer , Corsair Raider and Standard of Car Karond . Bloodburn Poision and Mind Killer can work on your enemys turn which can be helpful to disrupt there economy or battlefield.

Hand Destruction

Scouts are the perfect cards to use against a crippled defence. Since destruction scouts are fragile - Shades have 1 and Gutter Runners 2 HP - you need to cripple there defence to use them later in the game. Dark elfs have even more cards to attack your opponents hand: Vanguards of Voe and Cought the Scent. They allow you to discard your opponents cards before the battlefield phase. With Necormancy and Slave Pens you can recycle the Vanguards.

Sniping and Killing

Helbane Raiders and Bloodrun Poison give you some sniping to get rid of utility units, and the Vanguards of Voe and Caught the Scent allow you to trigger the raiders ability more than once per turn. Since I can get my opponent to discard cards before the battlefield phase or in his turn I use Disciples of Malekith . They give me the power I need to kill defending units or burn zones. The Countess Iseara gives me another powerful unit and necormancy.

Economy

The Economy is based on sacrificing units ( Walking Sacrifice, Vanguards ) to power Slave Pens and Necromancy to get them back.

The Deck

deckbox.org/sets/25032

Question:

Can you use Lash the Prisoners and Slave pens on the same card and get both effects?

Seasoned Corsairs would be another unit to bounce with the countess. I could get rid of one of the power reduction cards for them.

Cool deck, cool name. Well done. Thanks for sharing this.

The only comment I'd have is to point out that Caught the Scent won't trigger Helbane Raiders since Caught the Scent is worded that YOU, not your opponent, are the one discarding his card from his hand. I wish they'd have worded it differently but it's a bit less effective due to the wording when it comes to combo-ing it.

That make the Disciple of Malekith a really strange card: "ACTION: When an opponent discards one or more cards from his hand, this unit gains 1P until the end of the turn". The only way to trigger this are the Vanguards of Voe. Or am I missing something?

I agree that that sounds strange. You may want to double check that.

The deck construction looks solid. ( I don't think you can double up Lash the Prisoners and Slave Pens, because sacrificing the unit is a cost of the effect)
However, in case you didn't know, you can sacrifice units with LTP or Slave Pens that you defend with that would die anyway.

I don't like the power reduction mechanic. Thematically, I think your deck is great, and as a power reduction concept, it's top notch. But since targetted kill for DE is so easy, I think you're running a second rate mechanic. Just kill the defenders when your turn starts.

Even if you're just playing a theme deck, I would replace Corsairs of Ghrond for Seasoned Corsairs, its just 100 times better.

I like Mind Killer in here, what do you think about Black Guard Aspirant? I think if you added something else to attach(whip, hydra blade, new assassin blade), I would replace Helbane Raiders for them.

Also, I think 3x Mind Killer, 3x Withering Hex, is a good way to keep quest down, while your discard effects neutralize your opp. I have a deck that runs withering hex alone, and it's pretty effective. (I guess you don't NEED mind killer because of -HP stuff, but it powers Blackguard Aspirant, and it's a cheap solution.)

You may have guessed it I am a big fan of getting strange stuff to work. But without Caught the Scent Helbane Raiders and the Desciples wont work. There needs to be a "your opponent has to discard a card from his hand" tactic or a hex "attacht to target unit, when this unit attacks or defends you have to discard a card from your hand" to make them functional.

Since you cant get the Desciples to work realiably the Black Guards are the superior choice. In any other deck with hexes I would use them, but in this case I stick with the Desciples for style reasons. But you make a good point about the Corsairs, I like them because you can kill a unit in your opponents turn with a sacrifice, but my battlefield was crowded anyway and my side zones got empty without the raiders. And Withering Hex is a great way to keep the quest zone down.

Since no one can argue against style/theme/stuborness, which is the point of this thread I made a new one. It keeps the power reduction theme, but I added some sniping:

deckbox.org/sets/23686

As you can see this deck has its own problems. I am at 58 cards, which means at least one card has to go. The reason for all thoses cards are that there are good reasons to keep all power reduction effects in the deck.

1) Druchi Noble: Since I got rid of the Desciples and the Raiders my Black Guards and the Countess are the only card with more than 1 power I play in my battlefield. The Nobles reduce power, wont die to Master Rune of Spite and have power when attacking.

2) Bloodburn Poison: This combos well with the sniping and you can use it on your opponents turn.

3) Corsair Raiders: Without them my support base get really thin.

I could kick out Innovation, since I have Lash the Prisoner.

PS excuse all the spelling errors in this I worte it on my laptop and I forgot to install a spelling check.