This is my current DE control deck.

Units: 17

Shades x3
Wight Lord x3
Vile Sorceress x3
Seasoned Corsair x3
Walking Sacrifice x3
Morathi's Pegasus x2

Tactics: 14

Caught the Scent x3
Whip the Slaves x3
Seeking New Slaves x2
Dark Visions x2
Chillwind x2
Invoke Khaine's Wrath x2

Supports: 17

Slave Pen x3
Contested Village x3
Warpstone Excavation x3
Withering Hex x3
Soul Stealer x3
Advanced Engineering x2

Quests: 2

Sac Tor Aendris x2

Subtotal: 50

This list has been amasingly successful for me, and personally I think it's a brutal rapist of a deck, but I'd love to hear other people's opinions.

Looks pretty sweet to me. I'll have to give it a try this week. I assume you gain no real bonus for the corrupted units resulting from Warpstone Excavation, right? Just using it for gaining resources/cards?

Correct, just a lovely "0" support, for income or cards. Although it usually tends to hit the kingdom more often due to the deck's innate ability to draw/search for cards.

Grove, I like your deck very much. One tiny remark nevertheless: I do not have a clue why you have Morathi's Pegasus in it. Why not exchange it for Corsairs of Ghrond or even Mortella?

One further point: What purpose do you follow by including Advanced Engineering? Maybe Har Ganeth would be a better choice in a control deck.

The pegasi are damage sinks. They don't hit the board often, but they are a solid card imo. I've taken the pegasi out and put them back in a few times. Mortella would be a good alternate, but she is very hit and miss. To be honest I think the two slots the pegasi hold lack a "shoe in" card at the moment.

Advanced Engineering is a filter card. You've probably noticed that the deck has a significant ammount of card draw and filter, which is one of the primary elements of what makes it so strong. Adv. Eng. is obviously not going to beat slave pens for a first turn anyday, but its a two drop support with a nice effect which helps to give me more reliable first turn plays.

I also agree that advanced engineering is a great fit in this deck, if nothing else to keep from getting character screwed.

Your offensive presence is a bit light though, do you have problems with decking out? Does the character stealing usually even it out for you?

Also, what would you do against another control deck that pumps their quest from the start? If you don't draw into your shades, I see that becoming a real problem for you.

I think Mortella covers DE's holes nicely, because she'll let you use their demolitions and such, she also is nice for innovation.

Yes, the offense is a little light, but I usually don't get anywhere near decking myself and I have never decked out completely. Soul Stealer and Seeking New Slaves tend to bring a lot of muscle to my board many games. However, the games where I slowly beat my opponent to death with a wight lord and shade happens often enough, but is sufficient for the kill.

To be honest I've not had anyone intentionaly try to outdraw me (that I'm aware of). The only problems I ever tend to have with being unable to limit/control draws is when a dwarf deck gets lucky and drops 2-3 mining tunnels early. I have not played a mirror match against this deck, but I think it would just come down to who got the better draw. I'll have to test this out with my play group and see what happens.

As I mentioned earlier, mortella is indeed a solid option, but I'm growing to think a pair of pillages might trump her. As the most valuable cards she can grab are pillage/demo. Innovate kind of blows for me, because I only develop defensively. Other than that she's going to mostly grab unit removal. With the comming cycle she may devalue in favor of straight support/development removal, but I still seeing her be a powerhouse against tactic heavy decks like empire. Long story short, I'm personally not sold on her, but I won't knock her as a viable card.

This deck is pretty **** sweet. Control indeed. Not great in a multiplayer game but one on one sure does work. I substituted Morathi's Pegasus with a couple of Enraged Varguhlfs. Those things hit hard! Helped a lot against the dwarf and orc decks.

Hi Groove, I've tried your deck with some friends and I have to say that it's awesome, but I'd have some questions for you:

- What about replacing "Advanced engeneering" with "Har Ganeth"? This is what I've done cause the fact that I don't have the "Advanced engneering" cards, so my choice have been forced, anyway I think that it is not wrong because the presence of walking sacrifices (drawning cards), and because you can sometimes use "har ganeth" to force your opponent to bring to his hand some units.

- Another replacement: "Invokes Khaine's wrath", with "Take captive", the resources you need to play both cards are quite the same, yes the first one grants you to kill every attacking unit, but you take the whole damage. With the second one you can prevent some damage using the higer HP opponent unit to defend and at least sacrificing it, and hopefully killing with his power sone enemy units. Obviously I'm not saying that your choice is wrong, I can imagine some situations were "Invoke Khaine's wrath" should be better, I'd only like to know what you think about using "Take captive" instead.

- What about "Offering to Hekarty" quest card? I think that it should take 1-2 places in a control deck, against aggro decks (and not only) it's damned helpful, isn't it?

- Last point: I usually put two "Burn it down" cards into my dark elf decks cause they are a bit slow, it's hard to overrun the opponent in fewer the 10 turns (correct me if I'm wrong). How can you deal with some powerful supports like empire's "Church of sigmar", dwarf's "Mining tunnels", etc?

These are only my thoughts, nothing correct or wrong at all, I'm just asking to improve my tactic and deckbuilding skil. Sorry for my English,

thank you for any reply, bye bye,

Iluat.

I have my own version of a DE Control deck that's been surprisingly successful. It can win 2/3 out of 5 vs. Dwarves, consistently, which is saying something. I'll have to post it when I get some time.

Thanks for posting yours!

Okay, let's talk about successful Dark Elf control decks. What I played at last and brought much joy was the following:

Unit (25):
3 Walking Sacrifice
3 Dark Initiate
3 Dwarf Slaves
3 Shades
3 Corsairs of Ghrond
2 Mortella
2 Naggaroth Spearmen
3 Seasoned Corsair
3 Wight Lord

Tactic (11):
3 Hate
3 Innovation
3 We Need Your Blood
2 Burn it Down

Support (14):
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Contested Village
3 Har Ganeth
3 Slave Pen
2 Soul Stealer

# 50

I love to hear any suggestions and comments!

I think there are no use of Hate and Burn it Down in this deck.
If you want to focus on support destruction (DE are really weak on this)
i suggest you to add some Pillage and DE/ORK loyalty cards.
Hate become weak since it can only be (effectively) used on opponents kingdom phase.

Your Naggaroth Spearmen will benefit greately if only one development will be present
on battlefield zone. And this contradicts to your Burn It Down tactic.

I'll suggest you to remove Hate and Burn it Down, and add some resource boosters (Innovation, Treasure Vaults).
Also think about *slave* tactics. Since DE are very good in killing units - there are some easy and effective combinations.

Here's my latest DE kill'n'control deck.

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Thank you Severance for your reply!

It is true that Naggaroth Spearmen and Burn it Down do not harmonize with each other well, what I had forgotten.

I don't share your oppinion about Hate. This tactic card is useful in any DE Deck and able to give you the advantage in early game you need to determine the outcome of the game.

There is no use for any additional ressource boosters. Innovation is already in the deck and Treasure Vaults are not necessary because of my lack of expensive units or tactics.

I have removed 2x Burn it Down for 2x Withering Hex and 3x Dark Initiate for 3x Seeking New Slaves. I'm struggling a bit about Mortella which I use by far not often enough.

Hi severance, I have taken a look at your deck, I have two questions for you:

- Why do you have 3 "Dark abyss" support cards in? Your goal is controlling the opponent and burning 2 capital zones, or forcing him to finish his deck? Maybe "Dark abyss" it is only a second way of control, with the hope to discard from his deck some useful cards before he can draw them?

- How can you deal with most powerful supports cards controlled by the enemy (I there are in play obviously)? I agree with the use of something to destroy them, like "pillage" or "burn it down", but I've seen that you don't use them.

Thanks anyway for the post,

bye bye,

Iluat.

Without looking at the deck I suppose Dark Abyss is for playing In Search of New Slaves at the beginning of the turn if by chance a unit is discarded.

grille said:

Yes

DE are lacking of any support removal, so i focused on fast killing and enslaving opponents units.
This strategy is fairly effective, because even if my enemies set up their economics - they often dont have enough
units to win the game.

Despite beeing a bit expensive Caught the Scent works also good with that (picking a meaningful unit for yourself) and knowing the other hand is often a good thing. But it's not working in every deck of course.

Sorry its taken so long for me to respond.

@ illuat
If you dont have advanced eng, har'ganeth is all right. It does allow recurrence with walking sacrifice, which is nifty, or bouncing enemy units w/ -hp on them.

The more I play the more I have come to hate invoke khaine's wrath. This card was originally in here as I was playing against orcs a lot. I think an appropriate replacement would be a slave for every occasion or maybe even pillage, as they will both be 4 drops.

Personally I think offering to hekarti is slow and clogs up the deck. Wight lord and corsairs are more than plenty of removal for the most part. Plus, sac tor aendris really wants your units on it so you can get in those points of damage.

I find burn it down to be situational, Its great against empire, because I end up having tons of developments everywhere, (and often in my B-field as my playgroup always try to wipe out my quest with WotE and Verena). Against other decks, I tend to develop randomly depending on where I see attacks comming, so I think pillage might be overall better, but I'd have to playtest it.

@philos

Nice deck list, personally I hate dark initiative a little as he is pretty mediocre. Also, no whip the slaves? I find its a staple in all my DE incarnations. Personally, I think the naggaroth archetype for DE may be seeing a comeback in the next few BPs, but it really depends on what we get, from the few cards I've seen it looks like a lot more unit removal, so still up in the air.

In response to grille's comment, caught the scent is great for that use, and I do it frequently.