****! People sure have been quiet, leading up to Worlds (in a week and a half).

I figure we'll see some Empire Judgement, some Dwarves prolly within 8 cards of last years winning deck, and LOTS and LOTS of Chaos. I think we'll see a Skaven deck crack the top 8, though not sure which Destruction board it'll be running. I know people have professed some love for Dark Elf and the Offering Quest, but personally I couldn't find a competitive build.

I'm also really hoping to see a boost in competitors this year, over last year's Worlds... And will anyone stop T from winning every FFG run tourney?!

Boy, I hope not!

I suspect that the answer may be Reclaim Dwarves. Reclaim wins the long game and Spite kills the fast decks and Kairos.

Other strong possibles:

Chaos Rush (probably slightly better than Orc right now)

Reanimator Orc (Grimgor is awesome in the control matchups)

Chaos Control (Kairos's alpha strike is very nasty)

Verena Empire (100% of the time 60% of the time)

Could be that the best version runs counters out of HE to win the mirror.

Guess you can also add orc rush. Swarm of Bats and Warpstone Experiments together with Visit Ban (no battlefield Warpstone anymore) give a major speedup to orc rush. As far as we tested it crushes the standard Chaos Control deck. Of course the opponent can kill a lot of weenie units from yourseld but that isn't a such drawback because there is a wide variety of damage for 3 resources every turn that always pressures the opponent.

I also think DE has some good counters but lacks damage potential. Warpstone Experiments helps but isn't solving the problem. Now that Visit is gone Offering to Hekarti is the strongest quest out now. It's just insane how much control DE gets when multiple Tokens or quests are played. Also note that Mountain Brigands and Dark Elf Infiltrator can be some serious Hate cards when expecting a lot of Empire and Dwarf decks. Since restriction of Innovation it's kinda obvious when the opponent will play his "tricks", so stealing resources can really mess up Empires plan of jumping/Chain Lightning/Knights Panther etc. Dwarfes also like to rely on Stand your Ground, Order in Chaos and Grudge Thrower.

I'm excited what the players will bring. There were never more playable decks than now and I hope that there are enough good players that will try something out and not following the main stream. Also thought about Reclaim because destructions unit control really is on another level right now so it seems like the natural counter. The problem is that dwarfes are really slow without Innovation or Mining Tunnels. Surely every good deck needs answers to dominant cards but to be able to counter everything seems next to impossible.

You weren't kidding about Swarm of Bats. I'd totally missed the Necromancy on that thing. Note that you can play it in chaos rush just as easily as orc rush.

Looks like the reanimator orc vs. dwarf matchup is a lot closer than I expected now that they can't Innovate out Reclaim (which was the way that game always used to end). I think the orc deck is actually favoured there if you play it right. I had overvalued dwarves because I'd been playing them against chaos and DE, which can't reset their support base effectively.

I haven't found a good DE build yet either - at the end of the day, the other control decks just do a better job of what they are trying to do. Grimgor and Kairos are a lot better than the DE party tricks with the quest.

I agree that this seems like the most open the metagame has ever been. For once, there isn't a really obvious best deck so it'll be interesting to see what people play at GenCon.

The main thing about orc is Troll Vomit. It just hurts a lot of decks (nearly annihilates Kairos decks if they don't run enough buildings), avoids unit protection (Empire comes to mind) and you are usually recovering quicker for the final punch. This could be another point for Reclaim but it should still be a close game. I wish I could play more games so I can't decide what deck is the best allround one between the established decks Clamatius mentioned.

There are a lot of combinations where one deck has a good matchup against the other. If you want to have a chance in tournament your deck at least should be able to play against rush and verena I think. There is also the factor of card draw. Even with a good deck it happens that you don't draw a key card after seeing like 20 cards of your deck. Rush decks usually draw more constantly and going like 25-30 units in a Swarm of Bats deck while having only a few tactics reduces playing mistakes (or better said "wrong decisions" evaluating the enemy) that can occur in tournament play when you are not that used to that kind of stuff.

I'll share my DE deck version in the main DE thread. I'm excited how it can be improved as there are a few slots that aren't certain yet.

go figure that Jury Duty would be the stopper in me making Gencon this year. /boooooo!

not going to give the decklist out but i was running a nice DE-Skaven deck that was doing great vs. anything not dwarves. not sure how many people think dwarves are stronger than empire right now, so i'm not sure how many dwarf decks we'd see in the field but i'd play it against anything else in a heartbeat.

Could you post that nice DE-Skaven deck that was doing great vs. anything?

I haven't had a lot of luck with Skaven, just because they really need to be out on the board in multiples before they are exciting and the current environment is pretty hostile to units (primarily because of offering to hekarti, sorcerer, vomit). I am also much less excited about dwarves than I was. The power creep has largely passed them by, it seems - and the restricted list hit them much harder than anyone else.

So far, my rough rock-paper-scissors: (where = means equal, >> means crushing advantage, > means advantage)

chaos rush = big orc >> DE > chaos rush

dwarves >> DE > chaos rush > dwarves < big orc

chaos rush > empire = big orc

Right now I like orc reanimator the best just because it has ok or good matchups against other control and decent chances vs. rush. Hard to play well though.

And now, the inevitable caveat. I should note that there are an awful lot of ways to build decks right now and seemingly minor tweaks can make a big difference in matchups, so YMMV. A lot.

You can quite easily build a DE/Skaven Discard with a Punch.
Base: Contested/Warpstone Discard: Shadow/Beastmaster/Gutter Runner/Bladewind(?) Skaven:Clan Rats/Clan Moulder/Greyseer Tactic: Chillwind (Gutter Runner / control)
20 Cards up to you. (Probably add some control to wreck his questzone)
Easy thinking, if the enemy has no cards, what can he do?

jogo said:

Yeah im just getting into the game (waiting for my shipment of everything from Coolstuffinc) I really want some solid deck lists, so after worlds I hope people can post of some deck lists thanks in advance

It would be pretty cool if you actually could attend the Worlds event at GenCon one of these years, Clamatius. You'd have to be a favorite to make the finals, I should think.

I'm stuck here in the Middle East for the foreseeable future so couldn't make it this year, plus I've not played in over 4 months now so way outta the loop - I was surprised to see the big bad ban stick, actually, but it seems like it was for the best.

Nice to see Chaos doing well and that the tournament deck archetypes are wide-open. Wonder what people will gripe about now? Gotta be something, I suppose.

I'll be excited for the Capital Cycle since I helped playtest it. Gonna be great.