Hey all,

I'm pretty new to the game, and working on putting together my first deck. I've taken a bit of a shine to the Dark Elf cards (plus I used to play DE in Warhammer RTs/GTs, so...) and am trying to work with those.

Currently I'm slightly limited, as I currently only have 2x Core Set, 2x Assault on Ulthuan, March of the Damned, and Legends. That being the case, here's what I tried to put together.

3 Walking Sacrifice
3 Dark Initiate
3 Shades
3 Thief of Essence
2 Vile Sorceress
3 Cold One Knight
2 Mortella
3 Seasoned Corsair
3 Black Dragon Rider

3 Innovation
3 Lash the Prisoner
3 Chillwind
2 Take Captive

3 Mind Killer
3 Contested Village
3 Corsair Raider
3 Har Ganeth
3 Slave Pen

I don't know if my instincts are right yet for percentages or for costs, but I tried to keep most costs pretty low, with just a few heavy hitters, and to focus on quite a lot of shenanigans. In general the idea is to ramp up resources quickly by using Slave Pen, Walking Sacrifice, Initiate, Lash, and Innovation. Then start messing with the other player's attacks and defenses and picking off damaged units with HP manipulation.

Does this look like a good start? Way off base? Are there other cards from those sets that I should have in here, or obvious stinkers that I've included that I should leave out?

Your "instinct" is right . You just have to play and play, to see which card is really efficient or not.

Looks good. Though, Lash the Prisoner is not that great, since you have to sacrifice your own unit to get 2 resources (which means exchanging 2 cards for 2 resources), while you can put a Warpstone Excavation instead.

And Dark Initiate is, as I think, a very weak card (If you get it at the beginning, it gets power only after 2 turns, after playing 2 developments; if you get it later and face such factions as Orcs or Empire, both of them can destroy/move around your developments and make Dark Initiate 1 cost 0 power unit again, which is quite far from great) and if you exchange it for something else, your deck would be probably better.

And there is a better card then Black Dragon Rider, which would work in your deck (it was used in last World Championship) - Wight Lord. It kills any unit right away and then could be sacrificed to get a token on Slave Pen (and this way, this combo can be repeated once per turn, since Wight Lord has Necromancy)

Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't thought of Lash the Prisoner in terms of 2 for 2, but that's a good way to look at it. I guess I originally was thinking of the Initiates as batteries I could use for that and Slave Pen, but you're probably right that it's not worth the hassle.

Regarding Warpstone Excavation I thought I couldn't have that in the deck if I had Innovation?

Wight Lord does look better. Especially with ways to sac him again before he gets returned to the bottom of the deck

Thanks again!

MahatmaManic said:

You must not really thought of Lash the prisoner in terms of 2 for 2. $

It's a way to sacrifice Wight Lord before returning to the bottom of the deck.

Cause it's a way to sacrifice "sacrifice" so 2 for 1 card +2 ressources, if you have thief of essence it's a 2 for 2 ressources + N cards where N is you number of team in play.

Just some example, but they are many others.

Being able to generate ressources during opponent turn is also a strong ability, cause allows you to do some surprising moves.

The power of Lash the prisonner is really depending of what you are playing aside. In some deck it's a poor card in some other it's a strong card, depending of what you really do with it and what are your goals.

You can say slave pen is by far better, but it's only once per turn in some deck / situation you need to be able to do more. And slave pen is the 1st target of support control card when facing a DE deck.

MahatmaManic said:

You are correct

My bad. Didn't realize that you have Innovation in your deck. But then, Warpstone is still better for your deck, since it gives you resources on a steady basis, while Innovation makes you think about which cards to develop and unless you are drawing a ton of cards, it's better to keep development as low as possible (there are decks that punish you for not developing, but that's a different issue). IMHO, Innovation is good for decks that allow development through deck (with cards as Ancestral Tomb, Nimble Spearman, Lights of Morrslieb, etc.) and benefit from it in other ways (through such cards as Beleagured Scout, One Orc's Scrap, etc.)

You can try both ways and see which one works for you.