Here's an Orc deck that tries to utilize the endless loop combo of Urguck + Skarsnik and Gobbla + Lord of Change + Fists of Mork.

Units:

3 Baby Suig

3 Squig Herders

3 Squig Lobber

3 Squig Trackers

3 Urguck

2 Great Cave Squig

3 Skarsnik and Gobbla

3 Lord of Change

Supports:

3 Warpstone Excavation

3 Contested Village

3 One Orc's Scrap

3 Squig Pen

Tactics:

3 Mork's Teef Ritual

3 Fists of Mork

3 Rip Dere 'Eads Off!

3 Warpstone Experiments

3 Raise Dead

50 cards

deckbox.org/sets/125802

Previously, there was one endless loop combo in Invasion, the High Elves' Loremaster of Hoeth + Lelansi + 2 Outpost of Tiranoc + Gifts of Aenarion. This one here now has three advantages: it is much easier to actually get into play thanks to Rip and Raise Dead, it is more difficult for your opponent to deal with once it gets going, and its components are more effective in incomplete combinations if you can't get the whole engine assembled.

So the plan is to get Urguck, Skarsnik and Gobbla, and one Lord of Change into play, have at least one Fists of Mork in hand (or as the top card of your deck), and one resource. You play Fists of Mork, dealing one damage to Urguck and Skarsnik each, and chose to return Fists to the top of your deck. From there it can be played again, thanks to Lord of Change, with the damage on Urguck used to pay for it, and it then again deals one damage to Urguck and Skarsnik each. With every cycle, your opponent takes two indirect damage. After the third cycle, you remove three damage from Skarnsnik for his effect. Rinse and repeat. Even if your opponent has units with toughness or can soak up the damage from Fists in other ways, he most likely can't handle the damage to his capital from Skarsnik.

How do you get there? Standard reanimator fare. Either you get the Lord of Change into your discard pile by playing him as a development, sacrificing him to One Orc's Scrap or the Giant Cave Squig, and bring him back with Raise Dead, or you use Mork's Teef Ritual, or you just play him as a development and use Rip if you can execute the combo in that turn. For more on reanimator decks, I refer you to Vitamin T's showcase at http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2297. Usually you shouldn't have trouble playing the two Orc heroes normally, but all of these are options for them too, especially if you don't want to risk one or two of them sitting in the open for your opponent to take out while you're still waiting for the rest of the engine parts.

I've been surprised how quickly one can get this going. Naturally, it helps greatly if your opponent hasn't faced this deck or a similar one before and doesn't realize what you're trying to hit him with (and how he can best put a spanner in the works of your engine). Even if you take your time, your opponent might be unable to stop you once the engine starts.

Dangers are that your opponent is too fast for you, and you don't have much control with this deck, since it only cares about assembling the engine. The Dark Elves in particular will give you a hard time with HP reduction and the potential to simply discard the Fists of Mork from your deck.

The nice thing is that you don't always need all the parts of the engine. You don't get the endless cycle without all of them, but the parts still have synergy, especially if you can afford taking the damage from Fists better than your opponent.

In general you don't need many resources, so emphasize the quest zone to collect your engine parts. Use Warpstone Experiments on units in your quest zone for increased card draw (and to get rid of troublesome Baby and Cave Squigs). The Baby Squigs help you with loyalty for Mork's, and they have nice synergy with the heroes, though you have to be a bit careful with their placement. The Great Cave Squig + Skarsnik is of course a nice combo too. Beyond that, the Squig cards are mostly there in hope of the Trackers speeding things up, you might very well replace them with standard rush units (Spider Riders etc.). Some fast damage that way makes it more likely that your opponent can't handle Fists damage from an incomplete engine well. You can also go for more control, with Lobber Crew, Pillage, etc. You can also try Advanced Engineering, Muck, and other cards that allow you to sift and sort through your deck. Raiding Parties can help you with loyalty for Mork's, speed things up, and give you another option for development destruction for Raise Dead. There are many more cards that can help, basically everything that isn't part of the engine can be scrutinized and replaced with something that helps you achieve your goal better or in a slightly different way.

I find trying to assemble the engine is fun, and I consider it an interesting challenge that there is a combo like this and how you deal with it. On the other hand it isn't exactly exciting to win with an endless loop engine, and it certainly sucks to lose against one. It's pretty boring, and for me not really in the spirit of the game. All in all I'd prefer for Invasion not to have these combos, but while it does we can mess around with them and see if they're actually worthwhile or if we don't have to worry about them. The High Elves' isn't worthwhile, this one stands a better chance.

Thoughts?

Great deck and explanation (that also counts for your HE deck). I wanted to test a similar deck next weekend but after seeing your version I tuned mine a bit. I didn't had Lord of Change in it for the looping mechanic and Raise Dead as well.

Now I will play your version with these changes:

- Squig Lobber + Spider Riders

- Baby Squig + Clan Moulder's Elite

- Warpstone Experiments + Dreams Uv Conkwest

- Squig Pen + Guard Squigs

I like the 5 HP from Clan Moulder because of DE and Chaos and together with Spider Riders it forces the opponent to do something against these 2 when they are in play. The other 2 changes are more personal playstyle. I really like the Guard Squigs and I want to test how the quest performs in this deck because it has good synergy with Morks Teeth Ritual and other cards as well.

Hey Mallumo, great Deck.

I also tested this alot in some different variations since i posted my first deck with fists here. The second one was very much like yours then. I was trying to boost for the combo with a good economy in my back. Although i did not use Skarsnik for making the combo really infinite, i was able to trigger it early quite often. It is defenitely better then the HE combo. I even tried to make the whole deck more reliable by bringing in some control elements like blood dragon knight, pillage, lobber crew or even troll vomit. This way you will maybe get the chance to clear the field in order to rule out counter measures like Hekarti. (Control + Combo was my 3rd option)

The first deck i was building around Fists of Mork actually did not have Urguck or the Lord in. It was Skarsnik only, and getting as much damage on him as possible in order to draw Fists again and again. It was a no-attack deck and it was by far the most funny one to play with orc imho.

Here it is again: deckbox.org/sets/127555

And my infinite combo deck: deckbox.org/sets/133163

But as you said, it is kind of strange to play out an "instant win". Also getting into the late game and knowing that you will get countered with this is not very amusing... Often times my friend held the counter in his hand the whole time and there is more then just one combo breaker

I would change the squig lobber. It simply is not a good card although it might seem to bring in some synergy because of his indirect damage... You could use spider riders or better a lobber crew instead. Having 14-15 Squigs in a 50 card deck makes your Trackers efficient enough, simple maths

greetings

Fists and Baby Squig both help self-damage decks, but I'm afraid they're still not competitive (and neither is mixing normal self-damage with rush, in my view). So while Fists does of course always have nice synergy with Urguck and Skarsnik, I don't think one'll get far if not going for the endless loop.

Before The Imperial Throne was released, I only used Squig Pens in this deck, and standard rush units, Spider Riders, Clan Moulder's, etc. The main differences to the current version were that one could simply pull of a normal rush depending on the draw, and that it was much more likely to inflict a good deal of damage to the enemy capital early, which in turn meant that the full combo wasn't required. Skarsnik isn't necessary after all, the other three cards form the endless loop that can win you the game, if you can stomach one damage for every two you still need to deal to your opponent, and he can't prevent that damage.

Not going with the rush units pretty much takes away that option, but it has the advantage that you can ignore your battlefield completely, therefore it becomes more likely you'll be able to set up the full combo, with Skarsnik. And the full combo of course doesn't care if your opponent has already taken damage, or if he can deal with the damage from Fists or not. In the end, it comes down to the question if one wants to risk betting everything on the full combo.

Like I tried to imply in the first post, there are many ways to build a deck around this combo. The above, rush, a focus on the combo without Skarsnik with either toughness or a massive HP advantage on your units ... They all have their advantages and disadvantages. This one here can assemble the full combo pretty fast, but really needs to assemble it to stand a chance of winning. No doubt it can be improved though.

I've played with it some more, after replacing Squig Lobber and Warpstone Experiments with Guard Squigs and We'z Bigga! (an improvement, I think). It really comes down to how fast you can get the combo assembled. With the right draw you can fire it up in turns 3 or 4, maybe even turn 2 if you're really lucky, and that's likely too early for your opponent to stop it. But the longer it takes, the more likely it gets that your opponent draws a card that can mess everything up for you, and then all he needs is to hold on to it for your to be practically powerless. I still think it's a valid approach, just a very risky one, and I think I'll revisit it if new cards show up that can speed it up, or that synergize well with the parts of the engine to give you more options.

I also wanted to add that it's of course not just infinite loop combos that can decide the match out of the blue in a single turn. Some Reclaiming decks, like the one used by Jakub at the European Championship, essentially follow the same approach, they wait until everything is in place and then burn two zones in one turn.

How are you able to play Lord of Change? You can't generate enough Chaos loyalty to meet the three required?

Oh snap never mind ... missed a bit of your explanation there. My bad!

Solid deck for sure. I definitely like Troll Vomit in the build, as a LOT of the stuff that stops the Lord/Urguck/Fist-ing needs a unit on the table: toughness, dude(s) on Hekarti(s), Dwarf Rangers, dude on Return to Glory, etc., etc. Plus, you've got the Rip, Raise, and Teef Ritual to instantly bring out all the guys you need, so killing your own guys doesn't really matter. Without units on the board, the list of cards that stop the combo is pretty short: some fog effects, off-turn removal, and stuff that kills Fists (Disdain/Dispel, Barbed Snares, maybe something else? Slaanesh's Domination?).

DE discard definitely seems like the toughest matchup for this deck right now. Barbed Snares just kind of trumps Fists, unfortunately. If it's pure deck-mill, then at least they are setting up Raise Dead for you. I haven't done nearly enough testing to say with certainty, but it seems like some form of DE discard might be the deck to beat for everybody.

LOL. Guess you're also aware of DE/discard's power. That last comment was up *before* your front page DE article/deck was posted, for what it's worth. I think I'll start another thread on the DE article/DE discard in general.

Mallumo said:

Well, this deck scares me. Not even because the winning power, more because such possibility exists.

I find existence of such combo (-> infinite loop) pretty disturbing, to be honest. I do think it is not in the spirit of the game at all, and I wonder - is it there intentionally or is it just some rules glitch calling for errata in the future?

Probably if someone will start using it on official tournaments, list of restricts would expand.

Paradoks said:

Why would it? There are always 3 types of decks: Rush, Control and Combo.

BTW there's also similar infinite indirect damage loop with HE and Return To Glory

Personally I dont feel this type of combo deck is too powerful. It seems about the right amount of power level to me. Its very unlikely to happen on turn 1 or 2 and it requires three cards to work. Too me, that is about the strength that combo should be. And doesnt it just not work if they have enough toughness out? True, not a lot of toughness gets play right now, but I would expect that amount to increase if this deck type gained traction. Certainly it is a deck that needs to have an eye kept on it, could be too strong with cards in the future.

Not the power of deck concerns me here, I just don't like the idea of infinite loop, in general.

Ad. Toughness - it won't save you from Skarsnik damage to capital.

Now Arkayne vampire can assume the same role as Skarsnik&Gobbla ^^

Virgo said:

I know about the Gifts of Aenarion + Lelansi + Loremaster + 2 Tiranoc Outpost loop, but was unfamiliar with one involving Return to Glory. I've come up with a 6 card loop using it: 2 Elven Scouts + Return to Glory + 2 Tiranoc Tower + Loremaster.

6 cards seems a excessive though. Am I missing something?

Anyways, I quite like combo decks simply because they provide something else to play other than control or rush.

Jowimus said:

Nope

Jowimus said:

I don't like combo decks because they play solo and never interact (except to defend)

I don't see how a combo deck is any less interactive than a Rush or Control deck. If anything, it may be more dependant on opponent action simply because if you yank any one part of the combo's "foundation" out, the proverbial castle comes crumbling down. For decks that take 3, 4, 5 or even 6 turns to get going, this is a pretty crippling defect and requires quite a bit of tactical savvy to avoid. They simply can't sit back and draw for several turns and hope to magically say "welp, I win!"