Hi everybody!

First of all I would like to thank to Torsten for writing this article. It's always nice to read more and more about our game, right? But there's something that concerns about this deck. Actually there are a lot of things ;-)

I would like to know to whom this article is adressed, lets face the truth, it's not a good tournament deck because a lot of reasons (which I will point out later), but on the other hand newcommers will probably be lost while playing it and will not learn much while loosing games one by one. So here are my thoughts about this deck:

1. Amount of cards: It's obvious we are aiming to have as less cards in deck as possible, because there's a bigger chance to draw a card we need. Luckly WH:I is different than other "famous" card game and we draw more than one each turn, still 55 cards is a bit too much, moreover we doesnt need some of them in this deck :-)

2. Race: Empire in my opinion is the worst option from Order factions. Why? It's main adventage: Church o Sigmar and Iron Discypline, which are essential for this deck, can be easily put in other races without problems with loyality. If you lose Lore Seeker's it will take ages to discard out enemy. Dwarfs and High Elves got abilities to return dead unit back to game and continiue producing resource tokens.

3. Economy: We're really lacking cards, which will help us in first turns. The easiest way to check it a deck has a good economy is to make it, and draw 7 cards, see if it's a good starting hand, put those cards on other pile, draw again 7 cards etc. and see how many "good hands" we had. Huntsmen, Contested Village, Sons of Coin, Dark Abys isnt much. There are few more options while we have a huntsmen on our hand, still it's not enough. This deck can be easily stoppped at the begining and lose really fast. Moreover we got amazing amout of 17 tactics! which will be also a problem on starting hand. In my opinion 12-15 tactics is enough for a stable deck.

4. Restricted card: Empire while getting more and more cards restricted got a big problem while choosing one. I have nothing against Wilhlem (especially in this deck), but lets be honest, with such a economy we need Derricksburg Forge.

5 Useless cards, missing cards: It's first time I see rocket battery in a deck! :-) I do belive it would maybe even work if we would have a great economy, but for this we need cards which are missing here: Imperial Zoo, Recruiting for War which allows us to focus on expanding kingdom zone. Also a peasant militia is missing and it gives us free loyality in first turn so we can put more cards. An idea with Runesmith is kinda funny, but is it really worth it? First of all we need tons cash, which wont be easy to get so fast, second thing enemy needs a unit in his quest zone. Other factions got a lot of cards which make this strategy invalid (like sacrificing)

Well I dont want to be accused for whining only so I will post later my proposal for HE discarding deck

Lets discuss!

@Mamut:

I think you are underestimating the moving elements. When Visit the Haunted City wasn't banned a empire mill deck was not bad. When you can prevent or weaken opposing attacks during the battlefield phase with Mastering the Spell, Called Back or Chain Lightning, chances are high that the opponent can't win before he draws himself dead when you survive until the 4th or 5th turn. At that point the opponent draws probably 10 cards or more.

Regarding Mallumo's deck there are some cards that I'm not so confident of. Helstorm Rocket Battery Is really expensive. I guess you are playing Hemmler mainly into Kingdom for that. For it's strength I would also play the Zoo and maybe Recruiting for War as it becomes another target for Ancient Map later when you already have Infiltrate Quest out. Runesmith can have it's benefits but he's fragile and you already have to protect the Infiltrate questing unit, Lore Seeker and both heroes. I would prefer Peasant Milita over Huntsmen for it's sturdiness. Demolition would also be good as it can shut down opponents kingdom so he is more limited with his massive card draw.

Before Will of the Electors was restricted there was also a great approach with Hidden Grove and Long Winter because it gave great safety in opponents battlefield phases so you could move the units out of the battlefield afterwards in your own turn. Without this a rush deck can be a real problem for a empire mill deck.

@grille:

I used to play VTHC empire a lot, but please note that quest was able to move supports, while mastering and forced march can only move units. Second things is that right now all factions but empire are able to sacrafice that unit in quest zone: Deamon Prince, Mork teef Ritual, Slave Pen, Grudge thrower for Dwa and HE, so it's not a big threat. But we will never find out about this because this deck lacks of economy :-)

Hi, Torsten here.

The article isn't adressed to any kind of Invasion player in particular. No news article here is, I believe. The readership is diverse - highly competitive players, casual players, veterans, newcomers. Some own three core sets and every battlepack, others are still pondering whether to get into the game or not. Some care deeply about optimizing decks and will frown at every deck with more than 50 cards, others will happily bring a 100 cards juggernaut to the table as long as they'll have fun. Naturally, some articles will appeal more to a certain kind of reader than others.

I believe the point of the news articles is to get readers interested in and excited about the game. For some readers, this means discussing the most advanced and powerful strategies. For others, it means exploring untrodden paths and showing them new ways to approach things. Like trying deck destruction with anyone but the Dark Elves, and finding a way to make rarely used cards like Helstorm Rocket Battery work in a deck, or a good reason to pick Wilhelm again over the other restricted cards. I'm sure some readers didn't particularly appreciate last week's article, because it didn't tell them anything new about hand destruction,, while others (or maybe the same readers) don't like this one because it doesn't follow conventional wisdom, or because they didn't like the slightly humorous tone. You can't make everyone happy all the time. (Please note that showing an upcoming card, which usually interests everyone, wasn't an option this and last week.)

Last week, when discussing hand destruction, I showed what I believe to be a competitive deck. One that still can be improved upon, and adapted to one's own preferences and expected opponents. This week, the topic was deck destruction. I could have gone with a DE deck again, I mentioned them as the obvious choice, but I didn't want to cover two DE decks in a row, especially when they would have shared a fair number of elements (many of the non-hand/deck destruction cards). So I went with something more original and unconventional, and I chose a different tone of voice to present it. Is that deck going to win you the World Championship? Probably not, but I don't think you should expect to see The Perfect Deck That Wins Every Match in a news article with a diverse readership. Is the deck utter crap and no fun to play? That's not at all true either, I'd like to believe. I have won matches with this deck, even against competitive opposition, and I found it fun to play. Your mileage my vary, of course.

As for your ideas on how to improve this deck: on one hand, again, the point was to go off the beaten path, on the other hand - great! Just as with last week's deck, the intention was also for players of every kind to think about and discuss how they would change or improve the deck.

I liked the article. I feel like that while this isnt the greatest deck around, that it is important and interesting to put together and talk about alternative strategies like this. Sometimes putting together something that isnt obviously strong lets you discover cards or strategies that end up being very powerful, but that had been overlooked.

I'm also looking forward to the HE version that you proposed mamut =)

TL

I like the idea behind the deck and i knew the dwarf version before, where the problem was to put in some cheap tactics in order to get enough markers. (one idea was to put in Burlock’s Ingenuity and redraw with mining tunnels but it is kind of a useless card though, a very useless one...) Iron Discipline and Church of Sigmar should be better for this concept then Stand your ground or Return to glory - You see, the unit will eventually not be removed at all and you can keep all your tokens on Infiltrate! Also you may protect the Lore Keeper but you cannot return units to a quest from discard pile. But i would play the dwarf version anyway. You can delay your opponent much longer with My Life for the Horde, Slayers of Karak Kadrin and Master Rune of Valaya - the lame potential is much much higher here and you dont have to care **** as a dwarf

Problem is: Combos will always be worse then op single cards, because you can put more single cards in a deck then combinations. So it is nice to play a fluff combo deck once in a while, but you won't bring this Infiltrate! thing on a tournament level. Just the fact, that you are playing a quest card, that does cost you 2 ressources to play, another minimum of 2 to be set up and another bunch of cards that will protect your questing units and core cards like Lore Seeker to even utilize this sort of discard effectively is a huge deal and will most of the time be a fail against the usual tournament standard.

Now you could optimize a combo and put some strong cards like Hemmler around it. But if i was a new player, i would maybe realize very quickly, that Hemmler and Iron Discipline are bringing me more wins than the discard does. And eventually i would not bother with Infiltrate! anymore and build a strong deck. I like improving combinations to be more competetive against single card tournament decks, but the aim should be to only win the game with this single aspect iam trying to improve. My point is: You can put in every aspect with Empire and Hemmler and get the illusion of a good combination, but once try without him and suddenly you will have a bad deck.

Well here is my HE combo deck. Since there isnt yet Helm of Fortune (which I would love to put in HE discard deck) I got something like this:

http://deckbox.org/sets/151168

This deck has 3 options to win. We can use Grudge Thrower and attack, ID infinite combo and ofc discard. It's not easy to play this deck for sure, but it's really worth it At the begining we put everything to quest to get Return to Glory. Along with Grudge Thrower elven scouts can produce us a lot of resources on our quest. You can even try to put here Burying the Grudge if you want this deck to be discarding insane amount of cards Using mining tunnels and convocation of eagles we got enough cash and tactics played to get even more resource tokens If you will have problems with loyality for church, remove one scion of everqueen and add HE/EMP ally

I agree with Vitamin T. Nice deck and good to have some discussions about in the forums. Since Stahleck I havent done much Invasion anymore, let alone deckbuilding, for me it was quite an eyeopener about "serious" deck destruction decks in a non-DE deck. So yeah I liked it, also the humorous notes. @Torsten: Good job, thanks for the article! @Mamut: if we meet again I would like to play against you such kind of HE deck, it certainly isnt something I would have come up myself.

@Mallumo: by the way, what do you mean with: "Please note that showing an upcoming card, which usually interests everyone, wasn't an option this and last week"

An addendum, I was quite busy this week and didn't have a lot of time when I wrote my earlier reply:

Mamut and others, my apologies if I did a poor job of getting my point across in the article. The deck isn't meant to run the opponent out of cards with Infiltrate!, and the moving effects are just there to mess with him. It is meant to run him out of cards with Infiltrate!, and/or by making him draw a huge amount of cards by moving his units to his quest zone. In some games Infiltrate! will be the deciding factor, in others it will be the card draw. While it is of course possible to build a good Infiltrate! deck with other factions, you need the Empire for the moving effects. The moving effects are also what I discussed earlier in the article - effects that support the deck destruction plan while offering protection and interfering with the opponent's plans.

For this reason, replacing Wilhelm with Derricksburg Forge or anything else isn't a question of making the deck better at what it's trying to do, it is one of sticking with the plan or abandoning it for something else. The deck can therefore also handle losing Lore Seeker. The Runesmith doesn't have to survive long at all - when you can make your opponent draw 10 cards per turn, it doesn't take many turns where he draws an additional 10 before he runs out. Sons of Coin, Hemmler, and 12 building supports, 3 of which grant additional power to all buildings, will provide plenty of resources, so you can afford paying for the Battery, and your Runesmith will be able to greatly increase the opponent's card draw.

12 of the 18 units and all 17 supports, 15 of which provide power, can be played on the first turn. So while it might not be off to the fastest start, I would not say the deck gets stuck with starting hands where it can't afford anything.

Of course it is possible for the opponent to counter the card draw approach by sacrificing units. I'd say though that when your opponent is forced to cannibalize his units, you must be doing something right, and it again has the side-effect of making it more likely your other approach, Infiltrate!, goes through successfully. 10 counters on his Daemon Prince aren't going to help your opponent stop you. Also, while we shouldn't ignore weaknesses, I don't think it is very constructive to overly focus on what can completely counter a certain card or strategy. We see this often, in the discussion of decks or new cards - this one is useless for you if I start with three Churches of Sigmar, that one won't help you if I get an early Sorcerer of Tzeentch, you won't get far with this if I blow up your kingdom with Grimgor, that plan is worthless if I rush you, etc. This is pointless negativity. Every strategy has a counter, every deck has a nemesis. You don't play against them all the time though, and your opponent won't always draw the cards he needs to counter you. We might as well point out what decks or strategies you are perfectly set up to deal with and distort things towards an overly positive perspective. Neither is very helpful. Every deck has its strengths and weaknesses. When you show one though, in a news article or here, you naturally focus on the strengths and your plan - no one wants to read "Here's my deck, let me tell you what it sucks at ..."

I mean no offense, Mamut - you're obviously a strong player, and you make some very good points, I understand where you're coming from. I just felt like my ideas behind the deck required some more explanation. Also, cool HE deck.

@Primus_Magicus: The delay between cycles is longer than the one between packs of a cycle. During the waiting period, you can't make all the news articles about upcoming cards, or you'll run out of cards to show, you want to save some surprises for when people open the battle packs after all. I'm pretty sure we'll soon get to see new cards though.

Liked the article and deck idea, more so than the Delf deck last week because I never even considered Empire for a mill deck when I was thinking of making one. Note that the only WH:I tournament I ever played in was the (pre) release "first" tournament at GenCon '09. Anyone here play in that tournament? Any fond memories of beating me? In any case, I remember my opponents and I decking each other with Infiltrate (the Quest) quite often when all we had to work with was one core set and even still after only two or three Corruption Cycle packs were released.

Never thought about that quest again or how some of these newer cards could getting rolling better. I always appreciate new ways to use older cards or finding a use for previously unused cards.