Hey Everyone,

I started this game probably three or four months ago. I picked up Dwarves and made a Slayers deck immediatly. They seem to be plenty powerful, and absolutely romp my entire playgroup without much difficulty at all. However, I have noticed I see very few top tier decks that are Dwarven, and have never seen a slayers top deck. I was wondering what keeps the slayers from being top tier, and if anyone had any glaring weaknesses they could help point out. Right now the deck destroys my playgroup, but if they were that good all the time, we would likely be seeing a lot more of them.

I love the dwarves - they are my favorite race and I love slayer decks! They can romp over some fools but do have their weaknesses. Serpent Slayers and Troll Slayers require developments to be effective, which can be blown up or moved by your opponenets. Also it's gonna take a few turns to really get Serpent Slayer "charged up". Also, as powerful as he/they can be, Dwarves can suffer against conrtol decks. Your 2 Serpent Slayers that you rely on to deal a boat load of damage won't be worth squat if they're corrupted. Likewise, some Rush decks can start dealing damage quickly while you're waiting to lay all those developments.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love these types of decks too. Here's a link to a Slayer deck of mine that I've really been enjoying lately, for what its worth:

http://deckbox.org/sets/479316

Thanks for the link Sammann11. I have yet to buy Fragments so I don't have DtL yet, but I am glad I am not the only one that thought that might work well in the deck. For now Empty the Hold will have to do (expensive though it is). My deck is extremely similar to yours, but I don't have Cata yet so I am sans the Standard Bearer and Hammersmiths, but one day ....one day......

I have been using Dragon Slayer with great success as well. He adds 2 power to my Quest zone, and I use him to sneak a few extra damage in on the attack and provide some defense for Q. The slayers have so many sources of toughness that if something goes south I just play a Fearless in Battle, or sack my Veteran Slayer to keep them from dying. I have also been using Spirit Slayer to force people to block with all the nasty units they bring out against me.

Any thoughts on Spelleater Rune to counter some of that corrupt/kill?

I've used Spelleater a time or two, but never found them to be fantastic. Sure, if you know you're gong up against a control deck - but otherwise they're worthless. Then again - if you're not going up ago at control, the cold be good for developments.

I used to run Spelleater Rune , but started using Iron Discipline instead. It's cheaper and lasts for the turn.

Wow that is actually a pretty good suggestion Kaine. I might have to try that out. Even with the 1 loyalty it is still only 1 resource to play. I try to keep the majority of my tactics either 1 or free if possible, with the ocassional expensive one. Right now one of my friend's favorite thing's to do is Forced March my slayer of the week to one of my more useless zones (if possible one that is already burning).

Right now I am still most likely to just pick up Wood Elves when they come out, but Slayers do quite a lot with developments and they are cool, fun to play, and get me accustomed to playing my developments regularly and strategically.

I played around a little with Surprise Attack for late game weakening to make sure they have even less room to soak up damage during the final attack, but it seems like it may just be too little too late.

Just to give an update, I played my friend recently with Iron Discipline and it helped out a ton. He tends to run with quite a few resources (playing entirely too defensively), but that caused him to use his huge pool of resources to kill or move 1 unit, which he otherwise could have spent on putting more units into play.

That same friend just ordered Cataclysm so our playgroup should be getting a needed influx of cards (Standard Bearer and Hammersmith ftw).

I love me some standard bearer!

Yeah. One thing the slayer economy needs is a fast start, and so I can't wait for Hammersmith (its like a mining cart that can fight). Standard bearer just looks way too good to pass up on.