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ddm5182

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Posts posted by ddm5182

  1. Posted

    Please shield your eyes if you don't like honest criticism and you prefer to live in a casual, happy place where everyone gives each other praise for their ideas and no one cares about playing optimal decks.

    ...

    I'M SERIOUS.  If you are going to read my post and be offended when I give honest criticism of this deck, PLEASE DO NOT READ ON.  Skip my post, pretend I said "Good deck dude!" and move on.

    We'll all be a lot happier if you do.

    OK.

    (Curator, you should not still be reading at this point). 

    So, my honest appraisal of the deck for those who care about playing and deckbuilding optimally.  Here goes.

    This deck loses badly to thrower, esp thrower w/ outpost.  They will just Master Rune of Valaya/Gifts of Aeneron you when you attack w/ a pumped up dude after you spend enough to make the attack lethal.  No way you have enough resources to both pump and fight a counter war, and you don't exert enough pressure to make the critical turns happen soon enough to expect them not to have infinite ways of dealing with your attack.

    Lelansi doesn't protect against Lobber Crew, FYI.  Seems like Crew is the most likely way your smiths die, and SYG seems suspicious at best in a deck with 3 units it can bring back.  I guess if you turtle til the critical turn, fine.  But you have no meaningful way to kill their lobber crews, so expect to see 2-3 in play by the time you're ready to go off.  Seems like that ups your variance a lot, and requires you to have a lot more resources available than thrower needs to win (esp w/ outpost).

    Slave Pens beats you (most of the time).  As does Grudge Thrower.

    Yes, we had this idea already and didn't bother to explore it.  Its cute, but isn't as good as thrower, and it is basically aiming to do the same thing.

  2. Posted

    Fine theory.   Have a list that successfully punishes thrower for playing only 3 win cons via milling?

    @Curator: Its pretty clear your vision for these forums is very different from the vision of most, or at least many, of the people who post here.  You're coming off like a jerk right now and not really contributing anything to the thread by railing on every other poster while we try to have a productive discussion.  Please contribute a bit more constructively.

  3. Posted

     Cool deal, you get the last word.  *Now* can we get back to discussing Silent Forge and the impact its going to have on the meta, please?

    I'm actually excited by this battle pack the more I think about it.  It means either thrower is getting banned (yay, what a fun meta that would be!) or we get to collectively focus on some really weird problems like how to get an edge in the thrower mirror; at the very least, I am reasonably sure anyone who cares about optimal deck selection in the format has to play thrower now (even if only to try and crack it).  From a playtest pov that sounds like infinitely bad EV, but the theoretical problems are interesting at least.  Next week I'll get to work brewing up some weird stuff abusing Will/Long Winter shenaningans, but I'm really interested to hear others' results in the meantime experimenting with weird tech in the matchup.  There *has* to be a hole in the armor somewhere.

  4. Posted

     TBH I think we agree man... notice I didn't say "someone who only has fun when they win", I said "someone who cares about winning".  For my part, I want to play at a high level against opponents playing their best, with the best versions of the best decks.  I guess a more apt description of a "powergamer" would be "someone who primarily cares about winning", but its important to note the distinction between winning as victory in a specific game and winning as a state of mind when approaching a card pool or matchup.

    Whereas Curator makes it sound like "powergamer" means "someone who wants to destroy the game", which I don't get.  I respect completely the school that views games as fun first and foremost, but I don't agree that an understanding of the game is anathema to fun.  (Indeed, in my case, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, an understanding of the game and fun are practically synonymous).

  5. Posted

    Fair point.  Clamatius and I drafted a while ago and had a good time.  Format seemed pretty shallow with just the core set (and to be fair we were worse at the game then) so maybe its time to dust it off and do a full card pool draft.  Could be good times - initial impression is that I really like a lot of W:I's draft rules.

    Might be a reasonable way to avoid having to play thrower.

    FWIW, in my view drafting doesn't avoid "metagaming" per se... you need to be extremely aware of the cardpool when building your deck (IE you should be able to discern from your opponent's picks what strategy they are employing, then change your valuations of counter-strategies accordingly).  But its true that the existence of a possible archetype won't dissuade you from playing an otherwise powerful deck - the cards and combinations in a limited format just don't allow for those kind of swings.

    Why are you so hostile to "powergamers" btw?  Isn't that just another way of saying "someone who cares about winning"?

  6. Posted

    Obviously I would ask you for proof if you claimed to break the format...?  Do you take that as an insult or something? 

    Also, please scan the deck building forum, I post lists there all the time.  So I'm not really sure if you are confusing me with someone else maybe when you say I have never posted decklists?

    As for your claiming to have spoiler info or name dropping etc, I don't really care.  That's not why I post here.  I post here to share info with other players and work together to 'solve' each format.  The cool thing about CCG-style games is the format is constantly evolving, so even if you claim some incredible card is coming that totally wrecks all my best deck ideas, it doesn't change a thing about the puzzle I'm working on now, which is how to build the best deck given the cardpool we have.

    I sincerely apologize, again, for letting Wytefang drag me down into his nonsense.  I hope everyone will read this thread and glean the useful bits of info, because there has actually been some good discussion here.  For my part, I will try and avoid his garbage in the future, and I completely recognize our back and forth in this thread makes us both look like retards.  So, sorry.  He's tough to ignore given how often he posts, but I'll do my best...

  11. Posted

     @Toberk: yeah, we have.  Its CRAZY how much speed the outpost gives the deck, but the problem is all the speed is contingent on having an outpost (or two, or god forbid three) in play.  That's where my idea of investing heavily in quest is coming from.  The 'old' thrower deck requires 25+ resources to do its thing, and outpost can go off with 8, provided you can find your outposts.  I'm dreading how draw dependent the mirror match is going to be for that reason alone - the winner will almost certainly be the first to draw an outpost, regardless of what else is done.  Hence my Long Winter/Will of the Electors plan... seems like the only decent way to interact.

    We don't have a list we're happy with yet, that will require some *GAG* mirror match testing since that's basically the only deck we are aiming to beat.  Grimgor is hard to play around short of raw speed, and outpost gifts you that as long as you can smooth out the draws enough to find it reliably.  Mulligan into outpost may not be a bad plan against Grimgor decks and the mirror, incidentally.

    @Lordpappanqui - I don't think we really have any decks properly tuned to take Silent Forge into account yet.  Blind guess... I would say Outpost Thrower makes dwarves a really bad choice, which will let Skaven get some breathing room to attack thrower and undead from the speed angle.  Here's a quick meta breakdown as I speculatively see it today (based on very little playtesting):

    Tier 1 - Thrower

    Tier 1.5 - Orc/Undead Reanimator, Mono-Orc Sligh ramping to Grimgor

    Tier 2 - Dwarves, Rock Skaven, maybe an Empire support denial deck

    As Clamatius pointed out in another discussion, the meta is basically being redced to "factions that can cheaply play a lot of answers to supports".  Meaning Orc, Dwarf, and Empire decks (Pillage, Demolition, Rodrik's Raiders).  

    Watch the deck discussion forum for these decks to be fleshed out - right now these are just concepts, theoretical angles of attack at the post-Silent Forge meta.  If you want older lists to just showcase the core synergistic cards in each faction, search for either me or Clamatius' posts in the deckbuilding forum - we post every tuned list we have there as we find it.

  12. Posted

     In my group, I am the best chess player in the world because we disregard everyone better than me.  Man, it feels good to be the champ and not have to practice or get any better because I'm always on top!

    ...get the point?  Sure you can pretend it doesnt exist, but then you are solving a different problem than we are.  I'm sure its fun for you, and yeah, I wish I could do that, but I'm not wired that way, sorry.

  13. Posted

     Whatever.  I apologize to everyone for letting Wytefang troll me.  Lets get back on topic.

    Outpost + Thrower, anyone have ideas?  At this point I'm thinking it comes down to tuning for the mirror since that's all anyone outside a casual meta would play right now.  My initial thought on that is to actually 'go big' in the quest zone, trying to draw more outposts than they do.  Sadly I think the matchup is basically your deck vs. variance, but given how fast you can win w/ 2 Outposts in play, I think digging for cards (and mulliganing VERY aggressively) is probably the right call.

    Long Winter seems good just to 'counter' their battlefield development - a succession of 2 or 3 of them  at the worst time could actually steal a turn.  In the same vein, I think Will of the Electors might actually be a reasonable way to interact... and ofc when you're getting value there, 1-2 Verena looks good.  Seems easy to play around that plan (probably using your own Wills on 'extra' developments the turn you go off) but having a plan is better than not...

  14. Posted

    Wytefang said:

    As I've said, it may be useless in an opening hand (to some extent) but then again so are many, many cards in the game in our current rush-rush environment.  It's quite nice to have on your units in the mid-game - and yes, I've honestly used it in different decks and against different foes.  It's particularly worth its weight against Dark Elf decks (but that should be obvious to all of us).

    Wasn't trying to imply that it's totally a perfect match for his particular deck, however, but rather that it's a solution for flimsy units and other than using higher-HP units (which isn't the most elegant solution, here, imho) it's the main one for Orc decks to counter the rushy fast unit's inherent weakness.

    So... show me a relevant deck its actually good in?  Are Dark Elves a really threatening deck choice to you right now or something?

    And anyway, why post it here if it isnt relevant to this discussion, which has been about how to tune a particular brand of orc/undead deck.  Please stay on topic.

    @Martin - I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well the deck I posted before plays vs. random decks.  it controls supports very well vs. Grimgor (surprisingly useful vs. all flavors of midrange/control decks, and even of some value vs. aggro when you hit their quest), and the Iseara + Crew plan is soul-crushing against unit-based beatdown.  I see what you're trying to do with the unit plan, but I think a lot of your cards are extraneous to your core strategy - you will suffer a lot from random MROS-fueled Lizardman decks, or any decks packing 3x Troll Vomit, for example, when you could be going even bigger (and more support-focused) to become more resilient to those kinds of strategies - essentially, you get better vs everything that isnt thrower, which you already said wasnt as much of a concern for you.

  15. Posted

    I think lots of players here are good, I just don't think you are good :(

    No one was building thrower decks before we had access to Flames of the Phoenix, guy.  Anyway, you didnt personally come around to the thrower deck until after the Burning of Derricksburg.  So if you want to restate your position as "everyone who claimed thrower was oppressing the format from AOU onwards was right" then I can absolutely accept that, since you know, that was when we started making that claim.  If anything, I was a bit slow to come around on it, so if you recognized it was oppressive right after AOU released (like F7eleven did, kudos to him), then wow, hats off to your being ahead of me on the format.  /eyeroll.

    Anyway, whatever, can we go back to talking about Outpost and Silent Forge in general please... interested to hear if others have testing Outpost Thrower with similar results to ours.

  16. Posted

    No Wytefang, I don't think you understand the point of what I was saying with "don't play terrible cards".  I'm going to waste some energy responding to you here, please don't make me regret it.

    You see, oftentimes people will build decks focusing on "christmasland" scenarios of interactions between cards with obvious synergy.  (Christmasland is a magical place where your wishes all come true).  Sometimes this can be OK - when the "combo" between the cards is powerful enough to justify how bad they are in isolation.  A good example early on in the W:I meta was Will of the Electors in conjunction with Judgment of Verena.  On their own, both cards are pretty bad most of the time, but taken together they can often be a game-winning blowout.  Even so, I'm still not a fan of those two cards.  So you can see I set the bar pretty high for bad cards to get played.  The trick of a good combo deck (or even just a highly synergistic deck) is you want your cards to be fine on their own, and devastating when paired together.  Lobber Crew + Countess Iseara is an excellent example.  Drawn in isolation, either piece is a powerful, solid card.  When paired, they form a semi-soft lock that can outright win games if unchecked.

    Do you see my point?  I was not stating a truism when I said "as a general rule, don't play terrible cards."  Its actually a valid point for deckbuilding - the trick is to avoid the "danger of cool things" and build a deck that handles well even when all cylinders arent firing.  Stability and consistency are often just as important as power in close matchups.

    As for the rest of your post - you basically aren't factoring in the cost of a card when evaluating the strength of Scrap Heap.  This is usually a sign that you are basing your ideas on speculation and theorycraft rather than actual playtesting.  If you had played with Scrap Heap in a deck, you would quickly realize you almost never want to draw it or play it over most all the other cards in your deck - its virtually a mulligan in your opener, and so situational in its usefulness that it really doesn't justify all those times you draw it and are thankful your choice of what to develop this turn is obvious.  I get that you see some value in the card when you are scanning through spoiler lists, but in practice, cards that narrow are almost never worth drawing without an extremely powerful synergy hiding elsewhere in your deck.

    All this said, if you have a successful, powerful list that uses Scrap Heap to good effect, please post it and I will give it a look with an open mind. 

  17. Posted

    LOL guy... find me a post with anyone even claiming to try playing a bolt thrower deck before Assault on Ulthuan came out?  Do you even know what you are talking about?  At all?

    You suggested someone play Scrap Heap.  Scrap Heap.  Yes, I'll pause for a moment while everyone looks that card up.  You suggest stuff like that and then post 5 seconds later with an authoritative, "I know the format" tone, as if anyone with a clue would take you seriously.

    You make my brain hurt.

    Anyway, got in our first round of Outpost Thrower testing today. 

    SAVAGE BEATING.

    My god.  The card is nuts.  Turn 6 Grimgor = not fast enough.  Our undead deck still has some game but it needs to be retooled to stop being cute with Clan Moulder's Elite and focus on ramping out Mr. Grimgor.  I am guessing after ~2 games that the win percentage is maybe 30% for undead as constructed.  Might be able to bump it up to ~40% by playing a blazing fast orc aggro deck with Mob Ups and Grimgors at the top of the curve, but yeah... this format is basically over until they do something to thrower/outpost.  Busted.

  18. Posted

    Uh...yeah... no.  Playing cards so bad your opponent wouldn't waste cards answering them != card advantage.

    As a general rule - don't play terrible cards.  Its MUCH easier to beat Master Rune of Spite by playing units with hp > power (or playing guys you don't really care about losing due to how fast they are, e.g. spider riders, so long as you can avoid overextending) than it is to play useless terrible cards you never want to draw or play at any point in the game.  Generally speaking, when evaluating card combos you need either tremendous, game-winning synergy between them or you need each card to stand on its own.  If your plan to beat MROS is to play garbage like Scrap Heap, you run into the problem of what happens when they demolish it, what happens when you don't draw it, what happens when you draw 1-2 of them in your opener, etc.

    MartinSmudge, have you played with our list at all?  I'm curious why you want to deviate so far from it, is it based on playtesting vs. any decks in particular?  I'd be happy to work with you to tune the build to beat specific decks you expect to see in your meta.  But I'd really recommend starting with our list as a base point before deviating into a more unit-heavy approach (and to have a solid reason for wanting to do so, e.g. beating unit removal decks by overwhelming them, or beating decks that are skimping on unit removal to beat thrower, etc).

  19. Posted

    Pretty much.  A *lot* of people on these forums were laughably wrong about the deck, but whatever, they were too dense to see it then and they remain so now.  Not like any of them have ever posted any deck or strategy ideas worth caring about anyway.

    So yeah, now that the deck has mining tunnels & outpost, there are only two kinds of people here: people who think thrower needs to be banned and people who prefer to wait and see what they print to counter it (both reasonable stances).  I can't imagine anyone with even half a clue thinks thrower isn't a completely broken deck, so at least we all agree on that.

    Also, @ my loyal fans: haters gonna hate :)

     

  21. Posted

    @ "kept pillage because it is too good to pass up"  -  If your plan is to go bigger than everyone, why bother interacting?  You don't just kill units with this deck, you KILL EVERY UNIT THEY EVER PLAY.  You don't kill supports, you KILL ALL THEIR SUPPORTS FOREVER BOOM BOOM BOOM.  Pillage sucks in this deck, it is never what you want to be casting.

    @ your list specifically, I suggest you try the Rip/Raise Dead plan.  You will find it better than 1/4 guys for 4.  Spider Riders are good too, and generally speaking we've found Wight Lord + Slave Pens to be cute, but almost always win-more.  Lobber Crewing a million times per turn is fine. You don't need an expensive sniper rifle when you have a cheap minigun.

     

  22. Posted

    Random aside... what occured to me just now is that this deck is probably not very fun to play against.  It wins by controlling the board in a dominating fashion - staring down Iseara or getting Grimgor'd really is not all that fun on the other side of the table.  Its REALLY fun to do but it probably isnt that fun to play against.  Clamatius can comment better than I can since I am usually piloting the undead deck.

    @ Ravenloft - fun game, a bit on the simple side but that can be a plus in its own right.  And it is far from easy, though the skill testing decisions are not always obvious, by which I mean the game can appear quite straightforward, leading to a "huh, I guess we lose" feeling at the end of the game without a ready explanation why when you retrace the party's steps.  I could see people playing dozens of sessions and still being terrible at the game.

    @ Descent - great game with equally great problems.  Much as I like flavor for its own sake, the balancing is so poor that its too frustrating to play most of the time.  As Clamatius hinted at, you basically need a group of players all able to play the game at a roughly equal skill level or it rapidly becomes 1v1 with the best hero player dictating the actions of the group.  And if your overlord is better than your heroes (or if they resist the "1 hero determines everyone's actions" plan) the overlord will DOMINATE in resounding, very un-fun fashion.  Especially RTL... having your party get camped by Alric w/ crushing blow every turn throughout the first phase will very quickly lead to "so, what other games do you have".

     

  23. Posted

    Lizards are fine at what they do, which is kill units.  See: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

    But given the current state of things, why would you even try to build around lizards, savage, loqzta machine gun, etc since the meta is completely dominated by supports?  You won't have any success, and that's fairly obvious, so no one is bothering to do that right now.  Just keep in mind that they are good at killing units and come back to that if the metagame shifts away from where it is now.

    in other news, "final" version of this deck before Tirannoc ruins the game is -3 We'z Bigga!, +1 Bloodthirster, +1 Troll Vomit, +1 Orc/Chaos Alliance.  Handles like a dream, very solid deck.  Hard to play well, easy to misplay against.  Lots of fun, powerful tricks.  Still a goddamn bore to test vs. thrower but wins very often (pre-Outpost), and is better than 50/50 against dwarves.  Probably still has *some* game against Outpost thrower but I'm not optimistic that it is >50% winrate.  We'll see.

  24. Posted

    Yeah... tbh that perfectly sums up my feelings about this game right now.

    "Whoa, bunch of cool, fun cards that would be really neat to build around.  Too bad there's no chance they are competitive against thrower."

    It makes me sad to think how many cool archetypes are waiting to be discovered and being choked out by having to either 1) ramp to grimgor, or 2) play a million terrible support destruction cards no matter what the rest of the deck is trying to do.

    Whatever.  If they don't want to ban thrower, fine.  Just means the game sucks a lot more than it needs to, and that's a shame because this is a pretty good game.

  25. Posted

    The meta now, without Outpost, is actually something close to fine.  You can pack your deck full of support destruction and make your deck suck, or you can just play Grimgor with a reliable plan that handles the rest of the field.  I'm very proud of how our Orc/Undead reanimator deck has been performing vs. thrower & dwarves, we finally have it in a state where it is favored vs. both, not overwhelmingly so, but nice, skill-intensive matchups that reward tight technical play.

    ... and this card sends all of that work to the trash bin.  Utterly pointless to play anything but thrower now. One thing I know for sure: we're going to start seeing some really, really stupid cards in non-thrower decks.  3x Mob Up! is standard now, and still probably not good enough.  Your deck clearly needs more Steel's Bane, and 3x High Elf's Disdain in every order deck.  This is retarded.

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