Uh, nice game FFG? Ban this ****, immediately There's no point even trying to build anything but thrower now.

Doom divers is too cute. This deck doesnt play (m)any cards that are just bad by themselves and DD is really terrible without a raise dead and a fatty in hand. We'z Bigga isnt pulling its weight either. Doesn't do enough. Thinking -3 WB, +1 Troll Vomit, maybe +2 Choppa but that seems bad too. Need to give it some thought... could just end up being a couple of alliances but I like the support base where it is. Maybe +1 Bloodthirster, +1 Alliance. Testing shows this list quite favorable vs. dwarves, but very easy to misplay. I won a few where Skaven would have packed it in long before this deck stabilized. I also savage punted a couple times. Never felt the game was out of my control - as I get comfortable playing the list I think variance may not be as much of an issue as i thought initially.

Have you ever won a game as thrower when you got Grimgor'd? ...I rest my case. 3x Grimgor is absolutely a viable plan against thrower. The deck's biggest weakness is not its strategy nor its disruption, but its resource base. Contested Stronghold + Treasure Vaults is a plan, but its a fragile plan. If the opponent draws 3 or more Demolition effects and uses them correctly you are just not going to win. You can beat 1 or 2 no problem but by the third you are going to be sputtering, especially if they are putting any reasonable pressure on you at the same time. If this deck had a building on the power level of mining tunnels it would be *very* good. As is, it is relatively high-variance (compared to dwarves and thrower), and the games you lose tend to be draw dependent and largely out of your control.

The latest version. Units (19) 3 Spider Riders 3 Clan Moulder's Elite 3 Lobber Crew 3 Wight Lord 1 Ugrok Beardburna 3 Grimgor Ironhide 3 Countess Iseara Supports (17) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Treasure Vaults 3 Contested Stronghold 3 Squig Pen 1 Orc/Chaos Alliance 1 Armory Tactics (14) 3 Innovation 3 We'z Bigga! 3 Rip 'dere 'eads off! 3 Raise Dead 2 Troll Vomit This is probably the best deck around at Grimgoring people, and obviously thats your plan against thrower. Against dwarves you go over the top and beat down with huge guys, with Grimgoring them obviously a fine and tasty treat to hit them with in the midgame. Wight Lord and Iseara + Lobber Crew form an effective tag team at stopping midrange unit strategies, though the deck is a bit slow to combat rush (hence the 2x Vomit). Vomit is actually one of your worst cards, since once you get going, your dudes are so much more of an investment than the opponent's. Still, opportunities abound vs. most decks to get value out of it, and that's why it hasnt been cut yet. Note the absence of Pillage. Wasn't an easy cut, but given how tempo negative it is for the caster esp in a deck with many 3+ cost cards, the decision was ultimately made to it and focus on developing the board ASAP in the early game. We have SUPERPILLAGE in the form of Grimgor anyway if the opponent's engine gets out of hand. The deck stumbles a bit from its own draws... multiple early Raise Deads with no Rip to get fatties into the discard pile is poor, but OTOH your raise deads have a ton of value targets and a lot of synergies with the rest of your cards. Don't miss opportunities to flash in a fatty to quest during the kingdom step for +++value. I don't love this deck yet, but I love what it's trying to do. Its my favorite deck to play right now, but admittedly is a few cards short of being dominant. It has game against everything though, and it does powerful, cool things without trying to get too cute.

...that was my point. Next time try reading my post (or, you know, the card text...) before insisting you know it already. If you read the reminder text on necromancy, it says "you may play this card from your discard pile. If you do, put it on the bottom of your deck at the end of turn." If it turns out we are wrong on this and cards retain traits when they change zones, you end up with some really weird interactions. For example, if I necromancy a Wight Lord into play and then Pilgrimage it back to my hand, then play a new Wight Lord... do I have to put a card in my hand on the bottom of the deck? How is my opponent able to verify that the Wight Lord I played was or wasn't the same Wight Lord that was put into play by Necromancy and is therefore going to go away when the delayed trigger resolves at the end of turn? Point being, if cards do indeed revert to printed form when they change zones (and, presumably, they are treated as a new object for the purpose of delayed triggers etc), the endless Lobber Crew + Iseara loop works. At this point, just have to wait for the rules confirmation.

I'm assuming you don't have March of the Damned yet, but even so I would recommend proxying up some Rodrik's Raiders - they seem like a natural fit in this deck, as focused as you are on resource denial. We've tested something very similar vs. the usual suspects and our conclusion was it wasn't quite there yet, but maybe Raiders will be a decent enough upgrade in card quality to get a bit closer. The main issue was a lack of critical mass for support disruption such that you might sometimes keep them on lockdown but often they only needed 1 turn without disruption to start going off and building up an advantage from which you can't come back. Also, with the exception of Raiders (which is why I'm so excited about those guys) your resource denial plan is rarely going to let you simultaneously put enough pressure on them to win before they recover. I think the deck needs Raiders plus a Man-O-War type unit; once Empire gets that I start to look at a tempo/resource denial (Ponza) deck as being a more viable choice. Card suggestion for the man-o-war-esque unit I'm talking about: Sigmar's Vanguard: Empire unit, 2EEE, 1 power 2 health. Battlefield only. You may play this unit from your hand at any time you could play an action (paying all costs). Action: When Sigmar's Vanguard comes into play, return target unit to its owner's hand.

EDIT: God nevermind. It is just not even worth talking to you.

Wytefang said: Then the card doesn't exist in game terms (out of play, not active). Not sure why there's any confusion about this?? Give Lobber Crew Necromancy w/ Iseara's ability. Play Lobber Crew from the discard pile for 2. Sac Lobber Crew to use its ability. Lobber Crew goes back to discard. ... where it stays at end of turn, since the card no longer has the necromancy keyword (assuming objects that change zones revert to their printed form, as we are speculating is correct here). Next turn, rinse, repeat. Get it?

Yeah, man, this deck is awesome!!!! You're my favorite deck builder ever!!

Logic pretty much demands that an object changing zones (hand to play, play to discard, discard to play, discard to deck, etc) loses any attributes it had gained in the zone it started in and reverts to the printed abilities on the card. Otherwise very strange things start to happen when cards are shuffled back into the deck, returned to hand, etc... anytime a card goes to a zone which is potentially random or has information masked from one of the players. A simple case... consider Greatswords and Called Back. If I play Greatswords, then return them to my hand with Called Back then play them again, how does my opponent know it is the same Greatswords? Couldn't they easily claim the Greatswords is a new copy, and therefore doesn't have the first gained power? Even if it is very unlikely that the player would play a 'fresh' copy, their opponent could easily claim they did. If the rules require a judge or third party to verify ordinary game states, the rules are broken. So yeah, lets wait and see...

On the draw, turn 1: Ancestral Tomb to K, develop K, Innovation, Wake the Wountain, Innovation, Innovation KING KAZADOR BABY. OH MAN. Haha just kidding, real decks don't play units. /sizzle.

Honestly, count me in the camp that thinks OIC is a cute trick and a decent way to up your card quality in general, but not nearly as good as I believe some of you think it is. Basically it costs you a card and doesn't by itself impact the board at all. Short term it can be a cute way to replay powerful disruption tactics like Demolition etc, but at the cost of serious tempo and board development. Its at its best when paired with a lucky start that gets you way ahead on board so you can exploit that advantage. Rarely will it allow you to catch up when you are behind. Right now I'm playing it as a 3-of because frankly dwarf and empire board decks are ridiculous and nearly always have an early advantage to exploit. But, its among the weaker cards in my deck and I could easily see cutting it for the next busted card draw/resource engine that gets printed.

No, I agree... not yet. But there is no way I come packing 3x MROS right now. And from there, its a very short step to bringing sellsword sligh...

lol... "best" decks are immediately not the best as soon as they are posted anywhere. Once a deck is a known quantity, you can design a deck that has an edge over it. That's why these games are fun, man. Constantly evolving metagame. I love how this deck is positioned btw... beating the mirror and having some game against thrower, hoping to dodge rush is exactly the right place to be in the gencon meta. I think that's already shifted though. Who isn't thinking about cutting MROS right now? Give it a couple weeks and destruction rush w/ sellswords and rock lobbers is probably going to be the place to be. Fun times, but for all the bolt thrower shenanigans.

Wytefang said: 1. When I was initially thinking that it sucked big-time, it was far less potent and much more fiddly and luck-based, in all fairness to me. 2. I beat a really good one at the World Championships so maybe it's not 85-100% vs. Dwarves, like some have suggested here ::: looking at Clamatius ::: AHEM! 1. No it wasn't But, lets let this issue die. 2. 85% assumes perfect play, and to be fair, we've seen some dwarf lists posted here that are probably a bit better than that due to recurring support destruction to disrupt the early game plan. I'd say 60-40 in thrower's favor vs. a tuned dwarf anti-thrower list unless they are REALLY all-in and playing 2-3x High Elf's Disdain etc. But again, this assumes perfect play. If thrower makes a timing mistake, all bets are off and the dwarf player is well positioned to capitalize.

Imagine a destruction deck with the thrower deck's resource base. Now imagine starting your turn with Lord of Change in play. Now imagine playing 25-30+ resources worth of cards off the top of your deck. Now imagine losing after you do that... (yeah, I can't either. ) The point is, if destruction gets a support base comprable to order, Lord of Change will be an extremely powerful card advantage engine, letting you literally draw as many cards as you can cast, every turn. Its like reap-what's-sown-ing for exactly as many cards as you can play, every turn, for free. (You can even develop off the top of your deck!). I do not think destruction has a support base that will allow for this deck, yet. But when it does... watch out.

DB.Cooper said: I really liked your post, swingjunkie ...I agree with his "sarcasm"... Noone is idiot for posting his point of view... NO U R.

Sideboarding would go a long way toward pre-empting this kind of nonsense in the future, yes, and would generally address some of the lopsided matchup percentages in the game. But, as I've said before, I am generally opposed to banning powerful strategies, since it is usually fairly simple to come up with good hate cards or powerful counter-strategies. Might be willing to concede that Thrower could be an exception since it wins at "action speed" and that causes a lot of problems; that kind of win condition perhaps shouldnt be in the game at all. Open to further discussion. What really troubles me though is the power creep for resource engines. I've said this in other threads, but it seems like the devs have responded to the perceived weakness of order factions by giving them extremely powerful resource (kingdom/quest) cards. This is a very, very bad idea... it will warp the entire game. I thought it was bad that Skaven decks would leave phase 1 on turn 1-2; dwarf decks these days routinely get to phase 3 on turn 2. Its not just christmasland when a dwarf deck has ~12+ hammers on the board (counting mining tunnels as an extra hammer in quest, since that is what it is) on turn 2 or 3. Yesterday we had a start where a dwarf deck had 15 hammers on turn 2 via Ancestral Tombs, Innovations, Mining Tunnels and Treasure Vaults. What the hell. If the devs continue to use busted resource acceleration as a balancing mechanism, this game is going to ugly, fast. Power creep is not fun, and I don't see what the devs are doing right now as sustainable at all. The sad part is we're already seeing the pendulum swing back the other way. Lord of Change is the first of many BROKEN cards to come. Mark my words that card is BROKEN, every bit as broken as mining tunnels. He needs some decent destruction-side resource accel to support him (which to be fair might not exist right now), but having essentially infinite access to your deck is something that should not be. Remember his ability is not a once per turn thing, you can literally flip a cascade of cards off the top... with a dwarf resource engine to back him up, you could dump 10+ cards per turn onto the table every turn. At least he's a unit so he can be dealt with more easily than an early mining tunnelsx2 start etc, but yeah, I foresee problems.

swingjunkie said: *in serious, presidential tone* Dear Fellow Warhammer: Invasion Players, We have embarked upon a dark time in our game. We have a broken deck. It's name is Dwarf. WAIT! I'm sorry, I have an incoming transmission from the Pentagon. I'm sorry, the broken deck is Bolt Thrower. As such, I demand that we ban Repeater Bolt Thrower! Sorry, I'm getting another transmission...Now Dwarves are again banned. To remedy this new and present danger, we shall also ban Dwarf Ranger and possibly Mining Tunnels. I apologize lady and gentlemen. I realize how badly it can hurt to be playing a broken game and we're try to fix this. This reminds me of a time not so long ago, when Skaven and Rush overran our beloved game. Wait, what? You're telling me Skaven are still out there? Oh my... I'm sorry my friends, It appears that with Dwarf and Bolt Thrower out of the way, Skaven and Orc are once again the dominant races. We shall now ban Deathmaster, Clan Molders, and the top 5% of Orc cards. Wait, you're telling me a Destructo Thrower deck won a regional recently? That simply won't do! From personal experience, I've seen the damage DestructoThrower can do if left unchecked, and with the banning of these cards, I have no choice but to ban Reaper Bolt Thrower as well. Well, I assume that means another deck will have the doors open for becoming broken...You know what? Actually, lets just reinstate the cards and ride it out. There will be new cards in soon that should fix the problem like they did with rush. Let us not forget, through this troubled time, that we only have 6 races. Well, we have 9 races, but only 6 capital boards. This is simply unacceptable! We must immediately begin production on more capital boards for all of the Warhammer races and flush them all out! Gone shall be the days of multiple useful cards every month! We may either have one or two useful cards every month, or we may have a few useful cards every 2 months! Whoa, Whoa...I have another message from the boys upstairs...You say people have already complained about balance issues and that balancing 10+ unique races would be a complete nightmare? I DON'T CARE! I WILL HAVE MY SEPARATE CAPITOLS! What? Are you saying that suddenly the fans of Warhammer are happier, but many card game players are disgruntled? Well which one is more likely to buy our game? Oh......really?......well ok I guess..... Ladies and Gentlemen, it would appear that I am once again mistaken. We shall continue on the path we've come and simply hope for neutral boards for the factions. Also, bear witness to the terrible prize support for our beloved game...mats and pins and uncut card sheets and boards and...what? nothing else? Well, this is embarrassing. Why would I play in a tournament for anything less than money or free games? It's not like there's pride in winning, and it's certainly not like it's a GAME! There's no reason to play for the challenge or fun! Hold on just a moment, Huh? OH, it's still a fairly young game with not a very large player base? I guess I can understand that. Ok... Ladies and Gentlemen, I suppose this too is merely a short term problem. I would suggest that as we travel forward, we keep watch for bigger and better prizes, but let us not forget that regardless of if we find it on our way, the ultimate destination is still joy and happiness. Fellow players, let us not see our dark times without knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Let us realize that all games have their flaws, but we must learn to cope, or find a new journey. In closing, I guess what I'm trying to say is.......SHUT UP AND ENJOY THE GAME FOR WHAT IT IS!!!!!!! yuor an itiod.

I think we played 6 games, with thrower taking 3 of them? Was it 7? In fairness, 1 loss for each deck was due to the other deck having a horrendously bad opening draw, so bad it should just be discounted as variance (Clamatius' opener while piloting dwarves in that game was, after a mulligan, "demolition, go". Clamatius and I may differ on the significance of the result - I felt like my draws on thrower were extremely poor in 4 of the games we played (1 of which I even won), but we definitely agree that the Demotion/OIC plan gives the deck substantially more game than it had in the prior version. Its a good direction to take the deck really, given that you can rely on the other dwarf boards to almost completely choke out rush. I still feel like thrower is a solid favorite against dwarves though, which makes it basically favored vs. everyone, sadly. New brewing at work for thrower, along similar lines... Empire board Supports (30) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Derricksburg Forge 3 City Gates 3 Mining Tunnels 3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance 2 Empire/High Elf Alliance 2 Contested Stronghold 3 Treasure Vaults 2 Abandoned Mine 3 Repeater Bolt Thrower Tactics (20) 3 Innovation 3 Order in Chaos 3 Demolition 2 Long Winter 2 Master Rune of Spite 3 Gifts of Aeneron 1 Master Rune of Valaya 3 Flames of the Phoenix

Sounds like a really fun tournament, sad to have missed it. Glad to see thrower get the respect it deserves, and the miser in me is VERY glad that thrower did not win the tournament. I really, really hate that deck, despite all the work we've put into it. Regardless, its probably fair to say the win % of thrower decks is leagues beyond every other deck, and that's basically what I expected. 3 in the top 8 with only 6 in the field is a dominating performance by any archetype. So where do we go from here... I guess I wish thrower didn't exist. The game would be a ton of fun if we were working on how to crack dwarves... March of the Damned has a lot of really exciting cards if thats the problem we're solving, but nothing really interesting at all given the current state of things. And tuning thrower for the mirror.... if this game devolves into just tuning thrower decks to beat each other I will probably stop playing for a while...

There is NO way that works, lol. But you could probably do a super unit-light version along the lines of my "bolt throwerless bolt thrower" list that is basically just playing control, using Descendant of Indraughnirx3 and some huge dwarves as finishers once we get the next battlepack. I imagine that would work fine in single-set, and not be terribly overpowered (goes back to what you said in the other thread re: winning at action speed vs. using the combat step, and therefore being disrupt-able). Anyway, where standard is concerned, we are running really thin on ideas to beat thrower. I'd really like to see a viable Grimgor ramp list that doesn't punt to dwarves. Thrower is so fast now that its hard to hang in there if you are trying to play destruction... the fogs + MROS ruin your riderriderchoppachoppa plan unless you also have 2-3 warpstones to go with it, and then I'd like a side order of eggnog to go with my mistletoe. If destruction had a resource base that was capable of hanging with the retarded starts that thrower routinely gets, I'd say there might be something to the huge guy ramp plan that centers on abusing Lord of Change as a card draw engine with a TON of hammers in kingdom (+ Iseara, Wight Lord, Lobber Crew shenanigans). I'd be surprised if it works today though, thrower is just too fast, but that's the next deck we work on I think. Sigh. Banning bolt thrower would be pretty cool at this point... Either that or borrow from MTG and print Split Second as a mechanic - this game needs Krosan Grip in a bad way. Imagine: Annihilate. Dwarf Tactic, 2DDD. Destroy target support or development. While Annihilate is on the stack, other actions cannot be played.... and Dwarves suddenly have some game against Thrower...

In your orc example... who cares? They need to swing for 8+developments twice to win, not once. I am not fogging their turn 3 attack that burns one zone. I don't care if they burn one zone. Do you realize how RUINED your orc board is when I play MROS the next go? Nice Clan Moulder's Elite and literally nothing else on your side of the table. Meanwhile I'm drawing a million cards and unless you have triple innovate into Grimgor the game is already over. Will of the electors does... nothing, man. I have infinite developments in Kingdom and Mining Tunnels is just about all I ever need for a draw engine. You blow up my quest zone by time walking yourself and I'll a couple supports there the next turn and shrug it off like its nothing. If you're thinking of using Will to 'counter' bolt thrower, well, learn the correct line of play and develop battlefield the turn before you play thrower (playing around demolition too). One shot w/ thrower is plenty. Are you using the same deck we are w/ Treasure Vaults/Contested Stronghold etc? Shooting for 30+ by turn 8 or so is not at all unreasonable, especially if you Gifts into Flames to start your turn, or sandbag some Innovation/OICs. Milling yourself should never happen if you can do math. Ever. I guess I have to accept that it is somewhat difficult to play thrower correctly, at least compared to other top tier decks. But it isn't really that hard to beat any of the hate cards or strategies in the game right now, except Grimgor, and even he can be outraced or disrupted pretty easily.

Clamatius sleeved up a joke deck today, basically stuffing every hate card we can think of into the deck. And.... thrower crushed it. Haterator.dec did win one game where I ancestral tomb'd both the remaining throwers in the deck (they were right next to each other) into play as developments. Since it was really obvious by about 3-4 turns later when I was drawing 4-5+ cards a go and generating 30+ resources that my throwers were developed, he sat on pillages for Abandoned Mine. I still had an out though, of drawing Long Winter + Flames of the Phoenix before I decked myself. Hit the Long Winter, was 2 cards away from Flames. So I lost. Every other game was not close. I'll let Clamatius post the list if he feels so inclined, but it was pretty hilariously awful. 6 Scouts, 6 Pillages, none of the units die to Master Rune of Spite, etc. Changes to the deck... -1 Demolition, +1 Long Winter. Coming around on Order in Chaos, it is quite a versatile answer to scouts or pillage effects. The resource base for thrower has gotten really tight. I'm not sure what to do. The deck is fast enough now that only the scariest draws from Orc/Skaven rush can threaten it, and MROS completely wrecks that plan. Ramp into Grimgor while putting on pressure seems like the only way to reliably win, and even that is fairly disruptable & can be outraced in a lot of cases. Anyone have any ideas on what's next?

You are playing thrower wrong. Dwarves cannot beat Flames + play thrower + kill them in the same turn. We've cut High Elf's Disdains from the current thrower list because it just doesn't matter except v. Mob Up! and we'll take that negative equity (for now). If you sequence properly dwarves really cannot win. Their only match wins come from your deck killing you, like all 3 bolt throwers as the last 3 cards in the deck, etc.