Absolutely love the Slave pen, Wight Lord, Iseara, Lobber Crew recursion deck. DE board using those to lock out the combat step, probably Naggoroth Spearmen as the finisher with some hand disruption to protect. Could be sweet. Probably loses to thrower. YAY. But, it might beat dwarves. Nice to have another pillar in the meta I suppose. (Lord of Change is broken right. in. half.)

Gave it a try this afternoon @ lunch, testing this list: Supports (28) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Mining Tunnels 3 Ancestral Tomb 3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance 3 Contested Stronghold 3 Repeater Bolt Thrower 3 Treasure Vaults 2 Abandoned Mine 2 Empire/High Elf Alliance Tactics (22) 3 Innovation 3 Master Rune of Valaya 3 Gifts of Aeneron 3 Flames of the Phoenix 3 Master Rune of Spite 3 Order in Chaos 3 Demolition 1 Long Winter It was pretty good. Still not completely sold on order in chaos - it felt tricky and gave the deck more access to key cards, but I'm not entirely sold that's needed. It felt very win more vs. Skaven; I was in a situation where I could OIC at the start of my turn to put 2x Innovation back on top the deck before my quest phase for ++++Value, but I opted not to becuase I just needed to draw deeper into the deck to find a thrower. They are very nice with Mining Tunnels and can occasionally be a decent way to get back a fog or recover from being scouted though... maybe I trim down the Abandoned Mine/Long Winter spot and play them as a 2-of (so 2x Abandoned Mine/Long Winter and 2x OIC). Not completely sure yet that they arent just a little too cute.

Do not agree. Skaven vs. Dwarves is a far worse matchup for Skaven than (to use some current MTG standard examples) "bad" matchups like RDW vs. Mythic or Ascension combo vs. Esper. The only comprable standard matchup right now is Turboland vs. RDW where Turboland loses ~70% of the time. In fairness, I think sideboards have a LOT to do with that too... thinking about it, lack of sideboards for g2/g3 is probably most of the problem.

Matchups do tend to be much more swingy here don't they. Probably a function of a limited card pool - less ability to maneuver your strategy to get an edge in specific problem matchups due to both the hard division between order & destruction, and the limited number of tournament quality cards for each deck. For reference for those not familiar with the high level MTG tournament scene, if you show up to a MTG tourney as an 85% dog to any deck you expect to see play, you either expect that deck to be a fringe player in the metagame (Dredge or Burn are frequent examples) or you are making a huge mistake in deck selection. In MTG "Deck X beats Deck Y" usually means Deck X has about a 55-60% winrate at best. In W:I, "Deck A beats Deck B" usually means "Deck A THOROUGHLY CRUSHES DECK B'S SOUL".

I considered Mountain Brigade but honestly 4 resources for 2 power is just underwhelming these days. Yeah they have a huge butt but you have better ways to defend now - by slaughtering everything that moves via MROS or fogging. You draw enough cards when playing dwarf that I don't think being unit light is really going to be a problem, not even for something like the book of grudges. I think it will always find a target, because you just dont need to commit to offense early - I can live w/ a book sititng in hand while I build up quest & kingdom. Plus, more value for cannon crew, etc. The biggest area where I feel like being unit light will hurt is that your slayers have a pretty good chance of being lobber crewed away, but so what, its still a 1-for-1 trade. You have SYG to offset the power of removal on your big guys anyway, and SYG on Slayers is much a ball-stomping as ever. Like I said this could be terrible, but I can at least convince myself there's some theory behind the madness. Keep in mind my goal was to build a list that beats the mirror - I admit I am probably costing myself percentage vs. Skaven to do so. Has better game vs. thrower via the Verena plan too - mising their quest zone early (because yeah right @ kingdom) might bump up my win % to like, 5. Which is like a 200% gain. Sadface. Side note, do we actually have a healthy meta now? Dwarves beats Skaven beats Thrower beats Dwarves????? Not that the percentages are even, especially w/rt tier 2 decks, but still. That's better than its been since Deathmaster's Dance.

For the most part I agree w/ Clamatius' assessments. Basically in my mind the meta today boils down to expecting lots of Dwarves and a fair amount of Empire given they have gotten all the latest new toys. Given that assumption, you could play Orc/Skaven with Grimgor to hate on bolt thrower (since thrower is still clearly the best deck) but then you risk a terrible matchup vs. Dwarves. At least Clamatius found a way to give the thrower a bad matchup by adding Grimgor to the zoo list - but even so, I'd still play thrower most likely unless I went with a dwarf list HEAVILY tuned to beat the mirror. Even so, thrower's winrate vs. dwarves (which I would actually put closer to 90% in thrower's favor unless they are running disdain, then closer to 65-70% in favor of thrower) is really, really tasty given how much dwarves I expect to be played right now. For freesies, a stab at a dwarf list I might consider... note that this is totally untested, just theory. I call it.... Bolt Throwerless Bolt Thrower Units (11) 3 Dwarven Cannon Crew 3 Slayers of Karak Kadrin 3 Longbeards 2 King Kazador Supports (22) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Mining Tunnels 3 Ancestral Tomb 3 Dwarf/Empire Alliance 3 Treasure Vaults 2 Contested Stronghold 2 Great Book of Grudges Tactics (17) 3 Innovation 3 Stand Your Ground 3 Master Rune of Spite 3 Demolition 3 Master Rune of Valaya 2 Judgment of Verena Basically the plan for the mirror is to play the same game they are, but leverage Master Rune of Valaya to help you race, and lean on your superior resource base plus Demolition to get ahead on cards. Verena bumps up to a 2-of to mise, probably more in the midgame with demolition + verena shenanigans than as a turn 4-5 play (though early mising is not to be discouraged). I have no idea if the unit-lite plan is viable, I just know virtually all of my games as dwarves are won by drawing an obscene amount of cards, getting an obscene amount of resources and dumping Longbeards into the battlefield. So I figured, all in. Master Rune of Valaya seems like sweet tech in the midrange mirror, letting you get away with being slow to get started on offense. Could be terrible though.

Grimgor is indeed a big problem, though I'd need to see an Orc list that beats dwarves before I get really concerned... Here's a theoretical take on a new, (untested) thrower list: Dwarf board Supports (27) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Mining Tunnels 3 Ancestral Tomb 3 Dwarf/High Elf Alliance 3 Empire/High Elf Alliance 3 Treasure Vaults 3 Contested Stronghold 2 Repeater Bolt Thrower 1 Abandoned Mine Tactics (23) 3 Innovation 3 Master Rune of Valaya 3 Gifts of Aeneron 3 Demolition 3 Master Rune of Spite 2 Long Winter 2 Flames of the Phoenix 2 Judgment of Verena 2 High Elf's Disdain Adds a lot more interaction with the opponent, and decent way to get an edge in the mirror via the Verena/Demolition plan. Reap What's Sown is not really doing it for me anymore - its just too slow. Long Winter/Abandoned Mine split is a nod to Verena. As Clamatius mentions above, you basically auto-win vs. dwarves, so your only real concern is Skaven w/ Grimgor. The Master Runes, Verena, and Demolition in combination together probably gives you a reasonable shot to win there... oh boy, more thrower testing...

'Big Orc' is interesting but my gut reaction is it would lose to dwarves and empire. If Empire is determined to keep you off of playing huge guys, they can do so fairly often. You beat them by playing lots of cheap threats, though I suppose your orc deck is probably still packing a reasonable suite of 1 & 2 drops. Dwarves just seems like it has the tools to wreck you... slayers completely denies the "play a huge dude" plan (and slayers + stand your ground is a KICK IN BALLS every freaking time). Would love to see a list if you don't mind posting your thoughts though, even if post-GC. Agree re: thrower being more resilient to hate than is generally known. We've beaten Skaven w/ 3 Mob Up! before, plenty of times, with the old list pre-mining tunnels. I consider that to be about as close to a 50/50 matchup as thrower has. When we say "haterator.dec" for thrower we do not mean a deck that is basically a decent shell that splashes in a couple hate cards. We mean the 3 shades, 3 gutter runners, 3 pillage, 3 burn it down, 3 mob up! plan, with a side order of Grimgors and probably a couple of cheatyface High Elf's Disdains. Hence, deck that reliably beats thrower = also savagely punts vs. the rest of the field.

Clamatius said: As an aside to anyone planning on playing rush at GenCon: if you are still building Orc lists you are in for a world of hurt vs. Master Rune of Spite. Fixed. Seriously though, destruction thrower attacks the format on the same axis that Chaos control used to. Same lesson to be learned in terms of deck construction, and just as laughably beatable by tuned versions of the top archetypes. Destruction thrower is not a real deck. Clamatius got 1 game off of me playing Skaven because I was being an idiot, and once I started paying attention we had no more games vs. Skaven or Dwarves that were anything resembling close. I still remain unconvinced by all these Order in Chaos shenanigans btw. Generally speaking just drawing more cards is going to be a more reliable, less easily disrupted means of finding your damage prevention spells, and overall reduces the variance of your deck by leveraging more multi-role cards (as in, supports that can be played in kingdom or quest, depending on what you need). Considering the primary source of losses for the thrower deck right now is variance in shuffling, support-heavy seems like a better way to build the deck to me, even if it does give up a few percentage points in its best draws.

Yeah re: stacking rules... pretty much the only way thrower loses to dwarves is if you make a bunch of timing mistakes on the thrower side of the table and your opponent is familiar enough with the matchup to exploit them. Since dwarves have gotten so many shinies lately, I expect a lot more people to be familiar with them now than they were a few weeks ago, and that dwarves will be much more played right now than other strong archetypes, particularly skaven. Seeing as Skaven is thrower's only "bad" matchup (and by "bad" I mean "less than 80% winrate", it still is probably in the 60-70% win range if Skaven doesnt play Mob Up!), thrower seems exceptionally well positioned right now. Not to say people will actually play it because it is mind numbingly awful to test, but in the hands of a competent pilot it seems like the deck to beat. I know I'd pack 1-2 High Elf's Disdains in my dwarf deck or 1-2 Mob Up! in Skaven if I were playing a major tournament right now and didnt wan't to play thrower for whatever reason.

X is in the cost of the spell, so X is fixed when you pay for it and play it. You don't get to magically decide that the X on Flames of Tzeentch is lower than what your opponent paid either. EDIT: what you are missing is that you can respond to Long Winter with additional activations of the thrower. If your opponent plays Long Winter and you say "yep, that resolves" well then you're just bad.

Going to echo the /facepalm for second sight man I had to deckbox that one, thought it was the 5-card pseudo-impulse at first... Agree that MROS isnt getting it done for me. I might board a couple to bring in vs. Skaven but considering dwarves are built to ignore that card (since, you know, they play it) I wouldnt maindeck it as long as dwarves are in the meta, which they most assuredly are given the latest battlepacks. Honestly I think you're trying too hard to get the fog engine to work. IMO, purely based on theory for now, the deck pretty naturally draws into its defenses as long as it doesnt stumble when setting up a draw/resource base. So, setting up the engine seems most important to me, and sacrificing some consistency there seems poor. Clamatius and I are testing a couple new ideas for the thrower list this week, so we'll see if we end up close to this list after some tuning.

Yep, seems fine. Smash em All would be played for sure w/ those changes. Not sure I like the flavor of " 'Pillage' destroys 'Sack Tor Aendris' " but whatever.

*I* think we need to resurrect Thrower to keep this list honest. This is a deck built to bury Skaven in a hole somewhere in the desert. And it achives that with vigor. Holy terrible matchup for the rats. Every bit as bad as I thought it would be 2 posts ago before we had tested it!

The deck has some surprise factor. Clamatius got me badly in the first game we played because I was on autopilot. Once I started playing around his strategy the rest of the games were not close. The problem is, Empire's card quality is not high enough to punish the opponent for skimping on card draw to over-invest in Kingdom. What's missing is a card that gives relatively cheap midrange offense by itself, the role that Longbeards plays in the dwarf deck. Once a card like that sees print this strategy might deserve a second look.

As a Skaven player I really hate this whole thread. I am just going to sleeve up bolt thrower, screw you guys. (this deck is really good).

Don't have much of an opinion on healing really. Like lifegain in MTG I think its good to have a mechanic that simultaenously appeals to new players and is bad - its part of the journey of becoming good to learn why it is bad and then, on the flipside, to learn when it actually can have some value. RE: counter quests... @ Clamatius, I think if you don't take away the tokens when the units die, the quests themselves need to be removable, probably by allowing them to be counted as supports for Demolition, Pillage, etc. Otherwise yes they are too powerful, or really, Smash em All is too powerful. One thing they could do is allow any unit in your quest zone to satisfy the 'if a unit is questing here' requirement, meaning you don't have to associate a particular unit to a given quest. So long as you have something in your quest zone, you are good, but if all your quest units die the quest gets reset. This probably doesn't fix the problem but it helps.

Not the most exciting of decklists, but since we're working on standard again I figure I may as well post the current starting point for testing this archetype. Units (22) 3 Spider Riders 3 Clan Rats 3 Lobber Crew 3 Clan Moulder's Elite 3 Greyseer Thanquol 3 Deathmaster Snkitch 2 Rat Ogres 2 Ugrok Beardburna Supports (14) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance 2 Orc/Chaos Alliance 3 Choppa Tactics (14) 3 Innovation 3 We'z Bigga! 3 Troll Vomit 3 Pillage 2 Easy Pickin's The idea is to move the deck slightly up the curve, reasoning that big finishers like Ugrok and Troll Vomit are the way to get an edge in the Skaven/x "zoo" mirror. General strategy is to play out resource accel, reaching the midgame @ 2 cards/turn & 4-5 resources/turn. Ideally you play a Vomit then start the offense, using Pillage, Crews, and Pickin's to keep them in phase 1 for a couple of turns while you set up your engine. The deck is also capable of your standard rush starts, but can hang in there and keep fighting when dwarves start playing huge guys. Basically loses to thrower without a nut draw. Whatever. That deck is dumb, and if I'm going to design for standard I have to pretty much ignore it. Some notes on card choices: - 2x Easy Pickin's: havent tested this yet in standard. In single-set it was a decent way to play more than 3 Lobber Crews, and it seems reasonable for standard as well given 3x Spider Riders are my only 1-drops, and they don't tend to survive very long anyway. - 2x Ugrok Beardburna: guy is huge. Very, very hard to deal with for a lot of decks. 2x because drawing multiples of him is no fun. - 3x Troll Vomit: playing the full set really changes your options in the early to mid game. You really want to vomit after setting up a decent resource base; playing around vomit is often a bad strategic play for order decks, since your card quality is so much higher than theirs that they can't afford to let you draw into your mid- late-game plays. Vs. destruction it is almost better, since they are so limited on quality supports. - 3x We'z Bigga: with Rat Ogres and Ugrok in the mix, going up to the full set of We'z Bigga seems good. Has tested well so far, almost always finding a juicy target. And that's it. Basically a small evolution of the last Orc/Skaven lists we posted here, but its a starting point for testing future battlepacks. This deck absolutely must be respected, and I expect it will continue to be one of the strongest options in terms of pound for pound card quality in the format.

Do huntsmen & warrior priests want to be 3x Mining Tunnels, 1x Dwarf/HE alliance? Moves your curve up a bit, but makes you more resilient to unit kill & gives you a ton of value being able to cycle your weak cards. Of which you have lots. (<3 empire). Point being, I'm not sure this is really a fast deck... its a midrange deck that leverages forge to get to the midgame and disruption to keep the opponent off anything backbreaking. So, it might be ok to slow down a hair in exchange for upping your card quality. (Or it might not!) Too, might make Will playable as a 1-of if you can reliably cycle it. I am a miser at heart. And I think the first Will gives a lot of virtual card advantage if they know you have it, even as a 1-of - not sure the first will isnt the highest EV inclusion anyway given the amt of games you can mise with it. Looking forward to Wilhelm - as we saw in testing today, big huge guys sort of lolcano over your defenses. @dormouse, I'd definitely cut the second Verena. Talabheim seems slow to me - what role are they playing for you? I don't like Warrior Priests as a 3-of either... too vulnerable and too expensive for what they give you. Those dudes definitely want to be alliances IMO.

Actually I'd probably play dwarves if I were going to a major tournament, because its win percentage against people who arent prepared for it is phenomenal, whereas thrower is non-interactive enough that my opponents can basically goldfish against me and that doesn't seem like a good way to leverage a skill egde on the field. Anyway, I still just don't get it dude. I want us to find the optimal deck construction and lines of play, whether that means I'm right and thrower is opressive, or whether it means you're right and it isnt. I don't care about the results! I just want us to exchange info and figure out what the other one is doing differently so we can analyze it and BOTH become better players. I am never going to just "take your word for it" that you are playing optimally. No one else should either. I don't ask that of you. You don't have to trust me at all - if you doubt anything I am doing, ask me for more info and I will go into as much detail as you need. I think this conversation is over man, and it sucks. I am sure we have something to learn from each other, but until you decide that its worth risking being wrong, there's no point in continuing to argue with you. I'm never going to "trust you" that you are playing correctly, so your results as far as I and hopefully everyone reading our discussions are concerned, are just bunk until you substantiate them. My offer stands - let me know when you want to stop theorycrafting and actually get better.

Fair point dormouse RE: casual v competitive approach to the game. Both are certainly valid - there are plenty of really 'cool' decks to be made that I fully admit I dismiss at a glance as being non-competitive. I am in no way arguing that Warpstone Excavation (& innovation, cv) should be banned for the casual crowd, and too I acknowledge that the vast majority of players are what I would describe as casual. But casual is not immune to their negative effects either, even if they are much more likely to mitigate the problem via a 'gentleman's agreement' soft ban approach. Tuned decks like Orc/Skaven "Rock" that leverage the cheap resource acceleration available in the format are often very oppressive to the fun casual decks. You've seen as well as I have the amount of complaining on these forums about 'rush decks' from the casual crowd. That's a manifestation on the kitchen table of the problem that is warping the format (pun halfway intended) at the competitive level, keeping down decks like Chaos control, any pure aggro strategy, etc. I appreciate your point that if power creep is the inevitable result of a card design (or a strata of card designs), then bans are preferable to "chasing the dragon". My point all along has been that the prevalence of cheap resource acceleration is a design idea that needs to die, and a ban is probably the only way to undo the damage. Worryingly, we are absolutely seeing a move in the power creep direction though... compare Derricksburg Forge and Mining Tunnels to the resource generation available in the core set. Those two are MILES better, just strictly better in every way, to the options available when we first started playing this game. This is, IMO, a direct response to the power level of the core 9, and it is not a good sign for the future direction of this game. Clamatius and I tested some decks yesterday and it is looking like Empire might just be vaulted into Tier 1.5-2 status solely due to the power of playing 12 turn 1 accelerators via the core 9 + derricksburg forge. It seems like going from 9 to 12 has substantially improved your odds of opening with a turn 1 accelerant, enough to where it is happening nearly every game. I'd need to do the math to know for sure, but anecdotally the jump in power level for Empire was *huge*. To be fair, this was single set testing and we have some more work to do getting back to building for standard, but that one card looks like it has swung that entire deck around on its head and it may be competitive now. Don't get me wrong here, I am not complaining that we now have more competitive archetypes... what concerns me is that the devs have clearly realized the power of resource accelerators and are applying them as fixes for perceived underpowered factions or deck strategies. If that's the case, where do we go from here? It's not doomsday, yet, but it is a cause for concern.

Results are not subjective. There is only one perfect way to build a deck at any moment in time, and there is only one perfect play in any given circumstance. Even with imperfect information about the meta or the gamestate, you can use EV calculations to determine the most optimal deck construction or line of play given the information available to you. (note that I acknowledge it may not be knowable in all cases what the best line of play is - this is a very very complicated game - but regardless of whether we know it, my point is there is always an optimal, highest-EV play and deck, no matter what). If you agree with this statement, then you will understand why I will never "take your word for it" that you are getting different results than I am. That is not good enough. I have posted in detail my strategic thoughts for different matchups, the decks I am playing, etc. You know where I stand, and you are welcome to critique anything I have ever posted. I am FAR from a perfect player of W:I, I make mistakes all the time. But I am constantly striving to improve my understanding of the game and my technical skills while playing it. I have nothing to hide. The only possible conclusion I can draw from you getting strikingly different results than me is that one of us is doing it wrong, whether in deck construction or in technical play. If I am making mistakes, it should be the easiest thing in the world to criticize my lines of play because all of that is out in the open. Let me ask you & wytefang this point blank: do you think, based on the information I've posted here, that I am playing these matchups or building these decks incorrectly? If so, how? Please be specific, or else ask me for specific details if you feel you don't have enough information to comment. I want you to tell me what I am doing that you feel is wrong. In this thread I have offered the same kind of criticism of your deck construction and lines of play. That offer stands forever as far as I'm concerned. But realize, until you either take me up on that or you start providing some actual commentary on my testing, we are at a total impasse and we will never come to a common understanding. For that, I really have to lay the blame on you though, because I don't see what else I can do so long as you refuse to participate in any actual hands-on testing and disucssion of the results. Anyway, I think we've about exhausted this topic until you guys agree to get on board with actual testing and discussion. For my part, I still cannot understand what you have to gain by refusing. Wouldnt that be better for everyone, if we could work out our differences by comparing data and come to a consensus? Isn't that worth putting aside our egos and admitting we might be wrong? I'm already here, man, and I'm waiting for you to join me. Lets just put aside the BS and become better warhammer players...

I don't disagree that play skill & correct strategy has a lot to do with how a deck performs. That's obvious. But it's not a reason to refrain from participating in community testing discussion, unless you think we are guaranteed to play the list wrong or something. And even then, why would you presume we can't listen to your thoughts on how to play the deck and get better? For my part, I have nothing to hide on deck discussion. If you think my idea sucks, tell me so and give me a list and some strategic insight I can test to experience your pov. I will either agree with you or I will explain why I don't, but either way we both stand to gain something from the exchange. If I am doing something wrong or something that can be improved, then I'd want to know about it so I can fix it. Don't you & Wytefang feel the same way? My ultimate point here is, if you don't provide decklists and strategic insight, how can we even have a conversation about the metagame, which decks are strong, etc? You know my frame of reference because all of our decklists are in public. I have NO idea where you are coming from though, so basically I either disregard everything you say or....? What, just trust you? That's hard to do when literally every conclusion you come to is way off the mark from my pov. Do you see why your refusal to participate in deckbuilding discussion is frustrating given how opinionated you are?

lol guys, I was joking FWIW though, my understanding of the rules is that W:I doesnt have a concept of "last known information" (like MTG does), so if the ability put on the stack when Skinks enters play referenced the Skinks, it wouldnt have any effect if the Skinks were no longer there at resolution time. For example, if it were templated like so: When Skinks enters play, it deals 1 uncancellable damage to target unitBut, since it isn't worded that way, it just says 'deal 1...', then you still get to do the damage even if Skinks eats it before the ability resolves.

...except for the lack of Pillage that has us all building around Contested Stronghold with nary a care in the world... lol. FWIW I appreciate where all sides are coming to in this thread. Understand we aren't trying to come off as arrogant, even though I totally get why we would sometimes. I think what will work best for everyone is the tried and true scientific method... no one should be attached to being right or being wrong, just accepting of a process that arrives at good data. Lets debate and discuss and all that jazz, but at the end of the day we have to resort to testing our ideas and being willing to accept that we're not always right. That goes for all sides. ('ll freely admit I started out playing this game with some baaaaad ideas... I played Empire for like 3-4 weeks ffs!) The last thing I want this forum to be is a dogmatic "MY SIDE IS RIGHT" "NO U R" slugfest. Because at the end of the day, its really pretty simple to sleeve up some cards, play some warhammer and figure it out. I LOVE YOU GUYS. LETS HUG.