@dormouse... how is my logic flawed when I say these 3 cards are 3-ofs in every deck? How about you show me a list that doesnt include these 9 cards and wouldnt be improved by adding them. (Or, you know, stop talking theoretical nonsense without backing up your ideas) My design challenge earlier stands... can you (or anyone) give us some ideas for fair, printable cards that would deter the use of warpstone excavation? The 4 cards I listed are barely straining the edge of balance and are still nowhere close to good enough to deter me from playing 3x warpstone. Have any ideas? Because if you don't, we don't, and FFG doesn't, and no one can come up with a deck that doesnt run the core 9 and wouldnt be improved by adding them, then maybe, just maybe, talking about banning or rotation is justified...

Game 1 Orc starting hand c.village x2, lobber crew, pillage x2, warpstone, deathmaster De start hand 3 X we need your blood and mulligans to shuffle cards more warpstone, innovation x2, mauls, v. sorceress, har ganeth, c. village Warpstone + double innovation is going to be hard for anyone to beat. DE clearly has the better starting hand here, given that orcs drew all their disruption and no gas. Deathmaster will win the game if they have no removal, but odds are they will since you are presenting no other threats. TURN 1 DE warpstone + c.village + har ganeth to K innovation played as D to K I would do warpstone to kingdom, contested village to quest, develop malus in kingdom, double innovate into vile sorcs in quest. That way you are drawing 3 cards a turn and exerting board control via the sorcs. Even if they have a lobber crew, you are still in fine shape. TURN 1 ORC draw snotlings lobber crew to K warpstone to K c.village to Q I would at least consider playing warpstone to quest here, as you dont really want to run the Deathmaster out there without any other action, and you need to draw some cards pronto. OTOH if the DE player follows my line of play and innovates out the sorc, I would go warpstone to kingdom, village to quest, use lobber crew on my turn to kill the sorc and prevent him drawing off of it. TURN 2 DE draw WNYB and play on Lobber crew v. sorceress to Q This is an illegal play. You need two targets for WNYB, one to lose hp and one to gain hp. There's only 1 unit in play. If you play the sorcs, he Lobber Crews it in response to the WNYB. DE player shouldnt have a vile sorc after this turn, so its probably not going to be possible to comment much further on the game... TURN 2 ORC draw deathmaster and spider rider c.village to Q pillage har ganeth Even with the crew dying, the orc player has 4 resources and can play Lobber Crew then Pillage with the loyalty provided by the crew... why slowroll the Lobber Crew when they (falsely, but I'll go with it) have a vile sorc in play? TURN 3 DE draw deathmaster and hate deathmaster to Q TURN 3 ORC draw clan moulder, crooked teef DE play hate and take 1 resource clan moulder to B and attack K for 2 See... the sorcs shouldnt be here, so you can actually play the goblins and beat for 3... I think I'm done commenting on this game... TURN 4 DE draw 2 n. goblin, c/de alliance, WNYB n goblin to K as D. innovation for 2 malus to B attack K for 3 TURN 4 ORC draw lobber crew, innovation, alliance deathmaster to Q attack K for 2 So you now have 2 Lobber Crews in hand to his 2 units in play (Malus, Deathmaster) and you choose to... play a Deathmaster? Rather than Lobber Crewing x2? No. This is bad. TURN 5 DE v sorceress targets deathmaster draw easy pickins, lobber crew, c. village, hate WNYB finishes off deathmaster lobber crew to K, sac, orcs sac clan moulders attack K for 3 TURN 5 ORC after K phase, DE plays Hate warpstone to q, choppa to K as D innovation, rat ogres to k TURN 6 DE draw alliance, s saboteur, shades, innovation easy pickins to K as D. innovation shades, s saboteur to B attack Q for 5 and discard (spider riders) TURN 6 ORC sac lobber crew, de sac s. saboteur snotlings and crooked teef to B attack K for 3 deathmaster kills crooked teef TURN 7 DE draw har ganeth, hate, lobber crew, s sabotuers s saboteurs to B, har ganeth to K attack K for 5 and burn TURN 7 ORC deathmaster to Q seduced on de deathmaster, then corrupt deathmaster to destroy him crooked teef with choppa to B and attack for 5 burning K TURN 8 DE v. sorceress targets deathmaster, har ganeth bounces him draw cards (doesn't matter what they are because the attack this turn wins the game Yeah sorry, I stopped commenting after turn 4. No surprise DE wins when they run the big cheats Orc is misplaying all over the place too. Game 2 DE starting hand innovation, hate, har ganeth x2, s. saboteur, c.village, deathmaster orc starting hand deathmaster, spider, greyseer x2, snotling, lobber crew, innovation Pretty godawful hand for orcs here. Fine hand for DE. Again, DE has the advantage with the village + innovation draw. TURN 1 DE har ganeth to K as development c.village + har ganeth to K Developing Har Ganeth seems sort of loose here, what if they have the pillage? I'd probably develop Snotling Saboteurs here, but then again I wouldnt play with that card TURN 1 ORC end of kingdom de play hate draw clan rats and play lobber crew to K No... drawing the clan rats actually made this a fine draw. I like innovating into Clan Rats to kingdom, Spider Riders here (developing a Greyseer) and swinging @ quest for 2. TURN 2 DE draw we need your blood and play on lobber crew death master to Q Sigh. Again with the big cheats. No surprise when you win, considering your Deathmaster hits the bin on this turn if you make a legal play. TURN 2 ORC draw choppa and play as D to K innovation, deathmaster to K TURN 3 DE Lobber crew to K and sac, orc sacs deathmaster N. goblin to B and attack Q for 1 TURN 3 ORC draw C/O alliance and play to K TURN 4 DE draw innovation, easy pickins, night goblins s sabotuers to B, attack Q for 2 innovation for 1, sac saboteurs to destroy orc alliance TURN 4 ORC draw pillage can't play any units because they will be destroyed when they hit the table TURN 5 DE draw warpstone, shades, c.village shades, n. goblin to B attack for 3 and a discard Q burns and discard spider rider TURN 5 ORC still unable to play anything TURN 6 DE draw take captive, malus, hate malus to B attack K for 6 Orc concedes Yeah so, you need to play correctly... cheating with WNYB is directly responsible for both of your wins here. But in general, the biggest thing I am seeing is you are running your Deathmasters into tricks constantly on the orc side. Stop it. Don't play Deathmaster as a 4-cost support with 2 hammers. He needs to come down and impact the board immediately. Also, you are undervaluing putting pressure on the opponent with early attacks and generally making lots of suboptimal plays on the orc side of the table...

Just for fun...can you come up with a fair card they would actually print that would make me not run warpstone as a 3-of in every deck ever? Here's a few absurdly powerful cards that are still not powerful enough to deter me from running it. Suffering of the Meek: 0, neutral tactic: destroy all cards in play with printed cost 0 Void Altar: X, neutral support: <> comes into play with X resource tokens on it. Forced: at the start of your turn, return all cards in play with printed cost equal to the number of resource tokens on <> to their owner's hands. Asuryan Pinnacle: 4HH, High Elf Support, 2 power, unique: kindgom.units your opponents control cannot be uncorrupted. Incite the Slaves: 6KKK, dark elf tactic: if your opponent controls a card with printed cost 0, you may play <> without paying its resource cost. Destroy up to 2 target unit or support cards. I would happily run warpstone as a 3-of in every deck even if all of these cards were printed. Have any design ideas?

Clamatius is on vacation atm, so I can't playtest anything, or I would But from a theory pov, we have tested plenty of decks that are trying to do what your list is trying to do: beat the orc/skaven list by playing a lot of removal and midrange fatties. Maybe you've cracked the code but I'm not seeing it. The key from the skaven side of the table is playing around your tricks. Don't run out a Choppa on a Spider Rider if you would get wrecked by WNYB (unless the risk is worth it, IE either you win if they dont have it, or you have enough gas not to worry about it), dont run out your Deathmaster if you'd get wrecked by Lobber Crew, etc. Basically the gamestate the Skaven deck is trying to achieve is either 1) they play their hand and burn 2 zones before you can do anything, with minimal investment in kingdom/quest, or 2) they play to 4-5 power in kingdom, 2-4 power in quest and out-attrition you with card quality by posing questions to which you must have the answer every turn. I suspect most people think option 1 is the prevailing way Skaven wins but it is actually only a very small part of the deck's strategy and knowing when to go "all-in" vs. go for attrition is the key skill-testing aspect of playing the deck. Orc/Skaven can win attrition wars despite playing a lot of cheap guys because they have pound for pound the highest quality, most efficient cards in the entire set - nothing compares to Spider Riders, Moulder's Elite, Deathmaster, Greyseer etc at doing what they do. Incidentally, thats why support-heavy Orc/Skaven running 2x Troll Vomit is so devastating - the right mindset when playing the deck is to toss your hand on the board every turn, as if asking the opponent, "have an answer to this?". When you're drawing enough cards/turn, eventually they won't, or eventually you'll reset the board state with Vomit and keep right on asking the questions. A unit-heavy deck that lacks support removal (like yours) will lose to this, a lot. If you want to document some games, I'd be happy to walk through them and explore lines of play etc.

Any card that is an automatic 3-of in any deck, no matter what the deck is trying to do, no matter what other cards it plays, practically no matter what other cards are printed is probably too strong. Warpstone Excavation Contested Village Innovation If you do not have 3x of each of these in every single deck you make without exceptions, you are doing it wrong. The only way you even consider cutting any of these is if FFG prints even more busted resource/draw acceleration than these guys. Banning them, and changing the design philosophy that allowed them to be made, would be good for the game. As a deckbuilder, I would absolutely welcome the change. Alliances, Armory, Contested Stronghold, etc are a fine benchmark for resource generation.

Unfortunately, I think you're just seeing how powerful Deathmaster is here... generally speaking, any reasonable draw that gets a Deathmaster online early when the opponent doesnt have an immediate answer for him is going to lead to a win. This is why testing Skaven mirrors is so annoying - its extremely hard to find the optimal build without grinding dozens of matches. Too often, 80%+ of the cards in your deck just don't matter at all. You could be drawing the ace of spades every turn, as long as you get an unopposed Deathmaster you're just so far ahead on tempo, board presence and resource generation that you rarely lose. If you're the best player in your playgroup, I suggest you start with the Orc/Skaven list Clamatius and I have tuned for standard and really learn that list and why it works. You need to play around the opponent's tricks (IE running out your Deathmaster when you have no other units in play against an opponent running Lobber Crews seems really loose unless you end up net positive even if the opponent has the Lobber Crew). We've already run plenty of unit-removal based control lists against the Skaven and the control decks just do not stand up at all. Orc/Skaven has too many threats; Moulder's Elite in particular are extremely hard for destruction to deal with. Too, your deck seems like it loses HARD to Troll Vomit since your support count is so low, and the average cost of your units is relatively quite high. Look up the dwarves list Clamatius posted if you want a change of pace... but I warn you that the deck is substantially more difficult to play properly (and to play against properly) than Skaven builds. It could easily seem either really bad, or really good, just based on play mistakes rather than the true strength of the deck. So again, my recommendation is to really learn Orc/Skaven inside and out if you want to be playing tier 1 decks - it will improve your game a lot and help lead to insights as to what can and can't work in the format.

Impossible to comment meaningfully without knowing the cards in hand of both players & what they drew each turn. But, play errors... Orc turn 2: Greyseer should be corrupted when he comes into play, so you didnt attack with him that turn (not that it mattered) DE turn 2: I dont think you are reading Innovation properly... you didnt have the resources to play Malus there, unless on turns 1 & 2 you developed Kingdom, not Quest... Orc turn 3: Choppa can only target units in your battlefield. DE turn 3: using Deathmaster on your turn there seems really awful.

Yeah I still play competitive MTG. Lobber Crew's ability is action speed, uses the stack, and can be responded to. Also, sacrificing Lobber Crew is part of the cost to use the ability. So, when the ability is placed on the stack, Lobber Crew is already in the bin as part of paying the cost to use it. An example... lets say you and your opponent each have 2 units in play, a Lobber Crew and a Spider Rider for both of you. He uses his Lobber Crew's ability, paying the cost of sacrificing his Lobber Crew and putting the ability on the stack. You now have a chance to respond, say by using your Lobber Crew as well. Now the stack is (1) his Lobber Crew ability, (2) your Lobber Crew ability, your opponent has priority and both Lobber Crews are in the respective players' discard piles. Assuming you both pass priority, the stack resolves last in, first out. So your Lobber Crew ability resolves first, forcing him to sac a creature (his Spider Rider), then his Lobber Crew ability resolves next, forcing you to sac a creature (your Spider Rider). Note that you do not have an opportunity to play effects in between the resolution of (2) and (1); in W:I, once both players pass priority, everything on the stack resolves in sequence before either player has priority to play spells or effects. Deathmaster is a bit more complicated. His ability checks target legality both at announce time and at resolution. So lets consider the classic "Mexican Standoff" case of two Deathmasters facing each other down with only 1 other Skaven in play, say a Clan Rat you control. Lets say your opponent is dumb and fires first. He corrupts his Deathmaster (as part of the cost to play the ability) targeting yours. We check the Skaven count to make sure the target is legal, and we find his Deathmaster, your Deathmaster, and your Clan Rat, for Skaven count = 3. (Remember that Deathmaster counts all Skaven in play, not just all Skaven you control). Since the Skaven count of 3 is higher than the intended target's remaining hp of 2, the target is legal and the ability is placed on the stack. You now have a chance to respond with spells or effects, and you choose to activate your Deathmaster in response, targeting his Deathmaster. Same check as before, its a legal target, your Deathmaster is corrupted and his ability goes on the stack. Stack is now (1) his Deathmaster's ability, targeting your Deathmaster, (2) your Deathmaster's ability, targeting his Deathmaster. Both players pass priority, and the stack resolves last-in, first-out. Your Deathmaster's ability resolves first, checking again at resolution time that the target is still legal. Since no Skaven have left play and the Skaven count is still 3 which is greater than the target's remaining hp of 2, the target is legal and the effect resolves, destroying the opponent's Deathmaster. Now his Deathmaster's ability attempts to resolve, but when it goes to check the number of Skaven in play it only finds 2. Since 2 is not greater than the remaining hp of the target (also 2) the ability is cancelled and does nothing. Like I said, your opponent is dumb! Note another confusing element of Deathmaster's templating... "remaining hp" literally means the amount of hp printed on the card, minus any effects which are lowering hp. This does not include damage on the unit! In the above scenario, if your Deathmaster had 1 damage on it, it would still not be destroyed by the opposing Deathmaster's ability because its remaining hp is still 2, even if it has a damage on it. Only "minus X hp" effects like Vile Sorceress or We Need Your Blood can lower the remaining hp of a unit. Make sense? Any other questions?

Ahhh dwarves... such a good deck, so totally irrelevant due to Bolt Thrower. Can we ban the stupid thrower already so we can move on to complain about how awesome Dwarves are?!

Gutter Runners are terrible. Play Moulder's Elite if you're just looking to splash a Skaven package. And really, if you're already running those, Greyseer is a better finisher than anything you're suggesting here too. At which point you may as well play Clan Rats. Heh... Anyway, I think all this emphasis on "beating rush" etc is misplaced... this game is just really fast with all the cheap resource acceleration in the format. Innovation, Warpstone Excavation and Contested Village means successful decks just have to play at a certain pace. Its like playing Vintage MTG... the format can be diverse and healthy with plenty of angles to attack, but also be really fast due to the presence of busted resource accelerators like Lotus, Workshop, Moxes, etc. Basically, until they ban or somehow rotate the core 9 (and stop printing stuff like Mining Tunnels, Derriksburg Forge, etc...) the game just is this speed. You are swimming upriver trying to play decks as slow as the one you're suggesting here.

Usually I dont post untested decks here, but I wanted to throw this one out there from a theory pov. In MTG, one of the most effective ways to answer aggressive decks is to go a little bigger, while still being fast enough to play beatdown against slower opponents. Here's a stab at a list that tries to accomplish this, with its sights set on Orc/Skaven. I started with this: Units (20) 3 Spider Riders 3 Lobber Crew 3 Clan Rats 3 Clan Moulder's Elite 2 Greyseer Thanquol 3 Deathmaster Snkitch 3 Ugrok Beardburna Supports (16) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Contested Stronghold 3 Orc/Chaos Alliance 1 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance 1 Chaos/Dark Elf Alliance 2 Choppa Tactics (14) 3 Innovation 3 We'z Bigga 3 Troll Vomit 3 Pillage 2 Tzeentch's Firestorm This seems a fine place to start tuning, assuming bolt thrower isnt a menace in your metagame. The general idea is to disrupt and play supports early, leveraging Contested Stronghold to ramp ahead of your opponent, then start playing big, powerful spells like Firestorm, Troll Vomit, and Ugrok. As a bonus, here's a list that adapts to thrower: Units (19) 3 Spider Riders 3 Lobber Crew 3 Clan Rats 3 Clan Moulder's Elite 3 Deathmaster Snkitch 2 Grimgor Ironhide 2 Ugrok Beardburna Supports (17) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Contested Stronghold 3 Orc/Chaos Alliance 3 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance 2 Choppa Tactics (14) 3 Innovation 3 We'z Bigga 3 Troll Vomit 3 Pillage 1 Mob Up! 1 Tzeentch's Firestorm As I said above, neither list has been tested at all. Clamatius and I were speculating that a miser's Grimgor or two might actually be an effective answer to bolt thrower for orc/skaven, and the second list here is probably the best shell for accomodating him while playing the Skaven package. I'm actually fairly dubious; I think thrower can hold Innovations in-hand to play around Grimgor and recover in a single turn, or even worse, hit the orc player with a Flames to completely reset their Kingdom hammers post-Grimgor. To be fair, Skaven can certainly also hold Innovations, and thrower can probably only make this move once. So it might be good enough. But this is all speculation - I welcome others to give this strategy a shot and post what you think. It might be terrible! (there is definitely a non-zero chance that playing single-set has warped my thinking... support removal is much more scarce there....etc...)

Have you actually tested this vs. the Orc/Skaven build or is this pure theory? Because this list looks MUCH slower & MUCH less consistent than chaos/skaven and DE/skaven control lists we've tested extensively vs. orc/skaven, with the latter always coming out ahead. Theorycraft time... I am guessing without testing that this list loses to properly played orc/skaven on the order of 65-75% of the time. Deathmaster completely wrecks you, demanding that you have the answer in-hand immediately or lose (and you have no Deathmaster to trump theirs). You will spend too much time casting spells that don't improve your board position while Skaven happily re-ups by drawing 3, playing 2-3 cards every turn, eventually forcing you to choose between answering Skaven's threats or developing your own draw engine. Without Innovation in the deck (a GLARING MISTAKE by the way), you are going to start considerably slower than Skaven is in terms of kingdom/quest development. And all the while, you're fighting through powerful disruption spells like Lobber Crew and Pillage, with no answer on your side of the table to stop their resource/draw engine. So yeah, if you've actually tested this and have some anecdotes that perhaps illustrate some flaws in my thinking, great, I'd love to hear them.

Been a while since I contributed any brews here. So, here's the latest build I'm running in single-set. Its actually substantially more viable to play a midrange/control strategy in single-set than in standard, because rush is a lot less consistent. Good times had by all. Here's the build: Orc Board Units (20) 3 Spider Riders 3 Clan Rats 3 Shades 3 Lobber Crew 1 Vile Sorceress 1 Greyseer Thanquol 1 Poison Wind Globadiers 1 Deathmaster Snkitch 1 Rat Ogres 1 Clan Moulder's Elite 1 Ugrok Beardburna 1 Ironclaw's Horde Supports (17) 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Contested Village 3 Contested Stronghold 2 Har Ganeth 2 Choppa 1 Armory 1 Orc/Chaos Alliance 1 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance 1 Dark Elf/Chaos Alliance Tactics (13) 3 Innovation 3 We Need Your Blood 2 Tzeentch's Firestorm 2 We'z Bigga 1 Pillage 1 Troll Vomit 1 Invoke Khaine's Wrath It's a relatively slow deck, but also powerful and consistent, with plenty of redundancy for key cards, especially singletons. The deck is capable of applying pressure in the early turns, but dont mistake this for a rush deck - this is truly a 'Rock' deck, to borrow from MTG - a deck that uses as many high-impact cards as it can to disrupt and overpower the opponent with card quality. Early turns are spent investing in kingdom/quest (though don't overlook the value of applying early pressure if your draw allows for it), then aiming to establish board advantage with powerful impact cards like troll vomit, deathmaster, sorceress, firestorm, etc. Your goal is to find one of these, then start planning to win the game with powerful finishers. The deck develops a lot, frequently playing Contested Stronghold to quest to accelerate its draws and find a board impacting spell or a finisher. Fun fact about this deck... it develops the best cards out of any deck I've played. Virtually nothing is sacred... I've developed Troll Vomit, Ugrok, the Alliances, Warpstones, Firestorm, Choppa, Moulder's Elite, Greyseer, Lobber Crew... probably the only card in the deck I would never develop is Deathmaster. To play this properly, you need to read every situation and plan ahead... know which cards are critical to your plan.

Hate to be a killjoy, but Reaper Bolt Thrower says 'each opponent', right? So...

@ your last, AFAIK no, because once both players pass priority, the stack resolves in its entirety before new triggers/actions can go on a new stack. (which is why stuff like innovation into high elf's disdain in response to an action going on the stack doesnt work). Verena is not a problem for a deck that runs 3x High Elf's Disdain. Sure you will occasionally mise wins off of Verena (thats what Empire does after all) but thrower draws enough cards that it will have the answer most of the time. Anyway, thrower develops enough (especially w/ mining tunnels) that 1-2 will of the electors is not going to get there most of the time. So by the time you are casting 3-4+ will and Verena to shut off their kingdom, well, lets just say they would have to be very very unlucky to not be able to counter it. On the destruction side, Smash em all does absolutely nothing vs. thrower, we've tested it. Its really Mob Up and Grimgor that do it, over and above the standard 3x pillage setup. Show me a "toolbox" deck that uses these cards and doesnt choke hard vs. dwarves or orc/skaven? All of our decklists are posted in the deck construction forum, for reference while building. Its all well and good to come here and give us some theorycraft about how thrower is not that bad/easily containable etc, but I want a list I can test to prove it.

FWIW, I think Clamatius could be lowballing the winrate of thrower vs. Orc/Skaven w/ 3 Mob Up! maindeck... I would guess it's probably closer to 50-55% in favor of thrower (though to be fair my memory might be exaggerating the losses since they are so f**king painful to sit through). Mob Up! really only helps accelerate your best draws... having 2 or even 3 in hand in the lategame often just doesnt matter, because thrower has access to its entire deck most of the time; given that thrower outdraws you and hampers your offensive acceleration so much, you must be sure you can burn a zone in one attack before using a mob up, and by that point they are generally going to have the Disdain. It comes down to whether you draw more Mob Ups than they draw Disdains, and given that your best offensive draws are also your worst at setting up a draw engine... its just not as good as it seems on the surface. @DavidTJ - 9 damage being enough to burn Kingdom in the lategame means your opponent was playing the deck...wrong. I hear developing every single turn (just about) in a deck that forces the rush opponent to win in a single turn is good... Starting to think it might be helpful for Clamatius and I to post some detailed game recaps turn by turn or something so you guys can examine our logic? I dont know. Its pretty shocking to me to hear people continue to claim thrower is a mediocre deck when it is so clearly overpowering the format right now. One side or the other is clearly missing something. Don't get me wrong, I think you can definitely build haterator.dec that absolutely slaughters thrower (and as Clamatius said, if the format had sideboards the deck would really not be much of a menace at all), but maindecking a ton of narrow, bad hate cards will get you annihilated vs the field... its not as if Skaven or Dwarves arent viable deck choices after all. (As we've said before, Dwarves would probably be the deck du choix if we were going to a 5k-type event today, simply for its high margins of success against people who arent prepared for it... thrower is non-interactive enough that you will lose plenty of games even when your opponent has no idea what is going on).

Thats a pretty stupid house rule, no offense. Makes it very tough to play around Blessing of Valaya. Do you require them to assign 3 pts to the Dragonmage too?

Sorry, I really dont want to rehash the "why bolt thrower is best and you're dumb/a bad player for thinking otherwise" argument. Its been done to death on these forums and I'm pretty content to let it lie. @ Darkdeal - FWIW I agree that the majority of W:I players are too casual/disinterested in playing thrower for it to really warp the game (as it should, if the game was played at a 'pro tour' level). That's fine. For my part, I approach games with intent to design the best deck possible, and since that deck is so clearly bolt thrower (given the current card pool), continuing to innovate has seemed pretty pointless for a while now. Single set is just a lot more entertaining. If someone comes up with sweet new tech or awesome cards are printed that throw off the bolt thrower choke hold, sweet. Until then I will continue on in single set, building weird triple-faction control decks and losing to Clamatius' dark elves

Standard is kind of boring. I feel like its a solved format for now... as much as Mining Tunnels helps Dwarves be competitive with Skaven, it puts Bolt Thrower so far over the top its comical. Basically the game is going to be learned like so: Phase 1: put together some basic decks from each of the factions, and come to the following conclusions: Orcs are really fast. Skaven have ridiculously high card quality. DEs are really disruptive. Dwarves have a lot of tricks. Chaos is good at killing stuff. Empire blows donkey balls. High Elves are like bad dwarves. Phase 2: build the "obviously best deck" by combining skaven and orcs. Complain that rush is too good. **YOU ARE HERE** Phase 3: look for room to innovate and beat the rush strategy, finding one or both of these decks: Chaos unit removal and/or DE/Skaven aggro-control. If you find Chaos first, be sad when you find DE and realize DE absolutely shreds Chaos. Declare DE/Skaven the new best deck in the format. Phase 4: Realize you can play a ton of supports to neutralize the unit removal of DE, tuning your orc deck to beat DE. Be sad when you realize Orc/Skaven is actually best, just as you feared in Phase 2. But...lo and behold... a light at the end of the tunnel... by now you've gotten good enough at the game to realize dwarves are actually awesome when played well. Be satisfied at a healthy rush/midrange meta, and/or bemoan the lack of a good control strategy. Phase 5: Find bolt thrower. Realize every other deck is laughably bad against it. Test a couple of matches half-heartedly, then go back to Phase 4 meta because its about a million times more fun to play. Wait for bolt thrower to be banned (or play single-set!). There you go. Good luck on your journey.

Yeah, going to go ahead and disagree with you there. You can play terrible decks and win in MTG too - even the most dominating decks rarely post better than 60-65% vs. the field. In fact, I would say that standard W:I is a much worse format than MTG standard right now, because of Bolt Thrower's choke hold on the format, and don't even compare it to MTG Legacy for number of viable archetypes... If your complaint is "Min/maxing 'Spike' types shrink the card pool" well... fine, but thats a CCG/LCG-wide complaint not limited to one game. OTOH Single set for W:I does alleviate that to a degree by forcing you to play more cards - but on that point, my biggest concern with banning the "power 9" (see what I did there?) of 3x Warpstone/3x Innovation/3x Contested Village right now in single set is that the dropoff in card quality would be enormous. We're already teetering right on the precipice playing 41 other cards; including 9 more means playing some real drek.

Yeah... Deathmaster is completely solid even as 4 cost for 2 hammers playable in any zone. If he kills even 1 unit, or gains tempo by deterring them from playing a unit, he is pure gold. If he goes unopposed long enough to kill/deter more than 1 unit? There is just no way you are losing the game when facing a competent player with a similarly tuned deck. Clamatius and I had a Orc/DE/Skaven v. Chaos/Skaven single-set match the other day where I had a filthy double-warpstone opening with Rat Ogres & double Clan Rats by turn 5. I outdrew him by probably +12 cards over the course of the game and STILL lost to an unopposed Deathmaster. The problem is compounded in single-set, as Clamatius said, because the answers to Deathmaster are usually not 3-ofs. So, while its true you arent going to "live the dream" and run out Deathmasters every turn through their removal with 5 other Skaven in play (Nice Moulder's Elite!) as sometimes happens in standard, and ofc you arent going to see him nearly as often, when he DOES come out, its such a beating that it takes some of the fun out of an otherwise awesome format.

This format is *sweet* so much more varirety than standard. Heres my Orc/DE/Skaven list that is "tearing it up" right now. Its basically a midrange/rock deck - as much good stuff, removal, disruption, and pressure as I can pack into one list. 30 Units 3 Spider Rider 3 Snotling Pump Wagon 3 Squig Herders 3 Followers of Mork 3 Lobber Crew 3 Clan Rats 1 Clan Moulder's Elite 1 Greyseer Thanquol 1 Deathmaster Snkitch 1 Poison Wind Globadiers 1 Rat Ogres 3 Shades 1 Vile Sorceress 1 Boar Boyz 1 Ironclaw's Horde 1 Ugrok Beardburna 13 Supports 2 Har Ganeth 3 Contested Village 3 Warpstone Excavation 1 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance 1 Chaos/Dark Elf Alliance 1 Orc/Chaos Alliance 2 Choppa 7 Tactics 3 Innovation 1 Troll Vomit 1 Pillage 2 We'z Bigga Deathmaster may need to go (he is just ridiculously unfair in this format) but otherwise this is just a ton of fun. You get to actually play with guys like Ugrok... draws are *just* slow enough that there is real room for play mistakes and interaction with your opponent. 4 cost and above cards no longer need to be game-breaking to be playable - the Rat Ogres/Clan Rats engine has consistently been a top performer in this list. Seriously a breath of fresh air, I strongly recommend this format to those of you tired of rush Skaven mirrors, bolt throwers, and other such nonsense.

Just reinforcing what Clamatius said... my strategy rapidly became "play supports, apply token pressure and bide my time til I draw troll vomit, then wipe his board and win". One of the strengths of the orc deck is the ability to commit a reasonable amount of power to the board with very few cards. I could often apply a game-winning clock with 2 attackers, forcing him to overcomit, then end up ruining him with a Vomit, leaving him with no draw/resource engine to speak of while I am in position to put 8+ power on the board the following turn. Call the Blood is a decent "getcha" when you don't know they have it, but it isnt really hard to restrain myself from playing We'z Bigga and it doesnt have that many targets to begin with. It has a nice interaction with the Globadiers, but those guys kill most of my offense by themselves. I am generally not attacking you until i find a Vomit/Deathmaster to deal with the Globadiers anyway, and if you're trading Call the Blood for a Moulder's Elite, I am getting the better end of that deal - my elite can be played any time and start beating face, while your CTB is only active in a very narrow circumstance. Virtual card advantage at its finest. I am generally much more scared of We Need Your Blood (and in fact I was playing around WNYB for a couple games til I realized he didnt have it).

I eagerly anticipate everyone joining the "bolt thrower is the best deck" bandwagon, so we can rapidly transition to the "ban the bolt thrower" bandwagon. The deck is seriously degenerate and bad for the game. FWIW Darkdeal, I'd recommend you try our Orc/Skaven build vs. your DE/Skaven, and I think you may come around to that as well. Ours isnt that much slower than your orc build and it is *much* more resilient. Obviously a lot of the matches just come down to boring "last Deathmaster standing" fights, but the early Pillage/Lobber Crew disruption of our Orc/Skaven list as well as the support count make it a pretty rough matchup for the DE list. Not to mention, in that match I definitely want to be on the side of the table that can cast Troll Vomit. Filthy card in the Skaven mirror. Almost as dirty when they know you have access to it and slow-roll their threats (esp when you have Pillage to punish slowrolling) as it is when they walk into it and get blown out. Current Orc/Skaven build is: 25 Units 3 Spider Riders 3 Snotling Pump Wagon 3 Lobber Crew 3 Crooked Teef Goblins 3 Clan Rats 3 Clan Moulder's Elite 3 Greyseer Thanquol 3 Deathmaster Sniktch 1 Rat Ogres 12 Tactics 2 Seduced by Darkness 2 Troll Vomit 3 Innovation 3 Pillage 2 We'z Bigga 13 Supports 3 Choppa 3 Contested Village 3 Warpstone Excavation 3 Orc/Chaos Alliance 1 Orc/Dark Elf Alliance Also, currently experimenting with adding 1-2 Rock Lobber for some combination of Rat Ogres, Troll Vomit, Crooked Teef Goblins. I suspect -1 Rat Ogres, +1 Rock Lobber is going to end up being right.

You're basically in agreement with my writeup actually I didnt say mindlessly attack a single zone until its burning - rather, I suggested that for the bolt thrower matchup you want to put yourself in a position where a single un-fogged attack wins the game, as soon as you can. So, lets say you're attacking for 7 instead of 8 on that next turn - the best strategy against many decks is going to be attacking a clean zone with your 7, in order to force them to block with their quest guys on your next attack and limit their outs - meaning you are basically always either going to disrupt them or threaten a one turn clock. But vs. Thrower, it would actually be better to attack into the already damaged zone for 7 to be able to subsequently threaten to win on any following turn (assuming you have a reasonable enough draw engine to build your offensive force above the "burn in 1 attack" threshold on the next turn, but thats down to deck composition as well). Make sense? @Clamatius - I think you're underestimating how good the dwarves are man! That list is scary as hell to play against on the Skaven side of the table. And while I agree the High Elf's Disdain splash is poor assuming Orc/Skaven as the dominant tier 1 deck, that changes if you assume Bolt Thrower is the most played archetype (admittedly a stretch given the reports we've seen so far, but this is theoretical metagaming). I guess I'd phrase it as... if I was going to a major pro tour level tournament tomorrow, if I wanted to play the best deck, I'd play bolt thrower. if I was afraid lots of people would be packing thrower and I wanted to avoid endless mirror matches while maintaining a decent rush matchup, I'd play dwarves splashing High Elf's Disdain. If I wanted some game against the dwarves and bolt thrower but assumed the majority of the field would be other jank, I'd pack Orc/Skaven (what you called Seduction Skaven). That's where I got my tier listings. The other decks are reasonable choices, but dont really do anything better than the tier 1-1.5 decks I listed above, at least IMO... certainly worth further discussion...