I like that the "Initiate" is clearly far superior at his school of magic than the so-called "Archmage". What do they teach those kids...

@darkdeal, I don't think we're going to gain much from talking about this further. You just arent playing against the same bolt thrower opponent I am, clearly. I don't understand how you think a deck with a grand total of 6 supports for resource/card draw is not susceptible to Flames of the Phoenix in the early/mid-game. What are your opponents doing in testing to make you think that? Must be nice to live in xmasland where you always have 3 spider riders by turn 4. Too, as I pointed out above, the inherent weakness of the "all unit" plan vs. other disruptive decks, particularly chaos and DE, makes it pretty hard to justify playing your build. We have tested with Followers of Mork/Squig Herders very extensively, and come to the conclusion that it is just worse than Alliances in those spots. That's why I consider DE/Skaven tier 2 - it loses consistently to Orc/Skaven and, at least so far in testing, it has performed worse v. bolt thrower due to scouts not offsetting the slower setup time without pillages to hit abandoned mines. (w/ pillages the bolt thrower matchup is probably favorable to DE/Skaven but that seems pretty poor in virtually every other match...wtb sideboards...). Also, just as a side note, we're been testing Troll Vomit as a 1-2of in the Orc/Skaven build for an edge in the Skaven mirror and vs. dwarves and it has been going very well. I've never liked Waaagh! (it feels very win-more-ish to me), and Vomit has been quite good to have as an out to a unit-based controlling board presence, particularly from a DE/Skaven deck. @crowdedmind - I'd be interested to hear your common lines of play with the thrower deck. In our testing, finding fogs has never been a problem; I think the deck has lost perhaps one or two games at most (when it survives to turn 4+) due to not finding a fog. I wonder if you are investing in quest enough, using abandoned mines/city gates, etc?

Sure, sure... I get all of your card choices. The DE build seems fine. Orc build... I dont see how you can play Sellswords if you expect rush to be part of the meta. Orc build w/ sellswords gives up a big % to a mirror without them. I do agree its a plus vs. bolt thrower but I'm skeptical of the inclusion. As above, your build loses hard to unit-based disruption, particularly Firestorm, Vile Sorcs, and Flames of the Phoenix. Thats why we opted for a much higher support density. You're certainly embracing the "high variance" plan for the bolt thrower matchup, but doing some quick math... they're going to see the Flames often enough to make me nervous, considering you are just about stone cold to the card. That's assuming they mull any hand without one, and to be fair, some players may not. Your build is cold to Mountain Legion too. So basically you're tuning orcs to "beat" bolt thrower (I still doubt whether you are even 50/50 without Mob Up! honestly) and lose to more midrangey Orc/Skaven builds, DE/Skaven builds, Dwarves, and Chaos. I don't really like the plan, but I get where you're coming from. And even though you're not playing it, I think Rock Lobber might well be worth testing vs. bolt thrower...

Thanks. So compared to the Orc/Skaven list Clamatius and I have tuned, you are: +3 Followers of Mork, +3 Squig Herders, +2 Rock Lobber, +1 Basha's Bloodaxe, +2 Waaagh, +3 Veteran Sellswords, +1 We'z Bigga -3 Deathmaster Snkitch, -2 Rat Ogres, -3 Greyseer Thanquol, -3 Clan Rats, -3 Orc/Chaos Alliance, -1 Chaos/Dark Elf Alliance In general, your deck will be slightly faster on average in this matchup (though less explosive - more on this in a moment), and substantially more vulnerable to Flames of the Phoenix. Your upside is you are more likely to be able to eschew building up a resource/draw engine in favor of aggression, because your 2-dorks can be played to the battlefield, whereas we're running alliances in those spots. On the flipside, you will have draws that flat lose to an early Flames of the Phoenix, and it will be very difficult for you to recover from a mid-game Flames as well without a lucky multiple-Warpstone/Village draw. Regarding explosiveness though, I think cutting Greyseer/Clan Rats actually dramatically hurts your win % in this matchup. Playing Greyseer and swinging for 8+ on turn 3 is a major reason for our build's wins vs. bolt thrower, and even though I think your deck has the potential for slightly more aggressive draws on average, aggressive consistency is not what you want vs. thrower - you want high-variance, overpowering aggression. Point is, if you are goldfishing kills on turn three or four 50% of the time and slow as molasses the other 50%, that gets you a pretty good shot at a ~50% winrate vs. thrower. But the curve drops off fast... consistently goldfishing on turn 5-6 gets you a roughly 5-10% winrate vs thrower (your wins coming when all 3 of their flames are in the bottom 10 cards of their deck, etc.) So, have you tested this vs. a well-piloted, well-built thrower deck or is this just theory? Because we have tested most of these cards, and while I will grant you Sellswords is a nice plus vs. bolt thrower (though pretty bad in an Orc mirror match...), I am not really seeing anything else here that offsets the loss of the Greyseer/Clan Rats Skaven package. Rock Lobber is interesting tech we havent tested, but seems beatable with good development management if the thrower player is aware you have it. Definitely something to try. Not to mention, your lack of Deathmaster or an answer to Deathmaster anywhere in your 50 makes this... not a deck I would choose to play... You mentioned having an updated list though, so maybe...?

...obviously? Post your "faster than Orc/Skaven" build for critique please? Or, direct me to it if you already have? EDIT: also, to be clear, the reason I give Dwarves the nod as tier 1.5 is not because they beat everything below them, it is because they have game against the major decks in the format. Dwarves splashing High Elf's Disdain is probably the best MU vs. Bolt Thrower right now, at least in theory (I'll admit we havent tested that one extensively), and Dwarves definitely are in the 50% range vs. Skaven of all flavors, with a soul-crushingly dominant matchup vs. Skaven if the Skaven player isnt vigilantly playing around their bag of tricks.

That's his baby. I'm the Skaven pilot that gets beat up by the **** thing constantly Those are sweet matches though, about 5000x more fun to test than bolt thrower.

I think what's coming to light in all this discussion is that the bolt thrower deck is extremely hard to play well, giving the impression to bad players that it is not the best deck. That's fine I suppose. It definitely is not easy. For those still undecided, I recommend you read Clamatius' thread and insights on how to play it. And, if you can bear it, practice with the thing. FWIW, in our testing - DE/Skaven does not beat Orc/Skaven. Its close to a 50/50 matchup as all Skaven mirrors are, mostly hinging on who gets an active Deathmaster, but Orc definitely has an edge overall. DE/Skaven being unable to play Pillage almost totally offsets anything they gain from WNYB/Vile Sorcs; while DE can definitely have draws where they get board control, just as often they lose to the speed of the orcs. Without a Greyseer, DE is often just too slow. Not being able to put 4-6 power on the board in a single turn reliably means they will often be outraced even with a spectacular board position. And with cheap Lobber Crews/Pillage, it is Orcs, not DE, who are the most reliably disruptive in the early game. I would say the meta for the current cardpool is: Tier 1: Bolt Thrower Tier 1.5: Orc/Skaven; Dwarf Midrange Tier 2: DE/Skaven; Empire aggro; HE midrange Dwarves get the nod as tier 1.5 because they can splash High Elf's Disdain and have some game v. bolt thrower. Skaven have to play Mob Up! as well to get any equity in that matchup - otherwise it is pretty poor. Dwarves have some excellent game against Orc/Skaven as well. If Bolt Thrower wasnt a deck I would say this was moving toward being a pretty decent metagame.

Not the point sir. They *cannot* take ideas from an outside source due to legal reasons, whether we "would totally let them" or not. Which is why we should limit ourselves to the humerous. Here's mine: Repeater Bolt Thrower Thrower 6HHHHH Battlefield. Action: sacrifice a Repeater Bolt Thrower. If you do, pick up the sacrificed Repeater Bolt Thrower card and throw it at your opponent's capital board. Burn the closest non-burning zone to where the card lands.

This deck is the truth. Also, the most annoying deck to test bar none. I think we have never tested the mirror match. I wonder why.

Wytefang said: No way. I've beaten some of the best unitless BT builds posted here when playing against them as run by a very, very good opponent. Not hating it unduly, just not finding it all that great. Sorry but we'll have to agree to disagree on this type of deck. We can agree that you & your "very very good opponent" had no idea how to play/build the bolt thrower deck, but thats about it I'm afraid. Excuse my vitriol, but in my defense, the dominance of the thrower deck is a really bad thing that is going to need some banning attention in the near future - yes, moreso even than warpstone, innovation and other degnerate resource producers. People ignorantly claiming the deck isnt dominant is not helping that cause. So, that's why I keep calling you out. The deck is legit.

Bolt thrower is the best deck in the format; if you don't think so, you are either massively over-hating it (and dropping a ton of matchup equity vs. everyone else) or you are piloting it terribly. Seriously. OP is correct to plan to beat it.

I'm going to come off as a jerk here, but its OK because I'm doing it in service to the community. TO: anyone reading this thread wondering how many cards you should have in your decks FROM: me Play 50 cards. Seriously, just do it. It is criminal that people are trying to tell you anything else. They are misleading you. They are wrong. They are bad at this game. Put them on your ignore list and never listen to anything they say about W:I theory ever again. You will be a better player for it. I guarantee it.

@Clamatius re: randomness in games, I agree that randomness is good for casual play. I do not agree that it is good in a tournament setting, especially a tournament format that is essentially single-elim. But that's more of a MTG issue until W:I gets more tournament support, so probably best to leave it aside. On topic, I'd love to see Warpstone, Contested Village & Innovate "banned" or at least rotated out, so we could get a taste of a format that was a bit friendlier to slower strategies. The issue now is that any deck in the format can leave "stage 1" on the first or second turn, and the stage 2 game of the rush decks is so resilient and fast that it is rare to get to stage 3 unless you are playing a bunch of fogs. For those unfamiliar with the "stage" terminology (I'm borrowing from MTG theory here, but its directly applicable), the concept is that in stage 1, you are severely resource constrained and your play is mostly focused on accumulating resources; in stage 2 you are no longer resource constrained and can focus on executing your gameplan; and finally in stage 3 you can essentially cast anything in your deck and the game becomes a sequence of trump - plays. In a format with Innovation, Warpstone and Contested Village, virtually every deck mulligans hands which cannot leave stage 1 on turn 1. There are few similar accelerants to leave stage 2 in W:I, however (cards like Ancestral Recall, Dread Return, Oath of Druids in MTG Eternal play are perfect examples of this kind of design), so as a consequence, decks like Orc/Skaven are heavy favorites vs. most decks, even if Orc/Skaven will lose to their stage 3 game. It would actually be interesting for FFG to design stage 2 accelerants as a solution to this problem; we already have some of these in cards like Mountain Legion, Contested Stronghold, etc. The issue for now is that these are extremely vulnerable to cheap disruption; anyone who has had their turn 2 Stronghold get Pillaged, or their turn 2 Mountain Legion get Lobber Crewed can attest to this. Cheap counterspells or tricks can help get around this to a degree (Stand Your Ground comes to mind in the current cardpool... and man, W:I sure could use a Force of Will/Daze equivalent...) but in general, some more resilient mid-game plays would go a long way toward stabilizing the format. I suppose my point is we are alllmost there in terms of having a healthy eternal format. Dwarf midrange is actually a very real deck, albeit not what I would play competitively right now (amusingly, my choice there would be bolt thrower - the only deck in the format that can actually play a stage 3 game consistently vs. rush...), precisely because Dwarf midrange has the stage 2 accelerants to play a late game vs. Skaven. Of course, they still lose to Deathmaster (undoubtedly the best trump card in the pool right now), but thats sort of a separate issue. Alternatively, FFG could opt to do cardpool rotations, new formats, and/or bannings to try and create a slower format that would allow for more stage 3 play. Either way, I'd like to see something happen soon, as there are lots of fun decks that are just being choked by Skaven/Bolt Thrower right now.

Given our current Orc/Skaven build, the thread for which is here, I posted my thoughts for playing Skaven v. bolt thrower in post #29 of this thread. I welcome insight on my lines of play, but I think our understanding of the Skaven v. Bolt Thrower matchup is pretty good, barring new technology. (We thought about running Smash 'em All! over Mob Up! today, for example, which might change the matchup considerably... or it might just make the bolt thrower play more unsummon effects... le sigh...).

After a brief test of DE scout vs. bolt thrower, I am dubious as to the effectiveness of the scout plan, unless you also run pillages (to hit abandoned mines), which is probably not the case in a world without sideboards unless you want to give up a lot of equity vs. other decks. More testing is definitely needed, but I suspect the people claiming bolt thrower loses to scouts arent investing in quest enough, and are probably misplaying their fogs/abandoned mines. You are only in really bad shape if you draw 3-4 fogs in the same turn and risk losing 1-2 of them. That's pretty rare, especially given that the scouts are by no means guaranteed to hit the fog. And even then, you can often force a critical turn before you run out of fogs anyway. Again, more testing needed to say for sure, but my initial impression is that Orc/Skaven is better vs. bolt thrower on account of speed - setup time for the DE/Skaven deck is considerably longer, and I feel like the negative equity of the bolt thrower's "all fogs and no business" draws is mostly if not entirely offset by the DE/Skaven's no-scout draws.

Actually, no. I'm running 3x Mob Up! in Orc/Skaven right now and I am still maybe 50% winrate against a well piloted bolt thrower deck. They draw more cards than you do in the early to mid game, and so are just as likely if not more to have the High Elf's Disdain for your Mob Up!s on the critical turn. Mob Up! can be relevant at forcing through damage in the early game, but as ever, winning the late game against bolt thrower comes down to luck more often than skill (once you're above a certain minimum understanding of the matchup). I would venture a guess that someone who hasnt tested the matchup would lose to a well-piloted thrower deck on the order of 70%+ of the time. People saying otherwise are, IMO, just not playing/building the thrower deck correctly. It is clearly the best deck in the format and it isnt close. It beats up so badly on every non-Skaven rush deck its hilarious. The only matchup I think reliably posts 50% winrate against thrower is DE/Skaven that maxes out on scouts and splashes Mob Up!, but again, a well-piloted bolt thrower deck can abuse the slower clock of DE/Skaven to set up a critical turn faster than DE/Skaven can handle. Abandoned Mine and good draw/development management also goes a long way toward winning this matchup.

Rezoh said: my only hope is to draw a Verena and Innovation to reset the battlefield and hope I can won after that. Yep.

You have balls of steel if you are willing to corrupt your Deathmaster without another one in hand in response to your opponent playing theirs. Innovate into another Skaven doesnt concern you at all? This matchup is so dominated by who has an active Deathmaster that I can't see taking that kind of risk unless I was imminently in danger of losing. I mean, maybe if you are offing a Greyseer in a really bad board state its worth it, but killing Clan Rats is not what you want to be doing man. And Deathmastering Clan Moulder's Elite is referred to as "living the dream" in our playgroup.

This deck can clearly lose to rush. I was posting ~40-50% winrate while learning to play the matchup with Skaven, and after including Mob Up! mainboard, I think the winrate for Orc/Skaven is in the 45-55% range. Incidentally, your playgroup's use of sideboards probably is and will continue to be a major factor in containing the bolt thrower menace. This deck is certainly a key example in favor of allowing sideboards in this game. Anyway, I'll share some opposition pov to help further discussion on this deck. From a Skaven player's perspective, the key considerations for this matchup are: Commit to power on the board before developing your resource engine. As in, if you have a choice between turn 1 innovate into double alliance or double clan moulder's elite, the latter is clearly the best possible choice, even if it leaves your kingdom/quest empty. Related to 1, apply pressure early and consistently to a single zone until you burn it. Counterintuitively for an aggro player used to forcing opponents into bad blocks by spreading around damage between 2 zones, in this matchup you must burn a zone by turn 3-4 to have a reasonable chance to win. Once a zone is burnt, if you have developed a decent resource/draw engine you should be able to threaten to burn the second zone in a single un-fogged attack. You often have only a single turn where they don't have the fog and/or counterspell for your Mob Up! - that is your window of opportunity for a win. Play around Flames by committing as few units to the board as you can, preferably masking the strength of your hand. Don't just dump Spider Riders and Choppas onto the board, and save your innovations/we'z biggas to recover after a Flames. After turn ~3-4, you must attack for lethal every turn to have a reasonable chance to win. Develop every turn, or at least every turn you can. Math matters. Usually you want to develop Kingdom for explosive innovates when recovering from a Flames. Too, make sure you play around their miser's Verena. They probably don't pack Will of the Electors, but you cannot afford to get hit with a Verena at any phase of the game. Play around Gifts by never attacking for more than you need to. They will have single-target bounce for your units, so sometimes you need to commit 1 extra, but never blindly attack with everything. This is the stuff blowouts are made of. Save your Mob Ups for the critical turn. Ideally you want to play 2, or even 3, to force them to have a fog AND multiple counterspells in order to win. When to use Pillage is probably the single most skill-testing element of the matchup. I often find it is correct to hit their draw engine early and hard if you have a reasonable amount of pressure on the board. Keeping them off resources is an impossibly uphill battle, but if you can prevent them from drawing fogs for even 1 turn you can steal games. But on the other hand, using Pillage in the midgame when they already have a full grip of cards can be a big error; it can be better to save it to force unprofitable bolt thrower activations by destroying the thrower with Gifts on the stack, etc. There you have it. Hopefully I've done my part to make this matchup slightly less painful for Skaven players. As you can see, there is a lot here. The bolt thrower deck has a TON of matchup equity vs. anyone who isnt prepared for it. I would definitely sleeve a bolt thrower deck up if I was playing a tournament tomorrow. But its certainly winnable if the Skaven player is familiar with the match and slots 3 Mob Up! in their deck.

I disagree w/ the statement that the bolt thrower deck is not tier 1. Its the only deck strong enough to post a decent record against Skaven right now. Most definitely a tier 1 deck, even vs. Skaven using Mob Up!. Incidentally, I think this deck, when properly built, is probably enough to convince me that Orc/Skaven is the correct Skaven build; without Mob Up and the speed of Spider Riders/Choppa I think Chaos/ or DE/ Skaven decks give up too much equity against this deck to be viable. This is all assuming people correctly build & play the bolt thrower deck, and that it starts being run in reasonable enough numbers that Skaven builders have to respect it. After a few dozen test games, I can definitely say that I do. This deck is real.

This deck is legit enough for me to want 3x Mob Up! in the Skaven maindeck. And I think its fair to say this deck is the first real degenerate archetype... Not that it isnt a creative deck idea, and definitely hilarious to play the first few times, but this is just degenerate as hell and really, really bad for the game if this is a tier 1 deck. Point in favor of having sideboards. Skaven can accomodate the Mob Up! in the maindeck though, for now, which will probably keep this from being a real deck choice until another archetype comes along to punish that kind of loose deck construction. For the builders in this deck thread... don't leave home without 3x High Elf's Disdain...

RE: Target Targeting is checked when the card is played and when the card effect resolves. A card effect to is considered to be targeting as long as it says “target” in the card text. So if I'm reading that right, they are basically saying everything has an intervening 'if' clause, whether printed or not? This game has such bad templating... Just to sanity check, the stack still resolves first in, last out, even though the entire stack is cleared when both players pass priority, correct? If not, and abilities on the stack do indeed resolve simultaneously, I am *really* confused as to what happens in the dueling Deathmasters case. Assuming they do resolve first in, last out though, this doesnt really change much. Just means you need a 4th Skaven to join the party before the Deathmasters kill each other (IE its really stupid to shoot first). It does open up interesting game states where one player has Deathmaster + Greyseer out and the other player can't respond with their Deathmaster. Probably a disincentive to splash 6 Skaven rather than play the full package. Huzzah for even more pressure to play a full-bore Skaven deck.

cyberfunk said: Stack order does sometimes matter with dancing Deathmasters, since there will be one fewer Skaven in play after one of the DM activations resolves. Doesn't matter. Deathmaster doesnt have an intervening 'if' clause - the number of Skaven in play is checked only when the ability is announced and put onto the stack. As long as the target is legal when Deathmaster's ability is used, the ability will resolve and destroy the target.

Vitamin T said: Really with so small of a card pool it is pretty difficult to come up with a wildly different deck that would be any good (I'm sure its possible). I'm sure its not possible... good lord we have tried just about everything from Verena nonsense to aggro-order to HE/Dwarf ramp to Chaos control to DE aggro control to Orc control to Orc rush.... yeah, you get the point. I am not sold yet on which build of Skaven is best because, as Clamatius has said elsewhere in this thread, its hard to tell. We've had ridiculous double-Warpstone, Lobber Crew, Innovate, Alliance type starts that lose because the other side gets an active Deathmaster and all yours are sitting on the bottom of the deck. So many cards in the Skaven mirror just do not matter at all. So yeah. This Orc/Skaven build maximizes speed and disruption, and that seems like a good place to be. To be fair, given tournament data that everyone is running Skaven I could see re-evaluating and building in a different direction. Counter-intuitively, things like Dark Visions, Chittering Horde, Altar etc have been pretty poor for us despite what you'd think would be a better chance of drawing into Deathmasters. Maybe we just need to test more; what we have learned is small edges in resource production assuming similarly timed Deathmasters will tip the game in favor of the faster player. The clocks these decks put on each other are no joke. But just getting an active Deathmaster without developing your board is often not good enough. Deathmaster chews away about a turn and a half or so worth of tempo as soon as he hits the table; but if you wasted the time he bought you by spending your resources & time finding him, you're net zero gain. Of course, if you dont find him, you lose. Its a frustrating match to play.

@dormouse - I think experience with other games can be relevant if you can establish a common frame of reference. Safe to say, unless you've played competitive MTG (because I havent played AGOT), conclusions drawn via comparison are just going to be a frustrating exercise for all involved. I don't get the sense that a majority of community members here have experience with any one game apart from W:I, so it would probably be prudent to limit this kind of discussion, Fair? On the sideboarding issue, I got to thinking... what would a typical sideboard plan look like? Anyone have ideas on this, theoretically speaking? In a meta so dominated by Skaven, clearly you play Skaven and pre-board for the mirror. I'm not even sure we need sideboards for anything right now. I'd be totally happy going into a tournament sleeving up my exact 50 right now even if everyone else in the room was running a 10-12-card board. The net? Maybe its not a productive time to be talking about sideboards.... I assume we'll see a few more competitive archetypes in the near future though, and maybe this discussion will be more interesting when there are more W:I examples to draw from. We'll see.