Thanks for the report. This metagame is both completely predictable and highly dissapointing, though admittedly a small sample size. Surprised there wasnt at least a handful of people playing bad pet decks. I guess Skaven in particular and Destruction in general are obviously powerful enough to rule out even developing an attachment to anything else. Not a good thing for the health of the game. Say it with me... ban Deathmaster & Clan Moulder's Elite for a healthy tomorrow~!

Yeah... this is why testing Skaven variants is so frustrating. You have to play dozens of games for the minor cards to have enough impact to noticeably overcome variance around your powerful ones. When your powerful cards completely dominate the matchup its hard to evaluate the advantage offered by each board. Turn 2 pillage + lobber crew, or cheap spider riders/choppa, sure does seem powerful. So does Chill Winding your offense, untapping my Deathmaster and flaying your board, or Hate into WNYB on turn 0. But which set is actually better in the mirror? My gut says a lot of the DE stuff is "win more", e.g. Har Ganeth, Altar, Chill Wind... in that you're only getting a huge advantage out of it when you're already ahead on board. Orc stuff seems more broadly powerful as a toolkit. But, I think it might be completely legit to ignore tuning for the mirror and focus on beating the rest of the field, since I agree that literally some 80+% of mirror matches just devolve into who can draw the most Deathmasters. Errata for Deathmaster to have him only count Skaven you control would actually go a long way toward "fixing" this problem (and of course by fixing I mean completely neutering every destruction strategy that doesnt play the full 12x Skaven package... but yeah, separate issue).

Fine, point taken. The discussion was devolving into "the game i am comparing warhammer to is more 'similar' than the game you have experience with, therefore your argument is wrong and mine is right" and that's dumb, to say nothing of the inane "my real world experience > your maths" nonsense. Am I coming off harsh here? I guess. Sorry. I'd rather have discussion a few levels above that, though. Fair? @hypothetical meta, I agree DE is probably where I'd want to be in that triangle. Do you think Chaos can't be built to beat DE? In that case the meta devolves into DE and Dwarves/HE(?) as tier 1, with Dwarves as a foil to Chaos @ tier 2. What beats DE? Presumably something that doesnt care about being scouted, preferably with resilient aggressive units. Might be an Order-based aggro deck, might be Orc rush. WTB this format instead of Skaven Skaven Skaven...

Interesting thought experiment. I'd guess Chaos or Dark Elf control is probably best, for having access to the most means of disruption. But I could definitely see a viable Dwarf/HE deck as a counter, especially to Chaos. You'd probably see an RPS meta... Dwarves/HE beat Chaos, Chaos beats DE, DE beats Dwarves/HE. Orcs might still be viable but Squig Herders are a (very) far cry from Moulder's Elite, and without Deathmaster they lack a meaningful way to interact with problem units. The rush deck probably still runs a Skaven package feat. Greyseer but isnt nearly as barrrroken. I'd guess that deck ends up being the annoying deck that occasionally goes "turn 2 Spider Rider Spider Rider Choppa Choppa, burn your Battlefield, go?" but most of the time sputters out and lets the opponent get control. in other words, the "40% of the time, it works every time" deck.

The classic problem (at least in MTG tourney structure) of "decks that get to the top 8" vs. "decks that win in the top 8". Not that I think there is a deck out there right now that consistently beats Orc/Skaven. To your point though, I think you'd rather be armed with the Chaos build in this thread if you're going into top 8. Based on our testing, if the Skaven and Chaos are both played at 90%+ efficiency with knowledge of each others' decklists, the Skaven has a pretty clear edge, probably 60-65% win rate. But there is just so much more room for error on the Skaven side of the table in that matchup than in the mirror that, unless you are playing against world class people and you expect them to know what to play around immediately, Chaos is probably a pretty competitive choice, assuming it doesnt take a dirtnap against the rest of the field. Only really a consideration if you expect most of the field to show up with this Orc/Skaven build though.

How is what games you've personally played relevant at all in a theory discussion? No one cares. Extrapolate your points based on logic, not from irrelevant comparisons. Arguing how "similar" games you've played before are to W:I as a basis for justifying your points is the dumbest thing I've read this week. Cut it out. @ the sideboarding issue... the point is, any eternal format is going to eventually devolve into broken combos/strategies, barring a miracle of game design. If you believe in miracles, then we're golden, and you can dive into thought-experiment land with nary a care in the world that what we're talking about might ever apply to your "real world experience." For those of us more inclined to pessimism, the lack of sideboards suggests competitive deckbuilders are going to be faced with a problem: how do you combat what you expect to be the dominant broken strategy? In theory, you are going to have 2 approaches. Assuming there are some narrow hate cards to stop the broken strategy (defining "narrow" as "bad unless specificallly played against the strategy it is designed to combat"), your first approach can be to find the deck shell that best incorporates as many of the good hate cards as you can without derailing your path to victory. Couple things to say on this. Note that I'm assuming the game designers' approach to broken strategies will be to print narrow hate cards. They could also ban the offenders (which would actually be a pretty good solution), or print cards that are good AND good hate cards at the same time. Usually the latter is going to result in yet another broken archetype, but this could be an interesting point of discussion; at any rate, since pessimism prevails with me at least, I'll assume this won't be successful at anything but spurring power creep. And lets assume for now that banning isnt going to happen. So, since we assume they will print narrow hate cards, now we note that sideboards allow many, many more decks to utilize the hate, because they don't face the burden of weakening all their other matchups by having to maindeck them. This allows for more varied deck construction in a meta with an oppressive dominant strategy. The other path to victory is speed. If you can be faster than the broken deck, you can still win. So the most linear aggressive deck is also a reasonable choice, assuming it is at least competitive with the dominant deck. There we go. Those are my starting premises. Can we have a discussion on why these are wrong, or right, without appealing to how many legos we've built and how similar legos are to W:I? Seriously.

I didn't say "ultra-narrow decks beating the field." I said ultra-narrow decks would warp the meta such that the only viable deck choice is the most broken deck, or the deck most capable of stuffing itself full of hate cards while still (barely) functioning. And you'll note that I said the haterator decks are a dog to 60% of the field... meaning yes, most people are still going to play stuff that isnt the best deck, even though its a poor choice competitively. Two main reasons for this: first, because some weird quirk of human psychology makes people want to "express themselves" or whatever by playing something bad, and second, because a highly skilled player wants to exploit their skill edge over the field by avoiding coinflip mirror matches all day. The point is, without sideboards, there is literally nothing stopping this kind of narrow deckbuilding. You pick the deck capable of doing the most narrow, broken thing, ideally stopped by as few otherwise good cards as possible, and you tune it to beat the mirror. Clamatius already pointed out the most obvious contender - how many more fogs/enablers do they need to print for the bolt thrower decks to mandate Skaven builds with Mob Up! in them? Once that happens, are they going to be willing to ban cards to balance the format? For what its worth, I agree with you that excellent game design can avoid this kind of degeneracy. And FFL's design team has certainly done a lot of things right (though they did print Deathmaster, Clan Moulder's Elite....). But without sideboards, even tiny design/development mistakes will lead to format-warping degeneracy, at least among the top-tier of competitive players (the Johnnies are going to keep on building their crazy decks regardless). Call me a pessimist, but I can't see them maintaining an eternal (everything legal) card format for long without some broken strategy showing up and warping the format. Skaven may already be there, and if it isnt, its really, really close.

No sideboards is the worst decision they have ever made with regards to this game. Hope you all enjoy Skaven. Literally nothing else is viable... if you don't maindeck all of your Skaven hate, you lose to Skaven. If you do, you lose to everyone else. Nice format. And generally speaking, without sideboards there is no legitimate means to punish players for relying on overly narrow, otherwise exploitable strategies in deck design. Because there will always be bad players running bad decks, playing Haterator.dec means you will be a dog to 60%+ of the field. The most broken, narrow strategy is always dominant, with slight tuning to beat the mirror being the only room for innovation. Imagine Legacy MTG without sideboards... a healthy, vibrant format devolves into the most linear broken deck (Dredge/Ichorid) and a mishmash of maindeck graveyard hate and jank that loses to Dredge but beats the hate decks. That's all W:I will ever be until they revoke this terrible decision. Or, I suppose, until they show a willingness to ban format-warping cards (of which there will be a neverending stream without sideboards to balance them). The negative effect this decision will have on W:I tournament play cannot be overstated.

RE: Innovation, lets consider an example... Compare game state A: Turn 1: Lobber Crew to Kingdom Turn 2: Alliance to Quest, Clan Rats to Kingdom, use Lobber Crew Turn 3: Clan Moulder's Elitex2 into the battlefield, hit Quest for 5 To game state B: Turn 1: develop + Innovate, Lobber Crew to Kingdom, Alliance to Quest Turn 2: Clan Moulder's Elitex2 into the Battlefield, use Lobber Crew, hit Quest for 4 Turn 3: Clan Rats to Kingdom, hit another zone for 5 By turn 3, B has done 4 damage to their Quest and 5 damage to another zone, and is down only a single card (remember B draws 2 on turn 2) compared to A, which has done 5 damage to Quest only. B is in position to burn either of two zones and can now comfortably sit back and prepare their hand to play around the opponent's interaction. A still has at least 3 turns to victory, B can win in as few as 2. Is this kind of tempo advantage by turn 3 worth being -1 card? Up to you. For my part, testing has shown B wins more often from this game state than A does, and we're pretty much sold on Innovation.

Playing with a card as bad as Will of the Electors is a significant drawback which should not be overlooked. Clamatius is correct - a miser's Verena or two can be a blowout, especially from a non-Empire board, but building around it (IE, playing an empire board) just telegraphs your strategy to a smart opponent and requires you to play cards that either start or rapidly become dead draws unless you live the double-will Verena dream. Yes, playing Will + Verena gives you a few percentage points in every matchup. Enough to offset playing dead cards when you don't get a god hand? Not according to our testing, at least in the current cardpool.

The situation: a Master Naga surrounded by walls, bane spiders and kobolds (with no empty squares adjacent). Zyla, being able to Fly, is able to move into a square adjacent to the Naga - however once she does so, she is grappled in a square with another figure, say a bane spider, and cannot spend movement points. Since Zyla would have to end her move in a square with another figure, which is obviously not allowed, I interpret the rule as saying she cannot move into a square adjacent to the Naga, as long as the square is occupied by another figure. Correct?

Perhaps an expansion for RTL which gives the heroes access to some OL-like gameplay elements, similar to how RTL worked for the OL w/ lieutenants, avatar cards, etc... Imagine having to play out sieges where the OL plays a lieutenant & minions in the "hero" role to storm a keep, while the heroes share control of the keep defense forces (with the heroes themselves taking part, if they are present). Always seemed odd to me that breaking a siege involves attacking a lieutenant in some forest glade.

I believe the curse doll in my version of the game says "discard after equipping at the start of your turn to remove up to 2 effect tokens" - definitely not a way to remove dark relics.

My wife and I decided to try the following: At the start of each game week, the Heroes discard their entire hands & draw 1 feat card each Heroes get feat cards normally, 1 per hero when a glyph is activated Hand size limit of 2 We like feat usage for the 'surprise' factor it gives the heroes - without feats, hero turns play out fairly predictably, and we like the effect feats have on upsetting the OL's plans. What we dont like is saving only the best feats for the precise moment when they are useful - we wanted a rule to encourage feats to be frequently used as small tactical bonuses rather than hoarded and used strategically to counter the OL's momentum at critical points.

Did an encounter last night with a leader that has Undying. The encounter card says that the leader "always succeeds on his first Undying roll." The leader was killed with a weapon that "ignores Undying." What happens? I read it that the leader would succeed at the Undying roll if he got to make one, but since the weapon denies him the chance to make one, he is just dead.

From the list of answered questions (stickied in this forum): Can a hero target his own square? No. (Except via Dark Charm.) From the JitD base rules: Melee Attacks: Melee attacks can only be declared against adjacent spaces. My conclusion: When Dark Charmed, the OL cannot force a hero to use a melee attack on themselves. Ranged attacks and Magic attacks can be so forced. Thoughts?

Mordrag's ability to gain fatigue "each time he is wounded"... do you read this as a single point of fatigue each time he takes N wounds? or N points of fatigue each time he takes N wounds? The former seems extremely weak in comparison to, say Varikas' ability, while the latter seems... powerful. Thoughts?

Hi all, Does the Sorcerer King avatar ability in RtL grant 10 threat on each dungeon level (i.e. 30 threat by the 3rd level of a dungeon), or a one-time 10 threat on the first level only? Appreciate the clarification,