What's the Play? - Ramhorn Rampage

Codex
1

You are playing [Blood]/Bashing/Growth, and it’s the start of your Turn 7 (as player 2):

In play:
Max Arg with three -1/-1 runes from Orpal (0/2)
Regular-sized Rhinoceros (5/3)
Makeshift Rambaster (1/2)

Tech I - 5hp
Tech II (Growth) - 5hp
Tech Lab (Bashing) - 3hp
10 workers, 0 floating gold

In Hand:
Careless Musketeer
Hired Stomper

Drakk and Troq available to summon

In Deck:
Oversized Rhinoceros

In Discard:
Bombaster
Mad Man
Pillage
Crash Bomber
Iron Man
Guargum, Eternal Sentinel
Stampede
Charge
Stampede
Trojan Duck

Your opponent is playing [Finesse]/Disease/Peace, and has:

Board Info:
In Patrol:

  • :psblueshield: Squad Leader: Brick Thief (2/1+A)
  • :psfist: Elite:
  • :ps_: Scavenger:
  • :pschip: Technician: River Lvl.1 (2/3)
  • :target: Lookout: Cursed Crow (3/3)
    In Play:
  • Orpal Lvl.6 (3/5) (includes a +1/+1 from Bloom, and a damage)
    Buildings:
  • :heart: Base HP: 12
  • :heart: Tech I HP: 5
  • :heart: Tech II HP: 5 (Disease)
  • :heart: Tech Lab HP: 4 (Finesse)

Oni available to summon next turn

Economy Info:
Cards:

  • Hand: 4
  • Deck: 10
  • Disc: 0
    Gold:
  • Gold: 0
  • Workers: 10

Aside from Cursed Crow, the techs you’ve seen are 2x Brave Knight, 1x Elite Training

What’s the play?

This is one of two What’s the Play’s from my recent series with @Eijolend. They’re not true puzzles, in that I don’t think there’s a guaranteed win here. I’m happy with the way I solved them, but they both made me think through a number of possibilities, and I got the sense that someone else might well have played them very differently.

Since there’s no true “right answer” (that I could find), please share your reasoning/argument for why your version makes the most sense to you. (:

2 Likes
2

I think my turn would probably go something like this:

Tech 2 cards (Guargum & Trojan Duck)

Play Hired Stomper, killing Crow (paying for resist) (5)
Build Tech 3 (0)
Patrol Rhino in SQL, Stomper in Elite, Arg in Technician.

Killing the Crow seems pretty important, especially with us wanting to get to Tech 3 because of the units already in the deck. After that, we don’t have a lot of gold or units to make good attacks with. Building Tech 3 now gices us a chance to untap and just win on the spot, and if not, we know we have the Rhino in our next hand, so we have a good shot of keeping the building alive until the turn after as well.

One alternative line is to play midband Drakk instead of building Tech 3. Then, we can trade the Rambaster for the Brick Thief, and have Rhino kill River to maxband Drakk. I don’t like this quite as much, because I think that with the current contents of our deck, we’re too likely to just draw blanks for a couple of turns and possibly lose that way. He just reshuffled, so he could have all sorts of nasty things in his deck that we haven’t seen yet (like Spreading Plague), and giving him an extra card by killing River just gives him more gas.

2 Likes
3

Those were the two I saw. I ended up going with the second, because it allowed the Stomper (boosted by Arg) to take out Orpal and survive as a 2/1. With the opponent’s board completely clear, max Arg and max Drakk on the table, and 10 worth of attack, he actually resigned. But I think he had a chance of really shaking things up before I could get Tech III going if he had stuck with it.

4

Oh I see, you can hit maxband drakk before playing the stomper and actually get Orpal. In that case I like your line better.