I’ve been meaning to try this as probably the best Legendary combination. Nice to know it works well.
I’ve been trying it as [Demonology]/Strength/Truth, and having Jandra plus Graveyard feels solid.
That said, Jandra becomes a liability relatively quickly, and that deck combination feels super vulnerable to any sort of unit or upgrade disruptions. Additionally, the Black starter deck is very gold hungry, especially when you have to pay +1g for the Tech 1; this makes it tough to get maximum value out of the rest of its cards (Sacrifice the Weak/Summon Skeletons.
Incidentally, I’ll be able to provide further analysis after the coming month; I’ll be running it as one of my two decks in the new tournament.
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I feel like the deck probably isn’t as vulnerable to this sort of disruption as you think. I mean, if you go all in on big legendary guys and walk right into their disruption suite, then you’ll probably have a bad time. However, Vandy and Rook are both powerful heroes with great ultimates, and if your opponent justs techs a bunch of unit disruption while you center your game plan on one of your heroes, you should come out ahead.
In my experience, I haven’t found this to be the case. Pestering Haunt, Skeleton Javelineer, and Deteriorate are all very cheap and good. I think that the black starter has some cards that do let you take advantage of having lots of gold (Thieving Imp, Graveyard), but one of its best features is that it has such cheap cards that can affect the board, so that you can spend your early gold building your buildings and playing and leveling your heroes. This is especially true with Demonology because you have Vandy.
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I personally think of the Black starter as somewhat “gold hungry” because, coupled with Vandy and to a lesser extent Garth, it is probably the color that spends early gold the most effectively. So when I play against it, I make it a point to avoid giving my opponent gold (or free levels) as much as possible. And I often lean towards using the Lookout patrol slot against it rather than SCAV.
My favorite deck so far: [Fire]/Fire/Fire. Aggressive tempo, versatile control, and easy card advantage.
Fire Arrow kills every hero level 4 and below, every T1 unit that isn’t Ardra’s Boulder, Gilded Glaxx, or an inactive Gargoyle, and a good chunk of building cards. A single Lobber brings the rest of the building cards into range; a Firebat lets you snipe squad leaders and tech buildings.
Doubleshot Archer is nearly always a 2-for-1 if she gets to attack. If you can’t keep a unit around long enough to attack, pay 1 more gold for Flametongue Barnstomper Bamstamper Lizzo and pick off a unit now, then make them attack into a 5/x before getting to your other units.
If they build defensively, it’s not too hard to find an opening for Double Hotter Fire; just having a Careless Musketeer, charged Bloodburn, or midband Jaina on board gives you 3-6 targeted damage towards killing whatever would otherwise punish playing 2 non-combatants.
You’re vulnerable to things that can snipe Jaina, like another Jaina, Doom Grasp, and certain hasty/evasive units. Very large units make your removal inefficient, so it might be worth swapping the third Fire out for Blood, for Kidnapping and hasty units. (Hasted Lizzo deals 5+3 damage to a patroller, enough to kill even most T3s). Law might be interesting - Bigby draws cards, wipes the board except for spellcasting heroes and Hotter Fire, and preemptively counters tough T2s. Or maybe accept you aren’t gonna keep Jaina alive much and go Necromancy for Garth card draw, Blackhand Resurrector, and killing heroes on alternate turns with Fire Arrow and Doom Grasp, freeing Jaina to spend more time burning buildings. (also Bloodburn synergy.)
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okay so I’ve given up on the deck in the OP (Law, Truth, Disease) for now, I don’t know what I’m doing with control decks. I especially don’t know what to do with Quince.
For now I’m going back to my first love, token units. I’m trying out [Disease],Necromancy,Growth. I really like the Arg buffs mixed with Orpal debuffs too. Arg midband is fantastic with Bone Collectors and Orpal midband is potentially great with Pandas. Looking forward to testing this one out more. I might try swapping out Orpal for Calamandra (sadness) just to get access to all the tokens.
I also find myself in a bit of a bind. I really want to like the White (my least favorite) and Purple factions now because I got some Dragon Shield matte pink sleeves for my set and those two factions look too good in those sleeves to not be used, lol.
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That is very similar to the Blood/Disease/Growth deck I was trying. I got the idea from someone naming decks somewhere, this was a Cancer deck. I love the buffs and debuffs available, and it can be REALLY killer against unit based strategies, but If my opponent focused on heroes, I had to just hope my units could stand up to the pressure. It was one reason why I tried the green starter with it. Swapping haste for direct destruction and token spam in Necromancy seems like an interesting strategy.
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I’m actually really loving mono red right now. I’ve played dozens of games and I’m only now starting to explore anarchy! I have so much more codex to play before I’m done with red, let alone multicolor.
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What was your problem with this deck? In the OP you say it is weak to building destruction, was it a problem that a rush to tech 3 happened? If they rush to tech 3 - not playing lots of units to avoid Community Service - could you not have Orpal Gloor out to play Death and Decay?
I feel I might be at that point you were in the OP, just starting out with this deck - with the black starter instead. Are there any traps you could tell me to avoid?
I’m torn between mono-white and mono-purple. I can’t think about multicolor stuff until I get familiar with all the basic tricks the mono-colors can pull off. I tried mono-green one game and liked it quite a bit too!
1-2. White/Purple
3. Green
4-5. Black/Blue
6. Red (haven’t played it yet)
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Purpleh is super fun ^^
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As I’m broadening my deck choices a little, I think my favorite spec currently is Disease, but I don’t like the black starter very much (even though it is considered very good?).
I’m struggling to find a good multicolor without black starter to put it in though. I feel no matter what I do I’ll lack answers for one thing or another.
Of course the Dream is Growth/Disease with Tech Lab so Plague Lab will spread both + and - runes. But it feels like setting that up just won’t be possible every game. (Might not be an issue though as imo both specs can do well on their own without Tech Lab)
My current try is [Balance]/Demonology/Disease but I feel like this has no good openings as Vandy is the obvious early game hero but cannot cast the strong green spells for cheap. Maybe I would be better off with a different combat hero as opener? Onimaru maybe with the blue starter? Keep Balance as the “counter everything” spec? But at that point we are so far away from my comfort zone that I have no clue anymore what strategies this would be vulnerable to…
Other than that I’ve been playing Green a lot and it is just so enjoyable and straightforward to play: Ah you’re trying something funky? Okay, I’ll just play a worker and this overstatted unit that you can’t possibly out-value.
But even if the opponent finds something that requires a more complex response, green has a tool to answer it hidden somwhere in the codex, so it is always more than just a onesided puzzle for your opponent to solve.
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I have been playing [Growth]/Strength/Demonology a lot lately. I often play Arg and purchase a hero hall early on. Because Arg makes tokens and can turn trades into 2-for-1s. This can make up for the cost of hero’s hall and it not affecting the board right away.
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One thing you can try is neutral starter. Bloom and Wither are both great with Orpal.
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I really enjoy [Disease]/Peace/Discipline, mostly for Orpal Midband + Overeager Cadet + Graveyard. Then there are some decent synergies with Plague Lab.
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Right now, I’m still slightly in the theorizing space, but I love the idea of Balance/Demonology/Law and Finesse/Ninjutsu/Past. Those are the ones I’m currently thinking about… Messed up very badly playing the former & rightfully got destroyed completely, but haven’t tried the latter yet. (Kinda got inspired by this one troupe… called Tantalus!) Anyway, I shall try my Codices once more, @Cerrus!! :0 The problem is that Demonology/Strength/Anarchy can be, like, really powerful when executed well! It’s hard not to want to play that nonsense!! Ye opponent better be fog-ing or pestering tech buildings early on or assimilating/destroying/trashing building cards or have one heck of a patrol zone to contend with ye potential for powafulness… or resort to Bribery, of course!! And, mono-Purple is still a very joyous experience!! 
(Might make a theorycrafting topic to discuss these later!!)
I like Fire and Truth together. Haven’t worked out who would complement the best for the third, or which starter deck works best. I’m still in the stages of learning my timing (either I fall very behind in the early game, or I lose focus midgame and get destroyed in the endgame by my cousin’s haste heavy decks. Either or, I run into problems not being able to do significance to the backline cause I’m terrible at board control.)
Otherwise been exploring a bit with Disease, Demonology and experimenting with a random third (atm Discipline.)
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I love purple. The straightforward power of Present (Immortals/Hyperion) is great. But I’ve recently delved into the ridiculousness of Past/Future. Hive + Omegacron and the 6/7 Mech token + any time rune manipulation both produce threats very fast for cheap.
I really want to try to mix purple with something else, but I’m having a heck of a time thinking of anything. Has anyone tried a Past/Future/Growth idea? It feels like Dinosize or Stampede could set up some sort of surprise OTK with the big bodies.
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Ready or not / now on a rampaging elephant seems like a good idea 
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I want to try this now, but I already foresee trying too hard and losing.
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