CAPS 2017: EricF ([Peace]/Balance/Anarchy) vs. payprplayn ([Necro]/Blood/Law)

Yes, please, I’ll take any tips you can give me. That goes for anyone reading this.

Happy to oblige, but before I do I just want to echo what @ARMed_PIrate said. This game can be tough to play perfectly by the rules WITHOUT software considerations, as just the edge cases of card interactions with this many unique cards in play will cause confusion, no matter how well they are worded (I happen to think Sirlin & Co did a very good job on distilling the wording). Add in a custom spreadsheet that takes a little getting used to, and it’s no surprise everyone makes mistakes (shoot, I still forget half the time whether a technician death goes into discard before or after I draw, and end up with a bad reshuffle I have to redo, and I’ve probably played more than 100 forum games at this point!)

You handled this tremendously. I know the feeling of whiffing that turn 3 draw all too well, it’s by far the swing-iest bit of luck the game design has. You had to redo the best case (drawing both teched cards) and ended up with the worst case on your redo (whiffing both), and that’s a major bummer. You did well, teching Nether Drain immediately, that was a great choice (almost worth teching two of them in that scenario, as they are excellent at most points of the game against Oni, Midori, Zane and Rook).

You already know, though, that your turn 1 was the disaster that necessitated teching it immediately in the first place. Your draw was harsh for black P2T1, no Jav, Deteriorate, StW, Jandra or Imp, all decent tempo reducers. You’ll be vulnerable to MTruth or Arrest if you go for a hero, and Eric’s opening is counting on that.

Your best chances, I think, were Rogue in SQL + Bigby in Elite, with Haunt behind. Sure, you don’t really want Bigby as your main hero, but at least Oni can’t get free levels off that. Bigby isn’t a total drag, either: he can probably get a free kill on whatever EricF squad leads, heals cheaply, and with Haunt, PBR and Bigby, you put a lot of threat on Oni. He can’t just kill PBR for free, since haunt would trade back, so now he has to Mtruth to kill it (bad trade on cards for him) or Arrest it, if he wants to avoid getting Oni killed.

I’m not sure what the Necro/Blood/Law desired synergy is, other than typical Garth / Graveyard + Blood tech 2 shenanigans, so you probably just play for that from that point forward. He doesn’t have great ways to deal with Bone Collectors, he doesn’t handle card bleed great until Peace engine is online so Imp can do good work, and then yea you just smash him with Crashbarrows as he’s trying to set up tech 2? Not saying it’s a for-sure win by any stretch, but it’s probably what you try.

Hope that helps, GL in the rest of the tourney!

3 Likes

Well, I don’t have a lot of experience starting with Black, and I don’t have a lot of experience playing against Blue, so take what I say with a grain of salt. That said…

The first obvious mistake I saw was putting Garth behind the patrol instead of in it. Since the PBR would have been in front of Garth (in SQL) either way, you get no benefit from leaving Garth out of patrol. Putting him in Scav. would at least have given you a money bonus when he died.

I also think workering Haunt in the early game is always a mistake. There’s nothing as cheap as free.

I think you should have either played Graveyard, or workered Graveyard. If you’re not going to play it in your first two hands, you probably won’t get enough value out of it for it to be worth keeping. (The dumb thing I would have done as a crazy aggro player would have been PBR+Graveyard+Haunt. This would have been terrible long-term, but interesting short-term.)

Keeping Skeletal Archery around was probably smart, as Peace and Balance both have decent fliers. Good job not workering that!

I just saw that FrozenStorm posted, so I’ll read over his comments and see if I have anything else to add.

1 Like

Graveyard/Garth/Blood Tech II strategy is certainly a powerful option. Oddly enough, though, when I first came up with this build, though, I was thinking more about Drakk enabling a Necro plan than Garth enabling a Blood plan. Skeletal Archery + Drakk Midband means skeletons can ping almost anything for 2 without dying, and War Drums makes them utterly ridiculous. That combo is what led to my only forum win so far (except for one that didn’t really count because my opponent though one of his units had died when it hadn’t, and neither of us caught it). Law is there because it’s good at stalling while I build up my skeleton army, and Bigby’s hand-fixing can enable a Skeleton Lord-> early tech III unit strategy. I’m still working on it. It’s worth noting that I came up with this before I’d ever played codex, and well before I was aware of the Necro/Blood/Truth build. Tbh, I way underestimated the strength of Blood tech II when I was just reading cards before the game came out. That being said, both plays are possible with this deck, and I imagine there’s even a reasonable way to play around Law with it if that’s what you really want to do.

3 Likes

Certainly a Drakk / Skeleton hero-centric play to spam tokens and abuse Frenzy / War Drums is also a very potent line. Hasty frenzied Bone Collectors are terrifying, and Lich’s Bargain + War Drums is just unfair :wink:

Law is decent with its stall, but yea I think Truth is much better suited to complimenting the core gameplan. Fire isn’t bad either, Bob199 would get mad use out of Lobbers and Graveyard as tricky early-game pressure :wink:

2 Likes

I disagree with this bit of advice pretty strongly. I think that Graveyard is at its worst at the very beginning of the game, because you don’t even really want to replay your Tech 0 units except for Haunt and Thieving Imp (which is prohibitively expensive at this point). If you have an opening, then getting it built early is great, but not being able to stick it during your first cycle definitely isn’t enough of a reason to worker it. This is especially true in Necro/Blood/X, where Graveyard is at its best only once you hit Tech 2. I don’t think it’s that uncommon to have Graveyard floating around in your deck/hand until around the point where you hit Tech 2 and start playing Crashbarrows. Additionally, while playing it early has advantages, it also increases the risk of Graveyard getting destroyed or filled before being able to really shine.

2 Likes

Especially in a Necro/Blood/X deck, I’m with cstick that workering graveyard early is a no-go, as is playing it P2T1 into Onimaru. You want it around for Barrows unless you’ve completely ruled out going to tech 2 in decent time.

I’d worker Archery or Summon Skeletons 9/10 with this deck and starting hand before Graveyard or Haunt. Even PBR is a more attractive worker in the abstract, though without any other cheap blocker in your Turn 1 hand it’s a tough sell to worker it right away, unless you want to just lay haunt and balk the rest of your turn 1 in favor of floating 4 for a heavy turn 2 (not a great idea but not terrible either). Summon Skeletons is pretty replaceable with Lich’s Bargain if you decide you want token spam, and Archery is tough to get value out of as P2 against anything but Nullcraft and Bird’s Nest. You don’t fear Aven, Deteriorate is its kryptonite :wink:

2 Likes

<-Not a black player. Listen to those ^ guys. (:
@payprplayn

2 Likes

Given how bad PBR is against Manufactured Tuth, I was thinking that perhaps I should have just used a skeleton token as a blocker and floated a gold. It’s got the same hp as the PBR, and lower attack so it’s less vulnerable to MT. In order to get through it he’d need to either arrest it, or play another either aven or magistrate along with MT, which would keep him out of Tech I. Of course, not patrolling my hero was obviously a mistake, as has been mentioned.

2 Likes

It’s kind of funny, I don’t consider myself great with Black nor do I like playing it much. I have played a LOT of it though, when I was studying the Black / Blue matchup with @YoungBuck and others. In a vacuum I think it’s probably the strongest starter though, and Garth / Vandy are among the strongest Specs / Heroes.

In general, Graveyard gets workered a lot. It’s tough to use well, situational, vulnerable in many ways. It absolutely shines with Barrows and Gliders though :wink: You can barely afford to worker it with Blood Tech 2 in your deck. Jandra, PBR, Summon Skeletons are the ones relegated to worker priority in this particular deck.

2 Likes

Skele + Haunt + Garth + Float 1 was a better opening as well, with Garth in Elite (I’d go for that over scav, as Elite means haunt gets a counter kill on Oni. Free early levels for Drakk is scary ^_^)

1 Like

Do you recommend workering Summon Skeletons even if I’m going for the token-swarm strategy? It seems like a key component of Skeletal Lord or War Drums plays.

You’re not kidding. I’ve only been here a short while, but I’ve already been burned by that a couple of times.

1 Like

I would, yes. Between Garth’s topband, Bone Collectors, Javelineer and Lich’s Bargain, you can still get a skeletal lord tech 3 trickshot if you’re hell bent on it. I wouldn’t recommend going for that against Anarchy in the hands of EricF though. He’ll shut it down :wink:

Same goes for War Drums. It only takes 3 or 4 units on the board for War Drums to be insane.

1 Like

Good to know. I do find I rarely cast it. Also, I’m curious what you think about skeletal archery. People seem to talk about it like it’s primarily an anti-air option, but I am drawn to it because of long-range. Do you find that it’s worth playing (again, in skeleton-focused strategies) even if you don’t have fliers to deal with?

I’ve straight up won a couple Necro/Blood games by getting an early level-up on Drakk and turning that into a hasty bone collector war drums lich’s bargain ball of destruction :wink: Some Tech 1 units cannot just be given Haste and Frenzy 1 for free, it makes them too scary (BC, Tiny B, Baron, Stewardess / Seer with Suits online yikes!)

1 Like

With Drakk, it’s definitely valid for snowballing frenzied skeletons. It’s often easily countered by a thick tech 1 unit (Brave Knight, Boulder, Argonaut) and a Tower though. I find it most useful when I definitely want a hero’s hall, but I also need to play around Birds or Nullcraft. It’s a lot harder to pull off a Skeletal Lord trickshot than it seems.

If you already have a couple skeletons ready to attack and you can afford a Drakk midband + Archery though, you can certainly get good immediate value out of it occasionally before the opponent gets a chance to tower, and that’s not to mention that they almost have to buy a tower (which could cost them the gold needed to counterplay something else). And, you now have scarier skeletons for the rest of the game, and a card thinned out of your deck!

1 Like

I’m beginning to get that. The only time I’ve ever had 5 skeletons + Skeletal Lord on the field is here, and I certainly didn’t need to tap them to win: Casual Games: Legion Vs payprplayn - #12 by payprplayn

I figure even if you never pull off the trickshot, the buff on SL can let skeleton archers shoot a volley through a tower without dying, which is worth something in itself.

Edit: I meant that to just be a link, not a quote. How do I link to halfway down another thread like that?

Yea Necro Tech 2 and Lord specifically are worthwhile for their face value, not just the tech 3 trickshot. And it synergizes well with Drakk (hasty Wights or Necromancers are also scary ^_^). Still though, I think more often than not, you’ll be better off with blood tech 2 and using the Skeletons as Bugblatter fodder :wink:

So Bugblatter is better than corpse catapult for that purpose?