Youâd get to dump quite a few resources on the board in turn 3 though. Maybe open with just spells, leaving the tech 1 as a decoy until you can use heroes to stabilize. Build a heroes Hall?
Iâm happy to play black PbF against anyone that thinks they have the answer. I mean that, as I really want to be proven wrong; I want to know how Blue P2 wins (shoot even Blue P1 struggles pretty hard in my experience).
I canât conceive of a solid blue response to Vandy + Skeletal Javaliner + Worker on P1T1.
Musketeer and/or Porkhand + block is the best I have and itâs a pretty sad attempt.
Black seems to have all the game at Tech 0 and blue seems to have no compensation at any higher tier.
Sure, open a thread and take your first 3 turns, assuming I play a Building Inspector in Scavenger Turn 1 and build my Tech 1 + patrol a Traffic Director in Technician Turn 2 (Floating 7 gold). If you decide not to kill the BI on turn 1, he patrols in Technician on turn 2, and the Traffic Director patrols as Squad Leader (and I only float 6 gold).
Iâll decide what to tech after I see what you do, to make the research better.
@EricF Oh man, so I assume youâre suggesting youâll pick the game up on P2T3 Blue, and make your turn 2 tech choices based on only my P1T1&2? This sounds like lots of fun!
Just to be clear, Iâll be basing my T2 tech choices on what you do on your T3, to make it easier to discover âwhat blue should do.â
I will probably also cheat a little in determining my draws.
If it were me, I would start with Vandy + Javaliner and then add Jandra + Tech 1 on turn 2.
Probably wouldnât play more to the board in order to reduce the ability of Bigby + Judgement Day to wreck me. Would direct whatever damage possible to Tech 1 and the rest to the base.
from my experience judgment day is the last thing blue think about against black.
Blue needs his units more than black since black really just need the heroes and can afford to lose units
In a normal game where both players are attempting to play in the first 2 turns, I would tend to agree.
In this context, P2 is going T1 pass T2 pass in order to hoard gold for a comeback attempt at T3+
The comeback attempts with the most potential are going to be the ones that can cause a large reduction in P1s force before P1 untaps. Rule those out by making them not cost effective and it gets harder for P2.
If P1 is able to get a tech 1 building kill on P1T3, that further narrows the comeback methods at P2âs disposal. Thatâs part of why I am partial to using Jandra on P1T2.
The experimental response is only against an opening of Vandy + 1 or more 1/1 guys, so @FrozenStorm should/must start with that turn 1.
Yep, I am also sticking to my âscriptedâ P1T2 Black play of HH + Tech 1, and Teching DP + One of Nether Drain, Bone Collector or Shadow Blade, based on the P2T1 play (the float 3 would be a little suspect, I think Iâll probably start out teching Nether Drain but wonât say for certain so EricF stays in the dark on that)
And since the prompt of this thread was Vandy Jav Haunt T1, Iâm at least going to start our experiments with that.
Iâll be âplaying the turn 3 drawâ fairly, and workering from Graveyard, Summon Skeletons, Archery, Jandra, Imp and Rogue, as they are all fair game in my first cycle when I do this. Usually though, Rogue, SS, Graveyard and Archery are what I prioritize.
Very interesting matchup !
What about keeping track of P1 Blackhand Scourge vs P2 Flagstone Dominion where P2 won ?
I didnât win many, but letâs contribute with mine !
P1 Vandy rushdown vs P2 Truth tech rush (win with crazy luck)
Some questionable advice from a newbz Blue player
Black starter is incredibly versatile and is your main threat in this matchup !
Deteriorate is of course awesome, but StW is surprisingly even more terrifying. Thieving Imp is not as hard to deal with as it is with Mono-Red or Mono-Green for example, and Graveyard is not as dangerous as it might look like.
Typical P1 Black gameplan is T1 Vandy + Javelineer + Haunt, followed by a hero-based gameplan around Metamorphosis and Dark Pact. Black is quite likely to delay Tech II there.
P2 Blue has many options, and after some games I came up to these conclusions (ok keep critical mind there, Iâm not the best Codex player in the world)
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Donât waste too many gold on cards. Your opponent can heal his heroes by leveling up and remember a Reputable Newsman with a Tower is a higher threat for opponentâs Javelineer than a Brave Knight is. Keep gold to build a Tower (will be useful once Metamorphosis will be on anyway !), Tech buildings and to recruit lvl 1 heroes. (yeah feeding their xp bar is painful but you really need them to keep some cards in hand).
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Donât go too low on cards. Your strategy implies Tech II and Tech III units, and you need to cycle your deck as fast as possible.
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We all love the Scribe, but yeah donât forget about Overeager Cadet to build your Tech II as soon as possible. Even if you might not have Tech II cards in hand, Tech II is a threat which might act as a leer to save your Tower.
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Play mostly units. Jail, Manufactured Truth, Eyes of the Chancellor, Boot Camp are awesome as P1 but very dangerous to use as P2. Ultimate spells arenât your first choice option, use them to react to exceptional board states and with caution.
To sum up, I think that with this on mind you can win something like than 20% of your games as P2 Blue !
Did this game ever happen? And if so how did it go? If not then why not?
To sum it up: not going well for Blue. It would be really nice if one of the playtesters could weigh in and âshow Frozen how itâs done.â To, yâknow, show that itâs doable.
I was more of a Green/Black + this multi seems broken letâs try it player in playtesting so wouldnât be much help with that.
What Iâm worried about is that even if Blue has lines of play that can survive Blackâs aggression, Black just has too many different threats. Blue may have a line of play that extends themselves to counter a particular strategy of Blackâs, but Black can just as easily switch to another one, and Blue doesnât even know if itâs countering the right strategy in the first place. If two seasoned players are finding the Blue side of the matchup challenging with perfect draws and knowledge of the opponentâs strategy, what would happen in practical play when Blue has none of these advantages? Using the âperfect opening lineâ against Meta wouldnât work if your opponent isnât going for Meta at all.
To be fair, Iâm only taking semi-perfect draws (aiming for about the 75 percentile of quality).
Clearly the do nothing -> Free Speech + Scribe isnât working out. Typically I would trade cards for board position against an aggressive opening (ie: Overeager Cadets), but black has discard effects to make that âsuboptimalâ - to wit: Imagine I play 2x Overeager Cadet on turn 3, then discard 1, draw 3. One Shadow Blade later and Iâd have no board, and only 2 cards in hand, with little prospect for recovery. Although, there might be something to that, with a little bit of variation.
Iâm not seeing why you wouldnât be discarding 2 and drawing 4, did I miss a discard earlier?
Also I suppose the idea would be to put things in technician to vaguely recoup that, but it is a problem for sure.
Imp Discard and Worker are the other 2 cards used up.