I’ve been taking the Starting Deck Breakdown from @Barrelfish’s Beginner’s Guide to Workers. Your suggestion here seems to be specifically designed to be good against Black (For example, having Newsman appear in two different sections with specific numbers), but I wanted this section to be more general – it should mostly hold true for any matchup. With that in mind, I won’t be using this part of your suggestion.
This mostly looks good, though I may have to rephrase things a bit to fit it into the space I have or to make it clearer.
I don’t know enough about Blue to say whether this is good, so I’ll wait until other people give it the OK or suggest changes. I can say that turns 1 and 2 are probably fine, but that’s about all I know.
The idea is that the breakdown of the starter decks is as general as possible, but the recommended tech choices for first game is specifically designed to do well against their “opposite color” (so like you said, Red vs Green and White vs Purple). The reason that the build order is at the bottom of the sheet is so that you can ignore it after the first game, and just look at the top part for a more general overview (but it’s still there if you want it, of course).
You’re right that Blue has to be more reactive than most other decks, but this is still a beginner’s guide, and giving tons of matchup specific advice would be both beyond the scope of this guide and more information than would be possible to fit on the page. Hence why I want the parts that can be matchup-independent to be as general as possible, so players can learn what is usually good in what situations and then figure out for themselves what changes value in each matchup.
Well I finally got around to doing this. I shameless stole the tech plans from the existing reference sheets, and my hope is to repay the favor by generating (or convincing others to generate) tech plans for the yet-to-be-completed sheets.
I’ve added a new reference sheet for Flagstone Dominion (aka Blue) to the OP. Thanks to @EricF for yet another great build order!
Over at the Beginner’s Guide to Teching, there are already build orders for all of Past, Present and Future. I can’t make the reference sheet for Vortoss Conclave (aka Purple) until there’s a consensus about which one to use, so:
So far, @neigutten is the only one saying to choose a build order other than Present. I’d like as close to a unanimous vote as possible, so can I ask you why you don’t want Present? I don’t want to make you feel forced to go with the majority, I just want to see why you have a different opinion.
I’ve updated all the existing sheets to include a URL for @Barrelfish’s Beginner’s Guide to Teching. Since this is meant to be printed out, I didn’t make it a proper hyperlink and instead provided a shortened URL (both because the original was too long and so that it would be easier to type). In addition, I’ve added short strategy descriptions to the Bashing and Finesse sheets and slightly altered the Finesse build order (swapped Cloud Sprite out and put in Leaping Lizard). I still don’t have a strategy description for the White sheet (which uses a Ninjutsu build), so if anyone can help with that, I’d appreciate it!
Because Present doesn’t teach new players about the things that make purple interesting, fading and forcast. If you choose purple as a starting color you probably choose them because of those special abilities in particular. Or, to say it differently, you are disregarding a large part of purple if you don’t focus on those things.
Well, that seems to be an even better argument for not using it? If it is “really easy” having a starting strategy around it might not be as useful as a starting strategy around something a bit more complex?
As a complete beginner, I must say I’m a bit surprised at how much more used Present is at Tech II than Past or, in particular, Future. Sure, I can see how good Present’s Tech II units are, probably better than the average Tech II cards (and let’s face it, most specs have some pretty OP stuff at Tech II, by design) - but to me Future’s Tech II options look just as strong. Present does look to have really strong spells, and Geiger’s max level ability for further nonsense, but of course you can still use these in a Monopurple deck without having Present as your Tech II choice.
I’m also surprised that Present’s Tech III (that octopus thing) is regarded as so weak. Sure, you have to keep it alive for a turn, but it’s got 8HP so that shouldn’t be too hard unless you’re getting completely blown away - which you probably aren’t if you can actually play a Tech III unit. And once you get to actually use the ability, surely that’s game over in your favour?
Yeah, I’m only a beginner, so I’m clearly wrong. I’d just be interested to know why though.
Hyperion and Tricycloid are exceptionally strong (especially Hyperion) and combo well with many purple cards (e.g. Geiger’s Maxband, Temporal Distortion).
Almost all Tech III cards are strong if they can stay in play for a turn. That makes them strong cards in general but not relative to other Tech IIIs. The best ones have haste or at least some immediate effect.
Not saying that it’s not good to play an Octopus if the opportunity presents itself, but you won’t pick Future for it’s strong Tech III option.
Yeah, that’s what I was expecting the reason to be. I want to agree with you, but I feel like forcing a beginner to use a tricky build order for their first game would be a bad idea. While I hope that everyone who learns Codex starts with the Core Set for their first game, some people will use the expansions first, and I don’t want to alienate those people by assuming they know more than they do. They can absolutely explore the other specs, but it’s good to give them simpler stuff at first. Besides, Present has some cool and tricky things it can do too!
[quote=“robinz, post:76, topic:1077, full:true”]
As a complete beginner, I must say I’m a bit surprised at how much more used Present is at Tech II than Past or, in particular, Future. Sure, I can see how good Present’s Tech II units are, probably better than the average Tech II cards (and let’s face it, most specs have some pretty OP stuff at Tech II, by design) - but to me Future’s Tech II options look just as strong. Present does look to have really strong spells, and Geiger’s max level ability for further nonsense, but of course you can still use these in a Monopurple deck without having Present as your Tech II choice.[/quote]
That’s because a lot of Present cards are more reliably useful. Hyperion, Trycycloid and Immortal are very obviously strong, and they don’t have any “tricks” needed to use them. You can do tricks with them, but that just makes them better; if the tricks don’t line up, it’s not the end of the world usually. Compare that with a time rune based Future strategy. There’s a real possibility that if you can’t get the time runes off through your other cards fast enough, your opponent will just kill you before they even arrive.
(At this point I saw that Zejety posted. I agree with what he says, but I’m still posting because my answers to both questions are slightly different.)
One thing to consider is that in order to play any Tech III, you have to pay 5 gold to build a Tech III building (meaning you didn’t spend it on killing their stuff or putting down more stuff that turn), and then you have to wait a turn for a chance to play the thing at all (which gives them a chance to either shut down your Tech buildings or just kill you). If at that point your Tech III unit doesn’t do anything the turn it arrives, they get another chance to either get rid of your Tech III or to just kill you.
Compare Octavian to the Green Tech III units. All three of them have something they can do to influence the board state immediately (destroying 2 things, summoning hasty squirrels, or getting to cast free Growth spells) and they also have either Resist 2 or Untargetable to make it harder to get rid of them before they can attack. Meanwhile, as powerful as Octavian’s ability is, it only works if your opponent was unable to either destroy your Tech III building before you summoned it or kill it after it got summoned (or just kill you). It’s not useless, but it’s leaving you vulnerable for two turns when others (even in the faction that’s infamous for not having immediate effects from playing their units) can at least do something earlier.
Thanks for the detailed answer - that makes sense. I will query you on just one point however:
I completely accept that any strategy involving Forecasted units may leave you vulnerable. But only 2 of the 5 Future Tech IIs are forecasted. Hive, Void Star and Xenostalker all look pretty awesome to me, and involve no time runes whatsoever. I guess they could be rendered ineffective by an opponent with lots of fliers themselves (or really heavy on anti-air), but otherwise I don’t see how they’re massively worse than Hyperion and Tricycloid.
I guess I’ve dragged this thread way off topic now though
I brought up the Forecast units because in general you have to go all in with them or they don’t work. The air units in Future are also good, of course! However, if you focus too hard on air superiority you might be vulnerable to your opponent’s units running under yours and killing you first. It’s a balancing act where you either need to set up good enough defenses to not worry about that or you need to get enough power behind your attacks that you can win the race, and that’s also tricky for a beginner (especially since Flying is often misunderstood by new players for a while).
I don’t mind, since this kind of discussion helps me make sure that the guides I make are actually good for teaching new players.
If most people want present, do that ^^ I am clearly in a minority, and I’m not going to be upset in any way by any form of community work that ends up being done ^^
The Vortoss Conclave reference sheet is up! The only one left to do is Blackhand Scourge, but there aren’t yet build orders for every spec in the Beginner’s Guide to Teching. Notably, I’d like to hold off until the Disease build is written so that it’s clear to everyone what each of the options to vote for are (so you’re voting for a specific build order, rather than an abstract “something that uses Disease Tech II”). If anyone can contribute by creating a build order for any of the missing specs, please do so!
I’ve made a decision to overhaul these sheets a bit, and as part of that I’ve expanded the General Advice and made it a separate sheet! In the near future I’ll be removing that section from the existing sheets and expanding them to include build orders for all three specs in each codex. I’ll be prioritizing getting a Blackhand Scourge sheet up so that there will be links for all of them, since I believe I’ll lose editing privileges on the first post soon. As always, let me know if there’s any improvements that can be made on any of the sheets, but especially on the new sheet.
