So I’d like to get ideas on how to deal with a Necromancy enemy deck. In this specific case, [Necromancy] / Anarchy / Blood. (I’m mono purple).
Looking over Necromancy, I see that it is about lots of skeletons (and skeleton archers), bringing heroes back from the dead, killing heroes, and long-range attacks. Graveyard and archers are a nice bonus as well from the starter, and those last all game.
As a side bonus, there’s a (fairly expensive) spell to trade skeleons for one of my units, and as I’m writing this, I just realized that the sacrifice skeleton for a card is NOT “once per turn” – every skeleton is a draw. So this deck can play a lot of cards against me. And those skeletons (even the draw sacrifices) feed Corpse Catapult.
And as a very minor side bonus, there is obvious synergy with a tech 1 from Anarchy, that can sideline patrollers if a spell is played.
What are ways to deal with this? I’m playing mono purple, and the archery upgrade, and graveyard building can be dealt with by a future spell (yet this seems expensive – am I missing something?). I don’t see any way to deal with long range.
A good goal would be to find some reason that this person wants to use the backup techs – playing one of the two reds in tech 2. What can purple do to threaten that?
Oh – I just noticed the ultimate spell in Blood – +X where X is the number of units (all the skeletons). I was planning on using past as my primary focus, but maybe I need present to lock enemy heroes from being able to level up (both Blood and Necromancy are annoying at mid/max)
Hey, don’t overthink in terms of what strategies to counter how, instead build your own battle plan and act on it. Yes, sometimes an adaptation is warranted, but if you build your own strategy purely reactively, you’re on a safe way to loose.
Also it’s always easier to look at past games of such a deck (and pilot) to understand what to expect.
That being said, I guess the ratio of players using Garth to actually play necro tech 2 is way below 10% as it is just awkward unless you manage to keep tons of skels alive for your first real tech 2 turn.
I would not say purely reactive, but I would say that I was taught, the best way to succeed is consider: What is my best most? How does my opponent counter that? How do I counter that counter?
Deteriorate, sac the weak, etc – there’s too many ways to take a cheap 1/1 out. So neither chronofixer (present) to stop hero improvement, nor gate disciple (to bring stuff from the codex directly to play) are viable. The “obvious” way to stop the sacrifice trades is to either have enough cheap low-tech units (ha, purple is expensive) or kill lots of skeleys (and … you say it’s hard to keep the skeleys alive actually? Hmm, … so a “lots of offense” strategy to kill them as fast as they show up.
Ohh … other than hero Zane, he has nothing with haste … and nothing that steals gold.
I’ll say this, it’s very unlikely someone would go necromancy tech 2 in that deck.
It’s not impossible, but it’s not really built for that. Garth is there to feed the skeletons into the grinder and draw cards to make the blood engine go, and provide defence through lich’s bargain which red sorely lacks.
The idea is to gain board control through black starter and skeletons, use that to tech up and then pressure endlessly.
Also I think it’s bold to ask for advice when fighting against someone who can see your post!
It would be incredible unfair to be getting advice in private.
And it is fair to be getting general advice, or so I thought. I had considered that black starter and Garth to be a really good pairing.
It wasn’t until the comment about keeping the skeletons alive that I realized – if I can bring in lots of creatures (with what I got in my turn 1? :-), he either loses them or risks base damage.
When I rethought the idea of black skeleton, taking into consideration gold cost and card counts … he’d just put them in technician and scavenger, and rely on either the kill benefits or me letting them live.
Now, finding out that Blood is the real threat here? Hmmm … May want to rethink my teching then.
Oh, and even Blood has ways to take out those 1 health “ability units”.
EDIT: And, learning more about Garth and his weekness, I have not only red with garth, but purple with garth.
Stewardess of the Undone and Rewind are very effective for getting rid of a bunch of skeletons, as are Tricycloid and Xenostalker. War Drums and hasty bone collectors with Drakk are also definitely threatening, but you have big tech 1 units and immortals you can use as a wall, too. Cronofixer will be hard to keep alive but you’re right that it’s excellent for dealing with those hasty heroes!
