Thanks! And thus you have a Rhino Rampage deck! [Growth]/Bashing/Past.
1 Like
āThatās just DeGrey-dingā or āYouāve made a monkey out of meā
[Present]/Strength/Anarchy
The gameplan is to use Geigerās Temporal Distortion spell on Jefferson DeGrey to bring out Disguise Monkey. Twice.
6 Likes
Alliteration themes!
Feral/[Fire]/Finesse - Roaring Fire! In A Crowded Theater
Play aggressively with Finesseās powerful early game spells and some T0/T1 hasty dudes. Two-Step + a haste unit is a lot of sudden attacking power. (+Centaur is good overpower). Discord (or Behind the Ferns) helps red starterās fragile attackers survive to attack again. Harmony lets you get away with casting more spells - 3x 2/1 unstoppables is nothing to sneeze at, but it might be more situational for this dex. If you can get Jaina out as well, it works well with Fire Dart. Finally, Jaina whole suite of fire things gives you answers to Tower or pesky heroes who eat your dog & level up to heal.
Blood/[Bashing]/Balance - True Balance
You start with the perfectly balanced neutral deck, equally suited to an aggressive Blood build or patient Balance tech. Will you walk the middle road, or be seduced by an extreme?
Thereās a surprising amount of synergy here - between Kidnapping, Nature Reclaims, and Tiny Chameleon, you can deal with units, heroes, buildings, and upgrades. Rickety Mine and Gemscout Owl help with leveling expensive Troq and Midori. Bashing units benefit greatly from Drakkās haste sources, and include 3 economical vanilla units for Midoriās midband. If you have access to both Blood & Balance, your opponent /must/ respect the possibility of a Shoddy Glider + Wandering Mimic play - your reward for keeping the balance.
[Past]/Present/Peace
I think this one is an actual competitive deck, described in serious posts elsewhere.
2 Likes
The General Gets What he Wants -
Peace/Discipline/Present
The man who killed Graveās father (I imagine the ghost of Daigo Stormborne would be confused fighting alongside Onimaru), and the same man who turned Geigerās creations into an army used for oppression. If a man will not give up his sword, he can instead become his sword. For their own good of course.
3 Likes
Mirror, Mirror: [Truth]/Anarchy/Present. I theory-crafted this in the āWhatās your favorite deck?ā thread, but when I tried it out it was even more fun to play Chaos Mirror on Mirror Tokens than I had thought. I lost pretty hard, but it might be viable?
Green Lantern: [Growth]/Blood/Future. The goal is to get out GaLina GLimmer, Shoddy GLider, and GiLded GLaxx.
1 Like
Ninja Deathstrike: [Ninjutsu]/Necromancy/Finesse
Combine Finesseās precision with a ninjaās natural deadliness and stealth. Then Necromancy adds an extra helping of deathiness.
1 Like
Gimme Dat: [Law]/Blood/Future. Community Service, Kidnapping, Ogre Recruiter, and Assimilate. Take what you want!
4 Likes
The Birds: [Peace/Truth]/Strength/Fire/Balance/Disease
Use Aven and Birdās Nest at Tech 0. If running Balance, Gemscout Owl at Tech I. Depending on your specs, either Air Hammer, Roc, Molting Firebird, and/or Cursed Crow at Tech II.
My preference is [Peace]/Strength/Fire, with a Tech Lab, and maybe some Generalās Hammers for good measure. Air Hammer seems so solid in a base race or in taking out Tech buildings, and Firebird hits all of the opponentās defense. BUT, Disease gives you one slightly cheaper hero, and Truth gives you one genuinely cheap hero. Truth is probably the best, for copying Rookās birds early, and copying Air Hammer later.
Sirlinās Angels - Demonology/Finesse/Feral
3 combat oriented female heroes, you should always build a heroesā hall!
Stranger Thugs - Strength/Growth/Bashing
3 demihuman heroes inexplicably working together!
Typical MTG Control - Law/Fire/Discipline
Youāve got Wrath of God, Lightning Bolts, and Disenchant plus lots of ways to answer potential threats. Jurisdiction gives you a toolbox of answers and depending on the starter you can be more aggressive or more controlling. Injunction as often as you can to really simulate an MTG control deck.
Token.dec - Necromancy/Growth/Peace
All your heroes make multiple tokens and youāve got MoLaC available. Garth can also fetch an Over-sized Rhinoceros which isnāt on theme, but seems prettttty good.
Surprise! - Anarchy/Ninjutsu/Present
Lots and lots of haste options as well as some stealth. I think Inverse Power Ninja would go nicely with the Red starter. You can give all kinds of things haste which can make for some surprising turns. Maybe Drakk would be better than Zane?
3 Likes
Your Surprise! is actually one Iāve talked about with @Hobusu. It was going to be my next deck after CAWS. I was going to challenge you with it, actually.
1 Like
Iāve currently trying out Ninjutsu/Anarchy/X, precisely for the Stealth (as @ARMed_PIrate knows). Although I prefer the White starter with it. My latest try is with X=Balance (stealthy Basilisks are pretty useful, plus it gives me a way to destroy upgrades and potentially fliers), but Iām not settled on that. Iām not quite sure what Present brings to the mix - other than more haste and being generally great, of course!
@NikoBolas - I would change your Sirlinās Angels deck, replacing Finesse with Fire. Iām not sure River is really a ācombat heroā, Jaina seems much more fitting, both thematically and gameplay wise (your other 2 heroes smash them directly, while Jaina lurks behind and destroys buildings with Flame Arrows etc).
1 Like
When I think of a ācombatā hero, I think they midband at 3 and maxband at 5, gaining +1/+1 at each stage. Both Vandy and Cal do this, but youāre right River is a little smaller even at maxband. She does provide some utility (as would Jaina!) as well as some speed (not sure if you need it with Vandy).
Hero strategies in general seem fragile because if you misplay or your opponent finds a weakness they can quickly benefit from the 2 free levels.
1 Like
Law of Nature
In nature more often than not, Balance = Strength.
[Balance], Strength, Law
Or
[Law], Balance, Strength
[Necromancy]/Past/Wheel ā You die in the Past, you Die Forever.
Objective: Prynn maxband, Trash 1 unit (+1 with a seer), Netherdrain Prynn to midband, Blackhand resurrector her after she dies to fading upkeep.
Pull it off and you PROBABLY win! Even works on targetable tech 3s! Spend a bit of gold, never have to deal with any more pesky Pirate Gunships.
Whatās wheel??
2 Likes
3rd wheel, probably not important to the pairing, but sticks around trying to be interesting.
Could be anything.
2 Likes
Looking over your thoughts in the thread against Eric, I noticed you didnāt consider Discipline as a third spec. Do you think it would be worth it for Training Grounds?
Can honestly make an okay argument for quite a lot of specs, even outside of tech 2 reasons.
Discipline has a 2/3 sparkshot -> 3/4 readiness hero at the 4 gold midband level which is quite spectacular. Tech 1 also brings sparring partner (cheap, really strong effect if you can keep it on the field, as even non-combat heroes have decent enough stats and leveling with a mere +1/+1 to defend reasonably against many combat tier heroes) and Rambasa twins as a two in one garth maxband target.
Strength has Rook, who is pretty self explanatory in terms of early hero drops ā not much at tech 1, but birds nest and possibly entangling vines are strong enough that you probably donāt care.
Sets lacks the same kind of statblock as the others but maintains a respectable offensive capability or can be quite taxing to attack if not patrolling early on. Tech 1 has a beefcake with IPN and speed of the fox/hidden ninja give some irritating options.
At tech 2, Discipline has all variously good units (and a few mystics too!), strength is possibly least exciting generically as not much exists to boost Doubling, though grappler is respectable, and De Gray is situational, while Glorious Ninjas, and Porcupines are quite good.
The important thing to remember is that Tech 2 is a fairly long way into the game, so first I would be asking to examine what specifically you want to be bringing in for the early stages; a combat hero and something strong in the early game is probably as good or better to be thinking about than any modest tech 2 considerations like training grounds.
Air Force
[Present]/Balance/Anarchy
Mostly just revolves around Wandering Mimic. Hopefully the Nullcraft can imbue it with haste and flying. Zane can maybe do haste if not. Geiger can maybe add sparkshot. Balance can add most of the abilities somehow.
Anarchy mostly chosen because haste and flying are both key and Zane can add haste easily. Anarchy also allows Chaos Mirror which is fairly strong with Nullcraft. That can help survive until the Mimics come out.
Faerie Dragon also has some synergy with Nullcraft. Just hit a unit for 1 with the nullcraft and put a Faerie Dragon rune on it and it dies.
Pirate Gunship is pretty good air power too with a tech lab on Anarchy. Temporal Distortion could also be pretty good with hasty flying mimics as could the Geiger max band ability.
With this deck you probably donāt want to sit long at tech 1, if you can avoid it. The idea is to use cheap stuff to hopefully hold off the opponent for a few turns and allow you to do devote gold to early tech 2. Maybe even skip tech 1 entirely and just tech spells before turn 2 and mimics before turn 3 so they will be in deck for the second go around with the aim to get P2T3 tech 2 with mimics casted and swinging on P2T4.
The threat of Zane coming out does OK at convincing the opponent not to mount the strongest possible offense also, which is helpful.
1 Like
Donāt you want Future for the Air Force?
The only Tech 0 flyer is purple, the only Tech 1 flyer is Gargoyle (though you could argue Birdās nest is a pseudo tech 1), but probably doesnāt fit in the air force. Present doesnāt actually have any flying.
3 Likes