Everything you do is just an illusion
Eh, not really for Balance. It gives you a pretty decent air game, bad decks would struggle against a Potent Basilisk, and you get an easy out against decks that rely on certain buildings or upgrades. Strength gives you Birds to quickly get the Mimics up in the air, too. Even Bashing at least lets you put out Revolver Ocelot to get sparkshot on the Mimics.
Anyway, here’s a quickstart driver’s manual.
[Discipline]/Disease/Law
Short version: early hero aggression with Grave, or maybe Orpal against some decks, assisted by the White starter, and maybe Sparring Partner. Transition usually into Disease II, backed up by Insurance Agents. Lots of cheap units and ways to draw/cycle cards let you easily play a needed card, or jump to Tech III for Plague Lords / Lawbringer Gryphon.
Starter and specs
- The white starter gives good options for early aggression with a hero, so going on offense early with Grave is pretty good, especially as Player 1. Orpal is a nice alternative option against some decks, e.g. Purple + Peace to discourage spamming Boot Camp on the indestructible Hardened Mox (“Juggermox”).
- Discipline is for Grave in combat, Sparring Partner to boost early hero aggression, Rambasa Twin for insurance cheese, and Mind Parry Monk if the opponent has strong targeted effects, e.g. Prynn and her spells. Martial Mastery is also good to throw in later to reach key cards, and know which Tech building to take down.
- Disease is the go-to Tech II spec. Abomination really changes the game: it stops mass-small-unit strategies dead, and between its -1/-1 aura and its high stats it’s also good for handling units that want to survive their first attack, such as Hyperion. Gorgon is a very efficient patroller for its cost, and helps with your hand size too. Plague Lab spreads - runes, and can copy Grave’s sword rune. Outside of Abomination, your options are pretty cheap, so getting Tech III is reasonably doable. Before Tech II, Crypt Crawler is good on offense for extra sparkshot and killing fliers, and Plague Spitter is good on defence versus, e.g., heroes. Orpal has some great spells, starting with Sickness to get good trades, and if he hits maxband he can threaten Death and Decay.
- Law is here primarily for Injunction, but it’s also a good choice for a Tech Lab pick: Insurance Agents can quickly get you a lot of extra gold, even if it’s just on a Tech 0 unit like Fox Primus. Insurance Agent + Rambasa Twin is especially good, because you effectively get twice the gold you paid for the Twin in the first place. If you’re struggling to get an insured unit killed, in a pinch you can sacrifice it with Orpal’s midband. Tax Collector’s nice if you expect the opponent to float, but this is of more use in a multiple-game session so you have time to get a good read.
Other things
- Be aware that you don’t have great removal options for Tech III units. Gorgon can hit them with deathtouch, but if the Gorgon can’t hit them your only option is Grave’s sword.
- Between your three heroes, you have spells to look at the opponent’s hand (Martial Mastery), and either discard spell cards (Carrion Curse) or steal a unit (Community Service). I’ve struggled to work this into my tech plans, but the option for hand burn is there.
There are going to be things I’ve missed – I’m not very familiar with Discipline II, for example, and I’m most comfortable with value strategies – so try things I haven’t mentioned. Go nuts.
1 Like
Use White Starter/Grave,
Then Disease and Insurance,
Tech 3 for the kill.
True Power of Storms:
Kills a base in two big hits,
Tech 3-drops and draw.
Present TD to Red,
Wall up with meaty bodies,
Growth Tech 2 if slow.
5 Likes
edit: thought id beef this up given some of the other posts.
Discipline/Necro/Law
- tech 2 rush for insurance agents.
- board flood for tech 0’s (liches bargain) and tech 1’s (twins)
early game
-discipline and white starter can either bully opponent (P1) or force good trades (P2).
-tech twins/spartner
mid game
-after playing twins/spartner, tech as fast as possible
-carefully monitor reshuffle when going to tech 2 to ensure you have insurance agents lined up for a turn 4/5 swing. can use bigby stash as well
-use insurance runes on either Rambasa Twin or Morningstar flagbearer
tech, insurance agent x2
late game
-use card draw from insurance agents, technician, and garth midband to draw into liches bargain, and flood the board.
-safe attacking will assist to multiply value from tech 0/1 units
tech, liches bargain x2
ideal play
-have ramabasa twin or flagbearer on the field
-play insurance agent(s), place rune(s) on Twin
-suicide twin into opponent patrol, gain gold/card
-either max a hero, or drop liches bargains.
1 Like
Difficult haiku
When limited content is
Given by the source
Insurance Agent
Pays for many small units
Don’t die to tech 1
I like haiku driver’s manuals!
Mono Black
Kill their hand with Imp
Vandy wrecks the early game
Garth fetches, GG
3 Likes
Black Finesse:
Same as Mono Black
With Nimble Fencer pressure
Instead of Disease
4 Likes
Relevant to my current game
1 Like
[Peace] / Discipline / Disease
A bully hero / True Power of Storms dex, with the blue starter. I picked the blue starter because its 3s have some use later the game, and because Building Inspector is bananas if you can make your opponent pay 3g for their Tech I.
Your Tech I options are complete in the sense that you have units at every price point, 0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4, so you can adjust depending on how much you think you’ll be spending on heros. You probably want one or both Brave Knights – besides being generally good, they can return to your hand so your can hit the magic 6 3g cards for double TPoS. Martial Mastery, Boot Camp / Elite Training, and Sickness are all viable choices as well.
Default Tech II is Discipline, mainly for Training Ground and Focus Adept. Disease and Peace have a lot of solid 3g units, your highlights are Gorgon and maybe Flagstone Spy. You don’t need to crush their base with your IIs – that’s what your heros and ults are for – your goal is to wring as much gold and card advantage out of your opponent as you can while preventing them from building any momentum.
Winning looks like: you end the turn with Brave Knight, Training Ground, and maxband Oni and Grave. Your opponent can only kill one, and they have to guess which ult you’re holding. You have both.
- Don’t be afraid to summon Grave before Onimaru; he’s 2g cheaper to heal, so you can pay for one blue spell and still come out ahead.
- Orpal is deceptively strong in combat if you can get a +1/+1 rune or Training Ground’s +1 attack on him. (Elite Training, too, and remember that Sparkshot is still combat damage for purposes of his passive.)
- Between Reputable Newsman and Carrion Curse, you have the best ability to prevent your opponent from playing spells, upgrades, and even buildings.
- Martial Mastery is way better than it looks.
- Sickness is pretty good against the white (and red?) starter.
- Focus Adept is brilliant for helping Readiness units/heros survive to patrol & level up. Brave Knight doesn’t mind patrolling with 1 hp.
- You have three big scary ults. You don’t need to cast them to win – you can also force your opponent to spend inordinate amounts of resources to keep your heroes dead.
1 Like
Multiple win cons
Make life tough for opponent;
Big heroes are good.
3 Likes
Thank you Zhav 
A question has come up asking: What do I do if I suspect my opponent is stacking their deck favorably?
I want everyone playing in this (and any other forum tourney) to have fun and through 3+ years playing here, I can honestly say I trust the players here to play fairly. Good and bad luck has striken everyone I have played with (including myself), and while it’s reasonable to feel down when the odds don’t work out in your favor, I would appreciate folks be kind to each other and give the benefit of the doubt.
I will ask, then, for anyone suspecting cheating to get a second opinion of a tournament judge (myself or Zhav) before jumping to harsh conclusions.
tl;dr: Be Kind, reach out to a judge with questions or concerns.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
8 Likes
Advice for Discipline/strength/finesse
The power of fencers, sensei’s advice, and snapback in this deck cannot be overstated. Discipline is good for air power and boosting 2 already strong heroes, but against most codices finesse or strength will close out the game. Finesse in particular provides the extreme value of leaping lizard along side maestro and grounded guide, both of which continue to benefit you through an injunction. Strength provides whitestar grappler and doubling barbarian, which help deal with troublesome units and heroes very well, and doubling barb especially combines well with two step. Discord is indispensable for dealing with hordes of weenies, and nicely softens even big units.
6 Likes
[Future]/Peace/Anarchy
There are several gameplans:
First of all you have standart cheeze tactics like Art of war rush or jugger-mox (boot camp mox from purple starter)
Also, this codex provides you Peace engine, which more effective with battle suits.
And, ofc, mass air-forses from Future.
There is T3 tactic - fast Pirate gun-ships which won many games on this forum.
The reason, why i picked Future and didn’t pick Past, is Assimilate - who can steal opponents garrison or activated MoLaC, so you can destroy opponents game-plan.
3 Likes
The threat of Assimilate is often stronger than the card itself because of how it warps their plans. I have played MoLaC against Discipline before because I thought that I could use haste to activate it and crush them before they’d be able to take it out with Versatile Style (and iirc I was right). I would never play it against Future.
3 Likes
I’ve won multiple games by dropping a MoLaC or two, charging them, and destroying the opponent’s base all in the same turn. With enough units in play, Assimilate can’t stop a MoLaC rush, but Reputable Newsman can.
4 Likes
When does the second round of games start?
Soon ™
I’ll try to post them tonight or tomorrow, was holding off for the last couple games of round 1
3 Likes
The reason I said that is because if you don’t actually have lethal that turn it’s possible to have it stolen from you, at which point you’re in real trouble unless you can win the base race at a huge stat disadvantage. It’s definitely possible, but it’s super risky to even tech it since the failure state is either a dead card or making your opponent stronger.
2 Likes
Okay, here’s round 2! Note that I am not doing anything preventing players from driving the same car more than once. It is bound to happen as the tourney goes on and, frankly, I just don’t want to do the matchmaking problem to work it out, so… it’s a feature not a bug? We’ll go with that.
GL HF all!
XCAFRR19 Round 2
Group A
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] charnel_mouse [Balance]/Disease/Growth vs Taz [Necromancy]/Blood/Present
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] EricF [Feral]/Growth/Disease vs bomber678 [Discipline]/Necromancy/Law
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] Nopethebard [Strength]/Feral/Growth vs James [Demonology]/Disease/Necromancy
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] Persephone [Discipline]/Strength/Finesse vs NekoAtl [Fire]/Truth/Disease
Group B
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] Leaky [Discipline]/Disease/Law vs frozenstorm [Discipline]/Peace/Past
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] codexnewb [Demonology]/Necromancy/Finesse vs dwarddd [Past]/Present/Future
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] CarpeGuitarrem [Fire]/Present/Growth vs Zhavier [Anarchy]/Past/Strength
- [XCAFRR19 Round2] OffKilter [Peace]/Discipline/Disease vs UrbanVelvet [Demonology]/Growth/Strength
On Bye - Player: @bolyarich, Deck: [Future]/Peace/Anarchy
2 Likes