Just played 3 games of my [Law],Peace,Disease deck vs [Discipline],Blood,Necromancy. I prefer to go second when learning a deck so I went second all three games.
The first game I got smashed. Don’t remember any specifics. Just lost to Bloodlust and other hero related stuff.
Game two when better. A couple of errors, one mechanical and one strategic, cost me the game. An Elite Training called in by Jurisdiction allowed a Brave Knight and a Skeleton to kill a Young Lightning Dragon, Skeleton, and a Rambasa Twin. My mechanical error was bouncing Brave Knight to hand when he should have still been alive (forgot about the armor). So he should have been able to patrol but instead he was discarded. Late in the game I forgot to stash my tech III that I would have been able to play on the following turn. Teching cards when I didn’t have to bloated my deck and led to bad draws. These three things sealed my fate.
Last game I went heavy on Disease and that seemed to do the trick vs this heavy hero based deck. Getting Jail out early curbed the madness of maxband Drakk. dropping an Abomb and a Reputable Newsmen was the start to my victory in game three.
The win gave me hope that I will be able to make stuff happen with this deck. Just have to figure a lot of stuff out.
I’ve been playing [Growth, Balance], Finesse for my last couple of games and it has been a blast. Fencers really help early Arg get value from his spells, and river offers cheaper buffs if you don’t mind losing the value on the green starter spells. Against decks with no upgrade hate, MoLaC becomes a quite reachable win condition (nomally activated T4/5 going second, or T5/6 going first). Against decks with upgrade hate, balance provides the alternatives (as without feral to help with token spam, the remaining growth tech 2’s I find to lack the same punch), with Fencers once again giving your mimics an easy way t get haste. These games are normally finished by midori giving my mimics flying and the flying armada killing everything.
I’ve been thinking about trying [Strength], Peace, Finesse. I love the standard Peace play of unit spam, but it’s really hard to get to Tech II as fast as I’d like, and I really don’t like the Blue starter. So this is where Rook comes in. He’s a brick wall for one thing. Birds create an easy early threat that my opponent has to find an answer for, and that hopefully slows them down just enough that I have the time to build my Tech II on-curve. After that, River is in there for her max-band, and to act as a constant threat of the Smoker / 2xDrill Sergeant infinite combo.
I think the hope behind Bashing was that it act as a sort of hodgepodge of abilities that the other factions get. The problem though is that deck creation in Codex is so flexible that it makes more sense to just grab the other factions that have the things you want.
I ran three games against Eijolend with [Blood]/Bashing/Growth (Ramhorn’s Ramhorns) and went Tech Lab Bashing or Bashing-> Tech Lab other in two of the three games. I didn’t get to play the Duck, as I was just a bit too aggressive to get Tech III out in time, but it’s worth the lab right there in a Blood base-race strat: Bloodlust/Charge makes it 8 damage to base immediately, or 4 each to two buildings. To be fair, PGC is almost as good, but just a bit slower on crucial turns.
Regular-Sized Rhino is so marvelously efficient if they don’t have a way to kill a big body fast. And Stomper gives you a way to kill medium bodies fast. Hell, there’s Eggship if you need fliers, which is also amazing with haste. And Pig is a poor man’s (rich man’s?) Monkey. Harvest Reaper+Dinosize is sick, if expensive.
Bashing just gives a lot of answers that complement your other spec, especially in terms of evasion and removal. It can be hard to justify the expense as Player 1 unless you’re running a spec with some really cheap or efficient units (like Lobbers/Crashbombers) and you have money to spare. But as Player 2, why not?
Demon/necro also pairs really well with bashing, using wither starter.
Demon Troq is huge, Bashing Tech 2 is great with Garth, and Wrecking Ball is a great complement to a Metamorph base race (2x breaks Tower before other attacks, or just to get the last 4-8 damage alongside dark pacts)
So, I am fairly new to Codex so forgive any faulty ideas/strategies or even misplays mentioned.
Like #mysticjuicer I have been playing Law and Present, but instead of a Neutral I am using Ninjitsu currently. Any starter deck options have been meh imo, but have setled on white since it at least gives me some cheap options when going first. I have tried to test this builds various options but generally come back to abusing Hyperion ans the main weapon to lead to victiory. So, the things that I have liked running with Ninjitsu…
Targets for TD and Warp Gate Disciple. Being able to play Hyperion, attack, and then TD into Glorious Ninja makes me happy everytime. If it’s late enough you get the bonus Hyperion play.
Added targets for Now. Porcupine mainly to immediately remove a patrolling problem or hero, but also Flying Fox to lay out damage onto a problem spot immediately, or just close out close out the game.
Though rare, Fox Den Students and more situational the School have got me out of a jam and closed out a game or two.
IN general I like that I have been using Ninjitsu for more than what mysticjuicer has mentioned with the neutrals. This is probably weaker…(I have no idea really, lol) but its what I’ve been enjoying a lot lately.
I’m trying to come up with the right deck construction to really feature the Disease -1/-1 shenanigans. The Neutral starter is nice because of Bloom and Wither (and its inherent flexibility). Feral’s spells are good with Plague Spitter, but they don’t affect Orpal. Ninjitsu can also give stealth, but to heroes as well, and fuzz cuddles is good for healing big heroes (as is savior monk, though less so.) I’m really liking the idea of Oni+HH+orpal, using boot camp to make him scary, but I don’t think I want to use either the black or the blue starter, and I’m going back and forth between Discipline, Feral, Ninjitsu and Finesse as the third (or rather [first]) spec.
I would be interested in seeing [Finesse]/Disease/Peace, it gives a srta well rounded set of heroes, though the big problem is dealing with opposing heroes, it still might be workable.
Orpal’s not as strong as Garth for heroes, but Sickness and Spreading Plague both hit heroes. Alternatively, Carrion Curse hits spells, and once you’ve weakened a hero with runes, spells are the primary things that make heroes scary.
Orpal has decent answers to heroes, if not the best. You’ve got the sickness(or wither)/spreading plague combo to kill them, or if it’s a mostly combat-focused hero, you can just stick -1/-1’s on them and leave them in play, since those don’t heal, so heroes like Rook and Calamandra lose a lot of their combat value. If you’re mostly worried about spells, you’ve got Carrion Curse. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s at least a deterrent. I think if I were playing this deck, I’d make a point to stick a rune or two on opposing heroes as soon as possible, with the idea that if they become a problem later on, I have spreading plague as an option for true removal.
I don’t think you want to pay the multicolor penalty. Just go with Finesse/Demon/Disease or Bashing/Necro/Disease, either of which give you versatility and a strong backup plan if Orpal gets killed at an inopportune moment.
You’re probably right, and I considered that, but I do like the Boot Camp idea. [Discipline]/Peace/Disease seems well suited to this approach, but you’re right, that initial Heroes’ Hall is expensive, and you miss out on Bloom/Wither. I do feel like there are a lot of synergies in that codex, though.
this recent bit of conversation has inspired me to try http://codexcarddb.com/deck/finesse/disease/growth … been using Growth/Disease/Strength, using Rook/Birds as an early game plan while building up to Blooming Ancient / Plague lab finishing combo, but using neutral starter gives more flexibility with early game heroes/spells and gives the ability to apply both kinds of runes for Plague lab.
Almost makes me want to take it a step further and just go Finesse/Discipline/Disease and try to use sparring partner as another way to get +1/+1 runes and focus more tech/spells on Disease/faster plague lab… since games I have played where I go blooming into plague lab are pretty much over just at blooming. and you could get a billion focus runes, if that’s a useful thing. @payprplayn or more sword runes
THOUGH, blooming ancient + birds is pretty broken.
Yeah, I like the Discipline/Disease synergy alot. I tried it with Past and the purple starter initially, with the idea that Hardened mox and nullcraft are great early targets for runes, especially since plague lab isn’t a unit, so you don’t have to trash Mox if you build it. Plague lab can also add time runes to things with fading. It didn’t quite work out for me, but there might be something there. Btw don’t forget the mother of all Plague lab cheese: giving grave extra sword runes. In addition to the plague lab shenanigans, Disease has several useful cards (including plague lab) that cost 3, so you can set up TPoS as an alternate win condition. Also don’t sneeze at the value of training ground with Orpal.
Edit: It’s been a day and a half, and I just realized that I said, Finesse/Disease when I clearly meant Discipline/Disease. (Actually, it’s worse than that: I said Finnesse/Disease, which is particularly embarrassing since I was in spelling bees as a kid.)
I get why you paired Demonology with Finesse, obviously, but I’m curious: why do you prefer Bashing over Finesse to bring the neutral starter to Necro/Disease? Is it for the endgame power of Trojan Duck?
