Foreword!

March of the Legion regionals are already underway. If you've had a chance to attend one, or glanced over someone else's Regionals report, you'll have noticed that quite a few people seem to be playing only slightly modified pre-MotL successful deck types with only a few notable exceptions that I’ve read. Cards from the new set are used only sparingly and as replacements for older cards that the new set has frankly made outdated, and decks built around March of the Legion seem to be mostly if not totally currently absent.

Regardless, deck building is a tricky venture. It's hard, and it takes time, patience and willpower to become good at it. It also helps to have a good working knowledge of most if not all of the cards currently in print. Net decking, while it may get you wins, teaches you nothing unless you already know the fundamentals of how decks are put together and how they work. Net decking also puts you in the vulnerable position of playing something that everybody can see coming, and prepare for. I've already mentioned the advantage of playing a deck that nobody's ever seen in a competitive environment, and people smarter and more successful than I have said very much the same thing.

So I propose to put forward a blog entry on the fundamentals of deck building (gathered from across the great dark vastness of the Internet) as well as future articles on more advanced deck building strategy and practice, to act as a primer for the deck building beginner in this series of posts called:

Deck Building 101

So the first part of building a deck is understanding what kind of deck you might be going for and knowing the fundamental deck building principles. For example, there are a few main deck archetypes that people use to classify decks and how they act and are played. The traditional three (taken from Magic) are:

Aggro
Control
Combo

And any number of combinations of these three. But in WoW, things are slightly different. For example, the game's hero-based deck format allows for players to put together decks where there hero is the only (or the primary) character. The basic deck types in WoW look more like this:

Rush (Aggro)
Control
Solo
Tempo/Mid-range
Combo

Basic Deck Types

Rush decks are fast. They try to get out as much damage in the first few turns of the game in the hopes that they can overwhelm their opponent or put them in a position that they can't hope to recover from. The most damage/attack for the least resources is the primary criteria for rush deck construction. Ever heard of the Omedus-Shadowfiend deck? Rush.

Control decks want to take control of the game. They try to counter or play an answer to every card their opponent could think to play. They try to control crucial turn phases of the game, like the combat phase, with cards like Stoneclaw Totem, Sarmoth, and big beefy protectors. Control decks rely on dragging the game out to the late turns when they can drop the cards that are their win conditions, like Tewa Wildmane, King Magni and the Greench. The Nathadan deck Guillaume Matignon piloted to his world championship victory? Control.

Solo decks do it alone. They use equipment and ongoing abilities to put down a board presence to handle whatever their opponent has to play and to deal out the crucial points of damage they need to send the opposing hero under. Some solo decks even rely on rushing direct damage abilities to seal the deal. Solo decks are really their own breed. You'll often see them as solo-rush, solo-tempo, solo-control and solo-combo with varying numbers of accessory allies (Rak Skyfury being a popular one for Horde solo). The Rotun solo rogue made quite a showing in the Worlds top 8, and not too long ago Telrander was the kitty to beat (not that you should beat your pet cats). Mr. B. Lyons wrote a lengthy article on solo in MotL that you can check out for a closer analysis of what solo means and could be.

Tempo/mid-range decks work by building up their side of the board while controlling whatever you try to play on yours with the intention of putting down enough damage to win the game by the “middle” turns – for example, turns 6 and 7. You could see them as a version of rush-control, but they're better defined a little more specifically than that. Like rush decks, they play damage-to-cost efficient allies to tear down the opponent's health totals in a timely fashion for the win. Like control, they pack a number of abilities and equipment (typically direct damage abilities) to remove their opponent's threats from the board and often include an alternate win-condition in case things take a little longer than they'd expected. Tempo/mid-range decks can focus on early control and mid-game bombs (control-rush) or on early game ally build-up with abilities to lock down or control your side of the board towards the middle game (rush-control). Phadalus and the Blue Man Group like to rush you with allies and Chain Lightning your side of the board turn 5 or 6. Tempo.

Combo decks rely on two or three cards that go together to deal insane amounts of damage and take the win in just one or two turns. Combo decks build their entire decks around trying to get these cards out at the same time so they can set the combo off for the aforementioned "insane amounts of damage." There aren't many in WoW yet, when you compare it with Magic. The early Gorebelly + Twig combo deck is the best example of a WoW combo deck as are the two infinite damage combos that recently come into the spotlight around the time of Worlds: one being the Wondervolt + Ritual Sacrifice + Tyrande combination and the other being Galway + Hauberk + Scarlet Kris (or any other zero-strike cost weapon). While combo decks can steal the win away from a losing game in a single turn, they're currently fairly fragile and can have a tough time against an opponent who's watching and prepared for it.

Knowing these basic deck types can help structure a deck building project. They are also neat categories that you can mentally sort different cards into (this card works well in a rush deck, this card screams control, etc.). They’re also good to have in mind when you sit down against an opponent who’s playing a deck that you’ve never seen. By watching what and how the other person is playing, you can make a decent guess at what kind of deck they’re running.

Deck Building Principles

Consistency:

One of the fundamental deck building rules is that a deck must contain at least 60 cards. A casual glance over the deck lists that take all the wins away from Darkmoon Faire’s and Nationals tournaments should reveal that most decks tend to play around 60-63 cards. Most also run 3-4 copies each of their important cards. Why? For consistency. If you’ve designed your deck around pulling out and playing a certain combination or number of cards, it’s important to make sure that you can draw those cards every game with a certain measure of consistency so your deck works as designed. This doesn’t mean drawing the cards consistently in the your opening hand, but rather having them available by the time you need to play them in the game.

However, there are no real rules to deck consistency. Running 4 copies of the important cards is a decent rule of thumb, but decks that run a much more diverse card pool with fewer copies of any given card have had just a much success (a lot of these are solo decks). It’s also, to some degree, a personality thing and a play-style thing. The only way to work on and improve a deck’s consistency is to play it and test it!

Curve:

In WoW, any card can be played as a resource. This can mean the first few turns can be crucial in establishing a comfortable board position, because either side can be reasonably expected to drop a card into play every turn. In this manner, you can sometimes think of card costs as indicators of what turn they can be played – especially when you’re looking at your opening hand. Generally speaking, you’re in a fairly good position if you can play a card during each one of the early turns and lay down a base for card draw when your hand starts looking thin. Curve also means looking at playing your stronger cards as soon as possible (i.e. the first turn you could have the resources you would need to play them). In this manner, a turn 3 Sarmoth is a much more powerful drop (in terms of board position) than a turn 6-7 Sarmoth could be.

When you’re building your deck, this means doing a bit of a balancing act in terms of card numbers. Having a good number of low cost cards, relatively few big drops and about a quarter of your deck space devoted to quests is a good place to start, but its only through playing and testing that you’ll find what kind of combination the deck works best with.

Synergy:

Synergy is using cards that work well together in groups. It also means not running cards that have little utility or only get used infrequently in a deck. For example, running copies of Voidwalkers Gone Wild is rather pointless if you aren’t also running a decent number of weapon cards. Likewise, running Broan Charges-the-Fight in a deck with a lot of 1 or 2 cost allies or running the Whispering Blade of Slaying in a rogue dagger deck is good synergy. Running Twig of the World Tree with a bunch of high cost allies is probably not.

Synergy points to the principle of putting together a deck with a goal in mind. This involves conceptualizing what you want your deck to do as you put it together and test it, and also on a smaller scale knowing what the key cards in your deck are so you can build around them. Getting a good sense of goal and synergy takes time, and is just another one of the reasons why the process of deck building is not completed after you put together a stack of sixty-some cards. Often it comes down to streamlining: getting a deck to do one or two things really well at the exclusion of others. A better track than that is learning how to be crafty, how to pick out cards that serve multiple functions, thereby make your deck more versatile. A fine example of this kind of card is “Chipper” Ironbane. Another underused example is Silent Fang.

Efficiency:

Efficiency is choosing the cards that offer the most utility while having a low playing cost and can affect the board reasonably when they come into play (the latter is a reason you don’t see Galway Steamwhistle seeing as much play as Rak Skyfury). You hear of efficiency spoken of more often on the level of individual cards than you hear it when talking about decks. The concept of efficiency comes out of the comparison of one card to another. You can compare the relative utility of two cards of the same type (like Blood Guard Malwani vs. Ash’ergi) or even two cards of the same drop cost (Whispering Blade of Slaying vs. Viking Warhammer) and find which cards give you a higher efficiency and warrant inclusion in your deck.

In general, card efficiency has gone up through the sets. For example, Your Fortune Awaits You just is just not an efficient source of card draw anymore. You could easily run instead one of the modular quests from TtDP, which provide much more efficiency if you’re running the hero whose race matches the card. A better choice would be to start looking into some of the other condition-oriented or alternate cost quests (e.g. Hellfire Fortifications and Demonic Contamination). Of course, this starts to creep back into the domain of synergy, and in general you’ll find that you’ll want to include cards that are the best balance of the two, rather than always choosing the “most efficient” at every level.

Forward!

Knowledge is, of course, power, but nothing is as valuable in this case as practice and experience. One of the most important things to remember is deck building is an ongoing process. DO NOT get discouraged if a deck you've just spent time putting together fails miserably. You're assuming incorrectly that the deck building process is over as soon as you take your deck into its first game.

This still leaves the choice of what card, theme, hero or idea to start building a deck around. I'll start discussing this in more detail in the next few articles, but the best place to start is probably to base deck ideas around the hero talent cards. These provide good indications of where a deck could go.

Not to foreshadow too heavily, but take an extra look at the new March of the Legion cards that reference damage type. Starting with one of these (for example, Fire Power) will narrow tremendously the field of possible allies, equipment and abilities that you might chose for inclusion and can make the differences between cards and the principles of deck building a bit easier to identity and understand.

-Ryan

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Introduction

While I’m in the process of writing the first one of my Deck Building 101 blogs, I wanted to take a little time aside to start another series of entries that you’ll see popping up every now and again: "How to Play..."

Think of it as a kind of card game trivia. When you see one of these cards plop down on the opposite side of the table, when you know you’ll be facing a plethora of opponents with one of these cards nustled securely in their main deck, it’s good to know ways to play with or around those big, game altering cards, the kind that everybody talks about when they first get released (with a notable exception below).

How to Play will be taking two forms. We’ll be looking at cards and ways best to play “Against…” them and looking at cards, their uses, and the ways you can best play “With…” them in your deck.

So without further ado:

Against… Cobrascale Hood
(Summary: re-think the way you start placing those quests, but don’t sacrifice all your quest-based card draw to this one card)

When this card hits the table, it changes the way you’re going to be managing your resource row. It’s got to. Leaving quests face-up uncompleted means you’re looking at taking a potential two damage every turn until you complete them or find some other way to destroy them or flip them down. So what do you do? The initial response might be to play quests face down to avoid taking the damage entirely, but then you’re losing a lot of card drawing ability and you’re faced with your whole game plan being altered by just one card.

Barring any quick equipment hate you’ve got in your hand, step one is to try to complete any face-up quests that you can – within reason. If you’ve a lot of conditional quests down on the field (e.g. Battle of Darrowshire, Brother Against Brother), you may be out of luck. Remember next time to avoid laying down these quests in the early game against this opponent. Otherwise, take a moment to flip your quests over and restock your hand. Don’t set yourself a turn behind if you’re in risk of taking a lot of damage from your opponents other cards in play.

Step two is to start looking at your quests in a different way. They’re cantrips now. You want to be able to complete them the turn that you play them so you still get the card draw that you put the quests in there for in the first place. You may need to play a couple face down in the earlier turns, but don’t sweat that too much. Oh, and next time, bring some equipment hate. This piece of grey is just one in a long list that are coming out that have some serious ability to shake up the board.

With… Bracers of the Green Fortress
(Summary: damage prevention aside, make your Steelsmith’s bigger with these Bracers and your weapon swings harder when your pair the Green Fortress with an Onslaught Girdle)

I heard these sold out at Worlds a week ago. They were hot items. Evidentally, a lot of people were looking at them as ways to make their Steelsmith Joseph Carroll’s even bigger and even badder even faster, and this is a great way to make use of them. Seriously, a turn four Steelsmith with just these Bracers in play is going to be 6 attack, 6 health for just a single resource!

But that’s not the only use you can get out of a pair of these. Onslaught Girdle combos with these Bracers just as well. When you’re going in for the swing, it’s a good way to turn one resource spent into one point of direct damage. And if you’re dual wielding, the prospect becomes sweeter as each resource spent becomes two damage points dealt.

Is there a risk? Hell, yes. With the Bringer of Death looking like it’s going to be a very popular card, having the Bracers in play could mean that a turn 8 explosion of the Bringer of Death will set you back to turn 0, destroying everything you have in play. Also, this means that equipment hate against you is now resource hate. So Puncture, Dismantle, “Acid Hands” McGillicutty, the Sonic Spear… all of these can take out your resources now too, and I’m sure faced with the option of sacking either the Bracers of the Green Fortress or setting you back a turn by blowing up one of your resources that most players will start thinning out your resource row without much thought put into it.

Options? If you want to try this risky gamble, save a way to destroy the Bracers yourself before your caster opponent reaches his turn 8. This doesn’t have to mean using equipment hate on your own armor, but rather by playing another bracer slot card to take the Green Fortress’ place. For a plate wearer, this means Black Felsteel Bracers, Vambraces of the Sadist or the underused Wristguards of True Flight. Option two? Sidedeck your Bracers: either bring them in or sub them out when you know you’ll find yourself relatively safe or in trouble against the type of deck your opponent will be playing.

Against… Runesong Dagger
(summary: destroy it)

Just destroy it. Really, there are few good ways to shut this powerhouse of a weapon down. If you’re not playing many allies, I guess you’re in luck, but otherwise you could be looking at taking quite a beating from this little 2-drop. Chances are, if an opponent’s packing one of these, he or she’s probably got other ways of drawing cards besides quests to power this up all the faster. This weapon is a great way of creating card advantage and you don’t need to exhaust it to make it work. I suppose you can find ways to start flipping your opponent’s quests down or make completion impossible (e.g Greefer), but that only makes the Runesong Dagger only slightly less frequent of a threat.

If you’re playing a lot of Untargetables, you’re in luck too, because this weapon won’t be able to touch them. Horde players will find their red friends left wide open, however. Simply put, this card’s another reason to plan equipment hate into your main decks (i.e. you’re just giving away your first game if you can’t draw a response in the mid to late game). Thankfully, Horde’s got a lot of “free” equipment destruction in the latest set in the form of one of the McGillicutty’s and Silea Dawnwalker.

Currently there’s no way to remove your opponent’s counters without destroying the card those counters are on. And while I know this is an “Against…” entry, but just think of the ally damage that can be wrought when you’re playing this dagger with a Night Elf and Crown of the Earth…

With… Venomstrike
(summary: pull it out of your trade binders and put it into your hunter decks… this and a Hunter Training in your hand have the same cost and a much more effective effect than the popular Stone Guard Rashun)

I know I mentioned this on the tail end of my last blog and I know I typed it at least one place else, but I wanted to canonize it finally in a How to Play entry so that the world may know once and for all what on that fateful day of the MotL release has come to pass…

Venomstrike when it came out was a rather poor hunter pet and in general a rather poor ally. Sure, it had the possibiltiy of being effectively a 5 attack ally for four resources. However, all your opponent had to do was prevent that initial 1 point of damage and the whole packet that turn gets lost.

But now, with Hunter Training? Any ally that your opponent tries to drop on the field after your turn 5 gets dealt 5 damage by the end of that turn… and it doesn’t even target. No ally is safe! None! The only way your opponent can deal with this is if they have direct ally destruction (e.g. Vanquish) or ability hate in their hands. But in a deck that might have other on-going abilites that your opponent may want to get rid of (like Master of the Hunt) having them waste a card on a 1-cost Training card doesn’t seem like such a bad trade.

Against… Bringer of Death
(summary: save yourself recursion in the form of unflipped quests like Sunken Treasures and Solanian’s… if you’re playing with this bad mother staffer, pack a Zaistor or a ferocity ally to play the turn you blow the whole board up)

There are basically two ways your opponent could play this. They could drop it on turn 8 and make the board explode all in one swift motion. Or they could take the slightly more risky route of dropping it on turn 5 and blowing it up turn 6, leaving you that precious one turn to get the weapon out of the way. The one positive about the Bringer of Death’s power is that they can’t use it on your turn as a response to you targeting it with equipment hate. If you try to instant-hate it on their turn, however, they’ll probably just exhaust it, pay the three and laugh as the world explodes in your face.

So what are some strategies? Well, for one, if you’re playing a solo deck and you see this play coming, you can try to keep some of the important cards saved up in your hand to rebuild your board after Bringer of Death destroys it. Of course, don’t overdo it, or your opponent’s already one a significant victory by slowing down the way you play with just the threat of one card in their hand.

Pack yourself some retrieval. Sunken Treasures, Solanian’s Belongings, Chasing A-Me, Finkle Einhorn… if you can start rebuilding the turn after the Bringer wipes the board, your already off to a good start.

Playing with Bringer of Death? Consider going Aldor and packing yourself a couple copies of Zaistor the Vigilant and make one of your big allies indestructible. Or if you’re Alliance a Leeroy Jenkins or if you’re Horde a Moko Hunts-at-Dawn or other Ferocity-style ally. Playing Bringer can be a good play all on its own, but how much better if you make it a ‘controlled blast’ and save yourself some damage to deal as the dust is clearing.

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An Afterword for After World's

So the World of Warcraft TCG's first Worlds tournament came and went pretty quickly, leaving a bevy of internet coverage and one very happy Frenchman in its wake. It marks the end of the first successful season for UDE's latest card game, as well as the beginning of a whole new year for the card game with new sets, a new raid and some new additions and changes to the structure of Organized Play.

I wasn't able to attend Worlds this year because of the demands of both work and school, but I stayed within arms reach of a computer whenever possible to check the progress of the event. What did I see? Surprise Attacks. A lot of Surprise Attacks. It seems like despite UDE's attempt at shaking things up pre-Worlds with the release and legalization of the Feast of Winter Veil set, much of the meta remained fundamentally the same. It was a little bit of a let-down not seeing exciting new decks tramping through the World's scene from the internet spectator's point of view, though it was nice to not see the dreaded number of Night Elf Wintervolt combo decks that the forums were fearing would show up en masse. What World's revealed was a more or less stabilized meta, for not only were Alliance Combat Rogue decks out in force but they were the ones piloted by players who were talented enough to make it to top 8. Granted, there were interesting things to be seen in some of the subtle choices that players made in their deck construction (World Champ's choice of Snowball + Inventor's Focal Sword is a prime example, as was his prediction that he'd see a lot of solo decks), but the deck choice difference between a few main decked Kicks or main-decked Blade Flurry among the rogue decks provides for less than interesting commentary.

Granted, TAWC's Victoria Jaton deck was a pretty interesting innovation. I remember commenting with a laugh when I first saw Gauntlets of Vindication how Rend would suddenly become viable. I also really liked their idea of using Andiss Butcherson and Stellaris. I much prefer seeing new deck ideas and attempts at different heroes and builds breaking into the tournament scene and I would always strongly encourage other players to make decks of their own rather than net-deck. Jeremy Blair made a comment to the effect that just the "surprise factor" in a innovative deck can add effective power to a build that otherwise lacks the strength of the more traditional net-deck of the moment, and I think he was dead on here.

But amidst all the round and round coverage were a few gems of information on the near future of WoW TCG gaming. Maybe you missed them, or maybe you heard about them peripherally through some other forum or from a friend across the table who's shooting the breeze with you while you're playing a friendly game.

A Peak into Magtheridon's Lair

One of the things casually dropped amongst the sound and competitive fury of the main event was the teaser for the upcoming Magtheridon's Lair raid set. A new card from the boss deck was revealed (a 2-cost spread 15 damage among the raiding party's heroes and allies however they see fit burn) along with some of the mechanics on how the raid deck will work.

Turns out, when the game begins there will be 5 channelers to try and stop your attempt short before you've even faced the wrath of the head honcho (if you've ever been in a raid group trying Mag for the first time, this may be a familiar situation for you). Two of them can summon 6 attack, 6 health infernal tokens, two will be shadow bolt volleying your crew while the other one will be trying to keep his buddies healed. Oh, and for each channeler that's killed all the others get +1 attack. Magtheridon himself will be wielding his glaive and some armor, there will be some way to organize heroes or allies to use the Manticron cubes to stop him from roasting your whole raid party (could be as simple as just having enough allies to exhaust) and by the sound of things, he'll be getting stronger the longer the game goes on.

Organized Play Shake-Up

The other item of information dropped was on the changing face of Organized Play. The big thing here is the addition of the Player of the Year title, basically an incentive for interested players to get out to as many events as possible to rack up their finishes for the Player of the Year award (almost abbreviated it PotY...). The other change is the breaking up of Regionals into 3 seasons. It's a little unclear, but how they have it phrased on the website sounds like season 2 will provide direct qualification for Nationals while season 3 will have a few rare slots for winning players to qualify directly for next years Worlds. Sounds ok to me. It'll sound even better as I'll be graduating from college come April of next year.

Also, it's definitely worth your time to go through and read some of the match coverage, in particular the day 2 drafting reads, particularly if you feel a little less than confident about your drafting game. Because unless you've drafted competitively and done so frequently, your drafting skills may not be as tested as you think. Check out the draft profile on Brad Watson. His day 2 drafting performance was good enough to carry him out of the top 96 into the top 8.

In the Future

There's been a lot of talk about casters lately. Many people were reporting huge warlock success from their Sneak Preview events and also from the limited format MotL events at Worlds/DMF San Diego. Then there's the Spellstrike Hood and the new gray caster gear that allows for some fantastic and efficient ally removal (hello Runesong Dagger and Devil-Stitched Leggings). Sounds like we may start seeing more casters at the top of the rankings next time around.

I hope to start seeing some big shake-ups in the meta as the new season begins (because growing stale in its competitive environment is the last thing this or any TCG needs) and I think the addition of the Aldor/Scryer dilemma will add greater impetus to experiment with and try out new decks. A recommendation? Set yourself goals, like trying to make the best bear-form Feral Druid deck you possibly can and see how competitive it can be (my goal), or make a Beast Mastery hunter deck that tries to stand up against the best your local meta and the tournament environments has to offer. Read reports, previews, posts and analyses online, take part in them, but do some experimenting of your own with the cards you pull. Build decks around the powerhouse cards that everybody sees coming, but look for those combos that no one else is expecting. A turn 5 Venomstrike + Hunter Training anyone?

So anyway, welcome to the first entry in my new feature blogging series Decking Out. While this blog was more a personal reaction to Worlds and a veritable news/gossip column, look in the future (also known as 'the end of this week') for the beginning of an article series on how-to deck building as well as a theoretical piece on the state of the game and where it looks like UDE will be taking it in the near future.

Until then, drop me a comment. Tell me what you think and what you'd like to see.

-Ryan

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In the first block of the World of Warcraft CCG, thematic deckbuilding was more a casual pastime for one's own amusement rather than a strategy for constructing a competitive deck.

In fact, there weren't really a lot of cards available in the first three sets to construct a themed deck around. True, you could try building a racially themed deck: an all-orc deck, an all-night elf deck, etc., but the card pool for these kinds of creations where still small and the resulting decks largely uncompetitive, if not unplayable. There were other options, such as a discard themed deck (i.e. shadow priest) or a mad draw themed deck (i.e. mage), but the cards just did not support these kinds of endeavors.

March of the Legion, however, introduces a slew of cards just begging to have thematic decks built around them. In this latest set, UDE it seems has provided players cards that practically encourage theme decks for competitive play. There are now cards that encourage stealth-themed decks, discard themed-decks, resource-destruction themed decks, as well as further cards that support the old racial-decks scheme that some players strove after in the pre-MotL days.

I'd like to go over a few of the possibilities for theme based decks. In general, thematic deckbuilding I find is a good exercise for sharpening your deck construction skills. Where some players often find it difficult to begin with a strong deck archetype in mind when they sit down with their collection to through a deck of cards together, starting with an easily recognizable theme provides a sound basis with which to choose cards for inclusion in your decks. This also encourages the player to really read through the cards that they pull out, find out what they do, how they might work together and to think of what ways these cards might work well in combination with other cards in their collection.

Thematic deckbuilding is a great exercise not just to put together a deck with a "story" to it, but also to really sit down and examine specific cards in your collection for their competitive potential.

Let's start with an example that I've actually played with to decent success pre-MotL (though a couple MotL cards are now included).

The Troll Themed Deck

Potential Card Pool:

Thwarting Kolkar Aggression (Q)

Berserking (Ab)

Ash'ergi (A)

[Blood Guard Malwani (A)]

Warcaller Zimbawa (A)

Nyn'jah (A)

Yellowspine (A)

[Fa'tafi (A)]

Zy'lah Manslayer (A)

Let's take a quick look at the cards we've pulled out. There's a common theme arising here, that of troll characters dealing more damage the more damage they take. And look at Warcaller Zimbawa. His attack increases for each point of damage on ALL of your allies, and he's fairly cheaply costed (3) and a a protector. Not a bad competitive pool.

Notice I put a couple of the cards up there in brackets. Here's the reason why:

After you've assembled these themed cards, take a look through them and find out which ones are the most effective, the most efficient and work the best together. From there we can cut the cards that fit the theme but don't quite live up to the competitive standard.

Blood Guard Malwani is a pretty obvious first cut. At 4 cost, he's just miles worse than the later ally, Ash'ergi, who for an extra resource has 2 more attack and stealth to his name.

Fa'tafi is a potential cut as well. While she's a great protector, and a troll, she's got that problem of healing at the beginning of every turn, powering down your Warcaller Zimbawas. It's not that she's bad (6 health provides a lot of latitude for damage taking and the powering up of Zimbawa), but there may be another non-thematic card that may work better. Like...

One-Thousand-Battles. I picked him for my troll-themed deck over Fa'tafi. He's half the cost, has the same attack, just one less health and doesn't heal himself of damage taken like Fa'tafi did. In this deck, it seems taking damage is looking like it can be a good thing. In fact, it seems like this deck is encouraging the opponent to:

Go Ahead, Hit Me

Starting Card Pool:

Thwarting Kolkar Aggression (Q)

Demonic Contamination (Q)

Ash'ergi (A)

Warcaller Zimbawa (A)

Nynjah (A)

One-Thousand Battles (A)

Kagella Shadowmark (A)

Zy'lah Manslayer (A)

Elithys Firestorm (A)

Hellreaver (E)

Intensify Rage (Ab)

Commanding Shout (Ab)

Berserking (Ab)

A few parting thoughts:

I chose warrior for this deck, rather than one of the other troll heroes, the more obvious other choice being troll shaman or troll rogue (low health heroes don't seem to fit well in this deck archetype). Going warrior provided me with the following options:

- Hellreaver (swing for 3 for free on the defense, or, go-on just attack my hero)

- Intensify Rage (toss this on Ash'ergi - +3 attack, +3 health that just gets better the more damage he takes... and he's stealth!)

- Commanding Shout (the more health that allies have in this deck, the more damage they can take, the better!)

- Demonic Contamination (in this deck, damage on your allies helps you! this quest lets you pay 1, put damage on 3 of your allies, effectively increasing the attack of many of them by an additional 1 point, and then draw TWO cards)

- Elithys Firestorm (much in the same regard as Demonic Contamination, you've got high cost allies who like getting hit - she'll pump up your berserking when she attacks, and deal damage to those untargetables for you as well)

But this is just a starting card pool, there are still plenty of spaces for other cards with possible synergy as well as other ways that one could put this deck together around the same theme. Building a troll rogue comes immediately to mind.

***

So here's a first look at building thematic based decks. Look for part II of this article for ideas on other competitive decks you can build around thematic ideas.

-Madjinn

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A Limited Experience

First off, I had an absolute blast at the Garden City, MI, Sneak Preview last Saturday morning. Thanks go out to all the judges and coordinators of the event as well as to the five opponents I played against, who were all great players to play against.

On the whole, I think I find these kinds of limited, sealed tournament types to be the most enjoyable of TCG formats, especially when they’re in the context of a new set’s Sneak Preview. Plus, you can’t go wrong for your money: at worst you’re walking away with your entry fee worth of new booster packs plus a limited edition EA and at best you’re getting a whole lot more (15+ boosters, plus other prize swag).

This is the deck I played with: an ally heavy (aren’t they all?) Alliance/Scryer control deck, feral druid style. It’s a little on the heavier side, coming in around 34 cards, partly because I had a difficult time making a class choice and my deck building came down to wire in the last few seconds of the allotted time for construction.

Allies (22)

Jav Stonewall x2

Piana

Torwila Gladespring x2

Caretaker Heartwing

Waldo the Decoy

Alhas
Bizzazz x2

Syluri

Hanaga Silvervein

Retainer Nealos

Retainer Mythras

Magdeline Prideheart

Retainer Kedryn

Arcanist Avelena

Retainer Salvan

Givon

Weeble x2

Gabble

Abilities (6)

Gift of the Wild

Sustain or Reclaim x2

Swipe x2

Shred

Equipment (1)

Runesong Dagger

Quests (5)

Natural Remedies

Wanted: Durn the Hungerer

The Blood is Life x2

Against the Legion

I played five games with this deck, going 3-2 for the morning. My opponents were a Horde Warrior, an Alliance Warlock, a Horde Warlock, an Alliance Paladin and an Alliance Shaman. I lost to both the Horde Warlock (a blow-out, he told me afterward that he was able to hit his ideal ally curve, drawing such cards as Yellowspine, the ally that deals 2 damage when it readies, the ally that heals damage when it readies and Osha Shadowdrinker to simply lock me down) and to the Alliance Shaman in a fantastic game that came down to end-of-match procedures.

The Most Valuable and the Underwhelming

The stars of this deck were Givon, Runesong Dagger, Waldo the Decoy and my hero’s,
Arktos’, flip.

Givon’s a rockstar in ally-to-ally combat, penalizing opposing allies with -2 attack when they attempt to go toe-to-toe against him. Because he’s a protector and takes so little hurt in those situations, he created consistent on-the-board card advantage for me by taking the other player’s allies out. I read somewhere a prediction that he’ll become a high draft choice in MotL drafts and I’d wager that opinion’s pretty spot on.

Runesong Dagger. Yup, wow. Where do I start with this one? What a piece of ally control this dagger was. Aside from the fact that a feral druid in form can effectively make near-full use of the weapon without ever having to actually swing it (and thus lose your form card), it’s cheaply costed, has a low strike cost should you need to make use of it in combat and pairs brilliantly with the growing family of Alliance gnome card-draw allies (e.g. Weeble, who lets you draw two cards when she comes into play). Using its power doesn’t even exhaust it, allowing you to blow up verse counters for direct ally damage and leave it open to swing with it in the same round of turns.

Waldo the Decoy’s power probably won me one of my matches that came down to the end-of-match procedures. Using him and exhausting my hero, I was able to neutralize an opponent’s fearsome 7 attack, elusive Gabble for the entire match. Like the Runesong dagger in this regard, his power does not require him to exhaust to pay the activation, so he can double-duty as attacker and ally control.

Arktos, the new Alliance Feral druid, has a tremendous power in his 1 cost flip. Basically, while in bear form by flipping him you can prevent all damage (not just combat damage) dealt to him while defending. The two match highlights of this ability came when I protected and flipped against an opponent swinging with the Hungering Bone Cudgel (causing it to be destroyed at the end of his turn) and when I neutralized a turn of Gabble attack in the same manner.

So what were the underwhelming cards? They were Swipe and all Scryer cards with Sabotage.

Swipe’s a great card. It provides the opportunity to create 3-for-1 card advantage along with putting your hero into bear form, which I see as becoming now as viably competitive as cat form has been. However, most of the allies I came up against had much higher health totals than usual. With few exceptions, even the one-drops had at least two health or were (as with Jav Stonewall) untargetable. I was able to use it once to take out a pair of 1-health allies (one being an exhausted Caretaker Heartwing), but otherwise found myself merely pinging heroes and higher health allies for a single point of damage without making any serious impression on the board.

So… Sabotage then. Part of the problem was the format. In a type of card environment where combat with allies is the most frequent and important game mechanic to maintain tempo control and create on-the-table card advantage, it’s not usually advantageous to use an ally for a non-combat purpose. I went with Scryer to put varied removal power into my deck, so I’d be able to answer a variety of challenges; however Sabotage is not exactly “removal.” It’s more complicated than that. Sabotage is probably more strictly control, a new kind of control where you’re able to dictate a certain amount of power over opposing player’s equipment, abilities and quests. In the sealed environment, situations where Sabotage is useful simply do not crop up that often, whereas the Aldor power (Inspire) is sort of like an ongoing power (it is used by simply having the inspire-ally present).

Feral Druid Control?

So while the deck I played in the sneak was a blast to play and met with fairly good success, would Feral Druid Aggro/Control (based on the deck that I played at the Sneak) translate well to the competitive Constructed environment? I made a provisional version of this deck with the cards I currently own, but spent some time at my computer putting together a Constructed version of what the deck would be.

Doing a combination of druid form aggro and druid control poses an interesting problem. The best druid control abilities (i.e. Cyclone) are not Feral and so using them would break your hero out of his respective druid form. With the protector keyword inherent in bear form and the power of Arktos’ flip and by placing a few other protector allies into the build, this deck could fairly effectively control the course of combat. Of course, this provides an answer to only some types of decks, but not others.

So it would seem that by going feral control, one would be opting out of the best druid control abilities in favor of abilities and powers that help you control combat and to some extent destroy allies. Druid feral control then seems to err toward the side of:

Form over Function

“Arktos, Greek αρκτος, means 'bear', from the Proto-Indo-European root *h2rtkos. The Arctic is named from this Greek word in reference to the northern constellations of Ursa Major, Great Bear, and Ursa Minor, Little Bear.”

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arktos)

Alliance/Aldor

Hero: Arktos

Allies (21)

4 Korthas Greybeard

3 Parvink

3 Vindicator Kaldel

3 Anchorite Viluaa

2 Syluri

2 Givon

2 Weeble

2 Fugu

Equipment (8)

4 Runesong Dagger

4 Devilsaur Leggings

Quests (9)

3 Battle of Darrowshire

3 Brother Against Brother

3 Voidwalker's Gone Wild

Abilities (22)

3 Swipe

3 Bear Form

4 Claw

4 Predatory Strikes

4 Feral Instinct

4 Nature of the Beast

Hmmm, well, deck, let’s take a look at you.

Initially, this deck looks more feral aggro than feral control but with a couple subtle differences. One is Feral Instinct, the new Feral Talent card. It provides your hero +4 attack while in bear form defending, which is just huge, as well as +2 in cat while attack exhausted characters. Feral Instinct allows decent damage on the defense when you’re exhausting your hero as part of a protector lockdown and couples well with Devilsaur Leggings to effectively destroy any ally your hero comes into combat with. Inspire: Hero and Inspire: Ally make allow us to get extra mileage out of our protectors allowing them to attack and still be ready to protect on the defense. Inspire: Ally also introduces some shenanigans with Fugu, who I couldn’t help but includes.

Match-ups? This deck appears to function most favorably against another ally-centric deck. It’s got a twinge of the aggro color which may help it against slower solo or control decks, but is not as consistently aggressive as other aggro decks.

So: it’s a hybrid – and it suffers and benefits from all the same advantages and disadvantages that typically accompany hybrid decks. Its diversity to me makes it infinitely more enjoyable to play and adds to the surprise factor in playing it on the side of the opponent, though again it may suffer in consistency.

The deck remains largely untested in its Constructed form, but has resulted from a decent bit of theory-crafting and card study. It’s the best I could come up with based on the feral control archetype that I played with at the Sneak Preview. What do you think?

-Madjinn

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Hey, TCGplayer blog community.

So this is my first post here. I wanted to talk about the upcoming Feast of Winter Veil gift set in a slightly different light than its possible effect on the meta at the upcoming worlds.

Casual or competitive, it's a safe wager to say most every WoW TCG player's going to pick up at least one of these boxed sets. With all honesty, 10+2 unique new cards, a deck box and 3 boosters isn't all that bad of a deal at $20 and the new Feast of Winter Veil cards promise a lot of possibly drastically new and interesting card interactions at most any level of WoW TCG play: casual, raid, or - as has been the talk of the boards lately - competitive.

So, let's say, if everyone and their friend's going to be buying one at some point, why not coordinate a little with your local gaming group or gaming store and turn what would normally be a purchase-and-open into an opportunity for some casual drafting gameplay?

Here's how it would work: if everyone's already planning getting a Winter Veil box, if each player throws down an extra $4 and change for another booster, you've suddenly got 4 booster packs a person! Which happens to be the standard number for drafting with.

So, everyone open their box, pull out the 3 boosters inside, add the fourth and start drafting! But what about those new Winter Veil cards? Well, those form an individual pool of ten for each player that they can add to their drafted cards to make their final 30+ card deck.

This changes the drafting process slightly, of course, because you'll want to be watching for any cards passed your way that may combo nicely with the new Winter Veil wonders, so you may want to open those and give everyone a chance to read through them thoroughly first.

Drafting's a great way to play with underutilized cards, try new decks and new card combinations that wouldn't find their way into your regular constructed decks, and to get playing with your purchases right out of the package.

Looking at the boosters just for their rares, or wanting to avoid one player amassing an unequal share of blues while another player's left with one or zero? You can always stipulate a rare-draft pool at the end if one or another player feels shafted out of those three important blues, the winning player choosing first and so on.

Really, if you're going to be buying a Winter Veil set anyway and you've got some time to spare playing, there's no reason you and some friends shouldn't break out your packs with an extra booster each and have an afternoon playing a different format of the WoW TCG. Try talking with your local organizer/store owner. Maybe he or she might be willing to turn the whole deal into an official store event, sponsor prizes, discount the extra boosters or what-have-you.

So, hey, anyway, that's my first foray into posting for the perusal of others. I'll be back again come the end of the week to talk Sneak Preview talk and a little bit about the new set. 'til then.

-Madj

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