A Player's Toolbox

There's been a rise in slower, control minded decks of late. Rush is still out there, but more and more you see people toying with different kinds of control (rogue discard, warrior control, warlock control) and you see them packing at least a few of the big end game allies like the Greench or Varimathras or Ishanah. The allies in themselves are basically the win conditions and the entire purpose of the rest of the deck is to drag the game out until the big ally can be dropped to lock the game down.

Over on wowtcg.com, John Tatta posted a mage control deck a while back that made use of the card Portal. He ran 1-ofs of every ally he could need in most any situation he thought he might encounter (including the big end gamers like Greench) and used Portal to fish them out. Yet another Tatta article a week later showed off a Dralnor discard deck that used much the same idea, running instead The Missing Diplomat to search the allies out and bring them to the top and into your hand.

Generally speaking, you design decks for consistency. And that means putting in multiple copies of the key cards you need to make sure you draw them every game. Of course, you're sacrificing diversity of options, but with a carefully constructed deck consistency in the cards you do draw should get you through. The control decks like the two John Tatta wrote about use a different strategy. They pack as diverse a group of allies as they want and then use search cards to pick and choose which ones they need at any given time.

This technique is called toolboxing.

Toolboxing used to be soley the province of the Alliance player (as far as allies are concerned). MotL gave Horde the power with the mage spell Portal. Toolboxing with allies though is just the most popular method at present. There are other cards that do the same thing, searching out other tools for your decks.

So let's go over these cards, their strengths, weaknesses and synergies, and find out how they can be used and what ways there are to counter them.

Top Shelf Toolbox

The Missing Diplomat - The staple toolboxing card. It's Alliance only, and while it's more expensive then the mage ability Portal, it serves double duty as a resource and a search card. The best way to stop it is with The Root of All Evil. Targeted resource destruction really isn't effective enough now and the other quest flipper, Thwarting Kolkar Aggression, lets your opponent chose which face-up quest card he wants to turn down. In a toolbox-control heavy meta, The Root of All Evil is a good choice for your side deck.

Portal - Now you're thinking with portals. This is a mage only ability, non-instant, but costs half the price of The Missing Diplomat and the Horde can use it to, making it very much Varimathras friendly. If you're running it, you probably shouldn't be relying on the ability heavily in the early game, as it'll put you behind on your play curve, even while you finding all the right answers that you think you need.

Gear Upgrade - Gear Upgrade is great. Not only can you toolbox with it and pull out the bigger equipment cards late game, it's a perfect response to targeted equipment destruction. Might as well get some use out the item anyway and using it to fish out a better card with Gear Upgrade is a not a bad deal. Most players use it to fish out weapons, but you can also use it to throw away a dual-wielded weapon for a shield to help stave off an overwhelming rush.

The Lower Tier

Kralnor - LOOK IT OVER. Kralnor doesn't see a lot of use because he's a bit more specific than other toolbox cards. He'll only find your staves. He also only puts them on the top of your deck, rather than onto your hand. The most obvious use with him is fishing out your Bringer of Deaths, but a druid deck might also enlist this orc warlock to pull out Braxxis' Staff of Slumber. There's also the Mag treasure card Crystalheart Pulse-Staff that's just waiting to be used and absued, and if you're not playing priest (who has access to much cheaper ally stealing) a sidedecked Staff of Dominance could snag an opposing Greench or Ishanah from the opponent and turn the momentum the other way...

Herod's Shoulder - In one sense, Herod's Shoulder works the same way as Kralnor: it puts the card on top of your deck, rather than into your hand. Paired with A Final Blow, however, it becomes A Missing Diplomat costed play that nets you a piece of armor as well. This card's fallen a bit out of favor because solo decks have been trying to become faster and faster in order to compete. While this card may not have a place in these faster solo decks, it can fish out a Sulfuras, a Thunderfury or a Glaive of the Pit and still net you a piece of armor for your Steelsmiths or Onslaught Girdles.

Bottom of the Box

Meeting Stone - Really hasn't seen use yet because it's much too expensive. Comes oniine two turns later than the Spirit Healer and isn't an automatic ally so much as you need two other allies already in play to bring it out.

Swiftshift - It's nice in that it can bring form abilities back from you graveyard as well, but it's pricey at four resources. Probably best used in Boomkin decks to because the Moonkin form card has no way of recycling itself if it gets destroyed. Could also be used in a future competivie bear form deck to bring out your Demoralizing Roars.

Premeditation - Would be so much more useful if it weren't subtley heroes only. But as it is, combo cards aren't generally worth four resources to fish them out, and subtley rogue doesn't really have much else to offer.

Deadly Brew - Only a toolbox card in the sense that it allows you to search your deck. It caught my interest when it first came out, but I never really ran with it. It could concievably work towards a rogue discard deck, stacking Anesthetic Poisons on the opposing player and exhausting their hero with the Bloodfang Hood...

Circle of Life - It's a nifty enough card. I remember it seeing some use in the days when all that was was HoA. But since then, it's just too expensive at eight cost to really be effective enough. Granted, it still has some potential abusing allies with come into play powers, but the Crystalheart Pulse Staff does the same thing a lot more effectively.

***

So toolboxing is another option in deck construction that gets you away from having to run multiple copies of cards for deck consistency and allows you to run a diverse number of cards. Generally, you'll use toolboxing for situational combo pieces or for ability/equipment/ally hate.

We've seen what toolboxing can do for the decks John Tatta posted, but why not take it a bit further and see what else toolboxing has to offer.

Wrath of Demia

Mesmeri the Channeler

Allies (22)

4x Kulvo Jadefist

3x Syluri

3x Porto

3x Acolyte Demia

3x Vindicator Kaldel

1x The Abominable Greench

1x Shem Reznict

1x Enfea Contha

1x Lt. Commander Dudefella

1x Lady Kath

1x Prophet Velen

Abilities (14)

4x Totem of Wrath

3x Stoneclaw Totem

3x Shock and Soothe

2x Earth Shock

2x Chain Lightning

Equipment (8)

4x Aegis of the Vindicator

4x Terror Pit Girdle

Quests (16)

4x The Missing Diplomat

4x Forces of Jaedenar

4x The Defias Brotherhood

4x Rescue the Survivors

(Thanks to manu-fan, frdrake, & yayaorbaldy for tips and advice) 

First up is an elemental shaman combo deck. This is based around an idea a friend of mine at the local game shop started playing with one day and I used his original idea for this list. It uses the prototypical toolboxing card, The Missing Diplomat, to ensure its combo (Acolyte Demia + Totem of Wrath) goes off in time and it plays a little shammy control to get to that point.

A Glaive Situation

Ona Skyshot

Allies (13)

4x Chops

3x "Acid Hands" McGillicutty 

2x Doshura Risestrider 

2x Shadala

2x Stone Guard Rashun 

Abilities (14)

4x Silencing Shot

4x Trophy Kill

4x Wing Clip 

2x Aimed Shot 

Equipment (19)

4x Blackcrow

4x Herod's Shoulder

3x Devilsaur Leggings 

3x Hellreaver 

1x Glaive of the Pit

1x Demonslayer

1x Flame Wrath

1x Sonic Spear

1x Hemet's Elekk Gun 

Quests (14)

4x A Final Blow

4x Swift Discipline

3x Sunken Treasure

3x Poison Water

This deck uses Herod's Shoulder to fish up its finisher (Glaive of the Pit) along with a few other situational tools (Flame Wrath for rush, Sonic Spear for solo, Elekk Gun for control, Demonslayer for lock control). Like the previous deck, it plays a little bit of control to get itself up to the position it need to to lay down its Glaive of the Pit and finish off the last few points of health with Aimed Shots and big weapons.

Tags: Warcraft