371 replies to this topic

[Asklepios]

A bit misleading in title here, as I don't feel ready to post a Urien deck yet. However, would love to see it if anyone has put a list together yet.

 

In the meantime, some theorycrafting:

 

Rakarth's experimentations

 

This card here. Assuming you play it, when do you play it, and what card type do you name?

 

My thought here is twofold:

1) Play it in Deploy Phase early in the game as a delaying strategy for 0, and name Unit, to force an opponent's warlord to either take a bit of attrition, or lose valuable early presence.

2) Play it in endgame in a bunch of them, one after another, as combat actions, naming the card type they are most likely holding shields on or even better don't have at all. For example, attachments for Dark Eldar, name Attachments. One of these might not do much, but several played at once may force a Warlord out of the battle or the game.

[Hakkor]

Urien will force DE player to completely change the deck strategy. He lacks Kith's card advantage and Archon's terror becomes harder to play (cost 3), as well as Raid. Events from allied fations will also get the icnrease in cost, so cards like Doom will doubtly be included.

 

Urien gets a starting extra card, but keep the average resources. That means he will have to rely more on cheap cards and try to combo with torture cards.

 

Maybe ranged units will get a higher pressence, thanks to the Injector and a high number of DE events in the deck. Maybe even the Kabalite Strike Force will have some presence to get that AoE harm the warlod a,d benefit from the Bladed Lotus Rifle.

 

Regarding to the experimentations, I agree. If you use it first to delay your deployment, the named card should be unit, specially in the early turns. Your opponent can wound his warlord, which benefits you; discard a cheap unit, probably losing a commanding unit or first panet grabber; or discard a high costed unit, giving you the chance to bring it back with a late Soul Seizure.

 

I also think that in late game fights the cards with shields should be named (events, attachments). Whatever the opponent does, you are getting extra wounds for 0 cost.

 

This event will combo very well in combat when the warlord is wearing the ichor gauntlet, and so he can be exhausted more than once to copy different event cards.

[Asklepios]

2R seems really high cost to pay for gauntlet, especially when there's an exhaust-the-warlord cost going on, and I suspect barring a late game combo draw of this with Soul Seizure, its mostly going to be played for 3 shields. As to Soul Seizure itself, its just so damn expensive. I can't see it worth running at more than x1.

 

Way to go to me, seems to be to have as many options to delay deployment as possible, and to play mostly 2 command guys for a denial game to keep the game "small", then hope Tortures have more relative effect. A 1-cost Power From Pain seems the best reason to play Rakarth right now, and that will have no good effect if there's too many units about, but could be fantastically economical if timed right on a small field.

[MotoBuzzsawMF]

From what I have seen already, not counting spoiled cards and such. These are all the units that come off as possible includes in Urien that are slightly out of the norm:

 

Cards that could be in a Urien Deck: 

 

Sybarite Marksman

Beasthunter Wyches

Coliseum Fighters

Kabalite Strike Force

Uber Grotesque

Sslyth Mercenary

 

Power from Pain

Visions of Agony

Soul Seizure

 

 

Suffering

Hypex Injector

 

Twisted Lab

 

Out of Faction: 

 

Heretek Inventor

Rotten Plaguebearers

Black Guardians

Warlock Destructor

 

Foretell

[Asklepios]

Let's pick Hypex Injector out here - this is a card that didn't make the grade in core for Kith, though I agree it has potential for Rakarth. How are we thinking of this shaping the deck?

 

Best match to me looks to be Baleful Mandrake, though I think the Beasthunter Wyches are a better use of the 3-slot in general terms. Rotten Plaguebearers might work too, though its a lot to pay for 1 extra damage, even if we have the versatility of not being tied to the Combat phase. Also agree that Sybarite Marksman could work well here too. We more or less need Ranged or pseudo-ranged for Hypex to be playable.

 

In fact, what kind of deck shape are we looking at? I think we still need to run 22 or so cheap command units at least, then maybe 8-10 units that are there for their fighting benefits plus at least 13 Torture events.

 

My inclination is for Eldar allies, and Chaos' main strength in alliance is Warpstorm, which is going to be too expensive, Plaguebearers, which don't strongly synergise, and big guys, which we can't afford in this sort of deck. Eldar allies opens up the opportunity for a Hypex-Gunline-Torture build that applies broad pressure and goes for opportunistic Warlord kills.

[MikeMcSomething]

I think the Altansar Rangers are a fine target for the Injector, as their 2 command icons will also be very useful in the command struggle. Tormentor would also be useful to maximize his ability, but I think Urien will be at his best when he's not trying to really combo. He has access to both Searing Brand and Visions of Agony for 2, so I think the Hypex will find itself in most games on something like a Hellion Gang or a Destructor or Zythlex, which will swing multiple times to win small combats. I would imagine most games will involve cheap unit + Hypex + random battle-swinging torture event winning the first couple planets.

[Asklepios]

The nice thing about Ranged gunline as well is that its a combat-centric build with good synergy with Klaivex, which should help with those tougher targets.

 

How do we feel about Archon's Terror? 3 is steep cost, but I'd feel naked building a DE deck without at least a couple of them.

[HoopJones]

I have a big write up on this that's almost done

[Hakkor]

Depends on how much the deck focuses on torture. It could still be played, but an event dependant deck like this can suffer including cost 3 events. Many cost 3 events are game changing mass effecting events.

 

I think the two main focuses of the deck are choking or going aggresive with rangeds + injector. Maybe a mix of them?

[MikeMcSomething]

The nice thing about Ranged gunline as well is that its a combat-centric build with good synergy with Klaivex, which should help with those tougher targets.

 

How do we feel about Archon's Terror? 3 is steep cost, but I'd feel naked building a DE deck without at least a couple of them.

 

I think in practice it will be very difficult to support:

 

Playing a moderately-priced ranged unit

Playing the Injector

Playing a torture card

Playing the Klaivex

 

That's alot of resources and cards. I think for 4 you would just want to lay down the Tormentor with a Hypex, pump him with the money you would have spent on the ranged unit, hit their warlord for 6-8 and then ready via a torture action. That requires one less card and lets you modulate the resources a bit better, and 4 toughness is durable enough that your opponent probably won't be able to stop him swinging. I think the best synergy for ranged + Klaivex would be the Kabalite marksman naked, as he's the cheapest way to get that combo off the ground.

 

If Urien runs terror, I imagine it will be a 1-off, since he has access to several cheap torture events (and we haven't seen all of the DE events spoiled yet) 

 

I want to see Hypex Injector + Warp spiders in action. I think that unit will find a home in Urien decks.

[VonWibble]

One other thing in favour of ranged - if the opponent chooses to ping their warlord for your signature events (which I think is very likely, especially if you use it turn 1), you actually have the tools to do him some damage.

I think Archon's Terror is worth running at least 2 of myself, I'd pay 3 for such a big effect with no problems.

Are there any torture cards in Chaos currently?

[HoopJones]

Are there any torture cards in Chaos currently?

 

Nope.

[VonWibble]

Thought not. If it ever happens (maybe Slaaneshi) then its well worth a look.

[Killax]

Ill put up my list again soon! Im really loving the ideas here because I also wonder about Kiths result.

Till soon!

[Asklepios]

How many Tortures are people going to aim for?

 

For me, it depends a lot on the quality of cards, as I don't want to play weak cards for the sake of it...

 

Right now its looking like:

4 x Signature event

3 x Suffering (it has 2 shields and the trait, so is worth including for flexible plays)

3 x Power From Pain (strongest torture of the lot, by far)

2 x Visions of Agony (2 cost is steep for discarding 1 card, but still not at all bad)

1 x Soul Seizure. (because of lack of choice)

 

Though honestly, I don't really want the Soul Seizure there, as its too expensive for such a conditional effect, and only really going to be useful from Turn 5 ish onwards, I reckon. Also, 13 Tortures seems not enough to make the deck worth playing. I want another 3 good cheap tortures in there.

[FedericoFasullo]

Am I the only one thinking that this warlord sucks? And that he's basically the weakest among all 8 warlords

 

Reasons:

 

- Dark eldar events are great (archon terror, raid)

- Torture events are not that great for now 

- His signature squad is brutal but the lack of command icons could make you shift to add more command among other units and Sslith Merc are not that good. Also I don't feel to add the razorwing with Urien for this reason

- Kith is OP

 

With this cardpool he's really not a good choice

[Asklepios]

No you're not alone in this. This is more or less why I haven't proposed a deck yet: because I can't make things work as it is.

 

Its an odd situation though, where we have 2 sig units and 4 sig events, so actually the command weakness of the sig squad isn't too much of a problem - its only using up 2 of the 30 or so unit slots, and we can make that up elsewhere.

 

More problematic, as you say, is quality of events. The sig event is a 0-cost action effectively, and thats very nice, but its effect is more or less "deal 1 damage to opposing warlord, as well as normal shielding, they can shield this with any card of a card type of your choice". Thats not a great effect, even for 0 resources. 1-cost Raid, otoh, isn't at all bad, and if we can get another good 1-2 printed cost torture then its going to be doable.

 

I wouldn't say Kith is OP by the way, rather that Dark Eldar as a whole are really strong, but that one of those key strengths (Archon's Terror) is effectively denied to Urien.

 

I think its too early to reject this warlord, but definitely its going to take some work and some more cards to make him as good as other warlords.

 

Personally, I'm expecting the next pack or two to give him some "fake signature cards", in the same way that Aun'shi had Kau'yon Strike and Homing Beacon arrive ahead of his release.

[FedericoFasullo]

On a barely realted topic: Kith is really OP, adding everytime a 2/1 to the battle is really huge, most of the times the Kymera is just there to absorb damage but that thing is still strong and makes Kith hard to bloody. Yeah, most of the deck is the faction itself not only the warlord, still pretty op all by itself

 

Anyway

 

I do agree a lot, Urien event is meh and you have to carry 4 of it. But I don't think we'll se a lot new things for Urien because they already gave him 2 events and 1 grotesque, and we have only 2 chapters left to have new cards for him.

[Asklepios]

Would be a shame if he was dead in the water on arrival. So far FFG have done pretty well in having Warlords be playable at time of release. A fair number of people thought Ragnar wouldn't work either, and he was solid, same, same with Ku'gath and with Aun'shi. None of these are better than their base warlords, but every one of them can build viable T1 decks. We're already looking at a situation where people are saying Zogwort doesn't work, but I have the feeling we can trust FFG to have each Warlord be decently playable at time of release.

 

On the other hand, sometimes they do get it wrong: in AGOT, for example, there have been a lot of funky trait-based decks that FFG pushed at us which never reached the threshold of competitiveness. This Warlord might be the start of the same for Conquest.

 

Besides, there are subtle edges that Urien has over Kith. While 8 cards instead of 7 on the starting hand takes us from 37% to 41% hit rate on a desired 3x on opening hand (or 61% to 64% after mulligan), it does much funkier things to the maths of getting a deploy hand of 5 deploy actions rather than 4, or 4 rather than 3 (say we're looking at a 7 or 8 card pull from a 50 card deck that has 20 cards that cost 1 or less, the chance of getting 4 or more of those cards goes from 27% to 40%). Also, Urien's ability is completely non-dependent on his location or status, so he can be moved to whatever planet suits command best without worrying about combat effect, and he can continue to contribute his ability even if HQ exhausted. So far, no other warlord has that degree of freedom in their special ability text, and that is a subtle benefit that cannot be disregarded.

 

In a way, I'm reminded a lot of the AGOT assessments of House of Dreams, where that agenda card looked like incredible economic value on paper, but actually had a devestating effect on setup economy. I think the 8 cards instead of 7 and the presence of a 0-cost event that can be dropped in the action phase will lead to a deckshape that is going to provide significantly more deploy turns than the kith counterpart on the first turn, and thus provide stronger opportunities for cards like Ssylth Merc, and for command strength in general. In short, I expect Urien to outperform Kith in command. Nine cards I am sure I want to include in his deck are 3 x Ssylth, 3 x Rogue Trader, 3 x Void Pirate.

 

My hope is that while Urien will look totally different to Kith in play, he'll still be viable one way or the other. 

[GKZhukov]

Haven't had a chance to read the posts, will do later in the week when I have more time, so apologies if this is already covered.

 

In response to Akslepios' opening question I would say Event/Attachment (i.e. Shield cards).

 

Urien is a weird choke/hunt hybrid I feel, generating just enough choke so that his hunt cards work.

 

If you can't sustain choke the opponent will likely always discard a card from Experimentations, if you choke hard but don't threaten the warlord he'll just take the measly 1 damage. It seems to me your best bet is to attempt to threaten the warlord and then if you say "shields (essentially)" with experimentations, and they choose the discard, that's one less shield to save the warlord in future.

 

Anyway just my initial thoughts on Experimentations - at the very beginning "Unit" is an option since your opponent probably doesn't know your balance of choking and hunting at this point so it may mess with him a bit more.