Baptism by Hammer

Astra Militarum Space Marines

Greetings Everyone!

Let me present a deck to players who like volatility and enjoy some risk/reward management. I managed to win a smaller scale competition (14 players) and reach top4 of a bit bigger one (22+ players), with this absolute blasphemy of a deck. If this caught your attention, do read on!

I do not win a lot of tournaments, the last one was the Hungarian Nationals back in 2015 and you could argue that it is because i like playing decks like this. The important thing is that players here usually shy away from playing cookie cutter decks, so you have to count for a lot of rogue brews and i think the best way to deal with those is your own brew. I used to despise this Warlord and argued against it's viability, but that was during a time when a 10th Company Scout did not mean more to me than the 1 command it had, and all i cared about was to get as much of a lead in economy as i could. But since then things have changed, and because of some efficient options, simply winning command is usually not enough to win you the game.

I used to like AM before it was cool, mainly because it is an amalgam of all the cool stuff in the Imperium, minus the Astartes. I know that these guys are public enemy number one now, but i like that you can use their Warlords in different and viable ways. If you think about the Dark Eldars, they are only starting to get some different options. Also one could compare Coteaz to Urien in the sense that they both require really unique things from your deck not to hinder your gameplay, but the difference is that one if them recieved some things to play with and the other did not.

The concept of this deck came up when i was playing against decks that played shameless amounts of command and relied on their Warlords to do some fighting (for example Ku'gath).The core was that i had enough of including both command and combat units in my deck and then drawing them in the wrong order. What i have seen, is when players reach this point they usually turn towards skipping a lot of command and trying to get by as efficiently as they can using the resources naturally given. My take was the opposite. I wanted to play a deck that only plays command, but still packs a punch, and note here that the difference between this and the decks that inspired it, is that those decks just harshly skewed the ratio of command and combat focused units, while this one just ignores combat units entirely (Eager Recruit is not in the unit slot, cause it has no commands). The fact why this does not matter as much is, that because of these units, i can usually make my opponent struggle for scraps and when neither shields nor units are abundant, one and two damages start to add up, not to mention the Warlord. Add the 8/8 start you get to all this, which is awesome and was also a big lure, and you can get out of the gate with guns blazing, which is essential.

Efficiency seems to be the name of this game nowadays in one way or another, and while this Warlord does not seem to offer much of it, an Eager Recruit coupled one of the signature events can savage most unprepared opponents. This deck indeed plays SM instead of Ammo Depot, but it should not be surprising, instead of trying to cough up as much as possible for nearly nothing, i want to win commands, because i think ignoring a decent chunk of the gameplay is just wrong. As for the combat part, i forced the
the Catachan Outposts and To Arms! events into the deck, which should answer your question about the deck size. Plan B (which a lot of the times becomes plan A), is to just expunge the enemy Warlord from the game using Preemptive Barrage and the aforementioned tools.

Consistency is a curious thing. This deck has a lot of it if we talk about decent starting hands. As from then on, the command yield hugely dictates the level of volatility. Sometimes i could grind out 7 turns long games, but the deck is really not built to brawl with a bunch of elites. I could also rush win games, but those usually involve specific draws with Outposts and Recruits coupled with 0 cost events. What i really like, is that you can't really classify this deck neither as agressive nor controlling, cause it does not want to build for the same gameplan every game, but rather lets you decide when to go for it or not.

All in all, the fact why i really wanted to win something with this deck and write an article about it, is because it surprised me how much i enjoyed playing it, but it kind of needed some legs to stand on as more than just something to goof around with. I like midrange type decks that rely on attrition, and in a twisted way, this deck does it like no other i played. Most games are wild rides, even if they look like a bit of a wash, cause there are no solid units to rely on. Having a bad opening hand and losing command or getting the Warlord bloody will often lead to a quick lose, but on the other hand you have to recklessly push all the advantages you get. Choosing carefully where to commit resources and where not can make or break the game more than with other Warlords. In return, if you pick well, you get to absolutely destroy your opponent with jumping Henchmen and stuff, who is anxiously waiting to just untap after a combat round and get away.

Also as you might expect, this deck gets absolutely destroyed by pretty much all the board clears in the game, so if where you play people are obsessed with things like Sowing Chaos, then you should probably just stay away from this menagerie.

If you like playing with fire, i think you should absolutely give this a try, but if you do not like something that can be hectic, require concious decisions and even then occasinally still burn you, just don't play with fire!

Thanks for reading!