Coteaz test deck

Thanks for posting this Kingsley! I hadn't considered the Rockcrete Bunker out of Coteaz. Do you think it's more effective than the Inquisitorial Fortress? I ran the IF in my Enginseer version and I found it to be quite effective.

 

I suppose that it helps with the low shield count in the deck. In this low cost unit meta, I would imagine the Rockcrete to be more effective.

 

Also, without the Snotling attack are you finding you have enough sacrifice targets for Coteaz?

Ah. I was curious about Augur (though he has been on my radar for a bit) but seeing as staging ground is very important...I think the call makes complete sense..even more so because an early Formosan black ship can cause a lot of problems. Kudos. I am curious about no VPS though. Seems like the army of small guys could dwindle without extra card draw and I usually feel ratlings aren't that great anymore.

Seems interesting.  I'm really enjoying Coteaz and am finding him easier to build with than Strakken.

Only 2 Preemptive Barrages?

Been considering Rockcrete Bunker myself as a soft Aun'shi counter and for its synergy with Chimera.

 

Surprised to see Chimera's absence, and also no Snotling Attack?

 

Also, really no Ammo Depot?

 

Do you consider this to be your competitive Coteaz deck or just an experiment? Because I've very much struck by how different it is to my own competitive Coteaz build, and normally we build very much alike...

I'm currently testing:

 

-3 Rockcrete Bunker

-3 Enginseer Augur

 

+3 Ammo Depot

+2 Elysian Assault Team

+1 Preemptive Barrage

 

I tested Snotling Attack for some time, but it was basically not a strong card. Ammo Depot has been very weird in this deck. I'm still not sure if I favor the Enginseer version or the Ammo Depot version (Enginseer only finds IG supports, so you really need 9 IG supports to run it IMO), but both seem strong.

I took out 1x Rockcrete for an Inq. fortress and replaced the shoota mobs with void pirates.

You may be right on Ammo Depot. I tend to be able to trigger mine on Turn 1, but after that its less consistent than with Zarathur, possibly because of the lack of options to turn draw into resources, so its too easy to end up with big hands,

 

That in mind, I'm thinking about dropping the depots to gain Suppressive Fires.

If your hand is filling up and you're unable to use Ammo Depot, it's probably because the average cost of your deck is too high (or you're dominating command and shouldn't worry). The problem with dropping your curve too low is that your opening hands can become inefficient, or you may have problems with variance if you don't have Ammo Depot in your opening hand and can't find it quickly.

 

Having SPA, Firestorm and Infernal Gateway in Zarathur helps a lot with Ammo Depot since it gives you some slack to utilize excess resources if you still aren't drawing many cards. The average cost is somewhere around 0.98-1.38, but Firestorm can push that up even higher if it has to, giving you quite a wide range to play with. If you were to run Ammo Depot in another deck, you'd have to target an average cost per card somewhere in the lower part of that range to keep Ammo Depot active.

Aware of the logic there, Syntaxlost, but there's certainly not a problem with average costs. Its more a case that the events aren't useful till the Battle Phase, and while thats not enough on its own, it also is often the case that command DOES go very well for this deck. Winning on command doesn't always translate to a winning state on the board either - something I've learnt from Ragnar games where I'll often be behind on cards and resources, yet still able to win the game.

 

But yes, at present, I still use Ammo Depot, and was surprised to see Kingsley turn it down initially. More thinking about the option of leaving it out, rather than leaving it out, at present!

 

Thing is, all the draw in the world doesn't help if I can't answer a Librarian with Storm Bolter, or a Gun Drones Marksman. Those things can make a real mess of Coteaz, as even if some units survive, the diminished numbers tend to leave him unable to win a battle.

How do you deal with massive numbers? I've been playtesting a lot with a buddy, either against his SM or AM Straken deck and I'm very hard pressed winning against him, it always seems as if I don't have the numbers to keep up with him, having to sac all the time.

Aware of the logic there, Syntaxlost, but there's certainly not a problem with average costs. Its more a case that the events aren't useful till the Battle Phase, and while thats not enough on its own, it also is often the case that command DOES go very well for this deck.

 

7 events Vs. 6 isn't a big difference (I can't recall a single instance where I've played a Firestorm in Deployment, though perhaps you've had different experiences).

 

 

Winning on command doesn't always translate to a winning state on the board either - something I've learnt from Ragnar games where I'll often be behind on cards and resources, yet still able to win the game.

 

Not sure what this has to do with my comments, but sure, games can be won without a command advantage. However, most games should go in favour of those that do generate command advantages.

 

But yes, at present, I still use Ammo Depot, and was surprised to see Kingsley turn it down initially. More thinking about the option of leaving it out, rather than leaving it out, at present!

 

I'm not using it at the moment because of the variance problem I detail in the post above.

 

Thing is, all the draw in the world doesn't help if I can't answer a Librarian with Storm Bolter, or a Gun Drones Marksman. Those things can make a real mess of Coteaz, as even if some units survive, the diminished numbers tend to leave him unable to win a battle.

 

Err... There are two AM cards (Fortress and Suppressive Fire) which can answer a Marksman + Gun Drones with Initiative or a Librarian + Storm Bolter. I'd argue that you'd want to draw as many cards as possible to reliably have an answer to these problems (particularly the former).

 

Back to the OT, playing with Coteaz I've noticed that Mystic Warden is really good Staging Ground. Being able to generate attack power with zero resources makes combat calculations much more difficult for your opponent.

Overall I'm a big fan of the deck, but I've got one question - Why the Leman Russ Battle Tank?
I can't really imagine a situation where I would be happy to draw it. Not at the beginning, not at the middle, and maybe not even at the endgame. I'm not sure that it can handle a situation alone, they can't work together with Coteaz and it is already too expensive to put other units next to it.
So what is its purpose? Or aren't there other "big bodies" that work better? Khymera has sort of a synergy with the rest of the deck, or the Assault Valkyre has nearly the same battle potential, but it costs 1 less, so it can be played almost always.
I'm really curious, as I probably miss something...

1 x Leman Russ is something I did for Straken for a while, as sometimes you just want a big ass unit with a lot of command icons.

 

As to when you want it, its when you have 5+ resources left and 1 card left to play! At that time, its really nice to be able to drop that down rather than, say, another Rogue Trader.

 

Assault Valkyrie was very much the bruiser of choice for most AM decks till a few cycles ago, but experimentation with Leman Russ has been something that has pleased a lot of players. It basically comes down to this: 4/4/6 is more impactful than 1/4/4 flying. They have similar levels of survivability, but Russ is more non-attack resilient (e.g. from a Plaguebeast or AoE) and 4 command over 1 command makes an unsurprisingly large difference.

 

There's no "right" answer as such, and actually at present I'm with you on this... Leman Russ has left my Coteaz deck, and there are 2 Chimera in there instead.

My sneaking suspicion is that Leman Russ is really there to push the Average Command Per Unit up to 1.21 which is where most of the good decks are at :-P

Kingsley (like every good player) obviously added a few bad cards to the public version of the deck, so he could keep an edge over less experienced players who copy it blindly.

Haha! I'm such a good player that I put entire bad decks up, and claim they're good.

 

Ahem.

Short of killing them with Barrage, how do you approach problem units with this, as there's neither Fortresses, nor Suppressive Fire?

Jeer- yeah, because Kingsley needs that every edge. 

Seriously, the russ is in there because the deck really does need some sort of bruiser that can take damage.  The advantage of the Russ over the Valkyrie is that has 3 command icons so you are probably going to be winning command where you play it.  I've talked with him about it and that is his reasoning.  It really is just a matter of personal taste.  There are 5 or 6 cards that can be slotted in there without making a "wrong" choice IMO

 

Gkzhukov-  what sort of problem units are you thinking about.  Most of your units are cheap trash that big bruisers will overkill.  But you can hit extremely hard so they don't get a lot of chances.  Swarms are a bigger issue but fortress and suppressive don't help there either.

I'd say anything with AE 2 or more is a problem unit for this deck. Barrage does a lot to help though, unless its ranged itself (eg Viorla with Gun Drones).

Big hitters otoh are less of an issue as you say.

Yeah AoE units mostly. Especially AoE units that can Indomitable/Shield your Barrage or Ranged Gun Drones as VW points out.

 

Personally I've found Fortress to be MVP in a few of my games since I started testing Coteaz. Can't imagine how I'd deal with the tougher AoE units otherwise.

 

Big hitters are less of a problem, though they can still be a pain - a jacked up honoured Librarian, for example, can really hurt Coteaz himself.

 

I find some similarities with my Kith deck, where Terror and Klaivex regularly save the Token Swarm or the Warlord by neutralising the thing that would annihilate them.