Kugath - San Antonio SC 3rd Place

I applaud you for spreading the pestilence!

Few questions? What is your take on the promotions? How often are you winning command with those? Or are they mainly used as shields?

And a question on a broader scale, how does this archetype fare these days? I think there are so many ways to ambush in units during battle, move units to the battle or just generate forces via Troop Transport etc. so the strenght of this deck has taken a step back. I mean it is great to use 3 warpstorms in a row to decimate the entire board, but if afterwards new units pop in and you are down to zero resources it's nigh impossible to do anything about it. Also the rise of Worr is huge due to the fact that one of the MVPs of the deck (Archon's Terror) doesn't have that much of an impact in that (widely popular) match up.

My latest iteration is really similar to your's but I removed Promotions and Splintered Path Acolytes to include 3xEcstatic Seizures (for that pesky Tau) and 3xTurbulent Rift. Turbulent Rift is a peculiar one with only 1 Elite in the deck, but if I happen to draw these it is a great way to deal some un-nullifiable aoe dmg.

The Promotions probably aren't strictly necessary, because yes, there aren't going to be many targets for them. Though I've certainly been in situations where it made sense to promote Caius Wroth or a Plague Beast. Or maybe even an Acolyte or Nurgling on those rare games where I need a capper down stream.

I was running one copy of Ecstatic Seizures when I played this at the store tournament last week. I don't think I saw it, and never particularly needed it, though I could definitely see a use for it. (In my local meta, I'm one of the main Tau players, which may lower its particular use for me.) I had not really considered Turbulent Rift before (as you say, it's odd with just one elite), but I might give that a shot.

I agree that Ambush is one of the biggest problems facing this deck. At the San Antonio SC, I went 3-0 till the final game. My first and third games were against Nazdreg and Zarathur. Game two was against Worr, though I got very lucky in that the Worr deck did not get many of the cards it wanted (only one Troop Transport), and we had a planet flop with few Greens. Through the use of Colosseum Fighters, I was actually able to use Fetid Haze four times over the course of that game, which obviously helped a lot. The final game was against Salaine. There were other issues--very bad draw on my part, never seeing any Archon's Terrors or Fetid Hazes the whole game, and a very dumb, tired play on my part where I forgot to shield my GPB from its own damage, opening it up to a Klaivex that turned the tide of that battle, if not the whole game--but the ability of that deck to keep putting out more guys after I had ostensibly cleared the planet is a huge issue.

Yesterday, we played a rematch, and though it was far closer than our game at the SC, Salaine ultimately came out ahead again, largely thanks to ambushing in Klaivex's and her sig squad. Lack of resources in that game inspired me to put Gut and Pillage into the deck, particularly as the final showdown came down to me having to choose between using Fetid Haze or Warpstorm. I went with Fetid Haze, fearing he had a shield in his hand; he didn't, and if I had used Warpstorm instead (or could've afforded both), his bloodied Salaine would have died.