I'm starting this thread to be a starting point to those to want to try forglar swamp battlegroups in the cheapest way possible. The current nature of rewards makes starting with this kind of battleroups a lot more fun than before, as you grow your collection of the faction as you familiarize with your battlegroup and that allows for a more enjoyable experience. As we know, most battlegroups have their fair share of high rarity runes that are as hard to get as a whole battlegroup of common and uncommons, so we will start with the step 1 of this introduction to forglar with a bg composed only by shardable common and uncommons. First of all I invite you to take a look at the Training grounds section of the forum to learn about the basics and to ask any general questions you may have: http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?forums/training-grounds-and-game-guides.8/ Next, I'll introduce the battlegroup that will follow a set of guidelines that I found make for easy to understand and play battlegroups specially for starters: 1) At least 6 long range champions 2) At least 4 durable melee champions 3) Covering the basic necessities: Detection, anti equip, access to magical damage, bypassing high defense 4) At least 2 good font harrassers 5) In this particular case, non leveled champions should be functional With this in mind, and restricting ourselves to shardable common and uncommons runes I propose this battlegroup (while poxbase is outdated I will list the champions in text) Champions: 1x Boghopper Shaman : Healing, base upgrades are fine but there are multiple builds 2x Boghopper Spitter : Long range attacker base upgrades are fine but there are multiple builds 2x Darkmarsh Fury : Long range attacker, there will be enough boghoppers to trigger violent, base upgrades are fine. 2x Firk Mindcaller : Long range attacker, base upgrades are fine but there are multiple builds. 2x Hippo Rider : Melee muscle, base upgrades are fine but I recommend switching to heavy charger on path 2. 2x Darkmarsh Enforcer : disposable tank, base upgrades are fine but there are multiple builds. 1x Darkmarsh concealer : stealth unit, font harrasser, I recommend switching to mark on path 2. 1x Darkmarsh snatcher : Stealth unit, font harrasser with anti equipment, Dive is useless without more water generation. 2x Snaptooth Deadeye : melee unit with detection, any upgrade combination is viable. 1x Salaman Negamage : Magic damage, dispel and sever summoned, base upgrades are fine. 1x Snaptooth Rider : melee unit with shatter. base upgrades are fine. 17 Champions Spells 1x Backfire : it can save you if you can predict your opponent's spells once you adquire a bit of experience. 1x Bubble of protection : to give more life to a champion you need a little longer, for example a buffed darkmarsh fury or someone fighting one vs one in a font. 1x Cleansing mist : you can expose yourself to enemy control in order to surprise him 1x Hungry mire : to give you board control and some damage if you need 1x Monsoon : area damage, it also grounds flying champions and you can use it to cliff them. 1x Murkwater weakness : a simple control spell that may get more than one opponent 6 Spells Relics 1x Font of restoration : healing, try to deploy it behind to get a second healing. 2x Poison trap : best trap of the game, bait your opponent to get a kill 1x Pond of lilies : Used to contest fonts, his shadowspawned makes it durable. 4 Relics Equipment: Darkmarsh helm : it gives you surprise damage and is your option to bypass high defense and block/dodge as assasinate does not miss. Goading mask : It gives you control with antagonize and can decide a kill with duel. Gold sand : Needed for the magic damage it provides if salaman negamage isn't there to dispel or kill. 3 Equipments Keep in mind that this battlegroup isn't a rigid proposition, I made my choices based on the criteria described and focusing on good performance with unleveled champions but it may be changed with success, several champions are interchangeable, for example you could run firk paraforms as tanks, draksar psions instead of spitters, tortun hawkers instead of deadeyes for detection, etc. I will later follow with the recommended steps to upgrade this bg with higher rarity runes that you may shard, win as reward or get in a pack.
How to improve: As you may imagine, the rarity description leaves a lot of FS out, with several games and some luck you will be able to increase your FS collection to get some runes that are staples in the faction, I will make a short list of useful runes that do not appear in the starting bg and can improve it. Champions: Rares: Salaman hunter: good long range unit can be splashed or used in salaman bg's Salaman trapper: important in salaman battlegroups but a good choice for detection in meta Salaman ninja: solid stealth option Tortun Portalmage: healer and summoner, deployed early can give you a edge. Exotics: Augur of the deep: one of the most dangerous champions in FS, his damage output is immense and is greater with some support, also it brings non targeted damage and is a champion likely to win 1vs1 even against melee Tide Master: exellent ranged unit that brings a lot of water and enables the use of drown and undertow. Tidal wave is an exellent bomb also. Kartch, finlord: beefy ranged unit. Slick and buzz: provides a lot of things, bomb, metamorphosis and action potion are great in any bg. Snaptooth dusk shaman: a 6 range champion with escalation is something that can simply win you the match if you opponent cannot do something about it. Legendary: Salaman Commando: FS's best stealth unit at the moment. Snaptooth ancient: cheap very long range unit with utility. Snaptooth chilan: very cheap and interesting ranged unit. Elder Murkwurm: cheap and versatile, great field control and damage output with hungry mire and fry and comboes greatly with augur and tidemaster. Also it brings a lot of water. Spells: Rares: Pygmy hippo stampede: widely used spell, great for great surprise damage. Reverberating blast: champion control to secure a kill. Undertow: powerful spell in presence of enough water. Exotics: Drown: self explanatory run one if you have enough water generation. Equips: Rares: Horn of order: FS's most powerful equipment, provides spot and consistent AP generation, it can find a place in any bg. Destiny: spot piercing shot is a powerful asset as it gives +9 damage for only 1 AP more, and a big portion of your bg will be surely able to tae advantage of the boghoppoer clause. Emergency kit: spot detection. Twisted emerald: can solve some problem with champions relying on his upgrades and provides a interesting amount of healing. Relics: Rares: Sacred temple: exellent contesting relic with some good utility. Legendary: Spirit Altar: warbanners are the best relics in the game and you get one buying your avatar, get one as soon as you can. This list is nowhere near extensive and just shows a couple options to spice given battlegroups. To improve your battlegroup you have to find what suits you and what combos do you like, and balance that with the answer needed to play in the current game enviroment. Personally I like the combination of augur of the deep, tide masters and elder murkwurm as a core that gives a lot of control and potential damage at the time it allows for the use of water dependent units like some semi aquatic or undertow or drown. You could also go for a more dry approach and run snaptooths as your ranged units and in that case you may want to renounce to the murkwurms in favor of something like a crawmangler or a snaptooth hunter. You can always find inspiration in the different threads in these forums or you can also ask for help if you don't know what to do with your bg. A good general use support core would be: 1x Pygmy hippo stampede 1x Reverberating blast 1x Moonsoon 1x Font of restoration 1x Tortun land cannon/pond of lilies/sacred temple 1x Spirit Altar 1x Poison Trap 1x Goading mask If you run enough water generation 1x Drown 1x Undertow If you run augurs 1x Hungry mire 1x Horn of order
I would recommend a few changes to the bg you sugested. Warning, wall of text. This is the budget bg I came up with: https://poxbase.com/deck/Cb2ctc30ChmcgICgUc80Cq-cliczbcdCivs1s6Ts1Ps1gsms6-r2LrNr3irWe2qe3Oew Boghopper Shaman - Divine Favor, Heal Champ 3 Boghopper Spitter - Leap 1, Poison 5 Coral Creeper - Life Tranfer Darkmarsh Enforcer - Leap 1, Touch 3 Darkmarsh Fury - Leap 1 Firk Botanist - Nexus Aura, Nature's Connections Firk Mindshredder - Swap 3 Firk Paraform - Oppotunistic Atk, NKD Jellebrium Mediator - Distract, Detection 3 Tortun Fishkisser - Tough 1 Rest is stock. The main game plan is to hold things down in an area (eg mid font) with anchor (dredger), binding chains (enforcer) and stall (mediator) and hammer away from range. The staying power is granted by the amount of healing your packing (shaman, 2 corals, font and bubble) paired with tanky units (enforcer, fishkissers, snap rider). Dredger could be run with punish as well. Stun is also viable on second upgrade, but I would leave at least 1 with grappling hook. Paraform build is focused on anti range. Fishkisser is a standalone tank and could be used to defend/atk side fonts or in those maps were your forced to split your army. Utility comes from Mediator (distract, detect and stall), Botanist (cleanse and dmg sharing) and Snap Rider (shatter). For spells I didn't include cleansing mist since you only have a 1 turn window to predict your opponent move (not like Backfire where you have 6) and Botanist already fill this role. Also left out hungry mire due to the fact that it will hit your units and its duration, which could play against you. I included Erode due to the relic spam seen nowdays and Marsh Song for obvious reasons. Bog trap is an interesting alternative that rarely see play to lockdown an unit/area, but its more situational and won't work vs FS and flying units. For equips, goading mask is propably MVP, equip it on enforcer and antagonize your opponent units, this is specially useful vs. ranged bgs. I've chosen Scimitar over Darkmarsh Helm since anchor generates water and you can use it everyturn even when theres detect units around. Most of the time +10 dmg from scimitar equals the double dmg stat from helm. Another option would be Swampwasp Nectar, making enforcers and fishkissers really badass (even tho oponents could simply avoid enforcers) For relics banner is the only rune with rarity above uncommon but you can easly get one and an avatar for 5000 gold. Pond of lilies could be swaped with soultap garnet as a perseverance counter, but mindshredders will deal with that most of the time. I've tested this bg and it worked pretty well.
@4NIK8 While your bg is interesting in some ways, I would not recommend it to new players because: a) doesn't follow the rules, the rules are indeed arbitrary but they have thought behind them, they make for easy to use and consistent battlegroups that suit new players well. b) It's dangerously inconsistent with boghopper shaman, 2x mind shredders and 2x tortun fishkissers, the chances of a losing starting hand are too high c) it's clearly more punishing to mistakes (you lose mediator and you are completely vulnerable to stealth, and there are others) d) You need more water to use scimitar. It's useful to see other champ options.
I see your point, but: a) Your talking about the legendary banner? Well it's optional, so anything else would be a good replacement. b) I can't see how a mindshredder or fishkisser would give me a loosing start? For shaman yeah, would be forced to throw divine favor away, but humm the bg your suggested also have one? c) I don't know if I agree with that, since there's plenty of tanks and healing making mistakes more forgivable. For stealth, most of the time mindshredders are enough, but yeah mediator is quite squishy. d) So far it's been ok, but it could be swaped for another goading mask or darkmarsh. Darkmarsh is kinda limited since you need 6 AP to actually use it the turn you deploy and you can only use it once every other turn. What I like about this bg for new players is that it's great vs. rushes and high dmg, which are usually things new players have no idea how to handle.
Dredger is still uncraftable IIRC, and would need to be traded for or bought (the latter defeating the purpose somewhat). It's cheap to trade for and all but I think I read something about new players not being able to Trade right away? Might need a change there at least.
a) Legendary banner, dredger and leveling required are the "technical" problems, the ranged units are too squishy, with vulnerabilities and 1 less range, that can be problematic also. b) mindshredder and fishkisser aren't reliable to capture fonts because 5 speed and manic respectively, boghopper shaman because you lose the divine favor, that's correct, but we are talking of 5 problematic runes vs 1. c) there are others: dredger's lethargic is compensated by grappling hook, so a bad synchronization can leave the champion stranded, manic is another mechanic you need to learn, Marsh song is a tempo hit, furies with leap 1 are more vulnerable and they are the main winning condition of the bg, firk botanist promotes grouping, the vulnerabilities on creeper and botanist can compromise the board presence of the bg, paraform's NKD requires additional AP management, you have only one source of shatter, you have no stealthy units. d) darkmarsh helm counters both high defense and miss mechanics and can be used by ranged units that are also the main beaters, that means that detection units cannot do much to counter the usage because it would be used beyond range on most times, 6 ap for one assasinate is basically multiattack 1 + strike that does not miss. also you removed salaman negamage that answers to many things
