My favorite decks of all time - appreciation thread

A simple thread to reminisce about the best/ fun to play/ "omg OP" decks of all time. Not in any particular order or any specific expansion / patch (I have tried to include the original creator of the deck where possible).

• Chop block - Mercy AP denial (with pre nerfed recycle and Rugolths fist) (IS/FW)
• Equipment decks (feat. Armory) (FS/IS) (FW/IS)
• NecroMoga (pre nerfed Unholy Tomb) (SP/FW)
• Frost Amp (ST)
• Jellies/ water gen/ aquatics (feat. pre-nerfed Forglar Jellyfish and Pool of Dreams) (FS)
• Sinwinds infamous Relocate-Mobi-Harvest (FW/UD)
• Demonic Barbarians (with pre nerfed Barbarian passive) - Unbending force with sac/ret mad echos and pre-nerfed Exile/Mercy (IS/UD)
• Banish-Banish Nora drain (UD/FS)
• Hyper-Nora gen (feat. nora cows, nefari siphons, scortched dwaves) (UD/ST)
• Kithros' DB-War Cry / efficiency / battlemaster POWER (SL/IS)
• Carrionling spam (pre damage aura nerfs/ Carrion colossus) (ST/FW)
• Deep elves / Grimlic's Treachery (UD)
• Rock-trap avalanche (SP)
• Vampires/Bleed (pre-nerfed bleed) (UD/FW)
• Stitched (FW/UD)
• Geomancer-Swap BOOM (IS/ST)
• Skeles (FW) (FW/ST)
• Dwarven constructs (siege engines/ catapults and dwarves) (IS)
• Create chasm Domi / gale (ST/IS) (FW/IS)
• Rush decks (feat. Rascal fairy/ Imp or baby dragon bomb) (KF/SL) (UD/SL)
• Fire decks (feat. Borghas)
• Summon Spam (KF/ST)
• Kithros's Flood / Rocktrap deck (Post rock-trap nerf) (SP/FS)
  
• Strip Armor - Conduit - Icequake - boardwipe (all pre nerfed) (IS/ST)
  
• Motivation decks (pre-nerfed Motivation) IS/KF
• Blade of the Snake Lich Kings (FW/UD)
• Kartch, Finlord (2006~) (FS)

This list is not exhaustive by any means and it would be great you if could share your memories of your fondest decks so that we can all reminisce about the glory days of PoxNora.

Honorable mentions

• Talinos' hella expensive BogHoppers (FS)
• @Ryvirath s' Instagib deck (FW/SP)
• Every single one of @iPox s' decks
• Soulfears 2 champ deck
• Tinydragons' efficient summon snake spam (with pre nerfed Battle hymn, Motivation and Drive) (KF)

 

Super speed imps killing shrines with 2x Dark Rising, Draconic Benediction, Quicking, Mobilize.

 

I had great fun playing that SP/SL shrine kill deck that used 2x Tribe War, 2x Enslave, and Quickening. Sadly (or perhaps happily) one of the last patches this game ever got went and added Skirmisher to the summoned Maulers.

I used to love oddball decks back in the day. I would spend hours pouring over the rune manager thinking up weird Bane Shift that may or may not work (a lot of it didn't, but most of it was fun to play at least). I remember getting really excited about a new deck, thinking it was gonna be the best thing ever and that I was the only one who had caught onto it.

I sure was naive back then. But even if my decks rarely worked out, I had a blast building them and theorycrafting and playing with them, trying to get that one key combo down.

I manged to dig up some of my creations over the years. A lot of them involved Chronomancer and her Spell Shift ability.

http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/a-heaping-helping-of-hippos.21750/

ST/FS Hippo Spam. I would deploy Boghopper Huntmasters, use Huntmaster's Charm to get another Hippo out, then send him back to the runedock with Retreat, refunding half the Huntmaster's nora. Chrono would get 2 charges every time I dropped a Huntmaster (since his pet counted as being deployed from the runedock as well), and I would cycle Retreat off cooldown with Spell Shift. The idea was to swarm the field with Hippos, and have Marsh Songs chugging away in the background to gen nora (again, cycled off CD with Spell Shift).

http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/cold-snap.19182/

ST/FS again, this time a Snaptooth split. This one was actually pretty consistent and I managed to break into top 100 once with it. I would deploy Snapteeth like usual, then cast Soul Frost on them to generate 10 nora per attack. Since their racial ability grants Multiattack, you're looking at an extra 20-30 nora per turn just for attacking. ST also has Coordination Tower (great with Multiattack units), Everfrost Manacles (again, great with Multiattack units), and Chronomancer, who brings both lower spell cooldowns (i.e. more Soul Frosts) and Haste to let your Snapteeth attack more.

http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/chronomancer-is-pretty-dang-broken.17419/

These are basically a bunch of decks I came up with involving Chronomancer, with varying degrees of success. The one involving Masochism + Crystal Phoenix was another fairly consistent one. Since Phoenix has Immortality, you could just prevent all damage to your units by using Chrono to keep Masochism on a 1 turn CD. The Flag spam deck was hilarious in some cases, because unless you were against an FS player who ran Corrode, there was no way to efficiently dispose of all those Flags in one go. So your opponent was left with a bunch of champions that couldn't attack or activate abilities, and you could kill them at leisure.

Probably my favorite deck of all time however was an FW/SP insta-gib deck that used Onus of Kiergana, Shadowshank, Goliath Fesh, and Cyclops Hurler + Domi to instantly kill anything the opponent deployed. Sadly I can't seem to find an exact list anywhere, but this was back before the Swallow Whole nerfs and when Hurler still had Create Chasm. You'd save up about 150 nora, wipe the board with instakills, then cast Ritual of Binding so your opponent couldn't transfigure. Cyclops Warwizard with Grant: Teleport and Cast: Alacrity provided the powerturn potential, with Mobi and Elsaari Bazaar as a backup. I also ran a few Soul Collection units to mop up the nora globes and keep the income rolling. It didn't work against all decks (playing against Moga or Aquatics was particularly painful.......) but damn was it ever fun.

A few other notable combos I loved to use were Nora Seep + Wake the Dead (back when summons could contest fonts), Soulsphere + Resilient champs, Millennial Icequake boardwipes (on those rare occasions when I would play 2v2), Shadowshank + Phoenix Amulet/Gravewatcher, AP denial with pre-nerf Magnetic Pulse, and Ryvirath's old Sporepox + Soulharvest deck (I actually forget if he was the one to pioneer that or if it was Krebmart, can anyone confirm?).

 

This was the deck that I went 55-1 with over a 56 game span back in April.

 

My Woodenscales BG's! Probably the most fun I've had playing PoxNora, at least in the time it's been dead.

 

Off the dome:

- SL Meta when Akakios was literally the only good champ in the faction and Acid Elemental was as much range as you got
- FF KF in thered's prime where you just Withering Ferned things and contested fonts, never attacked
- As previously mentioned, pre nerfed FF FS Jellyfish
- Boost 3 Kanen when they all had sunder
- SL/IS paladins
- Half Skeezick when Awayaway was playing them and Half Skeezick was an IS unit

 

Most people don't know this but when you run x2 Hammer Strike you can actually cast Hammer Strike twice

 

Any deck with a pincushion.

 

Fairies.

 

Very early Pox: super imp or gahroon plus helm of chaos for the shrine kill. Stealth decks with Deep elf assassin back when there was few destealth options.

Slightly later Pox: cheap shoebox UD spam with grundlewolves and scorpics.

Mid Pox: Spiders, I love me some spiders.

Late Pox: Goblins are a fun deck.

 

Oh god Blade of the snake Lich Kings were hella OP.

I even remember when Kartch, Finlord was the single most OP rune in the game!

On that note I have also just remembered Talinos' HYPER EXPENSIVE boghopper deck. That guy ran Tidemasters and Spitters etc ALL 100+ nora and held a super high rank with it. This was back when you could customise the stats. God I miss the good ol' days of Pox.

 

and combo with a that short lived bodyguard guy when bodyguard had no max range

 

KF/FW Cocoon + Soustrike or Loss of Life attacks

 

Circus warcry/grimlics mirror double fire skull double firestorm was the first deck I remember playing against in ranked. Right after that I got Imp Helm of Chaos shrine rushed, then I got post manned by a skeezick filcher shrine nuke. Those were cool decks. Sac/lich King, Boghopper Finlord, er I mean Kartch . . .


The most fun BG I played a lot was the Exile/Mercy/Echoes/Ret build. I don't remember who officially got it nerfed, I just know I made an alt and sat in the top 5 until it did. And cried a lot when it was gutted.

I also really liked any BG that had the old old SL FF bonus, but not the oldest (when +20 defense was the bonus), and the UD and SL bonus' canceled each other out.

Also, anything with old SP font bonus for 2 AP on deploy KF split 13 speed Harbs that had 10 AP on deploy. And you could deploy a clay form and clay form the harb for 2 ap, and just absolutely wreck/win in the first few turns. Rush font, vortex, win. Didn't have to attack all that much.

A BG I played a ton, but absolutely HATED to play against was the AP lock IS/FW BG, I combined it with the Nightbarbs/Decay combo and it was just an absolute Bane Shift show of rage quits and cackling like a maniac.

Oh! When Nora Singer was released, there was an awesomely fun KF/SL BG with Elven druid, Nora leeches, and singer, and you'd just park a 70+ hp 18 damage Nora shielded bear in a font and just kinda win.

Any FW BG that tried to min/max builds to hit certain cooldowns, then alter of voatev came out and I made a UD BG that could cycle demons faster than any FW BG.

I played a ton of SL, whether split or full faction, and had on many occasions taken extremely sub par draksar BG's to respectable ranks, long before a draksar deck was actually decent. I ran Draksar Footmen back before they were cool. (wait did they ever get cool?). In fact I remember the super old "meta" SL BG at one point was ravagers, draksar chargers, Draksar Archers, Archnic, and uhhh, I don't remember the rest, but it was 20 rune BG days, so probably not alot more. Also casting DB, and then Quickening/mobi whatever else.

But one BG that I feel I helped create as an archetype, or at least don't remember copying from someone (it actually still exists mostly), was the FS/UD Nora infusion/marsh troll/flamesiphon/borghas/wasp/lava nukes. I spent a ton of time with Caine working on it and play testing, and managed to do extremely well with it. Most of the fundamentals are still there so I'm probably going to try and recreate it and see how it goes.

I wonder if there are more past BGs than current BGs, all things equal.

Also now I try to fill BG's with as many LE's and Legendaries as possible. Themes be damned.

EDIT, also I feel like devils covered alot of the biggest highlights of the various meta seasons pox had over the last 15 years or so.

other edit

I also loved this bg of yours. I remember getting wrekt by it and asking you to help me build a version, truly an awesome super fun BG.

 

I always like Soulfear's 2 champ BG (when champs would auto reveal). 2 x Eternal Liches and the rest spells. FW/KF spell spam including Grimlic's Mirrors and then the CD's would be shortened. LOL Great deck!

 

Anyone remember that deck iPox created that let him one-round the enemy shrine with a Tiny Morsel (the summon from Gathering at Dawn)? I thought that one was Firking hilarious.

Oh and that one that fed a ton of charges to Deep Leviathan with pre-nerf Sea Song for Cataclysm boardwipes.

Also Trucelock (even though everyone hated playing against it, it was still a pretty creative deck).

Kinda unrelated, but any deck made in Draft mode usually turned out fun in some way. Since you were basically picking runes at random, it was always a challenge to see if you could make a workable deck with what the dice rolled for you. Was also great because it was the only mode where you could theoretically end up with more than 2 copies of a rune in your deck (excluding that brief period when the Numerous ability existed). One time in particular, I was against @Gaverion in a Draft game and, by some unimaginable stroke of luck, he managed to draft 5 Boghoppers. This was back when Boghopper was 50 nora with Block 2, Dodge 2, and Riposte. Those little Firkers were so damn efficient at harassing I don't think I owned a font for more than 2 rounds all game.

 

Miss the days when we could customize the stats on Champs and name/taunt tokens. Long live Pox.

 

Definitely the Muddy Waters bg @Thbigchief