This is a somewhat silly deck that grew out of an older idea I had about using Chronomancer to spam Marsh Song: https://poxbase.com/deck/c28CwDcqUCozc24Cgjc6iCujCimCvWs19s1fs7bS4YS1gs8HS1Zr1_r2urNrW Like most of the split decks I make these days, the key rune here is Chronomancer. Only this time, she shares the spotlight with a rune that has fallen into disuse of late: the Boghopper Huntmaster. The basic premise is to use Chronomancer's Spell Shift ability to spam Marsh Songs in order to generate nora. And just how does she get the charges to continually use Spell Shift? Well, Boghopper Huntmaster comes with a pet whenever he is deployed from the runedock. That means Chronomancer gets double the number of charges when you deploy a Huntmaster, which lets you reuse Spell Shift twice as fast. But the combos don't stop there. FS also packs a nifty little spell called Huntmaster's Charm, which massively increases the stats of any target Pygmy Hippo, along with removing Huntmaster Bound. Alternatively, when cast on a Huntmaster, another Pygmy Hippo is deployed adjacent to him. This brings us to the meat-and-potatoes combo of the deck. Retreat allows you to return a target champion to your runedock with a cooldown of 1 and refund half its cost. Huntmaster drops a Hippo whenever he is deployed. And Huntmaster's Charm boosts your Hippos to incredible heights. By using Chronomancer to cycle these spells off cooldown, you get a never-ending stream of Pygmy Hippos whose stats usually lie around 60 HP, 7 speed, and 14 damage. Of course, all this spell casting is going to end up costing a lot of nora...............but wait, we've had Marsh Songs running for at least 10 turns now! With Chronomancer eliminating their cooldown, Marsh Song can be spammed indefinitely for a huge end of turn nora spike. Even with just 4 Songs running (the usual minimum for this deck) that's an extra 40 nora PER ROUND you're getting, which more than covers the cost of your spells. If that wasn't enough, we also have Noraweave thrown into the mix, so whenever the opponent attempts to chunk away your precious Hippo army, you get even more nora for reinforcements. The rest of the runes are facilitators for your Hippos. Turtle, Mentor, and Beast Tamer further raise their stats and provide some additional AP. A single Phoenix (with Immortality) is enough to keep your Hippos healthy and happy. The Painters are great early game champions; upgraded with Augment Creation, your Hippos will have even more damage, plus Psychic Compulsion keeps your backline safe from assaults. The Portal Mages come with their own brand of summon, and also boast some decent healing when the need arises. The Rooks bring in more nora, while the Heretics are your artillery. With all the spamming of Retreat you will be doing, their damage grows quite quickly to threatening levels. The downside of this deck is undoubtedly the early tempo hits. You will have to take a lot of them if you want the big returns later, but if you can weather the storm (done easier with Rooks tying up the opponent in font battles) the opponent won't be able to match your mid/late game board presence. It's not uncommon to have over 100 nora to work with every single turn using this deck. Run at 84 nora, Boghopper Huntmaster returns 42 nora when used with Retreat, meaning you recover the full cost of the spell itself, plus a bit extra. Always be sure to prioritize Hippos that have not yet been affected by Huntmaster's Charm when you have the spell available. If you use Retreat on your only deployed Huntmaster when you have a few unaffected Hippos out, they will turn on you at the start of the enemy's turn. And yes, the buff from Huntmaster's Charm DOES STACK if used on a Hippo more than once. If you so desired, you could forgo the Hippo army strategy altogether and just make a single super-Hippo...........but that would likely be a terrible idea due to the prevalence of anti-summon tech. This is another downside to the deck, but luckily the majority of anti-summon runes only deal flat damage to summons, not kill them outright. This means your behemoth Hippos are (generally) safe from destruction. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome. Keep in mind this deck is not to be taken too seriously, and is mainly just for having fun.
Not half as hungry as a house of hoggish hobbits hankering for honeyed ham at half after elevenses, but hungrier than a haggard Hagrid on holiday in Harlem.
I don't play ranked, but I do play normal games on occasion. I've tested it there and in single player.
JazzMan... You've never stopped to impress me with your ideas and decks.. - Just popped in for the lulz (haven't played for quite some months), but this.. is exactly why i liked PoxNora.. Well done! I might have to try this deck some day if i feel like playing again. The BG sounds very funny on board.. hopefully it's just as funny ingame. props from me buddy!
