Delving into the Mountains...

Ok! So, i'm still a total stronghold noob, but i'm making progress. I have acquired all of the Wing units and have made a 'beast deck' i guess with them, 2 sarnghavian herders, and 2 of the new hoolies. It doesn't seem very strong yet, i need practice and deck edits for sure.

What should I be looking to acquire next? I love dwarves, and ale, so I'm thinking some sort of dwarve deck next? The Northern Cross units look super cool thematically, with the Cardinal especially. How do they rate?


Also, sorry for referring to 'dwarf' as 'dwarve' since dwarve only referrs toa dwarve from middle-earth but...i guess habits are hard to lose.

 

What about yo try something like this:
http://www.poxbase.com/deck/CuictdCjjC10C4c5jCjhc1tcjgCgactfS5Xs4BSls4Gs6Ms4-sPrirYe2ye3i

 

Is that considered meta IS at the moment? Looks pretty easy to acquire the last few runes I would need to make that. I'll give it a shot! I already have one fist, and a paladin commander from random trade fodder.

Do you know if there's any Northern Cross kind of deck that's competitive?

 

Also, what is a good situation to use the guard tower on? It seems unlikely to get use out of the knockback part.

 

Brew/dorf decks seem to be meta atm (been a while). Id say constructs are still meta as are good stuff pallies in the right hands.
Beast based decks (wings/barbs) seem strong, but haven't really run any yet.
Barbs still seem to lack something (which is kinda becoming their theme), but I haven't really had a go with them either.
Trolls are one of the themes that didn't seem to be too mixed up by the revamp and are probably in the same place as they were before, which is to say not meta unless your good.

North cross pally decks used to rock the whole brand thing which was good, but not sure how that runs, or who even still has brand (I know vengeant lost it). Priestess got a cost increase and can no longer deploy the spear at range which has lead to her being used less (well by me anyways). NC militia loosing divine favour reduced their healing capability. In saying that, PoV can be run cheap. In all, there seems to be no real synergy outside the whole CtE thing, its really a flavour choice now.

Guard tower is awesome, particularly at fonts. Detection 3 and battlemaster are great, KB on the tower is useful in font fights and can help keep champs (in particular ranged) mobile by forcing a disengage at the end of the opponents turn.

 

Ahh okay. I'll see about getting a tower then. I made a deck identical to the one posted, except an earthshaker subbed in for guard tower, i'll play around with it and go from there. If anyone could post more example decks that would be great!

 

It is a shame that not all of the is themes are competitive, but oh well. Hopefully progress will be made for us soon.

 

So...I tried a deck identical to the one above, with guard tower swapped out for Earthshaker but I still really liked my wing units, so I tried mixing them up a bit. I haven't had much luck at all, and have lost so many games it's embarassing. I decided to take out Emerald Wings and Platinum Wings as they seemed really pricey, and I mixed some things around and this is what i'm at right now.

http://gyazo.com/3553fe2090364116e432ff34a8e4f281

Any suggestions? I'm working on finding heroes, like Euan, and i'm working on finding constructs to build that theme, but i'm not sure what to do for a more dwarven deck. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Drop the wings of glory, only really useful in a pure wings deck, even then despite being good on paper its a bit meh
Drop spare parts too.
Swap out one hammer strike for a sapping beam, or sub one in for the spells above.
It also seems like the deck is just made up of random goodstuff champs.

My two favourite decks atm, nither is perfect, but Im having fun

 

Yeah, it was more of a wing deck before I tried editing some things, I didn't play that deck. I'm working on building ones like yours, I've acquired my 2 master Axemen but still not having any luck on the heroes or brewmasters. Thanks for posting!

 

I have been liking Collectors more than Axemen recently in brew decks. Do you have hound masters for your beast deck yet?

 

Yep, I have houndmasters and I really liked them for supporting my wings, drive is super useful. I'll have to find some collectors to try out, but those will be easy to get. I've been considering an IS/SL split that focuses on carousing all the dwarfs, then using Magnetize to nuke an enemy and proc the enrage on dwarfs, what do you think of that idea?

 

Oh, I've also made this so far...
http://gyazo.com/a960e017d40c5866b2afcf9621a56e5f
that i'm tentatively using while I work on attaining the harder to get runes i'm looking for.

 

This is actually a pretty nifty idea. SL has some great equip and spell support.

 

The half-skeezicks have race dwarf too, so they can be equipped as well. I'm not sure how powerful using magnetize aggressively would be, but figure it's likely you could have up to 5 dwarves with brews, so that's 25 damage for the spell, and 5 enraged dwarves for 3 turns seems pretty sweet.

 

I've been loving snatch on the collector, take those brews off, enrage your drunkards, get surprise ap on the collector, and smash face.

 

Oh that sounds great! I'll definitely have to try that, too. Seems like a more reliable, albeit less nuke-ish version of magnetize.

 

I've had some succes with the last deck I posted today^^ but I don't seem to ever use the Minister, Fists, Wings, or Agent. I need more carouse, for sure though. How would northern cross militia work for that, until i can find brewmasters?

 

If your going the carouse way, then definitely drop the fists, possibly replacing with collectors, stoneskins and/or thugs. Agent and minister are good, give them a go. The only wing I really use is the scarlet, can recommend.

Militia is alright for passing out brews and antagonize is a useful ability for drawing away threat, but it can be cleansed so be careful.

On a side note, I'm dropping that holy blade of valdac, it got put in cause I got domi-cliffed, which always pi55es me off. Probably put in another tac manual, but maybe I'll throw in a rugoths fist or something.

 

Yep! The fists and obsidians are temporary while I work on brewmasters, once i get them and a hero or two ill be doing some massive edits. I'll definitely try the militia, too. Carousing everything basically makes my units immune to negative equips which is great. I had someone pilfer the brew from my master axeman hehe, made me laugh. I'm 3/0 for games so far today though! Which dwarves do you use for detection?