Essence devourer/Vengeful/Cheap meat

Returning player. Played way back in the day but that log in information is lost the ravages of time. Returned briefly but took a break and im vaguely aware that forsaken wastes got some big changes(disease affecting them namely) So i figured the forums was the best place to go



Is what im currently running. Even back then i know Essence devourers's werent the best deck types but it was mostly for fun(AS evidenced by the aspect of death even being there). Looking to get a little more competitive though, Can any of these cards be salvageable or should i hit one of the trading outposts and try and make something new?

Zombies are the deck id like to play. I liked the undead tide aspect of forsaken far more than the debuff/curse shenanigans in witches/liches and worms.

 

Essence devourer decks are actually one of the best in FW at this moment. I'll post my deck which is similar below.

Blood fiend
Broken Bones
Coragh
Death Guard
Essence Devourer x2
Genesis Lich
Polluted Martyr
Risen Moga
Serkan
Skeletal Excavator
Wandering Zombie
Xulos
Bone Circle Archmage
Zombie Behemoth
Zombie Rotwrapper
Anathema
Ancients protection
Despoil
Essence Drain
Hungry Dead
Mobilization
Elsari Bazaar
Elsarin Vex
Graveyard
Skull of Decay
Tome of hate
Unholy Tomb
Bone Circle Staff
Vendetta

The idea behind only running 1 graveyard is essentially you only have 1 essence devourer on at a time. If it dies deploy the other one the very next turn. and then the more you do it the more you get to exploit a 51 nora huge damage dealing beefy unit with no downside of having to pay for another graveyard. Elsari Bazaar is basically just target champion gets +2 speed and bone circle staff allows serkan to have infinite HP scaling upwards as well as damage due to vengeful.

 

Do you actually get that much use out of coragh? I mean, he may be coragh but hes just another body in a bg that is nothing but bodies. I cant imagine having 90 nora and not using it on xulos or serkan

 

He's mostly there for the utility from his corpses. Realistically he's the most replaceable rune in the bg

 

Draft 2, Decks definitely improved though victory doesnt seem to come through attrition, rather more from cheap deploys securing the natural font and contesting the mid font with a wrecking ball essence devourer chasing down and eating anything in the mid font(seriously. ive had this guy beat down a sheoul demon and a vothsair ireguard with just a wandering zombie) thanks to the bazaar. Ancients protection covers a much wider net than absorb magic, soul reave ive found helps since much of the bg is physical damage though im likely to cut it still, desecration felt like subpar relic removal(you needed two to actually kill the damned thing) and the excavator only costs 20 nora more while giving you another body on the field. Weak runes appear to be the...

Zombie behemoth; Risen yeti does his job better while also being faster, doing more damage and applying a global effect. Anytime id play the behemoth id rather play the yeti

Anthropmancer; Just a little on the mediocre side, There are far more important runes that i want out to reap death benefit than him. Even if hes fairly cheap for what he can do.

Death harvester; Im loathe to be rid of him by virtue of being the only detection in the deck but for 55 nora he doesnt really do anything. Ideally you would want him out early to start making his nora back but thats 55 nora i cant use on an essence drain or a mobi.

Aspect of death; Just a little on the expensive side. His death bell means i want to keep him back but without taking him into combat i spent 80 nora to sit on my hands. He can definitely put out some punishment but he cant take it at all. Hes absolutely won me games before(though that was because of his soulstrike, not his signature ability) and i keep thinking im going to need him some day but that day has yet to come.

Utterdark fadewisp; Just too expensive for what it does. It poisons, it soultaps but its 73 nora for 5 range and 6 speed and 39 health. 100% cutting him for a vengeful whisperghast. Same mana cost for much higher damage, higher range and a fair chunk of hp. It also gives me a proper lichbone staff target thats not serkan.

Repurpose; I still like this rune and its inclusion is much of the reason ive still got blood fiend and skeletal bezerker in there but its not a cheap spell and even ignoring its cost its still unwieldy to use. It just feels like 70% of the time its a dead card but 30% of the time its absolutely gamewinning. Unsure what i plan to do with it.

Any thoughts on runes to replace those listed? Or even why im wrong in my opinion of them?

 

I would drop fadewisp if you can afford a legendary replace it with genesis lich. If you can't replace it with elsari culler. You could squeeze a vendetta in as well at the expense of one of your champions or repurpose. Also bone elemental can get detection now so we're no longer forced to run that garbage bird now.

Last thing are you finding the 1 graveyard 2 essence devourer better to run?

 

Why do you recommend the genesis lich so strongly? For the relic removal?

As far the graveyard, i understand your reasoning but it may just be poor luck on my part but i absolutely cannot draw the thing, leaving the big powerhouse of the deck sitting in the runedock for a large portion of the game. I almost never mulligan(10 nora is 10 nora after all) so i may have to do that. I do agree with your reasoning though, its just frustrating.

One thing ive noticed with the deck is that im struggling heavily to deal with super champs(Notably a 5 defense scale armored regen 3 monster) and bastion whom is obviously shielded and thus cant be reasonably dealt with via essence drain. Would a reapers blade be amiss or are there better ways to deal with them?

 

Genesis Lich specifically because he has Vitality creation, a loss of life alt attack generally good stats for a low cost and if you do decide to run vendetta he can become a real powerhouse. I've started running Bone Circle Archmage as well. augment creation helps scale the damage up to deal with those tough units a bit better though SL is definitely the most difficult matchup.

 

Speaking of vitality creation, do you run xulos with it?

I can see your point on him, vaiable range is valuable in a heavy melee bg though whisperghast is filling the same niche, just with natural vengeful instead of vitality creation. Then again, whisperghast doesnt have two useful attack types.

Do you actually get away with spending 75 nora on a support unit in this deck? Especially if you dont get him on the first draw. Augment creation is a powerful tool but i cant imagine playing him until the mid font(and thus, the game) has been decided unless i drew him first turn. But thats an inexperienced point of view.

 

Care to share your upgrades themacca?

 

he's fantastic at stalling the game out. and the longer u stall with him the more value augment is providing. as well as hex keeping your units alive occasionally and 2 anti summons basically removes swarm from the equation since thats this decks biggest weakness. And yeah run vitality creation on anything that has the option of doing so it's an amazing ability

 

basically anything that helps to increase damage output. High ranking knockbacks, dots, highest rank AOEs you need all the damage you can get.

 

Thats interesting. I typically valued lower cost to higher damage. You run your behemoth with rank 3 knockback? And ED's with max rank bezerk attack? I know its common to run the ED's at 51 nora but you lose the exact same amount of defense, ive personally found +2 damage per swing to be worth the 2 nora unless you absolutely never use it, which with horrific aura seems like a bit of a waste.

 

actually ED is the exception cause he's already a monster for damage lol. but yeah i like to run knockback 3 cause of all my expendable meat a 15 damage trade is generally in my favor.

 

Was hoping to put together a kanen deck instead of buying two legendaries but i -have- been having a lot of fun with the deck, Recent revisions.



...Unfortunately leave me with a mostly carbon copy version of themacca's bg. Which i was hoping to avoid. Of course theres a reason those runes are there, only so much room for personal preference. Onto the rune thoughts

Whisperghast; absolutely love this rune to pieces, i dont think id run more than one but with relocate DMZ he helps move the fat blocks of health(looking at you behemoth) where they need to go. To say nothing of the surprise potential of having an essence devourer a comfortable distance away teleported in, and mobi'd to the font for a stunning 40-50+ damage. Vengeful naturally so he hits hard, on the cheap and shields the frontline from nasty single target spells with his dmz strike.

Behemoth vs yeti; I think they can coexist. While they fight for the biggest pile of meat spot the yeti's true value is his global fear and when you need an hp block without using that tool behemoth is your man. They also fill slightly seperate niches in that the behemoth can hold by himself for quite some time whilst the yeti only truly does that against melee and would rather be with the main force. For a surprisingly cheap 2 nora the yeti can function as a bunker/centerpiece with his aura, 2 defense, and the enemies -2 attack leaves your runes shockingly durable. That really cant be understated.

Repurpose; My opinions softened on this rune, While its true that often the rune is sitting in the runedock the amount of disposable runes in this bg(bezerker,fiend,wandering zombie) leave there plenty of targets. All of those runes are cheap and are great to double deploy first turn for multiple font grabbing. Once that duty is done they can be repurposes to heavily bolster the front line. Special mentions to the bezerker who at 29 nora, practically begs to be ignored(doubly so if hes only got a turn or two left from said font grabbing) and a repurpose really squeezes the juice out of him. Even if you summon him purely for the repurpose, 70 mana for a permanent 8 dmg and 25 health isnt a bad deal at all. Especially if its on serkan or an essence devourer or even a risen moga.

Blood fiend; on the contrary to repurpose while i found him perfectly serviceable before i have to wonder why hes even here. For being a throw away unit 50 nora is quite the price and hes squishier and less damage than a skeletal bezerker with the same upgrades to put him at the same cost. Hes obviously not shortlived but disposable units dont really last long enough for that to wear out naturally anyways. Id really like to hear your opinions on this rune since i see it so commonly but im just not getting it.

Polluted martyr; Fairly lukewarm about the rune. I just seem to be finding better uses for the nora unless im fighting something right outside my font. What upgrades do you run on him? I know you mentioned taking all the damage you can get but soulsift shaves off quite the pricetag on a short lived unit vs a disease breath.

Skeletal excavator; Similar to the martyr. Hes expensive for a non-combat unit and i havent really bumped into any relics that i desperately need removed right that second. That may just be getting lucky however.

Soul reaver; Almost purely for the essence devourers since equipment is usually already going to be on the vulnerable backline and nothing else merits keeping alive. Can absolutely turn the tide when your opponent is expecting that monster to stay down via stun/hex so he puts something valuable too close. Likely the next rune to go however since a cleanse isnt that crucial in FW when things are fully expected to die. Unsure what to replace it with as of yet though. Another broken bones maybe.


And for fun



"im going to go for your vengeful runes and make them die" - Quote from man killed by vengeful runes

 

who was this guy Bane Shift talking you out of curiositys sake? I find his lack of awareness to the situation he's in somewhat refreshing

 

I omitted him because this is a small community and i dont want him ridiculed. Id like to say he was a new player(newer than me even) but with an attitude like that im assuming its an alt.

Still, on the off chance he's just a mouthy idiot who tasted victory because his lonx got to chew on some zombies for a while and wanted to make his sweet(and likely rare, again small community of veterans) victory taste sweeter he'll go unnamed.

Seriously though, Playing ST on the ST map. So annoying.

 

Any advice on tortuns? Their slow speed is no downside when this deck is just as slow and between their extremely durable units and AOE im finding it difficult to drag a few tortuns down with my front line. Its all well and good to have strong vengeful units but if no tortuns die then its just too much meat on the board. I suspect this is why you have Skull of decay in the bg, Pulling double duty in protecting the graveyard from seism and in preventing the damnable protectorate factions from recovering

 

skull of decay is generally amazing yeah. 20 nora and it basically renders healing useless and keeps graveyard safe. (until you meet some rat basturd ST or SL player who use arctic wail or unstable powersource)
But tortons are a tough matchup, focus on the ones who can attack the most regularly (fishkisser first no questions asked) once they're down their offensive units there's not much they can do to start removing the meat and they'll just be chipped away at by your strong ranged units.

But killing fishkissers is an absolute nightmare.

 

I'd take out broken bones for a chattering maw.

I've been thinking 2x time of hate and 2x elsari bazaar might be worth it for the drawing potential, and remove unholy tomb altogether. Also, having a copy really does help against relic kills, which are meta. SL has some really nasty global relic damage, and they are uber meta.