hi everyone i was wondering what a good skeleton BG looks like these days, or are they not really playable atm. Cheers
Worry not jack, i've got your back Unless your name is dennis. In which case hi dennis, here's my deck for skeletons Champions 2x Blackblade Baron 1x Bone Circle Archmage 1x Bone Elemental 1x Bone Shredder 1x Bone Wing 1x Pyro the Patient (Skeletal Rifleman is a slight downgrade to it but essentially the same kit) 1x Skeletal Excavator 2x Skeletal Reaper 2x Stitched Skeleform 2x Tomb Lord 1x Xulos, Undead Sage Spells 2x Dark Rising 1x Despoil 1x Essence Drain 1x Hungry Dead 1x Mobilization Relics 2x Bone Mine 1x Elsarin Vex 1x Sacrificial Altar 1x Skull of Decay Equipment 1x Bone Circle Staff 2x Cloak of Skulls
Go over a bit of the champions and their uses. Key Melee Champs (in order of usefulness) Blackblade Baron: Tanky unit with a strong defensive ability in sapping armor. Has surge so his damage gets sky high the more you get your skeletons out. Gets you extra Meat whenever you get a kill with these nearby. Would auto include these in every skeleton deck Stitched Skeleform: Low cost, Extremely fast, high damage. With Unleash these guys have a big role in power turns, gives other units a good way to use spare AP and gets even more damage when doing so, personal favourite move of mine is to dark rising use unleash with the summons to allow skeleforms to move an extreme distance, possibly attack 3 times with an average damage of around 21 and then use a sacrifical altar on the summons to do even more damage if there is something in range. Strongly advise running these x2 Boneshredder: Bulwark gives thing a huge HP pool towards the end of the game with all the meat you should have out, solid defence and an ability that will help put out more meat and occasionally stop a melee unit from rushing in on you and sunder can help you tear down tanks, though all lines on his second upgrade are valid considerations Skeletal Reaper: Low cost good AOE/DOT ability, Independent with it's high stats, good early game unit Skeletal Lerper: Shadowspawn, dot, flight and high damage stats make this thing really damn good at harassing side fonts Bone Elemental: Good tank but it's easy enough to work around bone fracture, a lot stronger early in the game than later where it's outshined by boneshredder Key Ranged Champs Xulos, Undead Sage: Gets huge HP from vitality and walking around picking up bone spurs, basically lets him bust out an essence drain every 3 rounds and plenty of meat for him to drain to recover HP from. Tomb Lord: Ranged surge is a very rare thing in the game these days but it is still very strong in the situations it does exist. Boost gives out extra HP which is fantastic especially given all your cheap meat and also able to get out extra meat every 5 rounds Pyro the Patient/Skeletal rifleman: Punish is a good control ability and strike is great at tearing down tanks. Utterdark Fadewisp: Low HP but has poison and soultap for an extremely solid damage over time build. Hoarfrost Lich: Has plenty of ways to keep itself out of harm with freeze and crystalize, good damage and a DOT Key Support Champs Bone Circle Archmage: Among the best support units in the game, keeping him out the back lines makes him extremely difficult to kill with all the meat ahead of him and oblivion shield automatically blocking out 1 attack per turn. Augment creation greatly boosts the overall damage the deck does, Bone Prison can summon anywhere from 33 to 48 to 63 HP and trap a unit next to 3 summons to get wailed upon. The anti-summon lets you creatively use low damage summons to heal other units or deal a bit of extra damage and hex is just good for little chips of damage and reducing the threat of a big damage unit that might make you rue the day. Tomb Lord: Reasons above Skeletal Excavator: Blockade prevents huge power turns from destroying all your meat out on the field quickly, also quite tanky and seism is a good on deploy counter to an annoying relic out there. or even just destroying the enemy banner is a fantastic use of seism. Bonewing: Dread, boost and elusive. Thing goes around reducing enemy damage by a lot and grants free HP. Decent enough at harrassing fonts without fear of being ranged down Bone Slave: Good harrassment and drops 33-48-63 hp on death but you have no control over when this happens and it's easy enough to ignore until you're in a better position to deal with the summons. Spells Dark Rising: Huge powerturn potential thanks to surge, sacrifical altar, vivify and unleash. Also they can be quite harrassing for enemy units to move around provided they don't automatically explode after 1 turn (trust me it happens) Essence Drain: Pick an annoying champ, kill an annoying champ Mobilization: Yet again, huge powerturn potential Despoil: Good for controlling an area, no spells in the zone and prevents the enemy from getting any globes in the area. Hungry Dead: Slows down enemy units and if you're able to pin something in the middle (less than 9 AP for the following turn) can deal huge damage for 35 nora. Unless your vsing IS in which case never use this spell because it has literally no effect Relics Elsarin Vex: Warbanner no brainer, more damage more HP get out asap Bone Mine: Consistent HP boosting around the area of the relic, fantastic for prolonged font engagements as the opponent wont want to destroy this asap and have to deal with the summons. The longer they wait to destroy it the more HP it will have given out to your units Sacrifical Altar: Gives a good usage for summons and great for power turns Skull of Decay: Just makes it easier to chip your enemies away with their healing being cut in half Graveyard: Good consistent extra meat Tome of Hate: Goes hand in hand with graveyard allowing for infinite usage of it with no concern for a shrine snipe. does deal damage to your own units though, won't bother your main champions much but will eventually kill off your summons and you don't want that Unholy Tomb: Damage over time globally and extra nora though it takes a while to pay itself off. Grim well: Potential locking down of an area, but easy enough to have a ranged champ just take it out then it was just a big flat waste of nora Altar of Bones: Potentially extremely good, 4 HP +1 Damage Globally every 2 rounds sounds fantastic but is a bit too slow tempo for the current state of the game Equipment Bone Circle Staff: Consistent HP gain, anti summon jumps on death. one of the best equips in the game Cloak of Skulls: Defence boost provides extra meat on field on receiving attacks, grants augment creation but since this will be on a front line unit, will likely be short lived. better to rely on archmage for that. Enervating Collar: Spot Dispel, Possible AP gain. Soul Reaver: Spot cleanse, but who needs it Mind Shackle: Completely and utterly ruins the effectiveness of equipped champion, renders them useless every second round.
