Hey. I've been playing the most fun and pretty challenging, but rewarding and really strong deck lately. I've seen people making threads on how to use imp familiar or how to slow down and build up with UD. One answer to that is to make your own wizard build with familiars before they get changed. Here's how I play the theme and couple advices in form of the list, as I don't know how to form a guide properly. About the familiar rune: nora: 66, abilities: doom, mischief, replicate, familiar (up1), flame charge (up2) *read about his abilities before you continue with my post* This guy is honestly the best late-game investment for UD I think I've found. He's really really good on lower rank games (he's really a high priority target and easy to kill, as on higher ranks people usually have the best tools that can get him). positioning him to make the best use of his abilities might be hard and its easy to lose one or two (if not all) by your mistake. I find all his abilities to be quite useful and he doesnt need a basic attack to do dmg. His main strenght comes with of course grimlic (early-mid game). or you flame surge red-tipped raptor or phoenix for an aspect of violence - style slaughter in late game. i didnt find any good way to burst up your ap for instant raptor doomsday, but the bg is fairly good in other things that you don't always need flame surge to win. (someone tried a bg with this and familiars only as a win condition, but i didnt see it). To the use and position of familiars: deploy when you have hit enough tempo and can slow down a turn. replicate, heal with griefbearer fountain until you have couple of them. reposition every turn to be quite close to threat with doom, but not too close (and dont use it too often, just apply pressure. the doom ability is actually pretty bad, but you can block doomed guys with grimlic's illusions to buy some time). If a champ has nohkan-do, you can group and use mischief to remove his ap, but in my bg i have mindstorm, Grimlic's bomb and good other non-direct dmg abilities. Here I present my current build that I found fits my playstyle the most and has answers to everything I've faced: I don't know what is general playstyle or strategy, so don't ask me whether you should rush, stall or hold a spell for something. If I expect something, I hold the spell (cauldron usually). If you want to have some fun, you should try goblin king (for boost and stealing abilities that will also have reduced cooldown) The roles: -First deploy, font contesting, early pressure, poke, making relocation plays: spellkaiser/minotaur portalwalker (90% of the time those two in an order that makes the most sense) -frontline, not so mobile tanks/beaters/whatever you call it: pincushion for obviously eater ability, situationally ruby crawler, minotaur battle mage (mostly for magic immunity) -support/cleanse (if you expect reverblast, soul corruption and anything that people whine on lol): minotaur stoker, eventually cleansing flame from demon lich. -grimlic for everything -arsonist for big aoe cleanup (spirits/skelletons, mogas, pseudo detection) careful: squishy and you want to use him at least couple turns. -raptor/phoenix for lategame madness (I don't really know how to properly use those guys against certain players, but they don't cost you much if you have couple familiars out and safe -familiars as the main synergy. About the bg: In early game i usually use the combo of goblin spellkaiser anf portalwalker -those two have really great possibilities of playing first couple turns out and get an easy, early kill (sheoul demon might be a bit better tho with boundless enthusiasm, his stats and ability set) and then i deploy grim and those imps. These 4 have everything an early game needs: tons of pressure, great relocation tools, many possibilities, enormous dmg, 1cd hex (cc), non direct dmg and familiar's flame charge. the things you should remember that counter you easily: snogvie deploy, planar dissonance, grimlic's bane, inhibit power, any good distract (sp aoe spell or ranged guys) and i dont know, aoe on familiars, oh and if someone has many immunities to fire and magic, and maybe stealth. Also deafening aura can be strong if played correctly. Also be aware that UD rush is your opponent here. I rarely win to current UD meta actually. Ok, so main plays and combos that usually win the game (from strongest to weakest): 1. flame charge + grimlic's bomb + fire blast - aoe2 cleanup - this kills everything that isn't immune to fire. 2. flame charge + flame surge - this can deal massive (really massive) aoe dmg, you should know or imagine how deadly it is if you know basic maths. 3. Grimlic's basic attacks 4. flame charge + tons of swaps + teleports + portalwalker's BIG HIT 5. flame charge + fire jab (lol @dreamcrusher) 6. 1cd hex on spellkaiser Things to be aware of when playing: - don't use flame charge when entering opposing UD's font - flame charge doesn't increase loss of life dmg from cauldron - after grimlic's death, his illusions count as Grimlic in game, so if they remain on the battlefield, 'familiar' ability still works - first use flame charge, then replicate, if you need both in one turn, because of maths - fiery ambush isn't affected by flame charge, as the effect takes place on the next turn - if you need a burst of nora for a play, you can sac/retri the original familiar and collect the globe - if you have stoker out, you can accidentally cleanse opponent from split personality with any fire damage - Grimlic will die. easily. almost every match. He will get doomed, hippo-stampeded, essence drained or anything, but to compensate, he kills much faster Couple words on the build and upgrade paths. There are many possibilities to build this theme. Every champion is unique and brings a lot to the table. Every champ is a swiss army knife and all the abilities are useful and counter almost everything other bgs use. I figured out I like spellkaiser with swap and hex the most, but fire nova and cast cauterize add another way of playing this guy and change the playstyle quite a lot. Use swap 3 on portalwalker, because it's really valuable and doesn't cost nora. Grimlic works for me with bomb and acolyte, but there are people that use regen (don't know why, maybe in meta usually, not a fire-themed deck), and I didn't test lava storm. I would keep him less expensive personally. Don't use favor on familiar - not in this theme, even though I use spells pretty often. Spellset/relics/equipment: I will just post which spells I find core and which are replaceable, because there are many not-mandatory ones and couple that work really well which I don't have, so, the core ones are: 2x fire blast, fiery ambush, demolish, mindstorm, price of victory, sacrifice, split personality, cauldron, fountain and banner. Things that aren't mandatory but are great: rapid assault, fire ruby (you can block a ranged unit within its range with illusions), mandate (i just added it cause it's popular and I wanted to see how much dmg i can deal with one portalwalker's hit) Things to add: boundless enthusiasm (works with walker really well), firelight gem (not a fan), drain vitality (careful not to give stats to familiars), second cauldron (probably should do it myself), bane shift (still banned from ranked unfortunately), dark pact for grimlic's protection, breath of ash (best anti-range in the game), purefire (if you are sure somebody's got protection or righteous deflection on it's really good to surprise the opponent) or just want to use it instead of or with stoker; shatter if you're n**b, this equip that gives flameburst maybe; other stuff you like, and want to experiment with. Have you seen me playing? Maybe you lost to me or you easily crushed me, because I was playing around and did silly stuff? I had some stuff lately on my head and in my life, so I couldn't focus too much on gaming, so I didn't even get good rank with it, but it's my personal fault, not the deck's. If you want to be top 10 you should probably play meta and rush, but if you want to have lots of fun and have a good tier bg this one is what you are looking for. I'm going for a while until the expansion, but will visit the forums from time to time, so if you have questions, I will be answering.
You have a good strategy there and seem to have the differ t roles picked out to for your playstyle, very nice picks
I played around with this for a while myself. I found that demon call was really good for revealing grimlic and familiar. Also Imp Trickster with deception and hex can stall ridiculously well with stealth, illusions and cc.
I found out you can build with several subthemes: Example base for bloodied (not bleed, as you don't benefit that much from bloodballs ex. minotaurs): https://poxbase.com/deck/cuOcdPc60Ct-Cz2CuAs7Ge3t -you can play 1cd blood magic at 4 aoe and then teleport with portalwalkers for 2 ap 6 range to hit (hard!).\ -magus has fire attack, so that's a big plus -those guys have enormous hp that can be boosted by the goblin king -charred (from rain of blood) on the other hand won't be amplified in any ways from flame charge Example knockback into fire wall: https://poxbase.com/deck/CdOc60Ct-CvHs6Fs21eB Or I found out a build that should technically work really well but might need the most setup, yet these are really far from topic that is wizard bg: deep elf/familiar/fire https://poxbase.com/deck/C2wc6-Ckuc60Ct-C99S2xSbR40 -searing aura works the same way flame surge but without the need to preparation (it's amped by familiars, but you don't have mobility and flame surge starts on cooldown and has cooldown) -you can combine trail fire wall with scepter of onus (add a boundless enthusiasm if you need to position for a knockback, then flameburst for enormous damage) -grimlic's treachery deals fire, so it should be really strong technically (didn't use it, but you know, 4 familiars = +8 global dmg, i think it counts grimlic's illusions, holy Bane Shift...) -well this has synergy all over the place Generally speaking, flame charge + reduced cooldowns for wizards is a really strong combination that opens up really cool space for deck design and probably creates the most open theme I've found in the game. This must be Grimlic's magic.
You beat me with it, I made a lot of mistakes and was using a bad Clops deck. I'm with you on the life stuff, I'll keep you in mind.
