Import - The Necronomicon - An encyclopedia of the Forsaken Wastes

Zombie BGs​

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Zombies have a very particular style - very physical+melee champ heavy, and with a large number of cheap, slow champions - the stereotypical shambling hordes, so for sure they're a flavourful theme. For the longest time, this was all zombies had, but theme development has turned them from a bland, horribly hard to play theme into one with monstrous AP gen, decent ranged options, and of course massive snowballing potential through swarming opposing champions. Zombies are both a very potent and very enjoyable theme to play, and though slightly pricey, they can be played almost as well with a lower cost BG.


The Zombie Racial

- Zombie Apocalypse "While you control at least 5 champions with this ability, this unit gains Latch On and Swarm: Festering Corpse."

- Latch On: "Cost = 1 AP, cooldown = 2. For the next 3 turns this unit stays adjacent to target champion while it moves. Target unit gains Lumbering."

- Swarm: Festering Corpse: "When this champion destroys a champion on a basic attack, a Level 1 Festering Corpse champion is spawned under your control in the location the destroyed champion occupied."

First things first about this racial - it requires 5 Zombies to make it work. This inherently makes cheap, weak zombies very useful as last minute drops to keep up your numbers, and simply get it working earlier, and by extension makes non-Zombies and very pricey Zombies dubious choices. It also causes one of the big first-timer issues when running Zombies - forgetting to play your 5th Zombie before attempting a swarm..

The abilities the racial grants are both flavourful and very powerful. Latch-On effectively halves a foe's rate of movement unless cleansed, and can be used to ferry your units around with Flying champs. Typically, slowing down a foe who may wish to escape is the usual usage of the ability - and be sure to bear in mind that 2 champs being latched onto one foe entirely immobilises that enemy. Generally, you'll want to use this ability with the otherwise slow and feeble Festering Corpses, who can do little else but are fantastic for slowing the enemy. There are potential drawbacks, however - NEVER latch on if trying to contest a font, as the enemy can simply drag you out of it, and similarly if being dragged away would be disadvantageous for other reasons - freeing up other foes to move, for instance, or a Fire Eater dragging you over lava. Typically, however, Latch-on is a small but very nice boon to have.

Swarm: Festering Corpse is the real reason Zombie BGs thrive - as long as you can kill enemies, your force replenishes itself for free. Festering Corpses might suck, but when you can put 44 HP bags of meat right into the middle of the fray for free, you're not likely to complain. Whilst these swarms may be slow, if you use Zombie Herder with Fleshweaver Witch, you can spur them to decent levels of speed, giving you a colossal advantage as the foe has to gun down a wave of free meat being thrown at them. There is a caveat to the Swarm ability however - it has to be procced by a basic attack killing an enemy. This makes attack order important - you have to use up alternate attacks, non-Zombie attacks, and spells etc BEFORE finishing with a basic attack from a Zombie. Luckily you can do this from range, making things like High Warlock very valuable for spot Swarming. Learning how to effectively swarm (and in particular, begin to snowball your force by getting the first swarm off) is one of the key skills in playing Zombies - luckily it isn't too difficult to get the hang of. Its also worth noting that having Zombie Apoc up will make your opponent naturally very cautious - as does any swarm unit, as the consequences for losing a unit become very severe - which you can often use to your advantage by becoming more aggressive, as if your foe is not cautious, they may well end up at a disadvantage due to your AP gen allowing easy overwhelming of overextended units.

Other facets of a Zombie BG:

- Being spoilt for choice for tanky melee. A vast majority of Zombies are tanky melee, meaning you have a huge array to choose from to fill those slots in your BG. There are thus a number of ways to build a Zombie BG, and unlike in some BGs, including 1x of many slightly different champs can actually be a great option to give yourself versatility.

- Tons of Disease damage. Zombies are the closest thing to a viable Disease BG FW has, so if you like the flavour surrounding the damage type, and would like to try the only (admittedly poor) damage Amplification we have to fofer, Zombies is the best option.

- Slowish units with the ability to perform immensely strong powerturns. Whilst Zombies are in themselves slow, the theme has a lot of support that aids amazing powerturns - which in itself assists in getting Swarms off.

- Some Death Benefit synergy. Whilst lacking things like Czar of the Void, Zombies, with their hordes of disposable meat, naturally synergise somewhat well with aspects of Death Benefit BGs, so a hybrid or module is on the cards.

If a number of the above appeal to you, then Zombies may well be the BG for you.

Example Zombie BG​

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http://www.poxbase.com/#!/deck/C4TCg Cg3c6qc93cpQCfLCpwcoXcwoc4ns6Zs56s7Asgs5fSns4fR2NrTr2Ie1me2y​

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This is the Zombie BG I currently run. It's fairly standard, aside from perhaps the Mute Stalker, which I enjoy for Shroud and Motivate. I prefer Pults to Piles, and like to run both ED and RB.​

If I lacked Warlocks, I'd add in a second Fairy, and probably something like a Risen Moga. Instead of Coraghs, a Corpse Golem and perhaps a Dark Knight. Elsarin Night can be replaced fairly easily by any meta nonchamp.

 

Witch BGs​

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The Witch racial: Elsari Coven

"Whenever an opposing champion is deployed or enters a friendly Dead Magic Zone, it becomes Cursed (-1 DMG, -1 DEF, -1 SPD) for 2 turns for each unit you control with Elsari Coven."

All witches have the above ability as a racial. It is a pretty subtle racial - applying two turns (one round) of curse per champion on the board with the racial, to each enemy that is either deployed, or enters a DMZ space (not if the DMZ comes to them - via champ DMZs or growing spell-based ones). Curse reduces Dmg, Def and Spe by 1 each - and as such is both useful in combat and in slowing down the enemy force. The plentiful cursing this entails is exploited by a number of other abilities within the theme, doing such things as healing off attacks, global damage, AP generation, and more, which I'll talk about as I bring up individual runes.



Witch sub-themes:

As for a list of the potential modular synergies in witch BGs, many based around Curse:
- Global damage
- Potent healing (self & targeted)
- Spell and range hate
- Attack prevention
- AP denial & Speed debuffs

Many of these intertwine so any witch BG will likely focus on several, and different witch builds are very possible. In general, however, you can focus on a combat-heavy witch BG, using lots of tanks and heavy hitters, or on a debuff-based BG which takes combat effectiveness as less of an important consideration, as after all, you're not going to get attacked if the enemy has no AP. This is being mentioned now so that I can refer to these during the analyses of individual runes below, and essentially becase if any of the above appeal to you as a playstyle then you should probably consider witches.

 

This needs to be sticky, thanks KTCAOP for saving this jewel, by any chance you got each guide for witch, zombies, and skellys?

 

No, people didn't ask for them to be imported and it is a bit too late now. Sorry =(.

 

Well Done, KTCAOP!

 

Good job! Maybe I will work on a life siphon overview since it is what I used a lot (**pet peeve when people call if vampire since there are other units than vampire in it!**)

 

Well this in no longer valid - when the patches are dun and the dust settles if you need some help to get this back up - look me up

 

Patches and the revamp eclipsed most the advice here, but it should still make a good read for newer players.

 

Can we get a lich deck?

 

This thread is old AF and totally out of date. Only useful for the cooldown chart.

 

Make sure to copy the cooldown chart before closing this thread or something.

After that, we can easily make some new guide threads for FW.

 

I am considering un-sticking this thread and generally re-working the sticks in the FW forums. Absolutely all of the info is out of date.

 

I know, it feels like a beautiful relic. The CD information, though, and the spirit of the thread will live on. I was thinking of just one stickied thread that links to official threads for various themes and subjects, and gives some basic faction information.

 

Any FW guides that people want linked in the New Necronomicon? The Worms and Witches ones currently stickied will be linked for sure. Also considering linking to the current beater tier list. Anything doing about liches, spirits, skeletons, and zombies? Do any of those decks have definitive threads? And is/should there be a de jure thread for junk lists?

 

It would be nice seeing an updated guide for Skeles put together by someone who doesnt seem to hate the theme.