As some of you already know, I'm a pretty big supporter of the Warlord. So, what better way to show your support than have the forums dissect your book?
As requested, here it is:
[spellbook]
[spellbookheader]
[spellbookname]Warlord[/spellbookname]
[mage]Warlord[/mage]
[/spellbookheader]
[spells]
[spellclass]Attack[/spellclass]
[mwcard=DNA01]2 x Acid Ball[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWA04]1 x Hurl Boulder[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Conjuration[/spellclass]
[mwcard=FWJ04]2 x Garrison Post[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1w01]1 x Fog Bank[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNW02]1 x Wall of Bones[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWJ03]1 x Barracks[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Creature[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKC07]1 x Dwarf Panzergarde[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWC15]1 x Thorg, Chief Bodyguard[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNC14]1 x Skeletal Knight[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWC06]2 x Goblin Slinger[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWC05]2 x Goblin Grunt[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWC11]4 x Orc Butcher[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWC01]1 x Dwarf Kriegsbiel[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Enchantment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1e09]2 x Agony[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWE09]1 x Standard Bearer[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e32]1 x Regrowth[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNE03]1 x Stumble[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e36]1 x Rhino Hide[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e29]1 x Nullify[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e31]1 x Poisoned Blood[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e02]1 x Block[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKE02]1 x Divine Might[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Equipment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ06]1 x Eagleclaw Boots[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWQ05]1 x Helm of Command[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q08]1 x Elemental Wand[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWQ08]1 x Ring of Command[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNQ10]1 x Meditation Amulet[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNQ09]1 x Wand of Healing[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q06]1 x Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Incantation[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1i04]1 x Charge[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i02]1 x Battle Fury[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i26]1 x Sleep[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWI06]2 x Power Strike[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i19]1 x Piercing Strike[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i10]1 x Evade[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWI08]1 x Sniper Shot[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i07]2 x Dissolve[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i17]3 x Minor Heal[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i20]1 x Purify[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i06]3 x Dispel[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i28]1 x Teleport[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i12]1 x Force Push[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i18]1 x Perfect Strike[/mwcard]
[/spells]
[cost]Total cost: 120 pts[/cost]
[/spellbook]
The main of the book is to basically churn out butchers because they are hands down the Warlord's best generically good creature. This is mostly accomplished through barracks and meditation amulet. The starting turns usually look like this:
Turn 1: Move, drop barracks in center, QC garrison post into either starting zone or to the left (depending on opponent)
Turn 2: Deploy butcher, QC Amulet, FC Meditate
Turn 3: Deploy butcher, QC enchant or ring, FC meditate, etc, etc
That's the basic gist. Obviously, depending on what your opponent does, you're not going to be able to keep bringing out butchers each turn; you're going to need to react to armor (acid ball), with commands, etc. In the turns you need more mana to deal with other concerns, you would make a grunt. This book is all about action advantage, so you should really always be deploying something.
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Lets go through each card to explain it's purpose:
Thorg: Play vs larger creatures, control them.
Dwarf Panzerguarde: Intercept, great body (
)
Dwarf Kriegsbiel: Sweeping. Great against multiple creatures/swarm. (Replaced by hammer in battleforge build)
Orc Butcher: Generically strong. Meaty, 4 dice. Main source of damage (usually).
Goblin Grunt: Fills in for butchers on barracks when low on mana.
Skeletal Knight: Counter bloodreaper, wounded prey, any living weakness. Provides a larger soldier to deal with mid range threats.
Goblin Slinger: Ranged support. Best played when butchers are engaged. Deal with mid/low range flying threats. Easier to position thanks to Garrison Post Errata.
Rhino Hide: Armor.
Stumble: Pay 3 mana. Cancel potentially large attacks. Could be considered flex space.
Standard Bearer: Armor buff, melee buff. I honestly don't like it that much, it promotes grouping and isn't the easiest enchant to gain value from. Probably needs a buff through errata, though, awesome against swarm. (Probably flex space)
Regrowth: Regen.
Poisoned Blood: Cancel healing/life gain.
Nullify: Stop dissolve, etc.
Block: Stop attacks.
Divine Might: Ethereal hate.
Agony: Very strong against beefy unliving creatures. Easy and effective way to deal with otherwise difficult threats.
Wand of Healing: Deal with conditions (corrode, sleep, etc)
Ring of Command: Discounts on things you're probably going to be doing anyway is nice.
Elemental Wand: Bind acid ball against armor stacking, bind boulder for damage (I usually only do the first)
Meditation Amulet: Make mana, deploy creatures. Offsets relatively costly start, extremely important.
Dragonscale Hauberk: Armor, fire resist is nice.
Helm of Command: Pretty much a less costly, more/less restrictive version of a mage wand, but for your head.
Eagleclaw boots: Jet stream on a wizard tower getting 5 dice and possible daze for 4 mana is terror. Lets you climb walls (actually got to do that the other day
).
Sleep: Mid/Big creature control.
Sniper Shot: Unavoidable ranged attacks. Best combined with a hurl boulder to 1 shot Falella
Evade: Elusive. (Flex)
Piercing Strike: Piercing (Possible Flex)
Power strike: With discount ring, you're paying 1 mana for 2 more dice, very solid. Even without ring, 1:1 ratio of damage to mana is solid.
Charge: Helps with positioning. Situational, but get get you damage not otherwise able to get. (Possible Flex)
Dissolve: Duh.
Battle Fury: I prefer power strike in most situations, but still, usually a 1:1 dmg to mana ratio which is good. Nice against low armor targets.
Perfect Strike: Unavoidable (possible flex)
Dispel: Need utility.
Purify: Probably one of the most underrated cards in MW. Removes all poison conditions, AND enchantments. Deals with poison blood and ghoul rot at in an action efficient way.
Minor Heal: Keeps you and other alive. 1 of the 3 might be flex.
Hurl Boulder: Damage, attack cancel.
Acid Ball: counter armor
Teleport: for those awful situations. Try to stay 3 zones away from enemy mage at all times (unless you need to go in to acid ball or something), and you usually don't have to use this
Force push: Utilityyy
Wall of Bones: Block LoS, block movement.
Fog Bank: Block LoS.
Barracks: Deploy, deploy, deploy. Other main half of the strategy.
Garrison Post: Errata makes having more than 1 out worth it. Fuels Barracks, helps with positioning making creatures more relevant quicker.
---------------------------------------------
Hopefully all of that makes some kind of sense. I find the biggest counter you need to be looking out for is armor stacking (usually through battleforge) or bloodthirsty. The first drops your damage output significantly (potentially) and the second counters the efficiency of your creatures (to some extent). Luckily, even right now, they're counters to both (acid ball, skeletal soldiers)
Notes:I may use some of the flex space soon to fit in skeletal sentries (since their recent update in subtype), but right now bloodthirsty isn't too much of a problem in my "meta," though could definitely develop into one. Also, I could probably use a
geyser, but honestly I've only had someone attempt to burn my Barracks down maybe twice, ever.
I know this book, and the Warlord in general, are getting some really nice buffs in FiF. The General's Signet Ring is looking to be an auto-include for this book, along with Flank Attack, likely Atlar of Domination, Defend, brace yourself, etc. However, I think most of those would take up the flex space and not have that large of an impact on the basic function. It may be possible the discount from General's Signet Ring may end up being so significant throughout a game that mediation amulet is no longer required, but at this point I don't think that's the case.
After the advent of meditation amulet, I believe their are two builds the Warlord (and possibly most mages) have access to. Both of these are based around action advantage. The first is the battleforge build that centers around buffing your mage through armor and equips. This build is used often for many mages and I believe most consider it strong, and it is. Battleforge build lets you stack armor effeciently, react to many threats through equips, and protects #1: your mage. The second build, seemingly, is the one I use and is described above; the barracks build. It also gains advantage through actions, but instead does this through deployment of efficient creatures (intially) and, similiar to battleforge build, has the ability to respond to threats, except instead of through equips, it does it through creatures.
It might be possible to combine both barracks and battleforge in a build for a sort of "ultimate" action advantage build, but I'll admit I haven't figured out how to stave off that kind of mana starvation early game.
Also, it's entirely possible that there are builds for the Warlord that are tournament viable that don't include either Barracks or Battleforge, but from my experience you need at least one of them. I feel this experience is at least somewhat supported from those I've seen/played against on Octogon and IRL, but I could be wrong.
Anyway, comments, criticisms, etc, all welcome. I like talking about the Warlord so even if you want to say "your book sucks, do this, this, and this, instead" I'd like to hear it
.
