The build that won 42 lost 0 or the reliable damage temple build

[Charmyna]

The basic idea:
This thread is not about Temple of Light + Hand of Bim-Shalla being a strong combo – it is about how to enhance this combo to become even stronger. Many temple builds rely on a solo-mage or a single strong creature, which is buffed with HoBS and Battle Fury for burst damage. The weakness of this type of builds is that you can prevent the damage quite mana efficient with different ways of crowd control (e.g. tanglevine, teleport, walls, daze, stun, restraint, defence rolls etc). So the idea of this build is to find a way which makes it very hard for your opponent to prevent the damage or in other words: We are looking for reliable damage sources.

Success rate:
To catch your interest, let me emphasize that from over 40 games I played with this build it had a 100% success rate (and in the majority of these games I never had more than 15 damage)! I know, it sounds unbelievable, but still its true. This is not because I played against morons – me and my strongest rival played over 70 games against each other and if I don’t use this build my success rate against him is roughly 50%. So we are quite at the same level and we both played against many different builds and more than 15 different human players via OCTGN with a good success rate even without this special build.
Considering all this, the reason for the outstanding performance of this build has to come from somewhere else than player skill .

The core cards of the build are:
-   6 Hand of Bim-Shalla
-   2 Temple of Light
-   3 Gremlins (if you can afford them, take 4)
-   2 Battle Fury
These cards work with every mage (although I have my favourites) and even if you add some important meta cards (e.g. seeking dispel, dispel, teleport, maybe a couple ballistae in the future) you still have enough spellpoints to combine this strategy with a second for flexibility.

The Opening:
The following example assumes that you have a Channeling of 10, but the first three rounds work also with channeling 9.

Round 1 (20 Mana):
HoBS + Gremlin = 12 Mana

Round 2 (18 Mana):
HoBS + Gremlin = 12 Mana

Round 3 (16 Mana):
HoBS + Temple of Light = 14 Mana

Round 4 (12 Mana):
HoBS + Battle Fury

In round 4, this build has the potential to generate a total of 22 damage dices divided into 4 rolls from which 3 have piercing 1 and one has a high chance to daze/stun (5 dices from ToL, 3 from the Gremlin without buffs, 14 from gremlin buffed with HoBS and Battle Fury). BTW in round 4 this build has 2 mana left, which can be used to give the gremlins fast (assuming channeling 10).
This damage output is quite high, but other builds achieve this as well. The important point is that it is really difficult for the opponent to prevent the damage. Walls don’t work against Gremlins. Tanglevine and other forms of crowd control are very inefficient against this build as well, because you need to control both gremlins and the mage at the same time! If you don’t, the free creature is buffed with 4 HoBS and a quick casted Battle Fury without you having the chance to interrupt this (to tell the truth, if the mage wants to attack with Battle Fury in Round 4, he can’t cast the fourth HoBS).
On the other side, it is quite difficult to lower the damage outcome of this build by focusing on either the conjurations or the gremlins. HoBS and ToL both absorb good amounts of damage in respect to their mana cost. Attacking gremlins is really horrible since they are cheap but have a nice defence and enough life and armor to survive a hit from a level 2-3 creature. And if the gremlin survives the HoBS is a really efficient way to heal them up (contrary to other forms of healing, there is no randomness involved in using HoBS).

To hopefully start a nice discussion, let me end with this:
My friend and I played many games via OCTGN and in RL against each other and against other players. We played against all common types of builds (e.g. solo-mage, swarm deck, curse deck, solo-mage temple deck, mana denial etc.), but we never came across a build that is a real threat for the one I discussed here. If you don’t believe me, try the opening I posted above and let me know how it worked .

[nitrodavid]

how did you handle flying sweepers like lof and east wind. or a light immune flying creature like the angle.

I would classify this as a rush swarm/control. 3 lvl 2 creatures by turn 4 is very swarm like and the daze/stun is your control

as for how would react if I personally saw that build heading towards me I would hope I had one of the following
damage barrier + circle attack (fire or lightning)
 suppression orb (your move actions act like teleports but are still move actions and will cost you 1 mana each)
general anti swarm tech (obelisk, cloak etc)

 out of those the biggest weakness I see is the suppression orb because you are a pest the other mage can run 2 zones away and make you constantly waste 2 mana per gremlin. since by turn 4 your opponent will have 50mana on the field I think they could have

suppression orb (
cheetah speed (5)
defensive creature to protect orb (up to 29 mana)
leaving 8 mana for a defensive mage item.

 I'm not saying it will beat your deck but I think it will hamper it. I believe your build works very well against the current meta which I find is very offensive based, while I personally always don't like that and go defensive in all my builds. the biggest problem is there could be a build designed to best yours but I would not run it at a comp because it will get squashed by traditional aggro meta

[sIKE]

These builds work well until Thunderbolt (Core)/ Grimson Deadeye, Sniper (FvM)/ Hurl Meteorite (Promo) with 3 zone ranged attacks are brought out and just the other mage sits back and blows these all up. Yes a bit of a mana sink but just hanging back and taking these out turn after turn and developing your own offensive capabilities.

[nitrodavid]

on a good day it will take you 2 thunder bolts to take out temple. that's 2 full action and 20 mana turns while you have 3 gremlins chasing you down.

deadeye is great for taking it out if you can keep him alive against the 2x5 (1 pierce) attack that will be coming your way on turn 2

[Paleblue]

I would counter with sniper and dwarf guards.

[Charmyna]

how did you handle flying sweepers like lof and east wind. or a light immune flying creature like the angle.

In most games I played against a Lord of Fire,he did one attack before dying after a combo of knockdown/force hold + buffed up gremlin. 14 Life is nothing against such a gremlin+ToL . Even if the LoF is buffed with defensive enchantments he often goes from full life to extinction in one round.
The light immune Angel is the toughest creature for this build, since a lot of the sustained damage comes from the ToL. One way to come around the angel is to damage the opposing mage while lowering the damage output from the angel (force hold, curse of agony etc). It is far easier and mana efficient to crowd control the angel compared to controling the gremlin. If the angel is buffed up with some enchantments it can be worth to banish him - the 3 rounds until he comes back often are enough to kill the opponent given the high burst damage of this build.
 If the opponent lets me build up 5-6 HoBS, a combination of force hold/knockdown + buffed up gremlin often kills the angel in one round (in the case of 6 HoBS that would be 2*8 dices after consideration of aegis 1 against 14 life and the 1 armor from the angel is ignored because of the gremlins piercing).
Think of this build more as a strategy than an actual build: The strategy is to create damage sources which can't be countered mana efficiently. Big creatures like the one you mentioned can be countered efficiently because their base costs are so high, whereas for the gremlins and the ToL it is very mana inefficient to counter them given their low costs compared to their survivability.
So at the end of the day, this build either has a mana advantage or a damage advantage.

I would classify this as a rush swarm/control. 3 lvl 2 creatures by turn 4 is very swarm like and the daze/stun is your control

as for how would react if I personally saw that build heading towards me I would hope I had one of the following
damage barrier + circle attack (fire or lightning)
 suppression orb (your move actions act like teleports but are still move actions and will cost you 1 mana each)
general anti swarm tech (obelisk, cloak etc)

 out of those the biggest weakness I see is the suppression orb because you are a pest the other mage can run 2 zones away and make you constantly waste 2 mana per gremlin. since by turn 4 your opponent will have 50mana on the field I think they could have

suppression orb (
cheetah speed (5)
defensive creature to protect orb (up to 29 mana)
leaving 8 mana for a defensive mage item.

 I'm not saying it will beat your deck but I think it will hamper it. I believe your build works very well against the current meta which I find is very offensive based, while I personally always don't like that and go defensive in all my builds. the biggest problem is there could be a build designed to best yours but I would not run it at a comp because it will get squashed by traditional aggro meta

Damage barriers can be a problem for the gremlins. But in many cases they have enough life to survive, which allows efficiently healing them in the following round with the HoBS (reducing my damage output). Even if the gremlin dies, as long as he delivered the combo-damage its worth the mana. Circle of Lightning is dangerous because it lowers the damage from the battle fury, so I would dispel that. A wizard that has a few circles might be a problem, but I guess that is a rather uncommon build. Anyway, if I cant dispel the circle, I would attack his other creatures to make best use of the high burst damage, which often gives an advantage in the long run. If he is a solo mage, he will have a hard time since he will be constantly dazed.

You mentioned Suppression Orb. Well, a hidden strength of this build is, that although you can rush quite well with it, you dont have to! If the opponent turtles with an Orb or Obelisk, i just build the 5th and 6th HoBS in round 5. In Round 6 I cast nullify on the opponent and remove his divine protection or whatever defensive stuff he has. In the next Round in which the opponent has initiative, I position my Mage in a range of 2 from the opposing mage and cast battle fury on a gremlin. Assuming he does not have more creatures than me (otherwise casting Suppression Orb/Obelisk would be a strange move), his mage has to use his action marker before my last gremlin. So, before the buffed up gremlins turn, I use the quick cast to teleport the opposing mage into my zone and attack him for 25 dices of damage (7 from ToL and 2*9 from gremlin). In the next round I have initiative for another 25 dices of damage. The only thing he can do against that is using his quick cast, but since I casted nullify on him, he cant use teleport or reverse attack etc.
Im not saying this works always as described, but the potential of a huge burst coming from ToL+buffed up Gremlin puts the opponent under great pressure and makes it very hard to decide what to do next. And since the damage from the gremlin is so high, the mana costs from Orb are negligible. The obelisk doesnt work against this build as well since usually 2 gremlins are enough. This is why the common counter strategies against swarm decks dont work against this build.

These builds work well until Thunderbolt (Core)/ Grimson Deadeye, Sniper (FvM)/ Hurl Meteorite (Promo) with 3 zone ranged attacks are brought out and just the other mage sits back and blows these all up. Yes a bit of a mana sink but just hanging back and taking these out turn after turn and developing your own offensive capabilities.

Those spells are very mana inefficient. Maybe you shot down the first and maybe even the second ToL, but then  the mana disadvantage and the damage from the gremlins+HoBS is a real problem. The Grimson Deadeye Sniper is a mana efficient solution, but its difficult to protect him. You can cast a nullify on him, but still its possible to use quickcast+full action to teleport him out of his safety zone and kill him in one round with ToL+gremlin. There might be a combination of Sniper+walls+archer tower for indirect trait that works, but i havent met them and putting up all those isnt really mana efficient. Btw, if you spend so much mana on protecting the sniper, I could use a thoughtspore with fireball or teleport to target your sniper even behind the wall and still have the mana advantage on my side. Or I use the buffed up gremlin to destroy the wall in one round followed up by a teleport of the sniper.
BTW I often play this build with a Forcemaster, which allows me to pull the deadeye even through nullify for only 1 mana.
Edit: Just had a funny idea. I could destroy the wall that protects the sniper with a buffed gremlin and replace it with a wall of pikes (costs 4 mana and does not block Line of Sight). The wall of pikes will prevent you from putting up another wall to block LoS to your sniper. In the next round its easy to teleport your sniper out of the zone or to push him through the wall of pikes.

I would counter with sniper and dwarf guards.

I never played against Dwarf Panzergarde, so the intercept might work nicely with the sniper. But that still doesnt protect the sniper against being teleported or pulled (especially if playing against the forcemaster).

[sIKE]

Once again if I am three zone away and I am shooting at your ToL, you will have to come to me. If you have dropped as much mana here has you have described, you will not have much to teleport me with. It is a passive defense which allows me to build up my strengths as I do not necessarily shoot each turn. The goals behind this kind of strategy is for the opposing mage to charge in to your firing base and get demolished. But if the mage does not play by your rules and start slowly grinding on your HoBs and ToLs at some point the advantage flips. I move forward one and teleport say the Gorgon Archer to me and hack to pieces.

I have seen the same thing done with Wizards Tower and Ballista in the same zone. Quite nasty by the way. Drop a Intercept Critter in the same zone and you have quite a blast radius....


Please forgive me for my ignorance, what are gremlins?

[wolf88]

Wow this build sounds NASTY. I knew that someone would find a way to exploit the Gremlins sooner or later

[Paleblue]

I never played against Dwarf Panzergarde, so the intercept might work nicely with the sniper. But that still doesnt protect the sniper against being teleported or pulled (especially if playing against the forcemaster).

A teleport would be expected, so a nullify on the sniper would probably be something I would plop down early (or wall off, though I'm not all that keen on walls). Your strategy certainly seems powerful and I think the majority of mages would struggle and if you didn't have the right reaction to it most people would die.

Certainly seems like temple play is the fad at the moment!

[baronzaltor]

Thou only a promo, so not yet tourney legal, lion savagery is amazing with blue gremlins if you can find the dice tower promo set.

It grants +2 charge and +1 pierce.  Since gremlins count as teleporting when they use fast, move they can exit and renter the same zone unhindered and always attack at 5 with 2 pierce.  7 if you give him a bear strength too.

Also, since their movements are teleports they are great for eating watchtower snipers because they can walk through walls.

[Paleblue]

Thou only a promo, so not yet tourney legal, lion savagery is amazing with blue gremlins if you can find the dice tower promo set.

It grants +2 charge and +1 pierce.  Since gremlins count as teleporting when they use fast, move they can exit and renter the same zone unhindered and always attack at 5 with 2 pierce.  7 if you give him a bear strength too.

Also, since their movements are teleports they are great for eating watchtower snipers because they can walk through walls.

I really wish these promos where out, so many good cards I want to get my grubby hands on! Out of curiosity how many copies of each cards did you guys get?

[sIKE]

Ah! Blue Gremlin. I can she how useful these little guys can be especially now without (from a tourney perspective) something like the Morning Star with the Unavoidable trait. Once that card goes main stream it will void the Defense advantage of the creatures like this.

Has anyone tried kiting your gremlins?

[baronzaltor]

Thou only a promo, so not yet tourney legal, lion savagery is amazing with blue gremlins if you can find the dice tower promo set.

It grants +2 charge and +1 pierce.  Since gremlins count as teleporting when they use fast, move they can exit and renter the same zone unhindered and always attack at 5 with 2 pierce.  7 if you give him a bear strength too.

Also, since their movements are teleports they are great for eating watchtower snipers because they can walk through walls.

I really wish these promos where out, so many good cards I want to get my grubby hands on! Out of curiosity how many copies of each cards did you guys get?

My brother and I each ordered 2 of the dice tower sets.  Each of  them has 1 copy in it.  So our collective set has 4 of each

[Charmyna]

Once again if I am three zone away and I am shooting at your ToL, you will have to come to me. If you have dropped as much mana here has you have described, you will not have much to teleport me with. It is a passive defense which allows me to build up my strengths as I do not necessarily shoot each turn. The goals behind this kind of strategy is for the opposing mage to charge in to your firing base and get demolished. But if the mage does not play by your rules and start slowly grinding on your HoBs and ToLs at some point the advantage flips. I move forward one and teleport say the Gorgon Archer to me and hack to pieces.
I have seen the same thing done with Wizards Tower and Ballista in the same zone. Quite nasty by the way. Drop a Intercept Critter in the same zone and you have quite a blast radius....
Please forgive me for my ignorance, what are gremlins?

Well, if you cast a Sniper in the first or second Round, I might change my opening. I would think of a way to position the temple of light on a field from which he can immediately shoot at your sniper. But who knows, maybe you got the right answer. Lets test it in OCTGN! Im online the next hours.
BTW Ballista+Wizards Tower sounds really nice  .

Thou only a promo, so not yet tourney legal, lion savagery is amazing with blue gremlins if you can find the dice tower promo set.

It grants +2 charge and +1 pierce.  Since gremlins count as teleporting when they use fast, move they can exit and renter the same zone unhindered and always attack at 5 with 2 pierce.  7 if you give him a bear strength too.

Also, since their movements are teleports they are great for eating watchtower snipers because they can walk through walls.

There was a discussion whether or not the gremlins can be hindered if they use their inherent teleport. Unfortunately there was no official response yet. I feel like gremlins are too good if they will be fast and cant be hindered after paying 1 mana. That’s why I play it with them being hindered.
Btw I don’t think it’s a good idea to cast two enchantments on a gremlin. If they die, you loose too much action/mana. One advantage of this build is, that whatever your opponent kills, it will cost you one action and only the base mana (no mana from enchantments). Or to put it in another perspective: A gremlin with those 2 enchantments costs 17 mana. Now, its much more harmful for you, if your opponent in some way prevents the damage from the gremlin. Whereas, if instead of casting those two enchantments, you cast two HoBS, the damage will be split into your creatures and the Temple of Light. So its really difficult to avoid the damage of those HoBSs. Im not saying that I never cast an enchantment on a gremlin though .

Ah! Blue Gremlin. I can she how useful these little guys can be especially now without (from a tourney perspective) something like the Morning Star with the Unavoidable trait. Once that card goes main stream it will void the Defense advantage of the creatures like this.
 

The morning star is quite interesting, since its more difficult to destroy compared to falcon precision. So maybe that will be a problem. But, even without the defence its not so easy to onehit the Gremlins. The daze of the ToL will work against the morning star as well. So, yes you might kill 1-2 Gremlins, but during that time you get quite some damage.
I had those games, in which the opponent destroyed 5 hands or enough gremlins to overcome my main strategy. But at that point I had nearly zero damage and he had 20+. So it wasn’t difficult to finish him off with some fireballs or a push through a wall of thorns.

 

Has anyone tried kiting your gremlins?

Yes, some tried an early suppression orb and kiting gremlins, which is quite annoying. But its not easy to protect the orb against the buffed gremlins. And btw there are only 2 corners, which the ToL doesn’t reach. So kiting isn’t that easy.
You mentioned Ballistae. Im aware of them being a big threat for the ToL and the HoBS. That is why I included 4 of them into my spellbook and some fire spells. I use the ballistae seldomly, because I dont want non-tournament cards to be the reason for my win. But, I include 4 of them to make sure my spellbook works with them and to be prepared for the time when they will be important meta cards. Still, the opponents ballistae will hurt me, but my own ballistae will make sure, that his don’t last long. At the end, he might destroy my temples, but I will have destroyed his ballistae and still have my own. So hopefully that’s enough to win.
If we play together in OCTGN, it would be very interesting to see a build that includes the ballista.

[reddawn]

Sounds like a build that is ripe for a zone attack.  Gremlins are good, but they're not going to reliably survive multiple Ring of Fire/Electrify/Firestorm/Hail of Rocks/etc (in fact, they can easily die to just one), and you have to get all your Gremlins on the same target if you want the amount of dice you're talking about, so it's not terribly hard to predict.