Warlord Rebirth: Open with the Hammer

[Dravidius]

  Hey all,

  I have played like 10 games over the last few days, since Necro and Druid have released and a friend of mine decided to build a Warlord book.  I told him there was a good bit of, well let's just call it Hate, towards the Warlord, but he laughed at my foolishness and did anyways.  Let me say OMG!!!!  He opens with the Akrio Hammer and set it up in the zone along the back wall of his side in the center.  Now he has me hemmed in at my end and I can really only put conjuration in one of two zones safely. 

    Now by mid/late game, the hammer falls off and is usually destroyed, but by then he has had plenty of time to get his Barracks, towers, or outposts up and is pumping out creatures while using Wall of Spears to control the flow of creatures.  What do you all think of this option?  Oh and Iron Golems galore along with Harmonize on the Barracks to make them pop out even faster.  If you want to see the spell book I will post it up later.  Just looking for your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Dravidius

[Zuberi]

Akiro's Hammer is really only decent against conjuration heavy builds like possibly the Druid. Against most mages, it is almost useless. It can't hit anything within 1 zone of it and it takes 2 rounds to build up the load tokens for it to fire a shot. If you are really concerned about it though, put a Fog Bank in front of it.

The best weapon against a build requiring a lot of build up, like it sounds like he's doing, is to go really aggressive. Don't give him a chance to place all of those conjurations. If he does manage to get a swarm going though, you can throw down Mordok's Obelisk and Suppression Orb.

[Aylin]

Akiro's Hammer can only target corporeal conjurations.

Best answer to turn 1 Akiro's Hammer? Turn 2 Fog Bank right in front of it. Akiro's Hammer can't target it, but loses LoS to everything on the other side, meaning your opponent either loses mana (spending 12 mana to your 4) or tempo (taking the time to break an incorporeal wall). The Warlord has a bit of a weakness dealing with incorporeal objects, with his only real options being Mage Staff or Divine Might. Either way it should provide enough disruption for you to set your own thing up and crush the Warlord's early game.

[baronzaltor]

When someone plays Arkio's Hammer, play a Fog Bank.  For 5 mana you render his 12 mana investment useless.

Its attack can only target "corporeal conjurations", which means it can't even legally target an incorporeal Wall like Fog Bank or Wall of Fire.

Its zone attack cannot objects attached to zone borders, so it still cannot hurt the Fog Bank, and now it cannot obtain LOS beyond the Fog Bank.

The Hammer also has a pretty big blind spot, since its minimum range is 2 zones, position yourself where it won't be able to contribute too heavily. 

Also, Iron Golems cannot be played from Barracks as they are not Soldiers.

Ultimatly though, a Warlord trying to open with Arkiro's Hammer (12 mana), and trying to work with Barracks (another 12 mana) then Harmonizing it (5 mana) and trying to get Outposts out (6 each, plus requires forward movement) is going to be really tight on his budget to cast out multiple Iron Golems (13 each).   He's not going to be able to do much to defend them as long as you are proactive and disruptive to him.

Another way to hassle the Warlord who is trying to use Barracks/Outposts is just to toss out zone exclusive conjurations like mana crystals in ways that make it where he cannot play more outposts from his position.   They cannot be adjacent to each other.. so just place your own conjurations in those non adjacent spots.  Now he has to either spend his time destroying them instead of more critical targets or has to use Barracks with much lower channel.

[baronzaltor]

I see I was late to the game with the Fog Bank suggestion.

[Aylin]

Note:
Fog Bank, Garrison Post, Archer's Watchtower, and Harmonize all cost 4.

Everything else in baronzaltor's post is correct.

[baronzaltor]

Note:
Fog Bank, Garrison Post, Archer's Watchtower, and Harmonize all cost 4.

Everything else in baronzaltor's post is correct.

Fogbank was a typo.

Harmonize was me showing how often Im used to factoring in "Magebind +2, Enchanters Ring -1" to its cost.

The others were me forgetting do double-check the card.

[ringkichard]

Hay, ne1 say fogbank yet?

[sdougla2]

Every time someone has played Akiro's Hammer against me, my response has been, oh good, I win. Now, in most of those games I was playing an aggressive or midrange build that weren't particularly reliant on conjurations. It would be better in theory against some of the spawnpoint builds I'm working on now, but it's still inefficient enough and slow enough that I wouldn't be very concerned even if I didn't have a wall to neuter it and I was playing a conjuration reliant strategy.

Barracks is very slow to get going. Much slower than other spawnpoints, and it's the least tough for it's cost spawnpoint I can think of. Whenever someone has played the Barracks against me, I've either killed it or the Warlord before it accomplished much. It may work better with Meditation Amulet, but I'd be surprised if that worked very well. I'd much rather use Meditation Amulet with a Lair or something.

The other issue with the strategy you describe is that it's vulnerable to strong position control. Iron Golems and Wall of Pikes in particular are vulnerable to position control. Whenever a Warlord plays a Wall of Pikes against me, I end up putting him on the wrong side of the Wall of Pikes, which often forces him to flee through his own Wall of Pikes. Wall of Pikes influences positioning, but most Warlord's don't have the position control for it to work out sufficiently in their favor to justify in my experience.

It sounds like you didn't pressure the Warlord early, and you didn't build a strong enough economy to win the late game. Either should work, although rushing will pretty much auto win against a turn 1 Akiro's Hammer. Also, as noted above, the Barracks can't summon Iron Golems.

[sIKE]

I see the fogbank argument, and yes when the Hammer is played fogbank is a great counter, but how many books actually carry one of these?

My counter is to go destroy it. They burn real fast, and if you melee it, it just sits there and becomes toothpicks.

[ChimpZilla]

Even if it had indirect fire (which it should have IMO) it's a terrible turn one play. It's strictly tech to nuke problem conjurations like WT, TOL, or Idol. Anytime I played it, it was last quick sat the turn prior and I got maybe one-two uses with mixed results. But I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever build around it.

[ACG]

Also effective against Druid conjuration builds. Maybe that's why the Druid hates the War school.