Blood Demon Aggro

[reddawn]

[spellbook]
[spellbookheader]
[spellbookname]Blood Demon Aggro[/spellbookname]
[mage]Warlock[/mage]
[/spellbookheader]
[spells]
[spellclass]Attack[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1a04]1 x  Fireball[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWA02]1 x  Force Hammer[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNA01]3 x  Acid Ball[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1a06]1 x  Flameblast[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Conjuration[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKJ01]2 x  Enchanter's Wardstone[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Creature[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFC02]3 x  Blood Demon[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Enchantment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1e01]4 x  Bear Strength[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e03]3 x  Bull Endurance[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFE06]2 x  Lion Savagery[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e09]2 x  Agony[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e05]2 x  Cheetah Speed[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e14]2 x  Enfeeble[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e19]2 x  Ghoul Rot[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e24]2 x  Magebane[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e28]4 x  Mongoose Agility[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e29]1 x  Nullify[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFE07]2 x  Rust[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e36]1 x  Rhino Hide[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e40]2 x  Vampirism[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFE03]2 x  Arcane Corruption[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e27]1 x  Marked for Death[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1e31]2 x  Poisoned Blood[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Equipment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1q05]1 x  Demonhide Armor[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q14]1 x  Lash of Hellfire[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q28]1 x  Ring of Curses[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNQ09]1 x  Wand of Healing[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q06]1 x  Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ06]1 x  Eagleclaw Boots[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1q09]1 x  Enchanter's Ring[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWQ10]1 x  Storm Drake Hide[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Incantation[/spellclass]
[mwcard=mw1i06]3 x  Dispel[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i07]2 x  Dissolve[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i12]1 x  Force Push[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i24]1 x  Seeking Dispel[/mwcard]
[mwcard=mw1i28]1 x  Teleport[/mwcard]
[/spells]
[cost]Total cost: 120 pts[/cost]
[/spellbook]

This is a book I just built but have yet to try out.  The plan is fairly straightforward; summon 3 Blood Demons, buff them (and sometimes the Warlock) up and drop curses, and assassinate the other mage.

Anyone have experience with this kind of book?

[BoomFrog]

What is your typical 3 turn plan?

What is your plan against a druid who plays kralathor? His reach will eat up your blood demons.

[reddawn]

What is your typical 3 turn plan?

What is your plan against a druid who plays kralathor? His reach will eat up your blood demons.

Pretty much summon a Blood Demon turns 1, 2, and 3. Rings and enchantments after, and then Bear Strengths/Mongoose Agility and whatever I else as the game goes on.  I'm not really worried about a Kralathor, since it doesn't get a damage bonus against them.  I'm not really sure why someone would play a Kralathor against a Warlock, since he's bound to have some kind of fire attack spell; I'd probably be a lot more worried if I had to fight Giant Wolf Spiders, which look like they counter BDs pretty effectively with proper support.

If I can stick an Agony on Kralathor, it becomes pretty pathetic.  Worst case scenario I have to Flameblast it; I wouldn't really want to use the Fireball, since it's a pretty key card against lots back-breaking conjurations.

[sdougla2]

I like the idea of flooding Blood Demons early in order to put pressure on your opponent and punish anyone without sufficient answers to flyers. They will leave you weak to certain creatures, particularly Iron Golems, so keep that in mind.

Like you said, I wouldn't be particularly concerned by Kralathor. Kralathor is a big threat against undead and level 1 swarms, but not so much against a bunch of level 3 creatures.

I would probably run more Flameblasts personally, but I can see how you might prefer to focus on Acid Balls to keep the Blood Demons efficient.

[Alexander West]

I really like the first Blood Demon as a Blood Reaper.  12 mana and 4 life to get a 6 dice attack (with Bloodthirsty) on a mobile and difficult to kill mid creature is nice.  The 2 life gain each time it deals damage puts your Warlock in a nice position to race vs. other aggressive plans.

 The subsequent copies of Blood Demon are a bit inefficient, they take a longer time for their mana cost to be paid off in damage.  If your book is going to go this long, you're going to need a Battleforge and defenses for your mage to turn it into more of a survival game.

I personally would want to go in on curses and fire spells after the first demon, and mostly make it a race that you should win due to your effective +2 life regen over your opponent?

[reddawn]

I really like the first Blood Demon as a Blood Reaper.  12 mana and 4 life to get a 6 dice attack (with Bloodthirsty) on a mobile and difficult to kill mid creature is nice.  The 2 life gain each time it deals damage puts your Warlock in a nice position to race vs. other aggressive plans.

 The subsequent copies of Blood Demon are a bit inefficient, they take a longer time for their mana cost to be paid off in damage.  If your book is going to go this long, you're going to need a Battleforge and defenses for your mage to turn it into more of a survival game.

I personally would want to go in on curses and fire spells after the first demon, and mostly make it a race that you should win due to your effective +2 life regen over your opponent?

Yeah I'm sort of concerned about the efficiency of the non-reaper Blood Demons.  Their traits definitely seem to lend themselves to a more offensive role, since the harder they hit, the more they heal (usually).  Also, I'm sure I don't have to tell the GenCon champ this, but Flying makes them harder to control through the more efficient Restrain cards and/or Walls.

Basically, I recognize the somewhat lack-luster initial efficiency of Blood Demons 2 & 3, but they seem particularly efficient when it comes to offensive buffs and less open to control, which in my experience suggests a good candidate for aggro creatures. 

I chose the Warlock since, as I believe and you describe, he has the best base resilience out of all the mages, which obviously suits him to the role.  I did actually heavily consider a Battleforge for most iterations of the build, but at the last moment I took it out to focus more on curses and buffs, as most equipment is efficient in terms of armor and defense, but not in terms of more dice and attack. 

I still haven't tested this yet, so I have no idea what will change and I'm probably wrong about a lot of things, but thanks for the insight everyone.  Hopefully it will mean less playtesting. 

[Myrddin]

Interesting book! I'm currently playing a Warlock with a couple of Blood Demons, though I usually only use one (as the Reaper as is being talked about here) and then rely on curses and a bit of fire magic. I lay down a battleforge first turn and bring out the Demon second turn.

If you want to go for several reapers, I think it would help to have some walls, as they can fly over them anyway and it can separate a mage from his guards. Wall of Fire and Wall of Bones are both good and cheap: a wall of thorns in your back pocket gives you an opportunity if an unarmoured opponent pushes their luck. Not sure I'd bother with Wardstones, although they're good with curses: I guess it depends how many dispels your opponents tend to carry.

In terms of buffs, bear strength is great on something with Vampiric, and Mongoose agility might be worth it on your reaper, but I wouldn't necessarily bother with the other ones. There is the slight risk of the opponent just running away because your Demons don't hinder him, but if the Warlock himself is in melee that's less of an issue. Lion savagery only seems worth it if you also have cheetah speed, and that's a pretty massive investment.

I'd be tempted to replace at least one of the vampirisms with regrowth: the latter is more flexible (i.e. can be used while running away if you're injured) and against so many curses I don't see your buffs being dispelled that much anyway. My warlock sometimes has the bloodreaper's healing, regrowth belt and vampirism at the same time, which means he can soak up shocking amounts of damage and that the opponent really can't afford to pause to build resources.

I'd also be tempted to have at least area attack spell in case of swarms. If you're surrounded by 4 thunderift falcons with a rajan's fury or two down, a ring of fire is very welcome indeed.

I was going to say that Dragonscale Hauberk beats Daemonhide, but actually with bloodthirsty creatures it might be convenient to cause small amounts of damage to opposing creatures and make them tastier targets!

I would also consider the forge. The main boon is action efficiency, and a chance to react before quickcast. Given you're presumably going to spend most of your full actions hitting things, an extra action wouldn't go amiss

[Alexander West]

I chose the Warlock since, as I believe and you describe, he has the best base resilience out of all the mages, which obviously suits him to the role.  I did actually heavily consider a Battleforge for most iterations of the build, but at the last moment I took it out to focus more on curses and buffs, as most equipment is efficient in terms of armor and defense, but not in terms of more dice and attack.

The Warlock starts as the second most resilient mage (34 health with Blood Reaper providing regen), and as such is both well suited to very aggressive play where he tries to trade life as quickly as possible, or a very long game where he tries to leverage his reaper/lifegain over as many turns as possible.  The choices a player makes with his mana investment changes what kind of game it is best to play for with the mage.

By spending 36 mana on 3 Blood Demons, we're choosing to give this book a very powerful long game, at the cost of losing out on the ability to be maximally aggressive.  Provided they survive (and they usually should, between Flying and Vampirism they are very very hard to put down), they should deal with most threats eventually.  To me, this means that preserving your mage will often become the crux of a match. 

Imagine this book was playing against a super-aggressive spellbook like Andrew/Boomfrog's Forcemaster from GenCon.  By turn 3 the Forcemaster is in your Warlock's face double-striking with Galvitar, chopping with a Dancing Scimitar, and powered up by Gauntlets of Strength and Bear Strength.  The Warlock is going to need some armor, walls, guards to stop this 14 dice/round onslaught.  (There are other aggressive variants, but the common theme is that they can kill you by turn 4 or 5 if you don't start getting defenses together.)  Having a chest piece is good (I'm not sure if it's good, but the damage barrier is certainly a cool interaction with bloodthirst), but I think you really need the other pieces of armor (boots, gloves, rhino hide) to soak heavy hits.  Your ability to heal 2 off your blood reaper is also much stronger with more armor, since each health point is effectively multiplied by how hard it is to lose them.

I guess what I'm saying is that though you're looking to maximize damage dice for your demons (both to kill faster and keep them topped off on life), you might be more in the market to maximize defense on your mage.

[reddawn]

Yup I think you make a good point; I'll put the battleforge back in.  Agony hates on the FM pretty hard, but I would need more than 2 copies to actually let one stick against a good player I imagine.

Also, turns out I have nowhere near enough ways to deal with Weak tokens.  Gorgon Archer counters my entire plan, so I'll have to figure out a way to deal with that.  I think I might switch out a Blood Demon for a Slayer too.

In the end, I think i'll need a bigger mana setup than just rings.  Blood Demons are good, but without access to Fellella, I just don't have enough actions to both buff and attack.  I may actually end up considering the Jokhtari BM for this kind of build actually, or at least Sersiryx. 

Edit:  I think the simpler solution is to just summon less demons.  Easier to manage, wouldn't you know