Let's chat: Garrek's Reavers

[Biboune]

Hi,

With the new cards coming, I am thinking about a very aggressive deck. I fell that the reavers get a boost and can now be played as they should: Attack fast, don't care about looses, try to kill the enemy before he can gear up and make Khorne happy. 

I have an issue to reduce the number of cards in this deck so i am looking for advices:

Ploys :

Blood Offering

Boon of Khorne

Fuelled by Fury

Mighty Swing

Fuelled by Slaughter

Trap

Illusory Fighter

Curious Inversion

Time Trap

Death Throes

Final Blow

Rebound

Insensate

 

 

Upgrades :

Berserk Charge

Frenzy

Whirlwind of Death

Awakened Weapon

Great Strength

Helpful Whispers

Light Armour

Second-in-command

Shadeglass Axe

Shadeglass Darts

Shadeglass Sword

Soultrap

Low Blow

 

 

Objectives :

 

Blood for the Blood God!

Draw the Gaze of Khorne

Let the Blood Flow

It Begins

Crushing Force

Precise Use of Force

The Bigger They Are

Escalation

Khorne Cares Not

Superior Tactician

Supremacy

Conquest

 

 

[Skinnyboy]

This is a neat list, I'd maybe try and get in the shattering terrain,  shadeglass hammer and heroslayer for some good damage 4 potential to oneshot stormcast Orruks and leaders. desperate gambit could be a cheeky ploy to combo with heroslayer if people start stacking +1 defence. Nice to see an all out offensive Khorne deck, not my style but I'd be curious to know how you get on with it.

[Red_Zeke]

Idly wondering if there is any mileage in Making a Statement or Overextended in combo with Desecrate. Probably not, but they feel more achievable with one less to hold. Of course, if you can get into position to Desecrate you're in position to hold that objective....

Edited February 14, 2018 by Red_Zeke

[Skinnyboy]

13 hours ago, Red_Zeke said:

Idly wondering if there is any mileage in Making a Statement or Overextended in combo with Desecrate. Probably not, but they feel more achievable with one less to hold. Of course, if you can get into position to Desecrate you're in position to hold that objective....

My thoughts exactly, sprint would still be my go to for getting out of the way objectives

[Matt Large]

Have the new warbands Inspired anyone else to make new decks then? Just starting out really and im interested in whether these new cards have changed peoples decks. Atm my deck is heavily objective based, but I want to use one that feels a bit more “Khornate” but that actually works. 

[Qraith]

I've been tweaking my hybrid deck with lots of ne cards. Can't be sure about every card right now, since I'm at work but I will duoble Check when at home:

 

Objectives

Hold Objective 1-5
Denial
No More Tricks
Ploymaster
Supremacy
Determined Defender
Escalation
Precise Use of Force

Ploys

Khorne Calls
Blood Offering
Curious Inversion
Distraction
Last Chance
Momentary Madness
Ready for Action
Time Trap
Trap
Sidestep
Sprint

Upgrades

Acrobatic
Bloodslick
Whirlwind of Death
Awakened Weapon
Ethereal Shield
Frenzy
Great Strength
Heroslayer
Shadeglass Axe
Shardcaller
Soultrap

 

Like I said it is a hybrid deck. I use the objectives and Shardcaller for a more or less steady flow of glory and to be able to score some glory in round 1. I think reavers lack a good method of reliably gain glory in round 1.

Regarding upgrades and ploys I like to focus on the chosen 3, Garrek, Saek and Karsus. Karsus is a beast with upgrades and can do 4 damage. Also I think heroslayer combos pretty well with reavers since they have to ploys that give them more attack dice. And a 3 dice, 4 wounds attack can be pretty scary. With the new cards you can also bolster the Reavers' defenses, especially Garreks. Bloodslick and Ethereal Shield gives him a 2 dice - Shield defense.

 

I haven't played with the deck yet, but will tomorrow.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Qraith

[Karakas]

Hi Qraith,

I could be wrong but at the moment I don't see it possible to score the Escalation objective.  The 3 objectives have to be played in the preceeding Action phase (not end phase as normal).  So far I can only see 2 cards we have to cheat them out in an Action phase; Spoils of Battle and Legacy.  If there is another I have missed someone let me know.  Even with a 3rd card I think this is unlikely to all come together and score. 

However I am thinking of putting both these cards in my Reavers deck anyway to upgrade fast and build momentum without scoring obj's first.

[Karakas]

12 minutes ago, Karakas said:

The 3 objectives have to be played in the preceeding Action phase (not end phase as normal)

I mean 3 upgrades...

[moriquendi]

I think you are mixing up power step with end phase.

While the action phase you have four activations and each of them ends with a power step within each of them you can play as many upgrades you are able to.

Edited February 19, 2018 by moriquendi

[Qraith]

I think escalation is a perfect objective to score in the second or third round. You should have some glory by then and it gives a reasonable amount of glory for mid/endgame use. 

[Karakas]

1 hour ago, moriquendi said:

I think you are mixing up power step with end phase.

While the action phase you have four activations and each of them ends with a power step within each of them you can play as many upgrades you are able to.

I just read it all again, we have been playing it that you can only play upgrade cards in the end phase.  A lot of cards make more sense now, thanks all.  I really like Escalation now and will definitely include it, in light of my new found knowledge I think I will also try using Spoils of battle and one of the 'Key' upgrades.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Karakas

[Qraith]

You mean Master of War? I don’t like that objective. You have three conditions and it’s one glory. There are objective which are much easier to trigger. Plus Master of War is really hard to score if you have it on your starting hand to score round 1

[Karakas]

3 minutes ago, Qraith said:

You mean Master of War? I don’t like that objective. You have three conditions and it’s one glory. There are objective which are much easier to trigger. Plus Master of War is really hard to score if you have it on your starting hand to score round 1

No I don't mean that, that is indeed a terrible card. I mean Spoils of Battle: " Play an upgrade card.  This doesn't cost a glory point."

[Qraith]

Hm i don’t know if thats worth taking. I mean there are some really awesome ploys. Okay spoils of battle can be pretty good in round 1. But it looses a lot of value in round 2 and 3. And how are the chances that you will have it on your starting hand? Like 25% 

I try to include plots that don’t loose value over the course of a game 

Edited February 19, 2018 by Qraith

[Biboune]

On 18/2/2018 at 7:53 PM, Matt Large said:

Have the new warbands Inspired anyone else to make new decks then? Just starting out really and im interested in whether these new cards have changed peoples decks. Atm my deck is heavily objective based, but I want to use one that feels a bit more “Khornate” but that actually works. 

I think that you can build something very aggressive.

• There is 2 new cards that can save a model:

-Rebound:  1/3 to suffer no damage (and to hurt the enemy), nice but dicey

-Last Chance: 1/2 to suffer no damage. This card is good for the Guard, for the Reavers, and for 3 of the Skavens if they are uninspired.

• There is another (and better) Final Blow: Death Throes
• There is a better Bloodrain: Curious Inversion, you  can also use it for attacking. 
• Reavers lack of cards to re roll failed attack but now there is Fuelled by Fury, and some upgrades like Awakened Weapon and Light Armour to make your attack more likely to be succesful
• Reavers lack ploys +1 damage, now there is Trap.

If you drop ploys like side step and distraction that you don't really need as badly as 3 or 2 speed bands; you can have a lot of very offensive ploys, other to save your model, others to hurt you opponent when he kills one. The other bands have access to the same card, but it won't be as great for them (Curious Inversion, Last Chance, illusory Fighter is old but still better for reavers). 

The new objectives cards are not so great but there is some "score it immediately if a friendly fighter make a successful attack [doing a precis amount of damage to kill a enemy]..." when you kill a model, it goes well with the Khorne's card "Score it immediately if[...] during this phase". You can hope to score some a the first kind, draw some of the second, have a new activation and score the last one. 

Skavens are better with Objective base decks. Reavers can try to launch everything they have as soon as possible with 3 potent damage dealers, hope to save them or to hurt something loosing them, score some glory, gear up the 2 last guys and launch them too. 

I tried it against a Skaven, it worked very well: I could reach almost every of the enemy models. Other bands may be harder to bring down, but a least they will have to deal with early charges messing up with their plans.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Biboune

[Matt Large]

So would you forgo objective holding all together or have a hybrid deck of objectives and kill  based ones? 

[Biboune]

I think you can forget the Hold objective. NeverEasy describes a very similar approach on the "Let the blood Flow - How does it work?" thread.

With other bands, i like hybrid decks (stormacast, skavens, the Sguard), but with the Reavers: you have most of the time round 1 opportunities to make charges, you have 3 good fighters to do it, you have objective cards rewarding you to do it.

Supremacy would need 3 action  to be done, a enemy ploy can ruin it. There is 5 Hold Objectives, almost half of your deck. You have 2 or 3 objectives on your territory; having the good card for the right objective is quite rare; most of the time you need to draw objective cards, wasting actions, go on enemy territory and let them charge you (and probably kill your models).

Stormcast have cards rewarding doing "nothing", so drawing card is fine for them.

The Sguard will put shardecaller and Confused Priorities in their deck, they have good fighter, they can resurrect them, they can fight with them while puting petitioners on their objectives waiting to draw the right number (or determined defender)

Skavens will get on guard and run for the objective where ever they are (2 defend dices, shield or dodge: harder to kill than you ll ever be), if they get their model killed, they can resurrect them.

Orruks can place their objective close to the no man's land or in the enemy territory (plant a standard); they may need to advance round 1 to charge round 2, their leader is tankier than our, they have a soul trap like car for him and probably a health potion in their deck.

Choosen Axes just need to get on objectives.

Bloodreavers have the mobility and nothing else arguing for going to objective.   

[Karakas]

Biboune, how are you getting on with your pure offense deck?  In particular have you played Orruks or Stormcast?

[Qraith]

So I’ve tried my deck yesterday against Skaven, SC and Orks. Skaven was pretty easy since the deck is fairly aggressive. 

Orks was a Desaster. Managed to win one game out of three since I was very lucky with objective draw and score supremacy round one and got some real good upgrade rolling. 

Stormcast was the same. Too tanky, you can also try to run through a brick wall. 

 

While I am really satisfied with my ploys and especially the upgrades I’m gonna revise my objective deck. I’m a tournament player and an aggressive deck does not work against Stormcast or Orks. You have to get solid glory from objectives to get some good upgrades. So I will be switching out two cards for the hold 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 cards. 

What are your experiences against aggressive Orks/Stormcast?

[Killax]

7 hours ago, Qraith said:

What are your experiences against aggressive Orks/Stormcast?

Still the same, your better of playing them because their allround approach works very well against pretty much anything.
There are several cards from the Skaven expansion I like and do want to test here, especially Earthquake and the flip in Hammer/Swords/Shields/Dodges are cards I need to test. 

Have said it before and will say it again, the moment a general Cleave upgrade will come out I'd gladly give Garrek's Reavers a new run, but we don't have that card.

[NeverEasy]

18 hours ago, Karakas said:

In particular have you played Orruks or Stormcast?

Last week I played two matches against aggressive Stormcast with my hyper aggressive Reavers (not a single "hold objective" objective card in my deck).

In the first match I killed one Liberator round 1 and the other two Liberators round 2 and actually scored Annihilation. I only lost two guys. In other words I won easily

The second match I lost but it came down to the last die roll! If Garrek would have rolled a successful attack roll, I would have won. I actually chose a suboptimal board for myself at the beginning of the game, just to try something new and for variety. This made the first round very hard for me, but I still managed to almost win. All in all I don't feel Stormcast is such a big problem anymore.

I also played two matches against the Sepulchral Guard and won both.

I have only played against Orruks in 3-4 player matches with this deck so it's a little hard to say, but I feel I would do good against them in a normal 1vs1 match.  With my hybrid deck it was usually pretty 50/50 but during the matches I often felt my "hold objective" cards held me back.

11 hours ago, Qraith said:

Orks was a Desaster. Managed to win one game out of three since I was very lucky with objective draw and score supremacy round one and got some real good upgrade rolling.

If you have Supremacy, your deck is not aggressive enough Basically all your objective cards should reward you for fighting. Supremacy causes you to waste actions just moving but more importantly it causes you to suboptimally position your fighters. Positioning is very, very important with the Reavers. Supremacy might let you score what seems like an easy 3 glory, but you will often get slaughterd next round because of how Supremacy made you behave. Throw away all hold objective cards, that's my advice

I actually run There is Only Slaughter, it's easier to score than you might think. Not against Sepulchral Guard or Skaven, but that's OK, they're not the hardest opponents for Reavers.
 

I started my Reavers journey with an objective deck --> Stormcast and Orruks slaughtered me. Then I made a hybrid deck --> Stromcast and Orruks felt more manageable but still hard. Then I made 100% aggressive "kill everything" deck --> Stormcast and Orruks are completely beatable.

I will say however that playing Reavers is very unforgiving if you make a mistake (in positioning for example), so you need to practice more with them than other warbands.

Edited February 21, 2018 by NeverEasy

[Matt Large]

Whats your advice on positioning then? Best choice of board? How to set them up etc? 

Im trying out the deck “Blood for the Blood God” from the Underworlds site so I’ll have to see how a more aggressive style goes for me. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Matt Large

[NeverEasy]

1 hour ago, Matt Large said:

Whats your advice on positioning then? Best choice of board? How to set them up etc? 

Im trying out the deck “Blood for the Blood God” from the Underworlds site so I’ll have to see how a more aggressive style goes for me. 

I have found the board in the image to be the most reliable choice for the Reavers. Of course your opponent's board pick and warband might be factors, but when in doubt go with this one.

Usually I rely on Garrek, Saek and Karsus to do most of the work, so against Stormcast and Orruks I most often put them in the back and Targor and Arnulf in the front. Because of how the boards are designed, Reavers basically always have to offer up one fighter to be attacked in the first activation (when palying against an aggressive opponent). Targor usually gets the short stick. If you have cards that give you more dice for an attack, Arnulf can sometimes actually be pretty potent in the first round, so I rather Targor dies first.

Great cards to have in your opening hand are Final Blow, Death Throes and/or Last Chance. If you have Final Blow AND Death Throes, then oh boy! Because one triggers during an attack and the other after an attack, if/when Targor bites the dust you can use both cards to deal 2 damage! (yes I'm sure ) Last Chance is also great, it gives a Reaver a 66% chance of surviving a fatal attack. You can also go for other survival ploy cards like Rebound and/or On Your Feet, although at this moment I'm only using Last Chance. For survival related upgrades I have Soultrap, Great Fortitude and Acrobatic.  Btw Last Chance combos nicely with Light Armour.

Generally you want to keep all your guys in a pretty tight formation and always have every fighter within charge range of at least one enemy fighter. Saek is your most important weapon against Stormcast - keep him safe until you are sure you can kill a Stormcast with one attack from him (you want to have support/extra dice/inspired and ideally also a survival card before you use him). Use Karsus, Targor or Arnulf to soften up enemy fighters so Saek or possibly Garrek can go in for the kill. If you get two Stromcast softened up and have Mighty Swing, then Saek is probably going to have a good time. I have Garrek's Grisly Trophy in my deck, so sometimes it can be very rewarding to get Garrek to do the killing instead of Saek.

Against Orruks you need to focus down their heavy hitters first and not inspire Basha or Hakka.

Against Sepulchral Guard or Skaven you can put Garrek, Saek and Karsus in the front line, since they shouldn't get easily one-shotted.

Also just a general observation: not having to think about holding objectives is very freeing when playing with the Reavers.

Hope this helps!
 

Edited February 21, 2018 by NeverEasy

[NeverEasy]

I forgot to mention Insensate. Of course I also have Insensate. It is the single most powerful card in the Reaver arsenal, in my opinion.

[Biboune]

On 21/02/2018 at 12:36 AM, Karakas said:

;Biboune, how are you getting on with your pure offense deck?  In particular have you played Orruks or Stormcast?

Soon there will be a little tournament in paris, I'll tell you how it  will go.

Right now, i played against a turtle stormcast: I lost. Round 1 is wasted and they can score 3 glory points max and you none. In the first game, I killed 2 of them, still lost 4 to 7: strong argument to put Denial in my deck.

A good turtle stormact will have Illusory Fighter  in is deck to counter it, but... this kind of play is a hard counter with an aggressive decks.(I played against the same player with a skaven deck: it was more easy, keep in mind that in competitive play we can have multiple bands and deck according too the rule book).

I think against Orruks the game will be 1/2 win. It is luck dependent but they will have phus and movement upgrade in their deck where you have aggressive cards + you wil have most of the time the first charge.

I agree with NeverEasy almost with points. I like Final Blow and Death Throes but I prefer Last Chance,  Rebound and Illusory Fighter. what is better? Dealing  1 damage when one of your model his killed or having of little chance to save it?

I give your my deck reworked after the today games:

 

 

Ploys :

• Blood Offering
• Fuelled by Fury
• Fuelled by Slaughter
• Trap
• Illusory Fighter
• Curious Inversion
• Ready For Action
• Rebound
• Last Chance
• Insensate

 

 

Upgrades :

• Berserk Charge
• Frenzy
• Awakened Weapon
• Great Strength
• Helpful Whispers
• Light Armour
• Shadeglass Axe
• Shadeglass Sword
• Shadeglass Hammer
• Soultrap

 

 

 

Objectives :

 

• Blood for the Blood God!
• Draw the Gaze of Khorne
• Let the Blood Flow
• It Begins
• Crushing Force
• Precise Use of Force
• Escalation
• Khorne Cares Not
• Superior Tactician
• Conquest
• Denial
• Worthy skull

I drop Mighty swing because it give your opponent more chances to defend: I don't need dicey attacks, I need successful attacks.

The point is to have a lot of card (upgrade and ploy) to save you models (last chance, Insensate etc), lot of stuff +1 attack dice, for the rest + 1 damage, free attacks etc.