Let's Chat: Ylthari's Guardians

[riddlesworth]

First thought is the low glory count of the deck. Some more 2 glory end phase cards or more score immediately cards with combination strike and victory after victory would bump it up.

 

Tome of glories will at best score you 3 glory, but ahnslaine is a really good way to score change of tactics and shes the most fragile member of the warband until inspiration, which diesnt gain her much.

 

Challenge seeker and glory seeker have a lot of value. Worth trying them out.

 

On my side, I'm still on the bubble for keep them guessing. It irritates me how often I pull it in round 3 and it's a nightmare to score. I love fuelled by fury but its attack dice specific so ylthari cant use it on her attack spell, think maybe determined effort or haymarket might be better choices. Potion of constitution is also a bubble but mainly because I haven't played the big hitters of magore, cursebreakers, mollog etc. Tome of offerings and duellists speed are on my list to try.

[GDNerd]

Another funny option is Blessing of Hydragos. On Gallanghann w/ a successful attack you can end up 5 hexes away from your target - 2 range, 1 push them 2 push you which for a lot of "standard" warbands means they can't retaliate.

[Skellisquad]

On 6/10/2019 at 1:02 PM, riddlesworth said:

@Skellisquad interested to hear what you think your errors were.

 

Primarily my deck is best when I'm playing to minimise the glory I allow my opponent to score. I let my self be tempted away from this in a couple of crucial games which allowed them to get rolling. 

In the final match my mistake was not rolling enough successes!

[belly318]

Seconded the low glory total. You mentioned you can get screwed with bad draws, which is exactly what you need to avoid with only 14 glory. I thought I was at the minimum amount of glory with 16, so I definitely think you should push it out a bit. Trading building momentum for Victory after Victory or Combination Strike would be a good start. 

I'd trade Shining example for Escalation too. With a few score immediately cards you can still claim this in round 1, and will almost always claim it in round 2. 

Sphere of Aqshy should be in there instead of Pangs due to being easier to cast, but I tend to run both.

I like your approach to resiliency. Gallaghan with Warding stance and Cursed Artifact is hilarious. I'm definitely going to try running both in my deck soon.

Why no Sorcerous Scouring? I'd swap out Domain Denied for it.

[GDNerd]

Here's what I've come to with some tinkering, unfortunately Cursed Artifact didn't make the cut:

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,N269,N302,N557,330,333,N290,N274,N266,N365,N388,N529,L24,N265,348,420,424,N499,327,349,N309,N276,N550,N485,N503,N371,N451,N268,376,343,N340,N305,N368

Still low on the glory count in my objectives but I'm not sure how problematic that was - the only games I've lost has been either a) not prepared to handle Mollog tabling me or b) having such a bad objective draw that I score 0-1 glory round 1. Do I really need to bump glory in my objectives to 16+?

[riddlesworth]

On 6/14/2019 at 5:42 PM, GDNerd said:

Still low on the glory count in my objectives but I'm not sure how problematic that was - the only games I've lost has been either a) not prepared to handle Mollog tabling me or b) having such a bad objective draw that I score 0-1 glory round 1. Do I really need to bump glory in my objectives to 16+?

If you're consistently winning? No. The advice from strangers on the net isn't always the best thing

[WathLab]

On 6/14/2019 at 6:42 PM, GDNerd said:

Do I really need to bump glory in my objectives to 16+? 

I'd say that it mainly depends on your meta / your playstyle.

Playing as Chosen Axes since their release with only 13 or 14  glory in my objective deck 90% of the time, I've won most of my games (maybe around 70%-75%)...

It's because I favor reliability over risk*. Low glory objectives are often much easier to score.

 

* As I think it's already risky enough to play Chosen Axes...

Edited June 17, 2019 by WathLab

[riddlesworth]

28 minutes ago, WathLab said:

I'd say that it mainly depends on your meta / your playstyle.

Playing as Chosen Axes since their release with only 13 or 14  glory in my objective deck 90% of the time, I've won most of my games (maybe around 70%-75%)...

It's because I favor reliability over risk*. Low glory objectives are often much easier to score.

 

* As I think it's already risky enough to play Chosen Axes...

Things like formless key, time of offerings, heroes mantle in the upgrade deck help with that too.

 

I live in fear of fjul with time of offerings

[GDNerd]

From my experience so far, the objective deck only really matters for the outcome of the game if you're even or up on board. The two approaches I've been successful with are:

1) Score immediate spam where you plan on fighting the whole time and incidentally picking up objectives as you go. You want early glory fast so you can put upgrades and maintain board advantage and try and choke out your opponent.

2) Objective holding haymaker where you take every Tactical Genius, every Tactical Supremacy, Our Only Way Out, and Supremacy. Goal is to get 5+ glory by the end of first round and coast off of that early glory advantage to fight and force your opponent to cede more 2-3 glory objectives to you.

Both of these fall apart if your opponent out-fights you. Style 1 is less prone to losing its ability to score objectives (Briar Queen / Goblins / Etc tends to have a hard time scoring style 2 once it's down to 4 or less fighters) but its low glory deck and its diminishing ability to fight chokes it out nonetheless. It really depends on the warband of course but I really seem to gravitate to style 1 - early glory means early upgrades which hopefully means maintaining momentum and keeping the upper hand. I expect to score most if not all my deck if I'm not losing the board and ideally my success is leading to my opponent's failure.

Is this a correct view of objectives or are there other strategies to employ when building an objective deck?

[riddlesworth]

Defensive (or control), aggro, objective are the 3 defined styles of play. It was intended to be a rock-paper-scissors type deal. Aggro beats objective. Objective beats defensive. Defensive beats aggro.

 

What happened in season 1 (shadespire) is objective play died. The meta was either hyper defensive or aggro (mostly aggro). The bar list and subsequent Nightvault release helped objective play a ton but right now it's still relatively tough to play, especially with tome of offerings knocking around.

 

What you'll find in most top decks is some element of flex play. I.e. in order to combat defensive, aggro players will have some passive/defensive/objective scores to get upgraded on the way into engagement or objective players will have an aggro element should their main plan go awry. In your Briar Queen example, they will have decent aggro elements. And goblins......score a lot of glory.

 

The way you're describing your play is straight up aggro, but you have some control and objective scoring (shining example, keep them guessing, reclaim the lamentiri).

 

If I were you, I'd swap Solid Gains for Victory after Victory. Your deck is built to score it and that takes you to 16 glory. You have Tome of Offerings to make up any other glory gap.

 

In your power deck, I question My Turn purely because of how squishy everyone but Gallaghann is. Trap or Pit Trap might get you more mileage given your objectives  I prefer Improvisation over Duel of Wits in every deck except guardians because of Lithe Spirits. If you could only take 1 of Last Chance or Rebound I'd take Last Chance because it works more often. And I'd find a place for Great Strength in the upgrades because Guardians damage output on cards is low. You're missing some kind of mollog/magore/stormsire tech but if you can live without it, more power to you.

 

As I said, if you're winning, dont take the advice of folks on the internet.

[riddlesworth]

So...power unbound...

Auto includes:

Overpower (because that's yltharis usual inspire method)

Sorcerous flourish (unrestricted trap for spells...)

Spirit bond (accuracy and defence boost for gallaghann. Or defence boost for ylthari while gallaghann is on the board)

 

High potential:

Strange demise (its sorcerous scouring)

Warning shot (ahnslaine and ylthari have range 3 attacks)

Spike (because we have chip damage and there's plenty of 4 wound folks around)

Blazing soul (again, only if you plan on inspiring people other than ylthari)

Eldritch ward (because ylthari dying is bad)

Spectral armour (because 4 defence dice ylthari or having gallaghann, ahnslaine and ylthari at 3 dice)

Spirit bond (accuracy and defence boost for gallaghann. Or defence boost for ylthari while gallaghann is on the board)

Edited June 25, 2019 by riddlesworth

[GDNerd]

Ylthari's is probably the biggest winner from Unbound outside of Cursebreakers. Only real competition is Thundrik's. Really excited to give it a spin this weekend.

[WathLab]

Really excited too ! I guess we Chosen Axes players  will have to struggle a bit more. What we can expect is tremendous progress in skills, cunning and morale !

[riddlesworth]

2 hours ago, GDNerd said:

Ylthari's is probably the biggest winner from Unbound outside of Cursebreakers. Only real competition is Thundrik's. Really excited to give it a spin this weekend.

Agreed. I added overpower, sorcerous flourish, spectral armour and spirit bond to my deck. I'm now at 22 cards and would dearly love to cut but I need to test first.

2 hours ago, WathLab said:

Really excited too ! I guess we Chosen Axes players  will have to struggle a bit more. What we can expect is tremendous progress in skills, cunning and morale !

I mean, theres the spirit of war thing to make fjul a sexy shoeless God of war? And at least 1 good push card. And inspired attack......I dont got much else.

[WathLab]

26 minutes ago, riddlesworth said:

I mean, theres the spirit of war thing to make fjul a sexy shoeless God of war? And at least 1 good push card. And inspired attack....

(Sorry for this interruption ! Fore sure I need to test this one ! And Blazing Soul of course. Inspired Attack is nice but I want to be inspired first... and 50% the time I don't need the +1 damage, so I guess it's a bit slow for me... Happy times anyway !)

[riddlesworth]

8 minutes ago, WathLab said:

(Sorry for this interruption ! Fore sure I need to test this one ! And Blazing Soul of course. Inspired Attack is nice but I want to be inspired first... and 50% the time I don't need the +1 damage, so I guess it's a bit slow for me... Happy times anyway !)

I was a season 1 dwarf fanboy. I hear ya!

 

In a more topic related post; as I said earlier, I'm now at 22 cards. Before power unbound I was running 20 with duel of wits and the deck was very consistent. I dont want to lose that so....what do I cut? 

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,N265,N266,N268,N269,348,N389,N451,330,291,257,243,N309,N271,N371,N276,336,235,331,272,N557,N529,N482,374,N290,N506,N503,N485,320,N521,P31,P46,P56,P57,N277

[GDNerd]

On 6/25/2019 at 1:01 PM, riddlesworth said:

I was a season 1 dwarf fanboy. I hear ya!

 

In a more topic related post; as I said earlier, I'm now at 22 cards. Before power unbound I was running 20 with duel of wits and the deck was very consistent. I dont want to lose that so....what do I cut? 

https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,N265,N266,N268,N269,348,N389,N451,330,291,257,243,N309,N271,N371,N276,336,235,331,272,N557,N529,N482,374,N290,N506,N503,N485,320,N521,P31,P46,P56,P57,N277

I'd say Curse and Blessing. Blessing is basically only important for curse as you'll reliably cast all your other spells once you put on Well of Power. And without Blessing, Curse is probably too hard to reliably cast.

[riddlesworth]

13 minutes ago, GDNerd said:

I'd say Curse and Blessing. Blessing is basically only important for curse as you'll reliably cast all your other spells once you put on Well of Power. And without Blessing, Curse is probably too hard to reliably cast.

These are both true. And I'd make the cut if Curse hadn't single handedly won me games against mollog and magores who are the two warbands that scare me most right now, but if those are the best 2 cuts to make, then I guess I have to

[GDNerd]

3 minutes ago, riddlesworth said:

These are both true. And I'd make the cut if Curse hadn't single handedly won me games against mollog and magores who are the two warbands that scare me most right now, but if those are the best 2 cuts to make, then I guess I have to

I also don't love Revenant Rage, maybe cut Nullstone Spear alongside it if you want to keep the Curse package?

[riddlesworth]

I'm not the biggest fan of revenant rage and if I had to cut a ploy, it would be that. 

 

I could just cut blessing and hold curse for when i have well of power. Or take the 50/50 chance with it. Building redundancy in upgrades has been my downfall before

Edited June 27, 2019 by riddlesworth

[GDNerd]

It's worse than a 50-50, its 25% without well of power. It's 50-50 with well power. Blessing is huge for reliably getting Curse off.

 

Edit: ignore this I was having a braindead moment and forgot the odds on spell dice. It's 44% on 2 dice, and ~74% on 3

Edited June 27, 2019 by GDNerd

[riddlesworth]

Yeah on 3 dice it's worth the risk. Blessing just makes it nailed on.

On nullstone spear - I took it after I saw it in the grand clash deck. Its turned ahnslaine from my danglebro into someone really reliable. With a second copy of acrobatic in the deck, inspiring ahnslaine now comes ahead of skathathael most games as all my other dudesmen can get 3 dice defence

[BetterOffGwen]

Hello, I'm a new player and got the models because I love the aesthetic for my Sylvaneth army (going to make Ylthari a count as Branchwraith) but I quickly fell in love with WU as well. My only problem is that every optimized deck has cards from near 14 sets in them.

Right now I only have Ylthari and the Nightvault box set. Is there a way to build a strong deck by adding just one or two more sets to the ones I own?

[GDNerd]

5 hours ago, BetterOffGwen said:

Hello, I'm a new player and got the models because I love the aesthetic for my Sylvaneth army (going to make Ylthari a count as Branchwraith) but I quickly fell in love with WU as well. My only problem is that every optimized deck has cards from near 14 sets in them.

Right now I only have Ylthari and the Nightvault box set. Is there a way to build a strong deck by adding just one or two more sets to the ones I own?

Thats a tricky question. In my experience they intentionally design their releases so there's a few cards for every deck in each box. I'd just build the best pile you can, then whenever you pick up a new team look for upgrades.

[riddlesworth]

8 hours ago, BetterOffGwen said:

Hello, I'm a new player and got the models because I love the aesthetic for my Sylvaneth army (going to make Ylthari a count as Branchwraith) but I quickly fell in love with WU as well. My only problem is that every optimized deck has cards from near 14 sets in them.

Right now I only have Ylthari and the Nightvault box set. Is there a way to build a strong deck by adding just one or two more sets to the ones I own?

The faction objectives and ploys are fairly strong. Lithe slirits, song of hatred, reclaim the lamentiri, strike swiftly form the basis of your objectives. You could then go with supremacy and denial and play a more defensive game.