Changer

Here’s my first try with the new cards. Deck is a little large at 24, but I’m hoping I’ll get through them. Any comments? Insensate Fuelled By Fury Curious Inversion Rebound Shattering Terrain Earthquake Duel Of Wits Sidestep Ready For Action Mighty Swing Skulls For The Skull Throne! Momentary Madness Helpful Whispers Shifting Image Grisly Trophy Frenzy Whirlwind Of Death Berserk Charge Awakened Weapon Great Strength Light Armour Soultrap Heroslayer Shadeglass Axe Supremacy Conquest Draw The Gaze Of Khorne It Begins Khorne Cares Not Let The Blood Flow Blood For The Blood God! Escalation Ploymaster Master Of War Superior Tactician Precise Use Of Force

Of course! My main strategy is to try for earthquake in round 1, and push Fjul onto the objective just inside enemy territory that I’ve put down. Against the Orruks on Friday I wasn’t quite happy with the flexibility any of the Fyreslayers gave me whenever inspired. That, plus the ploys I was able to pull allowed Tefk to survive longer than he should have and Maegrim kill off an Orruk. Every little helps etc etc...

So I got three single games in last night. Here was the deck I used. Mighty Swing Treasure-Lust The Earth Shakes Earthquake Ready For Action Sidestep Duel of Wits Piercing Stare Oathsworn Ur-Gold Boon Indomitable Awakened Weapon Great Fortitude Activated Runes Great Strength Grimnir’s Speed Headlong Charge Shadeglass Axe Grimnir’s Fortitude Defiant Strike Light Armour Soultrap Swift Advance Unstoppable Advance Conquest No Remorse Precise Use Of Force Scion Of Grimnir Master Of War Plant A Standard Ploymaster Escalation Superior Tactician Ferocious Charge My first game was against Skaven. He placed the boards connected against the short edge, so I put one objective in his territory, and the other two close to my slayers. His first turn he spent putting ploys on his rats and moving to the back of the board. I took 3 objectives, and scored Plant A Standard as Fjul was on the objective in his territory. I the night gave Fjul Headlong Charge. In the second round I won the roll and opted for him to go first. After which I played Mighty Swing. Fjul was 4 hexes away from Hungering Skaven and Krrk. Fjul charged in and killed Krrk (double dodge means nothing when you roll double crit to hit!!), and immediately scored Ferocious Charge. I then pulled No Remorse before swinging against Hungering Skaven; then scored it when I also killed him. 4 glory in 1 big swing!! He managed to kill Tefk, and then ran away and brought back a rat. The game ended 13-4. My second game was against Orruks. He was very new to the game, and made a lot of tactical errors. He fell back and went on guard instead of attacking (which I advised he should), and an Inspired Fjul killed both Basher and Bonecutter with a Mighty Swing. I annihilated him when Tefk (with Great Strength) struck Gurzag back with Defiant Strike to take the last two wounds off. The rest of the game consisted in me fishing for my objectives, and I won 14-1. My final opponent was Orruks again. I made a tactical mistake here by not pushing Gurzag back after hitting him with Fjul, and he punished me by hitting and then playing Having A Good Time to kill Fjul in giant first activation. I finished the first round by playing Earthquake to move both Tefk and Maegrim onto objectives. Tefk with killed in round 2, but a lot later than my opponent wanted as I used Piercing Stare on an inspired Bonecutter with Awakened Weapon, and then Indomitable a few activations later to ensure he survived again. I finished round 2 with a Sidestep + Charge to get Vol inspired. In the final round, Vol failed to kill Bonecutter, even with Oathsworn, but then Bonecutter also failed to kill Vol back. I used Treasure Lust to get Maegrim in charge range, and he finished off Hakka with 2 rerolls (gets one for being inspired + Awakened Weapon). My was worried I’d have Ready For Action for Vol so used Distraction to push me away. I then pulled a power card and got Ready For Action! I equipped Vol with the Shadeglass Axe, which suprised my opponent as he threw it in Bonecutters direction! Unfortunately it missed, but it was as worth it just to see my opponents face when it happened. By this point I’d gone through all my objectives, and had Conquest, Swift Advance, and Unstoppable Advance in my hand, which allowed me to win the game 10-4. So, 3 wins with decent glory for the Fyreslayers. As you can see, the deck really has a single plan; get into the opponents territory. I think it works. I’m interested to play this deck against different warbands, and I’m actually pretty happy with how it should play. I think the issues I’ve had during the week against my regular opponent come down to him exclusively playing Orruks since they we’re released: he knows the deck inside out, and it’s going to be a struggle to consistently win against him. One thing that definitely helped last night wasn’t the fact I managed to get every surviving member of the warband Inspired. The extra movement and damage they can do when inspired helps tip the balance.

So my lunchtime game finished in a 7-7 draw. I would have finished 10-7 up but my opponent played a last minute distraction to push Tefk into no mans land. Turned out I was one power card away from a sidestep, which is a shame. Anyway, lets see what happens tonight. I felt a little better about my new deck today, but I think that's more the fact I was able to draw ploys rather than just upgrades for my first hand. I'll report back with my deck and the results after the casual event tonight - I know I'll be up against more than just Orruks, which will make a nice change.

I've changed my deck about a little again for today. I've got another game against my regular Orruk opponent at lunchtime, and then a casual event this evening. If I'm still not feeling the Fyreslayers by the end of the day, they'll be relegated to the cabinet and I'll play another warband instead.

How is everyone doing with their Fyreslayers? I'm two games in (a 5-5 tie, and an 8-1 loss, both against a punchy Orruk warband) and I'm just not 'feeling' the fyreslayers in the same way I've felt the other warbands. It's a real shame, as they're newly painted, but I really don't see how to proceed with them. It doesn't help that in both games I never really seemed to pull any ploys; but either way I'm not sure how to play with them. Fyreslayers are slow - if you stack your deck with ploys that help with movement you miss out on other things, such as stacking rerolls etc... I don't feel you can play for objectives either, as they're just too slow to get any objectives that might be sitting on the other side of the board. They'll get kited by Skaven and Khorne (not that Khorne want to run away of course!), and just don't have the staying power of a heavy hitting warband. I'm not one to shirk from a challenge, but I do feel a bit lost with the Fyreslayers.

It's my one criticism of the Fyreslayers - they've all got toes sculpted to the base. I really don't understand the reasoning either.

Finished Tefk last night. With him done, the warband is complete!

How did your games go last weekend?

I believe the main reason for not doing organised play events in GW stores in mainly due to the lack of continuous spending Shadespire generates. Even now, once you've bought the main set and all four expanion warbands you're still only looking at £110. Ok, you can buy some dice and card sleeves etc, but that's still not an awful lot of money, and with the speed warbands are being released you're not likely to bring in the repeat custom GW thrive on. Instead if a GW store focuses on AoS or 40k, their customers are (generally) continuously buying more and more products to expand their armies, start new forces etc... This type of revenue just isn't brought in by Shadespire.

I was in two mind so how to do it too. Opted for lava in the end just for a bit of colour. I’ve been told my bases may be a little dark on the fyreslayers, so I might add a brighter drybrush once they’re all done. I finished Mad Maegrim tonight. Just Tefk to do tomorrow.

It’s Retributer Armour, washed with reikland, then retributer again, liberator as a area highlight and stormhost silver edged. I then went back and pin washed some recesses with the purple GW wash. Finished Vol Orrukbane this afternoon, so halfway there.

Not a full warband, but I finished Fjul last night.

Apparently we’ve bought more shadespire in the UK than in the US, but GW are doing more events etc in the US and not over here. It’s a shame really. Shadespire is set to be mail order only from GW and GW managers have been told not to run shadespire events in store and to leave it to other places to do the organised play etc. It’s just funny that it took them ages to get the organised play stuff to stores, as locally we seem to have lost loads of competitive players as they’ve had nothing to win over the past few months.

It's difficult to say without playing a game I suppose. I've just never liked the idea of sitting on objectives all game - if you win the first roll you're only placing 2 objectives, and a canny player will make it extremely unlikely you'll be getting anywhere near the other three. I've got a number of objectives that reward me for getting the entire warband in the opponents territory; which even with a bad draw of ploys I should be able to do by the third turn. If someone wants to sit at the back of the board then I'll do this by turn 2, and if they come forward for a scrap I should be able to hold my own and score from kills and the other objectives. It's not going to be perfect, but we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

So I got my boxes last night, and immediately put the Fyreslayers together. If I'm being perfectly honest, I'm a little disappointed that each one of them has toes sculpted to the base. I normally like the paint the model separate from the base, but now I've had to attach them in order to greenstuff the tiny gap (I don't like any gaps, especially on flesh!). Still, I'm looking forward to painting them. I wanted my Fyreslayers to not be tied to objectives - yes, I want to try to sit on an objective to get inspired, but by not tying my deck to objectives, it's not a massive issue if someone plays Earthquake on me. With that in mind, my objectives are all about upgrades, punching people, and slowly but surely ending up in my opponents half. Escalation Master of War The Bigger They Are Precise Use of Force Ploymaster Unstoppable Advance Scion of Grimnir No Remorse Ferocious Charge Swift Advance Brawl Conquest I then laid out all of the ploys I wanted - which came to 25!!!! There are so many good ploys available nowadays. Anyway, I've managed to whittle my list down to a 24 card deck. Defiant Strike Grimnir's Speed Grimnir's Blessing Grimnir's Fortitude Great Strength Shadeglass Axe Soultrap Awakened Weapon Activated Runes Great Fortitude Helpful Whispers Great Swing Duel of Wits Mighty Swing Healing Potion The Earth Shakes Ur-gold Boon Living Wall Indomitable Oathsworn Ready for Action Piercing Stare Distration Sidestep As you can see, I'm focused on movement and damage prevention. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to try this out until next Wednesday; but I'll report back once I've had a game.

Do you think that they'll be able to create a deck that doesn't consist of holding the objectives? I know they'll need to sit on them at least one turn in order to be inspired, but if you don't hold that card in your hand it'd be wasted anyway. I'm going to take a look through the card library to see if I can come up with a 'punchy' deck.

Don't forget you'd be able to use Curious Inversion in your action phase before your opponents turn - it's (IMO) a better version of Blood Rain, but that can be used by all.

All of these were shown of on the stream last night. Some very interesting stuff here.

Some images (not mine) from the new White Dwarf. Releases on the 17th Feb. Skaven inspire when a ploy is played on them. Fyreslayers inspire when they hold an objective at the end of the turn. Looks like the key axe is only range 1 though, which is a shame.

Not sure how this one could be misinterpreted to be honest. You choose to make this attack action. If it fails and the target was a leader, then you can make the attack again. I’m pretty sure there can only be one reaction per event. Plus the enemy gets the choice to react first. If you attacked steelheart and he had fatal reposte for example, he could react with the hat, thus preventing the reaction on this card from even occurring.

It’s an upgrade that grants a reaction after an attack that has failed against steelheart.

That’s how we played it on Friday. Steelheart killing the opponent before he swings against his allies was also cinematic.

Here’s one that popped up last night. An attack action that targets each enemy within 1 hits steelheart first. This attack fails and steelheart performs the fatal reposte reaction, killing the attacker. Does this reaction (and death of the attacker) prevent the attacker from finishing his combat and hitting the rest of the opponents within 1 hex?