3 x Dwarven Wizard Level 20 Dwarf Wizard Pearwood Staff Counterblast Staff Runestone Runestone Runestone Armorbane Pendant Robe Of Lightness Glimmer Boots Perfect Toughness Electroporter Novice 1 x Combustible 1 x Mighty Spark 1 x Jarring Block 1 x Surging Blast 2 x Toughness 3 x Wall Of Fire 5 x Winds Of War 1 x Spark Generator 1 x Rusty Armor 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Run 2 x Hover 1 x Fright 1 x Cloth Armor 1 x Spark Inductor 1 x Acid Jet 1 x Frost Jolt 1 x Memory Loss 1 x Hardy Mail 1 x Dissolve Armor 2 x Sorcerous Blast 2 x Counterspell 4 x Squeamish This is the Peasant deck I used in the tournament. To those who don't know, Peasant decks are decks that uses common and uncommon items only. The deck performed relatively well. My final score was 3-1, one win being a forfeit. My loss was against TheShadowTitan, and I most likely would have won that one also, if I hadn't run out of time and started doing silly moves at the end of game 2. The idea was to take regular control wizards and make a Peasant version of them. This meant some big changes, but the basic idea of trait cycling is still there. Fright is the biggest disadvantage of this build because it often gets drawn at the worst possible time. WoW is hands down the most important card in the deck. I took Pearwood Staff because of its power and versatility. My second staff was Counterblast Staff because I was expecting a lot of wizards. Armorbane Pendant was an ok replacement for Short Perplexing Ray. My sideboard was designed like this: Opponent has a wizard team -> replace Pearwood Staff with Counterblast Staff (and switch to Pixie Hide Cloak if the opponent uses a lot of direct damage or fire) Opponent has a melee team -> replace Pearwood Staff with Chillwood Staff, and one Perfect Toughness with Solid Rock. Those were only guidelines of course. For example my first game against TheShadowTitan went so well that I decided not to make any changes. I also ended up not using Pixie Hide Clocks in any match. Sideboard Chillwood Staff Chillwood Staff Chillwood Staff Counterblast Staff Counterblast Staff Counterblast Staff Pixie Hide Cloak Pixie Hide Cloak Pixie Hide Cloak Solid Rock That's about it. I'm hoping others will post their decks/sideboards as well, along with some reasoning behind their character and item choices.
Could you explain how the Solid Rock is better against melee than Perfect Toughness? I would have assumed that against melee Toughness + Toughness + Rusty Armor (Perfect Toughness) would be better than Toughness + Parry + Immovable (Solid Rock). My reasoning would be than Toughness is always better than Parry, and that Rusty Armor would be better against melee than Immovable. What am I missing? Thanks ------ Late Edit: Oh, it's about the tokens, isn't it. Duh.
They both cost a major token. Perfect Toughness vs. Solid Rock has been discussed a lot. Both are great, but one is usually slightly better than the other depending on your draw and your opponent. There are many factors to take into consideration. Short version would probably be something like if you know for a fact you will be facing a wizard team, Perfect Toughness is better. But if you fight melee team, Solid Rock is usually better. Yes, Toughness is better, although Parry is not far behind if you fight melee. But the reason Immovable is better is that you get to draw a new card to replace it. This build is based on cycling traits and getting good cards like WoW again and again because you go through your deck faster than if you had no traits. So even if Immovable was a completely useless trait in your situation, the card that replaces it might be WoW. With Rusty Armor you are stuck with that card.
There's a concept in baseball called "Replacement Level". In effect, a "Replacement Level" player is one that is freely available to major league teams -- a "AAAA" player, too good for the minors but not good enough to have any actual value to a major league team or contribute wins. So what you're saying above is that functionally, Rusty Armor is below Replacement Level -- you're actually better off having no card rather than Rusty Armor, at least given the value of your other cards. I wonder if Rusty Armor is always below Replacement Level, or is that a function of the power of the rest of your cards. I'd think that there are some cards that are always below replacement level, even on the worst decks. They key to creating a good deck is ferreting them out. Good tip. Thanks. ---- Of course, in my Firestorm decks having the Rusty Armor suck up 3 damage isn't the worst thing in the world either...
Good post SLG, nice to see your reasoning. Avarice, I talk at greater length about how terrible Rusty Armor is and why Solid Rock is probably better than Perfect Toughness (depending on context obviously) in my thread about dwarven racials.
I don't agree with the "Perfect Toughness sucks" comment in that topic. I've had multiple 20-30 win win-streaks with Perfect Toughness and those two Toughness cards have been the sole reason for my win in many matches. I've even won a couple of matches because of Rusty Armor, believe it or not. Parry is great when it works. The problem is that it's very easy to bypass. I've died many times with Parry in hand when a step-warrior stabs me in the back, or when I get zapped by lightning. This never happens with Toughness. Toughness is also great when you use the regular version of control wizards with Volcano. My point is that it's not a simple case of one "sucking" and the other one being "awesome". There are many different factors to take into consideration, and the best way to truly determine which works better is to test it. I've played 100+ matches with both items and I can safely say that there is very little difference in their effectiveness.
I was talking about what you said in that topic you linked. For example: Doesn't leave much room for interpretation. And yes, it definitely depends on context, and context on this topic is control wizards, so it makes sense to discuss here what works well with control wizards. And Perfect Toughness is a good choice imo. I tried to understand the "Replacement Level" thing but my brain almost exploded But if I understood correctly, then yes Rusty Armor is below replacement level.
Well of course, that topic is its own discussion, kind of weird to reply to things from it here. The point of that topic was to spark debate.
The point is that Avarice was asking about Solid Rock vs. Perfect Toughness when using control wizards. I felt that your link gives false information because you talk about how "Perfect Toughness sucks", which I completely disagree with. I have used that item a lot, and it works very well. And because I felt that the link gives false information, I wanted to clarify why I think Perfect Toughness is a valid choice.
More accurately, I was asking about the relative utility of those two items for a Firestorm-heavy all wizard deck -- the extent of the "control" is a few tk's. As it is now, I'm leaning towards the Toughness, just because I tend to torch myself so often in the process. It's basically a guaranteed damage negation & draw when I average ~3-4 Firestorms per turn. I'll see if I can find a non-mathy, concise definition of "replacement level". I think the concept has applications that may apply well to CH.
Heh, it's a treatise. Meant as food for thought not to be definitive. Sorry if it came across as "everyone else is wrong," but it was just supposed to be my (context-dependent) opinion, and the start of a discussion.
If it's Firestorm deck you play, then I think you should definitely use Perfect Toughness because of the reasons you mentioned here. Even Rusty Armor should help a lot in a deck like that.
