This multiplayer build is an evolution of Scared Little Girl's Dwarven Control Wizards (DCW, 3DC). It adds the current meta-dominating Whirlwind Enemies and Whirlwind into the mix. It does not use any cold encumbrance but instead seeks to do more direct damage, be more mobile and block and parry melee hits. It's the answer to Nimble Striking warriors, traditional trait-cycling control wizards and Firestormers. It does not maximise trait cycling but instead the amount of playable, flexible cards. It recognises that you will be Whirlwinded around and that the Nimble Striking warriors will close in on you. It's not frightened by them but instead packs the tools to deal with them and outrun them. The playstyle is separate them, waste their movement, nullify their melee hits, strip their cards, kill them, control the Victory Points. The build can be very frustrating to play against. I did not invent it but have observed it in the wild and played against it. I think it deserves to be entered into the permanent record of Card Hunter deck evolution. It is perhaps not the most reliable build around but in skilled hands it is very good indeed. BRASS DISSECTION 3 x Corno Level 18 Dwarf Wizard Ironwood Staff Of The Magus Trembling Staff Armorbane Pendant Greenstone Pendant Runestone Farzil's Perplexing Horn Tempest Robes Rhood's Boots Solid Rock Electroporter Novice 1 x Dissolve Armor 1 x Mighty Spark 1 x Rushing Aura 1 x Squeamish 1 x Obliterating Spark 1 x Penetrating Bolt 1 x Memory Loss 1 x Whirlwind 1 x Desperate Block 2 x Winds Of War 1 x Spark Inductor 1 x Spark Generator 1 x Toughness 2 x Vulnerable 1 x Surging Bolt 2 x Parry 1 x Resistant Hide 2 x Short Perplexing Ray 1 x Perplexing Ray 1 x Immovable 1 x Team Run 2 x Whirlwind Enemies 1 x Dimensional Traveller 2 x Combustible 1 x Wall Of Fire 2 x Flame Jet 1 x Nimble Strike 1 x Big Zap 1 x Wild Run Upgrades: Farzil's Perplexing Horn -> Bewlin's Baffling Bauble Rhood's Boots -> Captain Cedric's Boots Downgrades: Farzil's Perplexing Horn -> Axander's Twisted Circlet Rhood's Boots -> Salazar's Sandals
Please explain me how this deck is going to play against a good Firestorm deck. All you have versus Firestorm is one Resistant Hide and one Toughness, accompanied by two Vulnerable and two Combustible. Opponent is going to have a good healer, you have none. Yes, you will draw your Hide for one of your mages (on average), but the rest two will be quickly incinerated, and one mage isn't going to win. I really dislike playing the Control Mages without frost. You don't have enough damage to kill opponent's warriors in time, you don't have enough Perplexion Rays to empty their hands reliably. You do have some blocks versus melee, but they aren't going to save you when the enemy warrior would use Hard To Pin Down to move at your back in response to your attack. You've tried to have a decent damage output, but this deck doesn't provide it. Every mage has just two powerful sparks, the rest are weaker. Even a frost mage can have more damage with Frost Jolts + Arcane Aura. But the most dangerous card to this build is Whirlwind Enemies, especially after Cone Of Cold. As soon as your mages lose the ability to support each other, they are going to be killed.
Firestorm is handled like any other build. Control where they are, strip their cards. They aren't going to kill you when they have no attacks and no healing due to no cards, no range or no line of sight. It's not foolproof but it works a lot of the time. The whole deck constitutes the defense against Firestorm and other builds. The synergy between all the different cards and their combined quantity on the three Wizards provides the surprisingly high offensive and defensive capability of the build. The good level of mobility is also essential and gives a lot of flexibility. This build provides useful options almost all of the time to all of the wizards. Any given turn of each round you can do stuff which furthers your aims and hinders the opponent. It's a common sight with Brass Dissection that the opponent has no cards left for the round and two of your wizards still have three or four.
Firestorm doesn't need a line of sight, you know, and your location doesn't matter. Most of your Perplexing Rays have very short range while Brin's Storm Locket and Sabo's Mirror have Forgetfulness. A good Firestorm mage will cast Firestorm almost every turn. You are very unlikely to win against them.
I think part of what makes 3 dwarf control so powerful is that it recognizes the battles it's going to lose, and doesn't try to compensate for them. Instead, it is just overwhelmingly powerful against everything else. Trying to make a version to cover every scenario is going to make it much less effective in it's intended fights. I don't know whether that's a net increase or decrease in overall effectiveness, but my gut says the original version is still the way to go. Edit: On a side note, this build doesn't seem to have a lot of damage output. Can you reliably kill characters with it? You only have 9 big damage cards across 3 guys (3 Obliterating Spark, 3 Mighty Spark, and 3 Wall Of Fire). I guess the Nimble Strikes might help out sometimes too, but it seems like you'd have a lot of trouble killing characters.
Like I tried to convey in the opening post, this is not my build. I've observed many matches played with it and there were bodies. Brass Dissection whittles them down eventually. They die by a thousand cuts, unable to do much if things go right for the Dissector. Also, killing is not a mandatory part of winning a match. Sure, it helps a lot but you can also just dominate the Victory Points. Brass Dissection achieves that often. Ector, the line of sight was in reference to healing, some of which needs it -- as does Impenetrable Nimbus, which is one of the possible components of a Firestorm deck. Fighting against Firestormers is always a balancing act and a race. The engine can be disrupted many ways. It doesn't always work, same as Divide & Conquer and 3DC don't always work against Firestorm. All builds lose to one another part of the time. I have no statistics of Brass Dissection vs. Firestorm so I can't say much more either way. You can consider your concerns recognised as far as I'm concerned. Brass Dissection has seemed effective enough from what I've observed. Also, Firestorm is relatively rare at high ratings from what I've seen. I regularly see Brass Dissection played with a high win rate at > 1,600 rating.
