What about some Flash of Agony build? I am trying something similar right now...to be honest Flash of Agony is here only as an innevitable addition but it has some nice synergies with Smoke Bomb. I would be curious about a more focused build.
Yes. In fact I combine it in the build mostly with Volcano. It's a perfect way to neutralise lavas you are standing on... It works also quite well in a curent board rotation. You can use it to cover a difficult terain which is quite common here. And finaly it's quite interesting to combine it with Jump Back. Because jumping back into the smoke can save you even from a long range spells. So maybe the build should be about a Smoke Bomb instead of Flash of Agony. But I would like to find out whether I am missing some even more usefull synergies...
I'm also more interested in Smoke Bomb too. Flash of Agony is ok but it's usually the filler card on power staves like Searing Pain. Using smoke bomb as cover doesn't seem great since the rest of your team presumably won't be doing much. Also, if the Flash of Agony wizard is packing the Smoke Bombs, you won't have good ways of defending it. Having a second wizard dedicated to Smoke Bombs frees up slots for control spells but Smoke Bomb doesn't do much against melee parties and I can easily see the Agony wizard getting overwhelmed. I think the best way to use Flash of Agony is to just use natural cover when you can and blast everything when the damage to both sides is even or in your favor. Maybe throw in an Impenetrable Nimbus priest to break the symmetry. What's important is that the rest of the team be proactive. I will put Smoke Bomb on the schedule though. It's usually just a wizard hoser so it'll be interesting to see if it can be anything else.
Heavy Armor Pros Fantastic damage prevention at 2.5 per attack Can have up to 2 in a deck if you play Leaden Plate Mail Cons Really really bad on dwarves, halves base movement Shuts down Dancing Cut and Nimble Strike, two of the most popular cards to get additional mobility For the same price you can get Reliable Mail with no strings attached. Verdict- Great for builds that can ignore the Encumber 1 like Bejeweled elves. However, like most armors, it isn't worth going out of your way to free up a token for it. Inspiring Armor Pros Affects the two characters presumably closest to the action Card draw that does not cost priority Can sometimes deter attacks if revealed Cons All Inspiring Armor items have an undesirable card effectively nullifying the extra card (with the exception of Thick Banded Mail which costs a major token) Does not play well with self damage cards Verdict- In a vacuum, I think Inspiring Armor is almost up there with Toughness and Defender's Block. Item quality is what kills it. There just isn't anything worth spending a token on. To be fair, a double Inspiring Armor item would probably be Aegis Of The Defender level of annoying to play against.
Smoke Bomb is one of those cards people bust out after losing the umpteenth time to wizards and then promptly lose to some stupid warriors. The problem with Smoke Bomb is that your wizard is essentially dead weight once the first one lands. You are fighting 2 vs 3 on offense and desperately hoping for wizards on the other side. What's the best way to minimize your offensive loses? Just don't give a damn. Spoiler: Smoke 'Em if You've Got 'Em Marroo Level 21 Dwarf Wizard Staff Of Chask Staff Of Chask Smoke Pin Smoke Pin Asmod's Telekinetic Chain Smoke Pin Smoke Robe Pergop's Slippers Solid Rock Electroporter Novice 2 x Violent Spin 1 x Spark Inductor 1 x Parry 2 x Slowed 1 x Toughness 8 x Smoke Bomb 1 x Resistant Hide 1 x Toughened Hide Strips 1 x Stone Spikes 6 x Punishing Bolt 1 x Spark Generator 4 x Pushback Parry 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Immovable 5 x Telekinesis Ulfgav Level 20 Human Priest Sacrificial Axe Sacrificial Axe Cintxotl Mail Aegis Of The Defender Pergop's Slippers Oquith's Choking Incense Ring Of Majestic Healing Jygpin's Healing Ring Advanced Flexibility Focused Medicine 2 x Defender's Block 4 x Team Heal 1 x Barbed Platemail 1 x Slowed 2 x Violent Spin 1 x Weak Chop 4 x Pressing Bash 2 x Strong Hack 1 x Toughened Hide Strips 3 x Healing Spirit 1 x Inspiring Presence 3 x Triple Heals 1 x Reliable Mail 4 x Vulnerable 3 x Cause Fumble 1 x Light Heal 2 x Leadership Gitkhrum Level 20 Dwarf Warrior Reap The Whirlwind Enormous Tree Branch Vinewrapped Cudgel Xander's Mail Aegis Of The Defender Captain Cedric's Helm Pergop's Slippers Ferocity Careful Attacker 5 x Violent Spin 1 x Slicer 1 x Parry 2 x Bludgeon 2 x Simple Strike 2 x Defender's Block 1 x Weak Chop 1 x Disorienting Block 1 x Bruiser 3 x Barge 3 x Strong Hack 1 x Toughened Hide Strips 2 x Controlled Overswing 2 x Reliable Mail 2 x Pushback Parry 3 x Blind Rage 4 x Officer's Harness Every character is centered around capturing a victory point and holding it. Each one has Violent Spins to overtake occupied positions and extra blocks to stay alive. Telekinesis, Barge, and Pressing Bash are there to buy even more time. There are a bunch of undesirables like Slowed or basically all the non-Barge attacks so Leadership is there to clear them away. I will need to keep the priest back under Smoke Bomb cover so the Vulnerables don't wreck me. If all goes to plan, the priest will be untouched and free to heal up whatever attacks my opponents get through. If that doesn't work I will try loading up on more Cause Fumbles and adding Arrogant Armors. This looks to be a really mean grindy build. I'm usually of the school of smacking people till they stop moving so this will be a learning experience at the very least.
I like the idea of hiden priest. For most of his cards he doesn't need a line of sight (Cause Fumble, Team Heal, Inspiring Presence, Leadership). The same could be done with wizard...at least that's how I use him: I use a combination of Volcano + Smoke Bomb + Whirlwind Enemies + team moves. He can be truly anywhere on the board and at the same time use almost all of his cards... I prefer a bit less pasive build so I combine him with two "hard to hit" wariors (Jump back, Violent Spin, Heavy armor, plenty of moves...) Carefull positioning of the wariors together with Whirlwinds, Spins and Jump Backs should force your opponent to use his moves so the wizard can finish him with the Volcano. It works quite well (about 7,5/10 in 1400-1500 ELO). But what's important I feel like every build I meet can be defeated and if I loose it's mostly because of some mistake...
I like also the "control" warrior. 5 Violent Spins!!! Barges! Pusback parry! Especially the Violent Spins...because they are unblocable. Still it would be nice to have some spot where to push your enemies(lava?).
You could also get some Barges on the wizard with a Cottonwood Staff....because no one expects a Barge coming from a wizard. Haha.
If you've got a build in mind I can test it. I find Smoke Bomb wizards either need to sacrifice attacks or risk being weak to melee but having 2 warrior bodyguards might be enough to forgo defensive stuff on the wizard. The problem with Barge on wizards is that it reactivates otherwise dead block melees. Besides, Punishing Bolts are incredibly punishing. I've been able to stock them up and nearly take out characters single handedly for the last few points.
That's very true; I was just thinking of ways to keep opponents away from your wizards (I think about this often), and the Cottonwood is token-less, so that's nice. That being said, an opponent that has perished is farther away than two squares, so I think your methods are likely the better choice in the long run.
This build take a crazy long time to finish matches but it's working out pretty well. So far I've only lost to Sprint, Team! warriors. Wizards obviously have a tough time against me and the massive amounts of melee blocks take care of the rest. I've even gotten some use with Smoke Bomb against warriors, though they were best against the stab variety. I don't know if people were leading off with step attacks more because of the Smoke Bomb but Pushback Parry has been working overtime. I'm noticing that my priest gets targeted first due to Vulnerable. I've been able to keep her alive so far but maybe I need to do something to get rid of the huge "Kick Me" sign. The priest is the character I feel is least prepared for staving off attacks. I don't want to get rid of the Pressing Bashes just yet, they've been amazing. Heals haven't been so hot. Usually, only one character gets focused on so the group heals is wasted. I might try the Arrogant Armor later and removing all the heals like I discussed previously. For now, I am going to switch to Altruism. Drawing half a card seems better than adding 1 point to heals when only one character benefits from it.
The build went 7-3. Lost one to Parry/Cause Fumble deck that blocked all my Barges and Bashes on a single vp map. Other one was to triple warriors that was able to take out one character after the other with help from some poor positioning on my part. Smoke Bomb has not been great against movement heavy melee. I've basically just been using it to clear away difficult terrain against them. So far, Smoke Bomb has really just been about upping the wizard matchup at the cost of having relatively useless cards against melee. I will try one more build with Smoke Bomb that hopefully uses it more proactively. Spoiler: The Real Smoke and Mirrors Marroo Level 21 Dwarf Wizard Mordecai's Staff Of Magma Wym's Lavastaff Chartwell's Ring Sander's Force Mirror Rod Of Winds Chartwell's Ring Firehide Robes Kerrick's Steel Boots Solid Rock Electroporter Novice 2 x Short Perplexing Ray 2 x Flash Of Agony 1 x Parry 1 x Shuffle 1 x Resistant Hide 3 x Force Cone 10 x Firestorm 1 x Immovable 1 x Toughness 6 x Volcano 1 x Spark Generator 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Whirlwind 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Spark Inductor 2 x Whirlwind Enemies Onkuzkul Level 21 Dwarf Wizard Mordecai's Staff Of Magma Wym's Lavastaff Chartwell's Ring Sander's Force Mirror Rod Of Winds Azgul's Orb Firehide Robes Kerrick's Steel Boots Solid Rock Electroporter Novice 1 x Short Perplexing Ray 2 x Flash Of Agony 1 x Parry 1 x Glob Of Flame 1 x Shuffle 1 x Resistant Hide 3 x Force Cone 10 x Firestorm 1 x Immovable 1 x Toughness 6 x Volcano 1 x Spark Generator 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Whirlwind 1 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Spark Inductor 2 x Whirlwind Enemies Angruff Level 21 Dwarf Wizard Trog Melter Trog Melter Smoke Pin Sander's Force Mirror Rod Of Winds Smoke Pin Smoke Robe Kerrick's Steel Boots Solid Rock Focused Teleportation 1 x Immovable 2 x Flash Of Agony 2 x Force Cannon 1 x Shuffle 1 x Resistant Hide 2 x Magma Spray 3 x Dimensional Traveller 3 x Force Cone 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Parry 1 x Toughness 1 x Whirlwind 6 x Melt Armor 2 x Telekinesis 6 x Smoke Bomb 2 x Whirlwind Enemies Damn you past me! Why did you have to name an Illusory Barrier deck Smoke and Mirrors? This one actually has Smoke...and Mirrors. Volcanoes and Firestorms will do most of the heavy lifting. I'm forgoing the usual Cleansing priest for a Smoke Bomb wizard. That means I'll be giving up a little heals and card draw but I'll have more game against wizards. Almost everything doesn't require line of sight. These maps are fairly Force Cone friendly and you only need to pick a direction to blast away. I'm also revisiting Whirlwinds since they're the only other non-targeting control spell. They also generally induce movement which is a perfect setup for hot Volcano action. Armor is going to be a huge problem. I'm using Trog Melter both as a token saver and as unblockable armor removal. I'm a little worried I won't be able to target people with a Smoke Bomb in effect. I'm also concerned I don't have enough defensive stuff. At least these games will go a lot faster.
Almost blind build! Almost no LOS needed. I am looking forwards for the results. For the first sight it seams that your dwarves are almost stationary. The only way to move them arround is to push them with one of the other wizards (Force Cone, Force Cannon, Telekinesis, Whirlwind). But that could be quite difficult under the smoke screen. How do you plan to force your opponent to use his moves? I would like to see whether are all those Force Cones and Whirlwinds enough...
Hi Peon, thanks for the topic, interesting experimentation and fun to read. I would like to share with you my own experiments. I was especially interested in two of the builds you proposed : jump back and smoke bomb. Obviously I don't have as much stuff as more active players do but I managed to tinker something playable. I first played a 2 warriors 1 support priest, warriors with Shield Of The Frog and Bouncing Boots and a priest to cast Unholy Wellspring and Mass Frenzy to compensate for the lack of damage on step attacks. I went 3 wins 5 loses. I don't know if everybody read this post but it really looked like they all knew they should not hit my warriors up front and just look for the side or the priest. I really had trouble making the jump back a good block card. And versus mages it wasnt great because the move back 2 is a real pain when you try to catch them. When I started to want the jump not to trigger, I moved to the next build. So then I wanted to try a smoke bomb build, but really couldnt equip 3 dwarves mages like you do.... so I decided to only make one. So it is one dwarf mage with 6 volcanoes, 6 smoke bombs, and 8 firestorms, that basically never see the light of the day and will soon die suffocated by the smoke of the volcanoes he summons. (I really liked the theme of this caracter, with lava pit, smoke and firestorms, a real telluric showdown) Then there was no point in putting a priest since he would have no loS. So I added two human warriors, a strong bashing one with Arrogant Armors, Focused Thinker, Enormous Mattock, Quinn's Buckler, and Twypp's Energy Boots to run after... well anything really, you cant be faster than these boots with a human... and a support warrior with two team walk, some team, move!, defender blocks... all of this requires no LoS and really helps keeping a good positionning through the fog of war. I went 6-4 so far. I am pretty happy since one of my greatest weakness is not drawing smoke bomb. It is not only a mage supercounter, it also seriously slows all the vampires priests and impaler warriors, since they no longer hit at a greater distance. I generally managed to destroy all mage team. It looks very good too versus general warriors. Howerve since I have no purge and almost no crowd control, deck with heavy support need to be shut down quickly with the energized warrior. Otherwise he can wait in the back to have a full set of frenzy and draw and then engage too violently for my warriors. But you can use the smoke to move all difficult terrain out the way and travel great distance in short time if needed. I realize this wouldn't work in all deck since you also shut down your LoS, but it really is powerfull and there are probably other uses to smoke bombs. Just because it sounds so cool, I would love to see a deck where warriors would jump back in the smoke after hitting their prey. If you have an advice to make this better, all critics are welcome
If your main concern with Jump Back against melee is that opponents know not to attack your warrior from the front I don't think Smoke Bomb would do anything. Smoke Bomb does nothing against melee except for the vamps and stabbers you mentioned but even they can just position themselves next to you with or without Smoke Bomb active. It would help against wizards of course but you would need a ton of step attacks to be able to repeatedly get back into range. That might make melee parties hard to deal with but I will give it a shot.
oh yeah, jump back/smoke bomb is only an idea for a fun or roleplay driven party... I don't see it being actually good.
How's your EttSC item collection looking @peonprop? Do you have enough items to build around Accelerate Time, Laser Whip or Radioactive priest?
Accelerate Time would be the easiest to pull off but I don't have any of the legendaries yet. I'm about halfway to the Radioactive priest (wish I had double dipped Daily Deal yesterday). Laser Whip is a no go. I don't know if it's worth testing though. Zoltan's Laser Scourge is pretty much what I'd do in a nutshell. I could simulate it with stabs and a self imposed range restriction though.
What would you run with a radioactive priest? I can buy my third Irradiator if I want but I am not sure it is worth it. I am trying it out with 2 and using a entangling roots priest and a accel time wiz. Its not doing very well...
