Here's a version of the deck that can be built using common and uncommon cards only. It won't be as powerful nor as versatile, but it should perform pretty well and give you a general idea on how the control wizards work. You can then add better items to it as you find them. Biggest difference here is the lack of Trembling Staff, which will lead to more bad draws, especially since you now have the highly annoying Fright, which I guarantee will make you lose a match every now and then. Another bad thing is that without Short Perplexing Ray, you could get owned by Arrogant Armor or Resistant Hide. Sensate's Ring kind of sucks but I had to add it to be able to include Pearwood Staff. Same goes with Glimmer Boots. Good thing with this deck is of course that you now have more Winds Of Wars. 3 x Dwarven Wizards Level 20 Dwarf Wizard Chillwood StaffPearwood StaffRunestoneRunestoneRunestoneSensate's RingRobe Of LightnessGlimmer BootsPerfect ToughnessElectroporter Novice5 x Winds Of War2 x Frost Jolt1 x Dimensional Traveller3 x Mighty Spark1 x Acid Jet1 x Cloth Armor1 x Chilling Rime1 x Spark Generator5 x Squeamish3 x Wall Of Fire2 x Hover1 x Spark Inductor1 x Cold Snap1 x Hardy Mail1 x Rusty Armor1 x Little Zap1 x Improved Telekinesis1 x Fright2 x Toughness1 x Bungled Bolt1 x Run
Funny, that was exactly the build I used for the peasant format. Dont think chillwood is worth it btw, the consistency is just not there compared to staff of winter.
Staff of Winter's a rare, though. What would you use instead? My favorite uncommon staves are Pearwood and Sizzlespark. (And yeah, I mentioned your performance in the Peasant thread.)
2 Pearwood, drop the perfect toughness for a racial with 1 blue. If fright it too frightening, 2 whiterune instead of pearwood.
Yeah, Chillwood Staff is not the most amazing thing in the world but I think it's good to have because it makes the build a bit more versatile. If you have nothing but WoW's, you'll be screwed if the opponent has a way to deal with them. Having some encumber in the mix is great imo, otherwise it's too much of a one trick pony. And other reason I used Chillwood is that I wanted to make the common/uncommon build as close to the original as possible. Without encumber, it would be almost like a different build. I don't know.. I personally couldn't mentally handle drawing Fright at least once every other round And I think Whiterune is kind of weak. One thing I would never ever do is change that racial. Having two Toughness is just way too awesome. But there's no right or wrong choice here and I'm sure your version works just as well.
Might want to start stocking up on Spellbane Scepter, this rotation is crazy favorable to Wizards. No idea how heavily the meta will shift in response, but if double and triple Wizard teams become as common as Double Warrior is now then building to counter them might become necessary.
I've seen a LOT of double warrior still, and it seems competitive—especially in Ice Room and Woodholm. I don't know if it's going out of vogue anytime soon.
Eight out of the last ten high rated games I spectated on had a WC on one side. Double Warrior is still being played, but it looks to be getting trounced. I don't see more than one Warrior being viable this rotation unless you've got an ideal set of Step Attack weapons.
Have you tried Solid Rock? When I was running a version of the build, I found it was really nice not having to deal with the dead draw of Rusty Armor. Plus, having less Toughness makes Winds Of Waring your own team easier, because you don't have to worry about wasting toughness on the 1 damage.
I much prefer Solid Rock on my dwarven wizard. Toughness is easy to play around and pretty overrated imo. If you are comparing the items straight up parry fills a similar roll to the second toughness and Immovable is infinitely better than a rusty armor. Toughness was much better when it was a card no one was expecting, that is no longer the case.
The extra trait card is tempting, but Parry being a situational card offsets it a little. Although another immovable it great to have against Wizards. Hmm, tough choice.
Yeah, those double warriors might just be kind of leftovers from previous maps, and as people start to realize how powerful control wizards are, we'll start seeing less and less warriors. Without tons of Nimble Strikes, I don't think warriors will have much chance. I have not tried it. In fact, I'm not sure I even knew an item like that existed. When I made this build I just took Perfect Toughness and I've never looked back really. Solid Rock looks pretty good. Whether or not it's better, is debatable. If you get to use that Parry to block something, then I can see how it would be better since you draw more cards and don't have Rusty Armor. Although I don't see Rusty Armor as a completely dead card. Sure, it's the worst card in the deck, but it often gets activated and that extra 3 HP helps. Parry on the other hand is 100% dead card if you face another wizard team, which is now very likely. Immovable of course helps against those wizards, but how often do you have that one immovable at that right time, especially when you have tons of other traits to push it out? I'll have to test it sometimes.
agree with Nim, already cycled in 2 of those to my deck.. quite useful. even the illusion wall is nice on some of this new maps
As a general rule I try to avoid these rock-paper-scissors type of cards that are either awesome or useless depending on who you fight. Then again I don't think there are many teams in current meta that use no spells at all. Even melee teams have that priest with at least a couple of spells. And for control wizards, other wizards have always been the biggest threat. So yeah, I could see how Spellbane Scepter could be useful. It would also give some nice variation to the build to make things a bit more interesting.
Vs wiz teams I use 3 wizards and add in: Cobalt's Chalice Brin's Spiked Rod and swap Baubles for Larkin's Orb I also use one Counterblast Staff which is particularly good vs teams that use Resistant Hide over Hover. The sad reality is that at 1600+ you have to look in the lobby and see who you're going to be playing vs, then load the correct deck.
I don't know why you would have to do that. We could just.. not do it. We could all have this unwritten rule against this and other things like sitting in lobby and waiting for the right time to enter battle. Then again someone will always cheat to get an advantage. Of course ultimately it's the developers job to design the game so that exploits like these cannot happen.
It would be easily fixable, X vs X flashes up and you have a 5-10 second counter before each match and actually allow you to choose the deck you want. But to me the real problem is just the lack of people playing. The diluted player pool is what makes matching at higher ranks so dull and it's only a small rank pocket where one could comfortably exercise discretion on who to fight in an exploitable way.
Man I would love a sideboard. One of the best things MtG ever did was accept that the metagame exists and build a mechanic to account for it.