I love playing Elves, I love dashing about at breakneck speeds, and I love vampire priests. This build is just about everything that I want out of cardhunters, and I decided to post it here because I want to play against more builds like it. This successfully carried me up from about 1400 or so all the way to the lofty heights of 1700, although it stabilizes around 1600-1650 or so most of the time. Treebranch Foofyleaf Level 19 Elf Warrior Hefty Stout Club Bejeweled Shortsword Double-edged Sword Gauntlets Of The Giant Slippery Shield Weakling's Helm Goat Boots Escapist Savvy Attacker 1 x Hardy Mail 1 x Potent Stab 3 x Hard To Pin Down 1 x Strong Bludgeon 1 x Immovable 1 x Elvish Insight 1 x Powerful Bludgeon 2 x Vicious Thrust 1 x Dangerous Maneuver 1 x Backbiting Strike 1 x Impaler 1 x Slippery 1 x Able Bludgeon 1 x Weakened Armor 1 x Frenzy Aura 2 x Impaling Stab 2 x Dancing Cut 2 x Bludgeon 1 x Reliable Hide Armor 1 x Slicer 1 x Team Run 3 x Powerful Hack 2 x Trained Bludgeon 1 x Walk 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Wimpy Swordsererer Bushblade Level 1 Elf Warrior Vibrant Pain Bejeweled Shortsword Nifty Halberd Gauntlets Of The Giant Rusty Buckler Bellowing Helm Goat Boots Escapist Novice Impaling 1 x Slippery 3 x Weak Chop 1 x Able Bludgeon 1 x Dangerous Maneuver 1 x Weakened Armor 1 x Penetrating Cut 1 x Frenzy Aura 2 x Parry 2 x War Cry 1 x Reliable Mail 1 x Elvish Insight 1 x Thick Hide Armor 1 x Reliable Hide Armor 8 x Nimble Strike 1 x Powerful Bludgeon 2 x Vicious Thrust 3 x Powerful Hack 1 x Walk 1 x Immovable 2 x Impaler 1 x Dodge Darkroot the Sorcererous Level 18 Elf Priest Vampire's Blade Bynzer's Black Spear Burnished Plates Slippery Shield Goat Boots Shielding Token Bleneth's Skull Shuddering Relic Escapist Focused Healer 1 x Slippery 2 x Consuming Touch 5 x Mass Frenzy 1 x Weakened Armor 1 x Martyr Blessing 1 x Team Heal 1 x Immovable 1 x Walk 1 x Draining Touch 1 x Elvish Insight 1 x Frenzy Aura 1 x Touch Of Death 3 x Hard To Pin Down 3 x Talented Healer 1 x Vulnerable 2 x Invigorating Touch 2 x Loner 2 x Impenetrable Nimbus 4 x Spear Of Darkness 1 x Dangerous Maneuver 1 x Enervating Touch It saddens me greatly that Frenzy Aura doesn't trigger Impaler. The Priest buffs and hangs back while the two warriors dash around causing mischief, sometimes on opposite ends of the board, but often ending up on the same side. The high mobility of the warriors allows me to leap from one end of things to another quickly, recovering from WWE and such quite easily. The vamp priest buffs with Mass Frenzy and dissuades people who try to snipe him out by draining the health back. Elvish Insight provides the foreknowledge I need to seek out weak targets when they are vulnerable, and running three elves makes it all the more likely that I pull it in any given game. So let's talk about choices. Treebranch Foofyleaf (snicker) has the standard warrior "Big Guns" - Bejeweled Shortsword and Double-Edged Sword. I chose Hefty Stout Club because I don't have The Strongarm, but the goal there is tokenless strong stationary damage. I personally agree with AngryUSAman's post about traits on warrior weapons, so I would shy away from the ever-popular Blazing Shortsword just for that reason (Also, I think Clumsy Chop is a bit of a trap. The main value of low damage attacks is to fish for blocks first, and the fact that it can't do that makes it hard to use effectively a lot of the time). Swordsererer Bushblade (teehee) has all of the zoom. With my Nimble Strike weapons, he clocks in at a ridiculous 8 NS, allowing him to zip from somewhere to anywhere at a moment's notice on most turns. That said, he is often a fragile little guy - one of the hardest parts about using him is knowing how to maximize the fatalities with him before he inevitably expires (This is where Elvish Insight is perhaps most useful - at directing the suicidal charges of Bushblade). My general experience is that if I can get a game to be 2v2, as the player with higher mobility, I generally do much better. The increased emptyness of the board allows you to duck into cover more quickly without having to worry about pincer attacks and the like, and take a round to sit on VPs or recover cards. A good suicide run from Bushblade results in 1 1/2 casualties on my opponent's side, which means I can chase down the remaining 1/2 health character with Foofyleaf. As I mentioned before, correctly piloting Bushblade is probably the hardest part of this build, and takes the most getting used to. I mean, it's always nice when he lives, but often, that can't be the case. Finally Darkroot the Sorcererous (so serious) is my vamp/frenzy hybrid. I'm going to take a moment here to talk about the amazing power of Frenzy Aura. This card is great. It forces opponents to put up or shut up. When you have blocks, can get them to make the difficult decision of attacking into them or running away (when they run, that's when you get to run them down!). Learning to time your attacks by running characters w/o the frenzy aura in first can take some practice, but once you got it down, the extra 3 damage + pen per attack really adds up fast (also, you can have fights where everyone has frenzy auras, and so no one can knock them off! It's a blast). It's doubly cool on vamp priests, where every point of damage is a point of healing too. I can't count the number of times my vamp has gone from 3 hp to 17 (4 from full) in a single cantrip attack. Speaking of cantrips, let's mention the amazing psychological effect Trained Healer has on opponents. When people see a priest with Trained Healer up, their instinctive response is to not attack in melee unless they know the priest can't vamp back. This often means I can safely sit a vamp priest in melee range of opponents without worrying too much if they're going to knock my Frenzy Aura off - as long as there is another target nearby, they almost ignore the priest in favor of someone who can't potentially heal it all back. Then my warriors can trade a few hits, and the vamp can swoop in for a kill after everyone's blown all their cards. I feel like there's more to the build than just what I've mentioned, but I don't want to take all the mystery out of it - explore a little for yourselves. It's a blast to play, though, so I highly recommend giving it a try. Alternate builds: Not everyone has access to Vibrant Pain, I've been told. What can you do if you don't have legendaries like Bynzer's Black Spear or Bleneth's Skull? Treebranch is almost entirely made of Rares and Uncommons (Plus Bejeweled Shortsword), which means it shouldn't be too hard to come up with that stuff. On Bushblade, if I didn't have VP, I'd probably run another Double-Edged Sword and Slippery Shield (Instead of Rusty Buckler. The added reach of the Impaling Stabs and the step moves from the Dancing Cuts help compensate for your lack of NS. The Nifty Halberd is hard to replace (maybe Thick Club as an extreme poor-man's version?), but you do what you can. The Bellowing Helm is very important - it gives the build an answer to blocks when your opponent positions themselves to shield you from attacks. If I had a way to add a War Cry or two to Foofyleaf without costing tokens, I would, but having a couple from the helm has saved my bacon on multiple occasions. Before I had the Bynzer's Black Spear on Darkroot, I ran a copy of St. Olf's Fiery Pike. If I hadn't had that or any other of the mass frenzy epic+ weapons, I probably would have run a Lifesuck Spear and swapped the yellow token in my armor for either Opaline Armor (preferable) or Glowing Hide Armor and upgrade your boots to a blue token (something with Team Run, preferably) - you need your divine items for netting those Mass Frenzy cards. Because the build relies on Mass Frenzy to get it's point across, anything you can do to get the total around 5 is important. Speaking of, if you don't have Bleneth's Skull, your best bet is probably maxing out on 3 shuddering relics. You've probably got a spare blue token by that point, but if you can't throw it into your boots, you might just be better off leaving it as an extra. The vamp build is definitely the lynchpin of this team. If you don't have at least one of Bleneth's Skull, Bynzer's Black Spear, or St. Olf's Fiery Pike, you might want to try a different build. Any questions?
I'm finding it very hard to build a strong vamp without a second priest to handle most of the buffs. Nice job.
Major edit, added in clumsy analysis, and made some suggestions about what to replace epics and legendaries with if you don't have them.
