Investigating the Underworlds: The Katophrone Build
Well, they've finally released all 8 warbands, meaning I now have access to all Katophrone artifacts. Since these first appeared I've been keen to make a deck built around these just to see if it's possible. I had considered Steelhearts Champions as being the best vessel, being quite tough, but Farstriders have equally got the double defence when inspired, AND have the bonus of ranged attacks, meaning if I do want to have one fully tooled up guy, I didn't want to have to charge him to be able to do anything, as then I couldn't activate him again. SO I haven't really built a farstrider deck as yet, I will at some point, for now I am running a Katophrone deck that just happens to be using Farstideres band as a vehicle.
So what do the artifacts do? Well they all go on one dude and they stack. 2 of them lets you reroll defence dice, 3 lets you reroll attack. 4 let's you draw two power cards after taking an action, and all 6 lets your action just be to simply score 4 glory points. Get all these artifacts on a guy by the beginning of turn 3, you can grab an almost certainly game winning 16 glory points.
So obviously that's a lot of the upgrades in this deck already taken, so what have I cherry picked to accompany them. Well, equipment designed to keep the artefact bearer alive of course...
The cursed artefact gives +1 defence at the cost of a wound, but great fortitude replaces that wound so we're all square there. Deathly fortitude adds 2 wounds at the cost of 2 movement, but with a range 4 attack on the guy I want to upgrade, I figure I can stomach this. Blessed armour means critical defence rolls remove wounds (and inspired and upgraded I'll be chucking out 3 defence dice with a reroll, so hopefully can keep regenerating. And army of one means if the other two sell their lives in gathering glory points to equip the leader he get's +1 attack and defence, meaning he'll be rolling 4 defence with a reroll with crits healing him on his base 6 wounds. Tough nut to crack!
Farstrider himself is the one I wish to upgrade, the other two are just to grab glory points to pay for it.
So, what ploys did I squeeze into this deck? Well, healing potion is no surprise surely. I also have great concussion to push fighters apart - great for an entirely ranged warband. ephemereal shield can give a fighter +1 defence, and misdirection should protect farstrider from the first ploy meant to undermine him.
To help get the ball rolling on upgrades I have spoils of battle for a freebie, daylight robbery to make someone else hopefully pay for one, and scavenge that is situational but might get me an extra point so why not.
To round out my deck I have duel of wits to get more power cards in hand and inspiration strikes... handy to inspire farstrider if I plan to keep him hanging back with upgrades while the other two do the legwork.
So how does the deck play? Well I played one game (4 way) so far with it, and I did a bit of a doozy... I either forgot to shuffle my deck or didn't shuffle it properly. Basically, all the kat artifacts were the bottom 6 cards of my power deck. I didn't know this when I started. I started with 1 upgrade and 4 ploys, not bad we can work with this. The plan worked for cheap objectives, and I ditched the unused ploys at the end of the turn and drew a fresh set of... 5 ploys. Ah. By the end of turn 2 I had 9 glory points, which would have been plenty to get all necessary upgrades equipped. However... the upgrades were still in the deck. I worked out that if I drew a card every turn and spent a glory point every turn, I would get to 5 artifacts at the end of turn 3. If, once 4 were in place, I activated my leader and thus drew two extra cards, I could just about get the 6th in place... but gain no glory from doing so. So instead I spent my last turn defending my slender lead by knocking the ork player off the central objective that was worth 3 glory points at the end, and I won the game by 3 glory points, so a close fought thing. However it was a low scoring game all round and I think that a better game from my opponents would have seen the deck fail, due to the katophrane stuff being buried. So I shall shuffle the deck thoroughly and try again, although the downside is that now they know the farstriders are set up like this they'll perhaps try to prevent me from gearing one guy up. But I'd like to see if it can work, before I make a deck that is more suited to the farstriders playstyle.
So what do the artifacts do? Well they all go on one dude and they stack. 2 of them lets you reroll defence dice, 3 lets you reroll attack. 4 let's you draw two power cards after taking an action, and all 6 lets your action just be to simply score 4 glory points. Get all these artifacts on a guy by the beginning of turn 3, you can grab an almost certainly game winning 16 glory points.
So obviously that's a lot of the upgrades in this deck already taken, so what have I cherry picked to accompany them. Well, equipment designed to keep the artefact bearer alive of course...
The cursed artefact gives +1 defence at the cost of a wound, but great fortitude replaces that wound so we're all square there. Deathly fortitude adds 2 wounds at the cost of 2 movement, but with a range 4 attack on the guy I want to upgrade, I figure I can stomach this. Blessed armour means critical defence rolls remove wounds (and inspired and upgraded I'll be chucking out 3 defence dice with a reroll, so hopefully can keep regenerating. And army of one means if the other two sell their lives in gathering glory points to equip the leader he get's +1 attack and defence, meaning he'll be rolling 4 defence with a reroll with crits healing him on his base 6 wounds. Tough nut to crack!
Farstrider himself is the one I wish to upgrade, the other two are just to grab glory points to pay for it.
So, what ploys did I squeeze into this deck? Well, healing potion is no surprise surely. I also have great concussion to push fighters apart - great for an entirely ranged warband. ephemereal shield can give a fighter +1 defence, and misdirection should protect farstrider from the first ploy meant to undermine him.
To help get the ball rolling on upgrades I have spoils of battle for a freebie, daylight robbery to make someone else hopefully pay for one, and scavenge that is situational but might get me an extra point so why not.
To round out my deck I have duel of wits to get more power cards in hand and inspiration strikes... handy to inspire farstrider if I plan to keep him hanging back with upgrades while the other two do the legwork.
As for that legwork, how will that be achieved? I went for cheap easy to score objectives, with plenty of "immediates" to try to rack up a good early score. There are no "end of third phase" or big scoring objectives in this deck, as at the end of the third phase they're too late to do me any good as part of the overall plan.
So how does the deck play? Well I played one game (4 way) so far with it, and I did a bit of a doozy... I either forgot to shuffle my deck or didn't shuffle it properly. Basically, all the kat artifacts were the bottom 6 cards of my power deck. I didn't know this when I started. I started with 1 upgrade and 4 ploys, not bad we can work with this. The plan worked for cheap objectives, and I ditched the unused ploys at the end of the turn and drew a fresh set of... 5 ploys. Ah. By the end of turn 2 I had 9 glory points, which would have been plenty to get all necessary upgrades equipped. However... the upgrades were still in the deck. I worked out that if I drew a card every turn and spent a glory point every turn, I would get to 5 artifacts at the end of turn 3. If, once 4 were in place, I activated my leader and thus drew two extra cards, I could just about get the 6th in place... but gain no glory from doing so. So instead I spent my last turn defending my slender lead by knocking the ork player off the central objective that was worth 3 glory points at the end, and I won the game by 3 glory points, so a close fought thing. However it was a low scoring game all round and I think that a better game from my opponents would have seen the deck fail, due to the katophrane stuff being buried. So I shall shuffle the deck thoroughly and try again, although the downside is that now they know the farstriders are set up like this they'll perhaps try to prevent me from gearing one guy up. But I'd like to see if it can work, before I make a deck that is more suited to the farstriders playstyle.
It's been a while since I've played a card based game, I'll have to rectify that!
ReplyDeleteShadespire is a nice blend of cards and miniatures on a board. The variety to the game comes from the deck you build so it is the more important aspect to it. But as warbands are quite small (the largest is seven miniatures) it isn't a bad game for the uninitiated to dip their toe into. They are also all coloured plastic suitable to their race so generally easy to tell apart (both khorne wabands are red and both sigmarites warbands are blue, but apart from that...) and the models are snap fit so don't even need glue. You can play it straight from the box even if you've never built miniatures in your life. So do give it a try if you get the chance. I did a post explaining the basic gameplay earlier in this "investigating the underworlds" series.
DeleteI can't bring myself to invest heavily enough to make the Katophrane strategy work, so it's cool to read about someone else doing it. The Farstriders do seem like a good Faction for it, tho Dwarves might do well, too.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I shortlisted it to the stormcast is simply the 2 defence dice when you are inspired. The dwarves hit harder nad move faster when inspired, but if the build is about building one guy who can tank it, these aren't as important as survivability. Although you can make the leader quite tough and you can effectively get two healing potions into a dwarf deck, so it isn't too bad a choice to try it on.
DeleteAs this deck has barely any farstrider cards in it apart from a couple objectives it could easily be lifted and applied to other warbands with the minimum of fuss to test the theory.
As I said I don't really do tournaments, but it seems a lot of people have done a similar list to this... and had enough success with it to get GW to put out a beta rule that says Kataphrone relics cost two glory points to equip. That will fundamentally change how this deck plays and may even eliminate it as a tactic. I'll have to play it a couple more times, see how many times I succeed out of say 5 games (and by succeed, I mean all relics on and at least one 4GP action taken - I did win a game with this deck but my Kataphrone play never came off, I ended on 5...) and then play 5 games at double cost and see if it's still even possible, or whether I have to restart my deck from scratch...
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