Deadly Synergy Rivals Deck Review: The Bonds of Battle
Welcome back to Path to Glory for another review, this time for the new Deadly Synergy Rivals Deck in the Spitewood box. While many folks were hoping for 2 plotless decks in the box to open up the deckbuilding meta a bit, I am excited for this one after my first look through. Basically since its inception, it has often been difficult to identify a reason to run a plot deck that’s not Countdown to Cataclysm, but I believe this one will finally give it a run for its money in terms of ubiquity. Branded as a “Mastery” deck by GW, in real terms I think this will function best as another Flex deck. While it may include very little feature token-specific scoring which has historically been a hallmark of the Flex playstyle, the positional mindfulness that will make the deck sing is difficult to characterize as anything else for me. You’ll never hear me complain about having too many of those though, so I’m here for it. Let’s start going through what’s got me so excited!
The Plot Card
The deck functions around the united keyword, which refers to a friendly fighter who is adjacent to another friendly fighter. To keep the deck accessible throughout the game, when you are down to your last fighter, they are considered to be united as well. Rather than just being a keyword, united also has a pretty good effect, as any enemy fighter adjacent to a united friendly fighter is considered to be flanked. We’ve seen the effect on dice odds that Hidden Aid can have, so becoming united is an extremely desirable state and is also one that is easier to access than you might first expect it to be. For instance, you can deploy into united position on literally every board side. Additionally, in any case where an opponent’s fighter runs up and drives back a friendly fighter with an attack from adjacency, there is now a spot next to them you can charge to and benefit from the united rule. This becomes even easier when you have movement economy baked into the warband, particularly defensively, which is nothing to sniff at either. Hard for my mind to not immediately wander to Reapers with a mechanic like this, but there are plenty of other hordes like Exiled Dead, Sepulchral Guard, Hexbane’s Hunters, etc., who can make use of this mechanic, and that’s before we even get to the deck itself. This is a nice midground between like the Edge of the Knife and Raging Slayers plot cards in that it adds a keyword, but that keyword actually does something useful without being quite as straightforwardly powerful.
Objectives: Glory in Unity
Our first objective is Aggressive Unity, a 2-glory end phase for making 3 or more melee attacks with united fighters in the round. I think it’s important to have the melee restriction here, as becoming united on ranged attacks is pretty simple to do. Even so, adding an extra requirement to Keep Choppin’ for a bump to 2 glory is a pretty fair deal. Even if you can’t quite manage to set up the board positioning to stay united, there are a few power cards to help you along the way as well, so this should be reasonably scoreable without being a gimme.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Beatdown is a 1-glory end phase for targeting the same enemy fighter with 3 or melee attacks in a round. Unless you are fighting against one of the big boys, sinking 3 turns of a round into the same enemy fighter seems like the kind of thing that indicates you are missing a lot of attacks, which is not exactly something I plan for in my objective package. Stack on top of that the matchup dependency (this is pretty bad against hordes, for example) and it is way too much work for 1 glory.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
Continuing the run of end phases here, Closed Down scores for 2 glory if a friendly fighter holds a treasure token that was held by an enemy fighter during the round. This is right up there as one of the most annoying objectives to track throughout the round, particularly with all the delving that is going on at the moment. For the amount of work, I think 2 glory is actually pretty good payout, but I could also see this being a bit of a trap card in practice. I think this is predominantly the case in Round 1, where your opponent is not coming into the round holding anything. For example, if you go first in that round, you have, at best, 3 action steps to make this happen, keeping in mind that, even if you do manage to swipe a token from your opponent, they probably want to take it right back from you if they bothered to stand on it in the first place. That said, this is an objective which has a lot of power card support in the wider meta. Cards like Confusion or Duellist are excellent if you are playing this, with a particularly notable shoutout to Switch Things Up, which can actually trivialize this score for you if the decks sequence right.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Got Your Back! is your typical “[insert keyword] friendly fighter was missed with an attack” surge. As far as those go, I think this is one of the better ones since being united inherently makes you harder to hit as well (at least, from adjacent). You probably want to see it more in the early game before your opponent gets their accuracy online, especially since it can be a great way to get your own snowball rolling, as you’d be scoring on your opponent’s turn instead of your own, which would help your objective deck cycle faster. Absolute ideal scenario is your opponent rocking up against one of your united fighters in their first turn and happening to miss their ~50/50 attack. However, even if you don’t see it early, it’s still scoreable enough late, particularly if your warband has access to decent native Save characteristics like Beastgrabbaz or Blood of the Bull or something. Special shoutout to DKK here since they can also pretty much force a miss as soon as their opponent targets a united friendly fighter with Dirty Tricks.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Helping Hand is a surge that scores immediately after a united friendly fighter’s successful attack in which you rolled the flanked symbol. While it’s nice that flanked would generally be considered a success in this instance, think of this as a significantly downgraded version of Critical Effort, since you not only need to roll the 1/6 face of the die, but the attack also needs to land and the fighter also needs to be united, whether via board state or power card support. Given these additional limitations, I would have preferred if the surrounded symbol also counted to score this, then I would be a bit more intrigued. While you shouldn’t play for a 2-card combo, if you are a warband that can afford to run this deck with Wrack and Ruin, Henchman would be good support for this card, at least.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
Hemmed In falls into the usual trap of 2-glory end phases for slaying the enemy leader in that the condition it adds (besides a united fighter having to do the deed) is that the leader must have been slain in that battle round. We’ve already talked at length when discussing similar cards about how needing to line up your opportunity/need to kill the leader with the round you actually draw the objective is just too much of an ask. We need to see more thoughtful design on what a 2-glory, “enemy leader is slain” objective should look like rather than just repeating this same old mistake.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
Inevitable Outcome scores for 1 glory in the end phase if you have two or more united fighters adjacent to a single enemy fighter. While this has some controllability to it, you’ll know that we typically prefer this kind of adjacency objective to come in the form of a surge rather than an end phase. This is particularly the case due to the potential that you went first in the round, meaning your opponent could easily disrupt the score in their final turn. It is doable, but there are plenty of 1-glory scores out there right now which ask for you to do less and/or ask for you to do something you actually want to do, instead of leaving some fighters in an exposed position like this.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Warbands that have an easy time setting up supported attacks will appreciate Infiltrate as a surge, despite the territorial requirement. I do think there’s a world where nobody bats an eye if you could score this in friendly territory too, but warbands like Gitz or Hexbane’s Hunters which have an easy time setting up support should appreciate this one nonetheless. Ranged warbands, in particular, continue to benefit from this wording given that it is generally easier for them to charge into a united position, as well as reach into enemy/neutral territory with the resulting shot. Not an autoscore by any means, but I could see it making your 6 with some regularity.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Outmuscle scores a whopping 2 glory simply for having driven an enemy fighter back with a united friendly fighter’s successful attack during the battle round. For having no other limitations, 2 glory seems like insane payoff to me here. Sure, it does mean the attack can’t have killed the target, but the triviality of scoring this when you are being mindful about your target selection is pretty incredible. I’d say this will be good incentive to slot guard and no-driveback tech into your decks, because I suspect you’ll see it in every Deadly Synergy Nemesis build.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2, Universality: 3
Another more ranged-focused surge, Tag Team rewards you for making a successful standing attack (with no Move/Charge tokens) and also being united and/or having support on the attack. Profiteers once again come to mind here as a warband that could pull this off with decent reliability, but the no Move/Charge token aspect of this is a bit more of a limitation than what we saw with Infiltrate. That said, the Ghyran boards can also give you a little bit better shot at lining up the correct positioning to score this even from deployment, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see this slot in now and then.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
Tandem Assault is a kill surge for slaying an enemy fighter with a friendly united fighter’s attack or if the target was flanked and/or surrounded. Again, this one notably does not specify a melee attack, so the ranged fighters can still leverage their easy ability to get united here. As far as kill surges go, this is pretty solid, as you’re basically trying to this with the deck anyway. Of course, those warbands with easy access to support like Sons of Velmorn, Hexbane’s Hunters, and Gitz once again come to mind, but even a card like Hidden Aid can just enforce this for you. I do still generally think that kill surges are something you can avoid in the wider card pool here, but this is up there as one of the better options should you need to take one.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Ending the objectives on a bit of a low note, United Aid requires a friendly united fighter to make a successful save roll that also has more successes than the attack roll and contains the flanked symbol in it. Sure, if you’re underdog, you don’t need the flanked symbol, but even just rolling more successes in the Save roll is a big ask given that attackers will generally be rolling more dice than you. If you are playing Blood of the Bull, maybe you can do this just from the raw weight of 3+ Shield Save rolls (which is its own issue), but your average warband is going to have a lot of trouble pulling this off, particularly when you are not the underdog.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 1
Ploys: The Power of Cooperation
Another Swing is our first ploy in the deck, allowing you to attack again after you miss a melee attack with a united fighter, but only if the attacker is adjacent to 2 united friendly fighters. On top of that, the Damage characteristic of the weapon on the second try is reduced to 1. “Try again” ploys have historically been a very solid component in power decks when available, but even then, there can be instances of “suffering from success” since you are generally trying to orchestrate high percentage attacks which hit anyway. Slap this many conditionals on it and I think it can be a bit of a trap card. As the image suggests, I think Exiled Dead are the only warband I would feel comfortable running this with, since they are the ones who are most likely to be able to manufacture the positional requirement on the card. Reducing the Damage to 1 is unfortunate, but at least it is still modifiable via grievous.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 1
Army of Two allows you to pick a friendly fighter to be united in the next turn. Notably, this will last for any non-action step attacks as well, either made as a surge like our previous entry, or in the power step. Unlike similar cards we have seen in the past that just grant a keyword to unlock surge objective scoring via that keyword, the fact that being united also comes with a direct benefit makes this card much better than similar things we’ve seen in the past which, for example, might make you tempered or something. I think you’ll generally use this offensively, since the accuracy boost is pretty sizeable, but there could definitely be scenarios where it is more beneficial to use defensively, especially if you’re trying to score something like Got Your Back! Just on raw value of taking flanked on an attack, this will often be close to equivalent value or, in some cases, even more value than just getting an extra die.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Brother-in-Arms is a surge ploy that lets a united fighter “borrow” a melee weapon from an adjacent friendly fighter to use in their attack. Depending on your warband, this can range from “why would I need to do that?” to “wait, you mean Senha can hit like Kainan????” As you can imagine, the power ceiling in the latter cases can be absolutely insane, especially considering most upgrades which give extra attack dice or bequeath runemarks to attacks often are written as “this fighter’s melee weapons…” (more on that later) which means you get to essentially borrow those upgrades too. I’d be remiss not to include George’s shout from the podcast on borrowing Terminus from the Wielder since, as worded, the only requirement is that the enemy fighter be slain “by your leader’s weapon.”
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Defiant Duo lets you pick two adjacent united fighters, one gets a guard token and one gets a heal. Better yet, if you are the underdog, they don’t even need to be adjacent. While you do need to meet the united requirements, keep in mind that you can heal fighters who don’t have any damage tokens on them in this edition, and a guard ploy is still very much playable value in its own right, a heal on top just makes for excellent value. Spiteclaw’s Swarm players should also note that this is a way to choose 2 friendly fighters for inspirations.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3, Universality: 2
Out of Nowhere! is another surge ploy, this time to change a die in a friendly united fighter’s attack roll to flanked or surrounded. Of course, with the plot card effect, this often means you get to change a die in your attack roll to a success, which is pretty solid, especially since you get to see what you rolled before you use the card. I do think we need a bit of an FAQ here on how this interacts with re-rolls (i.e., can I reroll before I change a die?), but overall I think it’s solid value. I think it would be an autoinclude if it straight up added that result to your roll, but plenty of warbands are still fine to take it as written, even though it will still get cut on others.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Selfless Parry is sort of the complementary card of Brother-In-Arms, allowing you to borrow a Save characteristic for an attack instead. This is really nice on warbands that have a wide variety of Saves available to them and have good access to clustering up. A fun shoutout here is with Impossibly Quick, since, if you read the upgrade carefully, this card will allow you to borrow the benefit without actually breaking the upgrade after an attack fails. The peak value is not quite as crazy here, and there are fewer warbands for which this will actually make sense, but being able to surprise your opponent with lower odds of success than they had baked into their initial decision to attack a fighter is still pretty solid value.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 1
Sidestep is Sidestep! You’ve got access to it, you take it.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Take One for the Team is a bit of a trap card to me. Being able to redirect an attack towards another friendly fighter is nice, but you’re still relying on your opponent charging into that flanked positioning in order to make use of this. I think if you got to push the fighter a hex and then take on the attack, this would be a lot more usable. As is, I think this will be one of the most common cards that you almost get to use in a game. You might still take it if you have a critical fighter to protect like Sepulchral Guard or Grymwatch, but it will be hard to set up consistently.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 1
Timed Strike makes me a bit upset. Everything else we’ve seen has said, “hey, get united!” only to turn around and say, “actually this one is just for when you’re not.” +1 Dice is a solid ploy, even if only limited to melee, but this one is literally unusable when you’re down to only one fighter and it is totally flying in the face of what the deck is trying to do. There are so many better accuracy ploys in the game right now, I just don’t get why this is here.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
United Front gives all your united friendly fighters +1 Save in the next turn, to a maximum of 3, which is often plenty. Notably, this again covers surge or power step attack actions as well, meaning you can still get multi-attack value here. I like the idea of pairing this in particular for warbands that already have the ability to no-sell or delay attacks such as DKK, Clawpack, or Reapers. Still, the general ability to just drop this in the last power step to better secure positional scoring for the end phase is universally solid in its own right.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Upgrades: Tools of Fellowship
Jumping over to the upgrades, Battering Ram means you always have more crits on melee attacks for the purposes of driveback and overrun. We often talk about the stochastic nature of overrun having an impact on game outcomes, so having this level of certainty is pretty nice, although you’d still generally prefer to have something which just lets you push after any attack, since that’s a bit more flexible (more on that in a moment). For drive back, I think we need a bit of an FAQ here, but my read is that this is supposed to override the no driveback effect of Stand Fast. I’m not sure it actually achieves that as written, but if that’s not the case, then I’m not sure what this part of the card is supposed to do. Even with just the auto-overrun though, I think this will still see some play, especially with the augmented value of feature token control in Spitewood.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Coordinated Deathblow is one of the best weapon upgrades we’ve seen in this edition so far. Even if you can’t set up the grievous, 1R/3S/2D is perfectly serviceable for a lot of hordes to take. When you factor in the united case, assuming the target can also be flanked, you’re essentially rolling 1R/3H/3D instead, which is fantastic. Another fun interaction here is using this on a little guy’s charge, then running another one up to use Brother-In-Arms to do it again. Even without that little wombo combo, I think this is well worth the 2-glory investment.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Remember how I said we’d come back to push surge abilities? Well, Duellist makes just its 3rd appearance in a Rivals deck, but it comes in timely fashion here. In addition to all the great things this card normally does for you, it also is a great way to make an attack, then push into a united defensive position or, conversely, make a united attack and then push away onto a token or something. Great card, as always.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Entangling Strike is a very accurate weapon upgrade at 1R/3H/1D, with the addition of cleave and ensnare if the target is flanked and/or surrounded. Since that is kind of the schtick of the deck, basically this just means the math says “this attack is hitting” in that scenario. It is modifiable, so you can get this to 2 Damage, but there are other melee weapon upgrades I am reaching for first. Great way to nearly guarantee Outmuscle though.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 3, Universality: 2
Spoiling ahead a bit, but Great Fortitude is such a great card to have in your deck these days. Duh, of course it is, the effect is sweet. That notwithstanding, PnP is inarguably the best deck in the game right now for your Nemesis build, but one of its few downsides is that it lacks this card. While this normally incentivizes you to pair up with one of the other 3 core box decks to get access to the card, seeing it pop up in some of the newer entries feels nice.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Speaking of cards which you want to pull out of the core set decks, Keen Eye makes its way in here too! Another one of those cards you just always take when it’s available, but be mindful of how many 2-glory upgrades we’re slotting here. I mentioned this earlier, but the wording means that Brother-In-Arms gets to double dip on this card as well.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Well we’ve had one “push after an attack” surge upgrade yes, but what about a second one? Over the history of the game, we’ve seen pushing 2 hexes be massively impactful, even in cases where there is some directional limitation to how it works, and I think this will be no exception. I know I just warned about taking too many 2-glory upgrades, but it is pretty difficult to say you’re going to pass up any of those we’ve covered so far. With how sequencing multiple surge abilities works now, you can do some pretty funky stuff with this card too, just be mindful that you need to be able to legally declare it at the same time as your other surges and be careful not to use your other surges such that you aren’t able to resolve this push afterwards. It’s again hard for me to turn off my Reapers brain here, but I legitimately think the strongest ability interaction in the game here is with Mortek Advance, since you have the option to push towards a Mortek cluster, then reposition them, or reposition them so that you can push to where they end up. Bit of brain burn on this card, and it obviously doesn’t work when you’re down to your last fighter, but there is some phenomenal upside here.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2, Universality: 2
Shared Incentive is a leader-only upgrade for +1 Move and also grants friendly fighters +1 Move if they start from adjacent to the leader. Of the 2-glory cards, this is the one I am most comfortable skipping. When I can have Great Speed for free in other decks, I’m not paying 2 for some potential extra spread of the effect, even if it might be interesting on something like Sepulchral Guard to augment what are otherwise pretty lackluster move stats.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1, Universality: 2
Not that we haven’t had some bangers in the upgrade set so far, but I’m still allowed to be critical of Spurred Momentum. Removing a Move and Stagger token is interesting, but think about the number of actions involved in actually using the effect. For most warbands, this will be a minimum of 2 action steps, possibly more if you happen to miss your attack. Seeing as this discards after use, I really would not have minded if it just let you use it after your action step, regardless of whether the equipped fighter actually did anything. As written, I just don’t see it making the cut.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1, Universality: 1
Our final card is yet another good one in Titan of Combat. This is simply a better version of Hidden Aid, since the flanked effect of being united is equivalent and it just adds the keyword to support your scoring on top of it. Always taking this one.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3, Universality: 3
Verdict: The Chorus Cuts Deep
You can probably tell from my analysis that I am very excited about this deck. I think it’s the first expansion deck since pre-nerf Reckless Fury that really competes for a slot in a Nemesis build with the Embergard core set decks, particularly as a plot card deck competing with CtC. There are some very manageable objectives here, and the power cards are about as good as you could ask for, particularly in the upgrades. As I hinted at several times, I think this looks exactly like a deck that Reapers want to play, but Gitz, Hexbane’s Hunters, Sons of Velmorn, Exiled Dead, and many others can make good use here. Hexbane gets a special shoutout given their ability to better leverage the high-glory upgrades in the deck. Among elites, I think Headsmen’s Curse also has a lot of play here, not only for the funniness of the Brother-In-Arms resurrection chance, but also the general value they get out of the extra flanked through their warscroll and access to 2-Dodge Saves.
For Nemesis pairings, we’ll start with the obligatory mention of Pillage and Plunder, because of course it pairs excellently here. Blazing Assault would probably be my number 2 pick here, as I think that likely gives you the best power deck you can construct at the moment. You’ll have phenomenal accuracy support in that pairing and also be able to backfill some grievous effects, one of the few holes in this particular deck. To me, there’s a bit of a drop-off from there, but, just to mention it in both articles, I can definitely see pairing with its box mate Hunting Grounds. There’s some decent synergy in the objective package there, particularly with Outmuscle and Pinned!
That’s all I’ve got for this. If you’re as excited as me, I hope to see you out there brewing with this deck. If you think I’m way overhyping it, feel free to let me know that too! Until next time, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
