Intro
Hello and welcome back to Path to Glory for yet another weekend of release coverage! While I’ve historically done a writeup for the new boards, rules updates, etc., there’s not so many changes this time, so I feel we’re alright with the coverage from the podcast on that. Make sure to give it a listen! To start the box then, we go to a warband I’m extremely excited about: Thricefold Discord. In addition to yet another set of gorgeous sculpts, I think the designers have really delivered on an elite control warband with this one. The gameplay mechanics match really nicely with the theme of the warband and they’ve opened up a bunch of design space with the warband’s fighter and faction cards. It’s great to see the developers continue to branch out and execute on fresh ideas even now going into what will be Season 9 of the game. Let’s dive in!
Fighters
As always, we start with the leader and for this warband it’s Vexmor. In addition to the obligatory Slaanesh keyword, he’s also of course a leader, as well as a level 1 wizard. Matching the bulk of his physical appearance (and being the warband’s representation of indolence), he sports a profile of 3 Move, 1 Defence, and 5 Wounds. With how lazy he is supposed to be, I don’t think 2 Move was out of the question here, but I certainly won’t complain about the extra mobility. Perhaps they’ve better represented his laziness via his attack profile at 2R/1H/3D. He doesn’t care to try all that hard to hit you, but if he does, the raw strength of his form is enough for that juicy 3 Damage right out of the gate. To further augment the bulk of those 5 Wounds, he has Locus of Indolence, an ability that lets him reduce the damage of incoming attack actions by 1 (to a minimum of 1) if his defence roll contained no successes. What a great way to represent apathy as a game mechanic! This is probably the first instance in the game of a warband you might be taking defensive re-rolls with the express purpose to not succeed. This is further incentivized by the network of the warband’s inspire conditions. You’ll note that Vexmor inspires when a friendly Vashtiss fails to roll a success on an attack, defence, or casting roll or that fighter is out of action. Since these 3 fighters all dislike each other so much, I love that this is how they’ve handled the “discord” aspect of their rivalry in game terms. It’s also fantastic to see such a unique inspiration condition without reliance on a warband plot card or counter mechanic. Given that this is how inspiration works in the warband, I think it makes more sense to look at the leader’s card in the context of inspiring Lascivyr, as that’s directly where you’ll be receiving the “benefit” of Vexmor’s stats at 1 die both offensively and defensively. At just 1H, what might be your first attack of the game already has a 50% chance of inspiring one of your 3 fighters (75% if you manage to stack in a re-roll and are committed to the inspire). Ordinarily, you’d never want to throw such a low-odds attack, but the risk-reward here is highly in your favor. Miss and you make Lascivyr more dangerous or land and deal a whopping 3 Damage. There is obviously the worst-case scenario of rolling a success and your opponent also rolling one, but there’s upside in the majority of outcomes. Getting back to Vexmor himself though, he gains an additional die in attack and defence upon inspiration, making him a potent threat sitting in the midboard, basically turning him into Kainan without the scything. In addition to him being easily the tankiest and slowest of your fighters, I think you probably stick him the furthest forward during deployment to potentially bait an early Lascivyr inspiration and then reap some benefits later once he’s inspired himself. Really solid stat line and that damage negation will come in clutch, especially on those defence rolls where you have no hope of blocking the attack anyway.
Next up we have Vashtiss the Coiled, a level 2 wizard with the flying trait. She’s got a pretty solid physical profile as well at 4 Move, 2 Dodge, and 4 Wounds, which should give her some decent longevity given that Vexmor will be such a damage sponge. She hits for 2R/2H/2D with her staff and her Range 3 spell attack hits on swirlies for 1 Damage. Uninspired, these attacks are pretty uninspiring, but having Range 2 instead of just Range 1 is a significant boon. Her ability is called the Locus of Paramountcy, which, prevents enemy fighters adjacent to her from receiving defensive supports when they are the target of an attack action. This will likely be one of their most forgotten about rules, but can actually have a significant impact in a lot of matchups. The most obvious one is against Sons of Velmorn, as simply attacking with her adjacent to one of their fighters will turn off a lot of their defensive synergies. Similarly, you can charge her into a group of fighters on DKK without immediately inspiring multiple of their fighters (of course you will likely give it up on the counterpunch…). One of those things that seems innocuous enough, but savvy players can take advantage of with mindful positioning. Looking at inspiration, she provides the triggers for Vexmor and I have to say it seems like Vexmor will be a bit tough to inspire given her base stats. She rolls 2 dice on casts, attacks, and defence, so it’s a bit less likely that she’ll be fully failing those rolls, especially in cases where she might be on guard. I could definitely see there being games where your leader doesn’t inspire until Vashtiss is dead. However, she doesn’t get all that much from inspiring herself, just gaining +1 Range on her spell attack and swapping from swirlies to lightning. I think it might be worth delaying Lascivyr’s activations to make sure you can use her to get Vexmor inspired faster, since he gains far more than she does.
Last, but seemingly not least, we have Lascivyr, the Bladed Blessing. They are an assassin and a brawler, two keywords which have been a bit short on card support in the post-Nethermaze releases, but will hopefully see some more soon. They’re the fastest of the group at 5 Move, but is quite frail at just 1 Shield and 3 Wounds. They have a pretty standard attack profile at 1R/3S/2D, but their Locus of Carnality ability means they are always considered to have a supporting fighter, making them extremely accurate from the jump and mitigating their fragility a tiny bit. Once inspired, they become even more accurate by changing their attack to hammers and also gains grievous, giving them a remarkable combination of accuracy and damage potential. They’re my favorite sculpt in the set (though they’re all great), but on top of that also seems to be your most consistent offensive option, so you’ll want to leverage their high mobility with some conservative positioning to make sure they don’t just die in the early game.
In terms of fighter cards, they’ve got some solid tools. Nothing that I think will be obviously busted but a very usable kit with several decision trees you could follow. I think your most “straightforward” inspiration order is probably Lascivyr>Vexmor>Vashtiss, but it’s not such a bad thing if it takes Vashtiss a while to inspire or never inspires. I do think this is one of the best examples of a warband’s fighter cards matching up with their theme, and I’m happy to say we’ll see more of that in their deck coming up shortly.
Objectives
Starting off the objectives, we have Born of Damnation, a surge for playing your second or subsequent temptation gambit in the same phase. In case you haven’t looked ahead, there are 6 of these in the deck. Of the 6, I would say that 2 are very good, 2 are pretty good, and 2 are middling to bad (we’ll get to that in a minute). Having had some experience in the world of [
Illusory Nemesis] (where I’d say you wanted at least 6 to make playing 3 in a round more reliable), I’d estimate you want to take at least 4 of the temptations for the dependability of this surge, likely with some draw tech as well. Again cheating ahead, but in Championship, I honestly don’t think those 2 “pretty good” temptations are both going to make the cut into your 10 gambits. You certainly could take them and this and score it reliably enough, but at that point you are, in my opinion, reducing the efficiency of your deck given some of the powerful universal cards you’ll need to leave on the table. “Play cards, score glory” is often a pretty good surge, but I think I’m generally leaning towards not taking this one, although its value does increase in Nemesis and even more so in Rivals.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Next up is Cacophony, another surge, for making a 4th or subsequent casting roll in the phase. Note that, unlike prior versions of these types of cards, you don’t need to successfully cast the spells in order to score this, just attempt the cast. As far as “play cards” surges go, this is where it’s at. The fact that Vashtiss also has a decent spell attack in conjunction with the number of power card spells you’ll want to bring with her means it ought to be pretty doable. Even if she dies, you can sort of backup plan into Vexmor attempting the casts and, again, it’s not important to succeed. Play a few gambit spells and couple that with one or two activations attempting to cast spells and you should be scoring some nice passive with this one. You might run into some unfortunate instances where you don’t draw into enough spells to make it worthwhile, but the card draw should be more reliable here than in the case of Born of Damnation while still allowing you to pack your deck full of powerful spell effects.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Speaking of spell casts, Cruel Chorus is the now commonplace “cast your second or subsequent spell in the phase” surge. As we saw with Pandaemonium, these types of surges that score just for playing the game while offering your opponent very little denial opportunity are really good. The synergy with what you are trying to do with Cacophony is just an extra bonus. I anticipate this warband to be quite solid (and popular) so I wonder if we’ll start seeing more early game plays of cards like [
No Time], [
Prayers of the Faithful], or [
Chilling Scream] to slow down the casting train on them, Stormcoven, and Pandaemonium.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
In what has to be a first for the game, we have a warband whose first four cards alphabetically are all surges. Here is Escalating Screams, which scores off making a successful supported attack action. While the most obvious angle for scoring this would be through Lascivyr, the warband does have a number of other support tricks to help you score this one. I do think card sequencing may be a bit awkward here since you will sometimes want to remain inaccurate in the first round to get people inspired, but it’s certainly solid. You’ll almost certainly land a supported attack over the course of the game, the question will just be whether you have the card in-hand at the time it happens.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Euphoric Killers is our first end phase card, scoring 2 glory if one or more enemy fighters are out of action and two or more surviving friendly fighters are inspired. Since I’m not sure you can bank on having more than one fighter alive at the end of the game given the relatively low Wound pool of the warband, you’re really eyeing rounds 1 and 2 to score this. Going further, the first condition appears to be pretty trivial, so the question is really whether or not you think you can consistently get two guys inspired (and keep them both alive). As cool as I find their inspiration condition, you don’t have so much control when it comes to inspiring them when you want to. There might be games where Vexmor is just slinging out crits in the middle of the board and, while this might be a good sign for how your game is going, it could actually hinder your ability to score this. I want my inspirations to be nice consolation prizes when an attack roll doesn’t go the way I want, not necessarily a core part of my strategy. I think the payoff is solid here, and some fortunate dice luck (or, I suppose, lack thereof) can even make it a trivial score, I just generally prefer a bit more direct influence on scoring my objectives.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1
On yet another surge, here we have Fuelled by Pain, which scores immediately after an opponent’s activation if each surviving friendly fighter has one or more wound tokens. I like this one as a sort of analog to cards such as [
Spirited Attempt], [
Bring It On], and [
Untouchable Fury], although the situations in which you want to draw it are a bit different. Whereas these previous examples you’d generally like to have in your opening hand, this card is best suited to a round 2 or 3 draw, at which point you’ll likely only have 1 or 2 fighters needing to meet this condition rather than all 3. Similarly, if you are playing cards which deal damage to your own fighters, such as [
Corrupted Companion], you’ll have more opportunities to pull and/or play those by that time as well, even independent of the fact that your opponent will have had ample opportunity to attack you by then. Similar to their other surges, there’s really not much opportunity to deny this if you’re the opponent, as very few warbands will be able to either just one-shot this warband, nor can many afford to simply not attack them. While I prefer the casting surges, there will be plenty of cases where you cycle this in the opponent’s activation right after drawing into it just because you already met the condition. Very solid card.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Indulgence Given Form scores one glory in the end phase for having one or more inspired friendly fighters both having one or more upgrades and being on an objective token. Note that “and each” has struck again here, but, despite the somewhat clunky wording, I do believe you can score this as long as one of your inspired fighters meets the conditions, even if your other inspired fighters do not. Additionally, remember that you don’t have to be holding the token to score this one, you just need to be on it, so cards like [
Hidden Lair] and [
Mindwipe] won’t be able to mess you up. I do think the confluence of your upgraded fighter also being inspired and also being on an objective may make things a little clunky in terms of preferred play pattern, but this is a perfectly reasonable ask and should theoretically be scoreable in any round. Given how little bounty I expect you to yield with this warband, taking some decently reliable 1-glory cards such as this is a perfectly reasonable call, but I am going to ding it a bit for being quite restrictive on your decision tree.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Obsession and Vice scores you one glory in the end phase if one or more fighters with a false gift upgrade is out of action. Cheating ahead again, there are 3 such upgrades in the Rivals deck and, while I think each of them might merit inclusion in your deck, your 1-glory cards need to be scoreable in round 1. To do so here, you need to not only draw one of these 3 cards, but have enough time left in the round after you play it to ensure the equipped fighter ends up out of action. Furthermore, these cards come with a player action to resist and break them which, if you gift them to an opponent, they could do just to remove the negative effect while also denying you glory. By the same token, you might put them on your own fighter and then your opponent has agency in whether or not they bother to kill them. I don’t love my opponent having so much of a say in me scoring my 1-glory cards, I’d prefer them to be much closer to automatic. Factoring in the massive card draw sequencing dependence of this one, I’m leaving it at home.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1
Triumph of Carnality is our next end phase card, scoring 1 glory if four or more fighters (friend and/or foe) each have one or more wound counters and/or are out of action. Late game, this is just free, but the nature of ping in the game right now (and also in this deck) is such that this is fairly doable even in Round 1. In Nemesis alone, if you imagine a Seismic Shock build with these guys (which, in my Day 1 opinion, looks like a good pairing), you take 2 gambit pings from there, pair it with up to 3 gambit pings from their own deck, then factor in damage from attacks and you’re cooking. Unless anti-ping and heal tech is released in droves, that strategy will continue to be pretty meta-dominant and for good reason, as it’s extremely effective.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
In the same series of cards, we next have Triumph of Indolency, a 2-glory end phase for there being four or more surviving fighters without Move or Charge tokens or each friendly fighter being adjacent to one or more enemy fighters while not having any Move or Charge tokens. While I like the use of a hybrid condition to mitigate the matchup-dependency of the first condition, the warband simply does not have enough tools to pull this off on a consistent basis. Yes, the temptations give you several ways to push fighters and or delete move tokens, but the gameplan becomes more and more obvious the further you get into the round, which a savvy opponent ought to pick up on, especially in a Bo3. I think your best-case scenario to score this would be in Round 3 when you are down to just one fighter and have a lot of push/anti-push tech online, but it’s just going to be so difficult to maintain adjacency without ever moving or charging given the general lack of token removal options at your disposal. I could see some niche [
Potion of Grace]-type plays helping you pull this off, but it feels like more of a “gotcha” card than a consistent score.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1
Last in the 3-card series is Triumph of Paramountcy, the big 3-glory bomb in the deck. This one scores in the end phase if a leader is the only surviving fighter in one or more warbands. Given how tanky Vexmor is, I could see you pulling this off by playing fast and loose with your other two fighters. The ability to control your targets on the opposite side of the table helps as well and, even if your opponent is wise to your gameplan, many decks need to take the bounty from the early kills on your more fragile pieces rather than sink activation after activation dropping attacks on Vexmor. If you get him inspired early and also bring healing tech, opponents will have a hard time justifying focus fire onto him when they can just go after the other two instead, so that does feel like the more scoreable condition. That being said, this is another one where you don’t have absolute control. If you opponent is willing to forgo killing even one of your other fighters and/or focuses down Vexmor early, you are left relying on the condition of their leader being their only surviving fighter. Given the general power of leaders, you often want to be removing them from the board sooner rather than later, so this does open up a potentially sizable conflict between playing for your objectives and denying your opponent the strength of their best fighter. I will be interested to test this one out, but I fear it may end up pretty matchup dependent and even difficult to score in Bo3 games. That being said, I would be remiss not to point out this is very good against Stormcoven, as killing any 2 of them guarantees you will score this.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1
Our final objective is Violent Excess, a 1-glory surge for making a second or subsequent successful attack targeting the same enemy fighter in a phase. Matchup dependency has been and still remains the biggest issue with these types of surges. If you’re facing a Mollog or such, this shouldn’t be a problem, but if you happen to pull a horde matchup, suddenly the odds you are one-shotting stuff significantly increase. Additionally, your Rivals deck here is incentivizing you to spread ping damage in the power step, which again increases the odds that you’ll be killing stuff off just a single successful attack. Since the best general way to deny your opponent their gameplan is to kill their fighters rather than take inefficient activations just to score your cards, I don’t think I’m bringing this one. Points for being interesting in matchups against resurrect-able fighters and big boys, but this strikes me as more of an “I’m going to face lots of elite matchups” meta call than a consistent inclusion.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1
Our Favorites
- Mark: Fuelled by Pain
- Aman: Cruel Chorus + Cacophony
- Zach: Cacophony
- George: Triumph of Paramountcy
Gambits
Moving on to the gambits, we start off with Acquiescence, a gambit spell casting on a single lightning which allows you to stagger an enemy fighter within 4 hexes of the caster. This is perfectly serviceable as an effect, but we have to keep in mind that there are a number of cards in the game that may have a similar effect either with some upside or without requiring a casting roll. If I’m going to run the risk of failing to cast a spell (especially if Vashtiss dies), I would like to see a little bit more spike potential. Something like increasing the difficulty to a swirly then allowing you to also push the fighter 1 hex (maybe with a directional restriction) would be a welcome addition.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 2
Next up is our first temptation gambit, all of which give your opponent a choice. In this instance, the choice is to either push one of their fighter up to 2 hexes so that they are adjacent to one or more fighters in your warband or allow you to stagger each of their fighters that is within 3 or more hexes of one of your fighters. With some good board control, this could be a massive stagger threat that certain warbands may not be willing to tolerate. However, if they let you pull their fighters toward you, that might also be heavily disruptive to their gameplan. I love these “no good choices” cards because they have a lot of opportunities for you to express skill by playing them at the right time while also giving your opponent that same opportunity to choose the “correct” option. The upside is pretty solid on both of these options, so it seems unlikely that this card would ever feel useless, although “cannot be staggered” and/or “cannot be pushed” effects may limit its utility in certain matchups.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Illusion of Power is also a temptation gambit, allowing your opponent to choose whether or not you both can give a free upgrade to a fighter or they discard two power cards from their hand. It is worth noting that you cannot play this card if your opponent has no power cards in hand, but I feel like you’d be dropping this early in the round regardless, so that’s not much of a holdup for me. Before we get into the power level of the card, I’ll say that I think it will be extremely rare that you ever discard cards for this, even in cases where you don’t have an upgrade to play. What is a bit concerning is we saw almost exactly this card in the universal pool with [
Shady Bargain] and that saw very little use. Yes, it could be neat to cheat out the false gift upgrades we will get to in a moment, but you’re playing a very dangerous game handing out free upgrades these days, especially in Championship. The main place the aforementioned [Shady Bargain] saw usage was in Reapers due to the high power level of their upgrades relative to the field and general problems scoring early surges. While I think you’ve got some solid to even really good upgrades in your faction deck here, a control-focused warband handing out free Guided by Fate or [
Great Strength] seems off to me. You do have the advantage of seeing what your opponent plays before deciding for yourself, but that will have some niche interactions at best (specifically with the false gifts, which, again, I will touch on a bit later). I think the surges here are good enough that you don’t really need to cheat out upgrades yourself and your gameplan seems like it will be heavily focused on glory denial anyway, so I struggle to see this meriting a slot in what is currently a very competitive set of 10 gambits.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1
Continuing with the temptations, we have Irresistible Feast, giving the opponent a choice of pinging every fighter adjacent to one or more fighters or just allowing you to pick one fighter in their warband and deal one damage. Talk about 2 bad options, this card is fantastic. Warbands like Reapers and Exiled Dead will basically have no choice but to allow you ping a target of your choice, no range limitation or LoS required. Since this warband has so many innate push tricks (and a bit of movement shenanigans), I suspect it will be rare your opponent wants to opt for the first condition here. I suppose there is a bit of risk here in sacrificing potentially up to 3 of your warband’s 12 wounds, but since you get to control the timing here, you really shouldn’t be dropping it in situations where the multi-ping is more advantageous to your opponent. I feel like you should only have been allowed to play this in your own power step so that you couldn’t leverage the threat of your impending activation so heavily, but, as written, the “downside” should not come into play unless you are making a mistake with regard to the board state you choose to play this card.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Continuing the trend of cards which give your opponent no good choices, we have Pavane of Slaanesh, a gambit spell casting on a lightning that is basically [
Toxic Gases] with a range limitation and dropping the push from 2 hexes to 1. Being a spell both helps and hurts this card, as it reduces the consistency while also allowing it to synergize with objective cards which ask you to cast spells or play cards. Overall, I think the status as a spell is probably a net benefit, but you do have to bake in the risk of failure, especially in cases where Vashtiss is out of action when you draw it. Still, we know either of these to be really good effects, especially in situations where this fighter might be standing next to a lethal anyway. Also note that fighters who can’t be pushed must allow you to ping them and vice versa. Very solid card.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Yeesh, we have even more ping with Soulslice Shards. This is probably the most ridiculous card of the 3, casting on a lightning to ping the enemy fighter furthest from the caster. Since this is not a choose gambit, you don’t require LoS and there is no range limitation. This should easily have required a swirly instead of lightning. This card, specifically in conjunction with Irresistible Feast and a wide variety of available universal tools, further promotes what I consider to be a very unhealthy cycle of gameplay where these casting warbands get to just sit in the corner and play a bunch of cards that melt the enemy warband from afar while also scoring casting surges in the process. I’ve always been an advocate for playing what you want, but this strategy, when as effective as it is in the current meta, has got to be one of the least fun things since Exiled Dead reaction denial was a thing. I think it’s ok to have some consistent power step ping damage (although certainly not as much as there is right now), but backing it up with surges that score just for playing the cards has been and always will be a problem, especially when something like[
Sudden Demise] exists to incentivize this as a primary strategy. Ping damage is an important release valve against warbands with overly high defensive stats and/or damage reduction, but I think I speak for most players when I say it should not be allowed to sit at the top of the meta like it has been since the start of Gnarlwood. I really hope we see some reversal in design direction in the coming warbands with regard to pings, but the interim will be a tough slog, especially if you are playing a horde warband. Rant aside, the card is obviously powerful and should be in every Discord deck.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Finally getting away from the ping cards, we have Sublime Harmonies, allowing each friendly fighter within 3 hexes to provide support in the next activation. Note that this can be used either offensively or defensively and, with good positioning, can be netting you full supports on attacks/defence. There is some obvious synergy with Escalating Screams, but from the perspective of just a base effect this is really good accuracy and/or bulk support. In the case of a simple 2H vs. 1S attack, the difference in success rate of full support vs. no support is a whopping 24% (54 to 78%). For comparison, +1 Dice would instead be a 16% increase (70% chance of success). Similarly, you’re getting about a 10-15% reduction (depending on exact attack and defence dice) in your opponent’s odds of attacking success if you can set up the full supports defensively. Note that this also lasts for the entire activation, so things like scything or multi-attacks from Exiled Dead will have each attack of the superaction impacted. Despite all of this, the fact that I am baking in full support tells you this card’s value starts to drop precipitously if you have any fighters out of action or fail to position such that you can achieve its maximum benefit. For this reason, it’s unlikely that you will be able to spike with it as frequently as you would hope. Still a borderline inclusion, but there’s more consistent performers to take that 10th gambit slot.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
EDITED: Vision of Wealth is another temptation gambit, this time allowing your opponent to either spend a glory or let you push any fighter up to 2 hexes toward the nearest objective token. This is a really cool card and, in Round 1, I think will feel very impactful. That being said, competitive Championship (and even Nemesis) decks should have a strong enough glory engine that spending the glory to deny the push in later rounds ought to be pretty doable. Still, decks often find space for one or two early-game cards like this, it’s an interesting option at least.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1
Next up is Well-earned Rest, which is a great opportunity for me to say that I just love all the cards with Vexmor flavor text. As far as actual effect, however, this one leaves a bit to be desired, if I am reading it correctly. Either your opponent allows you to give one of their fighters (that has no tokens) a charge token or you may remove up to two Move and Stagger tokens from any surviving fighters. Based on the wording, I feel like your opponent is allowed to choose the second option even if no fighters currently have no Move or Stagger tokens, which will almost exclusively be the best choice anyway. There may be some very niche scenarios where you can leverage this to protect yourself from like a barge action you just made or support Triumph of Indolency, but I really don’t like it. If it can force your opponent into the choice of Charge token, its value increases significantly as a start-of-round surprise card, but otherwise I just don’t see sufficient upside here unless your gameplan revolves heavily around removing Move and Stagger tokens. I would like to see an FAQ here, my ranking changes pretty significantly if you can use it off the rip and force your opponent to eat a Charge token.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 1 (Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2 if you can “force” the Charge token)
EDITED: Perhaps saving the best for last, our final gambit is also a temptation with Words of Praise. Your opponent either allows you to push one of their fighters up to 2 hexes towards one of your fighters or they cannot activate that fighter for the entire phase. In addition to being a very powerful “no good options” card in the first place, this gets nuts when you consider the wealth of anti-push cards in the game right now. Say they’ve played [
Darkwater Anchor] onto Mollog. You play this card and, since they cannot choose to be pushed, you’ve basically just won the game because you’ve made their key piece impossible to activate this round. This is insane to me and, even without hitting this kind of a spike, the card still provides above-average value for a push gambit. I suppose the downside is that this doesn’t allow you to disrupt end-of-round positioning (they’ll just take the charge token), but it’s an incredible early round tech piece with some ridiculous upside in cases where a “cannot be pushed” effect is in place. This seems like an essential piece of your gambit deck.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Our Favorites
- Mark: Words of Praise
- Aman: Words of Praise
- Zach: Irresistible Feast
- George: Words of Praise
Upgrades
Ecstatic Scourge is a moderately worse version of [
Duellist’s Speed], allowing you to push after making an attack action besides a scything attack at the cost of taking a damage. While this can set up some cute stuff for things like Held in a Bloody Fist or Fuelled by Pain, you can’t play too fast and loose with taking damage given the low total Wounds pool for the warband, and you also really have to choose your spots for this one. If you just took the safety of the aforementioned [Duellist’s Speed], you could spam the reaction at-will. It’s not bad, but definitely lagging behind the pack a bit as far as push reaction upgrades are concerned.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Next up is Gourmand of Pain, a wizard-restricted spell reaction allowing you to ping a fighter (on the roll of a swirly) within 1 hex after an attack action that targeted you. Interestingly enough, you can actually use this on yourself or another friendly fighter (again to do some cute stuff with the objectives that require people to have damage). Being a spell, you can also use it to score your casting-related surges as well. Similar to the last one in the set, I’d argue you can’t be quite so free with your Wounds these days, but it could be a neat option for spreading damage to enemy fighters if you’re playing with a lot of anti-push/driveback tech. Still, I think I’d have liked the range limitation to be 2 hexes to be more in line with things like [
Dusklure Bracers] and Bursting Sores, as a lot of fighters will be able to dance around the 1-hex restriction. Kudos to the designers on busting out their dictionaries on this set for great words like “gourmand” and “pavane” though.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 1
Helm of Insight is our first false gift upgrade in the set and wow is the design space on these interesting. This particular upgrade gives the equipped fighter a defensive characteristic of 2S and cannot be modified further at the cost of not having LoS to fighters 2 or more hexes away. As a base effect on your own fighters, the best target here is Lascivyr, since this is all upside for them anyway. However, the really cool angle here comes in the fact that you are allowed to give this upgrade to an enemy fighter. We’ve seen this with Singular Reshaping, but this one actually allows you to pick the fighter who gets it, which is just nuts. Throw this on a spellcaster like Ephilim and completely ruin their day, as not only does the range on their spell attack action become useless, but remember any spells that “choose” (fighters, feature tokens, etc.) require LoS to the target, meaning it would likely also reduce the efficacy of the spell gambits in the deck. What a fantastic control tool that, even in matchups against something like Krushas that doesn’t care about the downsides, you can still just throw on your own fighter instead to give them a very solid defensive buff. Thankfully they realized they need to give people an out with the “resist” action, but even forcing that action out is a huge win for an upgrade. Also note that voidcursed fighters actually cannot resist, so these cards sort of “counter” that countermeta deck! Lots of applications, but yea this is just a really good card.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Icon of Excess is a spell action cast on a swirly which allows each surviving friendly fighter to make a move or attack action at the cost of dealing a damage to the caster. Given that the construct of the card is a bit different than usual, it’s unclear to us whether you still take the damage on a failed cast, but in either case, I think this might actually be a card I would consider sacrificing damage for. The action economy this gives you if you even have 2 fighters remaining is phenomenal and absolutely worth the damage. However, the efficacy of the card obviously dwindles as the game goes on, especially if Vashtiss is dead and you have to make Vexmor try this. A wide range of outcomes here, but the spike potential if you draw it and cast it in Round 1 really intrigues me.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1
Next up we have another false gift in Invincible Armour, granting the equipped fighter +1 Wounds at the cost of -2 Move (to a minimum of 0). Again you have a fantastic control tool that still has some impact even if you end up using it on your own fighter. Drop this on something like Mollog or Kainan and your opponent is all but forced to make the “resist” action to break it at some point or risk giving you way too much flexibility in ignoring their best fighter. Hilariously, you can also use this to force the opponent to break upgrades that cannot be given to Large fighters (of which there are a number of solid options these days) in cases where the extra Wound pushes them to 5. I forgot to bring this up in the previous discussion, but [
Launch an Attack] is going to be super valuable tech against these cards. Already a good gambit, but the importance in the matchup (saving you an activation) cannot be understated.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 3
Our final false gift is Perfect Blade, a 1R/3H/3D attack action upgrade that also makes the equipped fighter not considered to have any upgrades or attack actions besides it. Like the other two, this one can be given to enemy fighters and has a similarly debilitating effect. Sure, you could be handing them a really dangerous attack profile, but there’s a wide range of upgrades you’d love to turn off for even one activation. You can turn off +Wounds so that a damaged fighter simply dies, turn off additional accuracy, defense, or any number of useful effects. In addition to ignoring the effects of the other upgrades, you ignore the fact that they even have those other upgrades, which can really surprise an opponent lining up to score cards such as [
Loaded with Plunder], [
Sorcerous Treasure-hunter], etc. I love the design space they’ve opened with all of these false gifts, really cool and impactful cards that are, I hope, well-balanced enough while providing a fresh take on the game.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 2
Sadistic Epitome is a [
Hunter of Souls] copy, granting +1 Damage to attack actions targeting wounded fighters. With the amount of ping this warband has access to in-faction and through the universal pool, this card is going to proc pretty consistently. In addition to the obvious benefits of doing more damage, lack of range limitation is also fantastic for something like an inspired Vashtiss, who can suddenly turret up and start zapping folks. Nothing bad to say about this one, it’s likely to be, at worst, the second best +Damage upgrade in your deck.
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 3
Song of Corruption is another really interesting design for a card, granting you support on your attack actions from enemy fighters within 2 hexes (as long as you are not making a scything attack and they are not the target). This could again heavily punish warbands like Exiled Dead and Kainan’s Reapers just for existing, but it is a bit of a meta call. It will likely be tough to set up supports against elites, but can often grant you double support on attacks against hordes. Definitely something that could come in and out of the deck though, especially if you are planning to play Escalating Screams.
Power Ceiling: 2, Consistency: 2
Unnatural Swiftness is [
Great Speed] with the upside of adding +Dice at Range 1 and 2, but with the caveat that you don’t get either bonus if you have a Move or Charge token. Again, really cool design choice here, but I do wish the card still had an effect when you do have a token. Even if it were as simple as making the +1 Move permanent and the +Dice conditional, I think that would have been preferable, but the warband does have access to a lot of multi-hex pushes, so there is definite potential to pull off the +Dice, which we all know is a really powerful get. Could be some more incentive to re-sleeve your copy of [Potion of Grace].
Power Ceiling: 3, Consistency: 1
Whip of Subversion is our final upgrade, basically giving you Tammael’s attack action. With the increasing prevalence of Voidcursed Thralls, the ability to push fighters instead of driving them back is useful, but granting an elite warband (with solid fighter card attack actions already) an attack action upgrade seems pretty meh to me. It’s fine, but I have a hard time seeing it make your 10 upgrades.
Power Ceiling: 1, Consistency: 3
Our Favorites
- Mark: Perfect Blade
- Aman: Invincible Armour
- Zach: Invincible Armour
- George: Helm of Insight
Conclusion
Overall, I think they nailed the implementation of a theme in gameplay mechanics with this warband. The temptations and false gifts are really cool design spaces that match the aesthetic and the inspire condition is simply an A+ on thoughtful design. That being said, I am a little concerned about the warband from a competitive lens, not necessarily because I see them as the next big boogeyman (although I do think they will be very meta-relevant), but more because it is yet another elite warband that incentivizes ping-happy builds and boasts a lot of minimally interactive passive scoring. Being primarily a fan of horde warbands, this design space is extremely restrictive to those warbands’ viability and, frankly, I think the game is about at its least fun when opponents are just deleting fighters in the power step left and right while scoring objectives that say “I cast X number of spells” or “I played Y number of power cards.” In fact, I had trouble picking a “favorite” for this warband’s objectives since the “good” ones were largely incentivizing ping and/or just playing power cards to score glory. I think it is important to be able to deal some damage in the power step, but there’s simply too much of it right now in conjunction with too much payoff for doing so, especially in Championship (cough…forsake [Sudden Demise]…cough). It’s a shame because I think, outside of the ping design, the warband has some fundamentally really cool and interesting aspects, but players will naturally gravitate to the builds that provide the most consistency, which is almost always going to favor this “longboard/offset and melt your warband with my 5-6+ ping gambit deck” strategy.
To not end on a sour note though, I need to reiterate how much I liked the general design space of this warband’s fighter and faction cards. There’s a lot of interesting risk-reward considerations and execution of new concepts in the deck that I’d love to see more of going forward. Perhaps my favorite thing from a design perspective is when the developers are able to find new and interesting ways to engage with the existing ruleset that don’t require the addition of more rules to the game. I hope to see even more of this as we progress through the Deathgorge releases and beyond.
As always, thanks for reading and best of luck on YOUR Path to (excessive) Glory!
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Written by: Mark Breault
Edited by: Aman Khusro
