ImaginaryNumb3r

This is brilliant, we can take this even one step further to improve the game. So let's do the same with Enlightenment. Make it T2, 400 power, one nature orb.
Someone feels that T2 isn't enough for him, and can allow to spend 400 power to nuke the board with T4 units? Take some useless T2 cards and actually boost them for at least matching their rarity (yes, Ice Age, Lost Shade, Mountain Rowdy, Vileblood, Banditos, Twilight Curse, Lost Priest, Revenant's Blessing, ALL Lost Souls actually, I'm talking about them). It doesn't matter that this will lead to an unending power spike, unevenly distributed throughout all factions. Because on the other side, we don't even need to balance T3 cards. All that needs to be done is doing cosmetic changes and don't address broken cards. See? Everybody wins.
Indeed, there are many replies from both sides but I can only see one side actually putting forth some arguments.
Note that "just leave it", "why you hate Amii Monument?" or "let everybody play how they want" don't exactly count as arguments it. They are just personal statements or questions. While other, more in-depth, reasoning (such as made by Treim) could still require some counter arguments.
Note, I hope not to hurt anybody's feelings with this post. I would prefer this topic to be elevated to a more objective level, without personal assumption about the other person's emotional state. It also feels somewhat unfair if well thought-out posts are completely ignored. It is a lot of work to explain why certain cards become problematic from an overarching perspective, as this is a complex game with many factors involved.

That comes down to people not understanding HOW to break maps with that card.
There is a reason why Amii Monument is used for basically every single speedrun record except 2 and 4 player rPvE 10 and Siege of Hope
There is literally ways to abuse the card to allow for some insane strategy that speeds up the game by so much. The card is not only broken in solo play but allows you to play around a massive shortcut on all of those maps. And sure some are more obvious and insane than others - Soultree <-> Encounters with Twilight. On most of those maps Amii Monument is the card that even allows you to play that strategy: Convoy, Slavemaster, PtD, Nightmares Shard, Nightmares End, King of the Giants, Bad Harvest, Soultree, Oracle, Ocean, Insane God, Dwarven Riddle, Mo, Crusade Treasure Fleet, Behind Enemy Lines. Probably missed a couple as well.
In Nightmares Shard one player even gives up his last monument just so the other guy can use Amii Monument. Now tell me that doesn't change the way you play the game. Amii Monument is the single most used card across all speedrun strategies with maybe the exception of regrowth and that is because it is so often a massive shortcut if you know how to abuse it. Just because most players don't know how to abuse it, doesn't mean its not worth fixing. If there is a bug in your game but 99% of players dont know how to abuse it, doesn't mean you just leave it be. And Amii Monument basically is just that.
Otherwise we probably just leave all PvE cards as is and only balance PvP relevant cards.

it's not like we even argue Amii Monument is the only stupid card there is - because there is a couple more - just none to the insane level, that they literally change how you can play most maps.
LSS; Shadow Phoenix, Shrine of War, Furnace of Flesh + CM -the list goes on. This thread however was about Amii Monument.

------------------Disclaimer------------------
I wrote this guide without access to the game and do not intend to update it anytime soon. I apologize for all inaccuracies due to my limited memory. The vast majority of things should be actually correct, but I might've missed a few smaller things that i probably wouldn't now.
Also note that the metagame in some areas has evolved since the game has been accessable again. This mostly manifests in the fact that Lost Spirit Ships became a lot more situational and Batariel is often the way to go instead, even against Lost Souls maps. This happened because Batariel is a lot better understood in its limitations and players got better at playing around those limitations which are especially relevant to Lost Souls maps.

If you want to see the theories described here in practice you might want to check out following thread where I upload solo speedruns of 1, 2 & 4 Player maps pretty much whenever I play them: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/6281-treims-motm-solo-speedrun-archive/
 
Apparently images originally attached and referenced in the explanations just ceased to exist for some reason. For the full guide please go to the END of this post and use the dropbox link attached there to get access to the full guide.

2. General Information
 
2.1. Spawn Mechanics

First of all: Spawn mechanics in rPVE are very simple, they are following only 4 rules:
 
Whenever you attack a unit from an enemy base (except the spawns), every camp that has a direct path to that attacked camp will start spawning units. A camp has a direct path to another camp when you can go there without facing any other camp on the way, its direct. You can go from camp A to camp C without the need to go through Camp B. When such a unit is spawned, it will always directly attack your monument, that was the last one you have built at the time the enemies spawned, monuments that weren't built up, but were in progress, when they spawned count as a 'full' monument. Any monument you build after they spawned are not relevant for that specific spawn. Whenever a camp started spawning units, it will not stop until you kill the spawn building. A camp can only spawn new units if the complete previous spawn gets killed.
Example:

In the picture I have named camps: '1','2','3','4','5'
The arrow symbolizes your attack, so the following will happen:
When you hit the first units from '1', '2' and '3' will start spawning as their is a direct path from '1' to them.
Nothing will happen to '4' and '5' as they do not have such a linkage to '1'.

After '1' is cleared you could go to '2' or '3'. In this scenario we will go to '2'.
When you attack '2', '4' will start spawning units as they have a direct linkage.'3' will still spawn units, as it can't stop; '5' will still do nothing; '1' doesn't exist anymore.

Next step would be to clear '4'. As soon as you attack '4', '5' will start spawning units due to their direct linkage. '3' still spawns units, '1' and '2' doesn't exist anymore.


2.2. Base structure & how to find the 'right' spawnbuilding

So a base is always built up like this (with more or less paths to it):

First of all you need to know that in every base there is always only 1 spawn building, if there is a 2nd one that could potentially be a spawn building as well (just from the way it looks), one of those is fake and will never spawn any units. There's a way to identify the correct and the fake spawn building with 100% security. In order to do so you need to know following things:
You will have several entries and one of them is the 'main entry', you can always recognize the 'main' entry on how the base is aligned.
In this case the 'main' entry is 'entry 1'. You can recognize it as 2 towers are directly oriented to that entry (they are always on the left and the right of that entry), even though you might get into the base from entry 2, 3 or 4, '1' will always be the main one.
With that knowledge the spawn building that spawns units is not random at all anymore, its 100% predictable which of them will be the 'right' one.
When you would run into the base from the 'main' entry, it is ALWAYS the spawn building on the right side of the base. If you ever think it's not, well better check if you have the main entry identified correctly.
 
2.3. The issue of close camps and trapping spawns.

I bet most of you (if not any), already had this: you're into a battleground game and you pull the aggro of the t3 when trying to take t2.
This often happens (95% of the time), the spawn of the t3 will somewhat pull the whole t3 base to your t2 base. In very rare cases, the aggro range of the t3 includes the t2. In all the other cases the spawn will just 'ask for ally help'. That actually means that you can avoid those attacks from close camps by 'trapping' the spawn in-between t1 and t2.
Every fraction (fire/nature/frost/shadow) can do that, some easier some harder:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=g52hV...ade_Expert Frost: Kill the melee units, take aggro of the archers with one unit and run to t2 with another one, you can take a well when the archers are NOT in range of it, otherwise its a gamble, if they switch their focus. After that spam some ice barriers and kill the squad you held aggro with. (if you are confident in your skill, you can try to do the same as with nomads, but its much harder as you can not run through them to do damage. You need to use master archers and stop the attack of them at the exact correct time, so that the bolts doesn't finish off the whole squad, but only parts( that works because every unit of the squad needs to get killed by a single bolt) Shadow: Basically same game as with frost, kill the melees, pull the aggro of the archer squad with one unit and take a well at t2 with another unit, kill that one after. Build Soul Splicer in-between t1 and t2 and kill some units next to it to, to fill it up. Then just press 's' with the squad you have aggro. By the time the soul splicer is empty, your aggro unit is dead and the soul splicer is destroyed, you should have enough energy collected to clear t3 easily. (You can try the same as mentioned in Frost, as it will lower the damage of the squad you gain more time) Nature: Kill the melees or the archers, take aggro of the other one with a shaman and build t2.. done. Extra tip: When you face lost souls and the spawn includes a lost dancer you are the luckiest guy in the world. Use any squad unit (windweavers/forsaken/northguards/master archers, etc.,etc.), kill all other stuff but the lost dancer, and press 's' with your squad unit. When the lost dancer attacks it, the squad will split up and stay like that, any following attack of the lost dancer on that squad will do no damage anymore.
This also works for close camps at from t3 to t4.
3. rPVE/Battleground 1 Player

3.1. Map structure and general principles
First of all I would like to show you the general structure of a lvl 10 1 player Battleground map, you will need to understand this in order to follow some of my thought process.



In this case we start at the bottom of the map. That is because it easier to explain it that way, but it doesn't matter if the map is twisted 90°, 180°, or 270°. The principle stays the same. You see that the way will split up right in front of your t1. The t2 will always be at the end of the way that goes to the edge of the mini map. Notice that the way to the camp that is closer to the centre of the map will always be way shorter and you might get problems with pulling the whole camp and or shamans if any exist in that camp. That is important as you want to avoid attacking anything from that base, because it will force another camp to spawn units as well, it makes it way harder to defend. You always want to rush to t2 with the smallest possible amount of energy being used - in other words as soon as possible. At that rank on the map you will always have 2 camps next to your t2, while t3 is always above on the next rank of the map. You always want to clear that as soon as possible as well, without using to much power in defence for the units that will attack your t2. Next to your t3 you will always find 2 other camps and the t4 on the exact opposite of the map.
From that point on you will have 2 more ranks on the map with each 3, rarely 4 camps. That means in general you have to clear 6-7 bases after you cleared the 'real' t4 base.
Whenever you reach a base you basically want to destroy the 'right' spawn building before it can spawn any units, as those can respawn the whole base. Which would cost a lot of time.
3.2. Common t1- t4 strategies

T1: Enemy - Bandits:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: There's some additional information I want to mention: This only works when your monuments can NOT attack the spawn, it will kill them slowly but not for sure. That makes it very important to be careful with the positioning of the spawn.
Shadow: Almost always your first choice to go. You will need forsaken or Nox Trooper (I personally prefer forsaken because- of their passive and because Nox Trooper aren't very good against squad units, which you will mainly face at t2). Key cards are forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. You basically want to build up the soul splicer at the exact range, where you don't aggro the t2 and then build just enough forsaken to clear the camp. You want to use 3 frenzied forsaken (in some cases with very bad spawns and unit positioning you might need more) to clear the spawn building, while you focus on taking down towers and those annoying mana wings with the other forsakens first. As soon as the first forsaken (not frenzied) hits a point where he has half of his hp left, motivate them. So the soul splicer can heal the rest up in time. Sometimes its worth/necessary to get a skeleton warrior in front of them to tank up a lot of damage. That is the case when you have a t2 base with bunch of units. Defend with 2 forsaken. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Frost: If shadow isn't working great against the enemy try frost. Key cards are frost mage, ice barrier and homesoil. If you face those annoying spearmen that can't get knock backed summon 2-3 master archers in order to kill the spawn building, as frost mages aren't really good against those due that they cant attack the spawn building properly. Defend with 1-2 frost mages, if the spawn includes spearmen use 1 frost mage and 1 master archer. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Fire: Only good in very rare cases. Mostly when you have these windhunter thingies AND you're having a close camp. What you want to do is: Spawn 3 nomads (green) set 1-2 mines and use 4 eruptions to kill the spawn building. You can defend with makeshift tower or 1 mine. Key cards: Nomad (green), mine, eruption. If necessary you can add sunstriders against those mana wings. After that you want to set up 3 blaster cannons (red) and build another nomad. So you have 4 nomads. Then set 2-3 mines in front of the t3 base and pull the whole base into your mines and blaster cannons. You run in the t3 base and clear the spawn building with eruptions. Mission accomplished. I got an example video for you: http://listenonrepeat.com/?v=8EkqkzbuLw0..._von_Treim Nature: Never viable, units and spells are just to expensive and following orb order is not better than frost. Basic information: in 95% of the maps you should be fine with spawning 6-8 units to clear the t2.

T1: Enemy - Stonekin:
Shadow: Same as Bandits, but you will almost always need to have skeleton warriors on top of the soul splicer. If there are those crystal fiends at t2 you should prefer nox troopers over forsaken as well, just to avoid the knock back, as well as being able to kill them very fast with the 'overload' ability. You will need immediate motivate in order to clear the spawn building with nox troopers though. In general 4 should be enough for that. Frost: You will often need some master archers on top of the frost mages, as they're not very good against the crystal fiends with their non targeted damage. You need to focus on them before killing the spawn building as they do so much damage. It's very likely that they respawn if you only use frostmages as well. I recommend using at least 3-4 master archers to kill the spawn building. Fire: not viable Nature: not viable  
T2: Enemy - Bandits:

Your second orb is always shadow. You always want shadow phoenixes to clear the t3. If you started shadow t1 you can even build up resource boosters already. Those are a must in every deck.
If you have those windhunters at t3 use spawn 3 shadow phoenixes use the embalmer shrine (you want to build up 2, so you can have the effect up all the time) and clear the base next to your t2, kill the spawn building in 100% of the cases and find the right target to get all 3 phoenixes back. That way you made those 3 phoenixes 'voidless'. That means they're not binding any more energy in them. You get all the energy back (into the void pool) when they attack. That way you can spawn 2-3 more phoenixes relatively fast and attack. You need 5-6 of them as 2 will get paralysed and might get focussed down before they are able to attack. If there are no windhunters just use 3 shadow phoenixes and enjoy to clear your t3 very fast.

T2: Enemy - Stonekin:
Basically the same as for against Bandits just with some special cases. You will most likely face constructs and tortuguns and t3 that means you need 11-13 phoenixes.
In order to get 13 phoenixes very fast, you need to modify the way you get the  phoenixes voidless by a little bit. You want to basically get 3-4 (depending on how many you can get back when attacking) and attack  the base next to t2 again. But this time use a unit in the base that is far enough away from the spawn building, that the spawn building will NOT die. You will just fly away with your 3-4 phoenixes and let whole base respawn just to spawn 3-4 more phoenixes and now kill the base entirely (don't kill towers or anything if phoenixes wouldn't revive from it).
that way you will have 6-8 phoenixes already and can almost instantly build 4 new  and your good 2 go.
Pro tip: Some of those tortuguns have a ranged anti air attack (just as the normal tortuguns have). Those will destroy a lot of phoenixes if it hits and your attack will most likely fail. In order to prevent that 'stack' the phoenixes on top of each other.


If you tell 12 phoenixes at the same time to go to a certain map point they will automatically get in the formation you can see on the left side of the picture. However you can pick small groups or even single phoenixes and all let them go through a certain point and press 's' to stop them from moving right when they're in that point where you want to stack the phoenixes. If you stacked them correctly there should maximally die 1 or 2 of them to the tortugun, as they will fly in basically the same point all the time.
If there are windhunters in that base you might want to consider to send 2-3 units in front of the phoenixes to tank their paralyse and damage. If you started frost you can use coldsnap to just freeze them.
In some cases you will face something that is even more annoying: you might have to deal with deepgorge towers that will attack your t2 when you try to build it up. Those bases will get pulled when the spawn hits the t2 definetly. You have to trap the spawn in-between your t1 and t2 as mentioned in 2.3.. In those cases you need to get a bit creatively. You do not want to take the wells and only take the monument. You can either defend it with skyelf templar and trap the spawn with ice barrier spam, what is really expensive though (if you are not able to kill the most part of the archer squad and only leave parts of it alive) as you will need some time to get enough power in order to be able to attack t3 OR you use warden's sigil and just shield the t2 over and over with 2 of those and trap the spam with 2 warden's sigil that give each other a shield. I prefer the green one over the blue affinity due to the healing that helps much against the trapped spawn.

T3: Enemy - Bandit:
Get 3 cultist masters and a Furnace of flesh (if you didnt build one yet, I recommend building one already at t2) + amii monument.
Latest point you get your resource boosters is when you hit t3.


T3: Enemy - Stonekin:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Should be a nature orb. Get amii-monument with nature aswell. Switch the frost orb into shadow if you started frost t1. Do not build t3 shadow just to get the resource boosters, but rather get it for frenetic assault. Its not worth it if you just build them now as you don't need a whole bunch of power  anymore until you're totally fine. Enlight Batariel (red).

T4: Enemy - Bandit:
Spawn Lost Spirit Ship and clear the map. Use heals and buffs to keep them alive.
I recommend to only use Lost Spirit Ship (red) so you can use flame crystal and motivate to buff them up. Use rifle cultists and offering (green) to get enough charges. I recommend to send 1 rifle cultist right behind your frontline so you get ground presence close to your main army and you're able to spawn them without them having to run a very long way to your troops.

Extra information: If there is a boss with a lot of hit points you can use a fallen skyelf and his 'tainted disease' to kill those faster . You need to be very careful with the timing though at it gets completely reset if you are not able to kill the boss in the time 'tainted disease' is active. I only recommend using this if you have a free slot in your deck that you don't really need.

T4: Enemy- Stonekin:
Get 2 shrine of war to permanently have the void manipulation active and just buff it with spells. You can get those by switching the amii-nature orb into a fire orb. You also need that to get disenchant against the windhunter paralyse.

Extra information: if there is a boss with a lot of hit points on the map, such as command walker (not sure if he was called like that, I mean that super construct thingy): You can use Bloodhorn(s)(purple) with his 'tainted enrage' and unholy hero to basically kill those in few seconds as batariel is very slow against bosses.
So your end orbs would be like that: shadow, nature, nature, fire.
This being said I would like to present you some very standard decks for a Lost Spirit Ship and a Batariel deck.
 

I did not explain every card in detail but the one I didn't mention pretty much are explaining themselves.

One last shot on this topic: Most of the time you will need to learn how much units you minimally need in order to clear t1-t3 just by trial and error.
This is especially true for the fight for t2. You will probably need several tries until you find the correct units to focus and when to change the aggro.
Just don't get frustrated if it doesn't work in the first few tries ^^

3.3. Pathing

Okay so at this point it starts to get a bit more complicated. In order to find the optimal path to run you need to always keep in mind these 3 basic variables:
The strength of each camp The strength and way spawns will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. To 1.:
It doesn't really matter to much for Batariel decks, you can steamroll them anyway and you should always have enough power due to shrine of war. You just need to take care that you don't get to the very high damage bosses to fast as you don't have enough power to support 1 or 2 bloodhorns and a batariel early on the t4 phase.
Crucial point for Lost Spirit Ship, you really want to kill the easier camps at first, as some camps are just to strong for few Lost Spirit Ship. Either it takes forever or you will just get wiped out. In order to use that time correctly try to kill easy bases at first. You really want to avoid bosses with high hit points until the very end.
I'm talking mostly about the command walker as those literally take forever without at least 7 ships and a fallen skyelf.

To 2.:
As you want to clear bases with your Batariel and only send your bloodhorns in after the base is dead (except the boss) just try and let them sit back on ways where spawns will pass by. This requires you to study the ways certain spawns will go.
Basically you want to avoid spawning too many units at your base to defend as that binds power that might be necessary for buffing and healing. Sometimes you can use Lost Spirit Ship that you would use for motivating in your base anyways to defend, but you need a bit of luck to have the power for that at the exact right time. That means you basically want to defend most, if possible spawn the rifle cultist and spawn a Lost Spirit Ship next to him that can then be added to your troops straight away. Sometimes you need to kite a bit in order to have enough power.
In both cases you want to prevent that very strong spawns hit at your t3 as you will often times just loose the game by that.

To 3.:
With both decks you want to avoid going unnecessary ways. That means you need to find the way with the shortest distance to run by clearing all camps. Often times there is not a perfect solution that would include you running every way exactly 1 time and never run out of a base in order to reach the next one. If you remember the picture of 3.1. (or just scroll up to it again) you have exactly that case given. You need to run backwards from at least camp 7 or 10 depending on which one you want to do first.
I played exactly that map in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EkqkzbuLw0 (you might remember it 30x15file:///C:\Users\Niklas\AppData\Local\Temp\OICE_BB1A28E5-6F75-4C7E-BE57-31B96B37F208.0\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png). Even though I didn't use amii-monument in that game due to a challenge I had with a friend you can see the path I took after I had t4. This ones doesn't really give you a big task of finding the best path just because of the limited amount of Lost Spirit Ship I had and the fact that bases on top (8,9,10)of the map wouldn't be possible for me to clear due to their insane strengths. As well as the point that the chance of pulling the whole base 9 while mainly attacking cap 8 is kind of high due to the fact the whole camp is built up in a very small place and Lost Spirit Ship sometimes move weirdly through that. Even if I made it through that one it is likely that if I attack camp 9 I would pull camp 6. Those risks just shut down the only other efficient route in terms of point 3.

To sum this one up: Its very necessary to know a map very good in order to be able to combine the 3 above listed variables well enough to find the optimal path. Often times you will need to gain that knowledge just with trial and error even though it will get much better the more experience you have with combining the variables and overall speed run experience.

4. rPVE/Battleground 2 Players

4.1. Map strucutre and general principles


So obviously you have 2 starting bases on a 2 player map. These are basically identical in structure. Both have 2 direct ways away from their t1 to 2 outer camps. In-between those you will face a third camp. A nice little fact to take note of: If the t2 is at the left/right side of his t1, it will be on the same side for player 2 as well. This is always the case. There is no separate bases for t3 and t4, but both monuments are in the same base. The T3/4 bases are always directly linked. On the way you will face 2-3 camps (most of the time 3). Rest of the map is split in 2 rows with each 5 bases.
The basic concepts of 1 player rpve and what you want to do and avoid are similar: Destroy the correct spawn buildings as soon as possible and try to not use to many resources in defence.
 
4.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Stonekin
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Twilight
Shadow: Standard t1 with forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. Attack the spawn with 3 frenzied forsaken and kill the units with the rest of your forsaken. If have got Twilight hags at t2 you can use skeleton warriors to absorb the damage and use knock back with them, 1 should be enough though. If you face those annoying parasite swarms, either take them down very quickly or just start with frost. Frost: Standard t1 with frost mages, ice barrier and home soil. If you face twilight hags I recommend some master archers to have an easier time on focusing on them and the spawn building. Parasite swarms are no problem due to the knock back of frost mages. Fire: super situational. I don't recommend it 99% of the time. Nature: Not viable Extra information: This is the case for both players. I recommend one of them to start shadow, so you get some early embalmer shrines for t2 shadow phoenix. T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
Shadow: Only viable for 1 player and only if the t2 doesn't include lost vigils. The other player will need to support the shadow player with massive fire spell spam. Use skeleton warriors only. Frost: Not viable Fire: If one player starts shadow support him massively with 2 mines and 4 eruptions on the spawn building at  least. That's 440 energy minimum. You can add a defensive mine to defend the spawn near t1 to that if you wish. Notice that this will slow down the fire player massively but will speed up the other player massively. If there are lost vigils though you are forced to play fire with both players. The concept stays the same though. One player will support the other one with spells. You want to support the other player with at least 2 mines and 2 eruptions on the spawn building. Blaster Cannons are a must have. You want to start off with 3-4 nomads (depending on how good you can pull and how fast you can erupt). Start of with 2-3 blaster cannons (when you build 2 you will most likely need to erupt 1-2 times unless you're a bit lucky with the focus). You want to set up 2-3 mines at the place the ground units will attack your blaster cannons. Placement of those can get tricky, depending on which enemies (trees, manabeasts, lost dancers, etc) you will face. After you set up yourself or your team-mate, pull out the whole base into your blaster cannons and let them switch focus, until you run into the base again and kill the spawn building. In optimal case you want to kill the spawn with the eruptions as well. Set a defensive mine to defend t1. You want to basically support the other player with basically ~60% of the total energy costs for spells that is necessary to clear the base. The supporter should NOT build any units or buildings until the t2 of the other player is cleared. The supported player will go t2 afterwards. The supporter will try to clear his base mostly alone, most of the time he will get only 1 mine and 2 eruptions. Notice that you need sun striders to trap those annoying lost dancer spawns. Nature: Not viable
T2 - Enemy Bandits/Stonekin
Bandits and Stonekin T3/4 is built up identical, so I'll just sum them up. You will face either 2 constructs, 2 tortuguns or 1 construct and 1 tortugun. Sometimes you will face Windhunter's in addition to that. Most of the time you will have at least 1 guy starting frost t1 so you will have coldsnap most of the time for those annoying dragons. You need again ~12 phoenixes to clear the base 100% calculating that you might 1 or 2 before you can attack the spawn. In order to get them fast you will need to make them voidless again, just as described in 3.2 T2- Enemy Stonekin. When you face that long range attacks from tortuguns just stack them as described in there as well. You will most likely have to defend against a bunch of spawns, you can leave some of them alive to defend against that. The rest you can kill near a furnace of flesh to get some void power back. Clear the dragons with frost mages/ master archers/ forsakens.

T2 - Twilight
Most twilight t3's aren't really strong, you will most likely need 5-6 phoenixes for an easy clear. Just care about those parasite swarms. If they are able to make your unit beyond control you might screw up. Just make sure you give them right target to attack before you lose control.


T2 - Lost Souls
So this one can get kind of tricky. You will most likely face a lot of units at t3 and I recommend using around 10 phoenixes. In order to do that you will need to make phoenixes voidless. But you need to take care that they don't die when you fly into a base or leave it. Lost vigils kill phoenixes really fast. In order to do that you probably have to fly from weird angle into them or have to attack units that you wouldn't focus  on other wise. For example little squad units. Those die basically from 1 phoenix, you need to make sure that all phoenixes you send in attack that unit. Do that by stacking them, so they all reach that unit at the same time.
Those weird angles and unit focuses are sometimes even necessary for t3/4 attack. Especially if you use less phoenixes as possible. Try to clear any air units with either a nomad spear, sun striders or blaster cannons. Use your phoenixes to defend the spawns.

T4 - Enemy Bandits
In 2 player maps you will often face a major amount of bosses. I recommend at least 1 player uses bloodhorns to kill the big bosses. You will probably need to split that one up from the rest of the troops, so that the bloodhorn can take care of bosses that are alone in their base while Lost Spirit Ship clears the rest of the base and just run from boss to boss. Batariel can  be an option here as well. You need to decide individually, what is better --> trial and error.

T4 - Stonekin
Most of the time Batariels will be faster than Lost Spirit Ship against Stonekin maps. But Lost Spirit Ship can be an option for some maps --> trial and error
I recommend Bloodhorns as well.

T4 - Twilight
Hardest T4 in the whole game. There is basically only shit available and you can get wiped out with everything quite easily. You need tons of crowd control. Both players need to have oink and at least 1 freeze (such as coldsnap or maelstrom) to cc those wrathgazers. In some bases you will face 4-5 of them+ spawns. Personally I play bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ship against that, you can add 2-3 green gemeyes for the extra crowd control. Earthshaker is a must to get rid of the willzapper buildings. I do not recommend to split up at the last rank of bases. You will need every single unit you can get. Sometimes you can't even clear those easier t4 bases alone. Batariel is not an option. Path finding becomes very important at this map, because you can not defend your base with a single t4 unit, due to wrathgazer spawns. You need to kill every spawn on its way to your base with your main troops or it might get messy.
If you want even wheel of gifts can be an option. Shrine of war is a must.

T4 - Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ship - Spam. Incredible Mo with yellow ability is a must. It prevents the lost dragon debuff and so you got a pretty easy time with your Lost Spirit Ship. You can add a Bloodhorn and send them behind your ships to clear the bosses. Do not run into bases with it though or it will get just get killed instantly. Shrine of war is not a must, but I highly recommend it.  Batariel is not an option as you have the anti-spell aura buildings and any spell you use in advance of entering the base will get deleted by those nasty lost dancers (that's true for wheel of gift, incredible mo, spells, etc --> never build those buildings against Lost Souls unless you have a lot of air units). That will cause your batariel to just get destroyed in later bases.

4.3. Pathing

This one gets a bit harder than for the 1 Player maps. So what you basically want is both players to clear their last bases at the exact same time. Then you did everything correct. However in order to find both paths that are optimal you always have to keep the 3 variables in mind:
The strength of each camp The strength and spawns that will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. However you need to now keep in mind for yourself and your team-mate that it might be an easier or harder to get to t4 due to probably stronger spawns, bases, etc.. So there might be camps that you can clear at a certain time. The map structure will most likely not be mirrored exactly so that one of you will have longer ways to certain key points of the map.
Might be easiest if I just explain with the help of the graphic above in 4.1..
I assume that that map is a bandit map and you both decided for Lost Spirit Ship. The camps in-between got cleared by you with 3 Lost Spirit Ship and you both are back at your t4 with 5 Lost Spirit Ship in total.(That's a typical scenario. You clear the easy bases between the t4's while your waiting for enough power to spawn enough Lost Spirit Ships to start fighting the bigger bases). You have similar power and start at the same time running from t4. Notice that this is just a model.
So this is basically the perfect situation to plan routes. In this case Player 1 wants to go clear camp 10 --> camp 9 --> camp 11 --> camp 16 and camp 17. Player 2 wants to clear camp 13 --> camp 12 --> camp 16 --> camp 15 --> camp 14. That is because Player 1 has a sub optimal way to go as they have to run a certain amount backwards (out of camp 9) and has an extra camp before reaching the very hard camps. In order to compensate for having a longer way than player 2, player 1 gets 3 easy camps and 2 hard camps to clear while player 2 gets 2 easy and 3 hard camps to clear.
This gets even more complicated if you assume that in certain camps are bosses of different strength or only 1 player has a bloodhorn. I hope that the base concept of this got clear with this easy example though.

5.rPVE/Battleground 4 Players

5.1. Map structure and general principles


So as you can see in the image above, you will face again the split way at t1 meaning that as soon as you attack you will get attacked at your T1.
Notice that the T2 is for all players on the same side of their T1 (in this case right side). T3 and T4 is pretty standard as 2 players share those bases with each other. In-between the T4's of the 2 sides you will face 1-2 bases, and in the 2 ranks after T4 you will have each 4-5 bases. The spawns that will come from T3 always attacks the outer players (1 & 4). Therefore they will have more of a supportive role in the game as they aren't able to build up their t2 army as soon as the inner players (2 & 3).
The basic principles pretty much stay the same: Kill the 'right' spawnbuilding as soon as possible and do not use any more power than necessary for defence.

5.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits/ Stonekin/ Twilight
Player 1 will support Player 2 and Player 4 will support player 3. Therefore the outer positions will start with fire while inner positions start shadow for early access to resource booster. Depending on the strength of the camp player 2 and 3 will get 1-2 mines & 3-4 eruptions on the spawnbuilding. Depending on the map Dreadchargers might be a thing to destroy the spawnbuilding if you 'only' get 3 eruptions. No need for skeleton warriors.
After that outer positions can try and clear their t2 by themselves or wait for the inner players to help clearing them.

T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
This one can get really tricky. If you only get 1-2 manabeasts or treespirits + only squad units, your good to go and just do the same as against Bandits, Stonekin and Twilight. But most of the time you wont be that lucky and face lost vigils in addition. If that's the case you will have to choose one guy who starts shadow, so either position 2 or 3. Who starts shadow depends on how easy the T3 will be and how well he can reach other parts of the map from his side of the map as this guy will have quite significantly more power than everyone else. The other 3 will start fire and just support the hell out of him. Erupt the spawnbuilding (each vigil needs 5-6 eruptions when buffed up, depending on how fast you can erupt). I recommend 2-3 mines and as many eruptions as necessary while the shadow player will tank the damage with 2-3 skeleton warriors (unholy armour obviously active). After that the other inner player will get supported by the 2 outer players and himself. He can take care of the vigils with help of Blaster cannons. I recommend 3-4 nomads for that + 2-3 blaster cannons. Outer players are just defending themselves against the T3 spawn and gather power.

T2 - Enemy Bandits/ Twilight
Most likely very easy camps. 5-6 shadow phoenixes should be enough to clear T3 and T4, unless you face a boss at t4 or have those nasty windhunters against you.

T2- Enemy Stonekin
You will most likely face constructs and/ or tortuguns again. Means you need to summon 12 phoenixes again by making some of them voidless in the first place. Pretty much same as in 4.2. T2 - Enemy Stonekin. I recommend not to clear T4 unless you are 100% sure you can do it as some of the spawns can get really nasty, especially if they are coming from the after T4 camps (bunch of shields and those bandit snipers) and you really want to have some shadow phoenixes to defend against that.

T2 - Enemy Lost Souls
You will most likely need 10-12 phoenixes to clear t3 and help your team mates on the outer positions to clear their t2. Outer positions will spawn a bunch of sunstriders for lost vigils while shadow phoenixes take care of the big ground units (treespirits & manabeasts). I recommend using 4-6 shadow phoenixes for that depending on if those ground units get shielded or not. (Man beasts die from 3 phoenixes and 5 if shielded, treespirits from 4 phoenixes and 6 if shielded).
You will most likely get massive spawns from the camps after T4, those can include 2-3 treespirits/manabeasts, 2 lost vigils, several squad units and those shield lost wanderers. That means you will need several phoenixes to defend against that and something anti air. Sometimes a mark of the keeper is worth thinking about.

T3 - Enemy Bandit/ Twilight
Basically skipped as T4 is already cleared. Outer players building shrine of war. Against twilight healing gardens and wheel of gifts CAN be built. If you want so outer players will do it.

T3 - Enemy Stonekin/ Lost Souls

One of the inner players will go amii-monument and clear the t4 of his mate (against Lost Souls most of the time the shadow player). The other side can try ashbone pyros with frenetic assault/ infect/ soulshatter. Shrine of war is build by outer players again. Against Lost Souls incredible Mo with 'benevolent Mo' effect is a must, also build by outer players.

T4 - Enemy Bandit
Lost Spirit Ship Spam supported by bloodhorns(red) for the outer players (they might have some lost spirit ships in the end as well). I highly recommend using red Lost Spirit Ships only as you can use motivate + flame crystal to increase their damage significantly. Use Bloodhorns for the bosses.

T4 - Enemy Twilight
Mix of bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ships. You will need a lot of crowd control to be able to deal with the wrathgazers. I highly recommend earthshaker for destroying willzappers. Always run with 2 people (I recommend 1 inner and 1 outer player) or its very very likely that you get wiped out. Batariel CAN be an option for 1 or 2 players (I recommend 1 maximum). You need the ground presence of the bloodhorns but be careful to keep them alive.
Same deal with Lost Spirit Ships and flame crystal.

T4- Enemy Stonekin
I recommend a mix of Batariel and Bloodhorns as Lost Spirit Ships have huge problems with the high hp buildings and units of stonekin.

T4 - Enemy Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ships are the only way to go here. Incredible Mo prevents Lost Dragon debuff from them. Have bloodhorns always 1 base behind them and send them in after the base is cleared to kill bosses (be careful at the hellhound as he can 'eat' your bloodhorns) otherwise your bloodhorns will just get killed by necrofurys and even your ships have a harder time as necrofurys can deal damage to them when they focus a ground unit right under them. Batariel is not an option in here as lost dancers will deny all the buffs you want to send at him and necrofurys killing him super fast then.

5.3. Pathing

Basically the same as for 2 player maps but now you have to also coordinate 2 more players, which can lead to some weird routes especially for the outer players. Expect to have a power deficit on one side of the map making that side a bit slower by clearing camps and overall starting to clear camps. It becomes very situational in 4 player maps even though basic concept stays the same. Most of the time you will need to change up your original route to go by quite a bit as its hard to calculate strength of each player at every time in the game correctly and you will most likely have mistakes in there which is changing viable routes completely. Learning by doing is the only way to find correct routes in 4 player maps.

6. Cards that can be very useful but are very situational (mostly for 4 player maps)

Netherwarp - Porting over walls.
Portal Nexus - Viable with ground units only, makes ways shorter to the next base and avoids long ways back out of bases / dead ends - mostly use for stonekin maps
Tunnel + Burrowing Ritual - Having few units that are mostly air and in a dead end? use this - mostly useful on twilight maps
Mark of the Keeper - Defending against heavy Lost Souls spawn on your T3
Witchclaws (red) - Sometimes good in 2 player maps to clear out the spawnbuilding when its very far back.
Stone of Torment - Avoiding to pull out shamans from bases.
Matter Mastery (green) - Some Bandit Maps having this nasty Rioter's Retreat towers, matter mastery can be an option if the rest of the base is very weak and you are getting strong spawns.             
Frost Bite(purple) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player).      
Mumbo Jumbo (red) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player)

Constructive critics and comments and improvement suggestions are very appreciated. Feel free to ask any kind of questions as well. Leave a reputation if this was helpful

At this point a special thank-you goes to @Kiwi, that helped me with my english for this guide and @ladadoos who made the graphics, you are awesome

Thanks for reading.
P.s. as the attachment upload doesn't work for me i will add a dropbox link where you can find a pdf with the whole guide: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kgyobccr9u03hd/Treim's Battleforge rPVE Speedrun Guide.pdf?dl=0

Only freezes lead to reduced damage and most frost players use them inflationary without brain and thats the problem with them especially if you or a teammate uses damage spells / abilities (especially spell caster decks). In such situations freezes do even much more harm than any good, because those decks rely on killing before getting hit hard. If you freeze in that moment, it isnt possible to kill fast enough which also leads to increased damage you take yourself after the freeze disappears, wasted energy on your (and your teammates side) and also a pretty bad slow down and maybe even to own dead units because of a brainless freeze of a frost player...
Freezes are fine if used with brain and in some situations like the combination with stone warrior they are even really strong!
All other CCs are almost always fine.

Ikr bad EA! Give me my 9 stack wheel of gifts and 10,000 breeding grounds!!!!111 So much fun!!!1

@Eirias I think no matter what, composed decks are a good mechanic to serve pvp. I am not sure how this would be implemented the best way, but I think the tinkering can be done later on.
Lately, I was thinking about a more sophisticated reward and proggression system. So far we've talked about rewards and progression as one topic, but I think they should be separated. I see rewards as a short term motivator, while the progression is a long term motivator. "Progression" can also mean something entirely different to a casual player than it is to a dedicated player.
In general, I think we should consider 3 player types, which concern pvp and pve alike:
Casual Regular Dedicated I'm not going to define these roles and expect everybody to have a firm grasp what these roles mean (to keep it short). 
Player Progression
From personal experience, I'd say the lifespan of a player involves the following aspects:
Gather new cards. To test out new cards and make the best of the cards you currently have. Enhance your deck. You work towards a deck of your liking and upgrade your first common/uncommon cards. Harden your deck. You acquire more specialized/exotic cards and apply more charges. You buy U3 upgrades and start upgrading rare cards. Finalize your deck. U3 on rare cards, upgrading ultra-rare cards. (Collect). Create decks of different colours and do further experimentation. Achievements should also incentivise playing/collecting different kinds of decks. Of course, in reality you usually have multiple decks for different purposes. However, you usually have a "core set of cards", which your decks resolve around. This is also just a generalization, but I do think it roughly reflect usual player progression.
Progression Implications
Now, we cannot do anything about the progress (1-5) of a player. We can lower the player rewards so it is more difficult for players to progress, but without a tangible feeling of progression I'm afraid that people feel like they are stuck in the game and are subject to repetitive grinding. I'd greatly advocate that the game employs different mechanics for the following rewards:
Aquiring new cards (enhance your deck) Upgrade low level cards, meaning U3 on commons/uncommons (harden your deck) Upgrade high level cards, meaning U3 on rares/ultra-rares. (finalize your deck) In reality, we already have 3 different resources in the game which apply to the reward mechanics above. Each resource also has its own source of income.
BFP from quests and selling boosters Gold from finishing rpve Exp from doing campaign missions Now, grinding campaign missions for Exp is not a good mechanic. To upgrade ultra-rare cards you must have rank 9/10/11, otherwise you cannot progress. You are subject to an artificial barrier that forces you to grind missions. This is exactly what should be avoided. However, campaign missions must still be included in the lifespan of a player, otherwise content would go to waste.
Also, I am not counting card upgrades which you get from campaign missions, as they aren't reliable. They too should be reworked, but that's another topic.
Progression Suggestion
My primary suggestion is a new resource to upgrade high-level cards. This resource acts as a "premium" resource in addition to the "common" resource, which is gold. Some decks absolutely need upgrades (and especially charges!) on ultra-rare cards to make them viable. This hits pvp and more exotic decks in particular.
Going back to the original BF, I'd reinstall a "token resource" as an additional resource (to clarify, just one type of token). These tokens are be earned at the places where you usually gain lots of exp.
Advantages:
No artificial barrier. If you want to upgrade high level cards you can do so by playing the according modes. It is very clear what to do. Tangable feeling of progression. Instead of unlocking all high-level cards at once you upgrade your cards one by one. Better control for the devs. The rewards and requirements of tokens can easily be changed and tweaked. Possible suggestion for upgrade resources:
Common: 125/625/1,250 gold + 0 tokens Uncommon: 375/1,250/2,000 gold + 0/1/2 tokens Rare: 1,000/2,500/5,000 gold + 2/5/7 tokens Ultra-Rare: 2,000/4,750/10,000 gold + 7/9/12 As rewards for tokens, I thought of the following:
Missions: 1 for standard, 3 for advanced, 6 for expert. rPvE: 1 token for rpve 9. 3 tokens for rpve 10. PvP: Depending on the rating, but potentially generous. Of course, this is just a draft, don't take it too literal. But I hope to have given a good insight my thinking why the game could greatly benefit by having a a "common" and a "premium" resource for upgrading. At higher levels of play, gold should be given out in masses so you can upgrade a quantity of low level cards relatively fasts (which promotes trying out new cards).
Tokens are also only a concern for the higher levels of play so we can take different resource balancing into account. Therefore, the devs have direct control over how fast a dedicated player is progressing with finalizing his deck vs. how fast a casual player progresses in enhancing his deck.
On top, pvp should provide a generous amount of Gold and Tokens alike to make it easier to upgrade. Upgrades are most crucual to pvp and this would also provide an incentive to play pvp.
 
This is just covering the progression system. I've also been thinking about some more concrete mechanics for a better reward and achivement system. Depending on the feedback, I'll be making a separate post for this later on. The game has a very rich combination of content and progression mechanics. It would be an utter waste not to exploit all of its aspects.

I know, new cards are not going to happen any time soon and everybody has a couple of card ideas himself. Nonetheless, it is fun to speculate sometimes which is why I thought of a new Twilight T2 card, the Twilight  Infestator.
It would serve as a T2 version of Shaman which can only heal Twilight units. It can also be used as ranged anti-s unit (which is what Twilight lacks). One affinity focuses on the healing aspect, while the other focuses on combat.

Eldtrich Blaze: Every 3 seconds this unit emits a blaze of eldtrich energies that deals 72 damage (up to 108).
Infused Blaze: Same als Eldtrich Blaze, but also knocks back small units.
Festering: Every 4 seconds, the Infestator heals a friendly Twilight unit for 140 life points.
Gifted Festering: Every 4 seconds, the Infestator heals a friendly Twilight unit for 165 life points.
Twilight Infection: Infects an own ground unit with the twilight curse. During the next 40 seconds the unit can transform at will into any other twilight creature in the current deck whose orb requirements are met.
I was mostly concerned with gameplay when thinking about this unit. Twilight units don't see much play and I was hoping to promote the usage of Twilight units if this card was in the game. The ranged anti-S is certainly strong, but it's true power comes only when it is combinated with the potential of healing.
The stats are a bit weak for a 70e unit, but I mainly see it as a supporter. The stats are only to show the idea, and not suggest a finished implementation. On U3, its stats would be 720/590.

Amii monument is pure cheese. Honestly, it was just a cash grab for people who were serious about speed runs. Along with cards such as Curse Well, I don't think Amii Monument should exist at all. Either that or make it come with a heavy penalty.
Really, the argument that it was "already nerfed" is more than weak. There were cards in this game that received several nerfs (Lost Grigori comes to my mind) because of this reason. And just because a card was nerfed/buffed doesn't mean anything. The balancing handling of EA phenomic was a mixed bag. With more resources and time there is so much you can improve in the balance of the game.

@ManGa it absolutely is a top tier deck. As a general note, I was writing this summary when I couldn't access to the game. But now that I figured out things again rpve is a true breeze, even against Lost Souls. Glad I sparked some interest in this deck.
I think I will rewrite some units to make it a bit more concise and add some extra infos to it.
Also, your observation on Thugs is absolutely spot on. I still prefer Nomads in pve, but in rpve Thugs truely shine. It's not only the power generation, but also the anti-S that is an absolute boon.
 

Amii monument is pure cheese. Honestly, it was just a cash grab for people who were serious about speed runs. Along with cards such as Curse Well, I don't think Amii Monument should exist at all. Either that or make it come with a heavy penalty.
Really, the argument that it was "already nerfed" is more than weak. There were cards in this game that received several nerfs (Lost Grigori comes to my mind) because of this reason. And just because a card was nerfed/buffed doesn't mean anything. The balancing handling of EA phenomic was a mixed bag. With more resources and time there is so much you can improve in the balance of the game.

If balancing doesn't matter in pve, I want a global spell in t1 that deals 50000 dmg to every pve unit and building. Nobody should complain about that I guess. After all you don't have to play that card if you actual want to play the game, don't you?
Back then I had the idea to make Amii Monument t4 and I still think that's the way to go. It may sound useless but when you even reduce it's costs, there are several strategies you can use it in. You can use amii monument to make a fifth orb and therefore play card combination that are normally impossible to play. It would be pretty much like enlightment but a permanent version with less orb-freedom.

The card is not overpowered, it's broken. If a card is underpowered/overpowered you can just adjust some stats to make it balanced. If a card is broken by design, you can't just fix it that easily. Amii Monument completely circumvents the tech-system in the game and does not play along the usual rules of the game.

Amii monument is pure cheese. Honestly, it was just a cash grab for people who were serious about speed runs. Along with cards such as Curse Well, I don't think Amii Monument should exist at all. Either that or make it come with a heavy penalty.
Really, the argument that it was "already nerfed" is more than weak. There were cards in this game that received several nerfs (Lost Grigori comes to my mind) because of this reason. And just because a card was nerfed/buffed doesn't mean anything. The balancing handling of EA phenomic was a mixed bag. With more resources and time there is so much you can improve in the balance of the game.

By that logic you could just create a card that requires 500 power in t4 and instantly ends the game. Not a viable PvP card and therefor shouldn‘t be an issue right?
It is however bad game design and Amii Monument falls in that same category. The card completely and fundamentaly changes the way the game and therefor maps are played while having no drawbacks except that you have to use a deck slot on it. 
The card is broken on so many levels that i can not fathom how Phenomic ever thought the card being fine as it is.
Bad game/card design should be enough reason to change cards even if they not necassarily effect other players directly

Amii monument is pure cheese. Honestly, it was just a cash grab for people who were serious about speed runs. Along with cards such as Curse Well, I don't think Amii Monument should exist at all. Either that or make it come with a heavy penalty.
Really, the argument that it was "already nerfed" is more than weak. There were cards in this game that received several nerfs (Lost Grigori comes to my mind) because of this reason. And just because a card was nerfed/buffed doesn't mean anything. The balancing handling of EA phenomic was a mixed bag. With more resources and time there is so much you can improve in the balance of the game.

Twilight Brute was used in Fire Nature mirrors and against pure Fire, because both do have attack patterns where Ghost Spears do end up struggling at certain power levels. Especially Scythe Fiends + Wildfirespam in late T2 are insane and Twilight Brute was offering more reliable dps against that. Not worth the slot for me personally though. 
 
@ImaginaryNumb3r I wasn't exactly referring to the twilight units itself, it was more about the transformation ability. 
I mentioned the strong T3 as Bandits can cut a big amount of deckslots in T2 to play 4-5 card T3s. The T2 stays bad even if you invest more slots into it ...
Soulhunter is an important tool to crack current Timeless One defences. If Shadow Frost goes Fire in T3 you are at an advantage because disenchant + aura is a reliable XL counter that Shadow Frost lacks since Sunreaver got nerfed. In addition to that Shadow Frost T2 doesn't require Life Weaving so the slot efficency is awful when going for Fire T3. Bandit Lancer & Vulcan do have top notch dmg/power values and shred through attacks while Giant Slayer is empowering your attacks by a wide margin. Since alot of these cards are cheap, motivate makes a big difference
I don't play Rallying banner in bandits anymore, but if you do so Cultist Master + Evocators Woe may end up being super strong. Combined with Shadow Insect and Fallen Skyelf that is a very strong T3 too, that requires 100+ APM (sounds easy, but is a really high value for Battleforge) and low latency to be played effectively though. Soulhunter remains as a potential finisher. This T3 is more effective when playing Fire T1 because it isn't motivate reliant like the first one. 
Timeless One T3 still remains stronger, but Bandits can close out games once you are ahead. That's something alot of T3's in this current meta can't do ... and I guess that's something ... at least.
 
In the meantime Twilight transformation will never give you an advantage. I mean the passive effects of transformations are useless and the only meaning of this ability is to spawn a small unit and transform it into a large one (Twilight Minions -> Vileblood) to bait out wrong counter units. That said most T2 S counters in this game (Darkelf Assassins; Scythe Fiends) are useful as allround counters so this strategy simply doesn't work at all since it is expensive (you have to invest like 170 power to get your vileblood and can't transform at the enemys base if he defends proactively)

The closed beta is here & therefore Hirooo and I made the decision to write a 1vs1 PvP deck overview. This may help you as a new player to find a deck that fits your style and makes PvP more enjoyable from the beginning, but also be informative for you as a veteran since we will give you an overview about all the different matchups with some detailed analysis.
 
What do these deck descriptions contain?
1. Basic deck descriptions where we point out major strengths and weaknesses and show a viable deck for the faction. 

2. Comprehensive matchup discussion. 

3. Final overall rating about the strength/usefulness for new players and in a competitive environment
 
 
PURE FROST
 
 
1. Deck example


Pure Frost is a very defensive oriented faction, but also very dominant. War Eagles are one of the most powerful T2 units and with proper support they'll ensure air control for you next to every game. Your units are strong and your scaling into late game is fantastic, but your units are slow and expensive, which can give you some trouble in certain matchups. Especially in T1 the lack of a swift unit can get exposed really hard, therefore you may have alot of trouble acquiring map control. The risk of playing Frost is pretty high, but the reward can be great too since there are really easy matchups for you if you manage to survive the early stage of the game. 
2. Matchup discussion  

So, how does this rating work?
This will go from the easiest matchup (1) to the hardest matchup (9) for each faction. In addition to that the matchups are divided in 3 categories: easy, advanced and difficult matchups. The matchup description follows afterwards.
Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Frost vs Pure Fire
This is one of the most onesided matchups in Battleforge! Survive the T1 and the game is yours. Skyelf Templar destroys Skyfire Drakes and War Eagle exterminates every single other Fire T2 unit. There is honestly not alot to say about the T2, since it's so heavily Frost-favoured. But you shouldn't play too hesitant since Pure Fire has a shot to win the game in T3. Juggernaut is still one of the most powerful T3 units overall. 

(2) Pure Frost vs Fire Frost
First Frost has a limited amount of playable units and you have a way to counter every single one. Shielddrakes are still not strong enough to give your Skyelf Templars any sort of trouble and if you control the air you can apply so much pressure, it's even possible to turn around games with a big power disadvantage from the early game. Your T3 is superior too, so this is one of the easiest matchups to play. If you have trouble dealing with Rageclaws consider using Icefang Raptor as a counter. 

(3) Pure Frost vs Fire Nature
The early T2 is slighty Fire Nature favoured. Your opponent will win trades on an open field with Ghostspears/Skyfire + cc, but if you stay in a defensive position you shouldn't get in trouble at all, because Stormsinger is a really good allround counter. From the mid T2 stage you start to outscale Fire Nature heavily. War Eagle + Defenders is a deadly combo, because Defenders are really strong counters to Skyfire Drakes and they are suuuuper hard to kill with their ability. If you add Area Ice Shield Defenders get up to 3700 effective hp (that's more than a Juggernaut btw). Skyfire Drakes will die to them super fast, because they have low hp and the L bonus damage makes even the low dps Defenders relevant against them. And if there are no Skyfire Drakes left Defenders are still annoying to deal with. You can't use hurricane against them anymore, so there will be constant damageoutput against the powerwells, which prevents them from repairing too. Your opponent dies slowly and he can't do anything to prevent it.
Skill matchups:
(4) Pure Frost vs Pure Nature
Your advantage lies within the T1. Frostmagespam is next to unbeatable against nature if you manage to get a critical amount of units (7+ Mages with Icebarrier & Homesoil). This changes the dynamic of this matchup dramatically. Unless the map is extremly big you should be able to prevent instant T2 aswell, because nature has no M/M counter and as long as the mages are splitted against incoming cc there is no unit left to deal with Frostmages (S Units get knockbacked & Deep can be kited very well due to Frost Bite). Only Treespirits can be a little bit tricky, but if you manage to time it well you can build up Ice Barriers between the shots to block the incoming damage. If your opponent reaches T2 you are at a disadvantage, because Frost has alot of trouble against the pure Nature core cards (Deep One / Energy Parasite / Shrine of Memory). Your core unit (Wareagle) is also pretty inefficient because Parasite Swarm can just take it over and then the Nature player can support the Wareagle with his heals & cc which is really dangerous for you (same stuff applies for skyelf templar). So be careful about the use of T1 towers (Primal Defender, Mark of the Keeper) as they may work as a stalling tool in order to reach the critical T2 stage.  

(5) Pure Frost vs Bandits
While most fire splashes tend to struggle against the mighty air control Bandits does surprisingly well against Frost. The reason for this is pretty simple, because Bandits has more tools to remove War Eagles and Skyelf Templar from the map. Windhunter is an excellent unit and combined with well splitted Darkelf Assassins pure Frost starts to struggle a little bit. Your advantage lies within your reliabilty. You have builing protects and cc to withstand big attacks, while Bandits has ... well ... nothing apart from Aura of Corruption as a 40s zoning tool, which is decent against the slow Frost units, but usually still not enough. While this matchup goes still in your favour, it may be tougher than the previous ones.

(6) Pure Frost vs Shadow Frost
There are no real advantages for each faction. Shadow Frost has Darkelf Assasins & Stormsinger to remove your units, but on the other hand there is no Shadow Frost unit, that can put you under alot of pressure. In the late T2 stage multiple War Eagles with appropiate support start to be a little bit better, but these games often reach the T3 stage. This is why you should try to secure as much mapcontrol as possible in T1. On some maps your T3 spots may get denied, because Shadow T1 is faster than Frost and superior in dazed fights, which can lead to a big problem in the late game. Curse Well may be insanely powerful in this specific matchup and almost guarantees a T3 win, if you don't bring it into the figh by yourself.  

(7) Pure Frost vs Stonekin 
Aggressor is kinda annoying since he knocks back your War Eagle. Stormsinger & Spirit Hunters are really efficient against air units in the early T2 stage. Stonekin has what it takes to prevent you from excecuting succesful attacks, especially because Stonekin has superior cc. Once 2 of the most defensive decks in Battleforge meet each other things are going to be really boring and your win condition as the Frost player usually is either T1 or T3. Most Stonekin Decks are lacking strength once the games reaches T3 as they don't invest too many slots into it.  
Difficult matchups:
(8) Pure Frost vs Pure Shadow
Pure Shadow can give you a little bit more trouble, because it has 2 big powerspikes. The first one is in the early stage of the game, where Shadowmages delete pretty much everything and the second one is the Harvester spike. Against Frost the first spike is actually even more important. Shadowmages & Darkelf Assassins are really hard to remove and can delete single units pretty efficiently. Nether Warp can be used to dodge Cold Snap or War Eagle screams and heal up Shadowmages when they attack and since Shadowmage & Darkelf Assassins are pretty high dps units you may even lose powerwells at this rate. If you survive the early T2 stage Wareagles take control over the game again. Since most Shadow units are pretty cheap it will get harder to split them up later into the game which makes the Wareagle's abillity way more efficient. You can also deal with an incoming Harvester really will due to lyrish knights & frost bite, but never underestimate him. If you are at a disadvantage (doesn't matter if it's temporary or permanent) the Harvester can seal the deal and close out the game by himself. A sweet trick in this matchup is to cancel out War Eagle screams in order to bait out a Nether Warp dodge attempt. 

(9) Pure Frost vs Shadow Nature
For some of you maybe a little bit unexpected, but Shadow Nature is the most difficult matchup for Pure Frost. Darkelf Assassins and Nightguard supported with nature cc are really really dangerous and can deal with nearly everything pure Frost has to offer. The Shadow Nature player can pretty much ensure to steal your War Eagle and take out the Nightguard safely afterwards. Shadow Nature has everything it takes to beat Pure Frost in the early T2 stage and is therefore the hardest matchup out of all 9.
 
3. Ratings

Competitive Rating:
Let's start with the competative rating, but first I'll sum up the most important positive and negative aspects of Pure Frost.
Pros:
+ Very solid deck with many advantageous matchups 
+ One of the strongest Air control decks
+ solid choice against most meta decks
Cons:
- Vulnerable in the early stage of the game 
- No mapcontrol due the lack of a T1 swift unit
We talk about one of the stronger decks for sure, but since the T1 can get heavily abused on some maps it's sometimes really risky to play pure Frost. You would lose map control, T3 spots or in the worst case scenario you would end up on Uro where you can't even take a single well without a dazed fight, where you are probably going to lose.
Final comp. rating: 7/10

New player experience:
For new players Frost may be a very solid, but also a pretty boring choice. It has great upsides due to the strong scaling (means you don't have to be proactive and take risks to win games), but it's slow and the T1 can get abused pretty easily, especially when you are an unexperienced player. 
Final NPE rating: 5/10
 
PURE FIRE
 

1. Deck example

If you want a deck with offensive strength, this deck provides it. Insanely high dps units & spells and an immense siege potential with firedancer. In addition to that pure Fire has one of the best T3 units also known as Juggernaut, which leads you to alot of wins against people who may be even superior to you in terms of skill. Your downside is the lack of deck variety. The amount of viable cards is insanely limited and you end up with only M ground units in T2, which is a problem in the pure Frost matchup, where War Eagle exists as a massive M Unit counter. 
2. Matchup discussion  

Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Fire vs Shadow Nature
This matchup is pretty easy to play. Shadow nature has no L unit and this means they have nothing to apply alot of pressure against you. Only well coordinated early attacks with the cheap nature cc's may give you some trouble, but if you don't lose immediatly you will just outscale your opponent pretty safely and you can set up unstoppable attacks afterwards. Wildfire is a really nasty card against Shadow Nature since it removes the low hp units while protecting your units in offense & it does alot of damage against the power wells over a good amount of time (therefore it's impossible to repair them). And if you are a toxic player you can use cliffdancer in this matchup too. The only way to remove them is aura of corruption, which is hella expensive and not power efficient at all.

(2) Pure Fire vs pure Nature
Nature is pretty helpless against your offensive strength. You need SoM + Deep One + permaheal to get anything done as a Nature player and before this happens he's usually already dead. It's so hard to remove the Fire units especially at the mid T2 stage, while your damage output against powerwells is massive. Nature mostly has low dps units and their cheap burrower attacks are easily defended by Enforcer. Skyfire Drake onehits Energy Parasite which leaves you in a really comfortable position in this matchup. 

(3) Pure Fire vs Shadow Frost
The praised shadow frost deck at number 3, what a surprise. But pure fire does insanely well against it. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler and Firedancer are really hard to remove. This gives you a solid advantage in offense and without a cliffdancer counter in Shadow Frost you can litereally destroy people. It's a really "lame" playstyle, but super efficient. The only thing you need to be worried about are the L Units. Mountaineer is really hard to remove, it sometimes feels even impossible. But keep in mind he costs a huge amount of power and if you manage to dictate the tempo of the game you can take your opponent down before you get into an uncomfortable position. In T3 Juggernaut may be the best tool in the game to break through a Timeless One Defence, so even scaling is on your side. 

Skill matchups:
(4) Pure Fire vs Bandits
Bandits is a little bit tricky for you. Skyfire drake + Life Weaving is pretty nasty against pure Fire and pretty much Bandit's trump card in this matchup. Apart from that both of your decks are super offensive oriented. The difference: pure Fire has the stronger offense. In T3 Juggernaut is still superior to Soulhunter or nerfed Sandstorm, so this matchup still goes in your favour. 

(5) Pure Fire vs pure Shadow
Tricky matchup and pretty much 50/50. In the early T2 stage Shadow has the advantage due to the high effiency of shadow mages on a low void level. But in mid T2 pure Fire starts to shine. Lavafield demolishes the Shadow units and you can apply constant pressure with your high dps attacks and destroy alot of power wells. But if you fail to do alot of work at this point you will reach the late T2 stage. And from that point on Harvester takes over. You can't take him out without losing at least a power well or an orb, even if you are ahead. So chose the right moment to attack or you'll lose. Once Harvester is out he will drop at least one well and it won't take long up until the next one is about to appear. 

(6) Pure Fire vs Fire Nature
Also a pretty specific matchup, maybe not as complicated as the one against Shadow. At the early T2 stage Ghost Spears + Skyfire Drake is really hard to remove, because your own Skyfire Drakes get oinked and die without dealing damage at all. Ghost Spears are M Counters and stronger on a low void base than scythe fiends. Since Pure Fire has no S or L ground units in T2 it's really hard to play against these kind of attacks early on. Later in the game you'll have an easier time, because you will regain air control on a higher void level, since Skyfire + Oink can be countered by an immediate double Eruption (155power vs 150power) now and you can attack with Ravaged Scythe Fiends and keep Ghostspears away from you with Wildfire support, which leaves you in the game leading position.  

(7) Pure Fire vs Stonekin 
Stonekin has really strong and solid units to remove the pure Fire units in the early T2. Stoneshards are insanely strong against you and are pretty much the main reason why Stonekin is ranked here as one of the more difficult matchups. Stormsinger + cc stands a small chance against the Enforcer, but he is still the strongest T2 M unit, so your only problem are still the Stoneshards. Stonetempest does knock back M Units which can be troublesome at some point, but you can remove him with Scythe Fiends + Skyfire + Wildfire (in case he gets permahealed) at the later gamestage. While Stonekin does well in defense, there are no high dps units, that can translate this stability into pressure. And believe me, even the strongest defense doesn't stand a chance if pure Fire reaches late T2.   

Difficult matchups:
(8) Pure Fire vs Fire Frost
Here we are. The First matchup that doesn't go in your favour. Shield drakes are a big threat in the early game, but what really pressures you the most in this matchup is the Mountaineer. Mounty + Skyfire applies huge pressure and also scales very well into mid T2 so you have alot of time to beat the Fire player before he starts to get enough power to set up his own attacks. In the late T2 stage the pure Fire dps just gets to high and you'll roll over your opponent like in every other matchup. If you manage to get up to a 7-8 wellbase during the T1 stage you may consider skipping T2 entirely. Fire Frost has no tools to fight against Juggernauts in T3, which can be very important on big maps, that allow uncontests tech ups. 

(9) Pure Fire vs Pure Frost
This is the most difficult matchup for you. I will be honest, you are at a massive massive disadvantage. As already mentioned in the Pure Frost section War Eagle deletes all your ground units, while Skyelf Templar gets rid of your Skyfire Drakes, because of the massive difference in combat stats. You can carry Global Warming in your deck to make this matchup at least a little bit easier, because it hard counters Area Ice Shield, but even then this matchup stays as the hardest one. Mortar Tower is pretty overpowered against Frost T1 though, which may give you a chance to win the game before it gets to T2 on some maps. 

3. Ratings

Competitive Rating:
Pure Fire summary
Pros:
+ Insane offensive potential with long range, high dps units
+ Best M/M unit in the game (Enforcer)
+ high dps spells who can have a great zoning effect
+ Super solid matchups against most meta decks esp. Shadow Frost
+ One of the strongest T3's in the game
Cons:
- Relies on an extended T1, because you need a high void level to be efficient
- struggles against some underplayed deck like pure Frost and Fire Frost
- struggles in defense against L units and its counters are next to useless in offense
Pure Fire does really well against against the meta decks and since some of these matchups are ridicilously easy pure Fire is one of the strongest decks for ranked games. From the moment on where pure Frost & Fire Frost start to get more popular pure Fire will decrease a little bit in popularity, because it really struggles alot against strong air control. But in the current meta pure Fire is in a perfect spot and extremely powerful.
Final comp. rating: 9/10
New player experience:
If you are really new to the game pure Fire is maybe not the best choice. It requires a really extended T1 to make scaling into higher void stages easier and this is difficult to excecute in some situations. In addition to that pure Fire struggles against L-units and as a new player L-Units often seem overpowered and it's really frustrating to lose against this type of playstyle. Therefore I don't think you should play pure Fire to learn the basics of this game. But if you reached a decent level you can play the deck and achieve some wins even against some players who are in theory better than you.
Final NPE rating: 5/10
 
PURE NATURE
 

1. Deck example

Pure Nature is one of the most interesting decks in the game, but it's also one of the weaker ones. There is some sort of variety in terms of deck building since there is also the Root-deck, but since this is inferior to the classic version I will make my matchup descriptions based on the stronger SoM/DO/EP deck. In fact pure Nature is one of the weakest decks, not because of its T2 matchups, but because your T1 is utter garbage against Phasetower and Magespam (Treespirits can kind of neutralize Mages at best, but they are shitty designed themselves and don't give you a freewin either in T1 since Icebarriers can block their damageoutput). Your late T2 is actually top tier with Deep One + Surge of Light and the huge powergains through the voidmanipulation thanks to Shrine of Memory. But reaching that stage is sort of difficult in most matchups. You have no M/M counter in T2 which causes huge problems. Therefore you mostly try to avoid taking to many powerwells, so there isn't alot of room for your opponent to attack, while you keep yourself relevant through Energy Parasite up to the point where your Shrine of Memory is ready to go and you can take over. 
2. Matchup discussion 

Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Nature vs Fire Frost
This matchup is pretty easy. Pure Nature is a hardcounter to Fire Frost, since it's able to remove all Fire Frost units in the early stage of the game and in addition to that Parasite Swarm is a huge threat for these big 100+ power cost units. Stormsinger is the only one that can cause you some trouble in the early T2 stage, but you can safely build your SoM and wait for your big Deep One attacks and there is nothing to prevent this as the Fire Frost player. 

Skill matchups:
(2) Pure Nature vs Bandits
Bandits has some tools to give you a run for your money. Rallying Banner attacks are pretty efficent and can overload your cc. Also Windhunter are pretty difficult to remove for you, since they have that S knockback against Spirit Hunters & Parasite Swarm, but since the knockback was pretty unreliable and buggy you still have a good shot against them. Apart from that you have solid units to remove the bandits attacks and good cc to make pressure yourself with Burrowers. That leaves you with a solid advantage in this matchup.

(3) Pure Nature vs Shadow Frost
Don't get me wrong here. Pure Nature does really well against Shadow Frost in T2. But there is one big Problem. Phasetower. Like honestly, Phasetower is legitimatly broken against Nature. On maps like Elyon or Whazai you can pretty much sacrifice the T1 immediatly against a strong Shadow player who uses him. It's so frustrating to lose games because of this and you should consider playing Primal Defender because of this. In T2 you have a good shot, since EP/SoM/DO is really really efficient but you need to close out the game in T2, because in T3 you will just lose to Timeless one and Lost Grigori.

(4) Pure Nature vs Pure Frost
Pretty similar stuff as the Shadow Frost matchup. Your T2 matches really well against pure Frost, but your T1 and T3 are straight up worse. You can neutralize Frostmagespam with Primal Defender to an extend, but without that you are done. Attacking very quickly is always a good idea, as you may be able to remove some of these Frostmage charges in early skirmishes, to delay the breakpoint, making a Defence slightly easier. But apart from that you are left in a pretty desperate situation. A well splitted Frostmagespam can even take down an early T2 attempt, therefore your possible options are pretty limited.  

(5) Pure Nature vs Stonekin
This matchup is kinda funny, because both of you have the tools to smash the other one. Nature can't deal with Burrowerspam due to the lack of an M/M unit (Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunter can be perma cc'd), Stonekin on the other hand can't block Energy Parasites and if your opponent doesn't carry Aggressor in his deck, your Deep Ones will destroy him entirely. Always keep in mind that your T2 scaling is superior, but in T3 you'll have a hard time. Overall this matchup still does go in favour of stonekin since it has the stronger T3 and the possibility to play a superior T1 (Frost T1 > Nature T1).

(6) Pure Nature vs Fire Nature
Fire Nature is really aggressive and hard to deal with. Pretty much the same deal as against every nature splash. Your opponent has the tools to defend against Burrower. In the meantime your are screwed against them, because you lack an M/M unit. Fire Nature also has a very good counter to Energy Parasites since Skyfire onehits them as already mentioned, but you can still use your Energy Parasites to force your opponent to play the way more expensive Skyfire Drake at a spot where he is useless for a while. It's a timewindow you can abuse to launch a powerful attack with a temporary advantage on the other side of the map. It's pretty much your only chance to be succesful at the early stage of the game. Apart from that your job is to survive the game up to a point where SoM starts running. Gladiatrix is just an average L Counter, so Deep One + Surge of Light is pretty powerful against Fire Nature, especially when your Shrine of Memory provides so much power. But due to your heavy weakness in the early T2 this matchup is still Fire Nature favoured.

Difficult matchups:
(7) Pure Nature vs Pure Shadow
Pure Shadow is really tricky to play against, because you can't really deal with Shadow Mages properly. Especially Magespam + Nether Warp is really dangerous in the early game due to the lack of an aoe damage spell in pure Nature. In addition to that Shadowmages can deal really well with early Burrower attacks and oneshot Energy Parasites. Your win condition pretty similar to most other matchups, you need to survive the early T2 stage. Harvester is powerful against Nature though, but you can defend against him either with Deep Ones, who pull him away from your orb or with cc chains (oink  -> root -> rogan kayle ability -> oink = 1min cc). But at some point you have a way to launch an own attack. Deep Ones are really powerful in offense since Knight of Chaos is just a mediocre L counter. Therefore you are next to unstoppable in case you survive the early stage of the game and start to pressure by yourself and keep in mind: Even if alot of these matchups look pretty bad in the first place alot of people don't use their powerspikes to close out games which is a great advantage for you as a Nature player, because your powerspike lies within the first activation of your SoM.

(8) Pure Nature vs Shadow Nature
Okay, now things get really terrifying. Alot of Shadow Nature players use burrowers and as we already learned pure Nature tends to struggle against them. What makes things even worse is the fact, that Motivate empowers Burrowers by a wide margin. Your wells drop nearly in an instant. On the other hand your Deep One is pretty much useless, because next to every Shadow Nature player uses Nightguard in his deck and she is super efficient against Deep One. The Shadow Nature player has counter cc to make sure he can catch your Deep One and his ability will make it even easier to kill the Nightguard afterwards (in this case the Shadow Nature player can also use the Deep One ability to catch her). Your only shining light is the Energy Parasite. Shadow Nature can't remove him before he gets his ability off and this is really important and the only tool that can keep you in the game. But still this matchup is one of the most difficult ones to play. 

(9) Pure Nature vs Pure Fire 
Pure Fire, we meet at last. As I already said: You are just helpless in the mid T2 stage against pure Fire. Your units don't have an outstanding damageoutput, therefore it takes time to remove the high dps pure Fire units. In fact that is too much time to save your powerwells. At least Deep One can deal with cliffdancers to an extend due to his ability and your late T2 scaling is superior, but reaching that stage without dying is quite a challenge. Splitted Skyfire Drakes will put up a very powerful defence against anything you may try to throw against Fire T2
3. Ratings

Pure Nature summary
Competitive Rating:
Pros:
+ Great scaling into late T2 
+ Can win games through voidmanipulation, even when you're down by multiple wells
Cons:
- weakest T1 in the game
- lack of an M/M counter in T2
- very DO/EP/SoM reliant 
- very unreliable 
Pure Nature has alot of abusable weaknesses in the early game and therefore you often get punished before you manage to reach the point, where you are able to control the game. But Shrine of Memory should never get underestimated, because he gives you so much additional power, that you'll be able to pull of some incredible comebacks. Overall the deck sadly still can't compete with the top tier meta decks and it also struggles against other Nature splashes, because they can set up Burrower attacks with Hurricane support, which is really difficult to play against. 
Final comp. rating: 3/10
New player experience:
Pure Nature may be a very interesting and micro intensive deck. But if you really want to be a successful player please stay away from it at the beginning. Nature T1 is the weakest and also the most complex T1 (unless you choose to play Treespirits zZz). It's way more useful to learn Shadow & Fire T1, because they are way more versitile and also easier to understand. Pure Nature in fact has alot of bad matchups and gets exposed by turrets like phasetower which is honestly really annoying. In addition to that pure Nature is a really specific deck, therefore it's very hard to translate the stuff you learn with Nature when you are playing different decks later on.
Final NPE rating: 1/10
 
SHADOW NATURE 
 

1. Deck example

Shadow Nature is my personal favourite deck. It's one of the most aggressive ones (at least you have to play it that way if you want to have some sort of success) and in my opinion it's one of the most skill intense decks aswell. You've got no L unit to rely on in offense, neither do you have any building protects or high defensive capabilities. Your strength lies within strong split attacks with spammable high dps units like Nightcrawler, Darkelf Assassins or Burrower. The cheap nature cc spells & Shadow's Motivate are the perfect support for these type of attacks which makes Shadow Nature super dominant in the early/mid T2 stage and fun to play. 
2. Matchup Discussion 
Easy matchups
(1) Shadow Nature vs Pure Frost
Pure Frost is pretty easy for you. As I mentioned earlier in the Pure Frost section Darkelf Assassins & Nighguards with the superior nature cc are your key to success. Frost dominates due to its strong air control, but you can take deal with it. War Eagles are countered with ease and then there is not alot left for pure Frost to be a serious threat.

(2) Shadow Nature vs pure Nature
This matchup was also discussed already. Burrower + Motivate are huge in offense & Deep One is pretty much a nonfactor due to Nightguard, who is amazing in the Shadow Nature deck. Some top level Shadow Nature players decided to exclude Burrower in their decks, which makes this matchup a little bit trickier, because your offense isn't as powerful anymore. Energy Parasite is your biggest enemy and if you don't pressure properly you may get outscaled in the later stages of the game, so don't get lazy. Your units are cheaper, your units are faster! So close out the game as soon as you can.

(3) Shadow Nature vs Bandits
You are in a great position in this matchup. Burrower with cc support are really painful for your opponent. Even just Darkelf Assassin spam with proper support is really powerful, because it removes the strong air units from your opponent and his only Darkelf Assassin counter are his own Darkelf Assassins, who are really susceptable to your Hurricane. Big Rallying Banner attacks can be completely removed with a sweet Shadow Phoenix + Nightcrawlernasty (or Burrowernasty) combo. Most of the time your Shadow Phoenix will even come back to life afterwards. Overall a pretty easy matchup to play due to the fact, that Shadow Nature has an efficient way to remove every potential threat from the Bandits deck.  

Skill matchups:
(4) Shadow Nature vs Shadow Frost
This matchup is also pretty easy. You have the same core units (Nightcrawler / Darkelf Assassins / Amii Phantom (she is similar to Stormsinger)), but your cc support is better, therefore you have the distinctive advantage. Your early/mid T2 is way superior and you can set up constant pressure up to a point where your opponent get's overwhelmed by your units and he loses the power to keep his powerwells up. You just have to be proactive and micro your units well and you will win due to the superior support tools, but if you just wait for things to happen Shadow Frost will outscale you and you'll end up in a T3 where the dynamic of the matchup changes dramatically.

(5) Shadow Nature vs Fire Frost
Still a favourable matchup for you, but a little bit harder as the previous ones. After Stormsinger got buffed Fire Frost got a really nice increase in terms of deck strength. The other units in this deck are pretty expensive. Accordingly, Shadow Nature has a pretty solid advantage in the early T2 stage due to cheap & strong units with cheap cc support. If the game goes into a higher void level you need to be aware of Mountaineer with Ravage & possible Disenchant support. It's really difficult to remove him, so make sure your Nightguard timings are on point, because if you mess it up you are in big trouble. Getting the Mountaineer can be really useful, because a combination between Stormsinger & Skyfire drake is a really solid counter against your Nightcrawler/Burrower and a Mounty would increase your offensive potential by alot.    

(6) Shadow Nature vs Stonekin
There was a period of time where Stonekin was litereally the hardest matchup for Shadow Nature out of all decks. But 2 big things changed, that turned the outcome of this matchup. First of all Razorshard got nerfed. This card used to be able to deal with every S or M unit in the entire game and Shadow Nature doesn't have an L-Unit. The second important thing is the introduction of Amii-Phantom. In it's melee form she's a hard counter against many Stonekin units, because Amii-Phantom is litereally a spammable swift Mauler. In her ranged form she is pretty much as strong as Stormsinger (Amii Phantom has even slighty better stats, but inferior support spells in Shadow Nature). Games would end up in a Stormsinger vs Amii Phantom spam, which is kinda weird, but Frost Bite & Homesoil leave Stonekin with a slight advantage in this matchup.

(7) Shadow Nature vs Pure Shadow
Pure Shadow feels kinda unfair to play against. Nighcrawler, Burrower, Darkelf Assassins. All these units lose really hard when they face Shadow Mages. As long as the Shadow Player doesn't run out of charges he will always defend himself against these attacks with great success. He won't be able to attack by himself in the early T2 stage, because Shadow Phoenix offers great AOE damage and Amii Phantom is very strong in this matchup, but honestly the Shadow player doesn't have to launch strong early attacks, because he can just win the game over superior scaling. With his abillity and proper buffs you can't remove Harvester with Aura of Corruption. While Darkelf Assassin spam + cc may be the best way to remove him, you need a big well distance in order to kill the Harvy in time. If you struggle to much with this defence Rogan Kayle is a good addition to create cc chains, that can deal with a Harvester, but apart from that Rogan is an entirely useless card, so decide wisely, if you really want to include him. From a leading position an Amii Phantom spam is able to stop a Shadowmagespam since you can you an oink to set up an engagement. With their melee mode they can disable ranged attacks, which perfectly works against Darkelf Assassins and Shadowmages. Nightcrawlers are a big threat, but for that you can switch some of your units into range mode and kite well due to the slow.  
 
Difficult matchups:
(8)  Shadow Nature vs Fire Nature
While the previous matchups were all decent for you, the upcoming ones are truly difficult. Fire Nature has a really big advantage over Shadow Nature. Skyfire Drake & Scythe Fiends may be availabe in decks like Bandits or Fire Frost too, but in a Fire Nature deck their efficency increases tremendously. I guess this showcases the true power of the nature support spells. Fire Nature often struggles against larger units, while Shadow Nature doesn't have any of them. For your defense: Burrower + Skyfire attacks are really hard to defend at some point and therefore Fire Nature has an easier time in defense and also in offense and is the superior deck in this matchup.

(9) Shadow Nature vs Pure Fire
As I already mentioned this matchup favours pure Fire heavily. Enforcer just destroys Nightcrawler, Burrower & Amii Phantom. Your only card with a decent value in this matchup are Darkelf assassins, who can do alot of work with cc support in the early T2 stage. But as the game goes on aoe damage spells will take them out and while you have a really hard time to attack, pure Fire just crushes your defence. Your units get countered by Enforcer & Wildfire, your cc is weak against Rallying banner attacks (btw. wildfire can constantly damage power wells during cc periods so there is no chance to repair them in time) and Firedancer is really hard to remove for you, especially over cliffs.  
 
3. Ratings

Competative Rating:
Shadow Nature summary
Pros:
+ pretty much the best early T2 in the game
+ has alot of easy matchups aslong as you make proactive decisions
Cons:
- does very poorly against pure Fire & Fire Nature, who are pretty popular
- poor scaling into late T2 stages due to the lack of L units (Shadowphoenix doesn't count btw.)
Shadow Nature does well in alot of scenarios and if you play the deck well you can crush your opponents in the early stage of the game, which is great, because your aggressive gameplay gets rewarded. Sadly the deck struggles alot against all meta decks apart from Shadow Frost. This kinda prevents Shadow Nature from reaching a top rating here.  
Final comp. rating: 6/10

New player experience:
If you are a new player, Shadow Nature is maybe a little bit too difficult for you. It's definitly one of the harder decks to play, but on the other hand it teaches you how to play aggressive and spending time to learn the deck is kind of rewarding. In addition to that Shadow T1 is really good for a beginner in PvP, beacuse its basics aren't as complex as Nature T1 for example. 
Final NPE rating: 6/10
 
FIRE NATURE
 
 
1. Deck example

Fire Nature is probably known as one of the most solid decks, because it has pretty much an answer for everything. Strong counterplay in T2 against S & M units and also sort of decent against L & XL units. In addition to that you've got some sweet ways to launch efficient attacks against nearly every deck. Overall the deck is really fun to play with a big variety in T2, which is its big strength. 

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Fire Nature vs Bandits
Bandits struggles alot against Burrower with cc support. You can use this to your advantage and destroy power wells for free. Your deck is better in all aspects at the T2 stage. Stronger units in offense, more counterplay in defence and great air control due to Curse of Oink. Since Bandits tends to spam many units due to the low costs of Darkelf Assassins & Nighcrawler Lavafield has a higher efficency in your deck especially since you've got Surge of Light as a solid counter against these AOE damage spells unless they are perfectly timed. Your T3 is inferior, cards like Sandstorm destroy your orbs & wells in an instant, so make sure to close out the game in T2 to win without any big risks. 

(2) Fire Nature vs Pure Nature
Your early T2 is superior due to Burrower attacks and the lack of an M/M counter in the pure Nature deck. Just make sure to use your Skyfire Drakes well to get rid of these annoying Energy Parasites and you are ready to go. I guess I repeat myself a little bit at that point, but pure Nature starts to get rolling, when SoM starts running, so finish your opponent off or try to take out at least as many powerwells as possible before that happens. If you use your huge advantage in the early T2 stage this matchup isn't even remotely close.  

(3) Fire Nature vs Pure Shadow
Alot of your strengths comes with Ghostspears / Skyfiredrake + Lavafield / cc support. Pure Shadow tends to struggle against that, especially in the mid T2 stage, because all these low hp units are kinda vulnerable to lavafield, especially Shadowmage. You need to be aware of flanking units to prevent a nasty suprise against your Skyfire Drake. Your defense against Harvester is also pretty nice due to the highly efficient Root & Disenchant combo. Just leave some Skyfiredrakes and a Gladiatrix behind that and they will take the Harvester down before he reaches your powerwell/orb. The shadow player needs superior micro to win this matchup, which implies, that you are in a pretty good position here.    

(4) Fire Nature vs Shadow Nature
In this matchup your defense is straight up better, which leaves you in a very comfortable position. You have good ways to counter Nightcrawlers, Darkelfassassins & Burrower and in case your opponent overcommits at some point you can lauch insanely powerful counterattacks, that are way harder to defend for the Shadow Nature player. Fire Nature is just overall solid and Shadow Nature has some distinctive weaknesses (No big unit in offense, unreliable defense since most units are susceptable to cc), that can be abused and this turns the matchup heavily in your favour. 

Skill matchup(s):
(5) Fire Nature vs Pure Fire
You shine in the early T2 stage with Ghostspears + Sykfiredrake, while your opponent will outscale you in late T2, where Scythefiends + Ravage + Wildfire take over and delete your power wells one by one. Since I've described that matchup already in the Pure Fire section here is a short, but important tip for your decisionmaking: Since Pure Fire scales with high void power you should actually try to play your T1 accordingly to avoid this game stage. In other words: Play a short, but aggressive T1. Try to get a small advantage, but then don't hesitate and make your fast transition into T2. Your position here is favourable already and if you've got a small lead in T1 you can use this to snowball and finish the game. If you still struggle in this matchup consider the addition of vileblood in your deck, because pure Fire struggles against L units, especially the ones with high dps against building. 

(6) Fire Nature vs Fire Frost
This gets kinda interesting. The tricky matchups for Fire Nature are the 4 Frost splashes. While some of you may think it's because of the building protects, that's actually not the case. Double Burrower attacks used to be really power efficient against Frost splashes, because the cc support was usually cheaper than the amount of power, that had to be invested to keep the power wells alive. What changed the dynamic in alot of these matchups, especially in this one was the Stormsinger buff. She allows you to defend Burrowers way more efficiently in the early T2 stage and is simultaniously strong against skyfire drakes with that gravity surge ability. Stormsinger defense in the early T2 with a transition into shielded scythe fiends & drakes mid T2 and a Ravaged Mounty late T2 is really hard to deal with. 

Difficult matchups:
(7) Fire Nature vs Stonekin
The second ugly matchup. Stonekin can be really nasty when it reaches a critical unit mass and Stormsinger allows you to reach that state. Your Burrower/ Scythe fiends / Skyfire Drake attacks are at least kinda dangerous and Mauler can deal with some Stonekinunits like Stone Tempest, but you are still at a disadvantage. Stonekin has an insanely good defense thanks to cheap cc and building protects and this allows your opponent to either stack up a big T2 army with the powerful stonekin units (especially the Crystal Fiend support is annoying at that point) or scale into a strong Timeless One T3.

(8) Fire Nature vs Pure Frost
Pure Frost can give you alot of trouble. You need to use your advantage at the early T2 stage. If your opponent is too greedy and goes aggressive in the early T2 stage you can outtrade him with Skyfire + Oink. Add Ghostspears into the mix and as long as you split them well against Frostmage knockback you can start to attack and apply alot of pressure. You need to get a solid advantage in the early T2, otherwise you'll end up getting outscaled. Defenders are so painful to deal with as a Fire Nature player. If they get mixed up with War Eagle & Skyelftemplar and Area Ice Shield support you have no way to clear these units without losing wells / orbs. The moment you are in a defensive position against Defender the game is over. 820hp + 660hp with 60% damage reduction are more effective hp (3700) than a Juggernaut (3550) can offer. If your War Eagle and your Defenders are well splitted your powerwell will get attacked constantly and you have no opportunity to repair it. Skyelf Templar & Defenders destroy Skyfire Drakes and War Eagle deals with every type of M unit in your deck. Ghostspears don't have enough dps to take out Defenders in time and at some point a Frostmage gets into the mix which will give you even more problems. Since your T3 is also not strong enough to crack the pure Frost defense you need to win the game in the early stage or you'll have a bad time.

(9) Fire Nature vs Shadow Frost
This matchup doesn't even feel that bad. You can apply pressure with Burrowers in T2 and as long as you carry Mauler in your deck you can sort of deal with the Shadow Frost attacks, which may give you the impression you are in an even matchup. The thing some people don't realise is the fact, that Shadow Frost is like a ticking time bomb. You may get a favourable trade here and there, but at the end both of you will just well up together and suddenly the game goes into T3. At this moment you are dead. End of the game! You need to kill your opponent in T2, otherwise you will just lose. Due to Stormsinger alot of the early Burrower pressure in T2 is gone and you have only one timewindow in the late T2 stage with splitted double Burrower attacks supported by Skyfire Drake. If your opponent defends your attack successfully you lost the game. Finishing off a good Shadow Frost player is truly painful. Your micro has to be on point, otherwise your Burrower will get sniped by Stormsinger + Frostbite before you can retreat. 
3. Ratings

Competitive ranking: 
Pros:
+ Very balanced deck with no big abusable weakness
+ insane diversity in T2 
Cons:
- Very slot instensive in T2, which results in a small T1/T3
- Bad matchup against Shadow Frost
Overall Fire Nature is a really good deck for ranked games, beacuse you have an allround T2 to deal with so many different possible scenarios and you have no real "autolose" matchup. Shadow Frost is really tough though, which is a big Problem, beacuse it's also one of the most played decks.
Final comp. rating: 7/10

New player experience:
If you are a new player I would suggest you to play this deck. It teaches you the basics of the game, is really fun to play and due to its versitality you can learn how to use your specific units in specific situations to understand how to counter unittype X. Fire T1 is also really solid and its basics aren't really complex therefore you've got an ideal learing experience with this deck. The only small downside would be the fact, that its defense is a little bit harder to play compared to Frost splashes, but your great, cheap cc makes up for that a little bit. Still I would recommend you to play this deck, if you are a new player (But you should play a bigger T1 than the one in the deck example, because it's really hard for a new player to win without Thugs/Sunderer against T1's like Shadow). 
NPE rating: 10/10  
 
PURE SHADOW
 

1. Deck example

Pure Shadow is one of the more unique decks, because it has Shadowmage & Harvester in T2, who are vastly different from classic T2 units and give pure Shadow 2 big powerspikes, that can be used to win alot of games. You lack hard-cc in this deck, but you have the highest dps/power Unit & the only XL unit in the entire T2 as a trade off. The deck surprisingly didn't see alot of play in the top ranks, but I guess in the low/mid ranks everyone loved the Harvester and I've seen people in the forums aswell who seem to be addicted to this unit. One of the weaknesses in pure Shadow is the fact that Shadow Mage has got only 12 charges. For this reason you shouldn't waste them otherwise your strongest T2 unit isn't available anymore at some point in the game.
Note: The voidmanipulation (FoF Balsa) type deck is excluded from our analysis, because I despise this type of gameplay where you just play voidmanipulation into Harvester into voidmanipulation into next Harvester until you either win the game or lose due to the huge permanent power loss if you mess up your attacks.  
2. Matchup discussion

Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Shadow vs Bandits
Both of you lack cc, but you've got Shadowmage to outtrade all Bandits units at the early T2 stage. The only troublesome attack for you is pretty much Sunderer + lw or buffed Scythe Fiends with Lavafield support at a high void level. But you can play Knight of Chaos to delay these kind of attacks or just use a Nightguard as a threat for these bigger units. If you play your Harvester the game should be won anyway. Just make sure to use nether warp to dodge aura of corruption and then there is nothing left to kill the Harvester in time bevor he takes down wells and maybe even orbs too. 

(2) Pure Shadow vs Pure Nature
You have good tools to deal with pure Nature. Shadowmage + Nether Warp (Green) is really hard to deal with as a Nature player, therefore you can apply alot pressure pre SoM to close out the game. Harvester is also a really good tool to snowball a lead and close out the game, but keep in mind that cc chains with Rogan & the Deep One ability exist and therefore there are ways to defend against your Harvester if you are in an even position. Use your superior T1 and early T2 to create leads, pay attention to Energy Parasites and finish your opponent off with Harvester, if he isn't dead already. With that gameplan you should win this matchup unless your opponent is alot better than you or prepared a cheesy counterstrategy.

(3) Pure Shadow vs Shadow Nature
Shadowmage works as an allround counter in this matchup and as long as you don't waste your charges you should be able to control your opponent at every stage of the game. Harvester is pretty hard to defend for Shadow Nature and therefore you have perfect conditions. Just make sure you don't spawn your Harvester to aggressive. An instant root aura will make your Harvester disappear in a second. Even with lifeweaving your opponent just needs to invest 175 power into the aura and the Harvester dies immediatly and you can't even use Nether Warp because Ensnaring Roots will keep the Harvester in place.   

(4) Pure Shadow vs Pure Frost
Shadowmages + splitted Darkelf Assassins are the key to success in this matchup. You can maybe even add a Nightguard into the mix to deal with War Eagles and you are ready to attack. You have a solid advantage at the early T2 stage and as long as you use it you will end up winning, but always be aware of the fact, that Lyrish Knights can deal with your Harvester and pure Frost has a superior T3, so as long as you aren't too passive you should be fine in this matchup. 

(5) Pure Shadow vs Fire Frost
Fire Frost can't do to much against you aswell. Shield drakes / Scythe Fiends are kinda okay against pure Shadow and this is pretty much the main reason why Fire Frost is here in the ranking, but it's not enough to really put you in danger. Fire Frost rarely uses Frostbite, Lyrish Knight or Homesoil, therefore your Harvester will be really damn effective. Gladiatrix & Skyfire drake won't stop the Harvester and especially not without reliable cc. Coldsnap has a cast animation which is more than enough time to dodge it with nether warp and get your Harvester in position to destroy powerwells/orbs and win the game.

Skill Matchups:
(6) Pure Shadow vs Stonekin
The difficulty in the matchup is pretty much card choice depended. Stonetempest & Razorshard can give your Shadowmages some trouble, you won't be able to attack early at least. Removing big Stonekin attacks can be pretty annoying too, because you can't use aura of corruption against stonekin since the stonekin player would just use the Aura for himself as protection to build up offensive Cannon towers. These turrets are also used pretty regularly in stonekin decks and combined with the strong nature cc it's really freaking annoying to play aginst this type of deck. A buffed Harvester is your chance to break the defense. You can add up Corpse Explosion in your deck to push up the damage even further, which helps to overload the building protects. While this matchup is really annoying to play it's still not too hard after the Razorshard nerf.

(7)  Pure Shadow vs Pure Fire
As I mentioned earlier, this matchup is all about timings. As long as you hit your right timings to attack there is not alot of counterplay left for your opponent. Pure Fire can't deal with shadow mages in the early T2, pure Shadow can't deal with pure Fire attacks at the mid T2 stage and pure Fire is doomed against Harvester. Since I've talked already about the T2 in the pure Fire section I want to add something about the T3. If the game reaches the T3 stage pure Shadow is in a favourable position, beacuse nether Warp can entirely counter a Juggernaut stampede. In addition to that you have alot of counter play against the Fire units regardless if you go for pure Shadow to play Voidstorm or play Frost in T3 and use Grigori who can disenchant the Juggernaut. Still this matchup is overall 50/50, because it doesn't reach the T3 stage most of the time.  

(8) Pure Shadow vs Shadow Frost
Shadow Frost is really annoying to play against. Darkelfassassins with Frostbite & homesoil support are really hard to deal with, even when you play Shadowmages. You could litereally defend a Harvester with that. Pure Shadow gets into a good spot when you get a temporary advantage at some point and translate this into an immediate Harvester attack. Since you can dodge cold snap with Nether Warp there is no time left for the Shadow Frost player to recover. At that point you can close out the game. Be aware of the fact, that Shadow Frost will destroy you in T3 so make things work in T2. The matchup is btw. even harder if you face Lyrish Knight, who can deal with Harvester and blow up mages with Lyrish nasties. 

Difficult matchups:
(9) Pure Shadow vs Fire Nature 
Skyfire Drake in combination with cc is the most difficult thing you have to deal with as a Shadow player. With proper support for them you are under alot of pressure. There is some micro stuff you can do with your Nether Warp to make advantageous trade like warping out of Lavafield or using Nether warp on your Harvester in offense to dodge Ensnaring Roots by prediction (if this works you litearlly win the game off that). Splitting your units against cc & Lavafield is also really important. As long as your Mages are well positioned you can take down the Skyfire Drakes (A motivated Mage onehits a Skyfire Drake btw). This matchup is super difficult for you to play, but you've still got a good chance to win it as long as your micro is on point. 
3. Rating

Competitive rating:
Pure Shadow summary
Pros:
+ Great dps deck with huge offensive potential
+ Crushes alot of the weaker decks 
+ Shadow Mage is one of the best cards in T2
+ Has no "terrible" matchup (40/60 in the worst case vs Fire Nature)
Cons:
- The most difficult matchups are against the most played decks
- Shadowmage may be really strong, but its charges are limited
I feel like pure Shadow was sort of underplayed by most top players. The deck has really solid matchups and even tho the meta decks are a little bite more difficult to play against there is still a good chance for you to win it anyway. Shadow Mage is a great allround counter and Harvester is just ideal to snowball your advantages. 
Final comp. Rating:  8/10 
New player experience:
Pure Shadow is a really good deck to start with. Shadow T1 is pretty ideal to start with and the basics of your T2 aren't that hard to learn (Shadow Mage has a great efficiency in lower elos even without insane micro skills). Harvester is also really powerful in low elo games, because alot of people have no clue how to defend against him, while it's pretty easy for you to execute this type of "strategy". You will end up winning alot of games in the lower ranks just because of that, which makes playing this deck even more enjoyable. No cc and the missing building protects are the big downside, which is the only reason why pure Shadow doesn't get 10 points in this rating.
NPE rating: 9/10
 
BANDITS 
 
 
1. Deck example


*Some stuff in this deck seems to be quite questionable in some situations, but there is no optimal Bandits deck, that can deal with all possible scenarios in the different Tiers. 
I will be honest at this point. Now we talk about the weakest deck out of all 10. Bandits does really poorly against alot of decks and has many abusable weaknesses. The biggest one is actually the lack of defensive capabilities. You have no cc at all apart from Aura of Corruption as a zoning spell and no building protects either. Simple Burrower attacks with cc support can be insanely dangerous for you if you let them come too close to your power well without any reaction. Your offense is kind of solid, you can do massive Rallying banner attacks in T2 and you have a pretty reliable T3 with Sandstorm. 
2. Matchup discussion

Skillmatchups:
(1) Bandits vs pure Frost
This is pretty sad, but you don't have a single easy matchup. If you play Bandits expect things to get really difficult at a higher elo. Pure Frost is still the best deck you can play against, because your Drakes combined with Darkelf Assassins offer strong counterplay against Air units and without its War Eagles pure Frost tends to struggle. It's still hard to get through the pure Frost defence, especially with Northstar the deck is such amazing defensive capabilities with a great scaling into T3. So try to get a decent T1 lead, which can be pretty easy on some maps against Frost and try snowball with your strong air control. 

(2) Bandits vs pure Nature
Nature has the advantage in this matchup, but it's honestly not that big. You can't defend against Burrower attacks and Energie Parasites are a distraction for you, beacuse it forces you to play Skyfire Drakes at unfavourable positions where they are isolated and bind 100 power for the duration of the attack. But you aren't helpless in this matchup. Nature T1 is weaker than Fire T1 and substantially weaker against Shadow T1 so try to secure an advantage at this stage of the game and translate this into aggressive Rallying Banner attacks in T2. Since you are able to spawn undazed units at any given time it's really easy to overload the cc and take down power wells. I personally prefer a Shadow T1 Bandits deck in this matchup, because Shadow matches well in T1 against nature and you can play Nightguard as an L counter, who is better against Deep One than Firesworn, because you can pull the Nightguard with your DO after the swap.

(3) Bandits vs pure Fire
Your ground units are vastly weaker in defence and in offense. Your only chance of surviving against Fire is air control. The crucial spell, that can help you alot in this matchup is life weaving. In combination with skyfire drake it's really good against pure Fire, because there is no real efficient way to beat it as long as you time it well. The easiest way to remove skyfire drakes is usually Gladiatrix or Skyfire Drake + Eruption, because that can burst them down and you technically spend just the 75 power, because your Gladi / Skyfire will remain witch full hp. But if you play the Life Weaving just a split second earlier, your skyfire survives and you can get rid of the counterunit leaving you with a 100 poweradvantage in the best case. But make sure your timing is on point. If you use life weaving to early disenchant  comes into play and using it to late is the worst case scenario. If the Eruptions hits before your lifeweaving you won't even get a good trade out of this because, your drake will be at 75 (62) hp if Lifeweaving just blocks the Skyfire (Gladiatrix) hit. Therefore your Drake will just die with the next hit.  
Advice: In case you still struggle in this matchup you can add Rageclaws in your deck, they match really well against all these pure Fire M units.
Difficult matchups:
(4) Bandits vs Fire Frost 
Fire Frost is actually the easist out of the 3 remaining frostsplash decks, because you can deal well with its units. Darkelf Assassin spam combined with Nightguard against these 100+ power units is efficient, so you have at least a good shot at winning. Your defensive capabilties are still nonexistent though and a straight wellfocus + cc will put you in danger if you don't react to incoming units in time. So keep in mind that you are still at a big disadvantage. 
(5) Bandits vs Fire Nature
Curse of Oink is the card that kind of decides this matchup. It provides superior support for Skyfire drakes compared to pure Fire and helps you alot in every situation. You can delay attacks to save your wells, you can protect your units in offense against every type of unit. You lack cc and this is why you are at such a bad position against alot of decks. Your deck lacks synergy and in the meantime Fire Nature is such a well rounded deck, with no big weakness. That makes it superior to your Bandits deck.

(6) Bandits vs Shadow Nature
As I said in the Shadow Nature section, Darkelf Assassins with superior cc support are really hard to deal with and if Burrowers are added into the mix you just run out of time. You need a substantial T1 advantage to survive the early T2 stage and afterwards you need to use you AoE damage (Shadow Phoenix / Lavafield / Aura of Corruption) to reach the T3 stage, where you have an easier time. 

(7) Bandits vs pure Shadow
Litereally every single unit in your deck gets destroyed by Shadow Mage. This is pretty much your main problem, because you can't apply any sort of pressure in the early / mid T2. And when you finally reach that point, where your attacks could be potentially successful, you will end up against a Harvester. Your defence against it is sort of mediocre with Darkelf Assassin spam combined with Disenchant against potential buffs. You can clear the Harvester, but usually not without tribute. That will put you at a serious disadvantage against pure Shadow.

(8) Bandits vs Shadow Frost
Here comes the good old Shadow Frost deck. Darkelf Assassins, Stormsinger, Cold Snap, building protects. Getting around this defense is really hard, and honestly from an even position it's even impossible against a good Shadow Frost player. But you still need to make your Rallying Banner attacks work with some magic, because otherwise you will just wait for your own death. The classic Shadow Frost T3 is just better and you will just get outscaled if you can't snowball. In case you fall behind at any given point, you will slowly get behind even further up to a point where the game is just over.

(9) Bandits vs Stonekin
In T2 you will stand no chance. Stonekin has like everything you want to have. Building protects and the insane nature cc combined are so incredible efficient against a deck, that has none of those. Stonekin has better units to deal with you anyway, so there is not alot you can do at the T2 stage. You actually have to abuse the fact, that Stonekin has to chose between the unreliable Frost T1 or the weak Nature T1 and decide the game there. Either win entirely or play such a long T1 to raise the void level to a point, where you are able to litereally skip the entire T2 stage. Otherwise I don't see a way how a skilled Stonekin player could lose in this matchup. 
3. Rating 

Competitive rating:
Bandits summary
Pros:
+ Alot of possible deck building options (can even be played with both, Shadow and Fire T1)
+ Strong Air control thanks to the drakes and Darkelf Assassins
Cons:
- At a high level you will lose next to every game due to tons of unfavourable matchups
- Has no defensive capabilities (No proctects, no cc)
- There is no optimal deck, that covers all possible scenarios and matchups
- Has no special units or combos who make the deck worth playing
Bandits does really poorly in 1vs1. As long as you are a really experienced player you can use your skill to cover up the major weaknesses in the deck and reach a high rank in the ladder, but if you're up against really strong players like in tournaments for example you won't get far at all. Bandits is the worst out of all decks and without proper cc support from a teammate in 2vs2 you will end up losing power wells against ridiciously weak attacks. The deck is simply outclassed by the other ones in so many aspects. Just your offense is pretty solid, therefore you need to snowball hard if you want to win. 
Final comp. Rating: 0/10 

New player experience:
If you are new to the game don't start with Bandits. You will regret it at some point. The deck is really hard to play in T2 and if you reach a somewhat decent rank you will lose games against people who are technically speaking worse than you. And if your opponent does well it feels sort of impossible to win which is really frustrating. The only upside I can see with Bandits is the fact, that you've got the choice between Fire T1 & Shadow T1, but this doesn't make up for anything. 
NPE rating: 0/10 
 
FIRE FROST
 
 
1. Deck example


 
Fire Frost is pretty much the deck, that gets overlooked all the time. The amount of people who played the deck was really small and I feel like many many players didn't recognize the strength this deck gathered due to the Stormsinger buff because of that. Stormsinger as a reliable M/M unit was like the last missing part of a pretty strong PvP deck. Fire Frost has strong, expensive units and good support for them. The most common tactic in this deck is probably Frost Sorceress + Skyfire Drake, which gives you very good air control. The weakness in this deck is the fact, that it doesn't have a reliable offense against certain decks (especially the ones, who can handle the Mountaineer).
2. Matchup discussion 
 
Easy matchups:
(1) Fire Frost vs Bandits
Bandits has 5 matchups that are harder than Fire Frost, but it's still the easiest one for you (just think about this for a while). As long as you pay attention to incoming Nightguards and respect the strength of Darkelf Assassins in the early game you should be fine in this matchup. Your attacks will be successful anyway later, especially if you apply pressure at multiple positions, beacuse the only defence Bandits offers is Aura of Corruption. Apart from that you can just cc counterunits and destroy the powerwells.

(2) Fire Frost vs pure Fire
A really valuable strength in this deck is the good matchup against pure Fire. Shielddrake gives you superior air control and with mountaineer you have a really strong mid T2 power spike and pur Fire doesn't have the units to react properly, which leaves you at a really advantageous position. Stormsinger adds some safety to the matchup, because you can kite Enforcer in the early T2. Your late T2 & T3 in general is weaker, so get a solid lead or close the game out before you reach that stage.   

Skillmatchups:
(3) Fire Frost vs Stonekin
Fire Frost matches well against Stonekin. Scythe Fiends are a really good removal against the S units and stuff like stonetempest couldn't knock them back properly. If you use Frost Sorceress to support them they are a true force against stonekin and since Aggressor wasn't included in alot of Stonekin decks Mountaineer is also a big big threat. Stormsinger would deal with early Burrower attacks and But stonekin does still have some awnsers. Stoneshards are really high dps units to deal with scythe fiends if you don't support them adequately.

(4) Fire Frost vs Fire Nature
Due to the Stormsingerbuff this matchup got turned in your favour. Mounty & Shielded Skyfire Drakes are solid ways to attack (supported Scythe Fiends are also sort of hard to remove) and Stormsinger allows you to defend against Burrowers. Things just get a little bit annoying, when Fire Nature gets to attack with alot of units at multiple positions, because Stormsinger can't clear them fast enough. So make sure you are the first one who attacks when the voidlevel starts to rise too high. 

Difficult matchups:
(5/6) Fire Frost vs Shadow Nature
The previous matchups were pretty easy to deal with, but the upcoming ones are really hard. Shadow Nature does pretty well against Fire Frost, because Nightguard is such a big threat for your 100+ power units. Unlike Bandits, Shadow Nature has the tools to make these Nightguard swap succesful with its cheap cc. With all these highly efficient low cost units/spells Shadow Nature gives you a really hard time at the early T2 stage. Stormsinger isn't enough to compensate in this case. 

(5/6) Fire Frost vs Shadow Frost
Shadow Frost and Shadow Nature are pretty much tied in terms of difficulty. Shadow Frost isn't as hard to deal with as Shadow Nature in T2, but against Shadow Nature your goal is pretty much to survive, while Shadow Frost tries to survive against you! If you don't make your Mountaineer attacks worthwhile you will end up against a stronger T3 and lose. Stormsinger & Darkelfassassins are really strong in a defensive position, because they defend well against Skyfiredrake. Scythe Fiends get slowed with Frostbite and therefore it will be pretty easy for the Shadow Frost player to kite them. Mountaineer is your only way to success, because alot of Shadow Frost players don't play Nightguard in their decks. But keep in mind, that Shadow Frost can use Mountaineer aswell and stay focussed!

(7) Fire Frost vs Pure Shadow
Shield Drakes with Lavafield support are pretty decent against pure Shadow, but this matchup is a ticking time bomb. As I mentioned in the pure Shadow section Lyrish Knights aren't included in the traditional Fire Frost deck. This leaves you with huge problems against Harvester. Since your units are already pretty expensive you will most likely be unable to apply enough pressure to prevent the Harvester from beeing played and without the proper counterunit you will end up losing most likely. 
Advice: If you play Frost T1 you can include lyrish knight, because you have Homesoil, Ice Barrier and even Frost Bite to support them. This makes the matchup easier, but usually Frost T1 is inferior, because it's just unreliable and you lose matches based on map-rng. 

(8) Fire Frost vs Pure Frost
This matchup is horrible. You have next to no options against superior air units, a strong defense and a superior T3. Even distinctive T1 leads won't help you to survive this matchup unless you can close out the game entirely. So all I can tell you here: If you want to win you need to play way better than your opponent.  

(9) Fire Frost vs Pure Nature
Pure Nature is also really annoying to deal with. You can stop early Burrower attacks, but you can't really attack yourself. Your expensive units are vulnerable to Parasite swarm and a combination out of Ghostspears and Spirit Hunters will deal with the rest. While this happens the pure Nature player can build up his Shrine of Memory safely and wait until it's ready. If it starts running prepare yourself. The permahealed Deep Ones are coming. 
3. Rating
Competitive Rating:

Pros:
+ Strong air control with Shield Drakes
+ Good matchups against popular decks (Stonekin, pure Fire)
+ Isn't as bad as it used to be, because with Stormsinger a reliable M Counter got added to the deck
Cons:
- Does really poorly against some decks (especially pure Frost & pure Nature)
- really expensive Units (vulnerable to unit swaps)
- using Frost Sorceress properly at mid/late T2 stages is really difficult and micro intensive
Fire Frost has alot of difficult matchups, but most of them aren't as bad as they used to be. The Stormsinger buff was really good for this deck and the good matchup against pure Fire makes the Deck attractive for higher ranked players because there were quite alot pure Fire mains up in the ladder. But you can't call this deck reliable, because there are some matchups, that are just awful. You sometimes can't even close games against pure Frost with a massive T1 advantage. 
Final Comp. Rating: 5/10

New player experience:
As a new player Fire Frost might not be ideal for you. Fire T1 is honestly great and Stormsinger and Mountaineer are really easy to play, but the Frost Sorceress micromanagement is really difficult and the deck isn't as strong as the top tier ones. On the other hand playing a frost splash is easier, because they are more forgiving in many situations. If you exclude the Frost Sorceress the deck is easy to play, but because of that it just gets a pretty low rating.
NPE rating: 4/10
 
STONEKIN
 
 
1. Deck example:


Stonekin is one of the most boring but also most powerful decks. It slowly builds up in strength and overwhelms your opponent at some point in the game. The T2 is honestly one of the strongest ones and the combination of crowd control and building protects leaves you with an insanely strong defence. The card diversity was also pretty good, so some matchups may change a little bit dependend on the cards you use in T2. 
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Stonekin vs Bandits
Massive defensive capabilities vs no defensive capabilities. The T2 in this matchup is incredible onesided and there is no way you can lose this as long as you don't get destroyed in T1. Burrowers with proper support will destroy wells pretty fast, especially with home soil. 

Skillmatchups:
(2) Stonekin vs Fire Nature
The following stonekinmatchups are pretty similar, so there is not alot to talk about. It's mostly about using your strong defense to stall the game into a gamestage, where you end up winning, which is generally speaking the T3. Against Fire Nature it's pretty easy to reach that point because of Stormsinger + cc and that pretty much sums up the entire matchup. 

(3) Stonekin vs Shadow Frost
This matchup favours you too. Your Burrower attacks are sort of power efficient, but not a big threat for Stormsinger + Darkelf Assassins. Your advantage lies within the fact, that stonekin can match the big Shadow Frost T3. Therefore you don't get outscaled and there is no pressure for you to be offensive, which makes this matchup much easier. 

(4) Stonekin vs Shadow Nature
The Stormsinger vs Amii Phantom matchup. Honestly the one who micros his M/M unit better wins the T2. Apart from that there is not too much Shadow Nature can do to pressure you too hard. In T3 you will win this matchup so there is no reason to be overly aggresive.

(5) Stonekin vs Fire Frost
Also a pretty managable matchup. You need to respect shielded Scythe Fiends and Mountaineer. But you have stoneshards to deal with the Scythe Fiends and the Mounty can be perma cc'd by Aggressor. Apart from that you are ready to outscale your opponent. 

(6) Stonekin vs pure Frost
Since Aggressor can deal with War Eagles there is not alot Frost can do to attack. But honestly you can't do alot either in T2 so this game will end up in T3 aswell. But pure Frost has a powerful T3, so don't underestimate it. 

(7) Stonekin vs pure Nature
This is the first matchup with a different game pattern. Playing against pure Nature is way more aggressive oriented. Nature struggles against Burrowers and you have to use this to your advantage and finish your opponent off before he gets to activate his Shrine of Memory. Energy Parasites are really annoying to deal with for you and keep the Nature player often in the game and therefore this matchup is one of the harder ones for you. 

(8) Stonekin vs pure Fire
Your units are more efficient in the early stage of the game while pure Fire scales really well into the late T2 stage. You want to avoid the late T2 or at least go with a solid advantage into this gamestage, because otherwise you will be in trouble. Given the fact that your T3 matches well against Pure Fire, because Timeless One + Stonewarrior is incredible against XL units it's not the worst thing to scale. You can use your early T2 advantage to reach this stage as safely as possible. Stoneshards are really efficient against all these pure Fire M units and as long as there isn't enough power to use wildfire support you will win many T2 skirmishes and that advantage can be used to survive the late t2, where the pure Fire attacks get to powerful. 

Difficult matchups
(9) Stonekin vs pure Shadow
You lack a serious XL counter and therefore Harvester is really hard to counter. Sure you could consider playing with Lyrish Knights, but most of the time you don't have the slot. In case you still want to use him you will be at a disadvantageous position in different matchups, keep that in mind. Shadow Mage + Nether Warp is also a serious threat, because most of your damage is damage over time, which is way less efficient against Shadowmages than burst damage. Razorshard can be useful to make this matchup a little bit easiert, but with the classic stonekin deck you will have some trouble here. 
3. Ratings

Competitive Rating:
Stonekin summary
Pros:
+ Really strong defence with strong cc and building protects
+ Very good T3 
+ Has the least bad matchups out of all decks
Cons:
- Apart from Burrowers + homesoil there aren't many ways to play aggressive at T2
- You are forced to play either Frost or Nature T1, who are unreliable and risky
Stonekin is definitely one of the top decks. Especially after the Stormsinger addition there is litereally nothing, that gives you trouble at early T2. You don't have many "freewins", but on the other hand you can pretty much handle every deck and with your strong T3 scaling this is a big advantage. Your T1 is honestly your biggest weakness  and the main reason why Stonekin is not ranked as the strongest deck here. Nature T1 is too weak and Frost T1 way too unreliable due to the lack of swift units.   
Final competative rating: 8/10

New player experience:
Pretty much the same stuff applies for newer players. The T2 is really strong and also really easy to play, but Nature T1 is way to complex to start with and Frost is also not the best T1 to start with. But with the massive CC and the strong defence in general stonekin deserves some credit. 
Final NPE rating: 5/10 
 
SHADOW FROST

 
1. Deck example

 
Shadow Frost was one of the most played decks in PvP ... for a good reason. The deck is the most solid one with no big weakness and an outstanding defence. You may struggle a little bit in T2 to set up efficient attacks that don't include Mountaineer, but this isn't a serious issue, because your T3 is fantastic and therefore you aren't forced to be aggressive. It's already enough to defend efficiently against your opponents attacks and build another powerwells up to a point where you can afford to switch into the T3 stage, where you'll most likely win.
2. Matchup Discussion

Easy matchups:
(1) Shadow Frost vs Bandits
Bandits is really easy to play against. Your units in T2 are equally strong if not even a little bit better and you have access to crowd control and building protects. Your T3 is superior and in T1 you always stand a chance with Shadow T1 against any given colour. Just look out for Nightguards if you decide to go for an attack with Mountaineer. 

(2) Shadow Frost vs Fire Frost 
Fire Frost is also really easy to play, because you aren't really forced to make proactive decisions. You just need to defend incoming attacks and scale into your superior T3. As long as you stay even in T2 there is nothing you need to fear in T3 (Brannoc is only a dangerous if you are already behind). In T2 you can defend Scythe Fiends & Skyfiredrakes easily with a combination out of Darkelf Assassins and Stormsinger with Frost Bite support. The only card, that is sort of dangerous for you is Mountaineer, you really need to pay attention here and get rid of them (in case you have Nighguard in your deck this is pretty simple). But since you've got Coldsnap and building protects you should be able to save your powerwells in time and go for a counterattack with your own Mountaineer afterwards. 

(3) Shadow Frost vs Fire Nature
This matchup got pretty easy after the Stormsinger buff. You can defend Burrower attacks with a very high efficiency in the early game and establish a very solid lead, that can be used to transition into a T3, where Fire Nature doesn't stand a chance. The only gamestage where you are sort of in danger is the late T2, where splitted Burrower attacks with massive nature cc support are powerful enough to overload your building protects, so make sure to reach the T3 as soon as possible, because Timeless one can deal with a massive Burrower push, if the Fire Nature player decides to rush you at that point.  

Skillmatchups:
(4) Shadow Frost vs pure Nature
You are heavily favoured in T1 and T3, but at a disadvantage in T2, therefore it's important to use the right timings to win this matchup. In T1 Nature is really vulnerable and unless the Nature player plays Primal defender (which is pretty rare, but possible) you can solely win games with Phasetower, who is overpowered. He can usually apply his splash damage consistently in a fight against nature units and does more than 1000 dp20s for 60 power. His hp pool is also insane in defense (1200) and even after the port in offense the 600hp are still high if you keep in mind, that nature has no T1 unit with bonus damage against buildings. For more in depth information you can check out my Shadow T1 guide (insert link), because the T1 is really important in this matchup since the T2 is nature favoured. Deep One is really hard to deal with if you don't play Nightguard in your deck and there is no reliable Energy Parasite counter in your deck. In addition to that Nature can deal with your S and M units really with (Ghostspears and Spirit Hunter do a really good job at this point) and Mountaineer gets either destroyed by Deep Ones or taken away by Parasite Swarm, so make sure to establish a solid advantage in T1, that either wins you the game entirely or allows you to scale into T3 before nature manages to get a big voidpool and an activated Shrine of Memory.  

(5) Shadow Frost vs Pure Frost
Your advantage is usually the fact, that you can deny alot of mapcontrol against Frost in T1, mostly important T3 spots, because your T2 is sort of equal. Darkelf Assassins and Stormsinger deal fairly well with War Eagles and this is Pure Frosts core unit. On the other side Shadow Frost doesn't have the tools to apply pressure in T2 either which leads to T3 fights, who decide the games. But in case you've got a map like Elyon for example you can block all T3 spots and win the game off that, because War Eagles may be able to deal with T2 units, but if Ashebones & Grigoris come into play they will struggle even with a power advantage. In case the game goes into T3 vs T3, cards without any counterplay are more valuable. Since both Frost Frost Shadow and Shadow Frost Frost have access to some of the strongest T3 units, cards like curse well can make the difference in this matchup.

(6) Shadow Frost vs Pure Shadow 
You honestly have the tools to deal with pure Shadow. Darkelf Assassins, are so efficient against this deck and in combination with Stormsinger you can defend every sort of attacks. The only thing that can sort of outsustain this damage for a while is Shadowmagespam + Green Netherwarp, but this tactic is very susceptable against Nightcrawler- or Lyrish Knight-Nasties. Harvester is also usually not successful against you, unless the Shadow player has a lead already, because Frost Bite is really valuable against Harvy. He needs such a long time to reach the Power wells/orbs while Darkelfassassins or Lyrish Knights deal so much damage against him and if the Shadow Player decided to port him forward he loses the chance to dodge coldsnap which slows the Harvester down even more. Your T3 is superior as usual and therefore your winning condition.

(7) Shadow Frost vs Shadow Nature
Shadow Nature has a distinctive advantage in the early T2 against you. They have similar units (Nighcrawler + Darkelf Assassins + Amii Phantom vs Night Crawler + Darkelf Assassins + Stormsinger) and superior cc which allows your opponent to set up massive attacks against you. Therefore this matchup is pretty much a survival game, because in the later T2 stages low hp unit spam gets countered by AoE damage like Shadow Phoenix, Aura of Corruption or Nasty, because it's impossible to split all these units and in T3 you will simply win the game of Timeless One beeing able minimize the incoming damage while it's way harder to respond to your attacks.

(8) Shadow Frost vs Stonekin
Stonekin can be a really nasty matchup, because its defensive capabilities match your power in T2 and even in T3. Therefore this matchup can be really hard to play and sometimes you have to make sure to win the game based on your score, because you can't finish off your opponent in 30 minutes. On smaller maps you can avoid this by winning the game in T1 which is kinda the most reliable option to beat stonekin, because Shadow has a big advantage over Frost on alot of maps and Phasetower wrecks nature (it's also useful against Frost, don't get me wrong here). 

Difficult matchup(s):
(9) Shadow Frost vs Pure Fire
This is the only matchup with a distinctive disadvantage for Shadow Frost. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler and Stormsinger which allows the Fireplayer to protect a Firedancer who shoots constantly at your power well and forces you to spend power into your building protects, which leads to very unfavourable trades. In case the Firedancer is able to abuse a cliff as protection you are pretty much done. And in addition to that Juggernaut is insanely strong, even strong enough to break through a Timeless One T3. Your only shot at winning is a short, aggressive T1 with a transition into an early Mountaineer attack since Pure Fire tends to struggle in defense against L units (No cc and just mediocre L counter).

3. Rating

Competitive Rating:
Shadow Frost summary
Pros:
+ No weak gamestage 
+ Insane T3
+ Very forgiving since you don't have to be proactive most of the time
+ Alot of easy matchups
+ Very flexible and well rounded defence (cc + ranged high dps units + building protects)
Cons: 
- low pressure T2
- Bad matchup against one of the most popular decks (pure Fire)
Shadow Frost is next to pure Fire the top deck in PvP. It does great in nearly ever matchup and is strong at any given point in the game. Sadly its only weak matchup is against its biggest rival pure Fire. Otherwise the deck would be in the best spot out of all possible 1v1 decks in Battleforge. 
Final Comp. rating: 9/10
New player experience:
Shadow Frost is the perfect deck to play if you intend to climb in the ladder as a new player and even at the higher ranks it's one of the strongest decks to play with its opressive T3. No major weakness and the possibility to play a viable counter against nearly every incoming attack (with the small exception of cliffdancer) make it really easy to play. The high late game scaling is also really good, because you don't have to be proactive in T2. The high defensive capability makes the deck really forgiving and it's one of the decks to start with.  
Final NPE rating: 10/10
At this point the deck overview is finished. I hope you can get some valuable information out of it, we put alot of efford into creating this list (Writing 15.000+ words took some time ^^). In case you have any questions regarding some factions or matchups feel free to ask us.

Best regards
Hirooo & RadicalX
 

For nature as T1 starter I recommend Ensnaring Roots so your windweavers can easily deal with any melee unit (root, hit and run).
Btw. dont forget to focus the attack with windweavers.
If you choose ensnaring roots you wont need spearmen anymore.
Maybe put primal defender in, it is situational but sometimes it can help at T1, T2 or when soloing.
Shamans and Dryads are optional and shamans make you even slower but keep you alive.
I would take only Surge of Light OR Shamans, not both.
Ditch Frostmage for T2, there are better options or just keep your windweavers and build masses. But good other choices are: Defenders, Razorshards, Stone Tempest or Aggressor.
Also you dont necessarily need Coldsnap and Curse of Oink, if you have to do to much CC you are doing something (to less units, to bad micro) wrong and CC will slow you down in this case (especially freezes). But keep it if you have enough spare slots.
If you plan to go directly to T4 with Amii Monument you dont need Mo! If you are soloing Amii Monument is ok but in multiplayer you could have bad luck so that somebody else already built it or the other person have a problem because you already built it (which slows down the whole team). If you exchange it with a real T3, I recommend to use Stone Warrior Blue (then keep Coldsnap, otherwise take Curse of Oink).
As Damagespell there is for example Thunderstorm, which can do some decent damage fully upgraded and if there are enough units and time.
Also I would put in Revenge, this way you make also a little bit damage but the spell has a cap while Stone Shell hasnt. Put in both if you plan to fight Lost Souls and have problems keeping your units alive.
Further I recommend Wheel of Gifts, it fits perfectly into your deck. The primary buff here is the 20% damage buff which is nice because stonekins dont have that many ways to improve damage, also the healing buff is nice for your Gemeyes because they sometimes take a little bit damage and you wouldnt have to heal them anymore that way.
Btw. Adamant Skin, Stone Shell, Revenge and Wheel of Gifts stack all in damage reduction, the forumal should be:
damage taken = 0,85 * 0,55 * 0,7 * 0,8 = 26 % (all effects, at max if I remember all factors right), this way your units will be almost invincible and you usually even dont have to heal them anymore.
At T4 Grinder (only one affinity) and Gemeye (purple) are all units you need, put Grinders in one group and the Gemeyes in the other group. Let the Grinders (at least 3, later 4 or 5 if you run out of Gemeye charges and have spare energy or are fighting the last lost souls bases) move into the base and keep attacking with Gemeyes from distance, but let them come a litte bit closer so that they dont attack the first unit but shoot directly into the center of the base (or even the spawn building / stun building). To take full advantage of Gemeye you have to attack as many units as possible with its area damage over time.
For taking T3 after you have T2 only one thing helps: a big army (so stay calm and wait a little bit more) and CC/heal at the right moment. At the end you will be quicker even if you need more time to get T3.
I dont recommend Shrine of Memory as someone else recommend it to you. You need void manipulation only if you play many spells or loosing much units but for stonekins you only need very few uses of spells and you can easily keep the units alive (in most cases you even dont need to heal). If your army dies you will be done no matter you have void manipulation or not (because charges are a bigger problem here). So you wont have much void if you play Stonekin right and the Shrine would be a waste of energy and a deck slot. I play also other types of decks and some of them are built to use massively damage spells so that void can sometimes be several 100 or even over 1000 in a few seconds. In this case Shrine of Memory would be also of no use because it cant bypass the void recovery maximum of 20 per second (like warshrine for example can).
To simplify everything:
Try not to waste energy on spells (especially freezing spells because they slow you down), try to build as many units as possible and try to keep every of them alive (by using as less spells as possible), micro them right and you have a powerful but boring deck, that can (at T4) also be very quick (comparable to Bloodhorns, Cluster Explosion, Lost Soul Ships and Batariel) and works even against lost souls.

@PorousBoat I think those are very valid points. PvP certainly poses different challenges onto a player and the game should address these players and their individual needs. Looking at the challenges of each game mode:
PvP: The challenge should come from human-human interaction. Understanding the meta of Battleforge is not easy for many reasons. Understanding Void Power, energy advantages, knowing when to go for T2 or grab a well is difficult at first. On top you have to deal with common combos, know how to play around CC and train your micro (because BF is a micro intense game). PvE: The challenge is less about reacting but more about building a strong deck that grows with the difficulity of the mission. You can do this with specialized decks or upgrading cards. Even when you play casually, you need to leverage your deck as the missions get increasingly demanding. In a perfect world, we would have an abundance of cards like MTG, have a stable balance in place and players are free to mix and match their decks to fit their individual playstyles (pvp and pve alike). Now, we can't have that because MTG is expensive. And because Skylords cannot ask for money (thankfully!), the only currency this game has is user-time. And as PorousBoat has described user-time is of short supply.
Mind you, Battleforge is primarily an RTS game with customization mechanics which are presented similar to a TCG. As an RTS, the usual rules for balancing and fairness must apply in competitive play. However, we cannot neglect the customization part as it is the diversity that appeals to differnet playstyles and player types. The problem I see with pre-made pvp decks that constantly change is that you have to repeatedly re-learn your deck. I am afraid this could deter people from learning the fundamental of the game first. This is even more problematic since you are probably matches with players who know what they are doing. Furthermore, some decks like pure fire or stonekin appeal to very different playstyles and some decks like shadow or bandits require an incredible amount of in-depth knowledge to play correctly.
Different Formats
@Eirias I think that is a very sensible suggestion of you, but I'd like to expend it a little bit.
Personally, I think the best solution for pvp is to have different formats like MTG. You have a restricted mode and an unrestricted mode. Potentially, a restricted mode would allow you to play only with pre-made decks. While the unrestricted mode is pvp as we know it and should be used for expert players. Continuing this idea, pre-made decks should be kept very simple and promote learning the basics of the game.
You could argue that different formats will disrupt the player base, which I disregard. These formats appeal to different persons and expert players should not be matched with beginners to begin with.
Having these mechanics in place, people can enjoy pvp and pve from the get-go. However, both pve and pvp have a goal to work and the customization aspect of the game is preserved for cooperative and competitive play. The only problem for pvp players is to make the jump from restricted to unrestricted. However, I think once a player wants to leave restricted mode behind he already has amassed a certain amount of cards and upgrades as well as a good understanding of the game itself. Thus, he is well prepared for unrestricted pvp even-though he does not have certain ultra-rares or U3 on all cards. In EA's Battleforge, people with decent decks also participated in (unrestricted) pvp. I believe that players can live with some elements being uneven as long as they can go back to the restricted mode if they feel cheated because a guy had a clearly superior deck.
I also think that by the time a player choses to play unrestricted pvp, he has gathered enough cards to form a nice deck himself.
Personally, I'd advocate for making charges and upgrades to be less significant but I suppose this would be a huge and painstacking undertaking that is out of the question.
Player Progression
In this discussion about player progression we are mostly concerned with AH prices, how fast people are unlocking their dream decks that we forget one thing: Progression is not only about cards. Yes, the original BF only had cards but the game business has evolved beyond having mere content. Honestly, I think achivements are the way to go. They provide another external motivation to play the game and could provide a wide range of rewards. They should be separate from daily (or weekly) quests and provide additional long term goals. This can range from faction specific goals like "kill 100/500/1000/5000 entities with Bandit units". Or serve as tool to promote using different factions, like "build 25/50/100/250 orbs of nature, shadow, fire and frost".
Furthermore, you could also bundle Promo cards to certain achivements. Promo Swamp-Drake could be a reward for winning 250 games where you started a game with Nature. Honestly, making new promo cards should not be difficult. It's just a unit re-texture with some fancy FX. It's something I've done hundrets of times for the game's I've been modding.
I think promo cards can be seen as different versions to "skins" in usual games. I also think that the option for "visual content" should also be explored further if possible.
Overall, I think we can be a bit more generous with card distribution if you set other goals in place that serve as an addition to just "building a deck with the cards you want". After all, you are not just maintainers of Battleforge, you are developers of Skylords - an essentially new game.

I know that the devs focus on server stability right now and that the current implementation of player rewards is just a first try of the devs. The current rewards have created different opinions on whether the rewards should be lowered or increased. I bet everybody agrees that player progression is crucial to whether Skylords will succeed or fail in the long run.
First, I don't think the progression system should be changed right now. I want to address the key problems of Battleforge in terms of player progression for a more elaborate discussion. After all, we can only find optimal solutions if we know the exact problems. Also, keep in mind Battleforge was a first try at making an MMORTS in a time when "Free to Play" was a recent invention. EA created a system which forced players to pay for BFP and encouraged players to buy premium items to minimize the grinding.
In contrast, Skylords will be a game that is truly free to play and for the game to succeed we need a big pool of players that lasts for years to come. However, the game is built around the monetization mechanics which have attributed towards its downfall. Former developer "The Black One" once stated that "Battleforge had a good flow of new players, but only few kept playing".
We see that Battleforge had a huge entrance barrier for new people before they could enjoy the game. I think Skylords needs to make further changes to player progression so it can succeed as a free game. My goal is to analyze the current state of Skylords and highlight the still existing problems that exist because of EA's drive towards monetization.
Based on this analysis, I want to name the implications that come with a fast or lower progression rate in future releases of Skylords. I also want to propose what needs to be changed altogether to accomodate for a game that is not only "free to play" but "free to enjoy".
The divide of cooperative and competitive
When creating a reward and progression system we need to keep in mind that we have two very different styles of play: cooperative and competitive. In the last days of BF, the PVE community mostly resolved around speedruns, grinding tokens/gold for upgrades and casual rpve games. On the other hand, competitive play was mostly about 1v1 pvp and some 2v2 pvp.
In BF, PVP is mostly an optional gamemode, while pve is not. However, for a pvp deck you need (expensive) key cards for the meta and upgrades on all cards. Therefore, a pvp deck requires you to grind enough pvp to: afford expensive cards (+ charges), have enough gold to upgrade your cards and a high enough rank to upgrade your ultra-rare cards. This creates a huge entrance barrier for people who are soley interested in the pvp aspect. And for the game, we need our playerbase to be as big as possible so the game survives in the long run.
As for the cooperative scene, we have the problem that pve content is rather scarce. Even a casual player will have finished all pve campaigns within a month. Also, most people don't find rpve very engaging. While pvp players mostly want to play the game, pve players usually play for the game. You perform battleground/campaign missions or quests to improve your card stack, but to what goal? For many people BF is just another game and these people will leave the game soon after finishing the campaign.
The pve players who stay after finishing the campaign are fans who either became collectors, speedrunners or enjoy rpve. Also, competitive play and cooperative play serve two very different stimuli. Therefore, cannot expect that a bulk of pve players suddenly become pvp. Similarly, we cannot expect players with pvp to grind through pve first.
Analyzing the different needs of players
We see there are the following types of players:
Casual Players (standard campaign) Competitive Players Collectors Casual players only play the game for a limited amount of time before leaving for other games. Some will stick around and play with friends, but I don't think we can do much to convert them into permanent player. Potentially, new campaign maps could be added but seem far fetched. I think all we can do is make the other aspects of the game more alluring.
Competitive players need to have a viable deck from the moment they start the game. However, we cannot simply give everybody every card as this would compromise the extended pve aspect of the game. Somehow a solution must be found to decouple pvp from pve progression. Without decoupling, we can only make bad tradeoffs between pvp and pve players. However, I am against a hard divide between pve and pvp players and I think there are overall benefits if pvp players have to do some minimal pve grinding as well. Presumably, pvp players also start off with pve to learn the basics of the game before heading into competitive play.
Collectors are people who actively participate in the extended cooperative play such as Battlegrounds or advanced/export missions even after finishing the campaign. They stick around because they like the mechanics of cooperative play. To make these people play the game regularly, the original BF already added a "daily quest" system. Without the need of monetization we can distribute cards and BFP more freely and we can try to keep casual players with alluring rewards and make them develop a love for the trading card aspect. However, being too generous will diminish the (personal) value of each card and compromise the need for the AH, rpve and advanced/expert missions. I also think that offering a generous list of achievements with unique rewards is beneficiary.
There are also some fringe groups, which I did not add because they don't add significant numbers to the player pool. This includes speedrunners, people who like to fool around with weird decks or team-players (private play with people you know).
 
This post serves as an entry point, I will state my personal suggestions later on. Of course, I invite everybody to state their opinion and own experiences.

I know that the devs focus on server stability right now and that the current implementation of player rewards is just a first try of the devs. The current rewards have created different opinions on whether the rewards should be lowered or increased. I bet everybody agrees that player progression is crucial to whether Skylords will succeed or fail in the long run.
First, I don't think the progression system should be changed right now. I want to address the key problems of Battleforge in terms of player progression for a more elaborate discussion. After all, we can only find optimal solutions if we know the exact problems. Also, keep in mind Battleforge was a first try at making an MMORTS in a time when "Free to Play" was a recent invention. EA created a system which forced players to pay for BFP and encouraged players to buy premium items to minimize the grinding.
In contrast, Skylords will be a game that is truly free to play and for the game to succeed we need a big pool of players that lasts for years to come. However, the game is built around the monetization mechanics which have attributed towards its downfall. Former developer "The Black One" once stated that "Battleforge had a good flow of new players, but only few kept playing".
We see that Battleforge had a huge entrance barrier for new people before they could enjoy the game. I think Skylords needs to make further changes to player progression so it can succeed as a free game. My goal is to analyze the current state of Skylords and highlight the still existing problems that exist because of EA's drive towards monetization.
Based on this analysis, I want to name the implications that come with a fast or lower progression rate in future releases of Skylords. I also want to propose what needs to be changed altogether to accomodate for a game that is not only "free to play" but "free to enjoy".
The divide of cooperative and competitive
When creating a reward and progression system we need to keep in mind that we have two very different styles of play: cooperative and competitive. In the last days of BF, the PVE community mostly resolved around speedruns, grinding tokens/gold for upgrades and casual rpve games. On the other hand, competitive play was mostly about 1v1 pvp and some 2v2 pvp.
In BF, PVP is mostly an optional gamemode, while pve is not. However, for a pvp deck you need (expensive) key cards for the meta and upgrades on all cards. Therefore, a pvp deck requires you to grind enough pvp to: afford expensive cards (+ charges), have enough gold to upgrade your cards and a high enough rank to upgrade your ultra-rare cards. This creates a huge entrance barrier for people who are soley interested in the pvp aspect. And for the game, we need our playerbase to be as big as possible so the game survives in the long run.
As for the cooperative scene, we have the problem that pve content is rather scarce. Even a casual player will have finished all pve campaigns within a month. Also, most people don't find rpve very engaging. While pvp players mostly want to play the game, pve players usually play for the game. You perform battleground/campaign missions or quests to improve your card stack, but to what goal? For many people BF is just another game and these people will leave the game soon after finishing the campaign.
The pve players who stay after finishing the campaign are fans who either became collectors, speedrunners or enjoy rpve. Also, competitive play and cooperative play serve two very different stimuli. Therefore, cannot expect that a bulk of pve players suddenly become pvp. Similarly, we cannot expect players with pvp to grind through pve first.
Analyzing the different needs of players
We see there are the following types of players:
Casual Players (standard campaign) Competitive Players Collectors Casual players only play the game for a limited amount of time before leaving for other games. Some will stick around and play with friends, but I don't think we can do much to convert them into permanent player. Potentially, new campaign maps could be added but seem far fetched. I think all we can do is make the other aspects of the game more alluring.
Competitive players need to have a viable deck from the moment they start the game. However, we cannot simply give everybody every card as this would compromise the extended pve aspect of the game. Somehow a solution must be found to decouple pvp from pve progression. Without decoupling, we can only make bad tradeoffs between pvp and pve players. However, I am against a hard divide between pve and pvp players and I think there are overall benefits if pvp players have to do some minimal pve grinding as well. Presumably, pvp players also start off with pve to learn the basics of the game before heading into competitive play.
Collectors are people who actively participate in the extended cooperative play such as Battlegrounds or advanced/export missions even after finishing the campaign. They stick around because they like the mechanics of cooperative play. To make these people play the game regularly, the original BF already added a "daily quest" system. Without the need of monetization we can distribute cards and BFP more freely and we can try to keep casual players with alluring rewards and make them develop a love for the trading card aspect. However, being too generous will diminish the (personal) value of each card and compromise the need for the AH, rpve and advanced/expert missions. I also think that offering a generous list of achievements with unique rewards is beneficiary.
There are also some fringe groups, which I did not add because they don't add significant numbers to the player pool. This includes speedrunners, people who like to fool around with weird decks or team-players (private play with people you know).
 
This post serves as an entry point, I will state my personal suggestions later on. Of course, I invite everybody to state their opinion and own experiences.

I know that the devs focus on server stability right now and that the current implementation of player rewards is just a first try of the devs. The current rewards have created different opinions on whether the rewards should be lowered or increased. I bet everybody agrees that player progression is crucial to whether Skylords will succeed or fail in the long run.
First, I don't think the progression system should be changed right now. I want to address the key problems of Battleforge in terms of player progression for a more elaborate discussion. After all, we can only find optimal solutions if we know the exact problems. Also, keep in mind Battleforge was a first try at making an MMORTS in a time when "Free to Play" was a recent invention. EA created a system which forced players to pay for BFP and encouraged players to buy premium items to minimize the grinding.
In contrast, Skylords will be a game that is truly free to play and for the game to succeed we need a big pool of players that lasts for years to come. However, the game is built around the monetization mechanics which have attributed towards its downfall. Former developer "The Black One" once stated that "Battleforge had a good flow of new players, but only few kept playing".
We see that Battleforge had a huge entrance barrier for new people before they could enjoy the game. I think Skylords needs to make further changes to player progression so it can succeed as a free game. My goal is to analyze the current state of Skylords and highlight the still existing problems that exist because of EA's drive towards monetization.
Based on this analysis, I want to name the implications that come with a fast or lower progression rate in future releases of Skylords. I also want to propose what needs to be changed altogether to accomodate for a game that is not only "free to play" but "free to enjoy".
The divide of cooperative and competitive
When creating a reward and progression system we need to keep in mind that we have two very different styles of play: cooperative and competitive. In the last days of BF, the PVE community mostly resolved around speedruns, grinding tokens/gold for upgrades and casual rpve games. On the other hand, competitive play was mostly about 1v1 pvp and some 2v2 pvp.
In BF, PVP is mostly an optional gamemode, while pve is not. However, for a pvp deck you need (expensive) key cards for the meta and upgrades on all cards. Therefore, a pvp deck requires you to grind enough pvp to: afford expensive cards (+ charges), have enough gold to upgrade your cards and a high enough rank to upgrade your ultra-rare cards. This creates a huge entrance barrier for people who are soley interested in the pvp aspect. And for the game, we need our playerbase to be as big as possible so the game survives in the long run.
As for the cooperative scene, we have the problem that pve content is rather scarce. Even a casual player will have finished all pve campaigns within a month. Also, most people don't find rpve very engaging. While pvp players mostly want to play the game, pve players usually play for the game. You perform battleground/campaign missions or quests to improve your card stack, but to what goal? For many people BF is just another game and these people will leave the game soon after finishing the campaign.
The pve players who stay after finishing the campaign are fans who either became collectors, speedrunners or enjoy rpve. Also, competitive play and cooperative play serve two very different stimuli. Therefore, cannot expect that a bulk of pve players suddenly become pvp. Similarly, we cannot expect players with pvp to grind through pve first.
Analyzing the different needs of players
We see there are the following types of players:
Casual Players (standard campaign) Competitive Players Collectors Casual players only play the game for a limited amount of time before leaving for other games. Some will stick around and play with friends, but I don't think we can do much to convert them into permanent player. Potentially, new campaign maps could be added but seem far fetched. I think all we can do is make the other aspects of the game more alluring.
Competitive players need to have a viable deck from the moment they start the game. However, we cannot simply give everybody every card as this would compromise the extended pve aspect of the game. Somehow a solution must be found to decouple pvp from pve progression. Without decoupling, we can only make bad tradeoffs between pvp and pve players. However, I am against a hard divide between pve and pvp players and I think there are overall benefits if pvp players have to do some minimal pve grinding as well. Presumably, pvp players also start off with pve to learn the basics of the game before heading into competitive play.
Collectors are people who actively participate in the extended cooperative play such as Battlegrounds or advanced/export missions even after finishing the campaign. They stick around because they like the mechanics of cooperative play. To make these people play the game regularly, the original BF already added a "daily quest" system. Without the need of monetization we can distribute cards and BFP more freely and we can try to keep casual players with alluring rewards and make them develop a love for the trading card aspect. However, being too generous will diminish the (personal) value of each card and compromise the need for the AH, rpve and advanced/expert missions. I also think that offering a generous list of achievements with unique rewards is beneficiary.
There are also some fringe groups, which I did not add because they don't add significant numbers to the player pool. This includes speedrunners, people who like to fool around with weird decks or team-players (private play with people you know).
 
This post serves as an entry point, I will state my personal suggestions later on. Of course, I invite everybody to state their opinion and own experiences.

You have a weakness for pillaging, raiding and superior firepower? You like a risk-reward playstyle and disregard healing spells as a cheap method for the weak?  You think your units are throw-away assets that should just do their job and do it well? You always wanted to create explosions of the size of tactical nukes to eradicate enemies from existence? You want all of this in in your Battleforge deck?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then look no further! This thread serves as introduction to playing pve as a Bandit player and shows how to reap the best fruits from fire and shadow alike. Playing Bandits is a very rewarding and unique experience as it is a finesse oriented deck that requires the right use of spells and abilities at the right time. You cannot simply throw units at the enemy and add some heals if things go bad. To master this deck, you need to think ahead and play with concentration and micro. However, once mastered, Bandits have several of the strongest card combinations in the game and are among the strongest late game factions.
This guide does not provide any map-specific details but instead, helps beginners with a range of tactics and unit overviews for each by tiers. It focuses on each card individually and how it synergizes best with other cards. The goal is to provide you with enough information that you can pick the right cards for the right job. This guide is structured into tiers and each tier has a smaller summary attached to it that provide an overview of the most important things there are to know. Some cards are considered "core cards", which are greatly beneficial and need to be in a deck most the time (that is, unless they are really not needed for a specific map).
Tier 1
Tie 1 does not have any Bandit specific aspects to cover, but instead I'll cover the most basic fire cards. Most of my exerience is from starting with fire, so I will neglect shadow T1. However, this does not mean that a shadow T1 is not effective, but the general consensus is that fire T1 requires less cards to pay successfully.
Sunstrider (core card)
Sunstriders are an utmost necessity as they are your only ranged T1 unit and only source of reliable anti-air. Among all T1 archers, they have the highest damage/cost but need protection from frontline units such as Nomads or Thugs. Furthermore, their ability to suppress towers minimize losses from fortifications early on.
Nomad (or Thugs)
On bigger maps, Nomads are a must have to swiftly traverse the map early on. I recommend the green affinity to let Nomads heal up fully between fights. With them, you can withdraw from bad engagements and let them heal up. While the red version is effectively 50% stronger, you will waste time by standing near buildings to heal them between fights. Due to their speed, Nomads greatly excel with Mine (see below). Nomads get an anti-air attack once you upgrade them, but since it costs power and has a cooldown it is not a realiable source of anti air. Nontheless, if you know a map only has a handful of T1 flying enemies, you can consider removing the Sunstriders from your deck.
Thugs (or Nomads)
Thugs are often overseen but when used correctly can achieve remarkable results. While they cost more than Wraithblades or Northguards, they will generate power from killing units and buildings. When used as the primary T1 force they can easily produce about 45 units of power within a minute or two and provide a headstart into T2. They are also your only S counter and can be used in a heavy foot-slogging army of Thugs and Sunstriders. Often, you will face other S creatures that are backed with a healer and in this case your Sunstriders can snipe the healers, while Thugs will crush the frontlines. If you don't need the speed of the Nomads, I recommend taking Thugs instead.
Mine
For a T1 card, this is a weapon of mass destruction. Place the mine preemptively and lure enemies into it to remove a squad of 3-5 enemy units. Not only will the Mine deal devastating damage, but it will also knock back small units, making them susceptible to other units. When attacking a small output, you can use Mine to kill the forces and suppress the towers of the base with Sunstriders.
Other T1 cards worth mentioning
Firesworn are your best answer to early aggression from L-creature (and best used with Thugs that serve as meatshields at the front), their knockback also provides a lot of utility but most the time you will achieve similar results with Nomads and Mine. Similarly, Sunderers can rip through walls easily but they cost a lot and are easily killed. If you need strong anti-structure firepower, consider red Nomads with Sunstriders suppressing the towers. Furthermore, if you face a lot of air units, you should consider getting the Blaster Cannon. With its red affinity, it becomes a formidable anti-air card that gets stronger the longer it attacks and keeps being useful up until T2.
T1 Summary (TL;DR)
The savest selection of cards is: Sunstriders, Nomad, Mine. Mine will kill most early enemy waves and Nomads can reach other points on the map very fast. You can replace Nomads with Thugs if speed is not important and you prefer having a bit more power available throughout the time. You will also find it easier to kill S-heavy enemy waves with Thugs in your deck.
Lastly, Sunstriders are necessary as they are anti-air, anti-tower and can be put on walls. However, if you don't need those 3 roles you can omit them and make a "Nomad, Mine only" list.
 
Tier 2
Once you are in T2, you can finally call yourself a "Bandit player". T2 provides you with various buffs and as a Bandit player you have one of the best defensive capabilities of all T2 decks. However, T2 is also the weak spot of a Bandit army as fire and shadow cards don't synergize that well at this point yet.
Lavafield (core card)
It is an amazing splash damage spell that decimates masses of medium and small sized units. A core card for every fire-splash deck.
Offering (core card)
This is your "go free out of jail" card. With this card (green affinity), you sacrifice an own unit to restore the cooldown of all cards with the same tier. For example, after playing Lavafield you have to wait some time before you can use it again. However, if you use Offering on a Darkelf Assassin, you can use Lavafield again immediately and play it twice in a row. This is a massive game changer and allows you to play your most powerful spells twice in a row.
Moreover, this card also has a second role as it also restores charges. Especially for beginners who have only 1 type of each card, this is a massive advantage as you can summon twice as many units as you could normally do. In general, this card is best used on units that are cheap or have little health left. Why bother with an almost dead unit when you can summon a new one?
Unholy Power (or Life Weaving)
This buff remains useful until the end of the game as the given unit will receive 50% less damage (meaning it will live twice as long) and do significantly more damage. You can use the card offensively (preferably Spearmen, Windhunter or Skyfire Drake) and defensively (Commandos, Shadow Phoenix). Especially when combined with healing (or life stealing) affected units become extremely difficult to kill on top of dealing more damage. And with upgrades the cost of the card goes down to 80.
Especially in T2 you might struggle against (flying) L creatures, but if you use Unholy Power with Windhunter you will make work of such enemies. A clear must have.
Lifeweaving (or Unholy Power)
An alternative buff to Unholy Power is Lifeweaving, it is similar in role but has two significant differences. First, it costs less power and second, it does not increase the damage of the buffed unit. Like Unholy Power the buffed unit receives 50% less damage, however  the other 50% will be evenly distributed among all enemy units around. Both of these buffs remain useful until T4 because of this 50% damage reduction, but Lifeweaving will outperform Unholy Power later on because of the extra damage from reflected attacks. Therefore, it comes down to the decision whether you want to have a stronger buff in T2 or reinforce your T4 slightly with this.
Rioter's Retreat (green affinity)
This card is what makes Bandits arguably the best T2 defenders apart from Frost. The green affinity will heal 70 HP of each Bandit model. So, while a Bandit Sorceress will heal by 70 HP a second, Commandos will heal 420 HP (!) per second. This is because Commandos is a squad that consists of 6 models (to put it into perspective, Commandos have 660 HP on U3). It is almost absurd how strong this is.
It's also a very powerful tower on it's own as it attacks 3 different targets on U3, but compared to its unmatched healing abilities this is just a side note. Nonetheless, if you have a defensive mission it is worth considering going Bandits just because of this card.
Commandos (or Darkelf Assassins)
Commandos are expensive and best used along with Rioter's Retreat but they are strong even on their own. When fortified, they have 50% life stealing which makes them an ideal target for buffs like Lifeweaving or Unholy Power and make great garrison troops on walls. They are an amazing M-counter because not only will they deal high damage, but also heal themselves by a huge margin in return as well. And if you face a lot of human units (like in the Renegade campaign) they will hard-counter everything as they deal twice as much damage to humans (and strong damage means strong healing).
Darkelf Assassins (or Commandos)
While Commandos are a strong and versatile choice, Assassins excel in their cheapness and synergy with Offering and most of all are your only good S-counter. Along with melee tanks, like leftover Thugs from T1 or Spearmen they make a formidable force (Assassins counter S, while Spearmen counter M). Furthermore, due to a bug their DPS increases substantially when using their ability despite being paralyzed for a few seconds. They are an excellent unit if you know what you are doing, but Commandos are always the safe choice.
Windhunter (or Gladiatrix)
This is your T2 superweapon. Usually, your T1 units are enough to progress to T3. However, if you face some powerful resistance such as Stone Warriors or Lost Vigils, Windhunters are the weapon of choice to eradicate them. When buffed (preferably Unholy Hero), Windhunters absolutely murder L sized creatures and because it is a flying unit, it is often unaffected by incoming fire. Windhunter is one of the best tools you can have to break a powerful Lost Soul base in rpve or just for a powerful air raid in campaign missions.
Personally, I find Windhunter + Shadow Phoenix to serve as perfect addition to a strong T1 army. The Phoenixes serve as shock troops to kill bases and finish off enemy waves, while the Windunter deals with stronger opposition. You should also consider taking Rioter's Retreat, as it allows you to fully heal your Windhunters in mere seconds.
Gladiatrix (or Windhunter)
The Windhunter has a big weakness (apart from anti-air): It cannot capture points. If you chose Thugs in T1 and need mobility in T2, it is worth considering to take a Gladiatrix. Since, apart from Nomads and Lancers, Gladiatrix is your only fast ground creature. It is cheap and stat wise, it is similarly strong to Windhunters on a per-cost level. However, because the unit is weaker individually it means that buffs do not excel as they do on Windhunters.
Bandit Spearmen
While not a good card for rPvE, the Spearmen are certainly worth taking for PvE. The appealing fact of this unit is its potential ATK of 2000 (!), which results from a base ATK of 900, a 50% bonus damage against M creatures and a 50% bonus against melee creatures. However, with 70 energy, they are a bit pricey. Nonetheless, once Spearmen made it into combat they will hold on for a long time due to life stealing (especially with buffs). They are well suited for defensive and offensive missions alike and like to have range support from Commandos or Darkelf Assassins. They are perfectly suited as frontline shock units and will deal with close combat melee creatures exceptionally well. Consider also taking Rioter's Retreat to quickly heal your Spearmen.
Bandit Sorceress
The Sorceress is worth mentioning because of her amazing ability. She can enter a tower to basically double its range. This includes Blaster Cannons, Rioter's Retreat, Necroblaster or Artillery. Her red affinity synergizes especially well with Rioter's Retreat (30% more damage for surrounding units).
I would not classify her as a T2 unit, but see her as an investment for all tiers that excels for defensive missions. It is not worth using her as an S-counter because her attack is bugged and Phenomic never bothered to fix her. Her attack splash is so small that it will only ever hit a single enemy model and only do a fraction of the damage she is supposed to do. Sadly, the same applies to other Bandit cards as well.
Other T2 cards worth mentioning
Because T2 should be kept concise there are a lot of good cards that I did not talk about that can have their use on particular maps. For example, the Skyfire Drake has bettter stats than a Windhunter, however, Bandits have a range of other good M-counters already. Also, for most shadow decks the Furnace of Flesh is the central building for gaining void energy back but is inferior to the T3 Shrine of War.
In rpve, the Shadow Phoenix is arguable your best T2 unit because it can kill buildings and units very fast. But in normal pve it is better to build a steady army and sniping buildings is less important. Ravage is another great T2 buff that allows your units to stay in the fight substantially longer, but unlike other buffs Ravage does not scale well with T3 and T4 and in most cases Unholy Power will work equally well.
Also, Time Vortex is a very powerful T2 tower but simply doesn't come close to the power of Commandos + Rioter's Retreat. Stone of Torment has its uses on some maps as well and with the Bandit Sorceress, it can teleport enemy units to itself from very far away. It's a strong combo, but not needed on most maps. Motivate is also a good buff if you have a deck to support it, but that excels mostly when starting with a Shadow T1.
T2 Summary (TL;DR)
Commandos and Windhunters are always save choices. For defensive missions, Commandos + Rioter's Retreat can even defend waves of T3 creatures whereas Windhunters can go on the hunt in offensive missions and kill crucial units/buildings with ease when buffed. Either way, Lavafield, Offering and Unholy Power can have a huge impact when used correctly.
For additional fortification, Bandit Sorceress will improve your defensive capabilities considerably. When time is of essence, a Nomad or Gladiatrix with Mine + Lavafield will be able to kill most T2 camps. But if you opt for a more sturdy gounr presence, Spearmen will be the unit of choice.
It is important to understand that playing Bandits means that your troops are expandable.
is primarily about using your spells and abilities correctly, whereas your units come last. You are the warlord who decides on who dies and who remains useful. Do not hesitate to use Offering on weakened units, as dead units will return 90% of their energy over the course of the game. Killing units and getting their energy back due to Void Manipulation is a crucial aspect in T3 and T4 when you start getting the big toys.
T2 is easily the weakest part of a Bandit army, but that only becomes apparent when playing expert maps or in pvp or iin rpve 10. When played right, Bandits are among the fastest decks and can deal crippling damage in a short amount of time due to buffs, strong abilities and powerful direct-damage spells.
 
Tier 3
This is where things are really getting interesting. On their own, Shadow and Fire already have some of the (arguably) strongest T3 cards and now you are going to harness their full power and put some excellent Bandit cards on top of it. The problem in T2 is the lack of a powerful frontline unit, but now you can get them in spades and make them even stronger with buffs and support from several Shadow cards. Once you reached T3, you will find yourself in a very comfortable position and the deck starts to take on an own dynamic thanks to Voidmanipulation and an amazing range of spells.
Soulshatter (core card)
This is an absolutely crucial card that remains useful up until T4 and is best utilized against a big horde of weakened enemies. Soulshatter is a direct-damage spell that does extra damage for every unit it killed, which can result in phenomenal chain reactions. With the initial blast, you might only kill 1 or 2 units, but the extra damage from those killed units might be enough to kill other units and trigger further explosions. It is hard to overstate the work this card can do, even more so when you have access to fire spells. Because if the initial blast did not kill any units, you can try to finish off weaker units with a Lavafield and force-trigger secondary explosions. 
In general, this spell is best used to finish off weakened groups of enemies or in combination with other powerful direct damage spells such as Inferno, Cluster Explosion or Fire Sphere.
Soulhunter (core card)
While there are other strong and fun to use creatures in T3, Soulhunter is hands down the most powerful of all. It is your only XL creature in T3, has amazing stats, conveniently counters L-sized units, has a powerful active ability and life steal. Let that sink in for a second.
It is a primary target for buffs such as Lifeweaving or Unholy Power. Soulhunter is the perfect frontline unit not only because of those buffs, but because life stealing will make a noticable difference on a hut that has 4500 ATK. Further, its mine-field ability can kill hordes of M-sized creatures with easy and can be coupled with Soulshatter for maximum efficiency. In general, it is advised to take only 1 unit in T3, but why would you want any other units in T3 when you have this guy?
Shrine of War (core card)
While this card might not be suited for beginners deck, it certainly is a must have for everybody who wants to master this deck. This is clearly the best card at Voidmanipulation as it returns 12% of your Void Energy immediately. And with all the powerful spells and units you have at this point, killing enemies is not the problem. In fact, it encourages a fast and aggressive playstyle as killed enemies will provide you with energy when this building is activated.
You might be wondering what void energy is, if so let me explain: Every time one of your unit dies or when you use a spell, 90% of the card's energy cost is added to a seperate energy pool. Similar to power wells, energy is slowly coming back from this pool. Energy coming back from this pool is called "Void Energy". Therefore, Shrine of War allows you to play cards in a very quick succession. You can sacrifice weakened units and use voidmanipulation to gain back a huge amount of their energy in a short time, allowing you to summon new units instead. Same applies to spells, as they return 90% of their energy into the void pool.
The disadvantage is that you need to start the effect of the building manually and it is only 20 seconds long (+10 seconds from the first upgrade). So you will want to build 2 Shrines of War and always have at least one available when you need it. This means a cost 300 power, but it really is worth the investment. My tip is to use access the ability via shortcuts. When you first start with Battleforge, I would not recommend this card as it requires some insight in how the power system works. However, this card is so hugely beneficial that it should be a goal to learn how to use this card at some point.
Inferno
Some say this card is not worth the 300 power price tag and I agree. However, when we use Shrine of War we don't really pay 300 power, as Inferno is powerful enough to give us most if its energy back right after casting it. It summons several meteors to deal massive damage in a medium sized area. If all meteors hit, they deal 2400 damage to a single target which is enough to kill everything that is not of size XL. It can even be used in T3 to deal a nice bit of extra damage if you have the spare power. And if you use this card correctly along with Shrine of War, you get most of your spent energy back in no time anyway.
Bandit Lancer
Even-though Soulhunter really is your best T3 card, Lancers are still worth mentioning. What speaks for them is their fast movement, a strong ability and that they are dirt cheap. Their stats aren't the greatest thing but they are supposed to be a support unit and actually make a decent L-counter. In my opinion its strongest aspect comes from its 60 power cost, which means that you can use Offering on it to recharge Soulshatter, Infect or Inferno. What makes this unit a good supporter is its "mark" ability, which allows almost all ranged units to hit "marked" units from further away. I am saying "almost" because some units like the Bandit Gunner have a bugged attack and do not benefit from this attack. It's worth noting that this ability also works with the Shadow Phoenix charge.
Infect
What is better than having spells of mass destruction at your disposal? I tell you: Spells of mass destruction that turn killed enemies into Nightcrawlers! That's Infect in a nutshell.
Sadly, the orb requirements make you choose whether you want to pick Inferno or Infect in your deck. Therefore, it is a matter of taste which spell you take. Nonetheless, with Soulshatter, Lavafield or Minefield you clearly have enough firepower to make Infect work. On U3, 3 NCs will spawn per killed unit and the effect has a very long duration of 30 seconds. The card is good to have, especially if you have Motivate in your deck. You can even use it in T4 to feed your Tortugun.
Frenetic Assault
This card provides you with the thing you lacked up until this point: Crowd Control. This card has two effects: You select an enemy unit, which will subsequently be attacked by all surrounding enemy units. Further, all units affected by the spell go amok and attack your and enemy units alike. It's greatest strength is in dealing with enemy paralyzers from afar. Just sit back and watch the show!
Undoubtedly, this card is a great asset that remains useful up until T4. However, the real question is whether you should take this or wait until you get Amok in T4.
Necroblaster
Among all T3 towers, Necroblaster arguably does the most damage to a single target and with 100 power, it is cheap enough to guard several passages. But the disadvantage is that it needs to absorb souls before it can be fired. But sacrificing units is not a big deal in this deck anyway and once you fed it enough souls it will probably never run out of souls again, since it is powerful enough to deal with units swifly.
Other T3 cards worth mentioning
Especially for beginners Backlash can be a very powerful direct damage spell that deals more damage the more void power you have at the moment. Assuming you have 1000 void power, it will deal 3300 total damage and cost you a measly 120 power. But the more you master voidmanipulation, the more useless this card becomes.
On another note, Corsair is a great card... visually. In practice it is too slow, cannot capture points, does not counter aynthing and has several attack bugs. It's actual damage is around 2200 ATK (opposed to the 3000 ATK stated on the card) and sometimes the main cannon will not fire because of an animation bug. And while it can summon Bandits/Commandos, they cannot capture points either. It does slightly buff human units around it, but that is not enough to make it viable. Competitively speaking, this card it is utter garbage.
Sandstorm used to be an alright card with a fun purple ability, as it combined a damage spell with Aura of Corruption (and even worked against buildings). And then they nerfed it. So, don't bother with it, as it is an expensive card that does too little damage and the size of its passive ability is so small that you will never trigger the effect.
Unity is a nice spell that allows your units to share incoming damage and makes them receive less damage. Sadly, life stealing/healing isn't shared by units and in general, it does too little, affects only a few units at once and is somewhat expensive.
I have no experience with Church of Negation, but saw it used with great effect along with building support spells. Sadly, we don't have building support spells and without them the Church will kill itself faster than its targets.
Gunner used to be my primary T3 unit... until Soulhunter was released. It's a fun card with fun voice acting, but simply cannot match the power and buffing potential of a Soulhunter. Sadly, their attack is also bugged and they deal less damage than is stated on the card. Finally, their attack range is fixed and they do not benefit from the Lancer's active ability. In numbers, they can be very good because they will constantly knock back M-sized creatures before they can reach your Gunners. But at this point you could probably afford 2-3 Soulhunters.
If you want a somewhat unique deck, you can try to work out a spam-list that resolves around Bloodhealing and Motivate. In theory, it should work out with units such as Bandit Lancers or Giant Slayers. So, if you feel like it, give it a try. Bloodhealing can also be used to kill Tortuguns in T4, so that is a plus as well.
T3 Summary (TL;DR)
Despite having Soulhunter, the two most important dynamics in T3 is void manipulation and damage spells. With spells like Lavefield/Inferno + Soulshatter you can decimate whole groups of enemies in a short amount of time. Those spells come at a hefty price, but because their impact is so powerful you will get back the majority of your energy back in an instant due to Shrine of War. "Mastering" shrine of war is crucial for mastering a bandit deck.
The rest is actually rather straight forward. Use Soulhunter (or other unit of preference) as your main frontline unit and beef it up to 11 with buffs. Try to combine different damage spells with Soulshatter to maximize the damage and capitalize with Infect if you wish. For a fun list you can try out different T3 units and see what works best for you, but powerful spells and Shrine of War are a must have.
You won't have enough firepower to kill a big T4 base, but then again... who has it?
T4
Bloodhorn (core card)
Like Soulhunter, this card is among the best of its tier. With 5800/5000 on U3, 15% life steal and stampede it is not difficult to see why this card is a must have. The real question is which affinity to use, as people still debate over which one is stronger. Purple affinity sacrifices health to deal twice as much damage and along with Lifeweaving/Unholy Power and Unholy Hero this allows you to kill bosses with a single Bloodhorn. Normally, attack buffs do not stack but Unholy Power and the Bloodhorn ability are exceptions to this rule. However, people also like the red affinity which sacrifices a Bloodhorn's health to make it immune to debuffs for 15 seconds. This is extremely useful when facing mass-CC towers in rpve, where a Bloodhorn can kill a building easily with its stampede.
It is also importent to note how useful stampede can be in the right hands. My experience is that stampede is (positively) bugged and it will always kill two buildings when they are hit simultaneously, even if that exceeds the limit of 9000 damage. Furthermore, for some reason life steal is far stronger when used with stampede and you can fully heal-up a Bloodhorn when it kills 2-3 buildings with its ability. Even if the Bloodhorn is nearly dead.
However, as a pure Bandit player you won't have spells to heal your Bloodhorns when they are critically injured. The best use of a nearly dead Bloodhorns is to use Offering and summon a completely new one instead! This has the nice side effect of restoring the charges and cooldown of all other T4 cards as well. With Shrine of War, you dont need to worry about killing your units, as you will get back the majority of their energy cost in an instant.
Unholy Hero (core card)
This card is massive. On U3, this card gives a unit 300% (!) more attack damage and costs merely 80 energy. However, if the affected unit gets hit, all allied units will get damaged as well (125% of the original damage). But that is not a big problem if your Tortugun is 50m away from the frontline, right?
Rifle Cultist (core card)
Rifle Cultists are good units on their own and they can deal massive damage with their secondary ability. You can build decks around this card, but for Bandits this is the most efficient way to restore T4 charges. Out of Bloodhorn charges? Summon some Rifle Cultists and use Offering on them. Want to cast Earth Shatter twice in a row? Or Amok or Unholy Hero? Just use offering on Rifle Cultists.
Tortugun (red affinity)
Not only has this card the highest attack power in the game, it can also be a target for the best offensive buff in the game. With Unholy Hero you can boost the ATK to 24000 (!), which translates to 2000 damage every 2 seconds. The red affinity is clearly superior as it gives the Tortugun 50m attack range.
No doubt, this is one of the most powerful units in the game, but it also comes with a big drawback as well. Tortuguns have a "hunger bar" that slowly depletes and once it hits 0, the Tortugun goes amok. Once it goes amok, it cannot be controlled anymore (also not sacrificed) and will kill your nearby units to increase its hunger bar. Therefore, Tortugun needs to be managed and the most effective way to dispose Tortugun is to sacrifice it with a spell. For this, Offering, Bloodhealing or Motivate. At this point you should be aware how important sacrificing units is.
Summoning units for food (like Boom Brothers) is simply not effective, however you can use summoned units like Nightcrawlers from Infect or the Insects from Grim Bahir to restore the hunger bar. What I also recommend is summoning 2 Tortuguns and once one goes amok, one will just cannibalize the other to restore a lot of the hunger bar. To put things into perspective, a Tortugun has 4000 HP on U3. Furthermore, a Tortugun has a max hunger pool of 5000 HP and depletes 50 HP persecond. Therefore, killing another Tortugun almost fully fills up the and you have one less Tortugun to worry about. FYI, Tortuguns start with 2500 HP in the hunger pool.
Especially in the beginning it can be hard to manage Tortugun, which is why I don't consider it a core card. However, apart from Batariel decks this is the most damaging card in the game. Once you learn how to play with this card it becomes an incredible asset and is a reason why Bandit decks are so powerful in T4.
Amok (red affinity)
Most people consider Frenetic Assault to be better, but I bed to differ. This card has 25m radius (opposed to 20m) and can be used every 30 seconds (opposed to 50 seconds). And unlike Frenetic Assault, this card does not need a target and you can cast the spell directly in the middle of an enemy base to cover as many units as possible. However, this card also affects your own units as well. Amok also has an edge, as you will use Offering regularly and Amok will capitalize from this as well. When casting Amok twice, you affect huge amounts of enemy monsters that will be fighting each other.
Cluster Explosion (red affinity)
Ever wanted to see a whole base getting annihilated within 5 seconds? This card has an infectious kind of attack which comes in 3 waves. On U3, the first wave deals 435 damage spread among 3 targets, those 3 targets further damage 9 other targets (same damage) and final wave can affect up to 27 targets. What might not sound devastating can severely cripple an enemy base and I haven't mentioned the best part: Soulshatter.
When Soulshatter is applied just before the final wave has hit, every killed unit will deal another 400 damage on top. This is massive and when used on a tightly packed map you can kill everything in a base with exception of a few XL units still standing (which are heavily damaged). And with Shrine of War, you will often get back ALL of your void energy in an instant.
It is almost unfair how strong this when used with Soulshatter.
Artillery
Like with T2, Bandits have an excellent tower that is awesome for normal pve. It costs only 190 power, deals 5600 damage and has a long range of 50m. Furthermore, if 4 or more units are approaching, this card will throw an additional mine. Once the mine is triggered, the red affinity creates a flame field with 25m diameter is created, dealing 70 damage to all enemies within (no damage cap applies). Mines from the purple affinity will simply deal 1000 damage, up to 3000 damage.
Earthshaker
In rpve, this card is a must have as you can kill spawn buildings or mass-CC buildings safely from afar. If you read this and don't consider this card to be strong, just wait until you encounter huge bases with multiple paralyzer units, spawners and mass-CC buildings. It can also be usedful for more difficult pve missions, but when you are doing easier maps this card is not a must have.
Grim Bahir
While nothing special by itself, this card has good synergy with Tortugun that is worth trying out. Attacked units get infected, which turn into stronger Nightcrawlers when killed. Grim Bahir is a bit lacking in stats, but since it flies it can avoid incoming damage rather well and you have other cards that serves as main damage output. This card is worth checking out especially if you are short on Bloodhorn/Tortugun charges to bring more XL monsters to the table.
Other T4 cards worth mentioning
Surprisingly, there are no other T4 cards that are really interesting. Many excellent T4 cards like Death Ray require 3 orbs of one colour, while other cards like Plague are simply overshadowed by other cards. There are other XL creatures like Overlord or Fire Worm, but most of these are either weak or get overshadowed by Bloodhorn. Yes, Bandit T4 is really this good.
T4 Summary (TL;DR)
Once you reach T4, you will find that the game shifts greatly into your favour. Not only do you have access to some of the strongest cards in the game, but you can capitalize further by their great synergy. For normal pve, Bloodhorn and Tortugun can deal with almost everything a campaign can throw at you. And with Artillery you even got a nice T4 tower.
For rpve, Bandits is among the fastest (if not the fastest) pure deck as you can put out significant damage with Cluster Explosion + Soulshatter. It also cannot be overstated how powerful a Tortugun can be when buffed. And yes, Tortugun can be a pain to manage but there are enough ways to make it work. And at this point, you will kill units so fast that you will find your void energy coming back almost instantly after spending it due to Shrine of War.
T4 is where everything comes together, as each card has its function. Bloodhorn is a frontline tank/boss killer, Tortugun is a hard counter to L creatures and when these units are buffed there is little they cannot do. With Offering + Rifle Cultists you will never run out of charges or you can mass-CC enemy bases by casting amok twice in a row. Earthshaker will kill enemy buildings surgically and it is hard to overstate the milage you get from casting Cluster Explosion + Soulshatter.

Did somebody say BF memes?

You have a weakness for pillaging, raiding and superior firepower? You like a risk-reward playstyle and disregard healing spells as a cheap method for the weak?  You think your units are throw-away assets that should just do their job and do it well? You always wanted to create explosions of the size of tactical nukes to eradicate enemies from existence? You want all of this in in your Battleforge deck?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then look no further! This thread serves as introduction to playing pve as a Bandit player and shows how to reap the best fruits from fire and shadow alike. Playing Bandits is a very rewarding and unique experience as it is a finesse oriented deck that requires the right use of spells and abilities at the right time. You cannot simply throw units at the enemy and add some heals if things go bad. To master this deck, you need to think ahead and play with concentration and micro. However, once mastered, Bandits have several of the strongest card combinations in the game and are among the strongest late game factions.
This guide does not provide any map-specific details but instead, helps beginners with a range of tactics and unit overviews for each by tiers. It focuses on each card individually and how it synergizes best with other cards. The goal is to provide you with enough information that you can pick the right cards for the right job. This guide is structured into tiers and each tier has a smaller summary attached to it that provide an overview of the most important things there are to know. Some cards are considered "core cards", which are greatly beneficial and need to be in a deck most the time (that is, unless they are really not needed for a specific map).
Tier 1
Tie 1 does not have any Bandit specific aspects to cover, but instead I'll cover the most basic fire cards. Most of my exerience is from starting with fire, so I will neglect shadow T1. However, this does not mean that a shadow T1 is not effective, but the general consensus is that fire T1 requires less cards to pay successfully.
Sunstrider (core card)
Sunstriders are an utmost necessity as they are your only ranged T1 unit and only source of reliable anti-air. Among all T1 archers, they have the highest damage/cost but need protection from frontline units such as Nomads or Thugs. Furthermore, their ability to suppress towers minimize losses from fortifications early on.
Nomad (or Thugs)
On bigger maps, Nomads are a must have to swiftly traverse the map early on. I recommend the green affinity to let Nomads heal up fully between fights. With them, you can withdraw from bad engagements and let them heal up. While the red version is effectively 50% stronger, you will waste time by standing near buildings to heal them between fights. Due to their speed, Nomads greatly excel with Mine (see below). Nomads get an anti-air attack once you upgrade them, but since it costs power and has a cooldown it is not a realiable source of anti air. Nontheless, if you know a map only has a handful of T1 flying enemies, you can consider removing the Sunstriders from your deck.
Thugs (or Nomads)
Thugs are often overseen but when used correctly can achieve remarkable results. While they cost more than Wraithblades or Northguards, they will generate power from killing units and buildings. When used as the primary T1 force they can easily produce about 45 units of power within a minute or two and provide a headstart into T2. They are also your only S counter and can be used in a heavy foot-slogging army of Thugs and Sunstriders. Often, you will face other S creatures that are backed with a healer and in this case your Sunstriders can snipe the healers, while Thugs will crush the frontlines. If you don't need the speed of the Nomads, I recommend taking Thugs instead.
Mine
For a T1 card, this is a weapon of mass destruction. Place the mine preemptively and lure enemies into it to remove a squad of 3-5 enemy units. Not only will the Mine deal devastating damage, but it will also knock back small units, making them susceptible to other units. When attacking a small output, you can use Mine to kill the forces and suppress the towers of the base with Sunstriders.
Other T1 cards worth mentioning
Firesworn are your best answer to early aggression from L-creature (and best used with Thugs that serve as meatshields at the front), their knockback also provides a lot of utility but most the time you will achieve similar results with Nomads and Mine. Similarly, Sunderers can rip through walls easily but they cost a lot and are easily killed. If you need strong anti-structure firepower, consider red Nomads with Sunstriders suppressing the towers. Furthermore, if you face a lot of air units, you should consider getting the Blaster Cannon. With its red affinity, it becomes a formidable anti-air card that gets stronger the longer it attacks and keeps being useful up until T2.
T1 Summary (TL;DR)
The savest selection of cards is: Sunstriders, Nomad, Mine. Mine will kill most early enemy waves and Nomads can reach other points on the map very fast. You can replace Nomads with Thugs if speed is not important and you prefer having a bit more power available throughout the time. You will also find it easier to kill S-heavy enemy waves with Thugs in your deck.
Lastly, Sunstriders are necessary as they are anti-air, anti-tower and can be put on walls. However, if you don't need those 3 roles you can omit them and make a "Nomad, Mine only" list.
 
Tier 2
Once you are in T2, you can finally call yourself a "Bandit player". T2 provides you with various buffs and as a Bandit player you have one of the best defensive capabilities of all T2 decks. However, T2 is also the weak spot of a Bandit army as fire and shadow cards don't synergize that well at this point yet.
Lavafield (core card)
It is an amazing splash damage spell that decimates masses of medium and small sized units. A core card for every fire-splash deck.
Offering (core card)
This is your "go free out of jail" card. With this card (green affinity), you sacrifice an own unit to restore the cooldown of all cards with the same tier. For example, after playing Lavafield you have to wait some time before you can use it again. However, if you use Offering on a Darkelf Assassin, you can use Lavafield again immediately and play it twice in a row. This is a massive game changer and allows you to play your most powerful spells twice in a row.
Moreover, this card also has a second role as it also restores charges. Especially for beginners who have only 1 type of each card, this is a massive advantage as you can summon twice as many units as you could normally do. In general, this card is best used on units that are cheap or have little health left. Why bother with an almost dead unit when you can summon a new one?
Unholy Power (or Life Weaving)
This buff remains useful until the end of the game as the given unit will receive 50% less damage (meaning it will live twice as long) and do significantly more damage. You can use the card offensively (preferably Spearmen, Windhunter or Skyfire Drake) and defensively (Commandos, Shadow Phoenix). Especially when combined with healing (or life stealing) affected units become extremely difficult to kill on top of dealing more damage. And with upgrades the cost of the card goes down to 80.
Especially in T2 you might struggle against (flying) L creatures, but if you use Unholy Power with Windhunter you will make work of such enemies. A clear must have.
Lifeweaving (or Unholy Power)
An alternative buff to Unholy Power is Lifeweaving, it is similar in role but has two significant differences. First, it costs less power and second, it does not increase the damage of the buffed unit. Like Unholy Power the buffed unit receives 50% less damage, however  the other 50% will be evenly distributed among all enemy units around. Both of these buffs remain useful until T4 because of this 50% damage reduction, but Lifeweaving will outperform Unholy Power later on because of the extra damage from reflected attacks. Therefore, it comes down to the decision whether you want to have a stronger buff in T2 or reinforce your T4 slightly with this.
Rioter's Retreat (green affinity)
This card is what makes Bandits arguably the best T2 defenders apart from Frost. The green affinity will heal 70 HP of each Bandit model. So, while a Bandit Sorceress will heal by 70 HP a second, Commandos will heal 420 HP (!) per second. This is because Commandos is a squad that consists of 6 models (to put it into perspective, Commandos have 660 HP on U3). It is almost absurd how strong this is.
It's also a very powerful tower on it's own as it attacks 3 different targets on U3, but compared to its unmatched healing abilities this is just a side note. Nonetheless, if you have a defensive mission it is worth considering going Bandits just because of this card.
Commandos (or Darkelf Assassins)
Commandos are expensive and best used along with Rioter's Retreat but they are strong even on their own. When fortified, they have 50% life stealing which makes them an ideal target for buffs like Lifeweaving or Unholy Power and make great garrison troops on walls. They are an amazing M-counter because not only will they deal high damage, but also heal themselves by a huge margin in return as well. And if you face a lot of human units (like in the Renegade campaign) they will hard-counter everything as they deal twice as much damage to humans (and strong damage means strong healing).
Darkelf Assassins (or Commandos)
While Commandos are a strong and versatile choice, Assassins excel in their cheapness and synergy with Offering and most of all are your only good S-counter. Along with melee tanks, like leftover Thugs from T1 or Spearmen they make a formidable force (Assassins counter S, while Spearmen counter M). Furthermore, due to a bug their DPS increases substantially when using their ability despite being paralyzed for a few seconds. They are an excellent unit if you know what you are doing, but Commandos are always the safe choice.
Windhunter (or Gladiatrix)
This is your T2 superweapon. Usually, your T1 units are enough to progress to T3. However, if you face some powerful resistance such as Stone Warriors or Lost Vigils, Windhunters are the weapon of choice to eradicate them. When buffed (preferably Unholy Hero), Windhunters absolutely murder L sized creatures and because it is a flying unit, it is often unaffected by incoming fire. Windhunter is one of the best tools you can have to break a powerful Lost Soul base in rpve or just for a powerful air raid in campaign missions.
Personally, I find Windhunter + Shadow Phoenix to serve as perfect addition to a strong T1 army. The Phoenixes serve as shock troops to kill bases and finish off enemy waves, while the Windunter deals with stronger opposition. You should also consider taking Rioter's Retreat, as it allows you to fully heal your Windhunters in mere seconds.
Gladiatrix (or Windhunter)
The Windhunter has a big weakness (apart from anti-air): It cannot capture points. If you chose Thugs in T1 and need mobility in T2, it is worth considering to take a Gladiatrix. Since, apart from Nomads and Lancers, Gladiatrix is your only fast ground creature. It is cheap and stat wise, it is similarly strong to Windhunters on a per-cost level. However, because the unit is weaker individually it means that buffs do not excel as they do on Windhunters.
Bandit Spearmen
While not a good card for rPvE, the Spearmen are certainly worth taking for PvE. The appealing fact of this unit is its potential ATK of 2000 (!), which results from a base ATK of 900, a 50% bonus damage against M creatures and a 50% bonus against melee creatures. However, with 70 energy, they are a bit pricey. Nonetheless, once Spearmen made it into combat they will hold on for a long time due to life stealing (especially with buffs). They are well suited for defensive and offensive missions alike and like to have range support from Commandos or Darkelf Assassins. They are perfectly suited as frontline shock units and will deal with close combat melee creatures exceptionally well. Consider also taking Rioter's Retreat to quickly heal your Spearmen.
Bandit Sorceress
The Sorceress is worth mentioning because of her amazing ability. She can enter a tower to basically double its range. This includes Blaster Cannons, Rioter's Retreat, Necroblaster or Artillery. Her red affinity synergizes especially well with Rioter's Retreat (30% more damage for surrounding units).
I would not classify her as a T2 unit, but see her as an investment for all tiers that excels for defensive missions. It is not worth using her as an S-counter because her attack is bugged and Phenomic never bothered to fix her. Her attack splash is so small that it will only ever hit a single enemy model and only do a fraction of the damage she is supposed to do. Sadly, the same applies to other Bandit cards as well.
Other T2 cards worth mentioning
Because T2 should be kept concise there are a lot of good cards that I did not talk about that can have their use on particular maps. For example, the Skyfire Drake has bettter stats than a Windhunter, however, Bandits have a range of other good M-counters already. Also, for most shadow decks the Furnace of Flesh is the central building for gaining void energy back but is inferior to the T3 Shrine of War.
In rpve, the Shadow Phoenix is arguable your best T2 unit because it can kill buildings and units very fast. But in normal pve it is better to build a steady army and sniping buildings is less important. Ravage is another great T2 buff that allows your units to stay in the fight substantially longer, but unlike other buffs Ravage does not scale well with T3 and T4 and in most cases Unholy Power will work equally well.
Also, Time Vortex is a very powerful T2 tower but simply doesn't come close to the power of Commandos + Rioter's Retreat. Stone of Torment has its uses on some maps as well and with the Bandit Sorceress, it can teleport enemy units to itself from very far away. It's a strong combo, but not needed on most maps. Motivate is also a good buff if you have a deck to support it, but that excels mostly when starting with a Shadow T1.
T2 Summary (TL;DR)
Commandos and Windhunters are always save choices. For defensive missions, Commandos + Rioter's Retreat can even defend waves of T3 creatures whereas Windhunters can go on the hunt in offensive missions and kill crucial units/buildings with ease when buffed. Either way, Lavafield, Offering and Unholy Power can have a huge impact when used correctly.
For additional fortification, Bandit Sorceress will improve your defensive capabilities considerably. When time is of essence, a Nomad or Gladiatrix with Mine + Lavafield will be able to kill most T2 camps. But if you opt for a more sturdy gounr presence, Spearmen will be the unit of choice.
It is important to understand that playing Bandits means that your troops are expandable.
is primarily about using your spells and abilities correctly, whereas your units come last. You are the warlord who decides on who dies and who remains useful. Do not hesitate to use Offering on weakened units, as dead units will return 90% of their energy over the course of the game. Killing units and getting their energy back due to Void Manipulation is a crucial aspect in T3 and T4 when you start getting the big toys.
T2 is easily the weakest part of a Bandit army, but that only becomes apparent when playing expert maps or in pvp or iin rpve 10. When played right, Bandits are among the fastest decks and can deal crippling damage in a short amount of time due to buffs, strong abilities and powerful direct-damage spells.
 
Tier 3
This is where things are really getting interesting. On their own, Shadow and Fire already have some of the (arguably) strongest T3 cards and now you are going to harness their full power and put some excellent Bandit cards on top of it. The problem in T2 is the lack of a powerful frontline unit, but now you can get them in spades and make them even stronger with buffs and support from several Shadow cards. Once you reached T3, you will find yourself in a very comfortable position and the deck starts to take on an own dynamic thanks to Voidmanipulation and an amazing range of spells.
Soulshatter (core card)
This is an absolutely crucial card that remains useful up until T4 and is best utilized against a big horde of weakened enemies. Soulshatter is a direct-damage spell that does extra damage for every unit it killed, which can result in phenomenal chain reactions. With the initial blast, you might only kill 1 or 2 units, but the extra damage from those killed units might be enough to kill other units and trigger further explosions. It is hard to overstate the work this card can do, even more so when you have access to fire spells. Because if the initial blast did not kill any units, you can try to finish off weaker units with a Lavafield and force-trigger secondary explosions. 
In general, this spell is best used to finish off weakened groups of enemies or in combination with other powerful direct damage spells such as Inferno, Cluster Explosion or Fire Sphere.
Soulhunter (core card)
While there are other strong and fun to use creatures in T3, Soulhunter is hands down the most powerful of all. It is your only XL creature in T3, has amazing stats, conveniently counters L-sized units, has a powerful active ability and life steal. Let that sink in for a second.
It is a primary target for buffs such as Lifeweaving or Unholy Power. Soulhunter is the perfect frontline unit not only because of those buffs, but because life stealing will make a noticable difference on a hut that has 4500 ATK. Further, its mine-field ability can kill hordes of M-sized creatures with easy and can be coupled with Soulshatter for maximum efficiency. In general, it is advised to take only 1 unit in T3, but why would you want any other units in T3 when you have this guy?
Shrine of War (core card)
While this card might not be suited for beginners deck, it certainly is a must have for everybody who wants to master this deck. This is clearly the best card at Voidmanipulation as it returns 12% of your Void Energy immediately. And with all the powerful spells and units you have at this point, killing enemies is not the problem. In fact, it encourages a fast and aggressive playstyle as killed enemies will provide you with energy when this building is activated.
You might be wondering what void energy is, if so let me explain: Every time one of your unit dies or when you use a spell, 90% of the card's energy cost is added to a seperate energy pool. Similar to power wells, energy is slowly coming back from this pool. Energy coming back from this pool is called "Void Energy". Therefore, Shrine of War allows you to play cards in a very quick succession. You can sacrifice weakened units and use voidmanipulation to gain back a huge amount of their energy in a short time, allowing you to summon new units instead. Same applies to spells, as they return 90% of their energy into the void pool.
The disadvantage is that you need to start the effect of the building manually and it is only 20 seconds long (+10 seconds from the first upgrade). So you will want to build 2 Shrines of War and always have at least one available when you need it. This means a cost 300 power, but it really is worth the investment. My tip is to use access the ability via shortcuts. When you first start with Battleforge, I would not recommend this card as it requires some insight in how the power system works. However, this card is so hugely beneficial that it should be a goal to learn how to use this card at some point.
Inferno
Some say this card is not worth the 300 power price tag and I agree. However, when we use Shrine of War we don't really pay 300 power, as Inferno is powerful enough to give us most if its energy back right after casting it. It summons several meteors to deal massive damage in a medium sized area. If all meteors hit, they deal 2400 damage to a single target which is enough to kill everything that is not of size XL. It can even be used in T3 to deal a nice bit of extra damage if you have the spare power. And if you use this card correctly along with Shrine of War, you get most of your spent energy back in no time anyway.
Bandit Lancer
Even-though Soulhunter really is your best T3 card, Lancers are still worth mentioning. What speaks for them is their fast movement, a strong ability and that they are dirt cheap. Their stats aren't the greatest thing but they are supposed to be a support unit and actually make a decent L-counter. In my opinion its strongest aspect comes from its 60 power cost, which means that you can use Offering on it to recharge Soulshatter, Infect or Inferno. What makes this unit a good supporter is its "mark" ability, which allows almost all ranged units to hit "marked" units from further away. I am saying "almost" because some units like the Bandit Gunner have a bugged attack and do not benefit from this attack. It's worth noting that this ability also works with the Shadow Phoenix charge.
Infect
What is better than having spells of mass destruction at your disposal? I tell you: Spells of mass destruction that turn killed enemies into Nightcrawlers! That's Infect in a nutshell.
Sadly, the orb requirements make you choose whether you want to pick Inferno or Infect in your deck. Therefore, it is a matter of taste which spell you take. Nonetheless, with Soulshatter, Lavafield or Minefield you clearly have enough firepower to make Infect work. On U3, 3 NCs will spawn per killed unit and the effect has a very long duration of 30 seconds. The card is good to have, especially if you have Motivate in your deck. You can even use it in T4 to feed your Tortugun.
Frenetic Assault
This card provides you with the thing you lacked up until this point: Crowd Control. This card has two effects: You select an enemy unit, which will subsequently be attacked by all surrounding enemy units. Further, all units affected by the spell go amok and attack your and enemy units alike. It's greatest strength is in dealing with enemy paralyzers from afar. Just sit back and watch the show!
Undoubtedly, this card is a great asset that remains useful up until T4. However, the real question is whether you should take this or wait until you get Amok in T4.
Necroblaster
Among all T3 towers, Necroblaster arguably does the most damage to a single target and with 100 power, it is cheap enough to guard several passages. But the disadvantage is that it needs to absorb souls before it can be fired. But sacrificing units is not a big deal in this deck anyway and once you fed it enough souls it will probably never run out of souls again, since it is powerful enough to deal with units swifly.
Other T3 cards worth mentioning
Especially for beginners Backlash can be a very powerful direct damage spell that deals more damage the more void power you have at the moment. Assuming you have 1000 void power, it will deal 3300 total damage and cost you a measly 120 power. But the more you master voidmanipulation, the more useless this card becomes.
On another note, Corsair is a great card... visually. In practice it is too slow, cannot capture points, does not counter aynthing and has several attack bugs. It's actual damage is around 2200 ATK (opposed to the 3000 ATK stated on the card) and sometimes the main cannon will not fire because of an animation bug. And while it can summon Bandits/Commandos, they cannot capture points either. It does slightly buff human units around it, but that is not enough to make it viable. Competitively speaking, this card it is utter garbage.
Sandstorm used to be an alright card with a fun purple ability, as it combined a damage spell with Aura of Corruption (and even worked against buildings). And then they nerfed it. So, don't bother with it, as it is an expensive card that does too little damage and the size of its passive ability is so small that you will never trigger the effect.
Unity is a nice spell that allows your units to share incoming damage and makes them receive less damage. Sadly, life stealing/healing isn't shared by units and in general, it does too little, affects only a few units at once and is somewhat expensive.
I have no experience with Church of Negation, but saw it used with great effect along with building support spells. Sadly, we don't have building support spells and without them the Church will kill itself faster than its targets.
Gunner used to be my primary T3 unit... until Soulhunter was released. It's a fun card with fun voice acting, but simply cannot match the power and buffing potential of a Soulhunter. Sadly, their attack is also bugged and they deal less damage than is stated on the card. Finally, their attack range is fixed and they do not benefit from the Lancer's active ability. In numbers, they can be very good because they will constantly knock back M-sized creatures before they can reach your Gunners. But at this point you could probably afford 2-3 Soulhunters.
If you want a somewhat unique deck, you can try to work out a spam-list that resolves around Bloodhealing and Motivate. In theory, it should work out with units such as Bandit Lancers or Giant Slayers. So, if you feel like it, give it a try. Bloodhealing can also be used to kill Tortuguns in T4, so that is a plus as well.
T3 Summary (TL;DR)
Despite having Soulhunter, the two most important dynamics in T3 is void manipulation and damage spells. With spells like Lavefield/Inferno + Soulshatter you can decimate whole groups of enemies in a short amount of time. Those spells come at a hefty price, but because their impact is so powerful you will get back the majority of your energy back in an instant due to Shrine of War. "Mastering" shrine of war is crucial for mastering a bandit deck.
The rest is actually rather straight forward. Use Soulhunter (or other unit of preference) as your main frontline unit and beef it up to 11 with buffs. Try to combine different damage spells with Soulshatter to maximize the damage and capitalize with Infect if you wish. For a fun list you can try out different T3 units and see what works best for you, but powerful spells and Shrine of War are a must have.
You won't have enough firepower to kill a big T4 base, but then again... who has it?
T4
Bloodhorn (core card)
Like Soulhunter, this card is among the best of its tier. With 5800/5000 on U3, 15% life steal and stampede it is not difficult to see why this card is a must have. The real question is which affinity to use, as people still debate over which one is stronger. Purple affinity sacrifices health to deal twice as much damage and along with Lifeweaving/Unholy Power and Unholy Hero this allows you to kill bosses with a single Bloodhorn. Normally, attack buffs do not stack but Unholy Power and the Bloodhorn ability are exceptions to this rule. However, people also like the red affinity which sacrifices a Bloodhorn's health to make it immune to debuffs for 15 seconds. This is extremely useful when facing mass-CC towers in rpve, where a Bloodhorn can kill a building easily with its stampede.
It is also importent to note how useful stampede can be in the right hands. My experience is that stampede is (positively) bugged and it will always kill two buildings when they are hit simultaneously, even if that exceeds the limit of 9000 damage. Furthermore, for some reason life steal is far stronger when used with stampede and you can fully heal-up a Bloodhorn when it kills 2-3 buildings with its ability. Even if the Bloodhorn is nearly dead.
However, as a pure Bandit player you won't have spells to heal your Bloodhorns when they are critically injured. The best use of a nearly dead Bloodhorns is to use Offering and summon a completely new one instead! This has the nice side effect of restoring the charges and cooldown of all other T4 cards as well. With Shrine of War, you dont need to worry about killing your units, as you will get back the majority of their energy cost in an instant.
Unholy Hero (core card)
This card is massive. On U3, this card gives a unit 300% (!) more attack damage and costs merely 80 energy. However, if the affected unit gets hit, all allied units will get damaged as well (125% of the original damage). But that is not a big problem if your Tortugun is 50m away from the frontline, right?
Rifle Cultist (core card)
Rifle Cultists are good units on their own and they can deal massive damage with their secondary ability. You can build decks around this card, but for Bandits this is the most efficient way to restore T4 charges. Out of Bloodhorn charges? Summon some Rifle Cultists and use Offering on them. Want to cast Earth Shatter twice in a row? Or Amok or Unholy Hero? Just use offering on Rifle Cultists.
Tortugun (red affinity)
Not only has this card the highest attack power in the game, it can also be a target for the best offensive buff in the game. With Unholy Hero you can boost the ATK to 24000 (!), which translates to 2000 damage every 2 seconds. The red affinity is clearly superior as it gives the Tortugun 50m attack range.
No doubt, this is one of the most powerful units in the game, but it also comes with a big drawback as well. Tortuguns have a "hunger bar" that slowly depletes and once it hits 0, the Tortugun goes amok. Once it goes amok, it cannot be controlled anymore (also not sacrificed) and will kill your nearby units to increase its hunger bar. Therefore, Tortugun needs to be managed and the most effective way to dispose Tortugun is to sacrifice it with a spell. For this, Offering, Bloodhealing or Motivate. At this point you should be aware how important sacrificing units is.
Summoning units for food (like Boom Brothers) is simply not effective, however you can use summoned units like Nightcrawlers from Infect or the Insects from Grim Bahir to restore the hunger bar. What I also recommend is summoning 2 Tortuguns and once one goes amok, one will just cannibalize the other to restore a lot of the hunger bar. To put things into perspective, a Tortugun has 4000 HP on U3. Furthermore, a Tortugun has a max hunger pool of 5000 HP and depletes 50 HP persecond. Therefore, killing another Tortugun almost fully fills up the and you have one less Tortugun to worry about. FYI, Tortuguns start with 2500 HP in the hunger pool.
Especially in the beginning it can be hard to manage Tortugun, which is why I don't consider it a core card. However, apart from Batariel decks this is the most damaging card in the game. Once you learn how to play with this card it becomes an incredible asset and is a reason why Bandit decks are so powerful in T4.
Amok (red affinity)
Most people consider Frenetic Assault to be better, but I bed to differ. This card has 25m radius (opposed to 20m) and can be used every 30 seconds (opposed to 50 seconds). And unlike Frenetic Assault, this card does not need a target and you can cast the spell directly in the middle of an enemy base to cover as many units as possible. However, this card also affects your own units as well. Amok also has an edge, as you will use Offering regularly and Amok will capitalize from this as well. When casting Amok twice, you affect huge amounts of enemy monsters that will be fighting each other.
Cluster Explosion (red affinity)
Ever wanted to see a whole base getting annihilated within 5 seconds? This card has an infectious kind of attack which comes in 3 waves. On U3, the first wave deals 435 damage spread among 3 targets, those 3 targets further damage 9 other targets (same damage) and final wave can affect up to 27 targets. What might not sound devastating can severely cripple an enemy base and I haven't mentioned the best part: Soulshatter.
When Soulshatter is applied just before the final wave has hit, every killed unit will deal another 400 damage on top. This is massive and when used on a tightly packed map you can kill everything in a base with exception of a few XL units still standing (which are heavily damaged). And with Shrine of War, you will often get back ALL of your void energy in an instant.
It is almost unfair how strong this when used with Soulshatter.
Artillery
Like with T2, Bandits have an excellent tower that is awesome for normal pve. It costs only 190 power, deals 5600 damage and has a long range of 50m. Furthermore, if 4 or more units are approaching, this card will throw an additional mine. Once the mine is triggered, the red affinity creates a flame field with 25m diameter is created, dealing 70 damage to all enemies within (no damage cap applies). Mines from the purple affinity will simply deal 1000 damage, up to 3000 damage.
Earthshaker
In rpve, this card is a must have as you can kill spawn buildings or mass-CC buildings safely from afar. If you read this and don't consider this card to be strong, just wait until you encounter huge bases with multiple paralyzer units, spawners and mass-CC buildings. It can also be usedful for more difficult pve missions, but when you are doing easier maps this card is not a must have.
Grim Bahir
While nothing special by itself, this card has good synergy with Tortugun that is worth trying out. Attacked units get infected, which turn into stronger Nightcrawlers when killed. Grim Bahir is a bit lacking in stats, but since it flies it can avoid incoming damage rather well and you have other cards that serves as main damage output. This card is worth checking out especially if you are short on Bloodhorn/Tortugun charges to bring more XL monsters to the table.
Other T4 cards worth mentioning
Surprisingly, there are no other T4 cards that are really interesting. Many excellent T4 cards like Death Ray require 3 orbs of one colour, while other cards like Plague are simply overshadowed by other cards. There are other XL creatures like Overlord or Fire Worm, but most of these are either weak or get overshadowed by Bloodhorn. Yes, Bandit T4 is really this good.
T4 Summary (TL;DR)
Once you reach T4, you will find that the game shifts greatly into your favour. Not only do you have access to some of the strongest cards in the game, but you can capitalize further by their great synergy. For normal pve, Bloodhorn and Tortugun can deal with almost everything a campaign can throw at you. And with Artillery you even got a nice T4 tower.
For rpve, Bandits is among the fastest (if not the fastest) pure deck as you can put out significant damage with Cluster Explosion + Soulshatter. It also cannot be overstated how powerful a Tortugun can be when buffed. And yes, Tortugun can be a pain to manage but there are enough ways to make it work. And at this point, you will kill units so fast that you will find your void energy coming back almost instantly after spending it due to Shrine of War.
T4 is where everything comes together, as each card has its function. Bloodhorn is a frontline tank/boss killer, Tortugun is a hard counter to L creatures and when these units are buffed there is little they cannot do. With Offering + Rifle Cultists you will never run out of charges or you can mass-CC enemy bases by casting amok twice in a row. Earthshaker will kill enemy buildings surgically and it is hard to overstate the milage you get from casting Cluster Explosion + Soulshatter.