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  1. Jaymy

    2 VS 2

    Hello peoples, since official release an issue emerges, more clearly every week. 2v2 appears to be almost unplayable. Not because of any issues with the game itself... No, its just not enough teams, searching for matchups at the same time. If you're lucky, there are 1-2 other Teams, which results in maybe 3-5 games. But that's it basically, like I said, if you're lucky. Since 2v2 is my favourite gamemode, maybe even the reason why I play Skylords Reborn at all, I'm quite frustrated about this issue. So, I have a proposal! All people who like to play 2v2 ranked come together on maybe 1-2 days a week, at certain timeframes, so that there are at least enough teams for consecutive matchups. My first suggestion would be: Every Saturday 16:00 - 20:00 (UTC +1/ MEZ) What do you think? Kind regards! LordJay
  2. Hello fellow Skylords, Im a new player who first heard about this game 3 weeks ago and been hooked ever since. Im lookin to get into PvP and decided to start with pure fire as first Deck to learn because I like to play proactive. I have played around 20 ranked PvP matches by now, my last opponment recommended farrockbfs youtube channel to me to get a general feel for tactics and the rock/papee/scissor system. I feel like I have the right ideas what to do most of the time (other times i think its safe to take a well only to get rushed into oblivion but thats a different story :-p) but my execution is flat out terrible. Im lookin for PvP newbies like me who want to train on a regular basis or more experienced players that are willing to drop a gem or two. I struggle the most against frost sorceress, nasty surprise spam and nature cc spam. I dont mind loosing at all, so even if you are a skilled player already feel free to hit me up. To me: my native language is german, but my english should be good enough. Im online almost everyday after work, around 19-20 pm european time. Looking forward to join your PvP community and compete for top 100 in the future! :-D
  3. A large portion of the fun in this game for me previously was building my PvP decks from scratch U1 and upgrading overtime. Having edit-able top tier 120 PvP decks simply removes the enjoyment of having your own developed deck. Obviously the premade 120 decks make sense in Rated to keep the playing field level, but I would like to suggest removing them from Unrated for the sake of being able to have more diverse matchups and still build a deck that you saw from the start. I think major changes like this are bad for long-term longevity of the game when there's no time spent upgrading cards of your choice for a PvP player. Obviously you can technically still build full decks from U1 scratch, but handicapping yourself by not using the available U3 cards that you can swap out doesn't make much sense.
  4. Since the April Fool's video I made, I've been playing with the idea of having a Troll 2v2 tournament where teammates start on opposite teams. Let's imagine 4 players: P1 and P2 are on a team against P3 and P4. P1 and P3 will be the "leaders" of their team. The game would start with P1 and P4 on (map) team 1; P3 and P2 would be on team 2. So actual teammates start on the opposite teams as each other. If team 1 (aka P1) sees the victory screen, P1 and P2 win the game. I team 2 (aka P3) sees the victory screen, P3 and P4 win. So basically, P2 and P4 are trying so sabotage their temporary teammates. Shadow is of course the obvious choice for trolling, so I am thinking the "sabotage" player should not be allowed to play any shadow orbs. We can see how creative people can be. I have thought of some interesting strategies to troll your partner even without shadow I am also wondering if the "lead" player should also be penalized from using shadow. For example, cards like corpse explosion or shadow phoenix would still be very strong in this scenario. Here is the current ruleset I'm thinking about: Each team is composed of a "lead" and "sabotage" player. The sabotage player starts on the enemy team and is not allowed to play any shadow orbs. Victory is determined by the winning "lead" player. Pairings: Swiss system with a random seeding Points: 7 points for victory, 3 points for loss, -3 points per shadow orb played Teams will play 2 games back-to-back. Maps: Fyre, Danduil, Gorgash, Zahadune, Turan. Any other map (including Generated) is allowed if BOTH teams agree to it. One team will ban 2 maps. The other team chooses any of the 3 remaining maps. The team that banned chooses the starting position of both players. After game 1, the map picking roles reverse. I don't know if it's feasible to stream the games live, especially since I would want to hide troll strategies from the competitors. But I'd like all the games to happen on the same day, so there is less chance for cheating (i.e. sharing replays with someone so they know someone else's strat). Anyone interested in playing (or watching) this?
  5. Eirias

    PvP t4 fight

    Over the years, I've heard lots of people say they want to have t4 fights in pvp. Well, I made a map to test something else, but the result is a map where you can have a huge t4 fight. So go ahead and try it if you want, and then you will see that there is not really a point You can play this map by going to the Sparring grounds, then clicking community maps and selecting Paint Block Test. My map gives you t4 immediately, and there is an open fight. The other map where you can have a PvP t4 fight is called Maze of the Survivors. This map forces you to beat some PvE enemies first, so you will be t4 when you get to the other player. Either map will let you see that t4 fights are silly in PvP
  6. Hey, just a little Bug: Played Sparring PvP with my friend Ultrakool to rip his ass, I Started the Game but he was still in the forge So I got instand win what means I ripped his ass Doesn't really matter to fix it cuz its Just sparring..there are more often little bugs that the Game Crashes but its ok Cya Pat ?@Ultrakool
  7. Hi zusammen, folgend eine Übersicht von PVP Decks, die ich gut finde (weitere folgen, wenn ich dazu komme): Below is an overview of PVP decks that I like (more will follow when I get to):
  8. Hello, First, for those who don't know what i mean by "wall attack", i'll introduce it to you very quickly. You're in a PVP map, and there is a wall very closed to your opponent's monument or power wells. A common strategy here is to take the wall and put some archers on it. They will attack your opponent's monument or power well. He'll be in a hard position because it's hard to kill units on a wall. I admit i use it when i can because it's part of the game. But i think it shouldn't because it's way too much punitive in an off-guard moment. Often, it results by the victory of the wall attacker. I think the map designers didnt thought that the main PVP strategies would be: destroy wall already built because you get more energy into the void + make wall attacks. So they put walls everywhere. Including near start position thinking "it will help to defend the base, LOL". Well... its the total opposite... xD Solutions i see here: - (If its possible) If the wall is built at the beginning of the game (near base), make it free in energy, and even a definitive wall that can't be rebuilt. So players will keep it as a defensive structure and wouldn't be able to use it offensively. - Increase / decrease the wall cost depending on if it's closed to a monument/power well, - Put the wall a little bit closer so player can't take it to wall attack (red area) - Remove wall and maybe create some new walls if the map is designed to play with it. If i have the time in September, i'll be happy to edit the default maps and apply those changes, maybe publish them as "Wall attack removed" community maps and publish it to server :). And the final objective would be to submit it to devs so they can replace it by the current maps. Does someone is interested in this project? I would be happy to work with one of you people! Thank you!
  9. first i love BF and sry for my bad english... but for me the biggest problem atm is you get to fast to easy all you want thats why pvp and normal pve is dead. Rly i play this game a month? and have all what i want.. stonekin pure shadow twillight etc. pvp and pve fully upgrade... okay to be fair my loot luck on booster was good. Promo Mo for example. But you must only play rPVE maps thats all. For me personally they can increase gold and lvl requirement extremly. 3 or 4 times more. Then boost the lvl exp and gold on normal pve maps. And boost it extreamly for pvp. Nerf rpve. An then maybe people play pvp and normal pve maps more. Above all pvp. It sucks you have a pvp deck but you cant rly use it because only the top 10 players are in ranked and waiting for noobs. thats why 2 of my friends stop playing this game. Fully ups their cards for pvp and then you wait 30 min in ranked to get a top player. And only playing rpve is for them to boring. especially if you dont need more gold.. I know its a beta but maybe they can take it as idea or something. I hope you guys understand what i mean...
  10. Hello, I just wanted to report this bug: Me and other players can't see my pvp rank anymore. Actually I am lvl 18 and rank 40 - but even the golden badge is away. Maybe you guys can take a look at it, ty! :-)
  11. There is a huge problem with spectator maps since the auto kick was implemented that leads to the kick of player who are inactive for 3 minutes. This new change has killed the function of spectator maps because people who want to watch a match and take a place in one of the inactive positions to watch other player compete against each other are now kicked out of the match after 3 minutes and they cannot do anything against it. I understand the point to not reward people for beeing afk in pve or pvp and this change may be good for pve because this way no player can just stay inactive in a map for 30 minutes just to get a booster. But it totally kills not only regular spectating but the option for tournament leaders or commentators to stream and comment matches. Tournaments and tournament streams like the ones done by @Toggy cannot be done with this auto kick feature. Also all buildings and units are obliterated if a player leaves a match. This is a huge problem if a 2vs2 match is nearly won and one player of the winning team gets kicked. This may be game changing. It is a hard punishment if the mate in a pvp-match is afk but it is even harder to still win if also all buildings and units just disappear. I suggest that this change should be excluded from the sparring grounds or at least for the community maps. Would be nice if there is a way to just make the match and all quest progression done through a match not count if a player at one time was 3 minutes or longer afk. This would prevent the problematic of this auto kick.
  12. MrDanilov

    Pure shadow pvp

    I was thinking if I should put a third unit in my pure shadow pvp deck (not shadow-shadow-frost) along with Ashbone Pyro, Cultist Master and was not sure what unit exactly out of these options: Brannoc and Unstable Demon are excluded for now. At the moment I have 5 cards on my tier 3, 2 units plus Evocator's Woe, Voidstorm and questionable Soulshatter. Thank you for the insight.
  13. Hello Skylords of Lyn! I dont have anywhere to go look for fun decks (except for old Youtube videos, which is in 240p), I was hoping some of you would post your decks so both I and other people could get inspiration. My deck is 100% self-made so dont look at my deck as if it is a viable one, i just play with cards i feel like are cool. Please post yours and what type of deck it is for (PvE, PvP) Current deck - PvE (With cost - as of 09th October 2018 on the Beta): Treespirit (Green): 100 Windweavers: 139 Shaman: 900 Surge of light: 100 Aggressor (Green): 75 Crystal Fiend (g): 70 Curse of Oink: 50 Coldsnap: 525 Stonehurler (Red): 40 Stone Warrior: 35 Fathom Lord: 180 Rageflame (Blue): 400 Deepcoil Worm: 650 Brannoc: 300 Hammerfall: 10 Grimvine: 350 Grinder (Red): 400 Giant Wyrm: 90 Construct: 130 Deepgorge: 11 Total cost is about 4550 BFP (Prices change a lot, some times some cards are cheap and other times they are expensive)* Also attached screenshot of the deck:
  14. I want to make a shadow frost pvp deck, I Want to use lost cards. Anyone got samples?
  15. Hello bois and girls, As we know Open Beta is coming to us. That's why i would like to show you my pure fire deck (before the close). There is a full deck. At start we summon Nomad to get asap first powerwall. We can used 3 Nomad to rush enemies (they getting dmg buff). We can use Sunderer or makeshift tower to destroy small monsters. At tier 2 we got some combos - for example firedancers, raylling banner + girl power. This way you can easly take down power wells or orbs outlocated on map. 0 Second one is Scythe Fiends/Skyfire Drake with ravage. To quick down strong opponents you can summons enforcer. Two card T3 to long games. We got here also control spells (offensiv) to doing dmg before heal up and etc. What do you think about my special deck :)? Waiting for feedback! Really sorry for my english (it's my biggest flaw)
  16. Elemantary PvP Knowledge This Guide is mainly for beginners and less experienced players of PvP. I want to share basic knowledge more experienced players have over starters, so that they can try to have fun playing PvP even if they get stomped. Then they can look at this, helping them to analyze their games. So obviously, this is not a guide beginners just read and suddenly be strong, it just should give them ways to think how to get better. There are a lot of guides out there already, written down or recorded as videos. This guide here will be my personal opinion on what is basic, and if one wants to improve further I recommend watching game commentaries of top players or guides like from Cicada etc. Anyone who likes to add thoughts or critics to this, I would like to encourage to do so! So what do experienced players usually know? It is knowledge about: 0) How do I get started and better? 1) Energy 2) Summoned cards do different special damage. 3) Do I summon units dazed or better not? 4) Moving and placing units more efficiently 5) Focus Fire 6) When do I focus my damage on a well, when on an orb and when on a unit? 7) Split attacks 8) Don’t forget about your units 9) Watching the animations caused by the opponent player 10) Keep an eye on the mini map. 11) Estimation of a fights outcome 12) How powerful are additional orbs, when should I grab one? 13) Wide knowledge of existing cards, often played in PvP 0) How do I get started and better? Honestly speaking: Put some cards into a deck and play. Be brave to lose a LOT! But you’ll definitely need: Ground units (I use the plural here and mean it. It’s possible to play with only 1 T1 unit, but you want to learn how to play right?) in T1 of ONE color (better T2, too) Everything else is optional, you will find out quickly enough what works well and what not so. Lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible and try to understand your mistakes and maybe those of your opponents. 1) Energy So, I would like to spare you from the very details. But what is important to know right away? There are generally 2 ways of energy income. a) from wells from void When you start a map you get 2 wells, and a base of 400 void energy. Beside that you get 100 energy for free at the start of a game. Every second you constantly gain about half of the amount of what the 2 arrows show you in the top right into the power you can actually use. The top arrow shows income from void, the second one the number of wells you have up. Whenever a unit dies, a spell is casted or an activated ability is used 90% of the used energy will recycle into the void power. So you only lose 10% of its energy in the long run completely (mainly over about 2:30 minutes, I know this is very gross: there are much more detailed lectures about this topic), but be careful that you have a temporary loss of power. However! If you lose a well or an orb you won’t get your energy back. So try to not lose those without getting clear compensation (getting a temporary advantage that you can use to counter attack: e.g. a larger army on the field and or more temporary energy available to use). Repairing is refunded 100%, but is temporary very costly. When to repair a well etc. or not is not an easy decision even for very good players, so I recommend to get your own experience (it’s very situational). Being able to grab wells earlier is a big deal because you will also be able to take the 2nd earlier if nothing happens. But does that mean you should take one as quickly as possible? If you think you can do so without losing it to a rush being 100 (decreasing on time) down, yes. Here also: Get experience! Usually being bold and greedy might look dumb at first, but that’s a way to learn. At last if you cannot figure out how to hold, it was probably unreasonable to be greedy. This is then valuable information you can use when your opponent goes well first in the same situation next time. Lot of times you can keep fighting, even if you lose a well before you gained its 100 power, there are a lot of things important other than just being ahead or behind in energy. Also: Be careful not to cast anything not clearly helping you to win or stall a battle, your opponent might be able to ignore or run from (e.g.: a Life Weaving-75 energy-, spells and buffs are good but you need to get its value played out) and put you into a temporary power disadvantage, so your opponent could take a well etc. for same or similar cost. And of course if you kill a unit with more costs then your own unit or spell, you get a power advantage. Whenever you end up with having less energy, that’s mainly due to decisions in game. You can always improve with any new knowledge. 2) Summoned cards do different special damage. Units casted have 4 different sizes: Small, Medium, Large and Extra large referred to as S, M, L, XL Units. If on the bottom left of a card there is a sword (melee attacker) or a bow (ranged attacker) then right of that symbol is S, M, L or XL written. That means that it does an additional 50%! damage against that size of unit. For example: We call a unit that does 50% more damage against S-Units an S-Counter (M-Counter etc. likewise). Obviously often (of course you have to find out the exceptions by experience) it is efficient to attack an S-Unit with an S-Counter etc. If the symbol is a star the text on the card will explain what special damage it does (e.g. multishot, siege damage etc.) Letting the right units fight the opponents ones is one part of what is called micromanagement (like unit movements such as spreading, kiting, body blocking or focus fire, explained later on) 3) Do I summon units dazed or better not? Dazed units do less damage and have only half health. But when you are attacking far away from a spawning point, where your units are cast undazed you don’t have much of an option. But be careful with low health units which might die before they even get out of daze (especially against fire or shadow). So if you run an offense spawn some units before you reach the opponents units. Often in higher level play you see a T1 fight with some units “pre”spawned, so that they are able to fight with full force. 4) Moving and placing units more efficiently Micromanagement is fairly important, and because movements are quite slow in this game it is in my opinion not as hard to get ok-ish at as in faster games like starcraft etc. Let me explain some techniques you should be aware of and maybe try for yourself. Spread your units! That avoids splash damage to hit all your units at once. But try to spread them only as far as needed (yes you need to gain experience here again: vs. nasty surprise, lava field etc.), so that they still fight efficiently. Often it is good to spread units in a circle or to attack from different angles. When you cast new units also try to place them so they are spread efficiently. Kite! Hit and run if you have faster against slower units. (scavenger, frost bite and so on are also very helpful) If you have a slower unit or your attack is “muted” by some special abilities. You can run with that unit and attack the attacker with another unit. Block! Many units get slowed down when enemy units are in the way. You might use that to your advantage! Stampede! Some units can trample others down and hinder their attack. 5) Focus Fire Especially with ranged units focus fire is important. Means: Attacking the same target with a bunch of your attackers or with all of your attackers. Let’s explain it with an overly simplified model(the units are not as simple, but it still applies often enough): Two armies A and B are fighting each others. All of A’s and B’s units do one damage per attack and have 4 hitpoints. Round 0: A(4) B(4) A(4) B(4) A(4) B(4) A(4) B(4) A uses focus fire and B not. Round 1: A(3) A(3) B(4) A(3) B(4) A(3) B(4) Round 2: A(3) A(2) A(2) B(4) A(2) B(4) Round 3: A(3) A(2) A(1) A(1) B(4) Round 3: A(3) A(2) A(1) Well, I hope you got the point. Similar models you can make for pincer attacks (sandwiching) etc. 6) When do I focus my damage on a well, when on an orb and when on a unit? You do want to get down something which is not getting recycled into the void (wells, orbs), but we aware! When you shoot on a building you are not doing damage to something which may attack you back. Wells and orbs can serve as static tanks. So I cannot answer this question in a simple fashion. But the higher your DPS (damage output per second) is the likelier is an lesser punished focus on a well or orb. Also with siege units you might prefer targeting structures. As for targeting wells and orbs: Wells have more function in the earlier stages of the game (in later stages why would you want to invest 100 energy when the game almost ends and the void income is huge) and lesser health than orbs. So you usually you want to target down wells over orbs early and the other way round in the late game. 7) Split attacks Often it is easier to defend one place than two. For example: Try sending 2 siege units to attack a well on one point of the map and if possible at the same time with the rest of your army somewhere else, your opponent will have a tough time trying to handle this problem. 8) Don’t forget about your units Use your units you have cast. Try not to forget about any of them. They are bound power (not even void income) if they do nothing. If they are too far away to do anything helpful, consider sacrificing them. Same goes for towers if they have lost their strategic value. 9) Watching the animations caused by the opponent player There is no fog of war. You need to collect all information you can get. So carefully observe what your opponent is casting. 10) Keep an eye on the mini map. Well same as point 9) 11) Estimation of a fights outcome That needs a lot of experience and/or good judgment, but… At least: Do not sentence your units to death walking into obviously lost battles. I have seen beginners run with one t1 unit into an army of t1/t2 units without a special idea to handle that (at least I couldn’t come up with one). You might do that if your one unit is much stronger and/or you have the energy and supporting spells prepared (e.g. nasty surprise, lava field, corpse explosion, life weaving) 12) How powerful are additional orbs, when should I grab one? I personally like to stay lower tier and grab a well or the map presence instead, if I think I can defend. But an additional orb, especially t3 is a huge power (not in the meaning of energy besides void manipulation cards) boost. Here also, I do not really have THE beginner tip. But the more defensive your deck is build the more you might want to stay lower tier and collect more energy etc. instead. 13) Wide knowledge of existing cards, often played in PvP The more cards you know in detail the better your judgment will become and the more likely you are to make the right decisions. Usually (also depending on buffs and nerfs of cards) there will be a so called meta game (cards you find in most top players decks). Work on knowing those cards and how their animations look like in the game. Ok, I hope I did tell as less nonsense as possible, and I know this is not even half of what one can learn and many of you might have diffrent opinions about what is important or basic. But I hope it will help especially those, who find themselves at a huge loss at what to do and think about in PvP, HiyaMC
  17. This is a card near and dear to my heart. I used it as a crutch to get 12th on the ranked ladder at a time where everyone said it was useless. Before I go farther let's remember what it does: Shrine of Greed: Tier 2, Shadow/Shadow, 100 Power Building Transfer half of the void pool to the power pool instantly. For the next 30 seconds, no void power flows into the power pool and any power that would normally flow into the void pool is instead permanently lost. This debuff means that for 30 seconds if you use a spell, lose a building, or let a unit die you permanently lose the 90% power that would normally be refunded. The debuff is so crippling it makes the upside, gaining half of your void pool instantly, not worth it. The lose of a single nightcrawler means permanently losing 54 energy. Lose two nightcrawlers and it is worse for you than building a power well and instantly destroying it. The issue is, the debuff is so bad that you will lose far more than 100 power in the 30 seconds it is active. But, did you know Shrine of Greed's (SoG) debuff is tied to the building itself? If you destroy the building immediately after activating it, you lose the 90 power bound into the building but instead get half your void power instantly. This is clearly a bug but it makes the card incredibly interesting to play and gives Pure Shadow a way to run an incredibly long t2. Rediscovering the bug from another Pure Shadow player Eljyn(?) is what vaulted me into the top 20. It lets you turn a match you are losing into a game where you have 2 buffed harvesters on the field. If you have ever played me and wondered why my micro is below every other top player's, reading this should give you a hint. For 1v1 PvP In my opinion the card is balanced. If given the chance I'd redesign it to bring back Pure Shadow's old school t2 turtle into Harvester or 5-card T3 without requiring the player to abuse a bug every game. Once someone knows you have this in your deck(or is given the impression), they can punish you hard when you build it. I typically had to go one Power-well down when I built it and if I didn't get major value the game was essentially over. It is a true high-risk high-reward card and fits well in the Shadow faction. For 2v2 PvP This is the important part of this post. The widespread use of this bug had a detrimental effect on 2v2 in the later years of BattleForge. The issue is that both you and your ally get back half of your void power instantly and only one of you suffers a -100 power penalty. In 2v2 where there is more power already in the game, this gives a team with a Pure Shadow member an unfair advantage in the mid-to-late game. Assume all four players in a 2v2 match have 1500 power in their void pool. One team is capped at +20 void power per second with 1500 in their void pool while the team using SoG pulls out 750 power instantly and still gets 15-16 per second. This isn't healthy for the 2v2 scene and as time went on and knowledge of the bug grew, more and more teams started incorporating a Pure Shadow member. And that's why I'm making this post. I've seen talk of balancing and if we are going to be making balance changes it is very important for us to look first at cards that hurt the overall playing experience of the PvP communities and this is a card we need to focus on first. Discuss.
  18. Hey everyone, RadicalX here! Some of you may already know, that I try to provide as much Battleforge gameplay content as possible and since I'd like to know what you'd like to see I decided to make this thread here. So this is the stuff I wanted to upload on YouTube anyways: -> Some of my best PvP matches (either the closest or clean ones, depends) -> Recent streams with actual gameplay (PvP & maybe some PvE too) -> Replay Reviews from 2013-games (Analyzing either old top level PvP matches or some crazy games in general as long as I have enough replays) -> Random videos about some stuff like specific interactions, that are useful to know to spice up your gameplay (or something like "how to oneshot powerwells with an Easter Egg" ) -> Short deck building videos with short analysis about the 10 different factions Here's the last video I've uploaded recently: Generally speaking I'll try to make a channel with entertaining content, but also educational aspects for those, who want to play the game on a high level in PvP. So let's get to the actual point. What kind of content would you like to see? A specific PvE map (solo runs)? A specific PvP matchup or a special deck in action? Or maybe something like challenges (I think @Eirias made a thread about this once)? I'd appreciate every comment & idea on this!
  19. Saim25

    NEW 1on1 PVP MAP!

    Hello everyone, here you can download my new Map HIGHGROUND. Its a fast and intense 1on1 Map, inspired by one of my favourite Maps "Haladur". Orbs: 6 (Maybe Ill add one more) Wells: 16 1. DOWNLOAD : https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzlscd35ic4wler/Highground new version.pak?dl=0 2. Put the PAK file in Documents/Battleforge/"Map" (if there is no Map folder, create one)
  20. How to play Frost T1 a PvP Guide by RadicalX - General talk - Hey everyone, apparently I didn't plan on releasing this guide so early, but since I have this finished guide lying around for such a long time I'll just post it now. This time I will talk about Frost T1. I'll try to do pretty much the same I did with my shadow guide: I'll try to provide some basic informations for new players combined with some deeper analysis of matchups and tips for more experienced players too. The stuff I wrote refers only to 1v1, because 2v2 is different in many ways (I said the same stuff in the other guide). General question: Why should I play Frost T1? Let's start with an essential question here. Why would somebody consider playing Frost T1? Because Frost T1 isn't as reliable as Shadow or Fire T1, since Frost has got 2 major weaknesses: 1. no access to a T1 swift unit 2. Frost does very poorly in open fights without a near power well Those two weaknesses combined make Frost very inconsistent in a way, because the difficulty of your game depends primary on the map you are playing on and not the opponents deck-color like in other matchups. Alot of people consider Frost T1 as too risky and that is a big reason why next to no high ranked players used it (only nature T1 was actually even less common). But lets take a look at the upsides of Frost T1. First of all Frost Units are the strongest T1 units in the game in terms of combat stats. Their cost efficency is amazing and they have such an incredible amount of hp which makes aoe damage useless unless your opponent is already T2. Frost may be weak if you can't get a close well situation, but when you manage to take a favourable power well you can smash your opponent from that point on. Frost T1 is unbeatable in a close well fight as long as your opponents doesn't build turrets or is T2 and even then it's possible to win due to the incredible stat efficency of Ice Guardians next to buildings. In addition to that Frost T1 offers a very strong late T1. There is pretty much no colour that stands a chance against you at the late-T1 stage (not even nature as some people may think). Your units already have got an incredible amount of health and homesoil adds another scaling effect in terms of damage which lets you outscale your opponent easily. I guess you can describe Frost T1 like this: "High risk, high reward" - the Deck - This list is going to be short like the one for my Shadow Guide. It just gives a slight overview about the cards to show what was essential/viable/trash. Group 1 - The "must have" Units (You would suffer alot if you decide to play without them): Master Archers Frost Mage Ice Guardian Ice Barrier Home soil Glacier Shell Group 2 - Very strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups: Lightblade (purple) Frost Bite (purple) Ice Shield tower Glyph of Frost Group 3 - Cards that are only useful for higher Tier combinations: Frost Bite (red) Frost Sorceress Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable): Imperials Lightblade (red) Wardens Sigil (both affinities) Northern Keep (blue) Glaciation (blue) Wintertide (both affinities) Group 5 - Trash Northern Keep (red) Northguards Glaciation (red) Construction Hut Defense Tower Some of you may noticed the surprising fact, that I included Wintertide in group 4 despite the fact that the card used to be pretty popular. I want to talk about it a little bit more in detail, because alot of players rated it pretty highly even tho it was a very unnecessary card and pretty much a wasted deckslot. And this is the reason for it: The only unit, that has any kind of synergy with Wintertide are the Master Archers. The other M Units, don't get anything from the knockback immunity and even if you can give your units insane amount of effective hp for a good amount of time, it wont make a difference due to its self-root. Wintertide + Masterarcher spam is not useful against any deck and there is always a better option for Frost T1. -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide loses against Dreadcharger spam if the shadow-player stops every movement command so he doesn't kill his own units with the reflect damage through stomp and it is not really hard to execute that. Motivate makes it even worse in this matchup. -> Master Archer spam + Wintertide is useless against nature, because you wont have enough burst to kill units effectively. Hurricane will at least do a single knockback before you can react unless you are a master at predicting the enemies actions and even tho it seems like hurricane does no damage at all it can deal up to 500 damage in total against a massive unit spam (10 damage that gets applied 5 times against up to 10 units). That is at least a respective amount for 50 power. -> If you try Master Archer spam against Frostmagespam you are going to have a bad time. A very bad time. Frostmages will just demolish you, because it's an S-counter and has a constant knockback. This means you have 0 damage without the use of wintertide and still less damage when you decide to use it and this is just bad. -> In the matchup against Fire Scavenger is just a better version of Dreadcharger, because there is no stomp-effect, which makes it even more reliable (Therefore the blue affinity of Wintertide would be actually better in this matchup). Apart from Firesworn there is no real knockback (Sunderer doesn't count) that makes Wintertide useful in any way. You may think Wintertide helps you to scale better into the late T1 stages since you get a higher efficency the more units you affect with a buff, but honestly ... you already outscale every deck in the late T1 stage due to homesoil, which is the superior buff in every perspective. Wintertide just doesn't have any kind of synergy that makes it worth a slot for a 1v1 deck. I consider Wintertide a 2v2-only card and this is why I would recommend to take this card out of your Frost deck. - The maps - I want to mention the maps right away, because they are super important as a Frost player. I want to give you a little overview about the strength of Frost T1 on each map, because in case your opponent plays shadow or fire as his T1 (which happens probably around 80% of the time) he will try to prevent you from getting map control and close wells. Against nature things are much different, but I'll talk about that a little bit later. Haladur: It alawys felt a little bit weird to play on this map. The middle of the map was pretty much perfect for you, because the power wells were pretty close to each other and it was not possible to get zoned from the first power well. Sounds great at the first look, but there was a massive downside. The main base was super far away from the middle position. This allows swift unit spam for the shadow/fire player and this is pretty nasty to deal with. Your opponent attacks your power well in the middle, but if you try to play units to defend he can just run down to your main base and leave your slow units on the other part of the map. You have to spend your power very carefully on this map, otherwise you'll end up with a massive amount of bound power, that does litereally nothing for you. Uro: This Map is your worst enemy. If your opponent starts immediatly with his swift unit he can block every spot on the map. You are pretty much forced into a dazed fight, which isn't favourable for you at all. Many Frost-players tried to start with 2 units immediatly and sent them to different positions to aquire at least some sort of mapcontrol, but that only works as long as your enemy doesn't pay attention. If you are in a tournament and your opponent picks this map you should consider playing something apart from Frost T1. Lajesh (standard version): You had a wellcluster next to your main base which is easy to defend. But on the other hand it's very hard to apply pressure due to the walls. Your T3 spot could get blocked pretty fast, but if your opponent takes the position himself it opened up opportunities for you to launch a strong attack. Lajesh (without walls): If both player agree to play without walls this map got just so much more interesting. When the power rises you can take an aggressive power well and force your opponent into a close well situation. Even though you had to spend 100 power into the power well you will come out on top. But take care of mortar & phasetower! Yrmia: I loved playing Frost T1 on Yrmia. The well distance is very short and the map in general is very small, which helps you alot to defend yourself against early aggression. If you get yourself into a safe position you will be able to launch super powerful attacks in no time. In my opinion this is the best map you can get as a Frost T1 player. Simai: A very passive map. It is very easy to defend yourself against aggression and you can take alot of power wells on your side of the map without losing to much map control. On the other hand it was very difficult to attack your enemy if he decides to stay on his side of the map. Pretty much an antifun map, but pretty favourable because it allows you to scale. Elyon: This map causes alot of problems, because it's small and mid centered. Since you wont be able to win dazed fights against fire or shadow you would lose the control about the mid position which means you would lose the entire map control. You have next to no available power wells & no T3 spot which causes serious issues. At least your T2 spot was very save, so it's not as bad as Uro. Whazai: It always felt a little bit weird to play on this map. You have no control about the middle of the map in the early stage of the game and your opponent has the pressure advantage. That said, Whazai isn't that bad for you. The map is small and that increases the power of your Ice Guardians (you can spawn dazed IG's with active shield over the cliff at your starting wells). If your opponent gets a little bit too greedy and takes a power well in the middle you can punish him for that. By way of conclusion I want to remark that Phasetower is broken on Whazai. Generated maps (small): The small maps were very threatening, because they are super mid-centered. The player who controls the mid position (usually 1 orb + 4 wells) controls the entire game, sometimes you could even deny T3 spots. In most cases you had at least a save well spot with a T2 orb, but you lost so much map control and you had to fight really well if you try to reclaim it. Generated maps (big): These maps are just bad designed. You need 2 entire minutes to walk up to the enemy. At least the maps were favourable for you, because no early aggression means you can take safe wells and scale into a T3 which should be not too bad for you since Frost T1 allows you to play a timeless one T3 regardless of your T2 colour. Still not the most enjoyable type of maps ... Frost may be very map dependend which makes the T1 a little bit unreliable for your casual ladder games, but just imagine how strong it can get in tournaments. There were a good amount of players, who used to play only pure fire. In a best of 5 you would get at least 2 free wins by picking a good map for Frost T1, because Pure Frost naturally beats Fire in T2. Mastering frost T1 can help you alot in these situations and can make yourself a way more threatening player even for opponents with superior micromanagement and decisionmaking when they aren't flexible in their deck choice. - Matchups - Frost vs Shadow Time to take a look at the specific matchups. I'll just start again with a short look at the core cards in this matchup: Frost: 1. Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Homesoil Shadow: 1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate Core Strategy: There are 3 possible scenarios that can happen in this matchup and I'll descirbe all of them. First scenario: You don't get a powerwell If your opponent get's the opportunity to deny you a powerwell and forces you to go into a dazed fight you will just lose. Master archer spam is the best thing you can do here, but you need at least 10-11 units with homesoil to stand a chance, because the Dreadcharger just demolishes Master Archers due to its bonus damage against S units. Ice guardians on an open field won't help you, because they have no iceshield and that leaves them as super squishy units. Lighblade costs too much & even a well placed Glyph of Frost won't save you, because there is just not enough dps early into the game to make good use of it. The shadow player motivates the focussed Dreadcharger and destroys you when he gets out of the cc. This is why you want to avoid this situation at every cost! Even if you have to give up alot of mapcontrol, getting a power well is the first very important step to keep yourself in the game. Second scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent attacks you immediatly. This is the most common situation in high ranked. The shadow player has a 100 power advantage and alot of strong players will attack immediatly at this point because this is a very micro intensive fight. The Shadow player tries to pick off your units immediatly, because your units are more cost efficient and if he waits to long or doesn't get his picks you outscale him, defend the well with glacier shell and get a massive advantage. This is why you have to micro your units as well as possible to survive up to the point where you can fight back. The units you need to play are Master Archers and Ice-Guardians. How much of each kind is decided by the units your opponent plays. If he plays many Dreadchargers, Ice Guardians are your way to go, Master Archers perform better against Nox Troopers on the other hand. Be careful with the use of spells at that point.Only use Glacier shell if your well drops really low. Otherwise your enemy can just switch his focus back onto your units immediatly and you wasted 50 power which could be invested into another unit. Only use Frost bite if you are 100% sure to finish off the unit & don't use home soil on just 2-3 units. It's better to get more units into the battle and micro them to build up a huge army. If you defend this attack successfully, the game is nearly won. Third scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent takes one too Unless you are a really high ranked player this will be the most common scenario. And luckily this one favours you. If both players just take a well you are pretty much save due to the high cost efficiency of your units around your power wells. Just don't let your units die for free and wait a little bit up to a point where alot of power is in the game. Because at that point you can take another power well without any risk. Your opponent lost his momentum and can't attack you at a high power level even with his advantage due to the strong stats of your Frost units. This often results in a situation where your opponent decides to take a power well himself. And this is how you can take advantage of this: Try to take your wells in a way to close the gap between yourself and your opponent. If you reach a point where you just have to build 2-3 Ice barriers for your Ice Guardians so they can walk up to the enemies well without losing their shield to crush your opponent. Your unit composition should consist of 2-3 Ice Guardians + Master Archer spam. The Ice Guardians are a big threat to the Dreadcharger and Master Archers naturally outscale a nox trooper spam espcially since Nox Trooper needs so many extra hits to take down an entire Master Archer squad. The last missing piece is the homesoil that gives you the needed boost to wipe out the entire shadow army. In smaller skirmishes it's important to use Frostbite to pick off units and prevent yourself from getting outmicroed by swiftunits. Tips & cards to watch out for: Starting unit: Always start with Master Archers and don't get baited into the Lightblade start. Yes, the card allows you to skirmish well due to the taunt ability if both players take a well, but if the shadow player attacks immediatly, the card is useless, because it gets demolished by nox troopers while binding more power than other units, that would be more useful in combat. This will make a rush much easier for your opponent. Phasetower: This card can stop your aggression entirely, so try to figure out if your opponent plays it or not. Phasetower is strong enough to allow Shadow fighting in close well positions, therefore even at a mid/late T1 stage it can be risky going too aggressive against it, especially when the Shadow-player can make good use of terrain to protect the turrets from your Ice Guardians. But as long as you make sure to avoid being overaggressive there is not too much to worry about, because your units are strong enough to deal with Phastowers when the port ability gets used. Motivate: Not every Shadow player uses it, because Nature & Frost were sort of underplayed! If your opponent doesn't use it you will reach your power spike earlier to punish your opponent harder. So always be aware if your opponent uses motivate in the first skirmishes or not. Replays: - coming soon - Frost vs Nature Core cards: Frost: 1. Frostmage 2. Ice Barrier 3. Home Soil Nature: 1. Swiftclaw 2. Surge of Light 3. Dryad Core Strategy: This matchup is pretty easy to describe. Spam Frostmages ... and win. Honestly, that's pretty much everything about this matchup. Frost mages negate Windweavers & Spearmen entirely, outdamage Shamans & Dryads by a wide margin and outrange Swiftclaws, who are the only real threat to you. In the early game Swiftclaws do a massive amount of damage to M units and therefore you need to keep Distance from your opponent up to the point where you get enough Mages to oneshot the Swiftclaws in one attackrotation (you need around 8 Frostmages with homesoil support to do so -> 930 damage per rotation, which is enough to kill a swiftclaw even with the dryad damagereduction). The most dangerous thing for you is an early T2 from your opponent. Therefore you always have to be in a good position, where you can threaten a T2 rush while being in a safe distance to be not caught out by an early swiftclaw spam. The most popular decks with nature T1 were pure nature & stonekin (nobody played shadow nature or fire nature with nature T1). Executing a rush against pure Nature is pretty easy, because it lacks an M/M counter in T2 and as long as you split up your Frostmages against Curse of Oink there is nothing that can stop you (kiting Deep One with Frostbite is an easy task). Against Stonekin it gets a little bit more difficult, dependend on the cards you are playing against. Stonetempest for example can perma cc 3-4 mages, but Lightblade hard counters him, so try to play one if you see your opponent switching into T2. Razorshard got nerfed, which makes it easier to outmicro them, Stormsinger doesn't have enough dps to stop you and the other cards are also S units, so as long as your micro is on point you can rush against stonekin aswell even with alle the cc & building protects. Tips and cards to watch out for: Treespirit: The honorable nature players wont use him, but you will still encounter this card due its ridiculous strength. But the good thing for you is the fact, that your Frostmagespam can't get caught out by treespirit, because you can build up Ice Barriers pretty fast to block their entire damage. It's a little bit more difficult to build them in an offensive position, but if you manage to do so it isn't a big deal to win a fight against them. Primal Defender: Never underistimate the influence turrets can have on the game in this particular matchup. While bound power is usually a really bad thing, Primal defender can create a huge zoning are & on some maps (Haladur for an instance) your main base is super far away which allows to to stop any type of aggression. Your opponent can switch into T2 safely, which allows him to stay in the game. Primal Defender & Mark of the Keeper map have a big influence on this matchup, so keep that in mind. You probably won't play against Mark of the Keeper, because it's useless against Shadow (outranged by Phasetower), but people definitely used Primal Defender! But if your opponent doesn't use any buildings be confident try to finish your games in T1! Pure Nature does pretty well against frost splashes in T2 and you really want to avoid that unfavourable gamestage. Tip: Keep your Frostmages at one spot in T1 and don't split them up! You want all of them shooting at the same time at the same target (The damage can be bodyblocked by other units otherwise & having delays between the attacks allows your opponent to time more efficient heals betweeen the attacks) Replays: -coming soon- Frost vs Fire Core cards: Frost: 1. Ice Guardian 2. Master Archers 3. Lightblade 4. Ice Barrier 5. Home Soil Fire: 1. Scavenger 2. Sunstriders 3. Mortar Core strategy: To play against Fire T1 you need to follow one golden rule, that will bring you alot of success: Don't get Greedy! It sounds a little bit silly, but it's really important to handle a pure Fire player and I will explain this in detail now. Like in every other matchup you will be in an defensive position right from the start. If you survive the first attacks against fire you will gain a massive advantage and be able to apply alot of pressure or force your opponent into an early T2. So let's take a look at the different type of attacks a fire player may launch at you and how to defend them properly. How to defend a scavenger rush? I mentioned this scenario already a little bit earlier. It is a really dangerous strategy to play against when the distance between your power wells is really high. So I will choose Haladur to explain how to play in this situation, this map is a prime example due to the high distance between the main base & the middle. What's my starting unit? You have 2 viable starting units: Master Archers & Lightblade. Theses units will be needed in the defense. Lightblade allows you to make easy picks & is super tanky against the Scavengers. But I personally prefer to use master archers as my starting unit, because they are more reliable in the other scenarios against fire and if you see your opponent goes for the scavenger spam anyway you can still play the lightblade (pretty much as a surpise spawn to get a free taunt). - Do I even take a power well in the middle? - Yes, definitely. You stand no chance winning a dazed fight and you have to get access to at least 1 spot in the middle. Take the closest well next to your base (don't worry to much about map control, if your opponent takes the aggressive well on Haladur he puts himself into a close well situation which forces him to either bind power into a defensive mortar or he will just straight up lose the game from that point on). - My opponent started spamming scavenger, what shall I do? - Don't panic! You got less power, but way more efficient units, try to taunt one scavenger with your Lightblade! If your opponent runs away you got a very efficient trade, if he tries to attack, play maybe one additional Ice Guardian. Don't play more than 3 units immediatly! And DON'T use homesoil. If your opponent goes for the powerwell and it drops to 66% health start playing more units, only use glacier shell if it drops below 600hp! Your power management is the most important thing here. While it's usually good to play at your power limit it is important to keep some energy in you backpocket, so you will be able to react when the scavengers start moving down to your main base. Don't get too greedy and spend all your power at one spot, your other base will be left entirely helpless. Keep this in mind: If you play your defense perfectly you can ALWAYS defend a Scavenger spam, so stay calm! Second possible scenario: While the scavengerspam is just one possible scenario there is also one big threat, that is really dangerous to you, when you decide to take an overaggressive powerwell. I'm talking about the mortarrush. The threat of an offensive mortar is really big and forces you to make bad trades, which allows the fire player to snowball. Scavengers will rip Masterarchers apart while Sunstriders are a big threat to Ice Guardians. I finally found a great replay to showcase why this is the most dangerous thing you can encounter in this matchup: How to play this scenario properly: Sometimes you need to give up map control as a Frost T1 player due to bad map conditions. Even though you put yourself at a small disadvantage by taking a defensive power well, beeing too greedy may cost you the game against a top tier player and this just isn't worth the risk. Third possible scenario: You can also be lucky and get into a close well position, where your opponent has next to no chance of winning. But be careful at some positions. If the position is protected by terrain your opponent may try to build up a mortar, which can be really annoying to deal with. It's usually wise to have a well distance around 70-80m, which allows you to spam Ice-Guardians & Master Archers (their stats are faaaaar superior to Scavenger & Sunstrider) from a save distance. In later T1 stages you don't even have to worry about that. It is possible to beat out Fire even with a Mortar, your units have a great health pool and don't die immediatly, and with homesoil you can destroy the Mortar in about 3 seconds. Afterwards feel free to kill every unit around you. Tips & cards to watch out for Wrecker: This card is also used from time to time in a rush due to high dps & the rallying ability. But your Ice Guardian are stronger in theory, so keep in mind that you can take a well against a wrecker spam, but if you lose 1 or 2 units in addition for that things may snowball really damn fast. Firesworn: I didn't mention the card at all so far, but the S knockback can be a problem for your Master archers, so don't rely too much on them! Mine: Some people may try to protect their offensive mortar turrets with some sneaky mines for zone control. It's usually not worth it, because it's easily dodgeable (for the majority of people atleast) but always try to think about it so you don't get caught off guard! Replays: -> another mortar rush by Obesity vs freemka - coming soon- Frost vs Frost Core cards: 1. Ice Guardian 2.Frost Mage 3. Homesoil 4. Ice Barrier This matchup is pretty simple in terms of explanation, but pretty difficult when it comes to execution. First of all I recommend starting with frost mage (I know it's pretty uncommon, but that is pretty much because there were next to no experienced frost players around the high ranked ladder, since everyone played shadow & fire due to the high reliabilty). Master Archers don't have any particular use (there are no unitsquads to finish off and also no S units in general) and they get permacc'd by Frost mage. Lightblade isn't too bad, but it's just really useful against careless opponents who let their units get to close to their opponent before the true fight starts. Otherwise the Lightblade is just too expensive (with the taunt ability nearly as expensive as 2 Iceguardians, who have far superior combat stats). Apart from that there are 2 types of possible fights. 1. Ice Guardians vs Ice Guardians This occurs on small maps with close well positions. The winner of this matchup is going to be the player who has better micro management. So make sure to always keep track on your Ice Shields and move your units properly. In addition to that it's important to play at your absolute power limit, otherwise you will ultimately lose out due to lower dps. Try to have homesoil constantly active in combat (An Ice Guardian spam usually involves more than enough units to make it worth is), but don't get baited into using it too early at the start of the fight, otherwise your opponent may be able to retreat without losing any units and that would be a pretty huge loss for you. 2. Magespam This is why starting with Frostmage is so damn important and valuable. On maps without proper wellpositions to fight at, the Frostmagespam outscales Ice Guardians pretty fast. The amount of mages you need is higher than against nature so don't even think about attacking too early, but after 10+ Frostmages you will be able to oneshot Ice Guardians with a single attack rotation (75*10*1,55= 1163 single target burst damage). If you face a magespam with your magespam make sure to get off the first damage rotation. That's enough to win fight, because at some point your opponents counterattack won't deal enough burst damage to kill mages and your additonal splash damage also adds up over time. So make sure to get a clean & fast damage rotation at the start. Tips & cards to watch out for: Glyph of Frost: Just make sure to respect its threat and you should be able to dodge it. But if you walk into it with your entire army, it can be pretty dangerous, because the enemies dps is really high in such a big spam and getting hit by a good Frost-Glyph can possibly cost you the game. Also be careful when playing a magespam, because you will have all of them pretty close to each other since you need to do this for better focusfire. This may lead to a full 7 unit freeze, which is pretty dangerous. So just dodge it & take the free 50 power advantage. T2 timings: Dependend on your T2 colour you should chose your T2 timing wisely. As a pure Frost player you can negate even a big disadvantage by just going T2, if there is at least some void power in your pool. War Eagles demolishe entire M unit armies. Replays: -coming soon- Frost T1 vs T2 This section will be added for Frost T1 specificly, because it's one Frosts biggest advantages over every other T1. It has enough power to even beat some T2's in a close well situation and I'm not talking about just defending with an extra well, I'm talking about straight up aggression. Here are the decks Frost beats in a T1 vs T2 scenario. 1. Pure Nature: I mentioned this already, Magespam can't be stopped by a pure Nature player. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunter are useless against the S knockback, Deep one will end up getting kited with Frost bite, and pure Nature doesn't have any other swift units. You don't need a close well to do this, but Ice Guardians will also do the job pretty well combined with the additional mages. Careful: Dependend on your opponents deck you may have to play a lightblade to counter a potential Spikeroot. This is especially important against people who used Tresspirit, because it's often an indicator for root decks. 2. Stonekin: Pretty similar scenario. The Frost Mages will do a great job against stonekin and Ice Guardians are almost impossible to kill (Stonekin lacks high dps units, which leaves the deck with no option to kill any units, while beeing forced to spend more and more power for cc and building protects). Having a Lightblade as a hard counter for Stonetempest can be valuable too (even though Stonetempest isn't too popular anymore). Just make sure to split your units as well as possible against cc and aoe knockups (razorshard). 3. Pure Fire: If the pure Fire player goes T2 early into the game you can punish him by taking a close well. Your Ice Guardians have a great hp pool to survive initial Enforcer charges. Pure Fire has no cc and therefore has to rely on a combination out of units & wildfire to defend attacks properly. On a low power level you can just play either units or spells and that lets the efficency decrease by alot. In later game stages you shouldn't rush Pur Fire players because their defense gets much stronger and you don't want to allow the fire player to scale into the late game (Especially when you are playing pure Frost, T2 is such a great opportunity for you to win the game). 4. Fire Nature: This also works really well, because Lavafield doesn't do enough damage to deal with the hp pool of Ice Guardians. Try to split your Master Archers against Hurricane and focus single Skyfire drakes with Frost bite. The lack of cheap & spammable T2 units will allow you to apply alot of pressure in the close well situation. 5. Bandits: Well Bandits has no cc, the aoe spells don't do enough damage and this makes it alot easier for you. But Bandits has spammable high dps units (Nightcrawler & Darkelf assassins), who can punish you really hard if you micro poorly, so try to kite nightcrawlers with Frost bite and play a Frostmage to deal with the Darkelf assassins. 6. Fire Frost: The success against Fire Frost was really dependend on the situation. Most of the time you should look for a close well against a wellcluster to reduce the efficency of Glacier Shell. Otherwise Coldsnap & Building protects may stall the game up to a point with enough room for Skyfiredrakes and Scythe Fiends. Fire Frost has pretty expensive units though, which means you got a big advantage in the early fights. The other decks had some cards that were to strong to allow a favourable close well situation unless you've got a tremendous lead. -> Shadow Nature has the cheapest cc and the cheapest high dps units -> Pure Frost has War Eagle (The Ability is too damn powerful) -> pure Shadow has Shadow Mages -> Shadow Frost has Lyrish Nasty, cheap high dps units & building protects Overall playing pure Frost was always a great experience for me and I hope we see at least some Frost T1 players in the game, when everyone is able to play again. So I hope you like the guide and I hope it will be useful for some of you in the future. I'll update it with replays, when I found some good ones, currently there are sadly no impressive Frost matches on youtube. If you are interested in more content about playing T1 check out my Shadow T1 guide aswell! I guess that's about it, thanks for reading and have a nice day! Best regards, RadicalX
  21. So I wrote a guide that I will use for myself when the game launches. I gathered what i got from other guides and wrote a summary of what I understood. I would like to see people's opinion's on it : Things that are highlighted in red (THIS OR THIS) are more important than other points. Tips to follow before the match: Warmup before playing competitively, Make sure you are ready to play, Revise the strategies and think about how your deck matches up against other factions. Make sure you are calm and collected to maximise your performance, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tips to follow during the match: [Micro, Awareness and Tactics]: All units are doing what is best, Look for the best moment to use a spell and only use it if you really need it, Try to kill units in the most efficient manner and try to trade up in value, Avoid using abilities unless you need them(i.e. frenzy because your units will die after the frenzy); but make sure to use them if there is no drawback, Attempt to either try to get a large advantage early on and finish the game or try to win small skirmishes and stall until tier 3 where you can end the game, Always build the right counter to the attacking force and use t1 to counter t1, t2 for t2 and t3 for t3 unless a card is very useful(like scavenger and frost sorceress), If you gain an advantage(i.e. destroy a well) make sure you deny the opponent an opportunity to do so to you. This can be done by defending after a successful attack, If the armies are even, try to initiate the attack next to your base because your fresh units won't be dazed and your orb attacks units, Build your first unit as fast as you can so you can rush it to the well faster and get the well first. This will give you a slight power advantage, Make sure to utilise cards that support your units even if they aren't a counter to a unit. These can be a unit that can trample(dreadcharger) or knockback(firesworn) other units, Try to play the way your faction is best played, If you can use less common tactics to try to force a mistake from your opponent, Always try to use hotkeys and try to learn all of them, Learn the maps: look up replays and try to see what tricks good players use. Also learn where the best orb and well clusters are, Remember to spread your units so spells are less effective against them, Try to attack multiple locations to strain the opponent, Focus fire units to make sure they die. If you are attacking a squad, then try to leave 1 or 2 units alive so they bind power(unless it's a squad like spirit hunters, they only need one unit to do a lot of damage, so take them out). If a unit is being focus fired then retreat it to a well and wait for it to heal up. TRY NOT TO GET ANGRY DURING THE MATCH, IF YOUR COOL-HEADED YOU CAN MAKE BETTER DECISIONS! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Power]: A well is equal to spawning 1000 power in cards, this is because if you lose a well you lose 100 power and if you lose 1000 power in cards then you lose 100 power also, Only build a well if you think you can defend it for 200 seconds(rough guide), During the game you should wait for a large advantage before you build an orb, or if you doubt you will gain an advantage in that tier then take an orb(only if you can defend it), If you are going to take an orb and a well make sure to take the wells first as they will start giving power back nearly instantly while the orb takes a while to build and during that time you could have gained power. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tips to follow after the match: [Analysing]: Watch a replay of your game and try to spot the mistakes you have done, next game focus on not making those mistakes again, Think about your deck; are the cards you are currently using not working well together? Are you unable to counter specific cards? Do you not have good ... counters? If yes try to revise your deck. Try to practice your micro and look back at all the tips. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think I should add something to my list then please tell me. There is no point of following a guide if it leads to the wrong path!
  22. 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
  23. Hey guys. Since most of us startet to enjoy other games once Baofo was shut down im certainly sure many of us started with the blizazrd game hearthstone. My idea is to start some kind of hearthstone tournament exclusivly for our awesome battleforge Community. Im not sure yet if it would be like once a week, monthly or a one time event. To spice it a bit up i will do some kind of price pool for the winner (currently im thinking of 10- 15 hs-packs) The idea is to check if there are enough ppl to participate, finding a date where most of us can affort the time (or maybe some kind of slower tournament where every round takes ~ 1 day and the players meeting in that round can schedule their match by themself) First of all there are a few questions to check: 1. Is there Intrest in a event like that 2. Wich server should we play on (personly i would prefer EU...) 3. Any Format ideas (Bo3/ Bo5 Bans/no bans , Picking class for opponent, etc) 4. Any other ideas to add?
  24. Power circulation keeps your energy floating. So In this post i wanna touch something really important for playing battleforge Pvp. Some main concepts of power circulation in general. First of all i wnna point out the different ways power (energie) can be spend in BattleForge. So first of all therer are units, spells and buildings. Technicy units and buildings are sharing the same spot (buildings are kinda overpowered units, in the way how they bind power for a (limited) amount of time like units.) Overall that means, valuewhise, Spell < Unit < Building. A 100 power unit should not be removed by a single 100 power spell and a 100 power Building should always beat a 100 power Unit. Ofc u cnat really compare a War Eagle to a SoM, since there are alot off buildings aswell as units (e.g. Energy parasite) wich work kinda different and don`t fill into this comparing stats theme. One Important thing i wanna note is, that trading positively in a unit vs unit or spell vs spell trade is not considered here. Well you might ask yourself WTF does this have to do with Energy floating? Below i made a little Paint -Sketch of the Power Cycle in Battleforge The main diffrence between Units/Buildings and Spells is, that The Energy u spend for Spells directly flows into the Void Power while Units and Buildings will slow the circulation down a bit while they bind Power. But does this even Matter??? Well lets say there is a theoretial situation A where you have 0 Void and 0 current power, 2 power wells. To spawn a 300 Energy Unit (Eg. A Harvester) u would have to wait 150 Seconds. And now lets simulate a Situation B Where you have 0 Void, 0 Cureent Power and 2 Power wells, but u woud be able to spend every single point of energy instantly (wich ofc. Is not possible becaouse the smallest proactive unit is like 50 Energy but to keep it simple we just pretend we could^^)so it would enter the void pool right away. than u could do some random math like 0,9 * 2t* (100/99)^t for t=150 this would be around 1,2k Power Cycled. By spamming ur power out like that u would reach the 300 power mark at like 80 seconds. After seeing this u might ask youurself : wtf why am i even building big units than?? Well in battleforge you have to destroy your emenmys Power Wells aswell as Monuments while Spells used to be not that effective vs Structures, well... some units expecially sige units are. This forces the energy recources into a unit vs unit combat naturally slowed down by the distance your units have to run to reach the action. Btw this favours the defending player overall, since the defending person does not have this kind of tempo delay between paying a unit (binding the power) and get it into the action. For the same reason closed well situations are kinda intrsting and railing banner is such a powerful card. To bring the power immediately into the fight there are unit support seplls like heal, cc dmg spells and protects wich can be casted near to your units and structures. First conclusion: find a good balance between units/ and spells, to bring the maximum amount of power into the fight. to be continued....
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