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Author Topic: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)  (Read 26424 times)

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May 08, 2014, 10:59:34 PM
Reply #15

Eukalyptus

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #15 on: May 08, 2014, 10:59:34 PM »
Those 3 are essentials.

May 08, 2014, 11:06:58 PM
Reply #16

zen89

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #16 on: May 08, 2014, 11:06:58 PM »
Sapling can be good if you're seeing a ton of Ninja Gollum (prevent They Stole It from triggering), and it's also nice if you like to play large fellowships while thumbing your nose at Enquea. I don't think I'd play it if you're simply worried about wounding, because between Alcarin, Banner of Westernesse (3-4 copies), and Aragorn you already have enough healing to thwart most archery-based shadows.

I'm not a fan of Elendil/Narsil in Move Knights. Elendil takes up a companion slot, but he's not a knight. You already have a minimum of two non-knights in Isildur and Sam, SoH, and you absolutely need three on the board at all times. Given how useful Derufin is vs. Corsairs and Besiegers, I'd prefer him as a non-knight splash to Elendil.

Elendil also really needs you to play multiple copies of Narsil, four Saplings, and probably a Scroll of Isildur to be a meaningful skirmishing upgrade over someone like Aragorn/Garrison of Gondor. And at that point, it's just a ton of card slots you're devoting to something that doesn't really further your deck's main goal: killing things efficiently with fortifications, healing, and recycling. In general, knights shouldn't need high strength to win skirmishes, anyway--you're zapping the most powerful minions, and only relying on strength to kill the weaker ones.

The only thing I would recommend Elendil for is if you really want a tripling mechanism, and even then he's not super-reliable. But for the reasons you listed (skirmishing, wound soak), I think your deck is already good at doing those things, and will do them better if simply allowed to execute its main strategy. If you want to play Elendil try the Gondor Burn deck I posted.  ;)

May 08, 2014, 11:53:21 PM
Reply #17

ramolnar

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #17 on: May 08, 2014, 11:53:21 PM »
Elendil has advantages in certain metas:
*He has 5 vitality, so he can survive a double They Stole It + Promise Keeping. He also eats a lot of threat wounds against Southron archery, who will manage to kill someone eventually.
*Narsil can't be stolen by Corsair Marauder.
*The triple move comes into play occasionally.

My Knights were designed to dump and go in a meta with lots of Ninja Gollum and Corsairs and Southron archery, with very little Besieger action. That's why I play three Saplings and a Scroll of Isildur. I start Ingold and don't play Turgon; the only possessions are 3 Gondor Bow. Relying on Fourth Level is different than relying on Fifth Level.

To bring up debate about Sixth Level, I now only have 2. Sixth Level is bad in your hand at Site 1 - I'd rather have extra copies of conditions that do things, even though Citadel and Stone Tower are unique. And it's bad in your hand on the last turn of the game. Plus, in my old meta, I had some trouble finding free wounds to use - I realized I'd often rather take the wound on the second move than exert to get something back. Thus, the Sixth Level count decreased.

August 28, 2014, 01:23:14 AM
Reply #18

dmaz

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #18 on: August 28, 2014, 01:23:14 AM »
Let's get this started back up :)

Here's a link to my pride and joy for Movie block:
http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8997.0.html

I don't think my Fellowship is really considered Elven Event Abuse...I don't use gandalf or GLR to dump useless events and feed Cirdan, or Telepathy really...It's kind of just a "try to weather the storm" fellowship by covering all of my bases...I struggled a lot against the Corruption Easterlings with the polearm and bow, but enough 9+ str companions helped me eek it out barely...still a weakness tho.

Speaking of those wretched Easterling decks (they shouldn't even be ALLOWED to use a Southron's bow ;) ), I've seen a Gandalf deck walk through one without too much trouble. It focused on beefing up Gandalf and must have had 4 copies of Barliman Butterbur to keep bringing back whatever Gandalf event he needed most to hand. In this case he kept grabbing Roll of Thunder and used direct wounding with Gorn's bow to plink. Without the easterling captain and his two toys you can actually walk through this deck pretty easily.

Another counter to the Easterlings seems to be knights and fortifications perhaps...The captain isn't taking a wound if the fortification is removing his vitality :) Also...I think that the fortification that exhausts him would work right? Even though he's not supposed to "take wounds", I think there are a lot of cards that distinguish between exerting and taking wounds ( I think a balrog says "cannot take wounds or be exerted" or something) Anyway...just some thoughts :)

August 29, 2014, 05:04:35 AM
Reply #19

sgtdraino

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #19 on: August 29, 2014, 05:04:35 AM »
I don't think my Fellowship is really considered Elven Event Abuse...I don't use gandalf or GLR to dump useless events and feed Cirdan,

We-ell... you do clearly use Cirdan though, and almost 40% of your FP side is Elf events. You're not dumping useless events to feed Cirdan, you're dumping useful events to feed Cirdan! :) I'd say your Shadow side definitely qualifies as a "new approach." Your FP side seems less revolutionary to me, basically an Elf deck that uses Galadriel as the Ring-bearer instead of GLR. That doesn't seem that unusual to me... although granted I'm used to Expanded, where all you see for Elves is decks that use Galadriel as the Ring-bearer. Is that highly unusual for Movie? I don't play enough of it to really say.
"I would have followed you, my brother... my captain... my king." - Boromir

October 09, 2014, 09:29:31 AM
Reply #20

sgtdraino

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #20 on: October 09, 2014, 09:29:31 AM »
Post #1 has finally been updated!

I'm going to try to focus on Movie format for a while, to start building some statistics for this thread. We'll see how long it can hold my attention. ;)

dmaz, I decided to call your Shadow "Rainbow Gollum." Let me know if you have a better name for it.

As always, contributions (links, ratings, strategies, etc.) are greatly appreciated.
"I would have followed you, my brother... my captain... my king." - Boromir

October 09, 2014, 06:22:00 PM
Reply #21

everial

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #21 on: October 09, 2014, 06:22:00 PM »
Post #1 has finally been updated!

I'm going to try to focus on Movie format for a while, to start building some statistics for this thread. We'll see how long it can hold my attention. ;)

dmaz, I decided to call your Shadow "Rainbow Gollum." Let me know if you have a better name for it.

As always, contributions (links, ratings, strategies, etc.) are greatly appreciated.

I like the thorough ratings and new info. One suggestion - when available, could we link to example decklists? It's a little cumbersome to search for them all individually, especially when--as a newbie--I don't understand the difference between versions (see the earlier discussion about Gondor knights builds in this thread).

October 09, 2014, 07:28:36 PM
Reply #22

dmaz

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #22 on: October 09, 2014, 07:28:36 PM »
Post #1 has finally been updated!

I'm going to try to focus on Movie format for a while, to start building some statistics for this thread. We'll see how long it can hold my attention. ;)

dmaz, I decided to call your Shadow "Rainbow Gollum." Let me know if you have a better name for it.

As always, contributions (links, ratings, strategies, etc.) are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for adding it to the list!

The deck does rely on Gollum quite a bit, but from all of my games, I'm finding that the power of the shadow comes from a combined effort of Gollum and Morgul Squealer.

The shadow works such that it almost always discourages the double move. This is because of the sheer number of minions in the deck. It's hard for the opponent to make any kind of calculated risk in the double move unless they really build up a massive force to double or triple. The problem with this is that it generates so much twilight. Any deck in Movie that wants to double usually has one or two turns when they generate that huge pool for you.

When Gollum is handy for dealing with little to moderate twilight by cycling cards out of hand and pulling that one key minion back into play, Squealer punishes them severely for flooding the twilight pool. I've had two opponents concede at site 4 after the classic dump and (attempt to) run at the sanctuary. Their ringbearer wasn't dead, but so so much damage was being done so early that it was a lost cause.

It is definitely a "rainbow" deck, but the base strength of the minions is found in the Nazgul. Gollum is merely there to cycle and troll your opponent into consternation with all the minions they hate the most. I guess it could be either Rainbow Gollum or Rainbow Nazgul. As for which culture it fits into, it's a combination of Gollum/Wraith.

I can talk a little bit about the weaknesses of the deck. I've lost a few times, one to definitive pilot error, one half my fault, but also the deck match-up...one loss I do remember was completely based on my shadow's inability to consistently keep them from doubling.

The shadow has like 8 - 10 cards dedicated to Possession/Condition/Ally hate. So the first element to a deck that I might have trouble with is one that doesn't rely on any of those things. If they play 6+ companions, then they get whammed pretty hard, so the second element to a deck that would give me trouble is one that can stand strong with 5 companions.

The deck I lost to used a combination of Elven telepathy with Gandalf for global control. While I was able to get a stop at site 7 because of a webbed Shelob (he would have been fighting at 8 with only 3 of his 5 companions), the Roll of Thunder next turn followed by a double got me.
I lost because, even though I was able to get a solid compliment of Nazgul out with each move, the abilities of my minions often deal with things other than skirmishing...so if my mininons can't win skirmishes, and if Gandalf can wham me with well times spells (Terrible and Evil is rough), I'll have a harder time.

I guess you could say Telepathy Tanks could be the biggest weakness. Once Ents are set up with their typical Lindenroot+Horde+Host+Treebeard+Gandalf, I might have trouble stopping them with all that vitality and spells...but they almost always have more than 5 companions at more than one point during a game, and I usually am able to kill a couple key guys or slow them down when that happens.

October 22, 2014, 12:32:06 AM
Reply #23

dmaz

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #23 on: October 22, 2014, 12:32:06 AM »
Reading up on Kralik's "Durin's Secret Society of Dear Friends" really got me thinking more about this format. My interest was spurred from dredlox posting in the hall chat how the deck was broken and unbeatable, etc...and I was like "man it really sounds like he's a person that just played against an Expanded deck".

So I checked it out (posted on his original list as well), and realized that I had already played someone using his deck...in fact, I think I've played against you, sgtdraino, using a variation of the deck, maybe.

Anyway, I was very impressed with the ingenuity and fast-acting strategy of the deck to get set up ASAP. I had to call out the deck a little bit on the weaknesses that I did observe, merely because I heard a lot of people in the hall saying it was "perfect" or "unbeatable". I don't think anything is unbeatable in this game, even in Open format ;) Annoying? YES...but not invincible!

To make a long story short, after looking at the decks from this thread, and watching some replays, I'm coming to the conclusion that to make a really great deck in Movie, you need to prepare more like you are getting ready for Expanded than you think! Bold statement...this is what went on in my mind (feel free to blow my ideas out of the water, as usual ;) ).

In Fellowship, Towers, Towers Standard, and King Blocks, you are in general able to develop a strategy for fellowship and shadow, without worrying TOO much about what your opponent is going to throw at you. It's more of a "I show you what I've got, you show me what you've got" atmosphere.
For example: If I'm playing Uruks in Fellowship block, of course I'm going to include a couple Saruman's Power to help prevent choke or take down those Last Alliance tanks. But if I'm Moria or Sauron, I just build my shadow to plow through them, regardless of what conditions they are using. Best deck (including a little luck with draws and matchup sometimes) comes out on top. Pretty clean cut.

Compare this to Expanded. Its a maelstrom of wild strategies, tomfoolery, NPE, abuse decks, you name it. I really believe that there is truly no "broken" strategy or something that can't be stopped, even among all of these (at least none that has been seen yet). However, the measures you need to take to prepare in making a winning Expanded deck are broader. In some cases you really CAN'T just throw your best Nazgul corruption deck into the league, comprised of 34 Wraith-only cards and just say "Well, I'll just corrupt them before they can stop me"...yeah, it happens sometimes. But what do you do when you have no way of using threats during Shadow phase? Pop, pop, pop...there goes all of my minions during maneuver phase, and they are doubling to Mithlond. The difference here is that if you don't prepare specifically for certain strategies, you won't even get to show your opponent what your shadow/fellowship actually does.

Now I'll try to bring this full circle back to Movie block format (the whole point here).

Just looking at the lists and replays of some of the most competitive decks in Movie format, I'm compelled to say that to have a Movie deck that can go the distance (consistently stay competitive up through site 9), you must tech at least a little, to prevent being blown away by certain strategies.

In light of Kralik's deck alone, I think its vital to have at least some form of condition control. Preferably an end-all, like Saruman's Power. Almost any deck would automatically benefit from a couple of the Grima's and some SP. Are these cards going to be useless to you sometimes? Absolutely. But they will also sometimes be the difference between you putting up a fight, or being utterly shut down.

What do you guys think? Does Movie need teching to have a truly "League-class" deck? Or can you just put your head down and give it the college-try, plowing through with pure besiegers, Gollum, etc.



October 22, 2014, 06:31:42 AM
Reply #24

sgtdraino

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #24 on: October 22, 2014, 06:31:42 AM »
I like the thorough ratings and new info. One suggestion - when available, could we link to example decklists? It's a little cumbersome to search for them all individually, especially when--as a newbie--I don't understand the difference between versions (see the earlier discussion about Gondor knights builds in this thread).

Sorry I been slack on this. :) I will add links to various decks whenever I have them.

So I checked it out (posted on his original list as well), and realized that I had already played someone using his deck...in fact, I think I've played against you, sgtdraino, using a variation of the deck, maybe.

Yep! That was most likely:

These Are My Dear Friends' Birthday Presents

A variation based on Kralik's deck that takes maximum advantage of These Are My People. Fun deck to play, but many opponents don't like it because it takes so long to discard down to the bottom. For that reason I usually only pull it out occasionally.

What do you guys think? Does Movie need teching to have a truly "League-class" deck? Or can you just put your head down and give it the college-try, plowing through with pure besiegers, Gollum, etc.

Oh, generally I think some teching is important, even if it's just against GLR... or teching to protect your own GLR. The current deck I'm running actually doesn't tech for GLR, but I do back it full of anti-Grond events, so I suppose that is a form of teching too. Heck, you have to be prepared to defend against things your strategy would be weak against!
"I would have followed you, my brother... my captain... my king." - Boromir

October 24, 2014, 09:06:45 PM
Reply #25

sgtdraino

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #25 on: October 24, 2014, 09:06:45 PM »
I've finally updated post #1 with some data! Now 35 strategies added!
"I would have followed you, my brother... my captain... my king." - Boromir

January 20, 2015, 10:09:24 AM
Reply #26

simplegarak

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #26 on: January 20, 2015, 10:09:24 AM »
Searching the forums there seem to be several approaches to Gondor Knights (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Did consensus ever emerge about the best builds? People seem to go back and forth on whether to include Catapult, Citadel of the Stars, Strong and Old, Ithilien Trap, and Fifth Level (the rest seems fairly consistent, aside from numbers). Also, given the importance of conditions, why did so few builds run 4 copies of Sixth Level?

Virtually all top-level Knights builds are going to run Citadel of the Stars. With recursion, it's basically an auto-win against two-site Dunland, it's solid against Castamir, it ignores wound prevention like Gorgoroth Soldier, you can use it+Stone Tower+an exert to kill enduring Enquea without allowing them to heal, and it can kill Easterling Captain. Basically, if someone isn't running it, they should be.

Fifth Level is also pretty much mandatory. It+Turgon allows you to wound in the maneuver phase, and it also gives you ridiculous skirmishing strength in the late game. Against wounding decks, it's an extra heal per turn with Alcarin.

I like both Strong and Old (Besiegers hate, huge twilight savings) and Ithilien Trap, but there are plenty of good knight builds that don't use Trap. Not a huge fan of Catapault because of how unreliable it is and because Knights tend to empty their hands in the fellowship phase.

People often run only three copies of Sixth Level because you can recur other copies as long as you have one on the board, which means barring a Saruman's Power the shadow player really has to zap them all at the same time to cripple you. And having multiple Sixth Levels on the board does you zero good if you don't have your actual wounding conditions.

As a sidenote, why do people run 4x Knight's Mount? If you're playing successfully, it's basically useless. Minions should not be surviving skirmishes, and if they are, it should be that you're intentionally leaving them alive to get extra heals. Just a waste of card slots.

Back in my day (man now I sound old) I'd run about 2 6th level and 2 Take Cover.  In case I was hit with Saruman's Power or some of the other mass ditch condition cards, I could recover in a turn.  Never bothered with Turgon because if you're playing right, whoever is bearing 5th level should be overwhelmed so extra wounding is pointless.  My fellowship selection was usually:
Isildur
Aragorn
Alcarin
Garrison of Gondor
Imrahil
a 2 cost knight to start (usually Knight of Dol Amroth or Ingold - they eventually would die)

I usually also ran a mix of Bows (with 1 banner) and Knights mounts (no more than 2 things on each companion actually) using creative skirmish order to clear the board each time while leaving my fellowship healthy.  This was also during the time of the healing enduring nazgul and heavily protected minions (I hated Easterling Polearm so. dang. much. It was also bad design.) so 4th level + Gondor Bow wasn't always quite guaranteed.

It was fun.  One tournament I took it to I went handily to the final round... and faced a guy with a raider deck almost exactly tech'd against knights.  It was brutal.

January 22, 2015, 08:43:28 PM
Reply #27

zen89

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #27 on: January 22, 2015, 08:43:28 PM »
Thanks for keeping this post around, sgtdraino. Definitely an interesting discussion.

In regard to dmaz's question, I definitely see Movie Block as a reactive format in that one needs to have a plan for the most prevalent decks, and it's often worth packing silver bullets (e.g. the Elf decks that run Stand Against Darkness, Curse Their Foul Feet!, and such). If you don't have a pretty concrete plan for dealing with Besiegers, Corsairs, and Ninja Gollum, your fellowship probably isn't going to get very far, as those are the three best shadows in the format. In general, shadow sides for which to prepare, by tier:

Tier One
Besiegers
Corsairs
Ninja Gollum

Tier Two
Beasterlings
Southron Archery
Two-Site Dunland

Tier Three
Various swarm strategies (Firebomb, initiative, Moria, etc)
Threat Nazgul
Every other strategy (Sauron Grind, Uruk Archery, Uruk Trackers, Twilight Nazgul, etc)

January 22, 2015, 11:08:16 PM
Reply #28

ramolnar

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #28 on: January 22, 2015, 11:08:16 PM »
I concur; Movie Block is a reactive format. Just wait until we play Sets 1-8 and 1-9! Corsairs without GLR are extremely tough to fight. Getting Derufin to work is really a challenge. But then again, I won a Territorial with stupid swarm and Goblin Man. And I frequently play a very unreactive Knight/Firebomb deck, so I'm not following all my advice. Then again, I play Knights because Fourth Level, Citadel of the Stars, and Stone Tower pretty much kill anything, and I don't see Saurman's Power very often. I am metagaming.

zen89, I almost completely agree with you on Shadow Tiers. I playtest for your eight decks, plus Enquea Toto corruption. I advance Firebomb to Tier Two, but I think it's because I play swarm decks better than average. And I drop Beasterlings to Tier Three because the Captain, and the pool, and 2 burdens never seem to come together in the right order for me.

January 23, 2015, 11:09:26 PM
Reply #29

zen89

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Re: Movie Meta (Top Tier and/or Commonly Seen Deck Strategies)
« Reply #29 on: January 23, 2015, 11:09:26 PM »
I concur; Movie Block is a reactive format. Just wait until we play Sets 1-8 and 1-9! Corsairs without GLR are extremely tough to fight. Getting Derufin to work is really a challenge. But then again, I won a Territorial with stupid swarm and Goblin Man. And I frequently play a very unreactive Knight/Firebomb deck, so I'm not following all my advice. Then again, I play Knights because Fourth Level, Citadel of the Stars, and Stone Tower pretty much kill anything, and I don't see Saurman's Power very often. I am metagaming.

zen89, I almost completely agree with you on Shadow Tiers. I playtest for your eight decks, plus Enquea Toto corruption. I advance Firebomb to Tier Two, but I think it's because I play swarm decks better than average. And I drop Beasterlings to Tier Three because the Captain, and the pool, and 2 burdens never seem to come together in the right order for me.

Yeah, knights are an interesting meta call. I feel like a good Besiegers deck playing 4 x Great Hill Troll or, especially, Great Peril of Fire will usually be a very tough matchup, but you destroy Corsairs, Ninja Gollum, and Dunland and can pretty much infinitely heal yourself against Southrons. Enduring Nazgul can be tricky as well, although Stone Tower means you don't have to worry about ToTo and Between Nazgul and Prey. Also good point on me forgetting to mention enduring nazgul in the tiers--Ellington's build is probably tier two.

I'm undecided on Firebomb--maybe I just play it poorly, but I feel like the deck really suffers against fellowships that can remove possessions and conditions in the fellowship and regroup phases. Which means GLR can be tough, and Gandalf is really a problem. I love the deck--just think the heavy condition/possession hate that the 'big three' of Besiegers/Corsairs/Ninja Gollum inspired have hurt the deck somewhat. It was built for a DH/Rohan metagame, and that metagame just doesn't exist in Movie anymore.

I can see moving Beasterlings down--they're an extremely scary shadow side when your draw come together, and you can often cripple a FP early, but they're so susceptible to draw-screw that unless you have a great cycling fellowship there will be games where you don't have a prayer. Also, Faramir SoD.


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