Welcome back to Sleeksbowl – I’m your guest host Fishmode, Taking Advantage. Last time, we talked about how I built the Gladiaterrors version 1 deck. Now let’s get down to the grim work of Mass Poisoning, and see just how many bodies we can pile up.
Test games:
Game 1: Andrew’s Ironsoul’s Condemnors with Tooth and Claw (Won 21-9)
This game went well for me, knowing he would be coming in hot made scoring Taking Advantage quite easy – charging behind his fighters and into his territory. I hit early and often, and while he did some serious damage back in the end he wasn’t able to win the leader’s duel in round 3. Gryselle’s surfboard let her ride right back in to counter some knockback and distractions he used to attempt to keep me out of the fight. Blood Sigil, Unquenchable Fervor, and Moment of Rapture were a godsend and Gryselle cleaned up at her leisure.
Game 2: John’s Skabbik’s Plaguepack with Beastbound Assault (Won 17-7)
John immediately opened with a scything charge with Rabidius into two of my frontline two wounders which had me sweating. Fortunately he didn’t kill either of them, and I ran past the threat to score Har Kuron Hurricane. He almost countered me with the Book of Woe, but pinged all the wrong fighters so nobody died and I kept three alive in his territory for scoring. I was later able to set up a great three-fighter scything attack with Gryselle, killing two, but she was taken down shortly thereafter and I was in a tight spot heading into round 3. Kalexis is a hero though, and with four upgrades and auto-inspiring in round 3, she was able to ride the surfboard and throw some great damage out, using Callous + Venombite shank on smaller guys, and her base 2 damage boosted to 3 with Callous to kill larger ones. I ran away with in in round three and he was tabled by the end, though some better than average defense dice helped me weather the early storm from his aggro plan.
Game 3: Brian’s Morgok’s Krushas with Tooth and Claw (Conceded after Round 1 while down 1-7)
This was a rough start, and we were playing a best of three for our league semifinals. Dice do be dice, and he was able to take out three fighters early while I missed three of my five attacks in round 1. With Gryselle, Retaria, and Thrialla all down and only modest damage on ‘Ardskull while Morgok was on my Venom Gorged target objective, I was in big trouble. After I drew a solid 5 upgrades to open Round 2 while having only 1 glory (which I had already spent), I knew it was a lost cause and scooped so we could finish our best of three before store closing.
Game 4: Brian’s Morgok’s Krushas with Tooth and Claw (Lost on tiebreakers, 12-12)
This game started out pretty rough for me too, but with the semifinals on the line I gutted it out and almost managed to claw back the win. I had the scything flourish in hand early and got greedy, attempting to set up a scythe with gryselle against all three fighters. Unfortunately Brian had Eager Advance, so he was able to reach Gryselle when I thought he couldn’t (I was planning to use Keep the Forest at Bay to make my charge), whacking her for three, breaking up the scythe pile, knocking her back, and blocking my charge lane. Bummer. I scrapped that plan and tried to grievous him into a lethal but failed the attack, and Thugg killed her right after. I was able to score Taking Advantage and Har Kuron Hurricane though thanks to Ill Prepared, so I was still in it. As the game wore on, he had too much defensive and healing tech for me to cut through so many 5 wound fighters, and he won with only Thugg surviving with 1 wound remaining, but on an objective. I again got greedy with the scything flourish instead of playing smart and running away to score Venom Gorged in round 2, which would almost certainly have won me the game. Lessons learned, and I’m quite tempted to drop both Venom Gorged and Capable Poisoners (or at least focus on that rather than playing too risky for scythes).
Deck Tweaking
Having run this deck now across four matches, It was time to re-evaluate my card choices with some evidence in hand. Having failed in all four games to score either Venom-Gorged or Capable Poisoners, I was going to either need more poison upgrades to help make it happen, or give up on them and move to new Objective cards. I opted to drop those Objectives seeing as I didn’t particularly like the remaining Poison Upgrades as described in the into of this piece, and even if I had them in hand they wouldn’t be applied to fighters without any glory, which would be harder to score with my Objective cards tied to Upgrades. Catch-22. I elected to give up on these and look for other End Phase Objectives, settling on Warrior-Faithful and Bloody Show. This dropped my glory ceiling by 1, but seeing as I wasn’t getting any of those 4 glory so far, It was probably a net gain. I described earlier how I didn’t like either of these objectives on their face because of how difficult they were to score in round 1, but in honestly so were the two I replaced here. Round 2 onward Warrior-Faithful is effectively an auto score since I just need to move or charge everybody which I was doing anyway. Bloody Show might be harder depending on the matchup but hopefully by round 3 it will be doable, but time will tell. Notably in all 4 of my previous games I would have scored it by round 3 (and in my Rivals games and Tooth and Claw games it’s been relatively reliable for me)
I made no changes to the Upgrade deck. I flirted with the idea of dropping a poison upgrade (probably Venombite weapons) since I didn’t need them for Objective scoring as much anymore, but opted not to swap any out. I still wanted them for Callous damage boosting and if I only had three total, finding a way to get Callous and one other on Gryselle could be low odds. If I did end up swapping I would go for Devotee of the Blade of Devotee of Slaughter, but that will be a decision for later. In Gambits I made only one change. I waffled again on Paean of Slaughter vs Daring Flourish, and was quite hesitant since I really dislike minus defense if you miss. Sure, I could buffer against it by having a fighter with combo make the flourish attack. I had previously thought that Paean worked for all attacks in an activation but after talking with the crew it ends up that that would only be true for scything during Spinning Flourish – the reaction for Follow-Up/Combo happens after your activation so it doesn’t have the same staying power. Additionally, Gryselle has died early a few times in my prior test games and I can’t play Paean of Slaughter without her.
++NEW DECK LINK++ Gladiaterrors v.2.0
Game 5: Brian’s Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers with Beastbound Assault (Lost 12-13)
This was a very back and forth game, that to my incredible frustration I lost by making a few misplays in the last couple activations. Brian is a savvy opponent and I don’t want to take anything away from him, but this is twice in a row I lost a game I should have won. We begin with a familiar theme – I missed five straight attacks in round 1, had scored no glory, and was on the back foot headed into round 2. With some incredible luck, despite losing the rolloff, I survived with Gryselle on a Crit defense and was able to immediately thereafter heal her with Moment of Rapture. During round 2 I scored surges, drew into surges, and just exploded from 0 glory to 9 by the end of the round, cycling poisons the whole way. Brian had his share of bad dice luck this round, and things were looking very good for me headed into round 3. In the end, I lost because I played Unquenchable Fervor and promptly forgot it was in play, allowing him to kill the Aegis when she should have survived on one wound. I then later played Daring Flourish, promptly forgot I had, and didn’t roll the extra dice (also foolishly targeting the wrong fighter). If any of these three mistakes had played differently, I would have had a two glory swing and won the game by 1. It didn’t help matters that Quiv sat in the corner and never gained any move or charge tokens all game, preventing me from scoring In Praise of Khaine. Live and learn I suppose, but it was rough to beat myself on yet another Big Boy matchup, which just may not be the right place for these Gladiaterrors to shine. I do believe the 2.0 deck is smoother and that with more Toxic Terrors practice I can probably pull it off. Maybe next time I’ll hit before my sixth attack!
Arena Mortis Game – Toxic Gryselle against Relic Lady Harrow, Tooth and Claw Brydget, and Beastbound Sarrakkar Blackwing (won 10-10-9-4 on tiebreakers)
I won’t spend a ton of time here since it’s not super meta-relevant, but I did play a four-player Arena Mortis with this deck making no substitutions. I was able to win despite all three of the other decks being built specifically with Arena Mortis in mind (the Relic deck with things like Rebound, Army of One, etc). Being able to react to my own declare attack step by going on guard, then push onto the token afterward with either Sneaky Weasel or Wicked Hunter was really nice. This game (as many Arena Mortis games are) was all over the place and a ton of fun. I can’t pretend this transfers to Nemesis reliably, but it was reassuring that the deck can function if you Voltron Gryselle, even against other Voltron candidates, despite below average attack dice for me this game. Also, if you haven’t lately, give Arena Mortis another go. Disclaimer! This message only for people who enjoy laughing with their friends and having fun.
Game 6: Brian’s Domitan’s Stormcoven with Seismic Shock (Conceded Round 1 down 1-8)
There isn’t a ton to say here, I lost too fast to even take a photo. I missed two early attacks, then got greedy with a spinning flourish + deadly flourish attack with Gryselle. Had I hit (and I did have supports, and had Spit Venom a wounded Leona down to 1 dodge), I could have killed two of his three fighters in my third activation. Instead, I missed twice and took two damage on Gryselle, who died thereafter. To make things worse, I failed every defense roll and he never failed a spell cast. Ends up Ill Prepared is great for preventing attacks, but when he has a deck full of pings there’s a little less it can do. This one was a bummer because I gambled and lost (sensing a theme here, anyone?), though had I played it safer I honestly think he would have just overwhelmed me with spells. If I had to do it over again, I would still go big or go home. Had a couple things gone the other way I would be writing this segment glorifying my 20-3 victory and calling myself a genius, but you know, fair’s fair. Me dum-dum.
Game 7: Vassal game against an anonymous player who was testing their deck for the World Championships in Atlanta (lost 7-17)
Out of respect for the player and to prevent tipping their hand in advance of the World Finals, I’ve anonymized this report. This ended up being less of a close game than the final score would indicate since I got tabled in the end of round 2, but it was relatively close until then (and had a chance to table him had one or two dice rolls gone my way). I do carry my fair share of the blame though, since I made a few less than ideal target priority choices, damaging a fighter but not killing them (in part because I forgot to play Fatal Flourish), and later in the game used one of my surfboard pushes in a pretty boneheaded direction. In round 1, he wisely stayed bottled up to prevent Taking Advantage, and killed an inspired fighter to block Exult in Violence. The thing that really busted my game though was an intelligent power card play that prevented the use of some cards on my end that would have allowed Gryselle to scythe into a pack of three fighters with a reroll while inspired and equipped with a poison, so I could have theoretically grabbed 2-3 kills and scored Carve a Path and Mass Poisoning in one stroke. Instead she ate an attack and went down to a ping right after, and that was that. A nice power card also saved the enemy leader later in the game, so I was on the back foot. I made the most of it and actually was in a position to table him instead with Raetaria, but he had an upgrade that is pretty potent against Arenai, and I was forced to make a bad choice, gambled, and lost. Still feeling decent about the deck, but against a literal World-Class opponent with a Worlds optimized deck, and being countered by some specific-matchup-great cards, the writing was on the wall. I’ve now lost 5 straight (including every one after deck adjustments), but I believe I could have won any of them if a few things had gone differently. Ever the optimist, that Fishmode.
Test games out of the way, I am now officially 2-5 with this pairing (if you exclude Arena Mortis). What happened?! I swear I had the Arenai under control. I was 8-2 and had full command of what went down on the tabletop. Then I tried this Toxic Terrors thing and got cute and greedy, both in excessive amounts. I stand by the deck’s potential, and the wearband’s in general, but this experiment isn’t looking good on my end. With that said, nothing better to do than enter a four round Nemesis tournament with absolutely no adjustments to the deck. What will happen? Does Fishmode prove to the world that A) he knows a thing or two about Underworlds and B) that Gladiaterrors has a real shot? Or does the world prove to Fishmode that A) No he doesn’t and B) No they don’t? Tune in next time…
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