Decree of Ruin Review

Just as the new pack is out.  Yay punctuality.  Also the worst thing about this pack...you can't build a deck with both new warlords at the same time :(

Broderick Worr
Worr, huh, yeah, what is it good for?!! The new hotness is plain awesome.  Starting with his first line.  it makes him an amazing command sniper.  Imagine any planet with x amount of Rogue Traders or Void Pirates.  No matter what if Worr opposes them, they are dead as Worr will kill them or they will die if they try to retreat.  Also you can safely retreat your own guys if Worr retreats at the same time.
Second ability is +1atk and cannot retreat or be routed at green planets for all your Imperial guard units. First of an interesting statistic, 6 of the 10 planets have a green icon.  Secondly Worr doesn't even have to be at the planet in question.  Which is pretty much why Worr is flat out better than Stracken.  He also buffs tokens, yay.

Anxious Infantry Platoon.
Omg the stats.  3/3/1 for 2 resources is crazy good,  The drawback can be bad, but at green planets it doesn't matter, so er put them there. There is nothing bad to say about these guys.

Forward Barracks
Once again a guard support that produces Guardsman tokens.  This one gets you fresh new guardsman every combat round as long as you have a an Imperial guard unit present. And they have to kill that Guardsman as he fulfils the conditions to spawn another...and another.  Also Worr himself will spawn a token wherever he goes,

Summary Execution
Kill a guy to make a planet green.  At times it matters will win you the game.  Also draws you a card, for times when it doesn't and you just want something else.

Commissarial Bolt Pistol
At present only Worr can have this.  +1atk is useful.  The reaction is powerful. But if Worr is present with his army (remembering he doesn't have to be for the oh so good +1atk for Guard units), odds are he will get singled out.  he isn't the beefiest warlord around.

Commander Starblaze
An interesting warlord, the first of which to mess with the alliance wheel.  Starblaze can Ally with Guard, but no one else.  This leads to by far the defacto best command Warlord.  With access to the 2 command icon Psykers, Iron Guard recruits, Recon Drone and Trailblazers.   His second ability to move units is situational but potentially decisive.  The rest of his command squad necessitate a balanced deck of Guard and Tau cards, which could prove difficult.

Ardent Auxiliaries
Balanced stats, but anything that says "ready this unit" is worth a look. and these guys do exactly that when they commit to a planet with a guard unit.  I would have to check the timing, so don't quote me, but I believe if Starblaze pulls a guard unit to him, these will be able to ready.

Starblazes Outpost
The best card in his set, this support lets you bounce a guard unit to put a Tau unit of equal or less cost into play.  Funniest use of this?  Bouncing sanctioned psykers that your opponent tried to snipe with his warlord for Borkan Recruits.   4 damage to the face for the ambitious opponent.

Bond of Brotherhood.
Buffs for all your guys at a planet.  It's ok.  Atk for your guard, HP for your tau.

Searing Burst Cannon.
Double damage if a shield is not played when attached unit attacks.  Note it doesn't work with AoE, and secondly thank your chosen deity that Tau have no units with native Armorbane yet.

Lone Wolf
Garbage.  moving on...but seriously the fact he exhausts to move just means he is going to get punched in the face by the Warlord he attempted to solo.  It's a space wolf for what that's worth.

Righteous Initiate.
It's merely ok.  not going to fit in any marine deck right now, or any ally deck.  Probably just waiting for the rest of the Black Templar cards this cycle.

Accept any Challenge.
Probably the sole reason Righteous initiate is in this pack, seeing as otherwise this card does absolutely nothing. Once again Future warlord bait,

Rickety Warbuggy
It's a conditional Honored Librarian for orks, but does on up the librarian by being immune to AoE.  And it costs 1, but has no command icons.  Still, 1 resource for 3atk is never ever going to be bad thing.

Lucky War Paint
Blue trait I just find hilarious.  Immune to events is so so good sort of.  Only event that it stops is Archons terror really, maybe the odd suppressive fire nowadays.

Ravening Psychopath
Again it's another non-Tzeentch card that fits amazingly in Zarathur.  He attacks for 2, takes 1 and does 2 to another army unit.  Insane value, put it in  every Zarathur deck ever from now on..  Maybe there will be more Khorne synergy this cycle and with the warlord, but if last cycle is any indication, expect them all to better in Zaruthur.

Sowing Chaos
Destroying every low cost unit at blue planets is such an amazing meta card right now.  Imperial Guard and Kith live on 2 cost units.  It kills the ever popular amazing Warlock Destructor and Snakebite Thug.  Amazing in those situations.  Not so good vs Cato.

Stalking Ur'Ghul
Garbage, Dark Eldar can't have all the awesome cards it turns out.  An outside extremely edge case you can

Holding Cell
Has annoyance factor, but I don't think it;s worth including in decks.  Thankfully it doesn't combo with Klaivex kills, that would be too much.

Prophetic Farseer
Bringing the Eldar Psyker count up to 4 (for the new eldar warlord) is this guy.  The enters play effect could win you the game, it could also do not alot but let you know how good the units he has coming are.  He's a pretty good unit at 2/4/1 though by himself.

Wraithguard Revenant
Can come back from the discard, and has 3 attack.  yay.  Eldar getting some good combat focused cards.

Deathly Web Shrine
Ok so the name of this card clearly is reference to the Warp Spider aspect, and it has a Warp Spider warrior right there on the card.  yet the only Warp Spider in the game doesn't move so can't trigger this.  But anyway, great in Baharroth.  It's basically like having a weaker Eldorath in your Baharroth deck, and we all know how good his effect is.  Weaker in that you can't hit elites, and it doesn't help you win command (movement tends to come too late for that)

Striking Ravaner
Tytranids have all the good elites.  This thing with a Venom Cannon could be the scariest thing ever,  Anyway once again anything that says 'Ready' somewhere in it's text is basically good.

Acid Maw
Better than Armorbane in that it stops indomitable and KFG and the like.  it is good,  Sadly Tyranid attachment space is tight, with Regen being amazing and Promotion being 100% required.  Sad that it can't go on a synapse.

The Great Devourer, part 4

Everyone else also got cards in this box.  One unique and one other card.  A note about all the uniques.  Every Dark Eldar deck, and like 99% of Eldorath Eldar decks run Archons Terror.  Having units that are immune to it is very much worth considering.

Veteran Barbrus.

His ability is really awesome, but I think his stats just don't quite equal his cost.  Add the fact that his ability could be blank 50% of the time makes him sad.  If your interested in why he has the targeting limit, he is a deathwatch member.  The deathwatch specialise in combating aliens.  So he has no real advantage to leverage against humans (genetically engineered or not) nor the warp born threat of daemons.  5/5 for flavour.

Vengeance.
Stand a space marine after someone dies to an attack.  It's really potent, but the space marine event pool is already fairly set in stone.  Could be a fair replacement for crushing blow in Cato decks.  Pretty good with librarians I hear.

Seraphim Superior Allegra.
A genuinely scary lady.  She has awesome stats and the amazing ability to ready supports.  More Catachan outposts, more staging grounds, more formosan black ships.  It's all gravy.

Holy Fusillade
Not so keen on this.  You get to redo a ranged attack step.  Thing is there isn't much ranged in the game, sure guard have Preemptive Barrage, but if you didn't kill everyone the first time, you still have to survive the backlash of whatever was left before you stand everyone up and do ranged again.

Boss Zugnog.
It's like having a super awesome tellyporta pad but in a unit.  Being ork you also prob don't mind the damage.

Ork Landa.
Would be a gazillion times better if the support had an odd cost itself. The ability is balls out amazing when it works though.  Not entirely sure there is enough good odd costed cards at present.  And just discarding cards for no effect is obviously not a good thing.  People will build decks around this thing and one day they will be good.  But not today.

Roghrax Bloodhand.
The chaos guy has the ability to grow to scary attack values.  Without any hp boosts, he caps out at 12 attack.  So he brings a similar amount of pain as possessed, but with minor hoops to jump through for the damage in exchange for terror immunity.  Also weak until his bloodthirst does kick in.  A bit on bloodthirst, it doesn't matter which players unit died and sacrificed doesn't equal destroyed.

Ecstatic Seizures
Makes Shadowsun cry delicious salty tears.  All attachments on units at a planet go away.  Also gets rid of signature attachments (Kugath's banner, cato's sword are some prime targets). You should also be careful, It doesn't discriminate.  All the attachments go, including your own.  You don't want to be the one discarding your own Ku'gaths banner.  Also warpstorm!!

Solarite Avetys.
I'm sure everyone will happy to hear that the dark Eldar unique is awesome.  It flies so is tough to shift and also has retaliation damage.  The saving grace is that it reacts on damage so he does actually have to take damage to react (unlike the Firedrakes for instance)

Dark Possession.
A lot of people are down on this card.  It's not great, but you can use some downright tasty cards for a 2 resource premium which to be fair is pricey.  If your flush with cash a doom/exterminatus could be fun, warpstorm is a winner, also simple things like Old One Eyes event or tense negotiations.  Urien gets a discount on this but then pays an extra resource when he plays the copied event so that's a wash.

Autarch Celachia.
Finally Eldar get an Area Effect unit (sort of). basically each turn this guy/gal(?), for one resource, can get armorbane, area effect 1, or mobile for a turn but only one of them.  This makes for an incredibly versatile unit, but expensive.  In a faction that already has the pricey warlocks they may not be able to afford it.  Also the next Eldar warlord will also be an Autarch look for synergies in that sig squad.

Subdual.
Temporarily remove an attachment or support from the equation.  Attachment hate is rare worth it for that.  Bonus points if you then discard the bounced target with the warp spiders.

Pathfinder Shi Or'es.
OK in Shadowsun, not so great in aun'shi he just doesn't have enough attachments.
I don't know if readying is worth the cost of losing an an attachment but at least Shadowsun can recur it.  And he has pretty good stats.

Repair Bay.
More Shadowsun love.  You can put back the stealth care and gun drones.  Even dead recon drones and trailblazers.  They do go on top of the deck sadly which does stop any overwhelmingly broken combos

So no terrible cards for the factions here.  Although I think some of them will see little play they can all have a powerful impact.

The Great Devourer, part 3

Tyranid events!

Clogged with corpses
Support destruction is a pretty amazing thing.  Nearly every warlord greatly values their signature support and it's not all that common.  Only Orks have it so far, and now nids.  But anyway Swarmlord can always blow up a cost 2 support just from his commitment reaction.  Things in this range include the ever popular Catachan outpost and Ksi'M'Yen orbital cities.  I would always take one on a Swarmlord deck.

Predation
Unsure on this card.  Seems pretty needed for infest decks.  But just hate having to give up a deck slot for such a minor event.  It is free thankfully.

Spawn Termagants
2 resources for (up to) 5 Termagants.   Seems OK.   However do you really need another token producer in your Swarmlord deck?  The answer is probably no.

Spore Burst
Discard pile recursion is good.  Sadly only in the deploy phase ruining the surprise shenanigans and only to an infested planet which means you have to worked a little to set it up.  On the upside when it works you can get slightly discounted 3 cost unit back.

Dark cunning
Readying a unit on demand is a hell of a thing.  Sadly not your warlord and sadly a bit expensive, although it is slightly discounted if used at an infested planet.

Consumption
4 cost had better be good.  And truth be told it is in line with the other board wipes.  The common deck types today tend to vomit cheap command units onto every planet.  Killing 5 of them seems good to me.  You have to lose dudes as well.  But if you have spawned tokens all over the planets you may care a little less.

Attachments!!

Regeneration
The best of the attachments.  1 resource for 2 hp and the abilty to heal once a turn.  Especially good on Lurking Hormagaunts.

Noxious Flesh borer
Attack and hp at an infested planet is relatively minor.  The abilty to infest on a command win is the real magic though.  I think it is a must have for any deck relying on infest.

Pincer Tail
Pretty crappy.  +1 atk and can stop someone retreating.  Not warlords though.  So yeah.

Parasitic Infection.
Pretty fantastic on the likes of honored librarian.  You get a termagant and they take a damage.  Every turn.  Dunno if it is worth the deck slot but that gaunt could well make the difference in a hive mind deck.

Heavy Venom Cannon
3 cost and you get to make one of your elite units genuinely scary.  Area effect 2 or armorbane.  You could well have an 8 attack Ymgarl genestealer with armorbane.  It's also got two shields so I would put a couple in just for that and then off chance the dream will happen.

Supports!!

Brood Chamber
Copy keywords.  Have to be printed values so no gun drones aoe for you.  Neither can you steal broadside aoe, or autarch celachias chosen ability (they are gained from abilities, not actual printed keywords)  I like this as a one off in decks just for that outside chance of free ranged or armorbane.

Digestion Pool.
The Nid reducer location suffers from all the problems of every other factions reducer but additionally this one requires you to jump through hoops to get the discount.    Situationally good but no, just no.

Mycetic Spores
You obviously want your gaunts and hive mind units together and this support helps.  I think it's primary use will be for moving a hive mind unit upstream for later battles.  Hardly seems worth it though.

Spore Chimney
I like this in that you get to infest a planet at the end of the turn ready for good things next turn.  But like all things support the lack of shields on them mean they need to be super cool.  And this just isn't

Synaptic Link
A free card every turn as long as your synapse is alive.  If you do pick it you really need to see it turn one to reap worthwhile benefits. but then it's eating into your limited 6/6 start.  I don't think it's worth it personally.  Maybe as a one off for that maybe it will work out factor

And that's it for my opinion on nids.

I have played exactly one game with old one eye, and one game against old one eye.  So I am in no way an expert.  Not played a game of Conquest locally for near three months.  Can't possibly talk about my gaming life without mentioning how shit this town I get to call home is can I?