wreon presents: 1.5 Ultimate Gravebone (Monster Control)

[wreon]

TL;DR stuff all in green

This guide holds my dearest, favourite, secret tricks that I've been using with GB. Granted, I may not be the first, but you can be sure that I found them out on my own. I shall be posting two versions of GB that I have, Monster Control being the first, far more entertaining one, and Brutal Is Control, the serious competitive one.

Without further ado, I present wreon's

Monster Control

The Monsters
3 PB
2 Ogloth

The Minions
4 Gargoyle
4 Wulvern Tracker

The Incantations
4 FireBall
4 Lightning Strike
4 SuperNova
4 Clinging Web

The Totems
2 DoU
4 Research

Nasty Surprises
2 Ley Line Nexus
2 Sever Ties
2 Shrieks

Total Card count=42 Including hero

This deck is fun. It is the most fun that I've ever had in SE. After playing stressful matches of Zhanna control and Eladwen rush from 1.29, it's the most fun deck I've ever played. This deck is slow, but strong and well controlled. The tempo it has is quite effecient, and uses simple uni-lateral Draw to out pace opponents. As it isn't a fast deck, your best trick is to push out meat shields, thus the beauty of gargoyle, PB and Oggy.

Here's how it's played, in a nutshell.

Turn 1-4 is not much. Your main target is to get out 1 research, 1 gargoyle and 1 Tracker/Lightning Strike.

Turn 5 is when you try to drop a PB, who should die. When he does, Turn 6: nova and recurse. Save Webs for Human decks, especially for sandworm. Try to save DoU for everything else. Against Ravens and Oggy (anything at 6HP), you can go for the kill instead by supernova-ing first before attacking with DoU (DoU kills everything at 1 HP, including heroes lol).

The BEST part of this monster deck, is when you get to play with Ogloth. He is a beast with GB, and in case you don't know how to use him, let me introduce the Oggy Bomb:


Oggy Bomb
Step 1: Get Ogloth into play.
Step 2: Supernova, instantly bringing ogloth to an obscene attack (as all 4cc and below allies cannot survive SuperNova), which you can use to ability+attack.

The beauty about GB, is that Ogloth can be recursed to play even after death, thus the Oggy Bomb can be pulled of very, very easily. Many people have been saying that Ogloth is easily countered by Crippling Blow and Capture Prey... But this deck vs anyone who uses these cards, is almost always auto-win.

Unleashing the Monster
Often after an opponent locks an Oggy down, they ignore him and go for other allies (which they should, because you're still dropping other Monsters that must be answered.When opportune, using 7 resources, unleash the Monster with Sever Ties, use his ability, and attack. This move often turns the entire game in your favour.

This trick is much meaner with Ogloth. As long as Oggy is at 6HP and above, he will not only survive a Supernova, but grow larger each time. This threat tends to go unnoticed till it's too late, and I have used this trick to unlock large, monster sized Ogloths, often 10-20 damage Ogloth.

Saving Nasty Surprises
Every deck has a weakness. Hunters and mages often rely on 5cc weapons/armours, so you save LLN for them.

Save shriek for draw engines, but do not use it before turn 7, as you often are not able to afford it.

Sever Ties is my favourite of them all. Not just to unleash the Monster, but because it hard counters many decks. Gwen at turn 5 must try to get Rapid Fire out, and if you have a sever ties in your starting hand, wait for it. The beauty of it is that the low count of sever ties often means that it appears at extreme late game (which this deck is perfectly capable at handling itself), do when it does appear, the opponent almost 80% has resourced every other copy of his favourite attachment.

Thus, when you finally use it, you could be dropping the final nail in the tombstone. In particular, Warrior decks bite the dust due to this card. Not only does crippling blow become a big lapse, a sever ties can literally remove +10 HP from a warrior, which means instant death the moment he is below 10 HP (even if he kept another copy in hand, its too late).

This deck rocks.

Thank you for your time, and I hope all of you enjoy this deck as much as I did.

P.S. To play this deck well, you should read my other guide to get an idea on how to play it.


Weaknesses of this deck

1. DoU/Retreats
2. Early game rushes

[Padawan Pete]

I would start with removal of 1 clinging web and 1 supernova in this deck, personally.

[Raphael Majere]

Clinging web would hold down the worm for a while.

[Padawan Pete]

But you dont need it till turn 5.

[bobwei]

What to do if no research or gargoyle appear in hand early? There is a relatively high enough chance of not drawing

[iClipse]

What to do if no research or gargoyle appear in hand early? There is a relatively high enough chance of not drawing

Well, you have access to Clinging Webs, which is a 2cc card. If there are no allies yet on the board of the opponent just skip your turn. You don't lose anything by doing so.

[yankfanatk]

trying to figure out what PB is.... smh

[yankfanatk]

i meant im triyng to figure out why PB is in deck. I figure that you really dont have the time/resources to be wasting on PBs ability instead you should be getting fat weenies out in play. Just my opinion if there is a reason for keeping him please let me knoe

[FDL]

fat weenies

What's a fat weenie?

Not a lot of allies (read none) can deal 7 damage in a single turn. And having Plasma Behemoth on the field is basically like drawing a Fireball each turn on top of your other cards that you can sac and/or keep for later.

Plus he'll basically win the game by itself against warriors.

[yankfanatk]

yes, that definitely makes sense. Im just very confused on what to sacc on the first few turns. since the deck is only made with 2 DOUs i dont like to sac them. and since the deck only contains 3 ogalths and 3 supernovas i like to keep 1 of each in my hand so its definitely hard to pick and choose cards to sac. I dont like saccing gargoyles becuase i like to get a creature out early in the game depending on the hero i am facing. Definitely need a strategy lol.