From AI to PvP - Boris beating down

[Airact]

A bit late because I recently discovered a game called Tera. I've been playing that quite a lot. Also, Magic the Gathering.


Boris as a hero seems pretty defensive: A decently expensive ability that straight out kills something that's a dude and is under 4 cost. It seems easy to just sit with an open board and let your ability do the early-game work, especially now when Priest of the Light isn't played as much.

Then there are the people who like to see the world burn. The people who just turn people sideways with the mission to murder other people as ruthlessly as possible. I'm one of them. I don't necessarily like dudes hitting dudes but I like inflicting a lot of damage early on, the best case of course being 25+ damage before late-game.

But it doesn't always work. It rarely works so even the most aggressive decks need something else to win with. Mages need time, others need ways to extend earlier game stages.


The deck I chose for the first article is a pretty known one. People have tried to play like this and most have failed. We don't see these kinds of decks win tournaments for a reason. The deck wants to go first and curve out. Going 2nd is way worse because even if you curve out, your guys start dying all over the place and that's game over. Not to even mention when you draw bad.


"Fairly simple Boris list" by Reshiram99


1x Boris Skullcrusher

4x Birgitte Skullborn
4x Champion of Irum
3x Countess Rasmina
4x Jasmine Rosecult
3x Aldon the Brave
2x Rider of Ellos
2x Stalwart Battleguard
3x Raven Wildheart

3x Crippling Blow
4x Blood Frenzy
3x Bad Santa

2x Dragon's Tooth
2x Rothem's Visage

Total of 39 cards + Hero


The deck seems on the first sight to be pretty Magic like. Midranges in Magic tend to run that way. A lot of dudes and very few support spells.

The deck tries to curve out. Birgitte acts as both a decent 1-drop as well as a later-game play to screw up opposing targeting. She can attack with Aldon and has a good chance to protect the 2 drops. Rasmina is played against weapon decks and can screw with Amber and Gwen a bit.

The deck wants a 2-drop to base the early-game on. That brings a question: Why only 3 Aldon? Aldon seems to be the best 3 drop with Birgitte and the big number of 2-drops. Aldon is unique but considering how the deck just wants to unload dudes, it's easier for the unique tag to screw with Champion of Irum than with Aldon, mostly because of t4 and t5 where the Champion is easier to play than Aldon.

+1 Aldon


Most aggressive decks want ways to protect their allies from getting killed. Birgitte tries to do the job here and sometimes does it really well. However with the addition of Ironhide Karash in the Dark Prophecies -expansion alongside the previously known weaknesses to both Kristopher Wyld and Puwen Bloodhelm, I can see it a bit hard for Birgitte to do her job. However, we still need something to replace her: Valiant Defender. Valiant Defender protects our allies from defending in combat but doesn't protect them from spells. It's a tradeoff but I think it's better this way.

-4 Birgitte Skullborn, +3 Valiant Defender


Countess Rasmina does her job of being cheap weapon removal but she has mostly the same weaknesses Birgitte does: Puwen and Karash. In that sense she's like Layarian Diplomat, not to be used as a 2-drop unless going first and with Aldon in hand. Those requirements are kinda hard to fill at times.

-3 Countess Rasmina.


Talking about Puwen, he's still a solid ally. With Ironhide Karash being the card of the month for all Shadow decks, Puwen + Aldon shut that down, hard. While I did cut Rasmina because of her needing synergy, Puwen wants synergy but doesn't necessarily need it to survive. The opponent can respond with a synergy of his own, with Puwen + Aldon or with Karash + Death Mage Thaddeus or even Karash + Bloodthirsty but Puwen has an easier time surviving than Rasmina. We need more than 4 2cc allies here and even Champion of Irum has his weaknesses.

+3 Puwen Bloodhelm.


Talking about Champion of Irum and his weaknesses, I did mention earlier that the Unique-tag on him can make it hard for us to keep tempo up on turns 4 and 5, sometimes even 6.

-1 Champion of Irum.


Then we move to Jasmine. She's a decent 3-drop and can affect tempo greatly from t4 onwards. However, she doesn't synergize with our earlier-game allies and because she can't use her ability immediately, our 2-drops are in danger of dying when going 2nd. We do already have Valiant Defender for that but I think we need more. Layarian Seductress, while has less attack, has her ability to disable when going 2nd and if we skip sacrificing at some point, when going 1st as well. Seductress can be a bit hard to play as a 4-of, though.

-4 Jasmine Rosecult, +3 Layarian Seductress.


The original deck runs both 2x Stalwart Battleguard and 2x Rider of Ellos. We do want a hard hitter in our deck but Stalwart Battleguard has his own problems: We want allies on-board, he doesn't. So we'll cut him. Rider of Ellos is really good against weapon decks and other non-burn decks as well. He hits hard so if he's let be on-board, he'll kill things. He is a bit expensive though so running 4 is not recommended, although it can work in some matchups.

-2 Stalwart Battleguard, +1 Rider of Ellos.


I can say the similar thing about Raven as well. I don't really see myself wanting multiple Ravens in my hand.

-1 Raven Wildheart



The ability base is pretty straight forward: Crippling Blow for extending the early game stage and giving advantage, Blood Frenzy to be able to keep pressure and Bad Santa to be able to keep pressure. There's already the addition of Valiant Defender to solidify board position but I think Crippling Blow and Valiant Defender aren't really enough. They cover allies but weapons and other things go straight through.

+2 Smashing Blow. Only two because we don't really want multiple copies in our hand at a time and we want to minimalize dead draws.

+3 Retreat. Only 3 Crippling Blow does leave us open to all kinds of things. Not drawing it is one, attachment hate is another. Retreat also works as a pseudo attachment hate as well as being able to pull back damaged allies.


Talking about attachment hate: +1 A Legend Rises. Only one because while it deals with attachments against our allies, it's still an attachment in itself as well as 4cc, which isn't the cheapest thing around. Even if your opponent doesn't play attachments on your allies, +2 attack is still kinda useful. Playing more than one can cloud our draws a bit though.


Moving on to the items:


Both Dragon's Tooth and Rothem's Visage are pretty decent cards although their usefullness in this deck is a bit debatable. Dragon's Tooth is definitely good but it's reach is fatties and sometimes our opponent doesn't play fatties so it can be a dead draw quite often. Boris is a hero that likes to use his ability whenever possible (mostly because he's forced to) so Rothem's Visage having 2SE cost for activation, as well as a risky drawback, is not worth the deck spot. For replacements I went a bit more traditional way.

-2 Rothem's Visage, -2 Dragon's Tooth; +1 War Banner, +1 King's Pride. Only one War Banner because they don't stack and one King's Pride because of reasons similar to A Legend Rises. It can cloud our draws pretty bad if we're unlucky and it's not the most useful thing in certain matchups either.

[Airact]

So we end up with this:


Boris Skullcrusher

3x Puwen Bloodhelm
2x Raven Wildheart
4x Aldon the Brave
3x Rider of Ellos
3x Champion of Irum
3x Layarian Seductress

3x Valiant Defender
2x Smashing Blow
3x Crippling Blow
4x Blood Frenzy
3x Retreat
3x Bad Santa
1x A Legend Rises

1x War Banner
1x King's Pride

Total 40


Sideboard (yes, sideboard):

1x Raven Wildheart
1x Smashing Blow
1x Enrage
1x A Legend Rises
1x Dark Revelations
1x King's Pride
2x Dragon's Tooth
2x Spectral Saber

Total 10

Basically the sideboard is a toolbox. Single copies of A Legend Rises, Smashing Blow, Raven and King's Pride to support the copies already in the main deck depending on the matchup. A Legend Rises against Crippling Blow, Captured Prey and sometimes Consuming Fear. Smashing Blow against weapon/armor heavy decks, Raven against burn and later-game decks, also when going first, and King's Pride against more control heavy decks where we might not be able to drop the beat as easily as we'd like.

Then there's a surprise: A single copy of Dark Revelations. This card seems pretty underestimated. I have main decked a single copy of this card from time to time and while I haven't found a place for it yet, it certainly has potential. In this deck it's against solo decks as a SE outlet. You also have the possibility of disrupting a lot of things and you know what they are drawing. Only one because it's pretty rare to face a solo deck in a situation where you have sideboards available.

The rest are pretty simple. Enrage against some later-game decks as well as burn, Dragon's Tooths against fatty decks and Spectral Sabers against some annoying attachments (Lone Wolf, Super Focus, sometimes even Crippling Blow, Captured Prey and Blood Frenzy).


I have to admit I went a bit experimental during the process of building the deck. I wanted to see how single copies would fare in a QM environment, as well as in general. They worked surprisingly well although Test Server QM isn't the best testing environment. Valiant Defender worked surprisingly well also, netting me a decent amount of wins and it has the power to do surprise comebacks because of it solidifying the board even when I'm behind.

It doesn't play as aggressive as the original but it should have more stability this way. It does have some problems against Amber with only main boards as well as the obvious Moonstalker matchup but otherwise it's not that bad. Portal Maj I didn't see so I can only guess but Boris has had problems with Portal Maj. If you see a lot of Portal Maj, consider sideboarding some Braxnorian Veterans or even main board them instead of Raven but a general idea is to play as much meat as possible and even Raven does surprisingly well there. Lance can be decently tricky although Rider of Ellos does surprising amounts of damage there and if you draw War Banner early (It's fine if he Stop, Thief's this, you'll get time that way), Ravens don't do as much damage.

Against Mages it entirely depends on the early-game which this deck has a decent chance to win. If you force the Mage to burn after burn after burn, you'll fare well. Raven helps here because of 6 health.

Aldon + War Banner + King's Pride hurts, a lot.


So yeah, that's that. I worried a bit that I wouldn't find a build I'm happy with because I always came up with situations where I would just lose but you can't beat everything. I wanted to stick to the beatdown plan instead of going a more standard way and it shows a bit with some of the decisions.


Keep PM'ing the lists, it's the same thing next week: I'll pick a list and hopefully make it better (chances are I'll hear about it if it wasn't).

[FDL]

Nice job. It's always fun getting insight into other player's deckbuilding.

I'd like you to elaborate on how you plan to win though. I see a lot of early defense but very limited end game. Is the cheap ally control enough to delay your opponent enough for you to chip away a big enough chunk of health with your early weenies?

[Zhou86]

Any space for Wild Berserkers? That ally timed together with Boris's abilities, wins me comeback games.

But overall its a nice deck, thanks for sharing.

[Airact]

I wouldn't say early defence. The deck intends to win with that early game. Smash the early game, everything else comes after that. I think that is what the original deck intended to do (as it had barely any end-game) and that's one of the reasons I kept it that way.

I don't want to change the decks, just make them better at what they want to do. Also I simply hate fatty based endgame so if you see me play more than 4 fatties, something's wrong. Well... Either that or I find the deck actually interesting enough to play.


Wild Berserkers? I wouldn't play it. In a fatty Boris maybe although 4 attack is kinda iffy. Here, no because I don't want comeback situations. The deck wants to smash the opponent early and then just ride to victory.


Regarding deck submissions: I probably prefer more wacky builds over standard lists but just send stuff my way and I'll choose based on what I have. I like playing aggro decks but if I do find a late-game build (or any build) interesting, I'll tunnel vision the crap out of that.