TaKtiX: Laurence J Sinclair

Laurence J Sinclair has been playing the Warlord CCG since the release of the game - mainly thanks to that killer Rathe art. He even stuck with it through that dark time involving Campaign Rathe art. Now he is a playtester and a member of the Warlord Story Team - guiding the armies of the Accordlands into an uncertain future.

7.6.06

Winning with Class: Clerics

So, how do clerics win games of Warlord? They're not up to much when it comes to bashing other characters in melee, and they aren't exactly renowned for their wide variety of ranged strikes. More than any other class, the cleric can be considered a 'support' warlord; one who helps his army to kill the enemy rather than getting directly involed himself.

This doesn't mean that all clerical decks must be the same, however. There are a number of means by which they can deliver victory, as evidenced by their action and item pool, and the innate abilities of the warlords themselves.

Clerics can deliver large, high-level fighters and rogues to combat, healing any wounds that they suffer and buffing their stats while remaining safe from danger themselves. This is an approach favoured by warlords such as Rustiq Umbala and Priam Ironsoul; the former because he has inbuilt movement and ATK boosting capabilities, and the latter because his healing powers can actually ready his troops, turning it into another form of movement. The basic premise of this decktype is to pack it full of the biggest, baddest characters available, and fill the rest with healing to keep them alive and steeds to get them to the front. For variety, readying and unstunning spells can speed up the rate at which your characters attack the enemy.

Sometimes this deckstyle is mistakenly called a stall deck. Usually, only by someone that hasn't seen a true stall deck before. When stalling, the idea is still to throw out big characters, but more because of their high AC and hitpoints than their offensive power. They need only hold off the enemy long enough for the purpose of the deck - usually a huge Dragon or two - to get into position for a slow grind to victory. Healing is even more important in these sorts of decks, and movement usually falls by the wayside in favour of actions and items that create even more meat for the warlord to hide behind - such as the infamous figurines.

At the opposite end of the spectrum to the stall deck is the frontline cleric deck, where the warlord - loaded down with goodies like the Teufeltiger's Lies, Glyph of Faith, Blasphemous Sign and Bascarite Mark - Ups the stats of those around him, hoping to kill the enemy quickly, before they have time to concentrate fire against him. In this deck, the healing is mainly self-centred, directed toward keeping the warlord alive. The warlords that do best at this sort of deck are those that have some form of protection (and usually two melee strikes). Atu Amani has his own way to prevent wounds from himself, for example, while Ghed Jaroslav is astral and has Deverenian redirection to keep the heat off.

Finally, there are also decks that take advantage (no pun intended)of the new focus for the cleric class: stunning the enemy, and making sure that they can't ready. Volda's Mantle takes pride of place in the repertoire of these warlords, but Kor's Patience, Shared Fate and Withering Gaze help maintain the lockdown. It's just another kind of stalling in reality, but to prevent an opponent from becoming annoyed with you you should probably pack in some form of kill mechanism to punish the stunned enemy, by utilising characters and items that get bonuses against them. As a devotee of your gods, it is your duty to make sure that the suffering of your enemies is as brief as possible.

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