Constructed Epic: Army of the Apocalypse

5 thoughts on “Constructed Epic: Army of the Apocalypse”

1. Hey, just built a deck round Army of Apocalypse myself, as a big finisher. Has it worked out for you?

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   1. This list specifically has not worked great for me, but this list (http://www.tomsepicgaming.com/constructed-epic-4-color-army/) was instrumental in shifting my understanding of constructed play, and it ran 2 Army of the Apocalypse.

      I like the card, but it can fall flat if your opponent is running a lot of discard pile removal: Amnesia, Heinous Feast, Grave Demon, Frantic Research, Guilt Demon, etc.

      My favorite cards to use with it are blitz champions, naturally, and Crystal Golem (Winter Fairy to a lesser extent). Crystal Golem is great because you can break it immediately after returning it to draw 2 cards to ensure you get at least some value from Army. This is nice because it lets you use it while your opponent’s gold is up for at least some value in case they off-turn board clear. One 0-cost answer to an Army is Blind Faith though, since it removes blitz from all of your champions.

      Overall, Army can be a great finisher or even just provide a bit of extra resources (especially if you Amnesia your opponent immediately before playing it), but it does have its weaknesses. It’s awesome when it works though.

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2. Thanks for the reply Tom, picked up two good cards I had overlooked from that.

   I’m playing Constructed Singleton with a group of friends, so that limits my choises to 1 of each, and a deck of at least 30.

   My idea, and your input is welcome, is to aim for a late game combo of Heinous Feast or Amnesia (or Grave Digger) and Army of the Apocalypse.

   That isn’t new of course, the interesting thing is really what you do with the rest of the deck while you build up your discard (in my case 30-40 singletons). I was thinking to base it on Airborns and health gains. In the early game (while waiting to get the right cards in hand) I’ll just make sure to use airborns as attackers and blockers to hopefully lower oponents health and increase mine and then have them broken.

   The reason for this is, that when I play the Army of Apocalypse (must be on my turn) and it is my oponents turn, and they attack, I have enough health that I dont have to block the attack, but take the damage and then have all my Airborns free to attack individaully on my turn, and they will have a hard time blocking.

   I’ll admit though, I misremembered the Army of Apocalypse so I thought abilities didn’t matter when they first came back from the discard. But you’r right, they are. This means that blitz champions are more valuble becasue you can attack directly, and don’t give the oponents as many chances to wipe the board.

   However, the mostly Good with lots of health gain may make an oponent less worrysome about wanting to wipe my discard (wich of course would be a disaster) since it doesn’t point forward to that ending as clearly. As part of the strategy I’m hoping early signs of me using health gains with recall (such as Inner Peace) will make them use any Amnesia-type cards early…

   But the risk of an untimley discard wipe, or a board wipe after I summoned my swarm is quite large though…

   If that happens, I’m hoping the Airborne + health gain is a decent base strategy 🙂 (I also have some of the smarter Blues such as Psionic Attack and Thought Plucker).

   ///

   Another Idea I’m working on is to base a deck on champions with powers since (as I read the rules) you can use them on opponents turn, even after that champion has blocked, and still have them be prepared on your turn. I’m thinking if you make heavy use of that, you’ll get substantionally many more actions then your oponents, any thoughts on that?

   Thanks for reading, have a good day,

   Rickard

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3. The part below contradicts itself: Inner peace may make them use their Amnesia early, so I know it’s out of their hand.

   “However, the mostly Good with lots of health gain may make an oponent less worrysome about wanting to wipe my discard (wich of course would be a disaster) since it doesn’t point forward to that ending as clearly. As part of the strategy I’m hoping early signs of me using health gains with recall (such as Inner Peace) will make them use any Amnesia-type cards early…”

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   1. Health gain by itself is a risky strategy because it is frequently attached to cards that have minimal impact on the board and champions in play. For example, if my opponent is attacking me with a Triceratops, I can play an Angel of Light negating the 10 damage dealt to me and leaving me with a 5/6 airborne champion, but the Triceratops is still a problem I’ll have to deal with next turn. In addition, that Triceratops can still kill me in 3 turns where it would take me 6 turns to kill my opponent with my Angel. Inner Peace works similarly in that it delays my opponent but doesn’t actually get me further ahead.

      Control decks and aggro-Kark decks utilize health gain for very specific purposes. Control decks try to gain as much value as possible with board clears and other forms of disruption. They only heal in opportunities where their opponent has no immediate threats in play. Healing for these decks is great because it protects them from being burned out with cards like Flame Strike, and it can allow them to recover from an opponent’s early damage.

      Aggro-Kark decks on the other hand are essentially burn decks with more reliance on disruption, since they need to gain life and not take damage. In this deck, health gain needs to be answered quickly because if it reaches around 50, the Kark deck can just win. Without Kark, decks can just slowly chip that health gain back down.

      With that in mind, a deck that focuses on smaller offense/defense airborne champions and health gain might just get overwhelmed by Wild decks with a bunch of big threats. Something to think about would be filling your 0-cost slots with airborne champions (Little Devil, Guilt Demon, Rescue Griffen, White Dragon, etc.). This would give you offensive airborne threats while leaving your gold available to disrupt your opponent while you build up for your Army of the Apocalypse. A little bit of health gain could be nice to help against aggressive decks (Drain Essence), but I wouldn’t focus too much on it.

      Expend champions are great, especially if you can get multiple activation out of them, but it is risky not to use the expend ability immediately after playing it because there is no responding. So, if you play Elara, the Lycomancer (with loyalty) and pass to your opponent, they could play Lightning Strike on it, and it would break immediately (unlike Magic, you can’t expend it in response).

      You can use the powers on your opponent’s turn (assuming the champion either has blitz or is not deploying), so you could play Time Bender, reveal for loyalty, and then immediately return a champion to hand.

      One really cool interaction with expend champions is Feint. If you have a prepared, blitz/non-deploying champion, you can declare it as a blocker. Then, if it survives until you regain initiative, you could expend it for its power, then immediately play Feint, (removing it from combat and preparing it), and immediately expend it again for a second activation in the same turn. Risky and unlikely to happen, but cool.

      I kind of went off on some tangents, so let me know if I didn’t answer your question as well as you would like, or if this just spawned more questions. Always happy to talk Epic.

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