This article was actually written several months ago for Sleek’s Bowl back when we were separate webpages. We delayed posting it because we had been planning to put Thomas’ Fearsome Flourish up first as part of the Arenai series, and then once LVO came and went it lost some utility since it would no longer serve as a prequel to my LVO write up where I took effectively this same deck. That said, Gryselle’s Arenai are fun, Breakneck Slaughter is the ‘fit’ they had been seeking in Nemesis, and Sleek and I want to keep the ball rolling. Still somewhere in the hazy future is the Arenai Round Robin that we spoiled on the Underworlds Underground Podcast. But in the meantime, here’s The Sisters of Breakneck Slaughter as I work through the deck theory in brief, and then outline a local tournament I attended in prep for LVO. Do my struggles here with horde Hold Objective Paths of Prophecy suggest anything in the future or cause me to think about how to deal with it at the Grand Clash? NO! What am I, some kind of prophet? Enjoy!
Hello again, friends. It’s Fishmode of www.SpentGlory.com back again to talk about Arenai, since that’s all I do anymore. Today we will be exploring the Nemesis format pairing with the new Breakneck Slaughter deck, which in my opinion is the smoothest pairing we have seen yet for Gryselle’s warband. I won’t overburden you with deck thoughts this time around and just give a quick summary of the main idea. Breakneck Slaughter is a great deck for fast aggro, which is already what you want to be doing with the Arenai. The best cards in Breakneck are the End Phase Objectives, a few great surges, and some pretty tasty Gambits, which works pretty well because these are the areas the Arenai faction deck needs the most help with. Last time around I struggled to fit in enough Poison upgrades with Toxic Terrors to be effective while still being able to take as many of the Arenai’s Grade-A Upgrade cards, but I don’t have this issue here!
The Decklist can be found ++HERE++, and I’ll post some thoughts about changes to the deck after playtesting at the end of the article.
The Objectives I wanted to focus on all involved making lots of attacks (Gale Force is just a better Storm of Blades, and I took both), taking out enemy fighters (Rapid Strike and Not Fast Enough), and being in Enemy territory or at least near the bad guys (Fastest Around, Eager for the Fight, and Need for Speed all meet this criteria, and pair pretty well with Har Kuron Hurricane and In Praise of Khaine). I also took Out of Control because I figured I would get staggered at some point, and in a best of three it might make an opponent think twice about it until they’ve seen the card hit my discard pile. I didn’t expect to hand off momentum with only one card in the deck that allowed me to do so. My Objective deck has a 19 glory max, which is huge for nemesis, but has weaknesses if the enemy also wants to invade or has hard to kill fighters. That said, just roll crits, bro. Plus, they can’t invade my side if they’re all out of action!
The Gambits again took the plus dice and damage options from the Arenai deck as well as their damage reduction and healing cards, but the Breakneck ones I included were fine to provide Momentum counters since I don’t much care where I end up so long as I got to make the charge. I took Reckless Charge and Devastating Charge (because who doesn’t love dice and damage), but they also conveniently work for scything attacks so I get even more mileage than other warbands if I get Spinning Flourish. I also took Quick Juke and Roll with the Punches for added survivability. Breakneck Pace is in there just to make sure I can reach somebody on the longboard, because you never know if you’ll need an effective +3 move on a charge.
My Upgrades took many from the Arenai deck and I was able to fit in some more survivability this time around. The only Breakneck Upgrades I included were Hurricane Dart, Inertial Lance, and Moving Mark, all of which continue to reward the ABC plan: Always Be Charging. No need to worry about Poison keywords or any positional business!
With that out of the way, I’m Eager for the Fight! Last one dead is a stinking coward.
Practice Game 1 vs Vanja’s Voidcursed Chosen Axes Arenai Win 20-9
Voidcurse preventing driveback definitely helped Vanja’s case as he was able to get on objectives and stay there unless I killed him, and a few choice push cards helped him inspire multiple fighters at the end of the first round. In the end it didn’t help his case, as my offensive output was simply too much to soak up. Gaining cleave on Gryselle when I gave her Devotee of the Blade was really tasty. Inspired Fjul still scares me, but overall the weight of dice and being able to fight him anywhere immediately from the early activations was all the help I needed. By the end of the game he had very few options and I took it pretty cleanly 20-9.
Practice Game 2 against John’s Force of Frost Thricefold Discord Arenai Win 22-13
This game went pretty well for me, as I was able to kill Vashtiss quite early on, and he was unable to finish Gryselle off despite having her staggered thanks to some good defensive tech. I did of course have damage reduced against Vexmor multiple times, gave up on him, and killed the assassin only to hand him an easy Excess of Paramountcy score. Knowing Abasoth’s Avalanche was a concern, I tried to stay in the midboard until I needed to cross over for my scores, though it didn’t matter since it was bottom decked for him. I got to throw lots of dice though, and actually accepted the multiping from the Feast temptation to put another damage on Vexmor and that was the difference maker. We ended the game drawing cards, and Arenai came away with another win 22-13.
It was only a couple games (one game against a season 1 warband), but that was all the testing I did before I dove into a best of 1 nemesis tournament, making no changes to the deck. Fingers crossed!
Tournament Game 1 vs Andrew’s Voidcursed Hexbanes Arenai win 20-15
He longboarded me and cursed a dog, easily scoring some movement based business with free dog moves. The Retractable Pistol also came out early, which was a challenge, and he successfully used Pock’s knockback 2 to keep me out of his territory with the longboard to stop some of my positional scoring. Andrew’s deck was designed to cut down the force of Frost he expected to see, and it was much less effective against me since Gryselle’s Roller Derby doesn’t mind those things nearly as much. I did have multiple ways to get +dice and cleave, so I was able to come back in the end and with a few good dice rolls, won the game 20 to 15, because Hexbane can score just for you playing the game.
Tournament Game 2 against John’s Force of Frost Thricefold Discord Arenai Win 22-16
A rematch from the practice phase! Neither of us made any deck changes so I was hoping things would shake out in a similar fashion. Very fortunately, at the game’s opening, he failed an activation 1 Abasoth’s Avalanche, but was able to toss out a few other pings and quickly put my fighters into vulnerable positions. The good news is he had Vashtiss in my territory ripe for the picking, so she took a few quick wounds and had to retreat. Gryselle got the crit to grievous out Lascivir, and I was quickly on my way to storming his territory and getting most of my aggro scoring off. Vexmor was tough to kill with damage reduction going off multiple times, and survived long enough to score him Excess of Paramountcy, but in the end I had enough damage to put him away and win 22-16
Tournament Game 3 against Louis’ Paths of Prophecy Sepulchral Guard Arenai win 15-11
This was a five man event (our sixth dropped after the first game), and based on scoring I was almost guaranteed to win at this point. I felt pretty good going into it since I should be able to get my kill surges easily enough with his softer targets, but I actually had quite a hard time hitting attacks and so I just didn’t kill enough to keep up with his resurrection. He blocked me multiple ways from scoring Rapid Strike (once bringing back the last fighter I needed with a power card in the final step), and with him longboarding me I struggled to score my positional cards early on. I quite fortunately got the hand to play Breakneck Pace paired with Devastating Charge and Fatal Flourish on Retaria to risk it for the biscuit, charging seven hexes with flying to one-shot the Warden, which helped slow his roll and bring me back in it. He was very efficient at hold objective scores, and were it not for two lucky crits on single-dice Hurricane Darts with a charged out Gryselle to close out the game and knock out some objective holding petitioners, I might have actually lost what I initially considered my easiest match of the tournament. Louis is the kind of off-the-wall player who can make something like PoP work, and resurrection is a pretty good counter to my deck. When you play a dice dependent kill-focused deck that’s the risk you take, but the highs are so high that you can still win things with a big play, as demonstrated here. Gryselle’s Roller Derby wins 15-11 (the first time I didn’t break 20 glory, which is wild). The game was so tense I forgot to take a picture until it was over!
The tournament complete, I kept the deck the same and played a few more matches. These happened after the Errata to allow for Acrobatic to reduce damage to zero, which did happen once. It’s not a massive boost to the warband, but still nice to have and could potentially win an Arenai player some games.
Casual Game 1 against Andrew’s Voidcursed Plaguepack Arenai win 19-5
This game felt pretty good, in part because I had so many 2 wound targets early on and was able to keep him bottled up. My scoring actually was a little slow because I had to delay Har Kuron Hurricane, Need for Speed, and Eager for the Fight since he failed to kill any of my fighters until midway through round 2 (a good problem, I know) but it meant I couldn’t get everybody in position and/or charged since I had five fighters and only four activations per round to play with. He also had too many fighters for me to get In Praise of Khaine when I drew it early, so I had to dump it, but otherwise did good work with pretty smooth scoring. Once I killed Skabbik he hit me with Reshaping Demise voidcursing two of my fighters which reduced my ability to defend (or reduce damage with acrobatic), but Moment of Rapture helped Gryslle out and Devotee of Slaughter on Thrialla kept her afloat as well. He did throw a Book of Woe at me once I had all five in his territory, pinging three fighters and leaving two vulnerable which was rough, but not enough for him in the end. Closing the game out he had a single fighter left on two wounds, and I won 19-5. (and you call that slow scoring?!)
Casual Game 2 against Brian’s Krushas using Tooth and Claw Arenai lose 14-19
You know how they call this the Nemesis Format? Well this deck is my nemesis. Do you notice how in this photo I’m already down two fighters by activation 2? I have such a hard time dealing with the stat check of the warband and the skill of my opponent, but you gotta give it your best. I unfortunately missed three attacks to open the game and lost two fighters very early, so some cards just weren’t going to fire like Not Fast Enough and Rapid Strike. I managed to do some good work and ended up in a position to deal 5 damage in one activation to Morgok, but a lucky crit defense on a combo kept him alive on two wounds, which I combo’d later to one, but couldn’t finish him off. I was in a tough spot needing to move into his territory and attempt to give momentum to Gryselle to fire off a 3 dice Hurricane Dart to finish Morgok, which would have also scored me Fastest Around, netting me 5 glory. Instead I ate a charge, died, and he won by five thanks to Brute Triumph. I rolled the dice afterward and would have missed anyhow so it’s nothing to lose sleep over, but nice to know despite a bad opening hand and a bad matchup I was still a dice roll or two away from a win. Arenai lose 14-19
Deck changes
Having a few games under my belt and ultimately going 6-1, I’m feeling pretty happy about Gryselle’s Roller Derby / Fast 5 / Sisters of Breakneck Slaughter. I just need to settle on a name! There are a few swaps I might make but the deck felt pretty smooth even in its first-pass play.
Objective-wise, I’m not sure if I want to keep Out of Control since I only have one way to hand off impetus (and am not interested in adding more), and in a couple games I had opponents stop me by refusing to stagger. I’m also aware that Fastest Around is a risk in a Best of 3, but so far I have scored it in every game but one, and for three glory it’s hard to let go of it.
For Gambits, I’m on the fence about Quick Juke. Going on guard is nice and the impetus doesn’t matter so much (unless they stagger me but it’s what it is), but not useful against crits which so far has been the use case. It also is blocked by Moving Mark (the fighter can’t be on guard) which was a bummer more than once, and also prevents me from choosing to Guard with Paragon of the Arena. Breakneck Pace got discarded multiple times since I often don’t need the movement help, but in the game I did it’s the reason I won so I’m still not sure about whether to toss it. I might consider adding Slick Ice – even though it will impetus me every activation (I’m going to charge pretty much every time), it could really put a wrench in Hold Objective warbands because they’ll have to choose between moving onto an objective or charging and never landing where they want. Plus, if I do keep Out of Control, I have a much better chance of scoring it (and could override some pesky enemy domain with this card).
Upgrade-wise, I didn’t get a lot of use out of Inertial Lance. Theoretically it lets me get a 2 damage attack in the early game, and if I’m charged out and not adjacent could tag somebody. It just never ended up mattering in any of my games so far, so I might just take another Combo attack. If I give up on Out of Control this is even less relevant of a card for me.
Wrap
That’s all for the Fast 5! I’ve had a lot of fun with this pairing and very rarely felt the frustration of positional requirements or needing to get hits/kills with specific fighters like I did when pairing with Toxic Terrors. If the last few installments of this series didn’t convince you to give the Arenai a spin, hopefully this one will! Let me know what suggestions you have (for cards or the deck name) because I’m VERY tempted to take a version of this deck to LVO in a couple weeks…
(PS: other LVO attendees please forget everything you read above)
Fismode
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