Countdown to Cataclysm is, on one hand, a beautiful deck. It has a variety of objective types, so regardless of your gameplan or second deck in Nemesis there’s something you can lean on. It has a wide variety of solid ploy effects and contains multiple pushes, which provide huge advantages to a savvy player. It has accuracy bonuses, direct damage ‘ping’ capacity in abundance, and quite a strong package of defensive upgrades. I love playing it in combination with nearly any warband and pairing and find it to be a staple of my decks even for casual play. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s also a staple of competitive play, to the extent that nearly everybody is running it – especially the winners.

CtC is, in many respects, ‘too good’ and has effectively 1-5 ‘free glory’ per game. I used to moan about Headkrakka’s Madmob getting 1-3 ‘free’ Primacy glory in first edition, and it really was a problem – so much so I recommended Rotating out old warbands from competitive play. CC is incredibly potent in a similar vein – and while this glory isn’t ‘in addition’ to objective cards like Primacy was, it’s still probably too easy to score some CtC objectives. There’s a reason we see it do so well – it’s remarkably consistent and very difficult to counterplay. If everybody’s taking it and you can’t stop it, then you’ll feel like you have to take it too, and before you know if we have substantially reduced variety in deck makeup and that can lead to more stale gameplay and a predominance of warbands that capitalize on CtC better than others.

I’m not alone in thinking this of course, nor am I the first to come up with this as a potential ‘problem’ in the meta at current. Let’s check in on the opinions of my betters and then some hard data:

Expert Opinion

The CtC overview from Staggerers shows it’s very strong as a deck and explains why – demonstrating that even in a bad matchup and a rough day, CtC should score 9 glory minimum and argues that 6 of those glory are ‘undeniable’. Michael’s closing statement reads: “Overall, Cataclysm is the most synergetic deck in the game right now. It fits well with any playstyle, and doesn’t force you into doing things you typically wouldn’t want to. While I definitely don’t recommend playing ‘for the Cataclysm’, like you would play ‘for delving’, I 100% recommend giving this deck a try as the second deck in your pairing.”

‘Three Pillars’ from PtG’s Mark discusses the three decks that should factor into your Nemesis pairing consideration. Mark argues that you need to be taking at least one of Blazing Assault, Pillage and Plunder, or Countdown to Cataclysm if you want to succeed competitively. While brief, the section on CtC shows it pairs well with everything and is strong in its own right. Choice quotes from the article are “Whichever of the pieces you are dipping into the deck for, the flexibility it offers makes for a fantastic partner, as we’ve seen in top-meta BA x CtC, ES x CtC, and PnP x CtC decks” and “CtC (is) the only deck where I wouldn’t look at you funny if you pitched me on any given one of its (eligible) pairings.”

Polish language YouTube channel Glorkazworka posted a video discussion about their proposed Deck Pairing Tier List (pictured above). While a tier list is subjective by nature, look how often CtC is at the top. CtC features in the only S-tier deck, and 3 of the 6 A-Tier decks (and the higher half at that). Only one of its possible combinations, that with Reckless Fury, is down in the C Tier and still sit in the middle third of all possible decks in that ranking. It’s also worth noting that despite this ‘C-Tier’ ranking, that deck pairing got second place at the World Championships of Warhammer a few months ago. Generally speaking, CtC is the strongest deck in this list, or perhaps roughly tied with P&P depending on how you slice it. The lesson here is: slap Countdown together with literally any deck in your collection (except Edge of the Knife due to Plot Card conflict) and you have an A-Tier combination.

Objective Evidence

The above screenshot was taken from the Underworlds Statistics Project Dashboard with the ‘Scurry and Plunder’ meta filter on – indicating everything post Reckless/Dromm nerf. The deck with all uses, all combinations, all warbands, sits at a 55.3% win rate. This is good, but not busted! However, we ideally want everything to sit between 45-55%, and it’s the only deck with more than 50% wins in this database aside from Pillage and Plunder (at 51.1%). But what I REALLY want to call attention to is the below screenshot with deck combination winrates:

Notice anything special? The top 5 decks are all Countdown pairings. That’s every single legal combination sitting at the top. No Countdown pairing falls outside of the top 5 and it has every seat at that table. The worst offender is with Pillage and that has a 62.2% win rate! As alluded to before, pick whatever deck you like, but make sure it has CtC alongside it if you’re hoping to win.

Another view we can screen for is the ‘meta score’, which is the Stats Project’s way of presenting the combination of win rate and frequency of use. If a thing wins 2/3 of the time but has only been played three times, it will have a much lower meta score than something that wins 1/2 the time but has been played 100 times – we have more confidence in the accuracy of the win rate and it presents a larger share of the meta. Here’s the top 7 decks by meta score with a minimum of 10 games played:

4 of those 7 contain Countdown, including all top 3. So not only are they doing well, they’re being played often compared to other non-Cataclysm pairings. This lends to the suggestion that the Cataclysm deck is ubiquitous in our meta and potentially reducing the variety of play as a result.

This data of course is just from user-submitted games, which can suffer from selection bias, have a limited reporter base, and as we know – not all games are equal. Throwing some dice casually at game night with my buddies, I might bring any number of wacky combinations, play against any number of weird decks or underpowered warbands, and it’s possible that one or both of us are playing suboptimally. In a tournament setting, however, that’s less likely. Most tournament competitors are bringing ‘better’ things with more practice and strategy, and the things that make it to the top more often would generally be considered ‘best’ across a wide enough data set. With that in mind, let’s review the Podium data set in the post Reckless Fury nerf-meta. Here are the podium standings for events around the world since the latest rules update.

This might be hard to read, so I’ll summarize it. CtC features in 30 of the above 42 podium decks. It took first place 13 of 14 possible times. Not included in this data set was this weekend’s Copenhagen Clash, where Zarbag’s PP/CtC took first and second place. Let’s do this in a more picture friendly way – this is the ‘tournaments only’ winrates for deck combos in the database:

If that’s not ‘serious’ enough to make the point, I’ll drive it home with a filter showing only World Qualifiers, where presumably everybody is playing their hardest with their best practiced decks. We find that it again takes the top 5 spots, with RF/CC tied for fifth at 50% with BA/ES.

While P&P has remarkably consistent scoring as well, pairs very well with CtC, and has become the ‘boogeyman deck’ here, I think CtC might need attention first from the rules team since it’s so ubiquitous.

What Needs to Be Done?

If there was a single issue with CtC, it’s the fact that the ‘passive’ glory generation is higher than most other decks, the amount of ‘deniable’ or counterplayable glory is lower, and unless things go terribly, terribly wrong for the Countdown player, they can expect to have 4 or more glory in the bag just for showing up. Their End Phase package is great, and their surges aren’t too bad either. Objective Glory is how this game is typically won, and Cataclysm provides some of the most consistent and high scoring potential.

The deck also has a relatively strong Ploy package. Their direct damage ploys do not have the ‘target cannot be vulnerable’ caveat, so they can be ‘finisher’ pings to slay a fighter. Most other decks do not have this ability. They have a 3 hex push in Countercharge, which is an immense distance in this game. Violent Blast can push potentially 7 fighters (more realistically 1-3), and they don’t have to all be yours. Improvised attack in an out of sequence attack action that can also drive back the target. In sum, the deck can do extra damage for your warband, move your fighters, move their fighters, and improve your accuracy.

The Upgrade suite, the ‘weakest’ of the four components of this deck, still isn’t half bad. You have access to Utter Conviction, which can increase a fighter’s defense stat – late game it’s not uncommon to see a fighter defending on 3 shields. Great Fortitude is in the deck and always good, and Driven by Pain can increase your survivability and/or Hold Treasure/positional game. The deck also comes with two attack action Upgrades, which is the most of any deck currently available. One is a decent range 3 attack, and the other hits 3 damage without needing a runemark and is well worth the 1 damage you eat in return for using it. The deck’s upgrades let you move faster, hit harder, and stay alive longer.

So let’s review. Countdown to Cataclysm:
– Has a very strong End Phase scoring package that is hard to, or in some cases, impossible to stop.
– Has a moderately strong Surge package, a few cards have effectively no counterplay.
– Has a very potent ploy package that can augment any playstyle and contains more than your average Push potential, which is the strongest mechanic in the game, and the best Ping potential, which is also among the strongest mechanics.
– Has a relatively strong Upgrade package that notably makes your fighters both more lethal and more survivable.

Any one of these four things could be addressed to help bring things into line, but the thing that I think needs to be touched by a rules update most urgently would be the consistency of scoring, particularly in the end phase

How Do We Fix Countdown to Cataclysm?

There are a couple levers the rules team has available to pull on when making a change to any deck. You could update the wording on a card with a rules update. You could clarify the intent or function of an effect with an FAQ. And, if all else fails, you could put a card on the Forsaken or Restricted lists. I personally would like to avoid Forsaking any of these cards, but considering there are no Restricted cards in the game at the moment, restricting doesn’t really do anything unless you restrict more than 3 cards in the deck, or throw Restricted status onto several other cards in other decks.

The cards that have the most ‘problem potential’ and/or are ‘overpowered’ in my mind are Wreckers, Spread Havoc, Collateral Damage, Violent Blast, and Utter Conviction. In theory, you could place all five on the Restricted list, and a player would have to drop two of them from their list. That said, they’ll probably just keep the three Objective cards and enjoy the ~5 ‘free’ glory that led to this issue in the first place. This is only a realistic option if you also restrict cards from several other decks. It might be better to just make a wording update in the next rules document to bring things more into reasonable territory. Let’s look at some suggestions for how to rein those five cards in.

A simple change that could tone down Wreckers is to make advancement of the cataclysm tracker mandatory. At current, it reads that you can advance the first time a friendly fighter is slain in each combat phase, and for each feature token that has no enemy fighters on it. Savvy Cataclysm players have learned that this means you may choose not to advance the tracker, often stopping just at the top of 1 or 2 and scoring Wreckers in the end phase. If advancement was mandatory, Wreckers would be much harder to score, AND it would open up counterplay for the opponent. Imagine you have two wounded fighters, and choose to move off of a token in your last action step to force the tracker to advance to 2 and block Wreckers from scoring. Currently, you can’t do anything about it unless you have a heal.

Spread Havoc is another one of the big issues in this deck. As it currently is written, the card is GUARANTEED to score. You can literally take the pass action all 12 activations and you will still score 1 glory, and possibly 2, even if you make no moves all game depending on what your opponent does. It’s incredibly difficult to hold it to only scoring 1 as well, so most games you’ll be giving up 2 glory for this card regardless of what you try to do to stop it. The cards could probably be more reasonable if it scored for a number of glory equal to your cataclysm value -1, meaning you might get no glory early game, and will have to push to cataclysm 3 to score it for 2. Cataclysm value 3 still does happen most games, but at least this will slow down the power of the card. If you made the card Cataclysm -2 if would incentivize taking cards that advance the tracker faster, but that’s probably too much. This card is a candidate for Forsaken if it doesn’t have a wording change, in my opinion, and probably should be Restricted even if it does score Cataclysm -1.

Collateral Damage advances effectively for free – you’re almost certain to lose a fighter eventually, and depending on your warband probably at least once a round. Even if somehow nobody is slain (or you surge into it after the first fighter goes), you can still score it right before the end phase if you’re the underdog. I don’t know the best way to slow this card down, to be honest. Possibly we could say you can only score either if you’re the underdog. Possibly you can only score for a fighter being slain. Possibly you can only score it if your cataclysm value is above a certain threshold. Possibly the card just needs to be Restricted or Forsaken.

Violent Blast is a very, very powerful card. You can push an enemy fighter into a stagger hex, off of a token, out of charge range, into charge range, or do all of those things to one of your fighters. Or do all of those things to multiple fighters. I love its utility, but it’s a really dang good card. Maybe limit it to pushing only one fighter? That could be too much of a nerf though. Maybe you can either push one enemy or multiple friendlies.

Utter Conviction is the last card I have on my ‘maybe needs to be Restricted’ list. As it stands, you can push a fighter up to 3 defense by the end game relatively reliably, and only for a one-glory cost. The card could be reined in with a maximum of 2 defense, as we see in other defense boosting cards. Maybe they can get to 3 defense if they’re a dodge fighter, but shield fighters should cap at 2? The’ limitation’ on the card right now is that the fighter cannot use critical weapon abilities, but this effectively means nothing for the majority of fighters in the game. We could also keep the defense wording as is and say the fighters cannot use ANY weapon abilities. Would you take 3 shields but lose Grievous? sounds a little more balanced to me. Seeing as this is an Upgrade, we always can increase its cost to 2 or more Glory.

There are a couple other minor considerations I had thought of:
– Improvised Attack maybe shouldn’t be able to drive targets back
– Desperate Rage should maybe be single-use/break after a successful attack
– Counter-charge should maybe be limited to 2 hexes (or give the pushed fighter a move/charge token?)

Wrap

What do you think? Is Countdown a fine deck, or does it need some rebalancing? Are my ideas on the right track, or am I Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? I’d love to hear your thoughts at SpentGlory@gmail.com but the best thing you can do is provide your input and feedback to the rules team directly by emailing whunderworlds@gwplc.com.

I also don’t want to use this to ‘point the finger’ at others, and will admit I’m just as guilty as anybody for ‘abusing’ this deck. As I explained in my Dread Pageant guide, CtC is a great deck, and I took it to a Grand Clash where I placed second (and the other two podium players also took CtC).

Until next time, get out there and start Spending your Glory (whether you’re playing Cataclysm or not)!