Today we have an incredibly special one – Dan Knight, who goes by Whizzwang on Discord, brings us an in-depth review of the cards in Edge of the Knife with a particular focus on Elites. I wrote a product review for the deck upon release and suggested that 3-fighter Elites might have a few angles with the card pool, and proposed a few of them Elites might like more, but Dan has actually taken the deck through its paces and has real-world tournament experience with the idea. Dan brought Ironsoul’s Condemnors with BA/EotK to the Copenhagen Grand Clash and took fourth place, which you can read about over on Staggerers. What a literal Dark Horse entry and amazing performance out of him in a meta that wasn’t even the most favorable to the strategy. Some of his card scores disagree with mine. Am I wrong? Is he wrong? You decide! (It’s me, I’m wrong)

I’ve personally toyed a little bit with RF/EotK and Jaws of Itzl, which works well enough but isn’t perfect. Dan’s BA Ironsouls have loads of more tools and so far is the best Elite Knife I’ve seen. Let’s take a peek at his decklist, then hear his thoughts on the various cards for the Edge of the Knife and this combo. While this article won’t fit cleanly into the Love Letters Series, that’s where I’m adding it so it can be found more easily in the future.

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The Edge of the Elite Knife

As soon as I saw the Edge of the Knife cards I wanted to try and use them in an elite warband build. While I think that this can work in multiple Elite warbands, I think it really shines in a pairing with Blazing Assault when running Scream of Anger.

Scream of Anger immediately scratched my itch to play subjectively bad cards to good or greater effect. Before we can unpack running Edge of the Knife with an elite warband we have to take a look at how Scream of Anger essentially makes the deck work. 

“Take 2 damage, remove a charge token”. It feels like a two-edged sword and outside of anything with 6+ health can be quite a risky proposition. On 5 health or less it only takes one grievous 2 damage attack to finish us off. Mollog gets some really solid use from it as it also leans into his inspire condition of taking damage and can push the inspire if our opponent is killing the fungus first. Other than that though, it feels, on paper at least, pretty bad. 

It does have some niche side effects if played late in a round, for example when facing Reckless Fury it can be used to turn off Unrelenting Massacre or Arena Mortis (or both, denying our opponent 5 glory) but Reckless is seeing less play so it’s not as much of a meta call as it might have been at the height of a JAWS SMASH! meta.

However, in a pairing with Edge of the Knife, we can read the card as “temper a fighter, remove a charge token”. We still get 2 damage BUT we also temper one of our fighters which is HUGE! The best way to counterplay Elite-Edge is to single target focus attacks on one guy, if damage is spread around it just helps the Elite-Edge deck temper out faster, single target focus slows down the tempering. 

It also helps in the Take and Hold matchups. Take and Hold warbands are generally only going to swing at our fighters if they absolutely HAVE to to score something or push us off something. They would much rather ignore the fight and concentrate on moving around between tokens, delving, scoring etc. 

So Scream of Anger is a temper we have total control over. Since there are only two other “guaranteed” (more accurately 1.5, more on this shortly) tempers in the Edge of the Knife deck, this means we can make sure all 3 of our elite fighters temper out for our Objectives. 

What follows is a card by card analysis of Edge of the Knife  however it is only in relation to running an elite warband AND combining it with Blazing Assault and my thoughts will reflect that.

Ploys:

Death Throes: 

This is pretty much almost an auto include. Since being tempered involves our fighters taking damage especially as we are using Scream of Anger, making sure they don’t immediately turn into a little red puddle is something we need to work towards. 5/5

Fake Out!: 

It’s a 50% ping chance (66% if the underdog), it can kill a vulnerable fighter, in any other build I would be all over this however it’s locked behind tempered and we don’t start out being able to use it. If this is in our opening hand without Scream of Anger or Dark Horse, we might struggle to play it. If we can fit it into our deck there’s no reason not to, but ploy space is at a premium in a Blazing Assault + X deck and I just can’t find a way to fit this in that I am happy with. It’s a solid card but there are better things for us to put in the same space. 3/5

Final Stand: 

We’re playing Crash Aggro, we don’t care about being pushed. 1/5 

Opportunity Strikes: 

Having just noped on Fake Out! for being temper-locked it stands to reason that this would fall under the same area right? Not really, any cards that make our general fighter attacks better are always going to be useful. This is generally the card I take over Fake Out! during building as it has more damage potential and also adds more dice for things like overruns, Critical Effort etc so it has a little more utility. 3/5

Power from Death: 

We are playing elite 5 health fighters, if we draw this in round 1 and they are dying fast enough for this to be useful something is going very, very wrong. If we hold this from round 1 into round 3 when our fighters will start falling over we’ve sacrificed 2 cards to draw 3 and a net gain of 1. In round 3 it’s amazing, but it’s not a statistical risk I want to take. They say drawing cards wins games and it’s mostly true, but this can arrive too early to be useful.  2/5

Running Riot:

Depends on which warband we are using. Something with 3 fighters won’t really need this card as we can temper out with Scream of Anger and and Dark Horse and again, ploy spaces fill up fast, however something like Jaws of Itzl that also has a cheeky little tempered fella at the start? Definitely worth a look. 3/5

Sidetep:

This should already be in our deck from the Blazing Assault cards. However to cover how awesome it is, elite warbands charge out easy, this gets us next to someone to punch in the face. 5/5 

Spiteful Traps:

Oh my! OH MY! What a card. One of the reasons I like this deck so much. In the aggro mirror, which essentially boils down to who can do the most damage fastest this card is Godly! It can effectively remove an opposing fighter from an entire round of combat. I saw an amazing return on card investment from this at Copenhagen with the highlight being turning off Vexmor in activation 1 round 1. It also shuts out a LOT of Reckless Fury cards as most Reckless decks aren’t running Quick Shift. 5/5

Editor’s Note: I have never run this card and that’s probably due to the fact that I either run Edge with Hordes & Pillage and don’t want my leader in the mix, or with RF and I want them charging for Arena Mortis and maybe Unrelenting Massacre. In the BA pairing though I admit I have completely overlooked this card.

Synchronised Effort:

Since we don’t temper fast, this one also isn’t much use to us until later in the game and even then it’s going to massively depend on board state as to whether it’s even useful. 1/5

The Uprising!:

Since this is only in the action step, the only thing it does is unlock temper-locked ploy cards for fighters that are not tempered. It’s not much use for Death Throes as we want our undamaged fighters to take damage, it can’t enable Fake Out!, unless we’re playing a raise warband we’re not throwing ANOTHER card into Power From Death and even then it’s a sub-optimal play. Ultimately this is a Rivals format card to make everything else work and we don’t need it. 1/5

Upgrades:

Dark Horse:

Really simple here, we need this for the deck to work. Without it we’re relying 100% on enemy attacks to make sure we can temper 3 fighters and that would be bad. 5/5

Deadly Aim:

Ensnare being useful in this edition is a hill I will not only die on but plant multiple flags on. However we get a much MUCH better card later on in Mobbed! so there’s not really a need for it here. 1/5

Fuelled by Pain:

If we’re going to run something with ensnare it may as well be ensare+. With a group of 5 health fighters we could see 3 or 4 attack dice off this fairly easily. A solid option if we lack for 3 hammer attacks on our fighter cards depending on warbands (unlikely with an Elite aggro band) 2/5

Great Fortitude:

I’m going to raise some eyebrows here and say if we are playing 5 health fighters in a 2 damage meta (we are by the way. The vast majority of enemy swings are going to be for 2) then we don’t need this. In a vacuum, a 6 health fighter falls over to the same number of attacks as a 5 health one. Putting this on a 4 health fighter though, that’s something entirely different. Since we’re trying to leverage Scream of Anger here, If we were to run a 4 fighter 4 health band it could be useful. 3/5

Impervious:

I like this but it’s very match up dependent. As such Death Throes is the better defensive play for us as it is always useful. 2/5

Lash Out:

Lash out has the same problem as Power From Death, our fighters shouldn’t be dying too quickly so this is only really useful towards the end of round 2 / round 3. As such it’s a dead card for 50% of the game. 2/5

Mobbed!:

Just put it in the deck already 6/5… Seriously, this card is bonkers. It turns 2 hammers into 1 shield from a 50% success into 83%. On 3 hammers that’s 69% into 96%! Flanked AND Surrounded from just 1 other friendly fighter within 3 hexes is just bananas. It’s also not melee only. 5/5

Parting Shot:

Another card that’s just not much use to us until much later in the game. 2/5

Pesky Nuisance:

If we were not running Scream of Anger I’d quite like this as a way to force tempered onto a fighter. As it stands, with Dark Horse and Scream of Anger, there just isn’t a place for this. 2/5

Sharpened Points:

We can never have enough cleave. 4/5

Objectives (Surges):

Aggressive Defender:

Generally easy to score in any round except maybe late game against another pure aggro warband. It does dictate positioning a bit but in a Pillage heavy meta, getting on a token to turn off Strip The Realm is always going to be a good play. 3/5

Behind Enemy Lines:

I’m not a huge fan of “after an opponent” objectives as I don’t like my scoring to be determined by someone else. It’s alright combined with Aggressive Defender I suppose and it’s feature token instead of treasure token but if I can’t control it, I can’t guarantee scoring it. It’s slightly better in the Elite-Edge build since our tempered fighters don’t fall over in a stiff breeze, but there are just multiple better surges. 1/5

Double Team:

Doesn’t require tempered and is nice and simple to score even with an elite build. It even sets us up for Scream of Anger if we charge a different fighter to help out a friend. Of note we cannot score this with Mobbed! It specifically references a friendly fighter providing flanked which Mobbed! does not do. 4/5

Immovable:

This is pretty much made for Elite-Edge. It could cause problems in round 1 but since the best way to stop us activating all our tempered toys is to focus on attacking 1 guy this is surprisingly easy to score and is basically free glory if they attack our Dark Horse. I wasn’t running this at Copenhagen however this has recently gone into the deck in favour of Branching Fate as Branching sees a drop off in scorability with 3 dice. 4/5

Power in Numbers:

Does not say “each other”. Does not say “friendly”. It also does not say “charge tokens” so we can charge our tempered fighters next to other tempered fighters to get them adjacent. This is super easy to score especially in a Gitz heavy meta. 5/5

Sneak Into Position:

This is even harder to score and easier to stop than behind enemy lines. 1/5

Objectives (End Phase):

All In:

Since we’re playing aggro and taking the fighter into the opposing half of the board is a good strategy against other aggro and take and hold, this slots into most Elite-Edge decks very nicely. Since we can also control when we temper some of our fighters we don’t; have to worry about the “friendly territory” part of the card. 5/5

Calm Before the Storm:

Much like power in numbers this does not have the “each other” or “friendly” text to worry about. Since the rules for adjacency also specifically state that “When an ability requires a player to determine adjacency between 2 or more things (such as fighters, tokens or hexes), adjacency cannot be determined from things not specified by that ability.” As long as we can make sure no 2 damaged fighters are adjacent this is an easy 2 glory. 4/5

Risky Position:

I mean this is just an easier All In, right? 5/5

Trial of the Tempered:

For 3 glory we would expect this to be hard to score, and to some extent it is. However since we know we can pretty much temper all of our fighters, all we have to do is make sure the other ones are a) dead or b) severely crippled. Since we’re playing Crash Aggro that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish. We do have to be careful about not dropping Dark Horse or Scream of Anger and be willing to focus (sometimes aggressively) for both. 4/5

Two-pronged Assault:

Hang on, isn’t this just All In and Risky Position again? Yes, yes it is, we get 3 end phase cards that can all be scored off meeting 1 criteria, if we can score this, we can score the other 2 automatically. 5/5

Usurper:

I have come around on this with the Elite-Edge build. I’m not a fan of having my kill order dictated by my cards, but for 2 glory and the ability to temper largely at will, we can make sure we temper the right fighter for the job. It does mean we may have to leave their leader alive until we draw this which can be a problem in some matches, looking at you Zondara and Crackmarrow. 3/5

Warband Pairings:

Ironsoul’s Condemnors: 

Scream of Anger works like a soft guard effect for Ironsoul as removing a charge token means that fighter cannot be driven back thanks to Bulwark in the Dark.

Aetherically charged shields is a great defensive play to keep a tempered fighter alive if someone comes swinging with grievous. The best thing about this ability is our opponent needs to play Twist the Knife before we decide to use it. Very powerful if timed correctly. 

Gorechosen of Dromm:

Enrage is another way we can try and force tempered onto a fighter. It’s not super reliable as our opponent can just charge a fighter that is already tempered, but it’s useful in a pinch.

Final Frenzy helps keep a tempered fighter on the board which is helpful for scoring the “tempered in enemy territory” objectives, post nerf they get removed at the end of the battle round, but that happens after scoring so you can still grab some glory before they fall over. 

Thricefold Discord:

These guys have the dubious privilege of having the least combined total starting health of any warband at a rather pitiful 13. Mathematically we can assume that each evasive sister will reduce damage at least once which puts them to an effective 5/5/5 which isn’t terrible but it is dice reliant. Great Fortitude becomes a more useful card for them but only helps 1 sister.

I would be concerned about trying to run this with TFD since missing the evasive reduction makes 2 of our tempered fighters very easy to kill. We also don’t really want to be moving or charging with Vexmor if we can help it so Spiteful Traps becomes less useful. 

Headsman’s Curse:

These guys definitely benefit from Great Fortitude and could also even leverage Running Riot since the Sharpener starts tempered. Having the raise ability to bring him back also makes scoring our tempered objectives easier. 

Cackling Court though is the real draw for playing these guys with Edge of the Knife since unlike Double Team it does not specifically require a friendly fighter which essentially means, “once per game, delete something with the Wielder” as there are no miss faces on his dice when using Mobbed! Which also means he has a 100% chance to raise a friend. 

This is probably the only 4 health warband I’d run this with.

Jaws of Itzl: 

These guys can definitely leverage this build. The Venomites give us a running start on tempered fighters and tempered synergises nicely with savage mauling.

Emberwatch:

We don’t really get anything from the warscroll to lean into this build and the Emberwatch likes to spread out around the board rather than just pile in over the border. I’m not sold that this is the best warband for the job but Mobbed! working with all their ranged attacks means they become very VERY good at pushing people off tokens. 

Farstriders:

Lots of warscroll toys that involve being in enemy territory including a guard for one of our tempered fighters, they don’t inspire to 2 shields though so it’s not the best guard in the world. The positional abilities are fantastic though.

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Wrap

Thanks once again to Dan for sharing his thoughts with us, and for an awesome result for Elite Edge in a tough goblin pillage meta. Hopefully some of you can benefit from his expertise and start bringing Edge of the Knife in more combinations and with more warbands so we can see a meta shift now that he’s given us this proof of concept. Feel free to try it out for yourself and let me know how it goes for you! You do not need to be as much of an expert as he is to give the community more inspiration and information.

While there are a few Love Letters in the works, there is always room for more. I’d love to hear your thoughts about an older or lesser or weird warband/pairing, what drove you to fall in love with it, and how you’ve piloted it to success – and especially piloting it to fun. If you have a warband you’d love to wax poetic about and serenade the wider community, let me know! I’m always accepting new submissions at SpentGlory@gmail.com. Until next time, grab the warband you love, a couple friends, and Spend some Glory!