Welcome to the second Spent Glory Product Review weekend! Thank you to Games Workshop for providing the page with an advance copy of this product for review and content creation. I hope to be able to provide something to the community that you all find valuable. Let me know what you think of my reviews and what you’d like to see change in the future!
So that you’re aware, this deck received a plot card rework in the rules updates in the February 2026 Errata. I’ll comment briefly on the changes later in the article.
Three and a half months later, we’re back with another round of product reviews and new releases for WHU. Today, let’s go Raiding for some Relamstone with our newest Rivals Deck – in a Mastery flavor with a Plot Card that’s pretty interesting!
Click here for a Master List of every Rivals Deck
Lore
Our lore snippet for this deck is good stuff. While the core box suggested many warbands come to Embergard for the purpose of grabbing a lot of Emberstone, we haven’t seen that super thematically – you could say Emberstone Sentinels and Pillage and Plunder have that angle but it’s not as front and center. Secondly, we know that supposedly Emberstone enflames your passions, avarice, anger, and can lead you to bad decisions – but again while we have seen it a bit in some of the other decks, it’s in the forefront here. Warbands come to steal some unattended Emberstone, and they do so at great risk. They want it bad, and they’ll make stupid decisions to get it – including not finishing off enemies while they chase after the stuff, loot chests without checking for danger, or even scurrying around to grab the rings off of Sonic the Hedgehog after he gets bopped. Once they have it, they make immediate use of it or get it taken from them in turn. People aren’t bringing this prize home.
The flavor text and quotes on cards in this deck really sell the point. A few of my favorites:
“Emberstone screams at you to use it. Most do” – Haskel Hexbane
“If you carry around a hoard like that, you’re asking for a dagger in the neck” – Farasa Twice-Risen
“What’s yours is ours, you wretched little blood-bags” – Vellas von Faine
“Master, I have it! I knew it was here. No to check around for hidden foes…” – Prentice Marcov
“The Emberstone calls us toward a violent destiny” – Zarshia Bitttersoul
What exactly does getting more Emberstone do? Well, it lets you get more cards/access those cards out of sequence apparently. The power of this realmstone is represented in a mechanic we will explore next. It is a cool and unique way to make things interesting beyond simple stat increases, which could easily have been the path the designers took.
Also, the cover image of the grimy hand reaching for a chunk of Emberstone is hardcore and adds to the overall effect in what is EASILY the best rivals deck logo/art of second edition so far.
Overview
Realmstone Raiders is a Mastery deck that is focused on making a Raid reaction, usually as a result of a successful melee attack. When you Raid, you reveal the top cards from your power deck and can potentially use them immediately or put them back into the deck depending on a couple circumstances. This means, in a nutshell, the deck will benefit players who take more of its “package” with the appropriate keywords, and it’s asking to be your Primary deck in a Nemesis pairing unless you are very selective about what you bring along. Warbands with accurate melee attacks will like this deck the best, and it will do best when fighting against smaller, more Elites warbands and/or Big Boys where your targets have higher bounty characteristics.
Before we get into the details of the deck itself, I want to give a word of warning to Nemesis Deckbuilders out there. Many of the objective cards are tied to the Raid reaction itself and specifically want you to Raid into an Emberstone card – there are only 12 of these in the deck, and they aren’t all that great. This also means drawing into an Emberstone Ploy or Emberstone Upgrade at the start of the round can actually be a bad thing – you reduce your chance to draw into one when Raiding, and can’t react off of it in a regular card draw scenario. Fortunately, you can put those cards back into the deck during the round thanks to the change to the plot card in the February 2026 Errata which I will cover below.
As a result, I am going to rate each card based on what kind of deck composition you’re going for. In Nemesis, you’ll have 32 cards to choose from, but you’re going to want a completely different handful depending on whether Realmstone Raiders is your “Primary” A deck, “Secondary” B deck, or you’re going for a more “Balanced” 50/50 approach. In Rivals, you have less to worry about, but you’ll probably enjoy the cards most if they’re rated well for Primary and Everybody.
- Primary: RR makes up a healthy portion of your Objective Deck. You are taking Objectives that score off of the Raid reaction and you are bringing many Emberstone cards (perhaps all of them) in your Power Deck to help with that.
- Balanced: You are taking a roughly even mix of your two decks. You’re either not afraid to Raid because bottom decking your other power cards isn’t harmful to you, or you aren’t Raiding because you want those cards, but needed this deck for the End Phase scoring and/or Ploys, which are this deck’s strongest components. I expect Balanced builds to be the least common (and probably least successful) use of this deck.
- Secondary: You are taking most of your cards from the other deck in your pairing, and RR is mostly supplementary. You are avoiding most Objectives that require the Raid reaction and are taking potentially fewer Emberstone cards in your Power deck. You might opt not to Raid after a successful attack so as not to bottom-deck cards unless you’re holding a Raiding-related Objective, since you don’t want to run out of Emberstone cards when they won’t score you something.
- Quick note of reassurance: it is absolutely OK to Raid if you’re playing Secondary. You’ll eventually bottom deck something you wanted to draw and feel bad, but statistically that card could have been anywhere, and so Raiding for the sake of Raiding to score cards (or fish for an Emberstone card you did take) is still viable. You’ll have the added benefit of knowledge about what cards are now at the bottom of your deck, so players with strong short-term memory might Raid a lot just to know when to expect what.
Cheating ahead
All 6 Surges from this deck refer to the Raid reaction (or an Emberstone reaction) and specifically mention Raiding Emberstone cards. If you are taking Surges from this deck, you’ll have a MUCH better time with the Primary approach.
5 End Phase Objectives mention Raiding, and 3 of them specifically want you to have Raided Emberstone cards (one of which can still potentially score without Raiding an Emberstone card). You can reasonably take 3-4 End Phase cards from this deck even if you’re playing the Secondary approach.
The other End phase cards mention Holding Treasure or having as much or more treasure delved than Raided, so a Flex approach can be beneficial when piloting this deck in either format.
There are 12 total power cards that have the Emberstone keyword – 6 Ploys and 6 Upgrades. Primary players will want to take most, if not all, of these and probably aim for a minimum deck size of 20 – though you have more opportunity to succeed with more power cards than other decks. The bigger your Power deck gets, however, the more you’ll be incentivized to take all 12 Emberstone cards to make sure you don’t over-dilute the odds to Raid one.
Plot
Here is the new Plot Card rework from the rules updates in the February 2026 Errata. There are some substantial changes here. I will cover these in red text.
Immediately after your first successful melee attack in an action step, you can Raid. You do this a number of times equal to the bounty characteristic of your target. Bigger targets = more Raiding! Small targets help you less, and Raised fighters don’t help you at all. You now have the ability to Raid 1 card OR a number equal to the bounty. This means zero bounty fighters and raised fighters no longer block you from raiding and makes the deck viable into more matchups. You’ll still prefer the larger bounty targets as you’ll get to raid more cards.
When you Raid, you reveal the top card of your deck (effectively the top 3 if you’re attacking a 3-bounty fighter, but one at a time). If it’s an Emberstone card, you can put it on the top of your deck or put it on the bottom of your deck. You could also play the Emberstone Ploys immediately as a reaction or apply an Emberstone Upgrade immediately as an action (assuming you have the Glory to spend). This effect is going to help you play more power cards per round than your opponent, all while potentially scoring glory for the privilege.
If the card you draw during a Raid is not an Emberstone card, you put it back at the bottom of your Power deck. This means you might be sad when you grab Great Strength and have to put it on layaway, but it also means your next Raid is more likely to find an Emberstone card (if there are any left in the deck). You still count as having Raided for Objectives that don’t care what type of card you Raided, and if you have a good working memory you can remember what cards are left and in what order as you approach round 3 – since a Raiding player is likely to see their whole power deck, you know that Great Strength is coming back eventually. That’s a benefit that other decks won’t give you – that primo card getting bottom-decked means you’ll still see it when other players wouldn’t.
Something that might be really crafty – since you can put an Emberstone card you Raided back at the top of your deck, you can manipulate what cards you Raid next time. Let’s imagine a situation where you have an Emberstone card at the top of your deck, and you hit an attack against a fighter. You could, if you wanted, Raid that top card, and put it back on the top of the deck. Then in a subsequent successful attack Raid that SAME CARD. This lets you ‘Raid an Emberstone card‘ much more easily. You could put it back on top of the deck again so that you know your next successful attack will also let you Raid an Emberstone card, increasing the reliability of the Emberstone card specific Raiding Objectives. Didn’t get the crit you needed, or your target wasn’t holding Treasure? Put the card back and try again. We will see later that many Objectives in the deck require you Raid different cards, so you can’t cheat out a ‘difficult’ score by re-Raiding the same card a few times. However, having a guarantee of what card you’re about to Raid does help with several Surges, so this means you might be able to take fewer Emberstone cards than you might originally think!
Additionally, there’s no reason you HAVE to play the card, so you could end up in a situation where you have four or so Emberstone cards you continually bottom-deck and can continue raiding infinitely at the end of the game. Doing otherwise risks running out of cards, so beware!
The final change that is a huge saving grace for this plot card is that you can now take the ‘store’ reaction. After you hit an attack, you can opt to take an Emberstone card from your hand and put it at the bottom of your deck INSTEAD of raiding a card. This does a number of useful things: the first is that it makes it less punishing to have drawn an Emberstone card. You still have to forego a raid to store it back in the deck, but this no longer cripples your ability to score. Second, if you should so happen to run out of Emberstone cards in your deck, you can make sure to put them back to allow you to keep raiding even toward the end of the game. If your deck has no cards left, you can just put an Emberstone down and know that it’s next to get raided, even. Reacting with ‘recover an Emberstone card from your graveyard’ or ‘draw after an attack’ doesn’t hurt so much either anymore.
You’ll want to be selective about storing, since you forego a raid to do it and it doesn’t count as a raid, but in the right circumstances this can make the deck so much smoother to play and score more consistently.
Surge Objectives
A Sure Bet
You need to hit a 3+ dice melee attack AND raid an Emberstone card. Depending on your warband, you might not have many 3 dice attacks, you can’t guarantee they’ll hit, and you can’t guarantee you’ll Raid an Emberstone card, especially if you’re playing into a horde of 1 bounty fighters. Sometimes this will be easy money, but it might be very frustrating. You also must use a melee attack, so even using the Ploy ‘Ambush’ won’t help you.
Who likes this? Nobody, but maybe Primary depending on your warband
Critical Risk
Raid an Emberstone card after you rolled a crit. Also dicey, but scorable by more attacks than A Sure Bet so hopefully would brick less often, at least depending on your warband. Weirdly, this card specifies the attack needs to be successful, but Raiding already always requires a successful attack. (also regarding Retaria’s quote; Go Off, Queen)
Who likes this? Primary, maybe Balanced
Looted Realmstone
Raid 2 or more different Emberstone cards, and requiring a melee attack. This is tough because you need juicy targets with 2+ bounty and/or the Raider’s Rapture domain persisting. AND you need to find two Emberstone cards during that same raid. This could be statistically challenging.
Who likes this? Maybe Primary
Pillage
The exact problem with the previous card, except way harder because it also has a positional requirement for your target, yet does not provide any additional Glory. Never take this card before taking Looted Realmstone, if you take it at all.
Who likes this? Nobody, but maybe Primary
Ragerock Strike
Now we’re talking. At some point, Raid an Emberstone card that you can make use of in that moment. This should happen for you at some point in the game, and potentially quite early.
Who likes this? Everybody, especially Primary
Reckless Gambit
Raid a second or subsequent Emberstone card (as long as you didn’t raid the same one twice). At first glance this is a solid Surge – you should eventually get a second Emberstone Raid and it doesn’t have to be the same attack like our previous two entries. You can even score it with Angered Focus. I’d caution you though – if you’re doing the crafty move of top-decking your Raided Emberstone cards so you can double-dip, you will not be able to score Reckless Gambit as you need each Emberstone card to be different (at least until you score Reckless Gambit).
Who likes this? Primary and maybe Balanced
End Phase Objectives
Certain Aggression
Raid two or more times in a round and have no enemies in your territory. Part 1 is pretty easy – hit two attacks and choose to Raid, or a single attack against a 2+ bounty fighter. It also doesn’t care about what cards you get! This condition is going to happen almost every round unless you’re playing Secondary and trying to avoid Raiding. The second part is Denial, which has easy counterplay but for 2 Glory you still can consider taking this.
Who likes this? Primary and Balanced, maybe Secondary
Emberstone Stash
Raid 4 or more different Emberstone cards this battle round. For one glory. A pretty rough ask to be honest – you can’t benefit from the double-dip, and you need to get 4 in the same round. That means at least 4 Raids which could be a big ask, but since you can take a maximum of 12 Emberstone cards you’re statistically going to need to Raid closer to 8 times to make sure you achieve this. Leave it at home, especially in Horde metas.
Who likes this? Nobody
Hoarder’s Hovel
Hold a Treasure token with a number equal to your bounty characteristic. A cool card, and I really like this design space! A callback to a reasonable option from Paths of Prophecy in first edition, made quite juicy by being two glory. Holding specific treasure with specific fighters might not always be the easiest to do, but this is worth the attempt. AND it doesn’t mention Raiding, so every player can get in on the fun no matter your deckbuild.
Who likes this? Everybody
Invade
Did you raid any Emberstone cards after hitting somebody holding treasure? Depending on your opponent and your deckbuild, this is no problem. If they’re playing P&P and will be in cover instead, with low-bounty fighters, or playing hard Strike with no care for Treasure, you’ll be in trouble. It might also incentivize you not to drive somebody off a token so you can try again, which is probably a bad move.
Who likes this? Maybe Primary and Balanced
Realmstone Raid
Raid three or more times after different fighters attacked. Good news – you don’t need to raid Emberstone cards, so whatever you get helps you score it. Bad news – you’ll need to hit at least three attacks this round, and do so with three different fighters. Will you still have three fighters alive? Will they hit their attacks? It is two glory though. It’s also the namesake of the deck, so like, you gotta take it. In one of my test games it gave me huge issues with only 3 fighters left alive, so stocks are highest in 5+ fighter warbands where you’ll be able to score it later in the game.
Who likes this? Primary and Balanced, maybe Secondary
Roused Violence
The number of Treasure Tokens is equal to or less than the number of Emberstone cards you raided this round. While somewhat difficult to assess in a vacuum, I love the idea of the card. You might need to Raid 5 Emberstone cards, which is a big ask – though you get 2 glory which is substantially better than the 1 for 4 Emberstone Stash gave us. If you Delve even once, now it’s 2 for 4, which is strictly better. If you’re paired with Pillage and Plunder, or your opponent is running Pillage and Plunder, get ready for some incredibly easy 2 glory end phase action.
It might need an FAQ, but I am reading this as still needing different cards Raided. The condition is ‘the number of Emberstone cards‘ and not the number of times an Emberstone card was raided, so you probably can’t use the double-dip to help out here. Worth a clarification though, and if it does allow for double-dips this becomes a super powerful card.
Who likes this? Primary and Balanced, maybe Secondary
Quick assessment – you have four 2-glory end phase cards here. Two or three of them are reasonably reliable scores, with all 4 being doable. However janky the Raiding mechanic of the deck might feel to you, this is a good Glory spread for competitive players.
Ploys
Ambush
A chance to Raid on a ranged attack probably doesn’t hurt (except in the case of A Sure Bet). I’m not entirely sure it’s worth a Ploy slot to have just one bite at the apple here, and you might not even need it depending on your gameplan/board state/warband.
Who likes this? Nobody, but maybe Primary
Angered Focus
Some ‘free’ Raiding can be nice but note the ‘this wasn’t an attack’ caveat. Additionally, you need to have no move or charge tokens, so unless you burn some push tech just for this, you’ll want to have it to open round 2 or 3 (or Raid into it quite early). Also doesn’t play nice with the Pillage and Plunder combo since you can’t be staggered either. That said, if you somehow have your leader holding a treasure with no status tokens, you might be able to get a quick triple Raid out early which could snowball you. It can only help score 2 Surges and 3 End Phases without the attack bit, so stocks are a little down. It is an Emberstone Ploy though, and you might want those…
Who likes this? Nobody, but maybe Primary or Balanced
A Step Ahead
Our Second Emberstone Ploy, which is a positionally restricted Sidestep. Everybody loves Sidestep, even if it has conditions. We also love that it can score us some cards just for being in the deck, and can be played as a surprise bonus card if you Raid into it. It also helps set up subsequent attacks and subsequent raids.
Who likes this? Everybody
Fortune Faded
A double-bladed ping isn’t everybody’s favorite effect. It also requires adjacency. You can’t even score RR cards off of it or steal a kill. That said, it is still a ping, is solid in a Wrack & Ruin pairing, and if you play a warband like Dread Pageant or Grandfather’s Gardners you maybe even want this self-damage.
Who likes this? Maybe Everybody, but probably Nobody
Hidden Knowledge
An Emberstone card! The potential to dish out a backbreaking move token! Sure you need to be adjacent, so the tagged enemy can at least still attack that adjacent fighter, but you stopped a charge. And you added an Emberstone card to your deck.
Who likes this? Everybody
Intoxicated With Rage
(This flavor text may become my Roman Empire.) Putting a fighter on guard is OK for a ploy, but they need to be tokenless which might not be easy. I probably would leave this at home unless you’re looking for more Emberstone cards or specifically can benefit from Guard tokens as a part of your gameplan
Who likes this? Primary, maybe Balanced
Manipulated Fate
Let me tell you, as a Skinnerkin player I have come to ADORE this ability when using Calloused Hands. You’re going to adore it now too. You guarantee you are not driven back. You can guarantee they don’t get an overrun (unless you’re slain anyway). You can take a kill shot and drop the damage to leave you vulnerable instead. You can keep your important fighter out of kill range for another attack. You can do this all as a surprise after it’s too late for them to switch lanes.
Who likes this? Everybody – yes, that means you.
Misstep
Give one enemy a stagger token. A relatively weak effect for a ploy, granted, but in this deck it’s not so bad! Firstly, this is an Emberstone card, which you want to take for that reason alone. Secondly, staggering a fighter increases the odds you hit, which increases the odds you Raid, which increases the odds you score. Play this early against their highest-bounty target.
Who likes this? Primary, Balanced
Raider’s Rapture
A Domain card, increasing how many cards you Raid for the round. Effectively a must-take for Primary players, you’ll still find use for it in other builds unless you’re so extremely Secondary you don’t want to Raid at all (and see above for why you’ll probably enjoy Raiding regardless of composition). Even then, it can cancel enemy Domains, which while niche can be game winning.
Who likes this? Everybody, especially Primary
Raider’s Premonition
An incredible card. Take an Objective you want later or can’t score now and save it for the end game. A better mini-focus since the card isn’t discarded, only takes a ploy instead of an activation, and you get an Emberstone card in the bargain. Even better is that the card goes to the bottom of the deck rather than shuffled back in, so you know where it is and can plan for it. Ever had Annihilation in hand during round 1? Sayonara. Have a 2 or 3 glory card you’ll miss out on this round but want to take another crack at without reducing your scoring efficiency? This is an auto-include unless your deck is so perfectly fluid that you never need the effect – and if that’s true in a Raiders pairing it’s because you took every Emberstone card, including this one. I have a premonition: you’re gonna sleeve it.
Who likes this? Everybody
Upgrades
Armour Piercer
A chance to do a ping damage on a drawn attack if you’re swinging a relatively big hit into a relatively soft target. I’m not a big fan, tbh – drawn attacks aren’t common enough to rely on, and 2 glory is a lot. Depending on the warbands/fighters on the table you might not even have this as a valid option – you want a 3-damage attack and/or a 1-defense target, and you might not have either. I’m leaving this at home unless I’m going hard into the Emberstone Raid strategy.
Who Likes This? Maybe Primary
Brightstone Vigour
Potentially a heal after a successful attack, which is almost always a good thing. There are similar conditions as before, but more reliable. Still not a marvelous card for 2 glory, but it is an Emberstone Upgrade for my Raiders out there.
Who Likes This? Maybe Primary and Balanced
Call to Power
Immediately after a successful attack, draw a power card and discard this. We like card draw! It’s one of the reasons this deck is fun. However, this is DRAW, and not RAID – this means it won’t score you as many cards, and might be a big bummer if the card you do draw happens to be an Emberstone one because now that ship has sailed for future Raids (unless you use the store ability to put it back later). This card is itself an Emberstone card, so still probably worth taking for Primary players, and pretty nice for everybody else who cares less about the Raid.
Who Likes This? Everybody
Emberstone Edge
A moderately accurate weapon Upgrade that gets decent if you’ve Raided (and you will have), but still only hitting for 1 damage. I am reading the ‘you’ as the player, rather than the fighter with the upgrade, so it’s a pretty easy condition. Since the deck cares less about kills and more about successful attacks for Raiding, this card is much better than it looks on paper. It’s also an Emberstone card itself which Primary RR players will also like – dependent on their warband’s base attack stats.
Who Likes This? Primary, maybe Balanced
Forgotten Fortune
After you successfully attack, recall an Emberstone Ploy from your graveyard. Is this Magic; the Gathering? Malevolent Masks from first edition? A couple of our Emberstone Ploys are pretty strong (A Step Ahead, Hidden Knowledge, and Raider’s Premonition in particular), and in other games this effect can be quite potent. If you have taken enough Emberstone Ploy support, this card is going to reward you. And it’s an Emberstone card itself!
Who Likes This? Primary, maybe Balanced
Great Fortitude
A classic, a staple, but not an Emberstone card and might get bottom decked. You’re still probably taking it though.
Who Likes This? Everybody
Great Speed
Less ubiquitous that the other ‘Greats’, it’s kind of warband specific, and if you Raid it to the bottom of the deck, you’ll never draw it in time to be relevant.
Who Likes This? Maybe Everybody – best for Secondary and worst for Primary
Great Strength
A classic, a staple, but not an Emberstone card and might get bottom decked. You’re still probably taking it though.
Who Likes This? Everybody
Keen Eye
A classic, a staple, but not an Emberstone card and might get bottom decked. You’re still probably taking it though. This is the best of the four ‘normal’ Upgrades in this deck if you’re playing Primary, because it helps you hit melee attacks and Raid more often.
Who Likes This? Everybody
Reforged Aid
The same effect we saw in Forgotten Fortune, but for the Upgrade variety. Four of our other Emberstone Upgrades break after use, so there’s a chance you can dig it back out, but really only one of the ‘break’ ones (Forgotten Fortune itself) is actually a good card. And playing this to dig that out to then dig out another Ploy is a lot of successful attacks to bank on. You’re still thinking about taking it as a Primary RR player, but it’s rarely going to be your favorite thing to draw.
Who Likes This? Primary
Flavor Count
Primary: 3 Surges (3 maybes), 4 End Phases (1 maybe), 7 Ploys (3 maybe), and 7 Upgrades (3 maybes) are good for this playstyle, or between 21-31 out of 32 cards in the deck.
Balanced: 1 Surge (2 maybes), 4 End Phases (1 maybe), 6 Ploys (3 maybes), and 4 Upgrades (4 maybe) are good for this playstyle, or between 15-25 out of 32 cards in the deck.
Secondary: 1 Surge, 1 End Phase (3 maybe), 4 Ploys (1 maybe), and 3 Upgrades (1 maybe) are good for this playstyle, or between 9-14 out of 32 cards in the deck.
The good news is though there aren’t a ton of quality cards for the Secondary players, they also don’t need as many since they’re using this as their secondary deck.
You can also read this as: 9-14 of the cards are so good you don’t even care about Raiding or the Emberstone Keyword to pull them off, and should be decent choices for most Nemesis pairings. Compared to Edge of the Knife, this deck appears to have more universal applicability even if you don’t lean all the way into the Keyword/theme. This is a good thing!
In Practice
I only played the deck once in the Rivals Format paired with Knives of the Crone, and once in Nemesis with Blazing Assault and Crimson Court. While in Rivals my card draw was pretty good and my dice were a little kinder than average, it felt like a pretty fun deck to play and the Objectives were relatively easy to score. I won the Rivals game 20-16 against Emberstone Sentinels Emberwatch, which was a pretty good matchup for the deck. The power cards didn’t contribute a tremendous amount, especially the Emberstone Upgrades (which as expected are more situational and weaker), but they still helped score glory while being raided. I ran out of power cards in my draw pile going into the third round. I was also benefitted from the fact that I was fighting into Elite targets – with 2-3 glory per fighter and thus 2-3 Raids per successful attack, it was a bit easier than things might be against Hordes. This is offset by Elites‘ generally better defense, however.
The Nemesis game didn’t go as well – in one part because Crimson Court have their own (significant) problems, and another because I probably didn’t walk the balance between Blazing assault and RR the right way – it felt more like a Balanced than a Primary pairing; but with how good BA is I had some trouble making cuts. I ran out of Emberstone cards before I ran through the objectives. What I should have probably done is bottom-decked more of the Emberstone cards so I could continue to score cards.
There was one major question I came across from the test games – I’ve sent them along to the FaQ team but wanted to let you in on my thoughts here as well. The first was “Can you Raid if there are no cards left to Raid in the power card deck”. Especially in Rivals, but also in Nemesis with a Primary strategy, there’s a chance you don’t have any cards left before the game ends. If you hit an attack and elect to Raid, but there are no cards left to reveal, did you Raid? Obviously you can’t do a Raid reaction, you can’t Raid an Emberstone card, and so forth. That said, you made the Raid reaction to a successful melee attack. For Objectives that care about how many times you Raided (and not what kinds of cards/how many cards you Raided), can you still score them without revelaing anything? I played it as yes, but I can see it being played as no.
It again was only two test games, but the lessons learned from them were:
– My crafty re-raiding double dip wasn’t really necessary or helpful (bummer)
– You should mulligan your opening hand if you have more than your average number of Emberstone cards – you need to be Raiding them, not holding them.
– Basically never discard anything so you aren’t forced to draw cards in between rounds unless you’re playing Secondary.
– The Objectives, at least in Rivals, are pretty doable and while I had the opportunity to bottom-deck them with Knives of the Crone I rarely felt interested in doing so.
– Hidden Knowledge and Manipulated Fate are in fact both certified stunners and can really control your opponent
– Emberstone Edge was better than I gave it credit for, at least for some warbands.
– You really should try to avoid playing it Balanced
Wrap
The Pros:
- If playing Primary RR, you can get through your deck very quickly and potentially overwhelm your opponent with Power cards in the early going
- Savvy players who choose to bottom-deck Emberstone cards can rely on certain things being available to them in Round 3, which while requiring a lot of skill and practice can have huge payout.
- The crafty double-dip option for top-decking Emberstone cards during a Raid increases the consistency of the deck scoring above what one might expect
- RR, if played Primary, can take a larger power deck than the typical 10/10 and still see some success since you have access to card draw in a unique way
- The deck has four solid staple universal Upgrades that can benefit nearly any pairing
The Cons:
- Issue with current meta favoring hordes – this deck will be harder to succeed with since your attacks will only let you Raid once in most of those scenarios
- Issue with posessing a Plot Card meaning you’re not able to take CtC – which until it’s Errata’d in a Rules Update is hard to pass up in a competitive setting.
- Issue with Raiding in Nemesis is that if you choose to Raid, you MUST place the non-emberstone cards at the bottom of your power deck. While pairing with Blazing Assault seems great, you’ll be less likely to get access to their phenomenal ploys and upgrades if you’re choosing to Raid for your RR objectives.
- As discussed at the top, since many of the objective cards are tied to the Raid reaction itself, drawing into an Emberstone Ploy or Emberstone Upgrade at the start of the round can actually be a bad thing – you reduce your chance to draw into one when Raiding, and can’t react off of it in a regular card draw scenario.
- There is a risk for Primary Realmstone Raiders players to run out of power cards in the third round, making it potentially hard to finish out the game or score things late-game without access to the Reaction. You may feel obligated to bottom-deck an Emberstone card just to make sure it’s around for round 3 depending on what Objectives you have taken/scored, and getting that right is going to take a lot of practice.
- You might actually want to bottom-deck Forgotten Fortune or Reforged Aid, since by then you’ll be more likely to have things in your discard pile you want to pull back out.
Suggested Warbands
While this is surely not a comprehensive list, a few things off the top of my head that jumped out as candidates for Raiding some Realmstone are described in short detail below. I can’t wait to find out what the rest of the community tests out, and I’m betting we will be surprised by something in the next handful of tournaments!
Knives of the Crone – relatively accurate melee attacks on 3 fighters and are already incentivized to make those attacks for their prophecy mechanic. Additionally, the chance to get the Foretold Wisdom option to manipulate the order of your Objectives can help a lot with the reliability/sequencing of some of the scoring in this deck.
Crimson Court – this warband has two nice features for Raiding. They have great accuracy and can pretty comfortably do two damage – hitting the targets you need to raid while leaving them alive for another hit, as well as getting warscroll access to cleave and ensnare. Secondly, their inspiration mechanic requires you to discard power cards, and as a result they might love a deck that gives them more card draw – though note that the Raided cards DON’T go into your hand – meaning this pairing is NOT as good as I first thought. I did try the deck in Nemesis with BA/RR and struggled a bit, but on reflection need to either pick to go even more fully into RR or back off and take more BA. I’m also not very good with Crimson Court (and they’re not great either) so take that with all the salt you will.
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz – The warband universally benefits from Da Trophy, has a range 2 cleave attack on Uglug to start, can cluster the minions to get flanking, and is relatively accurate even without those. You’ll hit in melee all day long, and Raid while you’re at it.
Hexbane’s Hunters – they have decent accuracy if you consider the dogs helping out, and have an easier time using the Emberstone Upgrade reaction since they can have ‘extra’ Upgrade glory available. Beware you’ll need to lean on melee attacks though! That, and the warband is kind bad right now so this may not be enough to make hem competitive.
Mollog’s Mob – he loves to bonk, and since they STILL haven’t errata’d the vicious critters rule you’ll be making tons of surrounded attacks with loads of accuracy as a result.
Da Kunnin Krew – accurate melee is their goal with supported attacks, and you’ll once per game have a shot at setting a dice result, guaranteeing a hit and a Raid.
Cyreni’s Razors – this warband is also quite accurate, every attack is a melee attack, and you’ll enjoy the Stagger from Hammertide to help hit and Raid. You’ll unfortunately sometimes want not to Hammertide since it’s not an attack and therefore cant Raid, and that can be a rough spot to be in.
Thorns of the Briar Queen – by making skilled use of positioning and their Wave of Terror through manipulatable charge tokens, you can hit with Surrounded and Raid with decent frequency. They have a few other accuracy tools plus a range 2 on the leader.
Gorechosen of Dromm – These guys love to hit in Melee. They seem to be a particularly choice pairing with Reckless Fury, and you’ll multiple range 2 fighters, and SUPER accurate gorehulk choke, and even the Fortune Faded double-ping helps you get blood tithe.
Ironsoul’s Condemnors – melee all day, with a side serving of flex/anti-push to help them hold stuff for some of the 2-glory end phases. They’ll also appreciate being able to extend their range or add dice to ensure more hits per round, more Raids, and more fun.
Morgok’s Krushas – Same story as Dromm and Ironsoul. Thicc boys who want to smash, one of which can even do so at range 2. Another Reckless Fury overlap scenario.
Jaws of Itzl – like others, this warband is melee all day, with the added benefits of a flanking fighter in the venomites and immediate access to a 3 dice attack in So-Kar (with all of them going to 4 dice inspired) to score A Sure Bet, as well as the ability to Obstinate onto a token you want to hold for Hoarder’s Hovel.
AVOID:
I am actually going to suggest you shy AWAY from warbands with built-in Power card draw if you’re taking the Primary approach. While Zondara, Khagra, and Ylthari have considerable ability to draw cards through their warscrolls, you will not be doing so as a part of the Raid reaction and any Emberstone cards you pick up in this way will not help you score as reliably. Other warbands with less prominent card draw (Headsmen’s, Ephilim, and others) will suffer less, but it’s still going to feel bad when you draw into an Emberstone card you wish you could have Raided.
I’m also going to suggest you avoid Daggok’s Stab-Ladz – it’s niche, but like the Crimson Court, they have some incentive to throw ploys away and so the deck looks tempting. That said, the warband will suffer in the fact that they prefer to make move actions to set up Krule stab, and as a result do a good chunk of their damage outside of attack actions. This limits their ability to Raid, and you don’t want to be playing tug-of-war between inspiration and objective scoring.
Suggested Deck Pairings
An obvious choice is Blazing Assault and is the deck I started with personally. RR wants you to hit in melee, and BA is the deck that helps you do that, and has great Surges to replace the relatively lackluster set this deck has. Beware though – You’re going to have to make a hard choice between the premium power cards in BA and the Emberstone cards in RR, since you won’t be able to load up on both. I’ll admit deckbuilding for this one was really painful – lean towards the BA cards that help you hit, since accuracy beats damage with RR. This pairing may set the BA/RR
You could consider Reckless Fury, and it’s what I’m experimenting with next since you won’t feel the need to take as many power cards from that deck and should have plenty of space for Emberstone cards. You’ll often be charging to Raid anyway, and the deck has enough reasonable Objectives to make something useful here. If you’re leaning Elites, this might be the pairing to take. Smoke ’em with the RF/RR
I personally am quite intrigued by Wrack and Ruin here as well, since it would be difficult for somebody to counterplay both pieces, and it gives you access to some fun cards. Both decks want you dealing damage rather than stacking kills, and the positional game can be potent with the right warband. You may struggle when you bottom-deck the WnR cards though, and your Surge package is less than ideal. Glory printer go WR/RR
There’s a case for Pillage & Plunder even if you’re playing the Secondary strategy; two of the two-glory end phases in RR play nicely with the delve/hold strategy. The power cards in PP aren’t phenomenal and also don’t particularly help with the Raiding plan, but that also means bottom-decking them doesn’t hurt as much. This could be one spicy PP/RR
They’ve reversed the ‘plot lock’ and you now CAN pair it with either Countdown to Cataclysm or Edge of the Knife, both of which could be great fun.
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With all that said, thanks for reading Spent Glory’s second Deck Preview, and thanks to Games Workshop for providing me with an advance copy to talk about. What do you think of the deck, and who do you plan to test it with first? What other Rivals Decks might you try it with in Nemesis? Let me know by commenting wherever you found this or by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com – and don’t forget to Spend your Glory!
Thanks again to Games Workshop for providing me with this product so that I can produce this review content.
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