War Journals – That’s a Lot of Tokens

Rotation 2 – Sept 29th to Oct 13th

Two more weeks have passed and my experiences with three new warlords has been interesting, to say the least. This rotation I played Old Zogwort for the first time, revisited Commander Shadowsun, and started playing “The Swarmlord” – a deck I will continue playing into the next rotation. I played Zogwort eight times, Shadowsun five times and Swarmlord four times for a total of 17 games. Eight of those games were against “Old One Eye”, who seems to be quite popular in my local meta at the moment.

Old Zogwort

Zogwort is a warlord I have always been generally down on. Not long ago, while listening to The Hive Tyrant‘s “State of the Meta” review with Sam Mann, they revealed Old Zogwort has an adjusted win rate that ranks him fifth among the warlords that had been released through the end of the Warlord cycle. This came as a surprise to me so I decide that there was something I was missing and that I needed to look deeper into it. After playing a few games with him, I believe the statistics. While he still is not quite tier 1 – whatever that actually means – he is most much more solid than I had originally given credit for.

One of the main strengths of the Ork faction is the powerful but still cost effective combat presence of their units. When paired with Astra Militarum you are able to build a very strong command presence and have every unit be combat ready. Borrowing Staging Ground, Catachan Outpost, and Suppressive Fire allows you to have a solid base of combat tricks, particularly when paired with the cards already available in faction.

Zogwort’s ability to fight long protracted battles and continually produce more Snotlings tokens means that he is a formidable bully if you are able to keep him in the fight. To help protect Zogwort I included a couple copies of each of the double shield cards available. I found that Dakka Dakka Dakka! was used almost exclusively as a shield card and never as an effect. Because of the large number of units in the deck, especially lower health ones, and the importance Zogwort himself often plays in the command struggle the card doesn’t feel like it fits.

I found that the deck was able to play both rush and long game strategies proficiently depending on the planet flop. I also realized that to take advantage of the full power of Launch Da Snots, you can trigger Zogwort’s Reaction to create an additional Snotling before triggering the reaction on the event. This allows clever warlords squeeze that extra bit of punch out of the attack.

I think I will be revisiting Zogwort in the future. When I do I will be swapping out the copies of Dakka, Dakka, Dakka! for one copy of Squiggify and Battle Cry each. Or potentially newer double shield cards that may be released for Orks in Planetfall. I would also like to find some space for a couple copies of Promotion, though I’m not sure what I would take out.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Zogwort and would definitely encourage others to try him.

Commander Shadowsun

Commander Shadowsun is a warlord I’ve played a lot in the past and who has grown a reasonable amount over the first cycle of the game. In particular, both cards Tau received in The Great Devourer were very big additions to her arsenal. Unfortunately, I don’t know if either Pathfinder Shi Or’es or Repair Bay actually have given Shadowsun the boost she needs to become a more consistent threat.

Looking forward I think an avenue of potential exploration is pairing her more heavily with army units from the Space Marine faction. Tactical Squad Cardinis, with an attached copy of Gun Drones can prove to be a formidable threat. And Repulsor Impact Field can be a particular pain when attached to either Blood Angels Veterans or Firedrake Terminators. This also opens up the possibility of using cards like Crushing Blow to add even more hitting power to your deck. I had already begun thinking more in this direction during this rotation and the inclusion of Cardinis started to pay dividends almost immediately.

Ultimately I didn’t get as many games in with Shadowsun as I would have liked and currently I’m torn between continuing to experiment and just giving up on her all together. Currently I think I will put her aside and see if she gets any help in the new couple War Packs. Hopefully I’ll feel inspired to revisit her down the road.

Swarmlord

Finally, I started playing with “The Swarmlord”. I did not get many games under my belt, so I’ll keep this brief.

I began by experimenting with how the Venomthrope Polluter worked as the synapse creature for the Swarmlord but I found, at least to start, that was a very confusing and seeminged inefficient. Because of this I decided to switch to the Stalking Lictor. When paired with Brood Warriors and Toxic Venomthrope, the deck felt like it had a very threatening early command game.

So far I’ve found I’ve enjoyed the deck quite a bit and I will continue to play and tweak it for at least a few more weeks.

 

I’m quite happy with the number of games I was able to log over the two weeks of this rotation. A lot of the players in my meta are currently quite enthusiastic about Old One Eye, particularly paired with the Savage Warrior Prime, so almost half of the games I played ended up being against it. Moving on to my next rotation I will be building Baharroth and Torquemada Coteaz, and continuing with “The Swarmlord”, so look out for some final thoughts about those decks in a few weeks.

Until Next time! Thanks for reading.