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Stormin' the Field
by Nagatsu
01.23.2006
This deck archetype is by far at this time one of the more
popular of the archetypes since it is mostly Nexan reality based. This deck has
more victories in tournament play than any other archetype (tied with Flyer and Demons ). I personally have a swarm that many of you
know on the forum as Anryoku Aiki Mure.
Strengths:
By far the only strategy that can field
more troops than any other reality or deck type. The main strength of
this deck is numbers and using them to trample over their opponents. Also even
if they have Guards on the board the parting shot usually is what kills them. I
think the best way to explain swarm is an ant colony. The
send out an immense army that can take down things much larger than themselves.
Weaknesses:
This reality heavily relies on its Flesh Pool to be able to
field their troops. Most of the time a Mage will waste Flesh on troops instead
of support cards for their decks. Also they tend to go overboard on the Barracks
draws instead of pulling from other decks (Spellbook and Armory
). Also this deck type costs some money to construct!!
Building a Swarm Deck:
The basis of building a swarm deck that you need troops that
can by themselves be an "instant army" usually the best approach to
this strategy is to use Nexans. Already they are pretty easy to create but have
Merge which can help in early game to handle threats to your growing swarm.
Basic cards that are good for swarm are Nexan Drone, Nokenaf, Crocotta, and
Nexan Shocker. Drones and Shockers are good early on since they can Merge
during Maintenance and keep abilities. Shocker is great simply because it can
disable early Device and Shield deployments.
Nokenaf is a great swarm card simply because it costs only 1
Flesh and doesn't eat a lot of your Flesh when you start making you swarm. It’s
not very powerful but it will stop an early game guard from attacking your mage
leaving stronger cards for your opponents creatures.
Crocotta is really good, being a solid stat Basic and
costing only 18 Flesh.It lets you have
a solid early game attacker and a Device destroyer also. It is a bit expensive
but I still would suggest it.
As for your advance group of fighters I would suggest either
Zyx Mothership or any other Zyx for aerial support and Zyx’s Dock for swarm
purposes. Ice Fiends and Demon Familiar are also pretty good for crowd control
and taking away key cards from your opponents control when you are trying to
prepare your field for swarm. Nexan Fighter and Instructor are pretty good as
well since you can give your Nexans flying. Also Drones will get Stealth too.
As for your Über combatants I would suggest Cerberus and
Nexan Creator.They are great choices
since Cerberus can stop flyer attacks. Nexan Creator is your trump card in this
strategy. I would suggest not playing till you have at least 200 or so Flesh in
your Pool so you can play 10 or so Drones on the board. Also don't Merge the Creator with anyone and I also suggest putting it
into a Shield to protect it from Mark of the Beast and other cards.
Armory cards you use in swarm tend to be shields, damage
absorption, and Biotech Lungs. These are just to protect you swarm till it can
overrun your opponent.
Great cards for Spellbook are Hurried War (must have 1 or
2), Vampiric Desire (mainly for Merges), Alleviate
(for Creator and other key cards), and No Creature Left Behind Act for Flesh
regeneration. Also Meditation is a great choice to cut your ability cost in
half (Creator) to basically two for the price of one!
That is pretty much swarm in a
nutshell. But I suggest you find what cards you are comfortable with. Also I
suggest trades for Nexans since they are kind of hard to pull in packs (just my
opinion). This deck is able to crush
almost any deck in the first five or so turns if you got a good hand but don't
rely on Merges since it goes against swarm.
Nagatsu's deck building articles:
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