I think hardest part for me is upgrading this deck just because all 100 cards are warhammer art and vibe. Feels almost weird to put in regular mtg cards. Not sure if anyone else feels the same way, I love this deck and all the precons for warhammer, but i think this might be my first precon I just leave alone and keep as a very casual deck when needed
I personally slammed Be'lakor as my commander in a Demon Tribal deck, and I found as a non-40k player the demons honestly blend into the aesthetic of regular mtg demons pretty well! And when you build Be'lakor, he can be a total HOUSE with any Flicker subtheme. And even then, Abaddon is so cool that I'm half tempted to rip apart my rakdos Lord of Riots deck and splice the two! Love this deck!
Plus we got Raphael for Demon beatdown. That Lord effect is one more damage off Be'lakor and lifelink is purty good if you use Citadel to cast more demons off the top.
Same here - time to instead finally build Rakdos, Lord of Riots in a strictly “mechanically optimal” way (lots of colourless creature spells etc.). And put all of that Demon goodness into Be’lakor.
First thing I upgraded was adding more ramp to this deck. The curve is really top-heavy and adding the guild signets, Fellwar Stone, and Nightscape Familiar really helped for smoothing things out.
You don't wanna cascade into 4 signets in a row tho, as someone who cascaded into sol ring, talisman, talisman, wayfarers bauble in the late game 4 turns in a row. Agree ramp should be attached to value in cascade decks.
@@3N3MYKN1GHT at the same time though, you still wanna ramp as fast as possible early game, otherwise you can't cast anything at all. there's definitely a balance to be had; probably pick only the best small rocks and limit that to a certain number.
Ashlen, you can use the excuse that Solumn Simulacrum is included in the deck because of the Dark Mechanicum and is actually a daemon's soul forcibly interred into a siumlacrum of itself. See, it still works! :D
These 40k decks really made you realise how many people can't read words they haven't seen before, not pronunciation, just moving letters around randomly.
“Astrates” hurt my soul… I refuse to believe somebody was a regional manager in GW store and hasn’t seen the words “Astartes, Primarch, Be’lakor” these are words that have been used by GW for literally decades. The primarchs where mentioned back in the late 90s
Can't wait to get my hands on these decks. They're on their way! Will alter the cards I'll add new ones! Altough I must say I hope there will be a Warhammer Fantasy version of these decks some time in the future too as it's.. Well, fantasy!
Love them both, I also feel they are very good at the podcast job! But.. I miss the old days of Jimmy and Josh, their chemistry is what got me into this RU-vid channel, and nowadays it is hard to find a video with both of them P.s. I like that DJ is more in the channel, I would love to see him on Extra Turns P.S 2: I think DJ and Ashlyn have really good chemistry!
Cardkingdom used to have fast shipping, but the last few months has definitely been slower, sometimes even slower than the individual sellers on TCGPlayer.
I've recently been getting into warhammer lore because of these decks, and I felt kinda heartbroken taking out some of these cards just because the aesthetic is so cool! I went with Be'lakor as my commander because I love demon tribal, but I'll miss The Horus Heresy.
I think their design principles coincide with their approach to reprints which is why they HAVE to make sure certain cards aren’t TOO good when they are in certain products.
sadly agree. you're in blue, so there are better draw options. only reason I can see him work is if you wanted to give things to your opponents for some reason.
O think brainstorm type of effect cards would fit great, its nice to know what you will pull with cascade, sensei's top and scroll rack probably make this deck shine even more
@@MalteLewandowski agreed. it probably makes more sense to load the deck with good-value cards to cascade into, while still being reasonable with the curve.
When Ashlen says she was a regional manager for Games Workshop, but she is unfamiliar with the term 'Astartes'. That makes me think of my father-in-law who was captain of the swimming team, even though he couldn't swim 😅 (For reference, 'Astartes' is an in-fiction term for 'Space Marine')
Were they always known as Astartes or were they just "Space Marines" back in the day and they added the term Asartes later? I tried to look up to give her some credibility but I couldn't find a good solid answer.
@@colkrakers1987 Oh no need, I was only making a silly pedantic joke 😅 I mean, I enjoyed maths enough to keep studying it until I was 19. But I only discovered that I was wrong about how you round up when I was 17. Sometimes you just don't get fundamental bits of information.
@@colkrakers1987 Astartes was a later and copyrightable term for Space Marines, before the release of the Horus Heresy series and the focus on Primarchs. It makes perfect sense for someone who quit a long time ago to know only Space Marine as a name.
@@colkrakers1987 They were always referred to both ways. Technically they are the Adeptus Astartes, and have been afaik since at least 3rd edition (40k is currently on 8th or 9th ed). There are a few others like the Adeptus Arbites and the Adeptus Custodes.... They're in lore terms, "adeptus" basically meaning branch or division or department. But the big name on the front of the codex books (ie army rulebooks) and boxes of models were "Space Marine" until some time around 7th ed or so--relatively recently. So, if one didn't consume much lore or didn't read any of the Space Marine armybooks, they might have not really picked up on it.
@@catbookworm6438 Adeptus Astartes was always in the lore. It just wasn't on the front of army books and boxes and stuff till later when they changed a lot of names (like Eldar to "Aeldari"). Probably for more easy copyright enforcement lmao... GW has the biggest law-boner. I was definitely aware of both names in my teenage days hanging around GW stores, but I was also a nerd reading all the rulebooks cover to cover and reading the 40k novels for fun.
Maybe. Counterspells to me fit the Eldar and maybe some of the Imperium's psykers more than Chaos. Chaos is usually the aggressor. Not so much trying to stop anyone else's plan as much as advance their own proactively. Tzeentch maybe could have some countermagic, but polymorphing and transforming spells is way more on theme (change, is the theme). Whereas the Imperium or Eldar *do* try to like "stop the chaos ritual" or otherwise foil the plans of the "bad guys" a lot more often than the reverse. So I would disagree unless the countermagic is somehow Tzeentch-flavored tricky changey stuff. Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh.... They don't seem like they would do counters, pretty much at all. Slaanesh would take your shit, absolutely, so maybe something like Spelljack. But not just "counterspell," in my opinion.
I was playing a precon game with my opponent playing this deck and me playing the temur deck proceeded to put bone sabers on to a Kharn on turn 4 to cause so much chaos
Considering the price of these puppies, I'd suggest cutting the upgrade budget in half, at minimum, but even better than that - just keep it as it is and play it against other 40k precons.
Ashlen, excellent work here. You really dug into the mechanics and added not just good cards but cards that will make the deck more cohesive. One of the best deck upgrades I've seen on this channel. My only minor disagreement is Chandra... PWs aren't great outside superfriends, and she's a flavor fail. An interesting choice might be a clone like Clever Impersonator, because you set up the potential of cascading into a copy of your more expensive spell.
You could easily spend the budget just upgrading the manabase, and have a better one. They just focus on the fun mechanical part of the deck instead because the manabase is generally straightforward. Shocklands, the commander lands, checklands, tangolands, painlands, fetchlands.... They will all do the trick and make your manabase faster and more reliable.
So I'm confused about where the $65 reprint value comes from. You said that this deck has 34 reprints (which you say multiple times is half the number you usually see). You also said that the reprints have total value $42. So if the number of reprints is half, would the $42 would not also be "half"? Which would make the extrapolated value $84, which does meet the average reprint expectation. Where did the $65 come from?
Here's my guess. You're not going to get more reprints of cards in the $10 range. The remaining reprints would each be under $5. Most of them under $2.
Instead of Aurora Phoenix you should add Boarding Party to this deck. Unlike phoenixes, pirates exist in 40K and are outlaws to the Imperium. Same MV too but less colored pips.
@@k9commander that being said, Fortell does work with several other cards in the deck, such as Keeper of Secrets and The Lost and the Damned. Also, Passionate Archaeologist if you add that.
Whats funny to me is DJ thinks 4.5 boardwipes is good, yet 14 removal spells is too high? I would argue you don't really want more than 2 board wipes, and you really wanna be around 15 interactive/removal spells, ive found decks just play better with those ratios.
Totally depends on the meta. Everyone knowadays is repeating this mantra of "we need more single target removal", whereas a few year ago it was said that its bad from a card advantage point of view (and it still is technically bad). Boardwipes can make a lot of sense, depending on your meta, as they are so efficient. However, personally I also tend to go more towards single target removal than board wipes, but rarely go over 10.
@@MalteLewandowski I think building to a meta is generally bad deck building. The problem then becomes, the more games you play, the more likely the rest of the group is likely to build different decks. I just build like i'm expecting to play with a bunch of random people, and its always worked perfectly. I think if you aren't over 10, you're just likely to not have answers for problems, i tend to be in the range of 15-20 interactive pieces in my decks (alot of those do others things)
@@spudster8887 mayeb if you're playign cedh, but if you're playing a game that expects to last an hour or more, spells like these get clunky and you could be doing other things with your mana.
Maybe dont do valuation of a deck that doesnt have the typical deck style. Just seems like a bubble of time that means nothing in the end. Granted in the future youll be able to compare this deck to future releases of this style.
a deck like this is hard to valuate because not only can it go in multiple directions it also seems to just want to be, well,...chaotic. all you can really say is it's not viable for cedh, but that applies to a lot of decks, including the other three 40k ones.
the first thing I would throw in here is Neheb, the eternal. it is 9.5 $, but yeah. he gets you the mana when you do damage to your opponents' faces. the triangle thing is called a "delta" :) not sure what the letter is called when it's above an A though.
I knew these cards having English spellings would throw the yanks off hahahaha I laughed out loud when she pronounced Armour as Armore. Its just Armour spelled properly love
Love you guys and the show, but it was a little painful to watch the Regional Manager of GW mispronounce astartes, Be'lakor etc. Knowing how much love you put in the show, I would do some prep ahead of a recording like this and get the pronounciation checked.
Yeah, like she said "they didn't used to be called that" but they did, just not on the cover of the books. It was inside them or in the novels or fluff.... Teenage me definitely knew what the Adeptus Astartes were even though the books and boxes said "Space Marine" on the covers.... As did the GW employees that put up with a bunch of obnoxious 14 year olds at the store in the mall lol. Not like I think it makes her any less credible but I was kinda like "alright dude whatever" lol
it really hurts considering this is 4. out of 5. videos on on warhammer topic and noone has the energy to actually check a wiki for information about 40k. i don't play it but even i went to google about my deck.
Prosper ain't the easiest to add in when you have an average of $3 per card and it's sitting around $10. Not to mention it can be difficult to find since every who bought the precon likely kept Prosper as a deck.
14:05 12 card draw?! Where are you getting 12 card draw? I counted out card draw in this deck - there were like 3 dedicated cards that actually drew cards reliably I spent like 6 games testing this deck not drawing cards, Command Zone has gotten complacent in its deck reviews
If there was one group of precons that you guys should have skipped doing this with it was the Warhammer set. Just leave these decks alone and have fun with them.
They do-- "ass-tart-ease." They do because it's spelled that way, for one, and for two because 40k is chock full of "sounds-coolium" aka fake latin nonsense words.
this one was by far my least favorite of this series and i tend to love these types of videos. Just some constructive feedback. The pacing in this one was pretty bad. typically these are super well formated and informative. This felt more like excessive filler. the guy was rambling and discussing literally every single card that was cut out for like 5 minutes each. When they were cut because they were not a good fit for the deck. arguing why each cut should be in the deck felt counter productive. the worst example of this was with the tallyman. it was like 5 minutes talking about abs on zombies and the tally guy and how his effect was super strong, when it was a cut not an ad. overall love this series and i can't wait to see the others.
The biggest problem here: so many of these cards are ALREADY really good, it would feel more like lessening it's value rather then upgrading it, to add more BUDGET FREINDLY cards to it.
they're playable, but still die to optimized decks. at minimum, I think it makes sense to take out some of the weaker cards and replace them with cheap draw or rocks.
I enjoy these, but guys, it takes 10 seconds to do a google search of someone else in the 40k community saying these words. don't be so afraid of Astartes, Primarch annd Be'lakor.
