Countdown to Cataclysm
Welcome to our rundown of Countdown to Cataclysm. Make sure to catch our podcast coverage of the release too. For everything out with this release window, follow these links:
Release Rundowns
Podcast
Thanks go to GW for providing a review copy to make this content possible.
Introduction
[D]AVY, [P]HIL, [B]RIAN, & [S]KYLER
D: Our first look at a Mastery deck. Games Workshop says that a Mastery deck "introduces unique mechanics and goals, opening up entirely new ways to play." Thematically, Countdown to Cataclysm seems like it's intended to be a ticking time bomb. Does this one accomplish that goal?
The Plot Thickens
D: Before you start reading other cards, it's worth noting that 3 objectives, 7 gambits and 4 upgrades interact with this Cataclysm tracker.
I had to go look up Combat Phase. It's all four activation steps and power steps from each player in a given round. So you can advance a maximum of three steps by losing friendly fighters over the course of the game. The rest you'll have to do by keeping enemies off of feature tokens.
I was very confused by this card at first. But there are little circles in the rubble that can count down your advancements.
Objectives
D: Two glory end phase? Seems pretty solid. To get in round 1, you'll need to lose a friendly fighter and keep your opponent off of three feature tokens. Reasonable. Cards like these can put some pressure on your opponent to position in a way they might not want to (aggro, er... sorry Strike) or just further encourage them to do what they were doing (Take & Hold).
S: I’m a bit surprised this caps at 2. Initially I thought this would be the goal card of the deck seeing you strive for a Cataclysm value of 4. I also thought there would be a scoring reward for hitting a Cataclysm value higher than 2, especially since 2 can be achieved rather quickly. It seems the rewards for upping your Cataclysm value lie in a small few power cards instead. All that aside, Spread Havoc is a solid End Phase score.
D: Feels about right for one glory. You do have to kill someone in the preceding round, but just splashing one damage elsewhere is reasonable. Noticing that it says "are slain" not "were slain", which means that fighter still needs to be off the board, so watch out against raising warbands.
S: But if you manage to sneak a damage back onto them, they’ll still count as “were slain” assuming they were killed and raised in the last combat phase. Overall, a reasonable ask.
D: Saucy. Snap that up for sure. Cards like this make you wanna mix in with Take and Hold archetypes.
S: Great card. Gets you thinking about treasure placements at the beginning to pick this up while holding in a territory with only a single treasure token, like No One’s Territory for example. You can always delve a treasure token into cover to remove it from counting as present as well - but that requires a little more coverage from your models.
D: Well, that's weird. This kinda punishes you for driving your Cataclysm value up. I guess this gives you the option to mix this deck with a Strike archetype that doesn't aggressively raise the Cataclysm value, so you can get this by just mulching fools?
S: Yeah, the clock starts ticking faster against lower model counts too. I do like the presence of “greater than” here, reigns it in a bit since tagging opponents with damage can be a breeze at times - dice be kind.
D: So without delving, this means you need to hold three different treasures. Even with delving, you'll have to make it to the third to flip it without power card support. Even more challenging if your opponent is being incentivized to step on treasure as well, either as a result of your deck at default, or their own objectives. This feels like a big reach from this deck.
S: Agreed. I think this is the hardest objective in here.
D: A first edition stand-by. Hard to stop, will just happen.
S: Notably harder for raise warbands in second edition though, since you now lose your upgrades on death. Notably easier with the introduction of 0 cost upgrades into the game. Gotta feel this one out, but I’d normally cut it for something more reliably scored in Round 1 at only 1 glory.
D: I didn't expect a card to be just a butt-shot of Aemos, but here we are. And I'm going to be honest, I don't think I realized how much stuff dude was carrying.
D: This will be annoying for your opponent when you scoop glory to keep pace when they kill a chump. It'll be annoying for you if you draw it *after* your first fighter goes down in the round.
S: Gikkit about to get pancaked here.
D: It looks like the Underdog scoring condition would happen after the last power step but before the End Phase?
S: Correct. The card is pretty smooth.
D: Interesting. Gets easier as you lose fighters, which you're *a little bit* incentivized to do for the purposes of Cataclysm tracking. I like that there's counterplay here. Not the hottest power level, but I like the design, regardless.
S: Yeah, I like the timing quite a bit from a design standpoint. Your opponent can use their turn to drive one of your fighters back if they’re all in position or move one of their fighters in such a way to ensure you don’t quite meet this, but then you have the Power step to use cards and abilities yet to meet it. Nice card. Worth taking and testing out for sure.
D: Iiintresting. So "all" is going to mean there needs to be at least one. I *do* like positional surges.
S: You? feigns shocks - haha, yeah I dig it quite a bit too. Notice here they don’t let you jockey back onto the treasure token in the Power step if your opponent was able to knock you off it during their Action step. Nice design touch again.
D: Well, this can be your own action step, so if there's play here for warbands that have move action efficiency. Do those exist? Who knows? Although... historically those have been warbands with high fighter counts, which slows this surge down. Yeah... this is putting a lot of caveats out for a one glory surge objective. And it's unscoreable below three fighters. So, not so hot in most warbands.
S: For me, the biggest downside is you can’t really use this to propel your Round 1 as it will be closer to the End Phase by the time you score it in most rounds without ample access to movement tricks. Yeah, I probably leave this one out of builds that don’t uniquely call for it.
D: Combine with Blazing Assault for even more RNG surges!
S: Access to Cleave/Ensnare should make this a more reliable consideration in theory, which is why I’ve held it across waaay to many rounds already. For me, it is the perfect cut.
D: Inspired Farasa can get there without power cards. But otherwise you're going to have to combo to get this one. I think Blazing Assault has two cards to help. This deck has...
D: ...one card, which only helps if your cataclysm value is at 4. That makes this card real warband dependent, IMO. Real bummer that this is mostly unscoreable in rivals format.
S: Aye. Did a Rivals match against Phil where I grabbed this deck and Zikkit’s Tunnelpack as a test, and realized they don’t have a single profile that naturally gets there. Do not take this one unless you have a few good routes to it.
Gambits
D: These are better in a world where crits don't trump all. It also helps with Blazing Assault's Perfect Strike.
S: And it’s pretty cool that it leaves Flanked open as an option for you to position for in combination with it.
D: Timing on this takes some thought. If you're about to lose a fighter, this card can brick out almost immediately when your tracker advances. Kinda crazy that you can lose your own cards too. Does this generate a power card playing frenzy?
S: I suppose that depends on how many upgrades they are holding and waiting on glory yet to play. High potential to be totally rude!
S: …and in my test with Phil, an even higher potential for that 33% chance Sword/Crit to hit you over and over again.
D: What a photo. I can't tell if the Sharpener is bored or depressed about having to read this document.
S: Definitely getting scolded and shown exactly where he broke the TOS that he agreed to… which he totally read the first time. Totally.
D: As far as the ability goes, potentially big. Only one action step but you can stall decently if the count has gotten high.
S: I’d say you generally use this to stop a Charge late in Round 1 or 2, otherwise another use could be to hobble a pursuit when you’re down to a fighter left each.
D: Finally a way to kill my own fighter. Just what I needed. At higher Cataclysm values this is likely to go off as a condition agnostic ping? That seems okay. Pretty rough early, though.
S: He’s been asking for it for years! I gotta imagine that’s in here to further tempt the Blazing Assault pairing and Annhilation include.
D: The real question is whose hand is that…?
D: …pretty sure that's Turosh. RIP.
D: Well... stagger hexes are a little sparse, but this is friendly and enemy and can push in any direction... so... situationally wildly powerful, situationally totally dead.
S: I have found it to be incredibly useful! As long as you place a treasure token within 2 of each of the snare hexes, which is highly doable, you can use this to push your fighters onto those tokens, and if the token is right next to the snare hex then you can push them off and you on in one card.
D: Dromm just called to say he wants Wound the Realm back and if this is how he has to do it, then so be it. Starts at a 50/50, gets better. Cool way to make the middle ground real risky.
S: Caution sunderers! And may the odds ever be in your favor.
D: Okaaaaay. Even at baseline, you can stagger a fighter you're about to attack. That's modest but fine.
S: With no way to shake Stagger tokens like before, this can be a pretty strong accuracy card. Re-rerolls against X fighters across a round.
D: Heck yes! Plus, the attacker can't change targets to get after the fighter you just brought up. Seems great to me! Small defense boost and a threat extender.
S: Second that! Happy to see it off any attack too, even if it the name summons to mind a Charge meeting another Charge (like was required in its previous version).
D: A look at the two warbands in the Embergard box doesn't make me feel like there's a lot of use cases for this in the core set. Getting a damage boost on Rittak (the wheel guy) is cool, but their inspire is pretty easy, I think. I'd keep an eye out on other warbands as we learn about them to see if the value on this spikes.
S: Fair shout. Out of the box, it feels like a rare need especially weighed against the cost going forward.
D: At a simple level, this is kind of like ping damage that you have to roll out, but it can help score objectives that want to see attacks from a particular spot, or a certain number of attacks, or certain dice results. And of course, you can drive a a fighter off of a position, which is potentially great, especially in the last power step of a round. It took me a second look to realize this was range 3.
S: Lining up that squig-aspear throw.
Upgrades
D: So... it helps to remember that a fighter discards all upgrades when they die. This is one glory to advance your tracker one of the 13 steps that it needs to be able to max out? It does feel tailor-made for Tik Tik.
S: The refunded glory you’ll get when this goes off is great too. You can toss this on someone you suspect won’t survive the next activation and if that ends up true, you’ll get the tracker advancement and the glory straight back.
S: That being said, I don’t think there’s enough reason in this deck to lean into Cataclysm value when building for the Nemesis format.
D: Fine... not super exciting. Your mileage will vary based on your warband's base stats...
S: And looking at the fighters in the core box, there’s not much reason to consider this.
D: Cards like this need me to shift my thinking a little bit. An upgrade that discards is *kind of* free since you get refunded that glory later.
S: If you’re pairing with a Strike deck and taking Spread Havoc, then this is a fine pickup. You’ll hope to see it early though.
D: Wow! Yes please. Punish a driveback? Saucy.
S: And potentially discourage it altogether. Yes please.
D: Boooo! Only ensnare and only on melee.
S: That’s just not the accuracy boon you’d hope for from an upgrade, especially when you factor in that you only can bring one weapon ability per attack.
D: Whoa. Here's a reason to drive up that Cataclysm value. You could have a Save characteristic of 4!
S: Almost exclusively the reason.
D: So this is a core ability? An action to draw two, or maybe three? It's been pretty easy to undervalue these in the past. But the new Focus action feels pretty similar, honestly.
S: Agreed. I think this card is waiting for the universal deck pool to grow and for someone to start cooking up a mad scientist deck that uses the Underdog position for major advantages. At the same time, an action can be quite a high cost to pay and Focus is more reliably available without costing you a Stagger token…
D: You know it, you should love it. I actually like seeing these staples printed in multiple rivals decks. Feels like cool considerations in setting up your pairings.
S: Agreed. And with Bounty value no longer being tied to Health value, a Great Fortitude is back to being a Great Big Deal.
D: That is a fairly modest stat-line, but a fair filler card, especially if you're going for features/treasure and still want some attacks to go off.
S: It’s going to take some getting used to seeing Crit Cleave represented that way. I feel like they could have used bigger icons and squished the hexagons together a bit more so it’s easier to understand the symbols are paired together and not two separate abilities. Oh well, I suppose.
D: Whoa! I think three damage attacks are so rare that this is real spicy. Plus it can be modified?! One damage back is not unreasonable if you're taking out the threat in your face.
S: And the only deck in the core box to feature such a weapon! Further incentive to pair this with a Strike deck. Some of the other decks can offer Grievous which can functionally get a fighter to 3 damage, but the difference is this can get a fighter normally offering low accuracy or a single damage all the way up to 3 damage in one and modest accuracy in one go. And can still take on a weapon ability such as Grievous to elevate it further.
Summary
D: Interesting mechanics here, but I don't know if it really changes the game. There are several power cards that exclusively manipulate your cataclysm score. Those cards are essentially doing nothing unless you can pull off some of the pay-offs and I'm not sure they're worth it. Confusingly, there's even a counter-synergy (Wreckers) which punishes you for driving the Cataclysm score up too high. I have a hard time seeing this deck being dipped into for the primary mechanic, but you may go here for handy tools like Desperate Rage if you need the high damage, or Overwhelming Force if you're rich on four dice attacks. I'd love to see someone prove me wrong on this one and really impress with this one.
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