Deck Doctor: Campaign Edition Volda
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Anthony grabski ‘freeks’
Welcome to our first deck discussion article here on Saga of the Storm! I’m Woodrow and today I’m taking off my party hat and putting on my thinking cap as we doctor up a Warlord deck. We’re going to use Free Kingdoms teamwork to make the dream work for an often overlooked Warlord from Campaign Edition. Huntress Volda walked into our clinic this morning with a laundry list of pre-existing conditions, but I remain hopeful. We’ll check her vitals, get her fixed up, and send her out of here in better shape than when she arrived just in time for February’s online Campaign Edition event!
Peer Review
In a recent (and excellent) video analysis of the Campaign Format, a colleague by the name of Dr. NirvanaTool assessed Huntress as capable of winning, but mostly in light of her starting army and in spite of her kit. If you haven’t seen his video, you should definitely check it out!
He concluded his evaluation of our patient with the admission that she could probably move up into the ‘Bad’ section alongside Jin Valford and Kedric. And while that is certainly good news considering our goals for today, we ought to explore Volda’s current state ourselves and see if we can come up with a plan to propel her into proper ‘Good’ shape alongside the likes of Albrecht and Dukat.
Volda’s Vitals
Before we figure out how to help her, we need to get an updated diagnosis of her overall health. So let’s get our stethoscope out and begin!
In terms of her vital signs, Volda is a pretty standard affair. She’s not morbidly unhealthy but not in great shape either. She’s moderately bulky for a spellcaster / support, but her skill is nothing to write home about and her ATK needs some nurturing if you’re going to risk deploying her to the front lines. To act as a beater with this stat line, you’d need to go all-in to try and make it work. My evaluation? Not reliable for battle, but usable in a pinch. While a service animal such as Wolf Companion or some physical therapy like Havat-lahn Stance are options in Campaign Edition, you notably lack the ability to ready her (stuff like Revigorate, Divine Guidance, Rafkin) and besides, XYZ Warlord does it better.
We’re a little concerned about Huntress’s underdeveloped level in combination with her classes here. Missing out on that fifth level of Clerical spellcasting for the most powerful tempo-positive protection Action Seize Life is tough. Similarly, missing out on the fifth level of Fighter tactics cuts you off from the most powerful support Action you could play in a Free Kingdoms deck in Krun’s Strategies. This is concerning.
Probably the easiest route to victory in Campaign Edition for Warlords of her border color is starting your match with Spencer Latham and Brother Dominy. From there, you evaluate how well you can support and eek value out of these starters. If you have the tools, it’s usually worth leaning into that. And while Volda can Sacrifice and Scourge of Dythanus, she’s missing the power of Atu and luck factor of Lady of Mercy. I’m leaning toward prescribing bedrest at this point. Maybe Volda really does belong on the sidelines.
Two thirds of the way through our examination, the prognosis could be death by atrophy sitting in someone’s Warlord chaff box. But, let’s finish up for the sake of argument. Her faction? Great, maybe the best in Campaign. Her feat? I don’t see Riposte +0 doing much if she’s following my advice about physical activity. The subclass.. es.. wait a second?! She has not one but TWO subclasses. This is a rare trait. According to my medical dictionary (the Accordlands), Ranger gets her access to or added benefit from 11 Actions/Items. And Druid opens up a whopping 19 cards! Surely this gives her something unique and powerful to explore. The react? Medium, but it does take the death throes of an opposing army of the table. I think with this last bit of information in mind, we can at least clear Huntress Volda for the next stage of evaluations. But not with abundant optimism.
What’s in a Subclass?
Without compelling reasons to clear Volda for battle maybe we will be forced to outsource most of the components of a final, cohesive deck. But the subclasses are the most intriguing thing about her so far. Most of the Ranger side deals with ranged strikes and most of the Druid side gets oddball control cards. So let’s just hit the high notes instead of reviewing the undesirables. Here’s the contents of our cart as we leave Subclass “R” Us:
Okay, now these are some cards that improve Volda’s quality of life! They’re all useful in their own right, and powerful in combination with other cards, but the drawback I’m seeing is that they don’t really work together. Mud Slick and Sudden Gale offer some control if that’s our goal, but they don’t do much unless we want to walk the Cerebrul path or protect our starting army. Wolf Companion can come alongside Improvised Shield and Bruntor’s Helm to provide some stability in the front, but we’ve ruled that out as our typical home for Volda. Meddling Nature is just a solid card. It doesn’t look like a roleplayer for any particular archetype, but having access to character number 26-28 is probably worth it regardless of what we end up doing. Finally, there’s Spirit’s Blessing and Hawk Hatchet. Now THESE might just be the right medicine for what ails Huntress Volda!
Faiza Nyota taught us, along with her later-errata’ed text box, the raw power of the Hatchet. Access to this fighter weapon and the ability to wield it to its full potential is something that separates Volda from Atu. So that’s at least one feather in her cap. And Spirit’s Blessing, similarly, is a known ‘good card’ though not quite of the same notoriety as Hawk Hatchet. However, I’m not sure it isn’t a more powerful card on the whole. Either way, my confidence that we can find a good subject for Sceth’s order-on-an-actual-stick is high. And that’s something Volda has that Jin Valford doesn’t. Volda’s cap current feather count: 2.
The real kicker for Hawk Hatchet and Spirit’s Blessing is that they share a similar mechanical space that we can further make use of with a card that was restricted since the inception of the Ancients Format alongside notables such as Archer Tower, Nightmaster Rress, and Phantasm. I’m talking, of course, about the titular character from Aaron Williams’ timeless comics: Nodwick.
And while other Druids -or- Rangers can certainly recruit Nodwick under their employ, they cannot get as much mileage as we can by having both subclasses and doubling our value on both Hatchet and Blessing! This is our most important ally. This is our shtick. This is the remedial pick-me-up that Huntress needed to get into shape for battle! With Nodwick to assist us, we have what it takes to live a long prosperous life in a potentially slower format like CE. However, notably, Spirit’s Blessing states that we can only ready ‘lower-level’ characters and Volda is merely a level 4 Warlord. This will significantly affect our decision making when choosing characters so let’s keep that in mind as we rally our banner(wo)men[bears].
What’s in a Character?
What’s in a character? Well, we have some strict guidelines. First, recall that we don’t want Volda to join the fray unless it’s absolutely necessary. We want allies to do our bidding rather than have them help Volda get the job done herself. Secondly, we want ample level three or lower characters skewed for offense to get the most value out of our readystick. So with our requirements in mind, let’s begin shopping for dudes:
Okay, we have options here. Campaign Edition has been good to the middle Free Kingdoms ranks. We actually didn’t even list all of the possible characters above. Characters like Sipho Hamisi, Darian Windson, Ursala Yscar, and even Spirit Wing are all fine too. So how do we decide what rises to the top of so many decent options? Well, we can start by identifying what we need most from our characters which happens to be a win condition. Volda is poised to support her characters’ journey to the finish line, but she can’t reliably carry the team across. So who’s the heaviest lifter here? That’s an easy enough question to answer if you’ve ever seen him in action. I’m talking about Barrett ‘the bear’ Yscar of course! As long as we’re not going the item route (dangerous with Nodwick - more on this later), Barrett is easily the most powerful brawler here. The math is just too obvious. The question then would be whether or not we can leverage him except we have answered that already. Spirit’s Blessing targeting a massive ATK line mounted onto a sturdy chassis is definitely something we can leverage. It’s a little harder to say who’s next up after Barrett, however. Xiantha has a high ceiling, Elissa is versatile, Jack can speed things up and Nodwick hatchets, Corten feels good, Roland is a great Uber driver.
Out of what isn’t exactly Barret Yscar, I like Xiantha here. She isn’t a free include in that she makes steeds less reliable, but a backup beater with three to four strikes will help us consistently have something worth readying. Sure, she doesn’t do anything else, but we don’t need her to. She’s a backup win condition and she isn’t terrible at it either. Just one ATK bump from Dominy, Argos, or a weapon like Hawk Hatchet or Nothrog Daggers will see her battle ready. Unfortunately, though, we probably want a third pick from this list and here’s where it gets really tough. I’m willing to be wrong here, but I’m putting my money on Squire Argos. Speed, utility, Argos has none of these and comes with an abysmal rogue-style ATK line. But, as we get further along on this deck I think he’ll get more appealing. We are going to make some odd choices that could put us in the position to pretty reliably have a wide front rank. And if we need to win a game off of a ‘wide’ front rank instead of a ‘tall’ character attacking multiple times in one turn, then Argos will help us do it!
Let’s move onto starters and support characters. I’m going to short cut a bit and instead of list all the options just go ahead and throw out where I ended up:
The Llyr Militia aren’t there simply as a discussion point as one may guess. They’re actually my recommendation. Draw hate is at an all-time low in CE because draw effects are also at an all-time low. Unlike our Saga event in January, first action Amnesia or Rr’gent can’t come up in Campaign. And with our game plan of delivering mid-level characters, we want the stability in case the first several actions of the game go against us - particularly against a fellow FreeK. In comes Llyr Militia to give us a virtual 8-card hand and secure that coveted Brother Dominy bonus to pair with future characters. Now, we will steal far less games this way and I can fully understand the argument for Spencer and Brother in play game one. Our game one against decks that are slower and bigger than us will suffer for our starting Militia, but we can always tag in the classic ‘bicycle thieves’ for games two and three. Secondly, regarding starters, we’re notably passing up Glenn the Blaze and less obviously ignoring Farrel Wadreth (due to Militia not actually dying - don’t forget this vs. Ar’tek) in favor of Josef Krieg. Josef is nothing to write home about, but he is happier to shoot down Amatria Tansiqs and can give us some pressure onto a second rank Warlord to make them respect a Hawk Hatchet. Another place where we concede a higher ceiling for a higher floor. We’re really playing to not lose with our start rather than to win with it which seems appropriate in our case.
As for our last few character slots, I won’t deep dive on all the possibilities. We’ve managed to keep our entire army in a marigold border and caring about melee strikes which makes Sir Thomas a bit of a no-brainer. Even more so with our win condition of attacking with a Barret or Xiantha multiple times in the same turn. When readying characters, anything that adds to ATK or multi-wounding has more value than normal. Last but not least there’s Enkida. Remember when I said I was ready to be wrong about including Squire Argos? I’m unwilling to budge on how central Enkida is in this deck. If Nodwick is our foundation, Enkida is our glue. She is just so reliably good in our deck. What can she do?
Give a fourth swing to Xiantha.
Offer double or even triple readying off of Spirit’s Blessing by holding a second Nodwick.
Solve rank issues with her second Order.
Join the fray with a fine stat-line for being virtually a level 2 character.
She is seriously awesome. Historically, if memory serves, she was in the mix of a few decks, but never in the spotlight. In recent years she hasn’t shown up at all. But now is her time to shine. I’m not sure how she performs in other FreeK decks, but she is exactly what we want in ours. She might not be literal Rafkin, but she is about as close as we’ll get and in the occasional game she’ll be better.
Putting it All Together
Okay, we’re basically done here. I’m feeling pretty good about where we have Volda compared to where our perception of her may have started out. Let’s go ahead and get our list in front of us before we discuss the last couple of inclusions that round everything out:
3 Nothrog Daggers
3 Spirit’s Blessing
3 Hawk Hatchet
3 Nodwick
Three copies of By Your Word might be ambitious for a second rank Warlord in a format with Exhaustion in it. But it is an incredibly powerful card with the ability to ready a lower-level character from the stunned orientation. Courage From Faith is there in place of what would like to be more normal movement. And Courage is the most flexible slot if you want to do some tinkering with other effects like Sacrifice/Scourge. It’s just that at some point we have to pay the price for having varied classes, extra level one characters, and ‘can’t ride a horse’ in the text box of two of our characters. That said, Courage isn’t bad if we can manipulate our ranks correctly. It gives us instant access to readying a Barrett or Xiantha with Spirit’s Blessing. Meddling in Nature is just there as a gap-fill card. It doesn’t directly contribute to our win condition or even play with the rest of the deck. But a hassle-free level one 3/13 with potential for growth that doesn’t take up any deckbuilding space on the character side offers us even more stability as we reach our win conditions.
Meet at the Inn is always a fun card to discuss. Here we are playing a deck that wants to see certain cards more often and certain cards in play together. The end. Was that hard to understand or does it need repeating? Rounding out the deck is Nothrog Daggers and Twist the Blade. These are both fairly important. Again, we aren’t out here stealing bikes game one and we don’t really have the tools to reliably aggro-out a stall deck before it assembles Voltron. Therefor, we need a way to win in the late game against more powerful decks like Duty and Nitesh that can reliably present 20+ armor class. With both Twist and Dagger, we are insured against such matchups and always a threat to frontline Warlords in general.
Notably we didn’t opt for value one-of items for Volda to carry as is typical of a Cleric support deck. Just in case we forgot, we want to play from the second rank. This puts us within Kapix’s reach which severely punishes Nodwick’s drawback. When playing against an Elf, never ever forget to play around Kapix with your Nodwick deck. When possible, equip Hatchet or Blessing before putting on Nodwick and don’t auto-pilot to equipping Blessing to Volda if there’s an Enkida around.
Discharge Summary
Well, somehow about halfway through writing this I completely forgot I started off in-character as a medical professional with Huntress Volda as my patient. I sat down to write the second half having completely forgot about the roleplay! I guess that’s what happens when you’re consumed by the hoopla surrounding AEG’s 20th Anniversary of Warlord Set. It’s been a busy week in the best of ways.
So what do you think? Did we do it? Did we nurse Volda back to health and propel her into the ‘Good’ Free Kingdoms stratosphere occupied by celestials and bald men named Captain ‘Dookey’? Let me know in the comments below or wherever you see this along with which artwork you prefer between David Hudnut’s CE and Athony Grabski’s EE Volda. Until next time, good luck to everyone in February’s Campaign Event and never give up scrounging around for undiscovered technology in older formats!
