The Deck Doctor's Return: Sam the Man

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When the SotS site started out, I found the Deck Doctor / Brewing articles Woodrow and Westley put together some of the more interesting content on the page. In our game, I don’t believe any two playgroups share the same kind of deckbuilding style or philosophies. For example, there are cards I would expect to see played in an Owensboro KY event that I would never expect to see played in a New Jersey event. And I’d expect to see cards played from European players that US players wouldn’t play. It’s one of the things that makes the game more interesting in my opinion because there is such a diversity amongst players and their thought process about what makes a good card and what makes a deck run better.

That said I am bad at this game. I think I know what makes a good card. Look at the magnificence that is Dragonkin. Easily one of the best cards in the game. 2HP, built in two ranged strikes, doesn’t spend or stun when it falls forward the first time? Might as well have just named the card Money because that’s all it is. But some people would say it’s mediocre or just a meme but I know better. It’s the cream of the crop. People might also say the same about the Warlord I’m here to work on today but in my heart I feel like he has to be good. Allow me to introduce Sam the Man.

Big Sam here is a Warlord I feel like never got his time to shine. You could say that for a lot of Warlords that were printed during Epic Edition. If a Warlord wasn’t broken out of the box it just couldn’t keep up during those days even if on cardboard that Warlord seemed inherently good. Sam does all the things you should want your Free Kingdoms Warlord to do. He has the innate ability to buff a Free Kingdoms character in his army within one rank and he can do it twice a turn. +5s to ATK/AC isn’t bad at all and currently Ancients decks need to find a way to overcome high bonuses to ATK/AC in order to win so that’s a checkmark in the pros column for him. He’s a level 5 cleric and with that comes access to the plethora of good cleric spells and items. He’s a Cantor so he gets access to Lift Up Your Voices as well as Embolden / Mass Blessing to add to the buffs he can already hand out. He has a lot going for him but his stats leave some room to be desired. With a meager 13AC, he’s just asking for a rogue (or a wizard, I guess) to shoot him in the face for a few wounds. He’s not going to be one of those “front rank” clerics we saw during 4E with his +5/+2 swings. But he does have a good skill bonus so he at least as that going for him!

Characters

Everyone loves bears.

For Sam to succeed, he’s going to really need to harness of the strength of the Free Kingdoms army. Sam should, for as long as possible, hang out in the back ranks to keep himself safe from being picked off by armies using ranged strikes. His ability may be restricted to characters within one rank, but that doesn’t mean he can’t buff them before they head to the front lines to do their job. In this version of the deck, I opted to look at the Free Kingdoms heavy hitters like Barrett Yscar above. Let Barrett become a big angry bear, let Samuel give him a little +5 blessing, and then get him to the front so he can do angry bear things. Since we’re already looking at the FreeKy beat sticks as the offensive weapon of our deck, we can play it safe with a little defense in the starting army and just accept that Llyr Militia x3 is reporting for duty in the front rank followed by Baqbou Umbala x2 in the second. Llyr makes people think twice before swinging which gives Samuel time to get a character to the front rank, buffed, and ready to swing themselves. Aside from our start and Barrett we have a strong list of characters to choose from to fill out the deck.

Blessings for everyone all day everyday… until he gets wounded anyway.

  • Barrett Yscar: Self buffing angry bear. An auto-include in decks like this.

  • Nellia Yscar: Another self buffing angry bear / Ewok. Built in movement pairs well with Baqbou and she comes into play a rank behind Samuel to be blessed.

  • Xiantha: If we’re keeping Samuel in the third rank, Xiantha is going to be swinging with 4 strikes. If we play a character in the fourth rank before she swings, she’s getting 5 strikes. She can be brutal and comes into the army near Samuel to be blessed before going to work.

  • Xeanara: More strikes.

  • Squire Argos: More stat bonuses to hand out to the army. Lots of level 3 characters to hand her bonus out to.

  • Brother Dominy: Because Llyr Milita has to go find someone!

  • Rafkin: Ready those angry bears and monsters to inflict more pain on your opposing army.

  • Roland Tzin: Get those angry bears and monsters to the front after they do the old switcheroo with Baqbou.

  • Sir Thomas of Celinar: We like inflicting wounds. We really like inflicting additional wounds.

  • Sister Amanda: A back up Cantor albeit she’s only level 4. Can also ready one of our characters after they perform an attack.

  • Tahomores Yscar: It’s very satisfying to get one of these guys fully buffed from their own order. Samuel just helps them make it faster.

We have quite a pool of characters to choose from above so now it’s time to start looking at our actions.

Actions

It’s incredibly strange to me the Free Kingdoms have so few Cantors in their character pool. One would have thought the faction whose biggest mechanic was to buff characters of lower level would have had more holy choir folk buffing the low-level characters, but I digress. Samuel is going to take up that role for us and we’re going to look at cards like Lift Up Your Voices / Mass Blessing / Embolden to make our army even stronger. I also currently have a fascination with Sustaining Aura. We get to a ready a lower-level unstunned character and since Samuel is a cantor they’re getting a buff out of the deal too. I like it a lot. I don’t necessarily know that it’s good but I intend to test it out and see how it ends up performing. To Seek a King is an action that Samuel wants to have in his deck too. He can pull it off on turn one just on his ability alone and with all the other bonuses he hands out it just seems like a no brainer.

I think it’s a good card. I’m probably wrong.

  • Mass Blessing / Lift Up Your Voices / Embolden: The clerical hat trick. Bonuses are good and the more we hand them out the better.

  • Sustaining Aura: Another way to ready a buffed-up bear and make them even more buff without having to go to the gym.

  • Exhaustion: Every deck should run at least 2. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

  • To Seek a King: Samuel can pull this off alone or with help from spells and other characters like Brother Dominy or Squire Argos.

  • Acts of Faith: Multi-wounding is good it turns out. Throw this on a buffed character when they start pressing the attack, ready them afterwards and still be doing more wounds.

  • Soothing Waters: Samuel probably won’t take the wound himself but someone is going to take a wound for Brother Dominy to keep his +3s around as long as possible.

  • Minor Miracle: At least a one of in most of my cleric decks and very satisfying to have when an opposing army finally hits Brother Dominy.

  • Mentorship: Samuel has a lot to do already but slapping this on a Barrett is very tempting.

  • Divine Fury: No one wants to see their characters bite the dust. Making the character that hurt you weaker so you can return the favor is fun.

Items

I started playing this game at the release of Southern Kingdoms and the Campaign Edition format. I have a lot of fond memories of playing cards with friends during that time and one of the cards I remember being something I thought was “br0ken” was Bascarite Mark. A local player packed this in a Rustiq Umbala deck during that time and I thought it was absurd that you could give a blanket +4 ATK bonus to Ethereal characters and that Rustiq was OP with the Mark in his deck. Did I mention I am not very good at this game? We are definitely going to pack some of these in for Samuel since it boosts his twice-per-turn ability and all the spells that we’ll use to boost our army. We talked earlier about how one of Samuel’s weaknesses is that he’s easy for ranged strikers to hit so we’re going to address that in our items as well by looking at stuff like Signon’s Armor and Bodyguard. You can’t hit what you can’t target. We can round it all out with more support items to choose from.

  • Bascarite Mark: More buffs for more bears. Also helps us pull off To Seek a King even faster when we can play Brother Dominy and buff a character to meet the requirement.

  • Bodyguard: We aren’t going to let Samuel get sniped or even let potshots go at him. Also helps if the Corn Chucker decks try to use Sar’ean to get around our army of Big Bear Boys.

  • Signon’s Armor: We aren’t getting shot. Not even by Percy Dorn.

  • Ring of the Savant: Recycling our big buff spells is always good.

  • Hod’s Legacy: More readying, more strikes, more ways to bring home a W.

  • Staff of Kizazi: Enjoy the look in your opponent’s eyes as their soul leaves their body while you’re adding charges to ready a big angry bear.

  • Stormwolf: High five your big angry bear as you yeet him up one more rank to bring the pain.

  • Messenger’s Head: Same as Stormwolf, but grosser looking.

  • Figurine of Protection / Nodwick: It’s nice to run the figs for extra characters. The cleric figurine doubles as protection for Samuel and if you’re going to use them Nodwick is an automatic include.

Now it’s time to bring it all together in a coherent deck list. This is what I plan to run for Ancients this month so I’m giving myself away a little bit, but that’s fine. I doubt anyone is expecting Samuel to make a strong showing including myself. I believe there is potential here or there should be at least as a cleric with the Free Kingdoms army with the Cantor trait.

Characters: 25

  • Llyr Militia x3

  • Baqbou Umbala x2

  • Samuel

  • Barrett Yscar x3

  • Rafkin x3

  • Xiantha x3

  • Roland Tzin x3

  • Brother Dominy x3

  • Xeanara

  • Nellia Yscar

  • Sir Thomas of Celinar

  • Sister Amanda

Actions: 17

  • Mass Blessing x3

  • Lift Up Your Voices x3

  • Sustaining Aura x3

  • Exhaustion x2

  • Acts of Faith x2

  • Soothing Waters x2

  • To Seek a King

  • Minor Miracle

Items: 8

  • Bodyguard x2

  • Bascarite Mark x2

  • Stormwolf

  • Hod’s Legacy

  • Staff of Kizazi

  • Ring of the Savant

Admittedly, there is a jarring omission from the list with Embolden. I just can’t shake the feeling Sustaining Aura is being slept on though. That is probably the CE player mentality that I have that readying a beatstick is good, but buffing the beatstick character when you ready them is even better. You could easily swap Embolden into the deck with Aura though, just be careful with how many spend orders you’re using for Samuel to cast since there isn’t a strong Cantor back up outside of Sister Amanda and she’s unfortunately level 4.

I don’t think the items are a surprise to anyone who’s played or played against a cleric in Ancients in the last 2-3 years. If you’d prefer more protection over readying or buffing characters you could move the figurines in for the Bascarite Marks and a Hod’s Legacy / Stormwolf perhaps. Going too hard on protection probably waters down what this version of the deck is trying to do though which is get a big angry character up front, buffed, and swing for the fences.

My biggest worry with Samuel is that he might just be too slow to hang in Ancients. On paper, this deck looks solid and fun to play. I don’t think it will go winless this month, but in Ancients an action here or there can mean the difference between a win or a loss and Sam needs 2 actions just to use his ability. There’s probably a faster version of this deck that uses Taya Cooper and some multi-striking level 2 Free Kingdoms characters to put pressure up early, but it still runs into the same issues and you have to put Samuel in the 2nd rank and open him up to being targeted early. For now, we’ll lean on the Big Bear Boy and his pals to get the job done.