Hello! Michael here. Today I am back with some more Misrecarded content, where we focus on misregarded cards and try to make you love them. Today we will be talking about Wrong-footed Stance, a Domain from Raging Slayers.
On paper a weak card, it can maybe be OP – in this article I aim to teach you the proper way to use this card.
Let’s get right in, and prove that you got off on the wrong foot with this card!
CARD TEXT ANALYSIS
Today’s star of the show is Wrong-Footed Stance, a rarely played domain (at least according to my good friend UnderworldsDB), being the least popular RS card. Oh well.
First of all, the most important word here is ‘Domain’. This is because it dictates how the entire card is meant to be played – I know, makes total sense. The fact that it is a domain automatically gives it the use case of shutting down enemy domains and shutting down your own useless domains. It also means it can be countered by enemy domain cards, which is important to keep in mind!
Next, we noticed that the card says ‘fighter’ and not ‘enemy fighter’. This is super important to keep in mind for future stuff.
The actual effect of the card happens whenever someone enters or is placed into a Stagger hex. While ‘enters’ encompasses ‘placed’ in my opinion, it is good to note that stuff like Canny Sapper DO trigger the card!
Next, the actual card effect – give the fighter a MOVE token. This is genuinely busted. With a move token, fighters cannot charge! This is absolutely bonkers! It locks down an enemy and potentially warbands for an entire round, and messes with ED really well too! While not the only move token card in the game, it is one of the only multi-use cards like this, and most importantly the only card that affects friendlies.
We also notice that the card gives a move token in addition to a Stagger token, which is interesting because it raises question marks about it’s interaction with Flying. Does it work on flying fighters? Does it stagger Flying enemies? We will find out!
Finally, the very last part of the text is a link back to ‘Domain’ so no need to worry about it.
MOVE OR DIE – BUT YOU CAN’T MOVE
First of all, let’s talk about how super op the effect of giving out move tokens is.
Charging is kind of the most op core ability in the game right now, excepting maybe Danse Dynamic and Hammertide (not biased choice btw). Anyways, move tokens are infamous for making you not allowed to charge. Worse than that, they also make you IMPOSSIBLE to charge out.
There is also several warbands who get slightly shut down by being handed a move token. Notably examples include my good friends Deintalos and Marcov and their respective core abilities. The Danse Dynamic lets each Conductive fighter in the Exiled Dead warband (so 4 of them) make a move or attack, but it cannot be used if Deintalos has a move or charge token.
Expanding on the ‘no charge’ thing, there is two decks in the game that are very charge-focused. Reckless Fury gets HARD walled by this card – it is hard to score Bloody Momentum, very difficult to score Arena Mortis, and impossible to score Unrelenting Massacre with any move tokens! Raging Slayers is less affected, but you still have 2 cards that read ‘all friendlies charged’ and Unrelenting Massacre. The reason it is less affected is because it is considered a little suboptimal to play Overwhelming Presence and No Escape.
So the card effect is insane! Hard walling some warbands, hard walling some decks, including the literal World Championship deck, and shutting down most aggro warbands by just telling them they cannot charge. So why the heck is this card not in literally every single Raging Slayers deck? Notice a contradiction?
WRONG-FOOTED EXECUTION
Let’s take a look at something this blog is known for – Stagger. Well, let’s actually take a look at the ‘stagger hexes’ part of this card.
Stagger hexes are far and few between, making up only 2/89 hexes on the board, or 2.24%. On the most fun board in the game, they only account for 1.12% of the hexes on the board. This means they make up an average of 1.96% of the hexes on a board. The chances of a fighter getting into one are remarkably low, right?
WRONG! This is because for starters, most of the time, players tend to play closer towards midboard, and none of the Stagger hexes are in edge hexes. By ignoring edge hexes, we remove 30 hexes, to make the fraction on most boards 2/59, raising the chances that a randomly placed fighter will be in a stagger hex to 3.389%. Still criminally low, but then we can take into account that most stagger hexes are positioned in a way that a certain board orientation makes them very central-positioned, which means most combat will happen around them. I don’t want to do more math but I estimate it raises the chances of fighters going into them by around 70%, which is a number I pulled from my head.
Point is, while Stagger hexes are few on the board, there are definitely ways to game the mechanic in order to make this card a lot more consistent. I will go into this in a further section.
NERF AND NERS
Lets talk about how this card screws over RF and RS.
Both of these decks have Unrelenting Massacre, which is worth 3 glory, and gets progressively easier as the game goes on. Wrong-Footed Stance, if played properly, hard-walls the card. Without a way to get a charge token or remove a move token, like Scream of Anger or Push Through or Spurred Momentum, getting a move token can lock you from 3 Glory for a round! Sure, RF has 5 ways to circumvent this but still, it forces your enemy to burn a card. And RS has 0 ways to circumvent this.
If we zero in on neRF-ing Reckless Fury with some more Move token tech, there are many objectives and even power cards that Wrong-footed Stance just says ‘no’ to. Every single card except Aim for the Top and Red Aftermath (and Savage Sprinter which it actually makes easier) needs a charge token, which makes taking away a fighter’s charge capability super important. In the power cards, Headlong Charge, Still Swinging, Furious Might, and Bellowing Tyrant all need a charge token. Unfortunately, RF does have LOTS of ways to get a charge token or to re-charge which is really annoying as it means you ideally need to give move tokens to many enemies. Oh man, if only this card persisted of for an entire round…
If we focus on neRS-ing Raging Slayers, the card is a lot less effective against the cards in the deck BUT it does shut down the plot card! In the objectives deck, 9/13 cards need a fighter to be enraged or charged. Unfortunately, out of those 9 cards, only Coordinated Assault, Unrelenting Massacre, and Best Foot Forward are ‘often played’ and considered ‘good’. That is mainly why RS is known for it’s power deck – which gets DESTROYED by Wrong-footed Stance. Most of the best cards in the deck like Venting Strike and What Pain? need a Rage token, which is unobtainable when you have a charge token! The cherry on top is there is no way to remove move tokens or get charge or Rage tokens in the game. Finally, as I said already, the plot card from RS slightly doesn’t work when you cannot charge. And the main reason people play RS is for the overtuned plot card – which means that this card kind of shuts down the deck! More on the interaction with the RS plot card and Wrong-footed Stance in a further section…
One huge issue with this card is it is located in RS. The fact that it affects all fighters is that it can wall you too – you have to make sure it doesn’t happen!
A FURTHER SECTION
Now we are in the fun part – the ‘guide’ section of the article! How to make this card OP, move token wise?
First and foremost – you don’t really want to play the single-stagger board. You want as many Stagger hexes on the board as possible. You saw my math in an earlier section but the more staggers the better. You then want to position the boards in a way that gets the stagger hexes near the combat. Will you play invasive against a hold deck? Make sure to throw those staggers deep in enemy lines! Are you against an enemy aggro deck? Position them more centrally, where most of the fighting will happen!
Next, PLAY NEAR THE STAGGERS. Obviously against hold and the deep stagger hexes it’s harder to do so but luckily the card is also less effective as hold doesn’t charge as much. If I throw a deep stagger, I will try to put treasures near it as well (unless the enemy is CtC for risk of Violent Blast) as it allows me shove enemies off of the treasure into a stagger to prevent a re-charge onto the token. While we are focused on holding I want to highlight how careful positioning of staggers can brick Sally Forth but can also make Step by Step possible through a ‘charge’ as you get a move+charge token. Be careful!
When playing against an enemy aggro, ideally the stagger hexes are near the middle. This forces you to play a more flex deck rather than pure invasive and then you can just camp out near neutral territory. This allows for really easy drivebacks into staggers, as most the time the stagger hexes will be near neutral territory – some simples good positioning will yield many a move token and many headaches to your opponent!
Obviously, it is important to take a pairing with some built in enemy push tech. The obvious candidate is Wrack and Ruin, which not only gives you Barge but also Damned if You Do and Confusion. On top of that, the positional stuff is pretty easy to score against enemy elites, making it a very good anti-elite deck should a meta like that ever come around, as Wrong-footed Stance really shuts down elites. Countdown also gets a shout, for giving you some nice passive glory but also for Violent Blast and Improvised Attack. Old reliable Blazing Assault has Lure of Battle, but you run into the issue of having literally 8 scorable glory. Finally, Hunting Grounds might be worth a shout, for Mind Your Step is a great distraction tech!
Ideally you want to make sure you don’t get shoved into a stagger hex yourself. The best way to prevent this actually lies in Raging Slayers, and that is Stubborn to the Bone. You might think it might be a brain-intensive moment to think about where you charge with Rage tokens, but keep in mind, once you charged you probably don’t care that you have a move token already. Other ways to do so are to make sure you aren’t standing near staggers, which is kind of obvious but hey, got to state it anyway.
So to summarise:
- Put staggers in places where your enemy will likely be
- For aggro, this is near neutral territory
- For hold, this is deep in their territory
- Invest in anti-push tech to not get shoved into Staggers yourself
- Invest in ‘Distraction’ tech to push enemies into staggers
But there is one more aspect of this card we haven’t covered…
THE LAST ASPECT’S DOMAIN
This card is a domain!!! We cannot simply ignore this. If you read my previous Misrecarded on the End is Nigh, you will notice some similarities.
We shall start by taking a look at how OP Domain cards are in this meta. The strongest cards by far are Explosive Charges (PnP), Raider’s Rapture (RR), and Honed Reflexes (RS).
Is it worth taking Wrong-footed Stance just to kick out the enemy’s copy of the domain? Well, no. But that’s because you already have Honed Reflexes in your deck! However, a HUGE advantage that Wrong-footed Stance has is that it’s effect is often a one-and-done. You typically won’t be reusing it’s effect more than once. Additionally, you can hold it till you know that you can actually use the effect – there is no reason to get it out as early as possible if you don’t need, letting you also hold it for optimal Domain denial timings.
You can also use the triple-domain package of RS to your advantage. If you notice you are in a position to be negatively affected by Wrong-footed Stance, you can kick your OWN card out with Honed Reflexes (or Slayer’s Arena too I guess). This makes Wrong-footed Stance super easy to avoid yourself, minimising it’s hinderance towards you.
Let’s quickly go over when you SHOULD kick a Domain out with Wrong-footed Stance versus when you shouldn’t. To help, here is a list of all Domains in the game:
– Explosive Charges (PnP)
– The End is Nigh (CtC)
– Raider’s Rapture (RR)
– Honed Reflexes (RS)
– Slayer’s Arena (RS)
– Wrong-footed Stance (RS)
Explosive Charges can and should be knocked out every single time. +1 Move to an entire warband for an entire round is VERY strong and can be very annoying to deal with. What makes Wrong-footed Stance so good at dealing with it is that it is more of a setup domain and it doesn’t need to persist permanently, it can be used as a one-and-done effect. This allows you to save it until you need it, which makes it very effective at denying Explosive Charges.
The End is Nigh should also be countered very early. You have to options to counter it – one which is immediately (which should often happen, as an enemy CtC player will usually have higher Cata than you) or one which is more risky and letting both you and your opponent get one roll off before countering it. This is more risky but can yield a larger reward too. Overall, you can game when you counter the End is Nigh for a huge benefit potentially, once again leveraging that Wrong-footed is a one-and-done domain versus The End is Nigh’s passive effect.
Raider’s Rapture gets stronger the longer it is in play making it a target for immediate knockout. Typically an RR player will insta-play this card, which means that you have to be extra careful about your Stagger positioning when playing against Realmstone Raiders, as you might be forced to deny Rapture at any moment.
You shouldn’t counter your own Honed Reflexes most of the time, unless you want to catch an enemy off-guard by turning all Stagger hexes into move token hexes. However, an enemy Honed Reflexes must be countered pretty fast, because you don’t want them to have the re-roll in play for long. Additionally, Wrong-footed is arguably the best domain for countering Honed Reflexes, as odds are your opponent already has one enraged fighter when they play it, meaning you have an easier chance to drive them back into a Stagger and give them a move token… which won’t do anything. So nevermind.
Slayer’s Arena is interesting and odds are you want to counter it ASAP, unless you badly want your opponent to whiff and get staggered. Still, most of the time they will be playing it during their own turn which makes them ‘immune’ to it for long. Just be careful of enemy Lure of Battles when countering, as you might get a move token before you can charge!
Finally, you should not counter enemy Wrong-footed Stances. Why? Simple – the effect is exactly the same for both players, which means you get nothing from having your copy of the card in play. This means you can hold it, and keep your opponent guessing about what card you can have still in your hand. You can then discard it in an end phase or drop it for a second round of Wrong-footed Stance!
Overall, the power of Wrong-footed Stance as a domain-blocker comes from it’s effect being a one-and-done rather than a permanent effect. Often times, this will mean you can hold it until your enemy plays their Domain card.
DEXAMPLES’O CLOCK
Time to provide some decks on how to maximize the power of Wrong-footed Stance!
As stated before, one of the best ways to trigger Wrong Footed Stance is to throw enemies into Staggers. Dromm has one way to do so on their warscroll, and pairing them with Wrack and Ruin allows for some truly insane displaceability tech. Notice how easy stuff like Into the Fire become now that the enemy cannot charge into Dromm to increase his tankiness!
Assured Bloodshed gives us Grapple to push enemies more efficiently into Stagger hexes, which has good synergy with Gorehulk’s low damage but accurate attack.
Confusion is here to charge into a stagger, play Wrong-footed, Confusion to throw an enemy into Stagger hex! You can get attacked back but that’s a side effect we are willing to ignore.
Damned if you Do creates some situations where you either get a blood tithe and free damage or can give an enemy a move token – a very scary prospect.
Finally, Barge is here to repeatedly slam a strong, upgraded enemy into a Stagger hex. This allows for a guaranteed lockdown of a fighter each round – against stuff like The Wielder of the Blade this could be fatal.
You also have your warscroll Call of Blood, which could be used very sneakily to potentially get two enemies with one push, but it does require setup so often times getting one is good enough.
However, we can do better: this deck is more of a flex deck which allows you to positionally outplay your opponents for more staggers and move tokens:
By picking Kurnoth’s Heralds, we get access to Grapple on each fighter, meaning we don’t need to play Aggressive Ambusher which can give us access to some more Grapple.
Instead we focus more on getting into good positions with our warscroll abilities and ideally not dying.
Savage Blow gets a highlight as it increases the odds of hitting our Grapple attacks from 75% to 86% chance, which is good odds! (thanks to Spinnerite’s Dice Odds calculator for help with this!). Same with Venting Strike!
Obviously Violent Blast is the key card in this pairing, literally turning into ‘give a fighter a move token’ with proper positioning.
Growing Concerns is here to force enemies into positions by restricting their movement away from non-Stagger hexes.
Improvised Attack is also here for some epic driveback-into-Stagger gameplay.
While definitely harder to play than Wrack for Wrong-footed Stance, this deck gives you a lot more consistent scoring, but still offers tons of ways to shove enemies into staggers for move tokens.
Finally, this deck focuses a lot more on trapping enemies and is a very anti-RF deck and doesn’t work in much other scenarios, but is fun to play:
This deck focuses a lot on Hrothgorn the Big Guy himself, so it doesn’t have much minion support. Still, it enables him to solo-carry games.
First of all, Hrothgorn’s RANGED grapple is huge for Wrong-footed Stance. Second, the trap makes it even easier to force enemies into Staggers as you can make them stand near them by giving your opponent no other options.
Mind Your Step is the best card in the game to throw an enemy into staggers except Violent Blast. A double push can be huge!
Assured Bloodshed is here to make your minions Grapple threats as well.
Blocked! can allow you to more carefully get enemies where you want them.
Poor Footing and Crippling Blow really make it difficult to charge for the enemy, creating a sort of ‘lockdown’ playstyle.
Overall, this deck really focuses on how OP move tokens are and leans heavily into that. It’s easier to catch someone who can’t move than someone running!
MISRECARDED OR BETTER DISCARDED?
Overall, Wrong-footed Stance is usually misrecarded but often times better discarded.
For the move-token effect, it requires a lot of setup, but a huge issue with it is enemies can still charge through staggers without getting punished. Additionally, the deck it is designed to counter happens to be the deck it is located in.
Still, with proper dedication and setup of the card, it can be game-swinging – thus making it usually misrecarded!
As a domain denier, this is one of the best cards in the game as a one-and-done domain, which adds on to reasons to run this card.
Do you think you can make this card work? Let me know if you do on Discord as usual, and with that – hope you enjoyed the article! Until next time, I hope to see you again soon!
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