Michael: Hello! Today’s article features a guest writer some of you might know as Quint. I don’t want to steal too much of his spotlight so I’ll let him introduce himself later – anyways, today Quint is going to be focusing on a topic we here at Staggerers wholeheartedly support – weird decks that somehow work! Quint will be focusing on a very specific part of the game – Reckless Fury Jaws, but non-aggro. How does that work? Well, it’s not my article – so I’ll let Quint take it away! Hope you enjoy 🙂
Intro
Quint: Hey there! I’m Quint, known online as URANOS, and I’ve been playing Warhammer Underworlds since the start of Harrowdeep. In V1 I was playing a lot of Starblood Stalkers and Blackpowder’s Buccaneers. Now, I like to find weird deck pairings and theorize about the game, then realize my idea was absolutely stupid, and love the process every time!
For this article I will be discussing my favorite warband: The Jaws of Itzl with Reckless Fury. Originally I was unfazed with this team. They came out in the time I was playing other games and on break from WHU, and after I got back into the game, I got beaten so hard by them that I swore them off. However, after trying to make Hexbane’s Hunters work, and failing, I was looking for another warbands with movement shenanigans and came to these dinos. This team just seemed so much fun.
I also finally decided to look into Reckless Fury, and realised that (outside of BA/RF) I really like this deck! It has some fun mid-range aggro tech and can be paired with a lot of decks that most of your opponents won’t necessarily expect. Do keep in mind that in a Best of 3 format you might lose some of the element of suprise you can get in single games 🙂
In this article I’ll advocate for playing against the norm and exploring what Reckless Fury has to offer outside of Blazing Assault, where you use it more as a tool to get charged out and reposition your fighters to keep attacking!
Addressing the dinosaur in the room
Why not just play BA/RF with the Jaws of Itzl? The answer is simple: The team doesn’t have the damage or accuracy to go full aggro. It is truly a flex team, and playing Strike with them will simply not work. So, we have to get a bit creative with what we play.
I specifically chose Reckless Fury for the fun tech in the deck and the ability to get charged out with the Venomites.
The first attempt
Originally, my plan was to just play the same deck I was playing with Ylthari’s Guardians at the time, RF/WR.
The idea was simple: Use Reckless Fury to get charge tokens on the snakes and use Wrack and Ruin to ping enemies and get inspired.
This is the deck I came up with. It has a lot of positional play and has some questionable surges (namely Savage Sprinter). Alone in the Dark has also become way harder to score due to the prevalency of Deadly Synergy. An idea had instilled itself in my mind whilst playing this though: Could I create a flex deck, with Jaws, utilizing their tricks, where I have a focus on making attacks, but don’t really care about hitting them?
The deck written in the stars
The deck I tested most was with Emberstone Sentinels, mainly because it pairs very nicely with RF in terms of objective count (Both have around 3 surges and end phases you can consistently take).
For a while, I thought my dream realised. This deck was insanely fun to play and was feeling really consistent, even though it had a counter-intuitive nature. It’s main strength is the ability to just place a saurus on a treasure token and leave your opponent unable to do anything about it. You can use Obstinate, Settle In, Hold the Line and Brute Momentum, spread out across the rounds, to force tokens and score objectives like Iron Grasp or Supremacy. In the meantime, you have to balance your charges and try and force your opponent to come to you.
The lack of pings is a shame in this deck (sorry Michael), but the inspire isn’t necessary. It’s nice to inspire Kro-jax for the extra shield or Ro-tak for a nice poking stick, but all of that isn’t needed when all you need is to deal one damage to enemies for Aim for the Top. Instead, I found that my inspired fighters actually refused to hit any attacks (the 4 swords curse is real), and this pairing doesn’t really offer any accuracy. It seemed impossible to hit 2 dodge fighters, even with flanks. I found it very difficult to actually re-claim treasure tokens after enemies had captured them, even though you should get more Overruns due to the high dice totals.
However, I brushed all of these problems aside for the sake of fun. Even if I was missing all of my attacks, I could consistently drive my opponent back deep into their own territory or back into mine, claiming objectives and denying enemy scoring.
Until I played against Grymwatch. My usual plan of running into enemy territory and staking my claim led me right into Gristlewel’s club, who nicely sets up a kill for Valreek or the Duke on every hit. Scoring Arena Mortis or Unrelenting Massacre felt impossible, with the raises completely ruining any chance I had for those cards. This exposed a great weakness in this pairing: I couldn’t stay on a token whilst charging, and couldn’t not charge. To make matters worse, I couldn’t even brute force my way through the game because of the previously mentioned accuracy issues.
I was also unable to use Savage Mauling. Your opponent can easily outmaneuver you when you are on a token, and refuse to give you a start of round bite. And if I could reach them, I most always had a charge token. So what to do? I am always on a token with a charge token, and if my opponent isn’t playing a hold deck, they won’t overrun me to get on the token themselves.
Good ‘ol Pillage
Pillage seemed logical with RF: Charge onto a token, move the Venomites, charge onto another token next round. There is a great ping in Trapped Cache and the deck flows pretty smoothly. It doesn’t have the amazing killing power of Blazing Assault or it’s accuracy, but has a lot of really fun tools! You can use Tunnelling Terror to great effect in this deck, and you can really surprise opponents with it!
This deck is really fun as well, wanting you to be extremely forward. Be mindful that you don’t have a lot of tools to actually stay on tokens, but the dynamic nature of PnP makes it so you don’t really mind getting pushed off.
It also has, arguably, the best ping in the game in Trapped Cache, allowing for easy inspires in most games.
You might wan’t to swap Strip the Realm for Unrelenting Massacre if it suits your playstyle more. Both are fine, but if you take Unrelenting you might also want to include Catch Weapon.
When deploying tokens, try to deploy as forward as possible, and place tokens next to starting hexes so you can get some charges in early game. Also try and place them close to the stagger hexes (for Canny Sapper and Tunnelling Terror).
Try and actually get charged out as early as possible to be able to score Hostile Takeover, and use Ro-tak for this task as well! If the snakes die he is a great candidate for Headcase. He can just stand on a token and spin around his spear to his heart’s content.
The amount of tomfoolery you can pull off with this combo is absolutely ludicrous. You have so many pushes and movement shenanigans, and, depending on the board choice, can teleport all around the place and get charged out swings. The pairing also fixes one of the main issues the Jaws have, their movement speed, by giving you previously stated teleports, Headlong Charge, Explosive Charges and Great Speed!
Tips for playing Reckless Jaws
The most important thing is to protect the Venomites! They don’t have to go into enemy territory, and should be kept back unless boards are flipped during the end of round two. Don’t deploy them next to a treasure token if you are playing against Pillage either!
When inspiring fighters, I usually follow the following rules (These aren’t set in stone and it definitely depends on the situation):
- Inspire Kro-jax first if playing into aggro, where you need the defense.
- Inspire Ro-tak first if playing into 2-health horde, as it allows you to mow them down effectively.
- Inspire So-kar in all other cases. The extra movement is so important, definitely don’t underestimate it!
Be mindful of when you can use Instinctual Control, because in some cases it’s better to save it for the end of the round. Do make sure you can actually make attacks later in the round to trigger it though!
There is a very niche interaction you could use. I have never used it myself but in theory it is possible: You play Great Fortitude on the Venomites, then use Push Through when they already have a move/charge token to move them again! This will probably never come up in your game, but if it does, it will shock your opponent!
When playing with Reckless Fury, it is often hard to actually land your Savage Mauling. Try and position a fighter in a way that your opponent has to charge, and you can capitalize off of their positioning to inspire or get a kill.
At the start of the round, determine if it is necessary to charge with your fighters. Are they going to score glory by simply delving? Go on guard or make a ranged attack (if you have an upgrade). In most decks you won’t need to charge every activation!
The most important thing is to be patient. You aren’t playing full aggro, so you can’t just rush in, and your fighters will simply die if you don’t protect them. So wait a bit or charge onto a token in friendly territory first!
The most difficult matchup is against Grymwatch. Try and kill the “bad” minions first, then hunt down the Duke. Try and simply ignore Grystlewell. If he charges you, he can’t activate again until the end of the round, unless you kill him. So don’t! Otherwise, I wish you good luck in this matchup, it’s a hard one.
In conclusion
The main goal of this article was to show you the fun of playing Reckless without Blazing Assault. I definitely reccommend it! I myself want to try RF/EotK with Jaws as well, and have played a few games of RF/ES Shadeborn, which was also really fun! I hope you will try out this fun deck and also see some other rival decks from another perspective than the one the “meta” forces you to play. After all, this game has so much skill expression before the game even starts, so use it!
I want to thank Michael for providing me the opportunity to write about this weird use of Reckless Fury I’ve been obsessed with for the past half year, and patiently listening to me ramble on discord about new pairings XD. I want to wish you all a great start of the year, and may all of your 4 sword attacks allow you to overrun onto that crucial token!
Quint.
Michael: I want to thank Quint a bunch for his great article! While I personally have not tried RF Jaws I do encourage giving RF a spin in literally anything else other than BA/RF – and see what a flexible deck it is! Quint is a great individual and truly has some great ideas about this game – once again thanks a lot to him!
With that, thanks a lot for reading! If you want to find Quint and give him some feedback he is present on the effervescent Staggerers Discord so feel free to join! With that, thanks a lot for reading, and I hope to see you again soon! 🙂
Staggerers - A Warhammer Underworlds Blog 