Michael: This pairing is literally my dream. Also hello, forgot to mention that. Anyways, a pairing that not only has pings and passive glory and unhittability mechanics and funny comeback potential and more… BUT also encourages sitting in a corner whilst having some DEVIOUS control tools? Also is this entire article a Valorant reference? Sign me up! In today’s article, I will go over why CtC/HG is one of my favorite pairings of all time. I tried it out with a hilarious amount of warbands and these are my favorites!
SHEAR
Isolation is crazy fun (in WHU). My very first iteration with this pairing was with a warband that also happens to be one of my favorites – Cyreni’s Razors! This iteration of Steel Garden focuses mainly on killing stuff by punishing invaders. Hunting Grounds obviously requires enemies in your territory and that is achieved through Hammertide more than anything else here.
The goal with the ‘Shear’ version of this deck is to shear your opponents away from each other. Basically kill them one by one. Cyreni is great for this, having great duelling tools in their kit. Hammertide, Soul Harvest are both good but Deadly Riposte allows you to really get that edge. The deck has pretty good synergy with the Razors too – just check this out!
The weak link here is definitely the surges. They don’t seem too bad on paper at least. Still, a lot of it is very dice dependent. The trick here is to toss Perfect Cut, Overwhelming Force, and Home Advantage if you aren’t scoring them unless you have very very good reason to believe you will score them. Stuff like 4 Guard Utter Conviction against 2 Swords. Back Off sucks btw. Throw it away instantly and I’d even recommend cutting it entirely if you prefer Too Close for Comfort (which I do) The other 2 surges are fairly reliable!
The end phases are very reliable (pls believe me). We have a decent amount of passive pressure in Spread Havoc, Set Explosives, Loaded for Bear, and This is Our Turf. Wreckers is also technically a passive card here, for the simple reason that Hammertide exists! We can force it without making a single attack.
The ploys are SUPER FUN. Savage Blow makes the 4 Sword attacks very strong. I believe everyone here knows my stance on pings already so I just won’t mention them a single time this entire article (very rare). Violent Blast and Mind Your Step are necessary to win the ES matchup, as with proper positioning you can force them to invade. The other 3 ploys are self explanatory.
Some changes I would love to add are Poor Footing, but in this combat-focused deck iteration it’s not really necessary. Still great fun! In addition, the End is Nigh would go crazy here but unfortunately we have no space.
Upgrades wise, the CtC is very default but in HG we go HAYWIRE. Visions of Ruin goes crazy on Cyreni, you can get to enemies into awkward positions. Crippling Blow is great, I have it in all my decks but it’s extra funny with Audacious Denial which Cyreni CAN and does play! Goading Defender is OP on a warband who scales well with high Save. Hidden Aid is busted in a 4 Sword Warband. Killing Blow provides some much needed damage.
This deck has a lot of devious combos. My favorite is Audacious Denial + Crippling Blow and I have pulled it off against an RS Skittershank once. It was great fun until I got double-double crit deffed on, preventing a driveback. Still this basically secured me the game!
Forcing a 2v1, through Shear. Colorized.
The main goal for this deck is to score Wreckers cause everything else is actually quite easy (though the surges suck). I took this deck to Maastricht in case you want a game summary and did pretty well on Day 1 (ignore day 2 pls) against non-Elathain warbands.
This deck plays very well into aggro with the disabling tools because you can really isolate the fights, especially into 3 fighter elites it’s really strong. But just in general, this deck combo is very effective into it. It loses hard to passive play though, especially passive with Guard tech. Against ES and NoP, your goal is to get as many tokens in your territory as possible. This sounds counter intuitive but the best way to do so is to put tokens in ENEMY territory as then they are forced to come to you. Basically, token placement wins and loses games, as usual.
Overall, this deck combo is quite fun to play if you want a simple, BA/CtC style deck. It plays quite similarly actually with the main differences being that you want enemies to come to you. You have a lot more avoidance and displacement tools if they do, making even an ES player overcommiting for Sally Forth likely to lose. However, the deck tends to score quite low (still winning games to the insane denial power) so if you don’t like ‘a win is a win’ nonsense then I suggest you try on of the other two decks. It’s also really important to properly use your cards to isolate the 1v1s with Elites (ideally 3v1s though) which I find a fun puzzle.
RAZORVINE
The goal of ‘Razorvine’ is to make following you impossible. Or at least very hurt. That made no grammar.
Well, who is the fastest warband in the game? According to our superlatives it’s Crimson Court. But which warband is the hardest to catch up with…?
Spiteclaw’s Swarm!
As stated before, Hunting Grounds needs enemies to come to you. For that people had the bright idea of pairing it with PnP or ES, which makes total sense. Nexus of Power works nicely too. But when I say ‘passive glory deck’, what’s the deck with the most passive glory?
Ignoring the fact that it’s PnP, we will say it’s CtC. This iteration of the Steel Garden focuses on forcing the enemies to you cause frankly otherwise, they lose.
The surges in this deck are once again atrocious. Shocking Assault is very easy with Justified Paranoia. Since we ideally need to get some attacks in, we have The Perfect Cut and No Business Here. Home Advantage is also very easy with our high save characteristic. And Hands Off has huge synergy with Unequal Contest.
Unequal Contest question mark???? Are we mental???? This deck is actually so devious at first glance, including some diabolical cards that are never ever played ever. But it works! (i think)! Since this is a very badly disguised hold deck, might as well throw in Set Explosives. This is Our Turf should also be very scorable. Pinned is ideal here as well, as enemies are forced to come stand on our tokens, so if we simply put them near the edge hexes we can easily force Pinned.
The ploys include Mystical Misdirection for the first and possibly last time ever. The reason it’s here is cause it’s mandatory for Unequal Contest as I learned during Pacifist Skaven and while it’s no Switch Things Up it has a 10x cooler name and 10x cooler card art. The rest of the ploys are very normal for this combo, with the notable inclusion of Growing Concerns to make sure that enemies don’t chase us into their own territory.
Upgrades-wise we start with VISIONS OF RUIN and GREAT SPEED in a HUNTING GROUNDS DECK because chances are at least one of the odd tokens will be in enemy territory and to make sure it’s not hidden for an eternity and a half we include some ‘desperate measures’. Also 10 move lol! Desperate Rage goes crazy with this warband as it does have built in Grievous and 3 ‘weapon caddies’ who love it. Same goes for Crippling Blow (second best upgrade in the pairing only to Utter Conviction btw). Yeah, overall nothing too special in the upgrades outside the ‘light speed package’.
The main strategy with Razorvine is to play Emberstone Sentinels, either through being passive or through the age-old ‘territory-swap-tactic’. If the enemy comes to you and you don’t have your two lockdown cards in hand, then probably you should abuse your 5 move and skedadle. Speaking of, this deck is notable for having the least lockdown out of the Steel Garden package. This means you can’t really punish invaders outside of Paths Unknown or Crippling Blow, so you really have to plan careful positioning for maximum use of Schemers Grievous and use THAT as punishment.
Trap enemies in Razorvines and then skitter-scurry away. Also colorized.
This deck does the best out of the three in beating enemy ES/NoP or ES/PnP because of it’s innate passiveness. Still, you need to fight to score your cards. To force a fight, the age-old Justified Paranoia onto enemy token with my duellist Lurking Skaven forces the enemy to either spend an entire round slapping an unhittable target, or to come to you and your Schemers. Obviously they can play Confusion but if they went first then you can always launch a counter-Confusion.
This deck does kind of suffer into aggro speaking from a power cards perspective as I already said, so pls pls pls try to position your Skaven in a way that enemies won’t get free picks on your little guys. Punish them by putting Skritch and Krrk on angles that grant them Grievous. It’s your main defense for invaders outside of Crippling Blow.
Your warscroll is key here. It punishes enemy aggression for you and also gives you the upper claw in a hold matchup. Please don’t ignore it!
Overall, this is the least ‘deck-y’ deck and the most ‘I know my warband, get owned lol’ deck. It relies a lot on proper warscroll usage in combination with the deck to force Unequal Contest and a win. You have to take advantage of the ‘Hunting Grounds effect’ where enemies for some reason think they can’t come to you to do so, but it’s winnable even if they do come to you.
Just a disclaimer that this is the deck I played the least of the Steel Gardens because I find it a little boring personally. It’s the most passive, hold-y deck of the three and if you enjoy Emberstone Sentinels I recommend you give this one a try just cause of the high similairty!
Now, we had a ‘I will ping everything, gg’ deck. We had a ‘Emberstone Sentinels at home’ deck. What’s next, an invasion Steel Garden deck? That’d be crazy haha.
ARC ROSE
Cata/Hunting Grounds doesn’t need to sit in the back. We can take the fight to the enemy, so shall it be necessary. Of course, can always sit in the backline while we do so…
Enter Thanatek’s Tithe, who are my favorite warband for Arc Rose. Shear plays for Wreckers, Razorvine players for Unequal Contest, while here we play for Lead by Example. With a 1 Range 3 Sword 1 Damage attack that also happens to be interdimensional.
This is by quite a significant margin the most consistent version of CtC HG, in fact, I now say you have to be able to score either Lead by Examples or Wreckers or Set Explosives or Unequal Contest (two of the above) to make this pairing work and Wreckers/Unequal Contest is a little difficult at the moment so any warband who can score the other two will shine.
As it tends to trend, surges are our weakest suit again but this time it’s not that bad. Collateral Damage is genuinely one of the harder ones, as our fighters are super tanky, and people might boggle at Shocking Assault and Too Close for Comfort but there is a method to this madness. The other surges are all super good especially for the Tithe.
The end phases are super consistent, which is rare in this pairing, with the hardest one usually being This Is Our Turf. The others are very easy to score, as the warscroll lets us set up Set Explosives very easily and Lead by Example is pretty much free as well with a single power card.
The ploys have a general pattern – DO NOT LET THE ENEMY REACH THANATEK otherwise you lose and cry. Growing Concerns is not my usual go-to play in a deck that wants people to come to you, but like it makes Thanatek undiveable. Same with Poor Footing. Naturally, we play every single ping (except Audacious Denial 😦 ) and Violent Blast is a must-have in Steel Garden as it’s the second best way to get enemies in line for Pinned.
Our upgrade suit has the same idea as the ploy suit where if Thantek_is_dead=true, then gg. My favorite here is Bounty of Ghyran as it allows you to not only gain 2 Shields for a turn on Thanatek but also gain +1 Dice, Cleave, Ensnare, and Damage AND Stagger all without spending a single cadaver token! This is very insane, as you might have guessed. Visions of Ruin is also a highlight here cause +4 Move on a Flying fighter is very balanced. You already know my stance on Utter Conviction from the previous Thanatek article but we double up on this effect with Goading Defender. Finally, Crippling Blow has won me more games than almost any other card in this deck which is funny cause people usually discard it at first glance.
“Absolutely no traps here”, or the Arc Rose playstyle. Still colorized.
Yeah, so the main strategy here is to keep Thanatek alive. This is because with the warband’s bounty spread, him being alive is basically a wincon as it severely gatekeeps aggro’s glory ceiling (and ideally hold shouldn’t ever reach him). This ‘flaw’ in the deck is the reason that we can play stuff like Too Close for Comfort, which is scored when enemies do try to dive Thanatek. It’s honestly one of the more reliable surges in the deck because people are figuring out that him being on the board is mutually exclusive with them winning.
The Tithe’s warscroll complements this pairing like literally perfectly. While PnP CtC is arguably more reliable (who would have guessed), this pairing is arguably better in a different meta (ideally one without Wings of War/Twist the Knife combo) and stronger into specific matchups such as RF, DS, and really anything that wants to just hit attacks. Elusive Mirages and the Possesor Push and most importantly the interdimensional space dagger make this pairing flow like a state (cause flow state haha get it…).
Since your opponents cannot win on invading you, chances are they try to hide. You should usually be caring less. The biggest issues with Steel Garden decks is someone hiding in a corner from you, and the only end phases you really lose out on here if someone does so is Pinned, but to keep this the case you have to have insane usage of the interdimensional space dagger so it’s like a high skill floor deck. The surges are harder to deal with, with 3/6 of them requiring an enemy either in your territory or close to all of your fighters. An enemy hiding reduces your glory ceiling by 6, which seems like a lot, until you consider that you should still be scoring about 12 glory from the rest of the deck and your opponent LITERALLY cannot visit your territory which often hurts them more than it hurts you!
Once again, ES/NoP is very scary into Steel Garden. The trick to counter it is again to throw tokens into enemy territory to force them to deploy in yours, or to simply walk on their tokens first. The 1-Bounty Battalion is super tanky especially with a guard token so sometimes the best move is simply a Guard+move action over two activations.
If people do invade you, you don’t cry. Instead, you play your power cards. I had a game against a very cool fellow playing Mollog RF/DS, and in our first game, he literally could only charge Mollog in one round. During which he had 1 move only. The sheer lockdown power of this deck is absolutely insane! Also sorry Harry but that was great fun for me, not sure if it was the same to you 🙂
I really, really like the Arc Rose iteration cause not only is it consistent but you also feel really smart playing it. Which I personally like. The nice thing about it is you are almost always scoring more than your opponent, because them hiding from you really doesn’t harm you that much as other decks. If they do come from you, first of all you earn +6 glory and second of all your ENTIRE power deck comes online and let’s just say that’s NOT fun to play against. It puts your opponents under a lot of pressure to consider not only their objectives, but also your objectives, and something quite rare in most decks but also your power cards (cause HG has literally some of the must busted cards in the game – have you guys seen Blocked!???)
CONCLUSION (i couldnt make another reference sry)
So now that we have our three decks, it’s time for a nice little summary.
With Shear (Cyreni), we focus a lot on isolating fights and forcing enemies coming into our territory to take really questionable odds against a battalion of very angry fish elves.
With Razorvine (Spiteclaw, we turn into Emberstone Sentinels and play a hold deck, leveraging the ‘Hunting Grounds’ effect to get enemies in range of our Scheming attacks for some more glory.
With Arc Rose (Thanatek), we take advantage of Thanatek’s Tithe – The Warband in order to bait the attackers in and then absolutely fry them by using every single lockdown effect in the game on top of the insanely OP warscroll that the warband has access to.
Arc Rose in action, yet again, colorized.
If you like simple, traditional ‘aggro’, Shear is probably best for you. It’s not simple nor traditional but it has similair play lines of ‘kill kill kill’ so it’s definitely a fun puzzle!
If you like hold and thinking 35 steps ahead, give Razorvine a go. Bet you’ve never scored Unequal Contest before. Plus your mobility is insane! Also when you set up a Schemer kill you feel really smart.
If you hate fun and/or like bait/fake out tactics, Arc Rose is here for you. Punish enemies trying to kill Thanatek with the most lockdown heavy deck I’ve built in a while farming infinite cadaver or play a sniper rifle with Thanatek’s interdimensional space dagger against enemies who aren’t getting baited.
See? Steel Garden – The Pairing is for everyone! I highly recommend you give this a try, even though Hunting Grounds is by far the most memed on deck (arguably beating Realmstone Raiders which at least got a buff). It’s great fun to play, you feel like a professional tactician trying to read where your enemies will go, and you your enemies want to cry on a daily basis because of the shear annoyance of the power cards!
Shear in Action. You guessed it, colorized.
I took CtC HG to tournaments and also to several league games in several different leagues, including the Austrian Masters (definitely one of the most competitive Underworlds groups out there, trust). It’s very consistent! I’m currently positive with this pairing and by a pretty significant margin (no exact numbers). Some matchups you feel super confident in just off of deck declarations, and sometimes you really have to try not to cry against an ES/NoP Stalkers player but man does it feel good when you win. So if you’re worried about not having fun, you shouldn’t be!
Ok I’ll stop trying to stretch this article out and for a final word i’ll just say PLEASE TRY THIS PAIRING. IT’S VERY FUN. If you have any questions on how to make your warband work with Steel Garden, just ask me on the Staggerers Discord Server which is full of very nice and kind people who hopefully also have good opinions on this deck and aren’t bribed.
Anyways, thanks for (possibly) reading my ramblings for this long! Hope you enjoyed them 🙂 and as usual, hope to see you again soon!
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