When Edge of the Knife was added first, I was excited. A “punching up” deck for the swarms? A deck with a cool keyword? It reminded me (distantly) of Voidcursed Thralls, (Someday I’ll get my love back) with a keyword to spread around. However, the excitement quickly fizzled. How can it be that this deck that seems so fun on paper just… isn’t seeing any tournament play?
Analysis
Edge of the Knife sits at a weird spot in the Aggro/Flex/Hold/Mastery grouping GW likes to use. It has a lot of Aggro elements, with most of the objectives requiring you to be in enemy territory or to make attacks and some offensive power cards. However, it also has 2(!) cards that require you to hold a Feature token (Aggressive Defender and Behind Enemy Lines). This somehow nets it a spot in the “flex” territory, which still baffles me. Anyways, the deck then proceeds to add in a lot of cards that make it’s identity even more confusing. Not one, but two cards requiring you to have two fighters adjacent to the same fighter means you don’t want to kill your targets (apparently), but keep them alive and push adjacent, which is, unsurprisingly, very hard. So, does the deck just want you to dish out a whole bunch of damage tokens, so that everyone gets tempered and you can bundle up to score your cards? No, because then you wouldn’t score the best objective in the deck, Calm before the Storm!?! What even is the identity of this deck? That, is the core issue this deck has.
This comes with the added horror that is Trial of the Tempered. This card is definitely the worst 3 glory end phase (yes, Pinned! is better), as it can be countered by every single heal/Great Fortitude/Raise out there (in addition to you having to hit multiple attacks), making it very swingy and dependent on your matchup. Also, you have to get your own fighters tempered, which only a single card in the deck can do, whilst Running Riot still isn’t errata’d.
Finally, there is the issue of Warbands. For who is this deck? The marketing material, artwork and flavor text all make it seem like this should be a horde staple, however, it includes Great Fortitude, a card that not only makes a 2 health fighter “un-tempered”, it also only works on 5 health fighters that are already damaged, to have your Tempered fighters survive longer. There’s also the issue of Fueled by Pain, an upgrade that increases in dice the more damage you have taken. Fittingly, the artwork features Fecula, who is far more likely to use this card than any 2 health fighter ever is! All of these issues led to a deck article about RF/EotK Ironsouls, with a horde warband playing it nowhere to be seen, as we where all busy gorging ourselves on Pillage Cata Gitz.
Some numbers
So, let’s go through some numbers together, to figure out why exactly we don’t see a lot of EotK play!
First up, the deck has a keyword that doesn’t do anything on it’s own. However, it does have a lot of cards that interact with the keyword. There are 10 objectives, 5 ploys and only 2 upgrades that reward you for being tempered. That is only 1 more than half the deck! All of the other cards either do something to any fighter or make you tempered. Let’s talk about the latter first.
There are three cards that make fighters tempered. Dark Horse, The Uprising! and Running Riot.
Of these, The Uprising! is definitely the worst. The only thing it helps with is scoring Immovable. It doesn’t work for any of the other objectives (because it’s only during an action step) and doesn’t do anything for a lot of cards (except maybe Power from Death, but you won’t have trouble triggering it).
Then there is the incredibly interesting card that is Running Riot. This card wasn’t fixed by the errata, as it doesn’t specify an end point, but isn’t a warscroll or plot card, meaning it persists until? The end of the round perhaps? The instant it is played, so it doesn’t do anything? Or the end of the game? If the latter where true it might see some play in warbands with 2 non-tempered fighters, such as Thorns of the Briar Queen and Starblood Stalkers. However, as it stands now, it just isn’t worth the argument to run it.
Dark Horse though, is played. A card that costs 1 glory and gives an effect-less keyword to a fighter, with no other benefit… Yes, Titan of Combat is a strictly better Hidden Aid whilst EotK gets this weird card. Call it power creep or something idk.
Objectives
However bad Dark Horse may be, people still run it, because of the Objective package EotK provides. It has:
- 3 good Surges
- 1 questionable Surge
- 2 bad Surges
- 2 good End Phases
- 2 questionable End Phases
- 1 bad End Phase
- Trial of the Tempered
This is pretty good! Most decks struggle with filling their Surges out, and this deck provides a good amount of playable ones! The issue however, lies in the End Phases. Calm Before the Storm and Risky Position are both great, hard to deny, and not a lot of work for you! Two-pronged Assault and Usurper are definitely warband and matchup dependent, but could work out for you if you desperately need the objective. All In is just bad and forces you into weird play patterns, for only a single glory (also, Risky Position is just straight up better). Not worth it.
Then, we get to the big one. Trial of the Tempered. I already said that it’s the worst 3-glory end phase, but why is that? Let’s look at all of the 3-glory end phases and see what you and your opponent have to do to score them:
- Supremacy: Stand on two tokens. (minimum)
- Pinned!: Have an opponent come to you, spend at least one activation driving them back into an edge hex.
- Strip the Realm: Nothing. Otherwise, force your opponents to charge off or push them off yourself.
- Unrelenting Massacre: Charge 4 times and get your opponent to do the same. (or kill the non-charged fighters)
- Trial of the Tempered: Do two damage to ALL of their fighters that don’t start tempered and be dealt two damage to your most important fighters and/or draw a single card that makes a fighter tempered.
Here you can see that Trial of the Tempered requires a lot more steps than any other objective. In addition, it is something that often can’t be scored in the first round, whilst almost all of the other cards have high likelihoods of being scored in the first or second round.
Card Comparison
A long standing issue in WHU is the fact that the first four decks (namely BA and PP) are way stronger than the newer ones. So, let’s go over all of the cards in EotK that have “better” versions in any other deck, or any reprints!
- Fake Out!: A mediocre dice-based ping. It has a health requirement and an adjacency requirement, as well as an inaccurate attempt unless you are Tempered (50%/66%). Knife to the Heart and Total Collapse are both better (not strictly, but most of the time and they are more flexible).
- Final Stand: Whilst not strictly better, Hold the Line! targets everyone on your warband. Final stand however makes it so you cannot be pushed. When does this come up you ask? Never, unless you are playing EotK/RS, in which case you have other issues to worry about. Also, most of the time your Tempered fighters will just die when hit, making this ability kind of useless.
- Opportunity Strikes: Determined Effort is better, as is Savage Blow, as is Vicious Intent (for melee only).
- Sidestep: Present in BA, ES, PP, HG and DS
- The Uprising!: Army of Two is simply better, as it gives out a keyword and a free Hidden Aid for a turn.
- Dark Horse: As said, Titan of Combat is just better.
- Deadly Aim/Sharpened Points: Present in BA
- Fuelled by Pain: An interesting upgrade that’s very situational. I’d take Burrowing Strike, Hidden Traps, Coordinated Deathblow or Desperate Rage over it any day.
- Great Fortitude: Present in BA, ES, CtC, RR, DS
As you can see, a lot of these cards are present in other decks or have less specific/situational versions of them. And here, we can see why EotK doesn’t get played. There just isn’t anything special about this deck! It has a worthless keyword that doesn’t affect the gamestate at all, has mediocre power cards and a single, incredibly inconsistent 3-glory end phase, and to top it all of, most other decks simply have better versions of their cards!
But, as you might see, that is not the end of this article. I have tested EotK decks and compared them to the “optimal” versions of them!
The knife’s edge is very sharp though
The deck can excel when used correctly, being like a “mini Blazing Assault”, with almost no copied cards. However, what EotK has that Blazing Assault doesn’t have is good end phases. Most warbands can take Risky Position and Calm before the Storm, which mirror the standard Keep Choppin’/Fields of Blood, but with a glory point more (and dare I say that Calm before the Storm feels better than FoB?). The deck works best with fast and aggressive warbands, that like to get in close for an all-out brawl, forcing enemies to engage and strike them back, leading to Tempered fighters and a chaotic boardstate, where EotK’s movement tricks shine. The warband that does this best is Thorns of the Briar Queen (woooooow, real creative Quint, that’s all you could think of? Briar Queen good Edge of the Knife? Oh shut up, disembodied keyboard voice, I need to illustrate my point).
Sharpened Points Thorns
Thorns of the Briar Queen is the most played EotK warband, and for good reason. The warband starts out tempered on all but their two most important fighters, who your opponent will want to kill. You’ll be happy either way, with them damaged or not, as they represent a consistent source of 2 damage for your warband, precisely enough to Temper opponents. The warband is also one of the best at chasing enemies and getting close and personal, brawling for control of their opponent’s territory, exactly where EotK wants you to be.
It is often said that to play Thorns, you simply have to make a choice of two out of Nexus of Power, Deadly Synergy and Edge of the Knife. Since the NoP/DS pairing is a lot more difficult to play during a tournament, Edge sees a lot of picks. However, I was (before my test games) under the impression that NoP/DS has a higher power ceiling than DS/EotK or NoP/EotK.
I was however, proved wrong. In my newfound opinion, I must conclude that EotK/DS is the “best” pairing for Thorns. It’s less clunky than EotK/NP and a lot more consistent than NP/DS (which can get outmaneuvered pretty easily). It feels like one of the only warbands which can actually take Trial and be pretty ok with it, having a good glory ceiling and making good use of every card in the deck! So, in this case, EotK is a perfect substitute for Blazing Assault, giving a good payoff, power cards and upgrades.
But how about warbands that aren’t horde aggro? How do they fare with EotK? It is a flex deck, after all…
Emberwatch
Remember when I said that EotK excels at all out brawls in midboard? Well, a warband that is also really good for that is the Emberwatch! They have pretty good defense and accurate attacks (and, more importantly, a dice-less Inspire), perfect for Tempering fighters. CtC gives you the ping damage (also to yourself) to force Tempers on yourself and enemies, and gives you Desperate Rage (very important) and Utter Conviction (maybe even more important). A lot of people (me) dismiss Yurik as the worst fighter, but DON’T! He is so powerful due to his range four at snagging objectives and just staying there, whilst having the same melee attack as Ardorn. Give him Utter Conviction and run around gleefully. Overall, this deck feels like a net upgrade to BA/CtC, although I need to test it more to find that out. At least you don’t have to take Wreckers 🙂
Gitz
Zarbag’s Gitz are a great hold warband, with the highest body count (no, not that one) in the game, great movement tricks and very good stats, it is no wonder that they have been a tournament staple for a long time. However, unlike other tournament staples such as Wurmspat and Soulraid, they aren’t limited to a single deck.
Gitz are probably the best abusers of Pillage and Plunder, and this decklist uses both decks greatly. It doesn’t have Trial of the Tempered, which is probably for the better, as you need to have three of your fighters tempered, after the already hard task of tempering all your opponents. That also leaves you with a lot more freedom to do some scheming, making cards like Careful Survey and Broken Prospects way more consistent choices.
Some quick comparisons: Playing gitz ES/PP gives you a worse surge package but a way better end phase package, with a lot more cards to support it. PP/DS gives you way better aggro potential and some nice surges/end phases, whilst PP/NP is a more consistent, but trickier to play version of the traditional variant (ES/PP). However, PP/EotK is no slouch, being very fun to play and weirdly consistent! It’s power cards aren’t flashy (Except for SYNCHRONISED EFFORT (I love synchronised effort)), but just generally pretty good. which is great for snagging objectives and doing other silly stuff.
All in all conclusion: EotK was… actually good?! Possibly my new favorite way to play Gitz? If you’re going to take one conclusion from this article, play PP/EotK gitz, it’s great fun!
The rest of the pack
Sadly, I can’t cover every single EotK warband, so here’s some more ideas for you to play with!
- Blackpowder’s Buccaneer
- EotK/CtC
- EotK/WR
- EotK/PP
- EotK/RF (trust me)
- Starblood Stalkers
- EotK/ES
- EotK/NoP
- Farstriders
- EotK/WR
- Grymwatch
- EotK/RS
- EotK/PP
- EotK/BA (GO FULL AGGRO GRYMWATCH)
Non-meta factors
Of course, the reason a deck isn’t played is influenced by a bunch of things besides how good it actually is. For one, Edge of the Knife was released as the first deck after the first big wave of releases (counting RF and WR here). This meant it had a lot to live up to, seeing as all of the previous 6 decks where absolute bangers. In addition, PP/CtC was so overtuned that nobody really tried EotK at the time, even though it was pretty good with Grymwatch and Gitz.
Besides it’s release window, it was also paired pretty horribly with Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz, being a very bad deck for them and giving a pretty terrible user experience when pairing the two. This didn’t help EotK’s imago as a weird deck, which it still has.
Conclusion
Alright! That was the article! I quite enjoyed playing Edge, way more than I anticipated. It has some pretty good objectives and isn’t that bad in it’s Power card selection, nicely complementing PP. EotK/PP is actually a pretty good alternative to BA/PP, just, for warbands that already like EotK. It’s main issue is it’s identity and a card that needs an errata quickly, but otherwise, it’s very nice! Which is, once again, an issue, since it has no real special identity. It isn’t as bad as RS, RR or HG, so it won’t get used in any “meme” decks, but also isn’t really good enough to consistently see tournament play.
This leaves my final judgement, which is that the deck, specifically designed for hordes, is just very nice. Not amazing, not bad, just good enough (so, the perfect Dutch deck xd)
I hope you enjoyed this article, and that I have convinced you to try out EotK (or that it isn’t for you). As always, you can hop in our discord server to come chat with us about any article, even this one! (yes really!) With that, I hope you have a really nice day, and I’ll see you next time!
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