Michael: Hi! Today we will be discussing Team Austrias preparations and decks for the World Team Championships 2026, which happened at the end of August 2026.
Before we start we do want to apologize for the diabolically low amount of articles we have gotten out recently. Sadly all three of us have been quite busy recently but with Worlds on the horizon, it only makes sense that we focus more on Underworlds – so hopefully we get some more content out 🙂
If you are interested in the rest of our WTC articles, check them out here:
Pre-Event Meta Analysis
Game Reviews
With that – let’s get started! 🙂
Early Planning
Team 1
Michael: For Team 1, we spent a really long time trying to figure out what everyone was going to play.
By some miracle, we managed to narrow it down to three plans, none of which we committed to:
| Plan A | Plan B | Plan C | |
| Tristan (captain) | Grymwatch (EK/WnR) | Grymwatch (EK/WnR) | Wurmspat EmbWatch (BA/RF) |
| Stefan | Thyrelle/Thanatek/Gardeners with PnP/CtC | Wurmspat BA/RF | Ylthari/Cyreni/Ephilim with Catawrack |
| Sebastian | Stalkers (ES/NoP) | Starbloods (ES/NoP) | Starbloods ES/NoP |
| Christian | Ironsouls RS/RF | Spiteclaw (DS/PnP) | GWatch/Gitz with Edge/RR |
| Michael | Spiteclaw/Thorns with BA/DS | Thanatek (CtC/HG) | Spiteclaw DS/PnP |
I personally hated our Plan A, but there was logic behind it. We had a really aggressive team composition with lots of invading decks. This meant we could kind of throw any deck at anything, but it also meant we were at the mercy of the dice. This was a really polarizing comp with 3 ‘hyper aggro’ and 2 ‘hyper passive’ decks.
Plan B was more well rounded, and it was my personal favorite. We had pretty strong decks on pretty strong warbands (EVEN THANATEK) across the entire board, which was obviously very good. The weak link in this one was probably Tristan’s pick of GWatch, as he had to be ‘sacrificed’ in order to give everyone else strong decks. Still, the pairing could snowball out of control. The main weakness of this pairing is that we were going ‘all in’ onto three of our decks meaning that the three players with ‘strong’ decks had immense pressure on them.
Plan C was also a decent idea, which was basically Plan B but slightly reshuffled around with the players. We also considred CataWrack for the first time, due to it’s insane flexibility (though in my humble opinion Cata/HG Thanatek was stronger). The weakness of this is we had no true passive deck, as even ES/NoP isn’t that passive as Ben discusses here.
As a team, we all hated Raging Slayers and most of us were vocally opposed to Realmstone Raiders, so that made picking decks quite simple.
Team 2
For this section it is important to go over the basics of which decks and warbands were allowed, namely no repeats at all. This year each rival deck had to be unique between team members, meaning that if one team wanted a Pillage/Cata player, no other member in that team could use either pillage or cata in their pairing. That being said these were our two plans we had early on.
| Plan A: | Plan B: | |
| Flo (Team Captain) | Kurnoth’s CtC/HG | Kurnoth’s CtC/HG |
| Rudolf | Starblood ES/NoP | Wurmspat BA/RF |
| Nicola | Soulraid BA/PnP | Shadeborn PnP/WnR |
| Luba | Thorns EotK/DS | Thorns EotK/DS |
| Ben | Ironsouls RF/RS | Starblood ES/NoP |
I quite liked both of these plans. At the point that we created Plan A I was thinking about trying to play Raging Slayers with Ironsouls to try to open up Blazing Assault for the Pillage pairing. Plan B exchanges the RF/RS Ironsouls build with the more classical BARF on Wurmspat, thus forcing the pillage player to take Wrack and Ruin instead. In addition, Rudolf and I swapped decks.
Both of these plans are pretty well balanced, with two more aggressive pairings (EotK/DS and RF/X), two flex pairings (ES/NoP and PnP/X) and CataHunting, with the major decision maker being if after testing we found RF/RS Ironsouls to be good enough.
Final Plan
Team 1
Our final plan came to be as follows:
Tristan – BA/RF Wurmspat (Decklink)
- Tristan is a really good aggro player (and player in general) so it made sense to put him on a comfort deck with a strong warband. Wurmspat have insane stats, so you could actually focus a lot on mobility power cards since they don’t really need upgrades that much. This was basically a run-it-down machine which steamrolls over everything (at least on paper)
Stefan – ES/NoP Stalkers (Decklink)
- Stefan played hold last WTC, so we thought it was logical for him to play it again. Stalkers are insanely overtuned at the moment as well, and both Sebastian and I strongly advocated for Stalkers over Gardeners. In the end it was Stefan’s choice but he settled on the Stalker’s higher damage output and more threatening power spike over the tankiness of the Gardeners after some practice games with Sebastian.
Sebastian – PnP/HG Thyrelles (Decklink)
- Sebastian opted for a passive Thyrelles in order to counter enemy BA/RF with the Zephyrites crazy movement, the lockdown power of HG, and the passive power of PnP. He also spent a solid two-three months training with them, which led to him being the final choice for this warband and deck combo.
Christian – EotK/DS Thorns (Decklink)
- We were one of the many DS/EotK Thorns teams because Thorns make two relatively ‘weird’ decks work super well together. Christian’s decison to pivot to Thorns was actually pretty last minute after some training games and he really enjoyed them, and was quite good on them as well. Christian and I practiced a lot together before the event, so thanks for that as well 🙂
Michael – Cata/Wrack Yltharis (Decklink)
- I dubbed this deck ‘nuclear bomb’ cause it’s super killy. It’s also hyper flexible, allowing for me to be thrown at basically everything and still have a chance of winning. The tech behind it is not running any cards that I have to score, it’s all cards my opponents have to deny, which made me an excellent ‘sacrifice’ for the team in the infamous WTC pairing system.
- Since I got the short straw this year and got to pick from the last decks left, I want to quickly go over my other options since I was given a lot of freedom in these. I briefly considered CtC/RR Elathain and CtC/WnR Shadeborne, but Ylthari’s just have some absolutely insane mobility compared to everyone else and can really just do whatever. Both the other warbands have wayy more weaknesses in pairings making them slightly more a liability for the team.
- And yes I tried my very best to make Thanatek work but my remaining decks were CtC, WnR, RR, and RS. CtC RS can maybe work but I actually wanted to win this year so I went with the slightly stronger Yltharis.
Overall this team composition really fit everything we needed. We had a strong deck that can just take over games on it’s own in BA/RF Wurmspat, two counters for enemy BA/RF stuff in ES/NoP Stalkers and PnP/HG Thyrelles (sidenote none of these ended up working which is a slight issue but more on that later) and we had managed to build two pretty good decks out of the ‘scraps’ with DS/EotK Thorns and CataWrack Yltharis, both who could take a lot of matchups and have a good chance at winning them.
Team 2
Ben: After some games, I thought RF/RS Ironsouls was descent, but the rest of the team liked plan B more. Therefore we made our final plan our plan B, with one small difference.
Flo – CtC/HG Kurnoth’s Heralds (Decklink)
- Flo decided to offer himself up to the WTC gods and pick from the last four decks remaining. He decided on CataHunting due to its incredible ability to play passively. However his warband choice of Kurnoth’s allowed him to also play the aggressor into hold decks, allowing him to have a descent matchup spread all around. Thus he was one of our two “sacrifices” while creating matchups.
Rudolf – BA/RF The Wurmspat (Decklink)
- Rudi has played a lot of BARF and has seen a descent bit of success with them as well. As we needed one elite aggro player, he decided to take the job. He decided on running Wurmspat, wanting the incredible stats, warscroll and tankiness over slightly more damaging alternatives (although they do still pack a punch).
Nicola – PnP/WnR Spiteclaw’s Swarm (Decklink)
- Nicola opted to play a passive version of Spiteclaw’s Swarm, wanting to take full advantage of the Confusion (which also usually guarantees Strip), the Guard and the revives on the warscroll. With Wrack and Ruin, opponents will also have to think of moving a fighter onto a treasure to deny Strip and into an edge to deny Stay Close. This deck can play into almost anything and was thus our second “sacrifice”.
Luba – EotK/DS Thorns of the Briar Queen (Decklink)
- Our team also opted to play EotK/DS Thorns, with EotK being an incredible deck for Thorns and a pretty bad deck for most other warbands (except for Gitz) and Deadly Synergy making all the ghosts defend on basically 2 shields. Luba decided to play this due to her descent result at the Vienna Masters with the same pairings.
Me – ES/NoP The Starblood Stalkers (Decklink)
- Surprising literally everybody, I am playing ES/X, where in this case X is Nexus of Power. Even though I do not personally like Nexus as a hold deck, this pairing can still work. I opted for Starblood Stalkers, given that I had a lot of experience with them and they benefit a lot from the extra range and the early pushes for easier inspires, which are the main benefits of NoP.
Overall, this team composition is incredibly solid. We have a deck for almost every game plan and each player has multiple good matchups and almost no “I might as well concede before the first action” matchups. We opted to have two “sacrifices” in Nicola and Flo, depending on the specific choices of our opponents and who generally fairs better or worse into them.
DECK GUIDES
Michael: Since Ben and I are the only players this year who wanted to do a write up, we will only talk about our decks.
Keeping in mind that this is a team event, here is my CataWrack Ylthari deck:
At first glance this deck might seem like an atrocity (I mean, LIVING ON THE EDGE? and The End is Nigh????) But I had a very clear vision behind it. You may notice that there isn’t a single token-related card in the deck and in theory this entire deck can be scored by only one fighter on the board, which is how I was planning to win. In fact, I could get tabled and still score my stuff cause CataWrack has some insane passive glory. In addition this deck plays a lot into the fact that at a 2-Day Bo3 event with 6 rounds, players will most likely get more tired as the game progresses, and since my deck is less to be scored by me and more to be denied my opponent, it should naturally get stronger throughout the course of the event (don’t ask how it makes sense, it does in my head).
On surges, the hardest stuff here was actually Collateral Damage cause I either didn’t die or died too fast or drew it in Round 3. I was really happy scoring it. Too Close for Comfort seems like a choice with Along in the Dark, but it worked very well and I always loved it in my hand. Strong Start may seem interesting but it was the ‘6th surge’ and performed remarkably well – any game I scored it I usually won. The other three surges don’t really warrant an explanation, they are just super easy to do.
The end phases require some more explaining. Spread Havoc, Hounds of War, Loaded for Bear, and Ploymaster are all super easy to score and cannot be denied by my opponent unless they also play The End is Nigh. I basically started each game with 5 extra glory from these cards. The 2 Infamous WnR end phases (Alone in the Dark and Stay Close) were both really good, even in a Bo3 setting, cause they a) are scorable in like 80% of matchups, and the hardest matchups (swarms) are countered by my warband and b) can be scored at any point in the game. I kind of played them like a two-part Annihilation, where it gets better the less fighters are on the board. I scored them fairly often (in almost every game I scored at least one). Finally, Living on the Edge is here for many reasons. First of all, I would glady leave it at home but then my glory total is 15 so I had to take it. Second, as I said, I don’t want to be forced to commit to any position, so I didn’t want to take the ‘better’ Set Explosives. Finally, I actually have a surprising amount of ways to force it!
The power of my objective deck lies in that I don’t need to do much outside of play WHU to score it, so I can focus a lot on denial of my opponents stuff. Most of my games saw me scoring less than 17 glory, in fact only 1/14 of them went over that. But I still managed to win 8/14 games – so a little more than half – despite not scoring my whole deck just cause of how easy it is to commit to denial. Against aggro stuff like BA/RF or DS/EotK I can reliably keep up in kill trades and then use Ylthari’s superior mobility to run away, while versus hold stuff my invasion isn’t really bad and my killing power is huge so it’s not like they can easily get on tokens. Also then I score my Alone in the Dark and Stay Close easier unless I somehow manage to get a token in an edge hex.
in practice games with Ben the night before, we did manage to end up with an edge hex token. which may have led to my losing of the game.
Now onto the ploys!
The immediate standout is The End is Nigh, which I will cover in a seperate section cause it’s so important and take this time to plug our Misrecarded article on the card so go check it out.
Now onto the pings. I run all but two available in the pairing – I skipped Deadly Traps cause it’s Deadly Traps, and I opted to skip Ominous Rumbling because it never actually does what you want. You want accuracy? Take a ping instead. You want damage? Yeah, your opponent is taking the staggers and then insta delving so it doesn’t matter. Total Collapse deserves a special shoutout as it can actually force Living on the Edge at Cata 3+, since you can inflict damage to yourself up to your Cataclysm. Total Collapse, Sunder the Realm, Improv Attack, and Volcanic Eruption are all S-Tier pings because they can kill stuff, which is super important. Sunder the Realm is the most accurate of the bunch but also covers up the least area, while Total Collapse and Volcanic Eruption have a HUGE advantage in that they are undodgable – nowhere on the board is safe. I therefore also put in Fault Lines, a ping that is also undodgable but can only target healthy fighters (and then pings me back so I score Living on the Edge lol). In my 14 games only one of my fighters died to my own Fault Lines, so that doesn’t really matter. It’s such a good card – allowing for guaranteed +1 Damage on something. It also has insane synergy with Total Collapse and Volcanic Eruption where I can very reliably delete a 2 Health Fighter anywhere on the board, which is really good for Stay Close. Damned if you Do is my last ‘ping’ which is mainly here to set up Stay Close/Alone in the Dark. It also combos with my undodgeable pings as it is technically also undodgeable.
Violent Blast and Countercharge are my pushes. Violent Blast always feels great and I like to play near Stagger Hexes so it’s very nice there. It also helps set up my positional cards. Countercharge does the same but also allows Skathael to attack more than once a round, which is OP and might need a nerf.
Finally, Viscous Intent and Fireproof. Viscous Intent is great and has insane synergy with my warscroll +X Damage because I could potentially hit a 5 Hammer Ensnare 5 Damage attack, which is funny as heck. Even at worst, it’s 4 Hammers. Next, Fireproof is Fireproof. There was a deck iteration where I replaced it with Ominous Rumbling which was even more killy, but for WTC I opted to take Fireproof instead and it proved to be the right choice (crazy how one of the strongest cards in the game feels good to play, right?)
Finally, onto the upgrades.
Mobility cards I have are Visions of Ruin and Wary Tread, both of which are BEYOND BUSTED. Visions allows my fighters to hit 8 move and with my teleport it allows for TWO fighters to be ‘8 move’. Wary Tread makes the Wrack 2-Glory stuff wayyyy easier, and is a 10/10 card. Also have fun scoring Strip the Realm vs. it.
For accuracy, I took both Cleave and Ensnare in Inescapable Grasp and Sundering Weapon. It felt nice to have access to both and it really never bricked my hand, as worst case it was The End is Nigh fodder or Loaded for Bear material.
For weapon upgrades, I took Hurled Weapon and Desperate Rage. Hurled Weapon is fantastic on Skhathael and makes him an insane threat, and the crit cleave is nice to have. Desperate Rage on this warband goes crazy cause you have built in +Dice on your warscroll, as well as +Dmg if necessary. It also helps with Living on the Edge and Ahnslaine’s fairly pathetic melee attack gets diffed by it. Technically a damage upgrade too, Rock-Splitting Tread was super nice to have in the couple games it went off cause it lets me do some really funny shenanigans with my kill pings, since it triggers after my last Action Step, my opponent has no chance to react to me just charging adjacent to someone, hitting them for 2, pinging them with the upgrade and using a kill ping of choice to secure a bounty.
Finally, survivability stuff is very out of theme of the deck but it’s also my largest category. Utter Conviction went onto Skhathael 50% of the time, Ahnslaine 30%, and the other two 20%, and every single time it did pretty well. Admittedly this event was pretty bad for my experience with Utter Conviction as I lost two games due to 3 Shields/Flanked just outright not working against 3 Swords. Great Fort is Great Fort, just keep in mind it does anti your own Living on the Edge so be wary when using it. Desperate Defense is therefore a ‘better’ Great Fort in this one case, since your Health count doesn’t change. Finally, with the amount of Friendly Fire my pings inflict, I can’t skip Unstoppable, and it had a lot of impact over my games.
Now onto the End is Nigh. I took pictures of cards discarded throughout the event, and here’s a final tally.
For my opponents:
- Inviolate (ES/NoP Gardeners)
- Sidestep (ES/NoP Gardeners)
- never played it in Spiteclaw game 😦
- Determind Effort (BA/RF Wurmpsat)
- Catch Weapon (BA/RF Wurmspat)
- never rolled it in Soulraid game
- Desperate Defense (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
- Countercharge (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
These are pretty good cards, especially when you consider that I barely actually drew The End is Nigh this tourney. Often times it kept coming up inside my planted cards which meant I only got 1-2 uses of it instead of the supposed 4. In addition, my rolls for it were quite bad. I still wouldn’t have cut it given the chance, cause against both Gardeners and BA/RF Wurmspat the discards did win me the game (as is my firm belief). So that’s 2/14 games won, which is pretty good, considering that most cards do not have that much impact on their own to credit an entire game to them!
For me:
- nothing from Gardeners
- never played it in Spiteclaw game
- Inescepable Grasp (BA/RF Wurmspat)
- Fault Lines (BA/RF Wurmspat) (also led to Low on Options scoring)
- never rolled it in Soulraid game
- Wary Tread (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
- Desperate Rage (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
- Violent Blast (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
- Hurled Weapon (CtC WnR Wurmspat)
- Had to Focus it away R1 against CtC HG Hrothgorn which drew me into a ploymaster-able hand.
You might think that this is pretty bad for my own discards, but if you think about it, really the worst thing that happened was me losing Hurled Weapon vs. a CataWrack Wurmspat. Do I need my Inescapable Grasp vs. Wurmspat BA/RF? No. Do I want to play a Fault Lines against an uninspired Wurmspat? No. Yes I have to admit that in my CataWrack Wurmspat game the card hurt me more than it helped, which is pretty bad, but to be fair – I did send the card when my opponent had more cataclysm than me, which was not very bright (but it was rlly funny so you know I had to).
Overall, I would keep the End is Nigh in the deck. You have lots of cards that are situationally great which means lots of stuff to have as ‘ballast’ for it. Your opponent’s usually don’t know how to play around it (for example against the Soulraid player he decided to play his entire power hand in one power step, namely power step two of the round) which means it often hurts them even if you don’t actually make a single roll for it. It’s such a great card – try it next time!
Ben: Here is the deck that I ended up with.
The core idea of the deck is to put Skinks on tokens (hopefully 2-3) and wait until glory starts flowing. This is a pretty standard version of this deck combination, especially for the Starblood Stalkers, however there were a couple of card slots that could be changed. One upside this deck does have is that it does exactly one thing most of the time, which makes playing it not that complicated when playing 12-18 games of WHU over 2 days.
Starting off with the Surges, this pairing has a descent bit of flexibility. With the exception of Aggressive Defender, which is free, every other surge could be exchanged for something else (mostly because they are all incredibly bad). Claimed is the next best surge and was incredible during the tournament. I almost always scored it in round 1 and 2 and even in round 3 it was still surprisingly consistent. I was also surprised at how descent Step by Step and Sally Forth played. I thought they would be pretty risky, and they were that in some cases, but often I found myself being able to score them because A.) my opponent has already invaded me and their territory is safer B.) My opponent missed an attack into 2 dodge on guard C.) Kixi charges round 1 with the The Bulwark Celestial and there is literally nothing the opponent can do to stop me. However, Seized and Calculated strike were incredibly bad, with me probably scoring them in less than half the games I drew them (turns out rolling a crit/hitting an attack is pretty hard). The sad thing is that there aren’t really any better options and there are not really any good end phases you are missing out on, so in they go.
The End Phases were mostly trivial to put in, with Supremacy and Iron Grasp being auto includes from ES and Close the Vice and Skin of their Teeth being incredible from Nexus. Close the Vice was annoying some of the time, forcing you to make bad activations, but Skin of their Teeth actually played decently, making up for the other Nexus objective. The only real decision I made here was Domination vs Slow Advance vs Hold 1/2. With the Domination ruling published a couple days before deck submission by the Community FAQ requiring the fighters to be adjacent to only 2 treasures I decided to include it last minute, exchanging it with Slow Advance. Luckily this worked well, with that extra flexibility making the objective way easier to score than expected (although keeping three fighters alive was sometimes a challenge).
This deck has the incredible benefit of often having more passive glory than the opponent, especially with how taxing playing ES/PnP, the best passive deck in the game, is to the rest of the team. This forces the opponent to engage you on your terms, next to treasure tokens, allowing you to often get charges onto treasures to get kill bounty while scoring your objectives. The only downside is that you almost want to avoid your surges, with them being pretty inconsistent. I found myself discarding any surge I was not sure I could score in the next battle round to dig for the glory bombs of Supremacy, Iron Grasp and Skin of their Teeth.
Moving on to the ploys!
Firstly, the most important part of a hold deck: the pushes. I opted to play most mobility card in the pairing, with the only two I opted not to run being The Extra Mile, probably the worst push in the game, and Organised Efforts, which is actually not terrible, but is slightly situational. Sidestep is incredible in every deck, but especially in this deck as it allows you to push onto a token in the power step or artificially increase your move by pushing 1 hex before your activation. Pilferer is slightly worse, but still allows you to push onto a token, which is its main use case. For both of these cards, using them during your opponents power step to set up an inspiration for your next activation is incredibly powerful, especially if the opponent does not expect 3 hammers with cleave to be hitting them that turn. Confusion is absolutely busted, especially in the ES mirrors, allowing you to very skilfully deny every objective of the opponent while scoring every objective you have (although it does often say “Your opponent discards ‘Confusion’”). Move at the Opening is a free move action, allowing you to proactively get on multiple treasures and threaten inspiration by activation 1 or 2 easily. Especially in combination with either Sidestep or Pilferer, it is possible to reach three treasures before your second activation. The only card that is somewhat questionable here is Hidden Paths. However, I found that being able to sneak a fighter to the other side of the board when the opponent was not expecting it immensely helpful. Since your opponent often invades you and you sometimes loose the roll off, it is often the case that the opponent places 1 or 2 treasures in the very back of their territory. Hidden Paths allows you to reach those tokens, turning the opponents strategy of making tokens hard to reach against them.
Defensive and Anti-Driveback ploys are also incredibly valuable for this pairing. I opted to play 3/5 options in this pairing, skipping out on Hold the Line! because I have a better version on my Warscroll and Dig In, as it needs to be used proactively before I know how well I or my opponent rolled and I already have a reroll on my warscroll. The first ploy I played was Settle In. Guard is incredible in this deck (in any hold deck for that matter), improving your survivability and keeping you on the token. The same is true for Into the Deepwoods, which is slightly worse than Settle In, forcing you to invade, but it still incredibly powerful. And then Healing Potion is obviously good, although it is slightly worse in this deck than most others, due to its less than optimal interaction with Skin of their Teeth (turns out healing can make a fighter no longer wounded).
The third category of ploys in my deck are the Miscellaneous Ploys (also know as any that do not fit the two categories above). Starting off with By the Numbers, which is in my opinion the strongest ploy in the game. It almost always reads “Draw Two” and sometimes reads “Draw Three”. Both of these effects are incredible. However, if By the Numbers is one of the easiest auto-include in the deck, the slot spent on Defiance is incredibly flexible. During Deckbuilding there were times where I had Organised Efforts, Hold the Line!, Dig In and Unearthed Treasures in the list instead of Defiance. However, I found the extra accuracy to be incredibly valuable to get important kills and increasing the odds of a driveback/overrun when it is important. Also it increases the dice to roll a crit for Calculated Strike and for successful attacks for Seized, which actually could come up.
Lastly, here are the upgrades. For this deck, there are barely 10 playable upgrades, so I will keep this section more brief.
Firstly are the defensive upgrades. Here is already the real reason I picked Nexus to pair with ES, one that I have kept secret for this entire article up until this point. I have the choice between two Inviolate arts. Anyway, Inviolate is a pretty good card, especially against Deadly Synergy, making the matchup way more in your favour than my opponents expected (which is good, as I was paired into 3 times during the event). Great Fortitude is Great Fortitude, so obviously it is good. The same goes for Agile with a small caveat being that you already have a reroll and rerolls don’t stack very well. Brute Momentum is an incredible piece and actually the only non-guard anti-driveback card I am playing. This is because generally Bulwark Celestial is used in the first round and drawing a card such as Hold the Line in that round is a complete waste. However, Brute Momentum is good at all times, but especially to make Sally Forth easier.
Moving on to attack upgrades, we have Duellist. Duellist is the only card in the pairing that can guarantee overruns (other than confusion, but that card is busted) and thus is incredibly important if your opponent decided to move onto a token you really need to hold. It also sometimes gives you +1 move, which is nice when it comes up. Keen Eye incredible for Hold, as accuracy is more important than damage when you need to get the opponent off of a treasure in your territory to score Iron Grasp. Although Great Strength is also good, as getting kills you usually don’t is still valuable in Hold and having a random 3 hammers 4 damage attack at range 2 is pretty good. Speaking of 3 hammers 4 damage at range 2, Spiteful Defender is another Grievous upgrade, although it is certainly worse than Great Strength. Not working on a charge is not always the best, but the extra damage is still incredibly good when it does come up. Also the next best option is Mirror Shield and that card is incredibly bad, so Spiteful Defender was my last upgrade to include. Cautious Attitudes, on the other hand, is an incredible upgrade that allows you to get attacks off that feel a bit like cheating. Klaq-Trok at range 2 was already bad enough, what would happen if he was at range 4 instead. This upgrade is incredibly flexible and not breaking on a miss also “guarantees” it gets value. In addition, if you are lucky, you can get multiple ties and thus drive the opponent back without breaking the upgrade, which is sometimes better than actually hitting the attack.
The last upgrade in the deck is Great Speed. This card was incredibly useful, especially as I found myself uninspired in a lot of my games. When the skinks are already at 5/6 move, Great Speed often does nothing. However, if the skinks are stuck at 4/5, Great Speed can open up a lot of options and cause the dinosaurs to teleport across the entire board.
Michael: And that is finally it!
CONCLUSION
With this article, our WTC 2026 content train comes to an end. Thanks a lot for reading it despite us taking genuinely three months to come out with everything! We hope you enjoyed 🙂
As always, massive shoutout to Honza for the stellar organization as well as to all 70-75 players who came in order for us to have an absolutely amazing weekend in Olomouc! I hope to see everyone again next year for the inevitable WTC 2027 – don’t listen to the WHU doubters :))
If you want to contact me or Ben and chat about WTC or the article or stagger tokens, feel free to check out the Staggerers discord server! With that, again thanks for reading – and I hope to see you again soon 🙂
