Happy Friday everyone! I'm finally back from my rather long hiatus, but I've got a great faction for you today.

The Deep Dwarves are awesome. Just so cool, I love everything from the tattooed faces to the evil things you can use this deck to do to your opponent.

Who Should (and Shouldn't) Play the Deep Dwarves?

Do you like turtling? Waiting carefully to plan an all out pulverization of your opponent? Carefully saving events or champions for the right time to make your opponent cry and take victory right out of his grasp? You should play the Deep Dwarves. If you aren't patient and don't think defensively, you're not going to have an easy time with this faction. Timing and patients are a must!

Basic Play: Commons

I like one of the three commons: the Gem Mage. This guy is just fantastic, but he's a little on the weak side, so you have to be careful about positioning. Ideally, you want to make your opponent walk into his lane of fire. His two abilities are both fantastic, and frequently worth using. Just make sure you don't throw these guys away, they're expensive, so you don't want to waste magic.

Miners are okay, they are a one attack two toughness common with an adequate ability. It's hard for me to get excited about them, but they are useful as a gem mage screen. However, if you have a few of them on the field, it is possible to set up a gang up kill on a summoner or a tough champion.

Scholars are my least favorite Deep Dwarves unit. They may just require more careful positioning, but my general experience has been I basically have no use for the one on the field and burn the others for magic. I'm sure someone out there has stories about games won with them, or how they're great as mini-walls, but I'd just rather play a gem mage.

Advanced Play: Events

The Deep Dwarves events make up for their fairly bland commons, these are amazing!

Illusionary warrior equals a free common from your magic pile as long as you have a gem mage out (so make sure you've always got one on the field).. Do I need to say any more? Save this for something good, use it to get a free gem mage, or really annoy your opponent, kill his Savager, Smasher, Lioneer, then blink its illusion back to fight for you. So who cares if your commons are only okay when you can make illusions of someone else's?

Magic Stasis has so many ways to use, you can use it to keep your opponent from refortifying with units and set yourself up for a push next turn, you can use it to just harass them. The one thing to keep in mind it doesn't protect you from catch up events like Reinforcements, so be careful about that.

Magic Torrent is great! It's really your own little catch up event that can pay for itself. It's also a huge range area effect, 4 squares is unbelievable! I like to use it to relieve pressure on my summoner, but there's no reason you couldn't also use it to help push.

Summoning Surge we've seen before, but it's a handy little way to get some extra magic for Magic Torrent or a champion, or even some of your commons' abilities.

And last but not least, Wake the Father Gem. You should really imagine the earth shaking whenever you read that card. This can suddenly set up an awesome blitz, your gem mages all start attacking like champions with three dice, then teleport away, your miners can all blink to join each other to gang up on a champion. Heck, your scholar might even be able to help. Never burn this for magic, save it for when you really need it.

Advanced Play: Champions and Summoner

Let's just start with Tundle. He can generate you one magic per turn, but that's not all! He can also put dead warriors back in your pile to be targets of illusionary warrior. Oh yes, it's a beautiful thing. Don't forget to use his ability every turn you possibly can!

I love all of the champions, they're just great! Don't forget Wake the Father Gem works on them, so take advantage of that.

Sprog is great for just moving walls around, yours or your opponents. There are all sorts of things you can do if you can keep him alive. Stack all of his walls in front of each other? Sure. Move your wall to open up a new attack angle that isn't covered? Okay. Reconfigure your walls to block old angles of attack? Go for it! Don't forget he's got a ranged attack too.

Kynder is a great bargain and is just cool. His ability is handy, but don't forget you're get a 6 health unit with 2 attacks for 5 magic, that's already a good deal. Don't forget his ability can be used at any time during your turn on anyone but him. So, if you set it up right, you can attack say, a champion or summoner with Kynder, then push that unit to be attacked by other units, or push it into a ranged attack. You can also keep him close to jiggle your summoner around, so go for an offensive torrent of magic, then push your summoner back to safety. Or use him to give a unit an extra boost to get to attack a someone your opponent thought was safe.

Lun is interesting. I'm not a huge fan of the low health, but the ability to teleport commons to himself is handy. Use him with a pair gem mages and wake the father gem for a quick strike and teleport retreat. So he could call them to a forward firing position, have them blast things for 3, then they blink back to a wall. Besides, he's got a 3 attack for a four cost, which is a pretty good deal. Don't expect him to last long and don't let him get swarmed.

Conclusion

I really like the Deep Dwarves. Their units are so cool, and they make me want to play them. My only problem is they just don't fit my play style, so I'm not naturally good with them. I want to be aggressive, in my opponent's face, and smashing things. However, I'm really enjoying learning a different way to play, they present a great challenge for me, so don't think for a second I'm going to stop playing them. If I can play them, you can too! So go out and undermine your opponent.

Posted by David Kartzinel