A very specific list of commons

[Aldin]

I feel it is more reliable then hoping for a 6 for possess.

Yay! Maths!

4xPhantom over multiple turns

Turn 1
2x Adj Phantoms = 30% chance of a successful possession
1 wound caused
Turn 2
3x Adj phantoms (1 killed last turn 2 more added this turn) = 42% chance of a successful possession (cumulative chance of possession over 2 turns = 60%)
2 more wounds caused (3 cumulative wounds)
Turn 3
1x Adj phantom (2 killed last turn) = 17% chance of a successful possession (cumulative chance of possession over 3 turns = 67%)

I think that's a halfway reasonable assessment of how well you might expect to do with 4 Phantoms.

Over two turns with a cultist dying after each turn, you would expect to generate 4 wounds from 6 attack dice rolled and one more from two death rolls for 5 total, 6 with a bit of luck.

Hmmm...

Okay, how about Phantoms are better in the anti-champ role facing 7+ life champs and Cultists are better facing 6- life champs?

[Aleph]

I think that is just part of the game though. I'm not saying Phantoms are useless, I think all of the Fallen Kingdom reinforcements are solid additions but I prefer gaining magic advantage through Greater Raising 6 Cultists. There is no right way to build any single deck though and people are going to have personal preference with some units. I do not like to play with the 1 cost commons in the Fallen Kingdom because I feel like they are just not worth it. Sure the 2 cost commons want to be raised by Ret but that is where crowd control and planning come into play.

You might try to stall the board until you get possess but if you don't possess on your first or second try I doubt your newly possessed champion will be at full life when you take control and that their champion didn't do any damage beforehand. So that 12-14 magic swing might actually be closer to a 6-7 magic swing and that is not even counting the investment you made with summoning the phantoms in the first place. I like to play my decks with consistency and try not to pack them with a bunch of different commons and I am not going to spam the board with a bunch of phantoms.

Crowd control and planning is a fair precis of "skill", and I think either Phantom or Cultist can be used skillfully. We shouldn't apply the benefits of skill to summoning Cultists through Retty and not allow for them in Phantom stalls, however.

If I'm facing a low health enemy champion (Baldur is ideal) I might try to plink them down with a Phantom if Possess doesn't connect. Whereas if it's high health enough that I'm unlikely to make much of a difference with Phantoms (I'm looking at you, Krung, who is a HUGE swing if you can steal him), I might leave the enemy champ unharmed and simply stall them. This preserves their value as a possessed asset and can force your opponent to either retreat and try a different route (which may leave the Phantom alive v. a melee Champ, for a second Possess attempt) or try to grind their way through my cheap Phantom factory.

I'm still not very experienced at SW, but I do find that my game suffers if I try to run too many 2 cost FK commons. I like it on paper for the magic efficiency, but in actual gameplay I then really want to raise them through Ret for the discount. I find this puts 2 limiting factors on my skill: a. it makes my lines of approach quite predictable to my opponent and b. it means that my enemy has a whole turn to react to whatever I summoned before I can move it. I suppose one could argue that skillful Cultist use is knowing when to raise them from Retty and when to wall-summon them, but that's a skill I currently lack.

On the other hand, Phantoms units can pop out of any wall with the same efficiency as being summoned by Retty and can really cause your opponent's stomach to drop when they run at their prized Champion. Maybe this is just a leftover from my playing Benders, but I like playing stressful mindgames on my opponents, and in my (very small) metagame I find that while I sometimes lament the inconsistency of Possess my opponents see a Possess attempt against a Champion as "1-in-6 chance to lose the game outright." Making them afraid of my walls as long as I have 2 magic in hand helps me stall longer.

Finally, in the FK toolbox, I like murdering enemy commons with my Champions (Skhull, Anica, Khan) while possessing enemy Champions with my Phantoms. It gives me a well rounded response set.

Aldin: To be math fair, though, we should treat 3 Phantoms as the cost equivalent to 2 Cultists. True Cost of Phantom is 2, True Cost of Cultist is 3.

[cfstevens91]

I think that's a halfway reasonable assessment of how well you might expect to do with 4 Phantoms.

Over two turns with a cultist dying after each turn, you would expect to generate 4 wounds from 6 attack dice rolled and one more from two death rolls for 5 total, 6 with a bit of luck.

Hmmm...

Okay, how about Phantoms are better in the anti-champ role facing 7+ life champs and Cultists are better facing 6- life champs?

Honestly, I am not going to throw a bunch of commons at a big champ unless all of my champs are dead. I said you could use phantoms in the mid game but in the end game when I don't have anything left I'm going to Greater Raise 6 Cultists and rush your summoner or that last champ if there is one just to whittle them down enough that Ret can finish the job himself. You can play 4 Phantoms and take over my champ but at that point you have used up just as many resources as you would have just summoning Skhull or Elut Bal. You might have taken over my champ but at the cost of playing one of your own.

[killercactus]

Also, if we're gonna compare 4x Phantom to 2x Cultist, remember that 4x Phantom is costing you 8 cards (4 magic + 4 Phantoms) and 2x Cultist only costs 6 cards. To take it a step further, the opponent gets 4 magic for killing those Phantoms, and only 2 for the Cultists, plus Death Curse might get you some back. And to go one more step, Cultists can be Raised for the same price as Phantoms.

FWIW, I usually don't run Phantoms either, but only a few Cultists and prefer to use meat shieldy commons like Reapers and Reavers, and use Zombies to fuel Dark Sacrifice. Different strokes.

[RoloCookie]

Am I the only player who favours a skeletal archer heavy strategy?

Like most, I aim to get three champs out every game when I play FK, but because I can build commons without much worry, and then raise them later at better value, magic comes easy. Once you take Eluts ability into account, and forced summon, I find I often have of plenty magic spare. I do like having meaty commons in my deck to soak damage because FK play so well late game (personally, I like reavers for this role, but reapers serve too) but I usually only throw these guys up as an emergency meat shield, and always build them first. As nice as champs are though, sometimes the game calls for a little extra legwork. Archers are cheap, ranged (for those cheeky pot shots) and best of all, they starve my opponent of magic. An enemy force made up of champs and archers doesn't yield much magic. When I'm lucky enough to get Anica early, the enemy is even hungrier

The result? The opponent either plays too slowly, being magic starved and gets overwhelmed by your champs, or hurries to burn through their deck to build magic. If they do this, throw up your meatshields and outlast them, its what FK do best. I've already pointed out that the FK play well late game, so any unit that encourages my enemy to rush through their deck gets a thumbs up from me.

In summary: if I wanted to mash your face in, I'd play TO. When I play FK, I want you saying "Where'd my deck go? Why do I have no magic?"

(based on all this, you may be surprised to hear that I actually did find space for a couple of cultists in my deck. Typically, they're not to my taste. They're too expensive for me to reliably out resource anyone when summoned at walls, and too fragile to help me outlast them. As such, I usually build them. Sometimes though I'll need the extra damage, and when that happens I like to know they're in my discard)

[PePe QuiCoSE]

nope, I also think skellies rock. In the standard deck it's the way to go in the early game.
But every FK common is quite good when they work. The only one that I'm not sold on yet is on Reavers, but basically is because they always fail to undie. Zombies are looked down upon, but when they work, they work like 0 costers (through raise and infect).