I wanted to share a fun, theme army, using Hunter’s Mark and Explosions!
Troops:
Gorgotha
Emperina
Orion
Acolyte
Home City: Khaziel +2 Brown
Banner: Khaziel +2 armor for Gotgotha and Emperina
I’d been wanting to use Orion for a while, and found a lot of armies where he works, but are kind of dull. I like his Hunter’s Mark, and I needed a way to use it with the troops I had. When I realized Hunter’s Mark doubled the damage from exploding skulls, I decided to build around it.
Gorgotha - Brown/Yellow - explodes 7 gems
This is the main engine for the deck. Hopefully durable enough to hold down the front line, and let the explosions roll.
Emperina - Red/Brown - Give 3 attack and life, then heal and cleanse.
So every tank needs a healer. The ability to cleanse and heal can help with webspinner and true damage deck.
Orion - Yellow/Green - Hunter’s Mark, 3-17 damage, +5 magic
So he’s our ranged DPS. You never know if he will be awesome or AFK. Use him to lay down a HM on your chosen target, or sometimes he just nukes them all by himself.
Acolyte - Blue/Purple - Create 10 Brown, +1 Magic
He helps speed up the army, and one active, it makes for a pretty decent, non-infinite loop.
Playing:
Focus on Brown and Yellow to power up Gorgotha. If possible, charge Emperina to have a heal on hand.
As needed, use Emperina to heal Gorgothra, boosting attack and life.
Try to figure out if you want to HM the first troop or the second on the opponents side. If their lead troop is low on health (<5), you may want to have Orion target the second in line. Keep in mind exploded gems do 1 damage, but 2 if the troop has a HM attached. If your explosion will kill the lead troop without Orion hitting them, then targeting the second troop give you the possibility of a death cascade. Gorgotha will be gaining attack over the match as Emperina heals it.
Try to keep an eye on how much brown is on the field. If it’s a bit heavy, it may be better to use the Acolyte and try for the odds of a match 4-5 and flooding the field with brown.
Nice catch with the Hunter’s Mark + Exploding Skull!
I tweaked around your concept with my own existing cards, and this is what I end up with.
Carnax - Purple/Red - Exploder, +3 Armor
Main - Brown - Mountain Crusher (secondary exploder)
Sunweaver - Blue Yellow - Target ally gains +6 to Att/Armor/Life/Mana
Orion - Yellow/Green - Hunter’s Mark, 3-17 damage, +5 magic
So while I lose the possible Brown Cycling power of the Acolyte, I gain a much beefier lineup Health and Armor wise as well as a secondary exploder. Carnax is a better frontline Tank because of its +3 Armor, and Sunweaver is hand-down a much better support than Emperina.
This setup is actually more fun than I imagined. Sunweaver can focus on either Carnax or Orion depending on the situation, and I can tear into the enemy rank with either the (buffed) Carnax or Orion.
Admittedly, I lose the cleansing power of Emperina. But let’s face it… Webspinner is scary not because of its poison, but more because of its endless cycles.
Too bad this setup requires human brainpower to be fully functional. I doubt the server would know how to utilize Orion’s HM when using this team as a Defense Team.
Alas, I am still awaiting Carnax. This was also pre-Sunweaver. Sunweaver and Soothsayer are so much fun.
Mountain Crusher is a nice tweak too.
The AI cannot play this combo. LOL! I ran it as a defensive team for around 3 weeks just to see how it would do, and I think I had 5 defensive wins over 200 loses.
I do have Carnex and have experimented a lot with Orion as well. I must say however that I am not overly fond of this combination since Carnex loses much of its potential after two or three activations. Most of the times you will not get more than three or four skulls after exploding all or most existing ones, leaving you with a lot less to work with.
Random exploders like Gorgotha are a lot more reliable in the long run. They can clear out low-skull boards where a Carnex is next to useless. However, the mana overlap is a serious problem with Gorgotha & Orion. I found that Orion works best with Ragnagord. Ragnagord not only provides overlap free mana colours, you can even choose which colour you want to explode, which guarantees at least 6 (assuming level 15 Ragnagord with no kingdom bonus) mana for Orion (possibly more) per activation, which is more than half of what he needs.
If you put your tanky hero in front you have no real need for Emperina. Against the AI the greatest danger will be skulls and AOE skills, since the AI lacks the ability to coordinate single target skills in an efficient way.
I’d like to see Orion and the new troop, Skeleros. Skeleros destroys 8 skulls, so would do 16 damage. He also creates 5 more skulls, so you don’t have to wait for more skulls to appear. The best part is he only requires 8 mana to fill.
Duly noted. Hence that’s what the secondary exploder is there for. To clean the plate, so to speak. Alternating between the two, it’s actually very rare to be missing Brown and Skull at the same time at a given turn.
Despite its limitation in the long run, I picked Carnex precisely because it will hit almost all the skulls on the first hit. This complements the Hunter’s Mark very well.