Wasteland Skimmer surge discussion

I wanted to get the ball rolling on some ideas for Skimmer surge decks as we should hit level 12 today or tomorrow.

Commanders: Dracorex, Thadius (Lucina/Dalia?) - Interested to hear opinions on this; currently I'm leaning towards Draco

Extra cards:
Rox Chainblade - useful stats plus tribute on 1 delay makes this the most valuable addition to skimmer decks
Executioner - skimmer rally + swipe on 1 delay = win
Ravenous Dredge/Stealthy Niaq - both cards are good in pretty much any deck, makes you less vulnerable to mimic (dredge>niaq imo)
EMP/Plasma - versatile cards with lots of situational uses
Hellion - flurry with skimmer's rally is strong, also has 2 wait, flying, and jam, but still I suspect just adding more skimmers might be better
Mortar bunker- because 4 rally isn't enough! also added protection against fear... not sold on this card in this deck though
Utopia Beacon - damage sponge for the popular quick hitting strike decks
-more cards I'm sure I haven't though of yet, please post yours-

The deck I will be trying first is Draco, Skimmer (6), Rox, Executioner, Dredge, Niaq
The above is likely to change, possibly to add a plasma or beacon in place of a skimmer if my skimmers are frequently dying before activation.

Please share your ideas!

well i dont have rox, but:
1. 1 skimmer is probably a good addition to every surge deck.
2. i dont think i will treat skimmers as core of the deck. i will put them into strike deck, ogre deck. not to daizon deck.

these are my thoughts for this moment. i have no time to build decks in next few days, and i need to use the cards a bit to evaluate usefullness of them

How are you supposed to kill Ogres with Draco?

Read the rest of your post now. Hellion with Thadius can do the trick. If you drop it first, it will deal 4.5 dmg average plus jam, compared to Skimmer's 5. Then it will suck completely vs Draco and Lucina, so you will want to skip dropping it vs these, but one or two should be fine. Well, then again, if it turns out that most creatures that present trouble have 4 or 5 toughness (which Skimmer kills always, and Hellion only 50%), and jam doesn't do much good.. but this can only be solved by playtesting.

kfsw wrote:

2. i dont think i will treat skimmers as core of the deck. i will put them into strike deck, ogre deck. not to daizon deck

The more I think about this, the more this seems right. If 6 skimmers are effective, 3 will probably also be effective, and skimmers don't have as much synergy with themselves as other spam cards like SC and Ogres. Plus a lot of defenses have already started to load up on mimic and other skimmer defenses, so having other ways to win could prove vital.

Dustangel wrote:

How are you supposed to kill Ogres with Draco?

You're right, this could definitely be a problem, and is the biggest argument in favor of Thadius (and the reason I think he is superior on defense in current meta).

I just did some messing around with evaluate decks, and two of the cards that helped skimmers the most against ogres were Mortar Bunker and Warehouse (Harbor Command was actually best but I think would be worse against other decks). Dracorex,Mortar Bunker,Wasteland Skimmer(5),Rox Chainblade,Warehouse,Executioner,Ravenous Dredge has a 46% shot against Draco,Ogre( 8 ),Asylum(2) with some ordering and would do better in the hands of a human. This isn't that bad as long as you can get higher winrates against other decks.

But like we have all already said, it's hard to know a card before actually playing with it.

I'm also with kfsw on this, we discussed it briefly in gtalk once. Agreement seems to be 1-2 of these will be great, but more than won't do so well. Important to note these things will be crushed by the common luci deck so the possibility of being forced to play one cause you have nothing else will end up killing you allot. I'm going with 1.

surge decks are always about being able to hit wide range of defense decks. skimmers themselves dont win with:
1. skimmers
2. strikers
3. mimic

After some trial runs with various skimmer decks, I'm back to my Ogres. Skimmers' weakness to strike and the variance related to unpredictable rallies were too much for me.

I think I overrated Skimmers initially because strike decks were less common and not as well built when I did most of my work with Evaluate Decks.

well skimmers need to start first. in this case they are deadly. luci+ 10 skimmers give over 90% on fight

The legendary Imp from the new raid will help against strikes.
1/4/2 refresh, weaken all 1, protect all 1

Also put in a plasma field, it will help a lot when surging.

I've been trying different variations of Skimmer spam surge deck... I'm sure there is a better combination out there but this seems to beat most decks only issue is Lucina/Strike decks which sometimes you can beat but you need some luck ... obviously every deck has a weakness though so not the end of the world.

Thaddius, 6x skimmer, Revolution, Tiamat, Sharpshooter, Fighter Jet.

I've used a couple variations so far this seems to be on of the more effective. I'm sure we can come up with something better though, if I had Helion I would for sure use that in place of one skimmer.

Also this is obvious but Rox Chainblade if you have it would be a fantastic addition to this deck.