Mahakam Forge is, as feared, Trash - How to fix it

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rrc

Forum veteran
I had tried my best to build a somewhat viable decent deck with Mahakam Forge, the new Trash leader ability, but actually, there is no way for MF to be even decent in the current state. Reasons
  1. Pathetic Big Boys (cards above 10+ provisions). Munro is easily bricked. There are only two cards which can provide him Rowdy Dwarfs (Zoltan and Zoltan's company). Even if you draw one of them, there are PLENTY of counters for Rowdy Dwarfs. I had played more games where Munro played for 6 than he could convert 2 Rowdy Dwarfs. Even in the best case (where he converts two rowdy dwarfs and all their attacks land on non-shield non-armor units), he plays for 16 for 12P in four turns.
  2. Dwarfs have absolutely no control options. Only Yarpen has 3 damage and he plays for 9 for 9 (with MF, otherwise 8 for 9). And that is it. The 4P Dwarf who does 3 damage is the only other control options. Are they at least greedy and can play engines? Or huge tempo plays? Not nearly close enough like other factions. So, they don't do high tempo plays, they don't have strong engines, and they don't have control. In the Rock, Paper, Scissors metaphor (Control, Engine, Tempo), they don't have any strong point.
  3. A 5 point leader (7 if you have Yarpen in R3) who hardly has any synergy with his high provision cards. Throughout the game, may be he would give more value as every damage gets armored by 1, but he is just as good as playing against Usurper.
  4. Resilience is a joke. It is only ever useful if your opponent drypass in R2 and you have the resilience card in hand. Otherwise, they are just bad. Zoltan is a 8 for 10 and is only so useful in very very niece situations.

So, basically they are tough, they have no control, they have poor/weak engines, extremely risky easily brikcable high provision cards and on top of that, the weakest and the lowest tempo leader in the entire game who has 15 provisions.

How to make it viable/better:
  1. Leader: Whenever a Dwarf ally appears on the board (played or spawned) it gets 1 Armor. Spawn and play Tempering. 16 provisions.
  2. Both Zoltan and Munro should be at 11 provisions. They are terrible for 12 provisions. Munro is an extremely high risk and low to medium reward card.
  3. Pyro Technician should have 2 armor. In its current state is is just miserably bad. Doing random damage can easily backfire on you and he may even play for 1 point (where it hits a drone) or negavite points if it hits a wrong unit (skeleton, dracoturtle, drakkar, redenian ship). No reasonable player will add Pyrotechnician in their deck.
  4. That 6 for 6 Dwarf who moves an ally to the other row is just a sad joke. Why in the freaking world will I want to move an ally to the other row? Make it so move an unit to the other row on Melee and Purify a unit on Ranged.
 
MF is a placebo, nothing more.
His "dwarf only" concept is simply wrong.

The good thing is that we did not need it in ST, it can stay generating spider webs. :beer:
 

Gyg

Forum regular
I think you underestimate the 1 point of armour. Marauders with armour cannot be killed with 5 damage cards. Xavier Moran will generate additional point (boy is he a nice engine, very difficult to kill with damage), Berserkers give additional point, Yarpen gives an additional point. If you save Moran and Yarpen for last round, you will get 9 points from leader easily. Not to mention all damage that will be soaked by armour.
Munro with only one Dwarf gives you 11 points for 12 provisions - not that bricky. Figis will generate additional Rowdy Dwarf.
Resistance Dwarves (Gabor and Zoltan) can be played in R1 to try to get 2:0. Zoltan is very difficult to be dealt with, Gabor will survive a 5 damage thanks to armour.
Also, Novigradian Justice will give a nice 12 points for 10 provisions with either berserker or mercenary.
I agree Paulie is a bit weak - either make his ability an order with zeal or change abilities as you mentioned. And you want to move an allied uit when NG fills your row with spies and you have no place for Oak/Guard/Barclay, which you missed in your analysis. Mahakam Guard for 8 points is very doable in long rounds, Barclay for 12 also. Which are possible because of Zoltan Warrior.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
I think you underestimate the 1 point of armour. Marauders with armour cannot be killed with 5 damage cards. Xavier Moran will generate additional point (boy is he a nice engine, very difficult to kill with damage), Berserkers give additional point, Yarpen gives an additional point. If you save Moran and Yarpen for last round, you will get 9 points from leader easily. Not to mention all damage that will be soaked by armour.
Munro with only one Dwarf gives you 11 points for 12 provisions - not that bricky. Figis will generate additional Rowdy Dwarf.
Resistance Dwarves (Gabor and Zoltan) can be played in R1 to try to get 2:0. Zoltan is very difficult to be dealt with, Gabor will survive a 5 damage thanks to armour.
Also, Novigradian Justice will give a nice 12 points for 10 provisions with either berserker or mercenary.
I agree Paulie is a bit weak - either make his ability an order with zeal or change abilities as you mentioned. And you want to move an allied uit when NG fills your row with spies and you have no place for Oak/Guard/Barclay, which you missed in your analysis. Mahakam Guard for 8 points is very doable in long rounds, Barclay for 12 also. Which are possible because of Zoltan Warrior.
All these points are what I thought when I wanted to try MF. But practically they stand no chance against engine heavy decks, be it (the insane) SY, or NR or SK neither does it stand a chance against high tempo decks like Arachas Swarm. I am currently in Rank 3, and I had the win rate of 1 in 5 or 2 in 5 games. I am not a strong player, but I have enough knowledge to know if a game could have been won if I had played any better. Even after I tech against Hidden Cache with Geralt Yarden, it is simply not enough (I once did close to 50 points Yarden and still lost). Imagine without teching against it. And the worst part is, they both have 15 provisions. :cry::giveup:

I can place an open bet to anyone to win against a half decent Hidden Cache player with MF. It is simply not possible. If you can think of any way you can do that, please let me know and I will try that myself.
 

Gyg

Forum regular
So Dwarves lose to engine heavy decks and they cannot outpoint them - how is it against control decks? Maybe they are semi-point slam that wins against control but loses to engine heavy decks?
I would imagine that against NR decks Dwarves should win R1 at all costs and bleed.
 
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So Dwarves lose to engine heavy decks and they cannot outpoint them - how is it against control decks? Maybe they are semi-point slam that wins against control but loses to engine heavy decks?
I would imagine that against NR decks Dwarves should win R1 at all costs and bleed.

I tested them a bit, against NG poison they are quite solid, as well as against the new ability of NG since they do not give very important objectives.
Extra armor is not very important against damage decks (especially ST).

The problem is that if the leader is changed it is more effective.

The "only dwarves" makes it a very bad choice of leader, since if one wants to resort to elements of control or defense these are not within the dwarf cards and therefore the effect is increasingly weakened.
If you play pure dwarfs it is no different from playing Gernichora, you look only at your side of the board and hope that the other cannot beat you.
 
I had tried my best to build a somewhat viable decent deck with Mahakam Forge, the new Trash leader ability, but actually, there is no way for MF to be even decent in the current state. Reasons

Yup, seems pretty bad. I've met a few and the decks are bad. The leader ability might be decent, not sure, but the supporting cards (dwar cards) seem bad overall.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I havent played enough with them or against them to have a totally formed opinion, but for now i think they arent as bad as rrc is saying. But i agree this new ability is one of the weakest of the new batch. And that against a tier 1, maybe even 2, it wont stand much of a chance.

One of its main problems is the lack of control it provides if you go 'full-dwarf', since now they're all about boosts, and there's just other decks that do that better.

The other problem will only get worse with time, which are the resilience dwarves as a surprise play, which can be game-deciding. But when everyone's expecting those 2, everyone will bleed and not drypass against Mahakam Forge dwarves, just like Invigorate decks suffer now.
 
The issue is honestly not the leader ability, the issue is that dwarves after the rework look individually decent on paper, until you realize that:
1.) Gabor Zigrin, Zoltan Chivay and Yarpen Zigrin are great with the leader ability if thrown into an already functioning archtype
2.) Justice can no longer setup a self sufficient engine (outside of Syndicate) and is thus just a mediocre point slam card
3.) Mahakam Defenders are bad for the same reason Iron Falcon Infantry is bad
4.) Xavier Moran is nice, but a mini version of the "grow 2 points each turn" engines, so just a filler engine
5.) The defender does nothing for them as there are not really any engines worth protecting
6.) Carlo Varese is horribly overprized
7.) Barclay is garbage after being reduced to one row
8.) Mahakam Guard is terrible for the same reason that the examples from 1.) only work in an already working deck
9.) Pyrotechnician not having Zeal means that it is far too slow to answer anything + it is random so unreliable
10.) The other dwarves are horrible and have no worthwhile synergy


The issue is that with engines being more and more important dwarves are terrible at setting up engines that are capable of keeping up and are furthermore unable to answer engines.
Beyond that Resilience is nice, but only when it is unexpected and/or a bonus and there is not even enough of an incentive for swarming, when Zoltan got reworked and the only somewhat playable reward for that would be Mahakam Guard.

To sum it up, dwarves are just sitting ducks after the changes and a protective leader ability on an archtype one can just ignore (given how Gwent works the fact that this statement is accurate is just depressing) does not work, they can neither deny plays, nor threaten explosive turns or setup enough engines.

Edit: To make this clear, in 2.) I do not intend to say Novigradian Justice would be bad, I am stating that Novigradian Justice (as a consistency tool) heavily relies on its targets, which in this case are mediocre..
 
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One of its main problems is the lack of control it provides if you go 'full-dwarf', since now they're all about boosts, and there's just other decks that do that better.

I watched Trynet play a "Dwarf only" deck, and he seemed to be able to win actually. I guess the deck doesn't have to be dwarves only or mostly, but perhaps due to the leader it in a way also has to.

Lack of control seemed like the biggest issue yes, and resilience at the right time the biggest strength. But that doesn't really seem strong enough in any way.
 
[...] resilience at the right time the biggest strength. But that doesn't really seem strong enough in any way.
Resilience at the right time is a strength, the issue is that the right time cannot arrive if you have no other strengths.
Hilariously enough non-dwarf decks are best at using Gabor and the new Zoltan, given that, unless you are capable of exerting pressure, resilience is worth nothing.
 

Gyg

Forum regular
It would help the archetype if the ability to spawn Tempering would be changed to 3 charges of boost by 2 and give 1 armour. It would synergize well with Defenders, Pyrotechnician and Yarpen.
 
Resilience at the right time is a strength, the issue is that the right time cannot arrive if you have no other strengths.
Hilariously enough non-dwarf decks are best at using Gabor and the new Zoltan, given that, unless you are capable of exerting pressure, resilience is worth nothing.

I'm not speaking from experience on that one, neither playing or playing against someone who did that. I simply saw it done on a stream. The streamer was able to assert pressure, which made the resilience move work. He was playing "dwarf only".
 

Gyg

Forum regular
Mahakam Forge could spawn Armory instead of Tempering. Its effect is boost by 6, give 3 armor.
Also Barclay could boost all Dwarves by one, similar to Isengrim.
 
Without even playing I knew it would be trash. They just keep redesigning dwarves over and over never getting it right.
 
I had tried my best to build a somewhat viable decent deck with Mahakam Forge, the new Trash leader ability, but actually, there is no way for MF to be even decent in the current state. Reasons
  1. Pathetic Big Boys (cards above 10+ provisions). Munro is easily bricked. There are only two cards which can provide him Rowdy Dwarfs (Zoltan and Zoltan's company). Even if you draw one of them, there are PLENTY of counters for Rowdy Dwarfs. I had played more games where Munro played for 6 than he could convert 2 Rowdy Dwarfs. Even in the best case (where he converts two rowdy dwarfs and all their attacks land on non-shield non-armor units), he plays for 16 for 12P in four turns.
  2. Dwarfs have absolutely no control options. Only Yarpen has 3 damage and he plays for 9 for 9 (with MF, otherwise 8 for 9). And that is it. The 4P Dwarf who does 3 damage is the only other control options. Are they at least greedy and can play engines? Or huge tempo plays? Not nearly close enough like other factions. So, they don't do high tempo plays, they don't have strong engines, and they don't have control. In the Rock, Paper, Scissors metaphor (Control, Engine, Tempo), they don't have any strong point.
  3. A 5 point leader (7 if you have Yarpen in R3) who hardly has any synergy with his high provision cards. Throughout the game, may be he would give more value as every damage gets armored by 1, but he is just as good as playing against Usurper.
  4. Resilience is a joke. It is only ever useful if your opponent drypass in R2 and you have the resilience card in hand. Otherwise, they are just bad. Zoltan is a 8 for 10 and is only so useful in very very niece situations.

So, basically they are tough, they have no control, they have poor/weak engines, extremely risky easily brikcable high provision cards and on top of that, the weakest and the lowest tempo leader in the entire game who has 15 provisions.

How to make it viable/better:
  1. Leader: Whenever a Dwarf ally appears on the board (played or spawned) it gets 1 Armor. Spawn and play Tempering. 16 provisions.
  2. Both Zoltan and Munro should be at 11 provisions. They are terrible for 12 provisions. Munro is an extremely high risk and low to medium reward card.
  3. Pyro Technician should have 2 armor. In its current state is is just miserably bad. Doing random damage can easily backfire on you and he may even play for 1 point (where it hits a drone) or negavite points if it hits a wrong unit (skeleton, dracoturtle, drakkar, redenian ship). No reasonable player will add Pyrotechnician in their deck.
  4. That 6 for 6 Dwarf who moves an ally to the other row is just a sad joke. Why in the freaking world will I want to move an ally to the other row? Make it so move an unit to the other row on Melee and Purify a unit on Ranged.

I agree with pretty much everything here.

Munro nerf looked terrible as soon as I saw it on the list. The card went from bad to worse. Bad enough that it was a brickable 7 for 11, which, when it hit, either removed boostable bodies from Zoltan OR reversed the boost to convert them into Berserkers, which, as far as synergy goes is mindbogglingly stupid in itself, but NOW it does exactly the same thing, but as a 6 for 12! Hooray!

The pyro is just bad. But I guess it's only 4p, so you can use it as filler and luck out and hit a 4-point engine if they drop if on first turn. The trouble with filler units is, though, you only get to use them when you get a bricked hand, because otherwise you're shuffling them away. EDIT: Realized after I wrote this that Pyro is acturally ORDER, which makes it about twice as bad. Don't think I'll keep it as a filler even.

The new Merc is an easy 7, but I would prefer the old Merc with the new armor, so that at least there's some removal.

I preferred the old Zoltan that destroyed units. The resilience is supposed to be something like the Skellige witch or the flying Redanian, but it's such a major fail compared to both, because unlike them it's not flexible or spammable. To get it up to speed, they would either need to give them "permanent resilience," or keep it one round, but let the unit keep the buffs like they used to.

Paulie's provision buff is nice, and the give 2 armor is semi-useful on Yarpen, but move allied unit is very iffy. It's pointless in movement decks, so the sole purpose seems to be to move Xavier back to melee if he is ever moved to ranged, which is VERY niche, bordering on useless.

I think 16 for leader ability would be OK, but this archtype is still missing a ton of piece to be viable even then.

I'll keep messing around with it for a bit, but I think it's basically back to MEcho dwarves for me, personally.
 
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Gyg

Forum regular
Lets wait and see. Mahakam Forge is quite novel leader skill so assumptions on its power level were maybe too optimistic. Also they reworked great portion of Dwarf archetype so for sure there is room for improvement. I'm glad that they want Dwarves to have its own distinctive feel with resilience and general swarm/point slam.
We cannot say that developers are doing nothing. Lets give them a month or two to iron out the changes. I think that with a bit of provision changes/small buffs they can make it viable. For example Pyrotechnisian could get a point of armour and should damage the highest unit instead of random.
Dwarven Agitator could also give armour and be 3 strength.
 
To be fair I am under the impression that Pyro getting Zeal and targeting (which makes it STs "deal 4 with situational upside" special), as well as a Dwarven Mercenary rework into something actually useful would turn dwarf decks actually decent.
 

Gyg

Forum regular
By useful you mean damage dealing? Reduce provisions by 1 on both ST Zoltans and we will see.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
To be fair I am under the impression that Pyro getting Zeal and targeting (which makes it STs "deal 4 with situational upside" special), as well as a Dwarven Mercenary rework into something actually useful would turn dwarf decks actually decent.
I have tried many different strategies and decks (Mantlet, War Wagon, Iron Falcon Infantry, Korathi Heatwave and Yarden for tech) and I can confirm that unless there is another major rehaul (3 ro 4 bronze dwarfs get reworked and 3 to 4 gold dwarfs get reworked), Dwarfs can never be even Tier 2. Trynet played for one day and he won games with it and even then he was disapproving of Dwarfs being good (even in those games Munro bricked more than getting 2 targets). Pumpkin tried it for a couple of days and then moved on to other leaders. Even the leader is lackluster. Dwarfs should be reworked and the leader should be reworked for them to be any good. Until then there is no chance for dwarfs to manage Liippy or Cache or even Uprising.

At the very least Agitators, and Pyro for bronze and Paulie, Sheldon (who is going to boose Sheldon? When all dwarfs have moved to armor why is he sticking with boost?), Munro (alternate ability and 11 provisions) and Zoltan Warrior (11P) and the leader should have 16 or 17 provisions. Then they can strive to be Tier 2.
 
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