The Beauty of Global Damage

Global damage - the beautiful ability to simultaneously and universally damage all enemy champions on the map.

Forsaken Wastes Global Damage Deck Experiment:

In experimenting with global damage, I tried to create a Forsaken Wastes 10/10 battlegroup that maximized it, and was competetive against any foe. As it is almost impossible to find any combination of runes that is universally effective, this was no easy task. What I did find was impressive.

With the Nora Surge expansion, a new FW relic, the Chopping Block, was introduced. This relic does 5 damage globally to champion (friend or foe!) with the lowest HP, and you can deploy two of them for stacking damage. 10 damage per turn is great, and rips through low-HP units like healers and archers. So then I added an Unholy Tomb, 2x Festering Wounds, and a Tome of Hate. That is already six out of my 10 rune alotment for a 10/10 deck. The chopping block looks cool, and has a great animation and sound when it processes, which is after you end each turn, at the beginning of the opponent's turn.

Okay, I had some solid global damage, so I tried to round out my deck so it was not a one-trick-pony. I chose ST due to AOE bombs, high HP champs and the added HP faction bonus. I also took four AOE bomb spells - 2x Deep Freeze, 2x Ice Storm. The problem was that any global damage from the Tomb/Festering Wounds hit my ST champions and that was problematic. There was no way around it. I did try FW's Necrosis, but having one of those was not enough due to cooldown, and adding two took up too many rune slots.

I was also using Amplify runes - amplify disease for FW, amplify frost (Ice Shard) for ST.

Results:

The Chopping Blocks alone were okay, unless I got wounded, in which case they could target my own army. The Amplify runes did not help much, due to the fact that they were mostly support runes and not viable melee champions. Overall, there were too many support runes in this deck, and it needed more champions to combat shrine rushes, etc. I could not find a viable FW/ST mix using Unholy Tomb/Festering Wounds. Necrosis did not work, because it further bloated my deck with more support runes. The only way to use this combo with another faction would be to use all FW champions who are immune to disease, and the other faction for relics, spells, and equipment. Unfortunately, 1x Tomb, 1x Tome, 2x Festering Wounds only leave you with 6 extra FW rune slots, which is not enough total champions for a competetive deck. I had tried two Lich Kings with no cooldown (Immortal), and even that was not enough to stop rush decks.

Conclusion

I came to the conlcusion that FW is best used full faction for global damage, with the highest hit point champs available, when using the Chopping Blocks. Most enemies I faced crumbled quickly before this onslaught, without even challenging my nora fonts or shrine. Adding cheap, but heavy hitting Short-Lived champs like the Death Guard and Skeletal Berserker further helped on defense, but make sure all champions are upgraded or start above 45 hit points, otherwise your Chopping Blocks will be targetting you! Personally, I would add 2x Throw Bones to my deck so that I could remove any injured champ on the map (that had been inadvertently drawn the attention of my Chopping Blocks), plus boost the HP of my remaining champs by 5 HP.