Shambling Hordes + Wooden Stake?

Wooden Stake
Type: Equipment
Melee weapon.
Strike: strength damage. If more than 1 damage is inflicted on an opposing vampire by this weapon in a given combat, that vampire is sent to torpor. In that case, this card is transferred to that vampire, and he or she doesn't untap as normal during the untap phase as long as he or she remains in torpor.

Shambling Hordes
Type: Ally
Requires: Necromancy
Cost: 3 blood
Zombie with 3 life. 0 strength, 0 bleed.
[nec] When Shambling Hordes enters play, remove an ally or vampire in your ash heap from the game or burn the Hordes. The Hordes gets +1 strength for each life counter it has. It can never gain life; any life it gains goes to the blood bank instead. The Hordes can enter combat with any minion as a action.
[NEC] As above, with 4 life.

Concealed Weapon
Type: Combat
Only usable before range is determined.
This minion equips with a non-unique weapon card from your hand (requirements and cost apply as normal). The weapon cannot cost 3 or more pool or inflict (with a regular strike) aggravated damage or 4 or more damage.

do these 3 cards work well enough together to build around and if so what crypt stands to take the most advantage of the concept?

I am not sure that a 4-life Shambling horde can use concealed weapon for Wooden Stake, my memory being hazy on the strength+n damage weapon.

More seriously, Shambling horde tend to be strong enough to not need Wooden Stake. It's way simpler and thus less prone to failure to put into play more shambling horde than shambling horde + Wooden Stake.

If you do want to try this out (hey, no harm in trying), I recommand to load up with card retrieval card, so that you can filter your combo more easily. Nicomedes seem to be a must for this, as do the classics things like Dream of the Sphinx, etc ...

Ohlmann wrote:

I am not sure that a 4-life Shambling horde can use concealed weapon for Wooden Stake, my memory being hazy on the strength+n damage weapon.

I can't see why not..disguised weapon requires obfuscate, concealed weapon does not. the stake does strength damage, so it should still fit under the 4 damage clause as it's only 4 damage after you add the hordes strengh. It's non-aggravated. Most Giovanni have easy access to graverobbing which in conjunction with heidlberg castle would allow me to cycle wooden stakes back onto one of the shambling hordes. I've just got 22x shambling horde and I want to use them..

Shambling horde are strong - but they don't need wooden stake to be strong, that's for sure . Secretlibrary show more than 10 tournament-winning deck with shambling hordes ; and the two main 'problem' when building a shambling horde deck are usually putting enough ally in the ash heap, and then blood management on vampire to recruit the shambling. Shambling themselves are more than able to torporize vampire by themselves, whithout any help.

My rule interrogation is because a shambling horde does 4 damage with a wooden stake, while 4 damage is already too much for Concealed (since the weapon cannot do "4 or more damage")

Ohlmann wrote:

My rule interrogation is because a shambling horde does 4 damage with a wooden stake, while 4 damage is already too much for Concealed (since the weapon cannot do "4 or more damage")

I take it then a shambling horde with 3 life can use concealed weapon + wooden stake? As I understood the wording on concealed weapon "-The weapon cannot cost 3 or more pool or inflict (with a regular strike) aggravated damage or 4 or more damage." the key term being regular strike. As I understood this was to mean the weapon by itself cannot inflict 4 damage as a strike- no concealed assualt rifle- but maybe I should post this question in the rules section.

as for my insistance on using the wooden stake, I kind of like the idea of sending more than one vampire to torpor with the same shambling horde as opposed to trading 1x horde or more in combat with any vampire with capacity above 7 I also figure it would make sense to use it with graverobbing as that way the stolen vampire isn't empty when you take control of him/her + you get the wooden stake back to hopefully use again with rave or heidlberg castle I'm working on a decklist.

This is an interesting idea. The combo works well-enough, sure. But instead of a 3-card combo, why not just use a two-card combo of Shambler+{generic press}? You'll get it more often and a large percentage of vampires will still go to torpor from it -- albeit fewer than with the three-card combo and they will untap, so it isn't as cool.