Scarab/Mitosis needs help

[Kowlickkid]

Hi! I recently stumbled upon a combination of scarabs and mitosis that seems to have great potential. Unfortunately, I'm not savvy enough to modify and improve this deck myself(I also have no electrum to upgrade cards). The basic premise is some time and life pillars to fund scarab, mitosis, and empathic bond, with a gravity mark to feed scarabs. What I'm not sure of is how to improve this thing. Any thoughts?

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Deck import code : [Select]

55p 55p 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5c6 5c6 5c6 5c6 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rq 5rq 5rq 5rq 5rq 5rq 8pl

[Aves]

Not bad as a first draft!

The problem with mitosis+bond is that by the time your bonds do anything significant, you've either already gotten full board control or you're dead. Therefore, I'd drop the bonds. This cuts you down to 33 cards.

After that, you probably have a little too much generation, so I'd cut down a few emerald pillars. This leaves you with a nice and slick draw-optimized 30 card deck. At that point, you need to analyze whether or not you have enough to power those hourglasses, or if it wouldn't be faster simply to put in time pillars in their place. The Quanta Index is a good way of figuring that out. Here's a slightly outdated tool that can help you do that quickly. This also applies to the other cards you're using, and helps to determine in what quantities you want them.

6 Scarabs and 4 Mitosis is the core, 'basic premise' of your deck. Add other cards (quanta production, synergising support cards, etc) to base around that! Whilst you do so, always make sure that your total deck size is at around 30 and that your quanta is roughly balanced.

[Kowlickkid]

Well, the absence of empathic bond increases my draw rate of scarabs and mitosis a lot, so that aspect is working out well. The problem I have now is time. Scarabs can take a bit to boost up, and even when they're going, unless the opponent is playing a few creatures, their power doesn't help me a whole lot. It seems that it's either a quick death for me or a lengthy death for my opponent. Creature control is good on my end if I can get them out early enough(without CCs from opponent) but I just feel weak in power. I've come up with a couple ideas, but I'm not sure how good they are:

-Chimera: Expensive, would probably show up at the wrong time, and also would still only be the accumulation of my scarabs' power, but it would bypass shields and have the benefit of a ton of health to work with. I'm thinking this wouldn't be my first choice.

-Catapult: Cheap-ish, with a decent damage output that can easily be replenished by mitosis-ing scarabs. In fact, as I just looked the card up, I saw an old deck called Scarab Cannon. Possible, but it still doesn't improve my chances of survival to get my scarabs up to that point.

-Empathic Bond: Yeah, I just got rid of it, and it's probably a bad idea, but I can't quite shake the thought that it'd be good against a tank. Perhaps one or two instead of 4.

-Adrenaline: While it shares an element, I also feel like it would just clutter, and would furthermore get less effective as the scarabs devour. Thinking a definite no-go here, but perhaps someone knows better.

-Reverse Time: Not the most effective CC card out there, and it would take away stuff from scarab funds, but it would allow me to return the most damaging creatures to fight another day. Unless, of course, the enemy has great quanta production(which I have the worst luck with -_- ).

There may be others. I already took the liberty of adding Eternity in there, just in case of deckout, and maybe Procrastination would do something if played right. Sundial is useless, given my lack of light quanta, and not much else seems to apply(within these elements, of course). So, while I test some of these out, does anyone have any ideas?

[Kowlickkid]

Well, so far, Chimera was an expected failure. It didn't come in handy enough, and even though I only had two, it cluttered my deck. Catapult has gone much better so far. While I haven't seen a whole lot of use for it, it doesn't require so many pendulums to keep it available.

[Aves]

Chimera is a card meant primarily for One Turn Kills (OTK). You generally only include one of them, and even then you want to draw it late.

Catapult is good if you can get out lots of scarabs fast, but as you say it only matters after you've got things set up, the same problem as bond.

Adrenaline is quick, extra damage. A 2 ATK scarab will attack 4 times for a total of 8. A 3 ATK scarab will attack 4 times for 12. After that you get diminishing returns until 7 and 8 ATK. One thing to note is that you don't have to use the adrenalined scarab to devour things-- when you're set up, you should have plenty of scarabs that can devour without adrenaline.

From Gravity, Momentum and Acceleration are useful to consider, though they fall in the same niche as adrenaline-- cheap damage spikes.

There's not too much you can do about the slow speed without rares and upgrades, however-- once you're at your optimized 30 card, quanta balanced state, that's pretty much as fast as you'll be able to get, with those particular cards. Scarab+Mitosis is essentially simulating a Pharaoh in the first place, and then Shard of Readiness makes ability costs 0.

[andretimpa]

The main thing I can think is that this deck is crying for a Shard of Readiness. It would reduce the quanta you spend pumping new scarabs and allow you to ditch the gravity part while still using devour. So if you have them I really recomend you try it (one or two dragons for the late game would also be useful).

[Monox D. I-Fly]

The main thing I can think is that this deck is crying for a Shard of Readiness. It would reduce the quanta you spend pumping new scarabs and allow you to ditch the gravity part while still using devour. So if you have them I really recomend you try it (one or two dragons for the late game would also be useful).

Looks like he's still new that he doesn't have any rare card yet. Otherwise, he would have put a Pharaoh there.

[Kowlickkid]

Yeah, the only rares I have are an Owl's Eye, an Eternity, and a Shard of Bravery. Well, thank you all! I'll try adrenaline and see what it does.