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Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1045245#msg1045245
« on: February 23, 2013, 06:41:49 pm »
Spoiler for August 2017:

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Deck idea by iancudorinmarian
Deck review and name by Basman-1453

Card by card:
Entropy Pendulums: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, even without considering the fact that the deck was constructed with a requirement of containing at least 50% Entropy cards in mind, Entropy Pendulums will be required to jumpstart those Supernovae and start messing with your opponent's head.

Novae and Supernovae: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, they're there to fuel the various support cards this deck packs.

Dune Scorpions: An interesting core of this deck. It might look impotent at first, but buff it and it will start inflicting neurotoxin on your opponent, which unique effect makes even one drop of it threatening without proper response. It stacks with regular toxin effected by Deathstalkers, too.

Deathstalkers: A clever support to help the Dune Scorpions dogpiling poison counters on your enemy, this creature also needs the loving touch of a stat buff to have its ability -- placing two poison counters upon attack -- be a headache that intensifies over time.

Chaos Powers and Improved Blessing: Another important part of this deck. Without one of these or Unstoppable (see below), your creatures aren't going to do any damage to your opponent. While Chaos Power might grant anywhere from +1/+1 to +5/+5 and Improved Blessing is a guaranteed +3/+3, their subjects will still deal physical damage, which is why the author decides to lump them together here.

Unstoppables: Another way to buff the stats of your scorpions. What it lacks in stat boost -- a mere +1/+1 compared to the potential +5/+5 of Chaos Power or the surefire +3/+3 of Improved Blessing -- it more than makes up with its unparalleled shield-bypassing capacity. Creatures affected with this buff will start dealing momentum damage that will bypass all sorts of shields and damage redirection. Your scorpions in particular will love the ability to reliably hit and poison your opponent as long as your opponent don't actively take care of it.

Epinephrine: A touch of this is going to make your creature hyperactive, attacking up to four times in one turn! A dangerous buff indeed, especially for the low attack value your scorpions tends to have after one buff. Your scorpions will only poison its target twice, however.

Improved Fog: Hax shield. Seriously, though, this or Vampire Dagger has a habit of prolonging your lifelihood by a few turns, which is usually enough to have you come on top. Imagine both. This one does its part by letting you evade physical attacks 40% of the time, all for the stupidly cheap casting cost of 1 Air.

Vampire Dagger: A powerful weapon indeed, this card does up to six points of damage and then heals you by that many points. For a casting cost of 2 Darkness, few weapons can come close to its power level.


Strategy:
This deck is built with one thing in its mind: having your scorpions poison enemies in its path. You might want to keep the scorpions in hand until you can buff it, however, so that it may attack -- and poison -- your opponent on its very first active turn.


Strengths:
When things are in its way, it can put up frighening number of poison counters; a dozen or so is not unheard of, especially when Deathstalkers are also involved. Since neurotoxin also intensifies with each and every card its victim plays, it can keep on intensifying even behind the most sturdy or elusive shields. That neurotoxin will also pressure its victim, since every card they play might as well be their last.


Weaknesses:
Any sort of CC, particularly reusable ones, will also put a pretty nasty impact on your deck, espeially since your scorpions needs to be buffed before they can do anything. Without any sort of control whatsoever, enemies will be at a near freedom to harass your game plan, either by outhealing your poisonous damage output or by nullifying the creatures.


Alternative deck choices:
When the deck performed, the user was restricted from using, amongst others, Reverse Times, Lightnings, and Deflagrations. They are some great options to assert some control over the field. Poisons were also resticted, but stuffing them into this deck might need more significant adjustments than simply replacing the Deathstalkers with them.
If creature hit point is not an issue, you can also slip in one Shard of Wisdom (creatures dealing spell damage won't inflict poison, but you wouldn't need to worry that since only Immaterial creatures will start dealing spell damage upon casting and you have no way to Immortalise your creatures) for a surefire +4/+0 boost, making your scorpions hit harder but easier to neutralise as well.
Spoiler for July 2017:


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Key usage of the deck in war, by team :earth

Card by card:

Gravity Shield: Gravity shield is a great counter to a lot of :water decks. Nymphs, SoP'd creatures, Ice dragons, upgraded crawlers, all get blocked by gravity shield.

Gnome Gemfinder: Gnomes are not only gemfinders, they are little gems in and of themselves. Allows water to make this a consistent trio deck. They are pillars, which grow to deal massive damage with sopa, and power the other :earth creatures. Need I say more? What seems like a small, useless creature, is what makes this deck possible, it would lose a whole lot of power without it.

Pulverizer: Oh pulvy. Pulverizer is the adding to this deck that changes everything. A lot of permanents can counter SoPa decks, sundials, wings/dims are a few examples. PC is, in my opinion, a must in any good SoP decks. It is not always possible to add some, like in a usual patient warden deck, which is why I think, even with the removal of trident, shipwrecker is an upgrade to sopwardens. I do not mean it is better in any and all occasions, some situations will still have sopawarden as the best deck.

Vanadium Warden:Wardens delay another creature. But what they also do that we can forget, is deal damage to non-airborne creature equal to their attack. Due to the fact they start with 0 attack, they need to be buffed for this added ability to be made use of, and this is where Shard of Patience comes in action. SoP would already delay the warden anyway, and it increases it's attack, which increases kill potential, and increases the CC potential too. Those two cards make for an awesome combo.

Water Towers/Marks:well, each deck needs quanta.

Arctic Octopus: Octopii are the much needed creature control in this deck. Wardens, while they can deal damage, only do so to non-airborne creatures. In this case, octopii will be much more effective since wardens only delay for one turn. Also, while they usually have low attack, Shard of patience makes them strong attackers.

Shard of Patience:As said earlier, combos extremely well with wardens, and gives a win condition to this deck through damage.

Mark of Gravity: Powers the pulverizer ability, and makes it possible to play the gravity shield.


Strategy:
The story of this deck is two-fold for me. One really needs to understand sopawardens first, to then transition to shipwrecker.
In a standard sopawarden deck, as can be seen here : http://elementscommunity.org/forum/trial-final-battle-results/(11th-trial-of-water)-jonathancrazyj-5-1-spielkind/ (deck 5) (can also include Trident), You rely on the CC generated from squids and wardens to stall the game until you get to the point where SoPa gives you enough damage to win. Trident can also help reduce the speed of your opponent's deck, as well as reduce his stall power. However, in shipwrecker, you decide to take away the Trident, removing some potential consistency, to add pulverizer which deals with the counters to sopawardens. While I do not mean that there is no counter whatsoever to sopawardens, I think it is an extremely powerful deck, which explains our extended use of it in war.

Strengths:

Any deck that excells at a deck archetype is strong, any deck that can do great in two decks archetypes is strong, a deck that excels at two deck archetypes is godlike, and that's what shipwrecker does. It's a very strong stall and stallbreaker. Adding the pulverizer to get rid of pesky permanents makes it even better.

Weaknesses:
Being a trio, it will never be the most consistent deck. Compared to SopWardens, it cannot run trident and therefore lacks the quanta denial that the deck could have provided.

Alternative deck choices:
Sop Wardens (deck 5)
Or for another SoP deck that includes permanent control
SopaDolls (deck 8)

And congratulations to JonathanCrazyJ for winning :water trials.
Spoiler for June 2017:

Adrenadamseltosissofree

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Deck idea by mathman101. (Deck 2)
(Although featured by Mr Muffin in the Final Battle, he credits mathman101 with the idea from their Phase 2 Match.)

Card by card:
Adrenaline: Adds a lot of speed to the deck. It also interacts with Sofree in a way that the extra damage from sofree is calculated after the amount of attacks, so a Firefly (for example) will hit for 4x(3+2), so 20 damage. Also have to mention that, used on a damselfly, it will generate additional quanta.

Mitosis: Adds a further stall-breaking element to the deck, and by using it on Air creatures with sofree, you avoid the usual drawback of making a creature an easy CC target.

Firefly: Attackers which deal 3 damage, sweet spot for adrenaline, making it even sweeter of a spot with sofree. Also note that, with sofree, Air creatures can dodge spells.

Damselfly: Ever since sofree has been in the game, damsels have attracted a lot more attention. They are basically a pillar that helps the rush. Having also adrenaline to put on it in this deck makes it even more attractive.

Shard of Freedom: Shard of Freedom adds a lot of things to this deck: shield bypass and CC protection.

Strategy:
When you are playing in trials, the most important thing is to understand your element's strengths and weaknesses. Life's main weaknesses are CC and shields. With Adrenaline and Mitosis being buffs on creatures that don't help the survivability of a creature, CC can just destroy decks. Same for shields, as :life has no way of going through them or destroying them. Shard of Freedom neatly addresses both of these issues to make your carefully crafted assault durable against anything except mass CC.

Strengths:
Excellent rushing deck. Each and every card seem to synergize with each other. Adrenaline-Sofree-Firefly deals a mighty 20 damage, bypasses shields and is untargettable. And they can be played quite quickly as Adren-Damsel gives 4 :air quanta, all while dealing a lot of damage. Mitosis adds even more damage potential.

Weaknesses:
As any deck with sofree, Mass CC will be able to cause massive damage, even more so in this deck. All creatures are untargettable, and therefore nobody cared about taking creatures that could survive damage. A thunderstorm will kill everything, leaving nothing to play with.
While it does have Mitosis, I'm unsure it will be enough to stallbreak some of the bigger stalls. The deck, while it is fast on damage, is quite low on it.

Alternative deck choices:
Being a deck that is:
  • 50% :life
  • Ignores Shields
  • Ignores CC
I don't think there is any alternative to it. Which is why I picked it for DiotM. This in my opinion makes for a brilliant deck that uses life's strengths and tries it's best at dealing with it's weaknesses. Who knows? Maybe :life will surprise us, find more great decks, and make an actual appearance in war...

And congratulations to Mr Muffin for winning life trials!
Spoiler for May 2017:

Rage Machine

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Deck idea by Spielkind. (Deck 1)

Card by card:

Rage Potion: Quick extra attack for Steam Machines, also acting as utility creature control.

Steam Machine: Ramping damage, allowing you to out-pace your opponent while you CC their creatures. Often you can only sustain two of these at a time, so make sure it's not a waste of your water quanta to play more. In a semi-upgraded meta, unupgraded Steam Machines are occasionally the better choice. While they have much less HP, they are still above the precious 5hp mark allowing them to withstand a lightning, and crucially they cost one fewer Quanta, making them much faster to play.

Nymph's Tears: An additional stall-break win condition. Nymphs multiply, usually in late game, for ramping damage.

Fire lance: Efficient creature control as well as optional burst bypass damage in some match-ups where you have made it to the late game and saved enough quanta.

Desiccation: Extra CC taking down annoyances such as Damselflies, Devourers and Squids, and timed right can allow you to create an extra Nymph or two for bust damage.

Pillars and Pendulums: Ordinarily not worth including in a deck review, but there is an important point to be made here. In a semi-upgraded meta, it is almost always better to upgrade Pillars than Nymph Tears. This is because both give a net +1 Quanta to your deck, but it is the targeted pillars, rather than the Nymph Tears themselves, which determine if the created Nymph is upgraded or not. Upgraded Water Nymphs have 7 hp rather than 6, putting them in a higher CC bracket, and making it much more likely that the all important first nymph will survive.

Strategy:
Quanta management is very important here. The most important card to play early is your first Steam Machine so you can begin ramping. After that, the deck is very reactive. Keep an eye on your fire quanta production, and only play a second steamie if you can confidently fuel them both. Against some opponents with access to creatures such as Arctic Squids, Blue Nymphs, or anything else that needs immediate CC, be sure to hold back 3 fire quanta so you can react in time with a Rage Potion. Against opponents you are confident have no CC, you can play Rage Potions early to increase your speed. Play Nymph's Tears on upgraded quanta sources, but be careful whether it's more appropriate to your board state to damage your :water or :fire production.

Strengths:
Excellent at breaking some stalls, and a very good domination deck against creature-based rushes which it can CC into submission while you ramp. Played right, your opponent will feel like there is nothing they can do while their small creatures are Dessicated, their large creatures are Raged, and their Shields are Bolted past.

Weaknesses:
Both Steam Machines and Nymph Queens are very quanta intensive, so denial presents a major concern. You'll also suffer greatly if faced with Eternity or Reverse Time. This version faced a ban on Deflagration, so it would also find Shields such as Wings or Dimensional Shield a problem.

Alternative deck choices:
The most important inclusion is Deflagration. In any non-ban meta, it is incredibly useful in destroying threats such as Eternity or Lobotomizer, and the shields already mentioned, along with Gravity Shield. You can also look to substitute some of your spell-based CC with Arctic Squids, which would balance the quanta usage more evenly, but leave you more susceptible to enemy CC. Finally, you could use a different tactic to slow your opponent by using Permafrost, and by relying on that as your defense you could choose to speed up your deck and make it more reliant on Nymphs for speed. Here is an alternative version with all of these changes.
Spoiler for modification:
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Spoiler for April 2017:

Mutating the Most Bang for your Buck

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Deck idea by laelin.
Deck review by TheonlyrealBeef

Card by card:

Supernova: Main source of non-entropy-element quanta and the primary way of getting a creature out to mutate. Save them up in pairs when possible for Improved Mutation.

Improved Mutation: Although primarily meant for giving you an attacking creature while neutralizing Singularities, it can also be used on the opponents' stronger creatures to both weaken them, and strengthen you by giving you a Twin Universe target. Just be careful since it can easily backfire with this usage, especially if the target becomes immaterial.

Twin Universe: The nicest thing about combining Twin Universe with mutants, is that you essentially get a new Mutant that is stronger. And even when you do not get a decent mutant up in time, you can use it on your opponents' creatures instead.

Precognition/Shard of Bravery: Efficient card draw, essentially shortening the size of your deck, allowing you to use a smaller deck. The only problem is that you pretty much need to use at least one Supernova to use them, praying you will draw another through these. So in the most cases that you will want to use it, you risk breaking up the combo by not drawing what you need.

Epinephrine: The thread best describes the full advantages of using Epinephrine with PU mutants, but it is essentially the most efficient buff card for increasing the power of Twin Universe. This way, even mutants that would otherwise appear weak can be used as powerhouses.

Strategy:
You'll want to play your Towers and Pendulums while saving up the rest in hand. Discard Improved Mutations or Epinephrines if you get too many of them, or play Supernovae one by one if you have a lot of them, but no Improved Mutations yet. Play the combo all at once as soon as possible: double Supernova, Improved Mutation on the Singularity.

Strengths:
Excels against slower decks, specifically quanta-lock decks. The versatility of TU and Mutation also offer it a good chance against buff decks as well.

Weaknesses:
The main glaring weakness is the cards you need in your hand to start the combo. It is essentially a 5 card combo (Supernova x2, Improved Mutation, Epinephrine, Twin Universe). The deck cannot consistently beat even ai2 for this reason.

Alternative deck choices:
The idea behind the deck was to take mutations to a new level by building a combo that relies on it: adrenaline was meant to mitigate the effect of low-power mutants affecting your outcome. Although the deck succeeds at this, making a large combo on already unreliable mutants, has made the deck both slower and less reliable than other mutation decks. To keep the idea but make it more competitive, I'd suggest using a bunch of cheap rainbow cards to help keep you alive and deal with some other weaknesses while you are at it. That way, you can use your first supernova for both these cards and extra card draw, rather than relying on starting out with exactly 2 Supernovae. It also uses less quanta generators: you really don't need much more than 2 Pendulums to supply your entire deck thanks to Supernovae.
Spoiler for modification:
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Spoiler for March 2017:


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Deck idea by Afdarenty for Trinity play-off Round 7.
Deck review and name by JonathanCrazyJ

Card by card:

Earthquakes: The first, and most important card which will be played in most games with this deck. It is vital that you destroy the opponent's opening stack of pillars and/or pendulums as quickly as possible. The rest of our deck has limited and slow response to any creatures which actually get played, so we have to make sure they aren't played in the first place by denying the opponent's quanta production.

Black Holes: In the meta this deck was played, only duos and trios could be used. While Earthquake destroys the source of quanta, Black Hole's job is to leech whatever quanta has found its way into their quanta pool, especially from the indestructible mark. An interesting side effect of this is that the opponent can't store up quanta to burst with several creatures at once, and realistically has to use it as soon as they have enough to play... anything! This makes the next card significantly more effective.

Auburn Nymphs: don't even be tempted to field this deck without these ultra-rare cards. There may be only two of them, but each one can effectively control 6 creatures, especially when your denial forces the opponent to play them one by one. They are durable against CC, and deal decent enough damage to make them almost always useful.

Pulverizer: The other key card in this deck. Pulverizer fills two important roles in this deck. Firstly it aids in the denial of pillars and pendulums. The best way to play around earthquake is to play pillars one by one, so Earthquake can only destroy one pillar, not 3. Fortunately, that's the worst way to play against Pulverizer. If they play a stack, they will be Earthquaked, if they play one by one, Pulverizer will mop up. Secondly, if they spend any of their precious quanta on permanents trying to avoid your nymphs, your Pulverizer will have that covered.

Antlions and Graviton Guards: This deck has very few slots remaining for damage dealing creatures, but these low-cost, mid-damage creatures are vital to see you to victory. At only two quanta they can be played early, and put some pressure on your opponent to circumvent your denial. Both are also decently durable, Guards with high HP and Antlions with burrow, allowing your precious damage sources to survive long enough to become a problem for your opponent.

Strategy:
Early game is all about denial. First priorty being earthquake, potentially followed by a Black Hole played with Pulverizer. any spare quanta should be spent on throwing your low cost critters on the field, and eventually lock down the board with an Auburn Nymph. The deck is 31 cards to give it the possible deckout win condition against 30 card decks which it locks down but fails to finish off fast enough.

Strengths:
Excellent against quanta-tight trio decks and fat, stally rainbow decks. It excels in any match-up where the opponent can't deal with the combination of an Auburn Nymph and Pulverizer slowly crushing their potential options. As always, Black Hole is great against Supernova decks if you can match each of their s'novas with an immediate Black Hole.

Weaknesses:
In an open meta, it has several weaknesses. Immolation decks will usually out-rush it, as will most other low-quanta rush decks. It's also weak against other denial decks such as Discord/Black Hole. Essentially, your game really needs to shut them down between their first to third creature. Any deck which can escape the clutches of your denial and get some early board presence will be an uphill battle.

Alternative deck choices:
Black Hole is not actually vital to your strategy, as earthquake and Pulverizer can give enough denial to stall your opponent's assault. Replacing the Black Holes with damage such as Steel Golems, more Graviton Guards or Sapphire Chargers to turn it from a denial deck to a domination style deck. If you are worried about facing large stalls a lot, you could lose the Antlions and Graviton Guards for two Overdrives and Armagio for a late-game stall breaking combination.
Spoiler for February 2017:

Deck Idea of the Month
SoP Devtal by Team Water

This deck review was written by Afdarenty
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The most exquisite deck of War #10! Quanta lock your opponents, before dealing massive damage late game with Shard of Patience!

Card by card:

Mark of Aether: Your deck becomes a lot more threatening after the first Fractal. Mark of Aether ensures you have a good supply of Aether Quanta in the early game.

Devourer: The key to the deck. Each one of these will take 1 Quanta away from your opponent and give you 1 Darkness Quanta.

Fractal: What's the problem with Devourer? You can only play 6. With Fractal, you can reliably play 8+ Devourers in the first 6 turns.

Shard of Patience: Your win condition. Devtal aims to play a lot of creatures quickly - Shard of Patience takes advantage of this by giving each one two attack each turn. This can easily end up adding 20 damage a turn. Also buffs your Devourers out of Area of Effect range.

Water/Dark Pendulums: These are the most reliable way to generate the three different kinds of Quanta you'll need. Upgrading the Darkness Pendulums can be quite important - even if you only draw one upgraded Pendulum, you can still play a Devourer on turn 2.


Strategy:
A new twist on a classic deck - Devtal has been popular in both PVP and for AI grinding for some time, but this deck trades in the typical Vampires for some Water Pendulums and Shards of Patience.

In the early game you want to play your Devourers out and build up quanta for your Fractal. Play Shard of Patience as soon as you can - you want to clear your hand out so you get more cards from Fractal, and the extra damage is always nice. When you can, Fractal your Devourers and drain all the quanta from your opponent - this will prevent them from playing cards for the rest of the match. Typically, you won't want to cancel your Shard of Patience until you have enough damage to kill your opponent in three turns.

Sometimes, against decks that can kill your Devourers easily, you might want to keep one Devourer in your hand to ensure you have a good target for your Fractal turn. Practice really helps with judging this.


Strengths:
SoP Devtal is almost impossible to compete with in the late - you just have to get there. This deck punishes 1 Pillar draws particularly hard - your Devourers will have a very easy time draining your opponents quanta with such a slow start. Some of the stronger match ups are outlined below.

Other Fractal Decks
There are many powerful decks (Fractix, Frogtal, Guardtal) that use Fractal on a cheap creature with high damage. Because Fractal is one of the most expensive cards in the game, your denial can stop them from ever playing it and counter their entire deck.

Poison Decks
These typically win in around 10-12 turns, and stall out the game with either Bonewalls, Creature Control, Sundials, etc. 10-12 turns is far too slow against this deck - not only is your denial slowing their win condition in the early game, but you completely prevent their stall cards from working too.

Dimensional Shields
This deck is an excellent counter to one of the most hated cards in Elements. Decks playing Dimensional Shields typically use damage sources that are slow but difficult to counter, such as Phase Dragons, Fractal, or Parallel Universe plus Dragons. They can afford to do this because their Shields give them a ton of protection.

Because their damage is so slow, and they don't play anything in the early game, they're a perfect match up for Devtal. You have plenty of time to set up a board full of Devourers, and when it's time for you to start attacking with your Devourers they won't have any quanta to play their Shields.

Any Slow Deck
There are a lot of different decks that fit under this category. Just a few examples: Shard of Wisdom/Reflect, Adrenastaves, Catatitans, Mono Light, Drainbolt... The list goes on. Devtal is almost always a counter to these decks - they rarely play anything at the start of the game and by the mid game they're already locked down. Even stall decks with Sanctuary can be defeated - sure, you'll be slow to generate Darkness Quanta, but Fractal and Shard of Patience will be enough to bring them down in the end.


Weaknesses:
Generally, if a deck beats you it's because they managed to play a bunch of stuff in the early game, or somehow disrupted your Fractal. Some of the more difficult match ups for SoP Devtal are below.

Other Denial Decks
To get your denial active, you need to use a Fractal. As stated above, Fractal is one of the most expensive cards in the game - in denial mirrors it can be extremely difficult to actually play it. Because of that, they'll often do a better job of disrupting you in the early game than you do to them, and as this deck relies on a fast lock down that's often all it will take for you to lose. It's worth noting, however, that classic Devtal tends to lose to SoP Devtal hard-to-head, because the latter can achieve a faster fractal with fewer cards cluttering their hand!

Nightmare
Nightmare will fill your hand with copies of a useless card. This stops you from getting a bunch of Devourers with Fractal, which means you'll have a much harder time draining your opponent of quanta.

Rush Decks
Rush decks aim to deal as much damage as quickly as possible. They're built to be efficient in the early game - playing a creature two turns earlier is more important to them than having cards to play in the mid to late game. To ensure Rush decks play their creatures quickly they tend to run either cheap creatures, such as Giant Frogs or Flesh Recluse, or many pillars for relatively cheap cards, such as 14 in a Mono Gravity rush whose most expensive creature is a Charger.

In the early game, when your denial is relatively weak, it can be difficult to prevent an opponent from playing very cheap cards such as the Frog, or to completely lock down a large amount of pillars. Because of this, Rush decks will often get enough creatures played in the early game to chip you down before you can kill them.

Immolation/Nova decks
These are your worst match up. Not only are these often cards you see in Rush decks, but they mean that even after you play a bunch of Devourers your opponent can still play their cards. You'll need a very fast draw to stand a chance, here.


Conclusion:
So, should you use this Shard of Patience version of Devtal instead of your classic Vampire build? The answer is yes, absolutely - but only some of the time. Each version of Devtal has a few key advantages over the other.

Shard of Patience helps you beat a lot of traditional counters to Devtal, such as Sanctuary deck-out stalls and decks playing a lot of Area of Effect cards. However, the classic Devtal boasts a ton of healing in the late game, which helps your chances to beat faster decks significantly. Playing a good mix of both will keep your opponents guessing, and give them a hard time beating you!
Spoiler for January 2017:

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Deck idea by Team Gravity W10
Deck review and name by Basman-1453

Card by card:
Gravity Pendulums: Because even the most OP cards can never be cast without paying the quanta. More seriously, the deck was developed in a situation where at least 40% of the deck needed to be constructed from Gravity cards, with up to eight cards upgraded in a deck.

Bone Pillars and Death Pendulums: Because even the most OP cards can never be cast without paying the quanta! The deck's winning condition involves Poisoning your enemy and having your creatures chip away at them, using a Bone Wall to buy a turn or two should the need arises. They're clumped together since they'll generate Death quanta every turn thanks to the deck's Death Mark.

Bone Walls: They're mostly there to buy you a turn or two. Without reliable ways to generate death effects (all you have there are two Gravity Pulls), you'll be lucky to have one of these last you more than three turns. Considering the shield-ignoring capabilities a good portion of this deck has, though, you usually won't need much more than that.

(Deadly) Poisons: They're there to.. apply Poison counters! Even if all your creatures are taken care of one way or the other, those poison counters will stay there to help remind them who's boss. Combined with Chargers, they give the deck good damage potential even against the strongest shields.

Arsenics: Need help applying more poison counters? They're there to do that, for the cheap casting cost of two Death. Note that they'll only stick the poison counters when the weapon can actually touch your opponent and deal damage (thus, for example, an unupgraded Arsenic is a dead weight against a hostile Titanium Shield).

Elite Chargers: Does five Gravity for a 7/5 beating stick sound a good deal to you? It does? Oh, I forgot to say that they're dealing momentum damage, which pierces shields and forces the opponent to actively take care of them. Now you see why these bad boys are a favourite in upgraded decks that use a decent amount of Gravity.

Mummies: Elite Chargers are a staple attacker in upgraded Gravity rushes, and Mummies are a staple attacker in unupgraded Death rushes. Four Death at 5/3 is nice for an unupgraded card, which also help free up upgrade slots for more important things. They're also there to make use of the excess Death created from the need for early Bone Walls.

Graviton Guard: A cheap, yet stupidly durable, beating stick. For two Gravity, you're getting a bulky 4/7 attacker. They're nothing like Life's Giant Frogs (5/3 for 2 Life) or Death's Flesh Recluses (6/3 for 3 Death), but what they 'lack' in offensive capability, they make up in durability.

Gravity Pulls: They may be mentioned last, but they're not the least interesting card this deck offers. This card is the only way you can kill an enemy's creatures. Note that this card will need some creatures dealing physical damage (meaning, no amount of Chargers can help you there) to actually damage the creature afflicted by this.

Strategy:
This deck seeks to defeat its opponent by overwhelming them with poison and creatures, with Bone Wall and Gravity Pull to take care of enemy offense. You might want to reserve Gravity Pull for particularly dangerous enemy creatures.

Strengths:
Poisons and Chargers deals their damage without care of the enemy's shields, forcing them to either simply outpace you or have it taken care of. Attempts to outpace it will have to face Bone Wall (and Gravity Pulls, if you're lucky). Bone Wall also serves as a deterrent against having your creatures CCed; it forces them to either take damage now and thin the Bone Wall or kill them now and thicken the Bone Wall.

Weaknesses:
For all those shield-bypassing damage, this deck doesn't have any sort of permanent control, which leaves it pretty vulnerable to dangerous weapons. Also, Bone Wall will quickly fall before decks that rely on having numerous creatures on the board. And since most of the reliable shield-bypass comes from poison counters (there are only two Chargers in the deck), Purifies can hamper your progress quite a bit.

Alternative deck choices:
When you're on a format where upgrade count is not an issue and you're free to bring a fully-upgraded deck, you will want to replace those Mummies for Flesh Recluses; 3 Death for a 6/3 is a very good deal. You will also want to upgrade those Bone Walls, Arsenic, and Poisons. Replacing the lone Guard with another Charger might be an interesting idea especially when all the Gravity Pendulums are upped too, especially if you're expecting them not to bring dangerous creatures that need Gravity Pull and a physical attacker pronto. You could also consider Shard of Focus which can act as PC, as well as synergizing wonderfully with Gravity Pull, and occasionally creating Death Effects!
« Last Edit: August 03, 2017, 08:34:16 pm by mathman101 »

Opsinis

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1129152#msg1129152
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2014, 11:24:31 pm »
Spoiler for December 2016:


G3: Gnomes, Golems and Graboids

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Deck idea and name by TheonlyrealBeef
Deck review by Bas

Card by card:
Immolations: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, this deck is part of a deck archetype known as Immolation rushes, which uses Immolation, some Immolation fodders, and efficient Fire hitmen to deal quick damage before they can react.

Gnome Gemfinders: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, in addition to being an Immolation fodder, they also help generate some Earth to summon the Graboids before they're being Immolated to create the Time needed to turn them into Shriekers. (The rest of the deck is not upgraded since the deck is created with upgrade restrictions in mind, citing this version as the 'minimal upgrades desired'.)

Fire Pendulums: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, this is your safety net when Immolation or its fodder aren't coming.

Sparks: They're there almost only as an Immolation fodder. That's not to say they're insignificant, though. Far from it, in fact; this deck have very few pillar/pend-based quanta generation.

Lava Golems: An offensive star of the deck. A 5/1 creature for 5 Fire is nice, but its ability to increase its stats by 2/2 for 1 Earth per turn (which would be supplied by Mark, Gemfinders, and to a lesser extent the Fire Pendulums) lets it get out of the range of most lethal-creature-control options, things like Reverse Time and Maxwell's Paradox notwithstanding.

Graboids: Another offensive star of the deck. A 2/3 creature for 3 Earth might not sound much, but Time lets it turn into a frightening 8/3 creature that can protect itself.

Deflagrations: They're there to take care of problematic permanents, including but not limited to disruptive shields, dangerous weapons, probably even to punish poor quanta openings if you're so lucky.


Strategy:
Similar plans you're doing with Immolation rushes generally applies here: get some fodder Immolated to pave the way to summon Golems, have Gemfinders gather enough resources for Graboids before being Immolated, what have you.


Strengths:
Like most Immolation decks, they're dealing fast damage when things are in their favour. You will need to either outpace or control damage it can do to take care of them, and neither would be very easy without the neccesary cards. Also, both Golems and Graboids (that would later turn into Shriekers as Time permits) can protect themselves. Finally, this deck is less prone to misdraws that Immolation decks are usually prone to have since it has more potential Immolation fodder than most.


Weaknesses:
Like most Immolation decks, though, it's also vulnerable to Reverse Time (it will force you to repay the summoning cost of a relatively expensive creature) and Bone Wall (Immolation kills the fodder, powering up their Bone Wall). Also, like most rainbow decks, it's also vulnerable to Black Holes. Last but not least, it have no creature control and limited permanent control.


Alternative deck choices:
To quote the maker himself,
For possible modifications ...  Deflagrations and Fire Pendulums could easily be swapped by cheap cards that don't cost Earth or Fire quanta to play. Fog Shield, Hammer, Vampire Stiletto, Arsenic, Lycanthrope, those kinds of cards. These variants are built with the very idea of permanent control having no effect on them, though. 2 cost cards also have the disadvantage of requiring 2 Immolations to be played to boot.
Spoiler for November 2016:

Deck Idea of the Month
The Selfless Golem by Afdarenty

This deck review was written by Afdarenty
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Use Shard of Integrity to create a huge, Immaterial, Spell Damage creature while using your Shards of Sacrifice to stay alive until the late game!
Designed for use in Platinum Arena - 46% winrate over 50 games!

Card by card:

Mark of Death: Being able to chain your Shards of Sacrifice is key for this deck. The most reliable way to do this is by using a Mark of Death.

Nova: Nova is the engine for the entire deck - want to draw cards to get that extra SoSac? Make your Shard Golem deal spell Damage? Play your Golem in the first place? Use Nova.

Shard of Sacrifice: Most decks in Plat will be able to deal 100 damage to you before you can deal 200 damage to them - or at least, without Shard of Sacrifice they would. This card gives you the extra turns you need to win the damage race.

Shard of Integrity: The win condition of your deck. This removes all the Shards in your hand and makes a Shard Golem with them. The more shards that were in your hand, the more powerful your Golem is - and there are a ton of Shards in this deck. If you have 2 Shards of Wisdom in your hand the Golem you make with be Immaterial. This is key to beating many Plat decks.

Shard of Bravery: The card draw from Shard of Bravery helps improve the consistency of the deck a ton. Whether you need more Shards of Sacrifice to keep you alive, more Shards of Wisdom to add spell damage to your Golem, or just need to draw your Shard of Integrity at the start of the game - Shard of Bravery has you covered. As an added bonus, it adds more attack to your Golem than any other Shard.

Precognition: This is in here for similar reasons to Shard of Bravery - card draw. As a bonus, the often overlooked ability to see your opponents hand is far from irrelevant in this deck. You can check if you opponent has Purify waiting to counter your Shards of Sacrifice, how much burst damage they have, if they're playing any Creature Control cards, and more.

Shard of Wisdom: The most important card to go into your Shard of Integrity. If you have 2+ of these in your hand when you play Shard of Integrity your Golem will be Immaterial, countering all kinds of Creature Control. Not only that - if you play Shard of Wisdom on your Immortal Golem it will let it deal Spell Damage! This lets you punch through the vast majority of shields, and makes your Golem very difficult to slow down.

Strategy:
In most matches, you'll want to draw with your Shards of Bravery and Precognitions until you have 2 Shards of Wisdom, then play your Golem ASAP. It's also important to draw two Nova early - this lets you use a 3rd Shard of Wisdom on your Golem and gain spell damage. This deck can be difficult to play perfectly, particularly in the early game. This isn't a deck that gets a lot of wins with Elemental Mastery - often, if you try to, you'll lose a match you could have won. Be as safe with your Shards of Sacrifice as you can be. In most Shard Golem decks, you want to make your Golem as large as possible in the early game. With this deck, you're less worried about how large your Golem is, and more worried about drawing all your combo pieces. It's much better to have a Shard of Sacrifice in your hand than it is to have it in your Golem!

The key to success is knowing how to use your card draw. If you need a 2nd Nova, don't use your Shard of Bravery to make your Golem stronger - draw with it! Similarly, if you already have 2 Shards of Wisdom, play your Shard of Integrity before you play your Precognition. There's a chance the card you draw is the 3rd Shard of Wisdom you need to make your Golem Immortal, or the Shard of Sacrifice that will give you 2 extra turns to win the game!  It's also important not to play your Nova when you don't need them. When you play Shard of Sacrifice you'll lose most of your Quanta - this can leave you unable to play your cards if you wasted your Nova early on.

It helps if you know what you're playing against. Precognition can help you to scout out what you're playing against. There are some tips below:
  • Against denial decks, such as Fractal-Pests or Discord-Black Hole, having an Immortal Golem often isn't that important. Don't wait for a 2nd Shard of Wisdom - get your damage in ASAP!
  • Against decks with Vampires, you can use your Shards of Sacrifice to prevent the AI from playing creatures. This will stop them from healing, but it's a high risk play if they have 10 or less damage out.
  • Against decks with Silence, don't be afraid to play your Shards of Sacrifice a turn or two earlier than you normally would. Better too early than too late!

Strengths:
The major strength of this deck is that it decimates Plat decks with low HP. In my 50 match sample, I only lost 2 out of 14 games against Plat decks with less than 140 health.

Purify is much less of a problem than you might imagine. As Shard Golems are a very fast source of damage, you spend less time with Shard of Sacrifice active with this deck than you would with, say, Poison Dials. This gives your opponent a smaller window to draw the Purify. Also, the AI will typically waste Purify early game by targeting their own health. If your main source of damage is Poison this is a big set back, but not for this deck! In 50 games, Purify was played 11 times. I only lost one match as a result of Purify whilst Shard of Sacrifice is active.

Control Bows can't do a thing about your Immortal Golem other than hope to heal more damage than your Golem can dish out. As these decks are quite slow, you can often fight through one Miracle to win the match. You'll see these decks quite often.

You also have a strong match up against Denial decks - another Platinum staple. Unlike most decks, you play all your damage instantly - you don't need to wait for pillars to make quanta for you. Their denial cards don't hurt you at all, and they're typically quite slow - this gives you plenty of time to get your damage in.

This is also a very quick deck - both to win with, and to lose with. Over 50 matches, my average game length was only 6.66 turns. This is excellent in a grinder!

Weaknesses:
It's important to stress that once Plat decks start to dip below 100 health or so, many of these bad match ups become quite favourable - the Shard Golem is extremely fast, and can often just race them.

Ghostmare is a 'nightmare' to play against with this deck. Their draw denial from Nightmare stops you from drawing the Shards of Sacrifice you need to keep health, and Shard of Integrity forces you to empty your hand for them. Decks that can outheal your damage are also a major problem - Life decks with many Shards of Gratitude, Light decks with many Miracle, or Darkness decks with many Vampires will all cause you problems.

Very fast decks - usually Mono Air or Mono Death - will also cause you trouble. To beat a 200hp Mono Air you need a Spell Damage Golem in the first few turns, so you can deal damage past their Fog, followed by 3 or 4 Shards of Sacrifice. It's far from impossible, but a lot of the time you'll be missing something and narrowly lose. Mono Death is a particularly difficult match as often they play Shards of Sacrifice themselves. This lets them heal off a lot of your damage.

Finally, this deck can be quite draw dependent to play - some games you'll have a great match up but lose anyway, because you didn't draw a second Shard of Wisdom against a Control Deck, or you drew your Shard of Integrity too slowly, or you didn't get the Shard of Sacrifice you needed to stay alive. In one extreme example, I played against a Mono Entropy deck with no damage - only Antimatter and Dissipation Shield. As Immaterial Golems are immune to Antimatter and Spell Damage bypasses Dissipation shield this is a perfect match up - but I didn't draw the 3rd Shard of Wisdom I needed for Spell Damage until the 26th card in my deck. I ended up decking out by one turn.

Conclusion:
This deck has a very competitive win rate in Platinum at the moment, and is one of the fastest grinders around. It's a great deck to snipe the Top 10 decks - these give increased rewards, and often have under 140 health. If you're sick of losing to Denial decks, or just fancy a change from the more regular Poison Dials/Swallow, try it out!
Spoiler for October 2016:

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Deck review and name by Basman-1453

Card by card:
Gravity Pendulums: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, this deck arguably revolves around Graboids, Graviton Guards, and Pulverizers, demonstrating the strong bond Gravity and Earth have.

Nova: Because even the most OP cards can never be casted without paying the quanta. More seriously, aside of the extra quanta boost for Gravity and Earth (which this deck would have no trouble producing), you'll also need some Time to Evolve those Graboids into a veritable terror, as well as Water and Air for, respectively, Purifies and Improved Fog.

Elite Graboids: One of the offensive star of this deck. Three Earth for a 2/3 creature might not sound much (and indeed it is), especially if you don't read the fine prints. They're burrowed upon entry, and you can Evolve them as Time allows into a terrifying 10/4 monster that can protect itself from hostile CCs.

Graviton Guards: The other offensive star of this deck. Two Gravity for four attack might not sound much when you compare it to Life's Giant Frog, but seven (!) hitpoints is nothing to sneeze at, making it a very durable, efficient beatstick.

Pulverizers: Four Earth for five damage is nothing notable for a weapon, especially one that's upgraded. Its ability, though, is the reason why we're using this rather than a Gavel (which will deal seven damage per turn for just two random quanta, thanks to this deck's Mark of Earth). For two Gravity (three for unupgraded Pulvies), it lets you Destroy any one permanent -- be it an annoying shield, a dangerous weapon, or even a mere pillar -- per turn over the course of a match, potentially changing the tides of the battle.

Improved Fog: Hax shield. Seriously, though, it lets you evade physical attacks 40% of the time that (hopefully) it can buy you enough time to assert field dominance.

Gravity Shield: Creatures with high Attack tend to have high HP as well. This shield lets you evade physical attacks coming off creatures with more than 5 HP, protecting yourself from the stronger attackers.

Gravity Forces: A pretty versatile spell that lets you get rid of a hostile, problematic creature or protect yourself in a pinch. Considering this deck's offensive nature, it's mostly the former.

Purifies: While Purify's regeneration is almost pointless in itself, the fact that it nullifies poison (to save yourself) and especially Sacrifice effect (to bust your opponent's protection) is priceless.


Strategy:
Play your cards as fast as possible and let your creatures loose in the field, gnawing away your opponent's hit point. You might want to reserve Gravity Force on game-changing enemy creatures rather than wantonly using them on whatever, and you should reserve Purify just in case Shard of Sacrifice rears its ugly head.


Strengths:
This deck is at heart a rush. As such, your enemy will have to either outpace you in the damage race or stall you out, neither of which are very easy to do without the necessary cards. Elite Graboids and Improved Fog are absurdly cheap for the power it can bring, which helps the deck to keep its speed ahead of the opponent's rush. Stally deck, on the other hand, will have to deal with Pulverizers destroying their setup, opening them up to your critters.


Weaknesses:
As with all rainbows, an untimely Black Hole can quickly ground a rainbow to a halt. Not only it vacuums (amongst others) the Time you'll need to Evolve your Elite Graboids, the healing it gets off a rainbow is pretty significant. It also have limited CC, leaving you vulnerable to creature damage once you ran out of Gravity Forces. Rewinds can also be a problem, considering that chances are it's going to be used on the costly Elite Shriekers rather than the much cheaper Graviton Guards.

Although stally decks does have to deal with Pulverizer, dedicated stall decks that can deal with it will, more often than not, proceed to "take care" of your creatures' attack, one way or the other. Even then, this deck will have to draw their Pulverizer early enough to actually destroy the stall's setup and defeat it before this deck runs out of cards.


Alternative deck choices(1):
On formats where Shards of Sacrifice are restricted, you are probably better off replacing Purifies with Rewinds or Thunderbolts to help with CC. A Mirror Shield can also be useful if you're expecting a deck heavy on spell damage.

Swapping a few Elite Chargers in place of Graviton Guards can be tempting thanks to the Charger's ability to bypass shields, but it might strain your Gravity quanta too hard after Pulverizer usage.

(1) When the deck performed, the user was restricted from using, amongst others; Reverse Times, Lightning, and Sapphire Chargers. They were, however, free to use Shards of Sacrifice. Also, the user have to have at least half of their deck consist of Gravity cards.
Spoiler for September 2016:

Trials Time Finals: Pipeleaker
by Kuroaitou
This Deck idea of the Month was written by Discord

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The deck featured this month was made by Kuroaitou.
Card by card:

Blue Nymph: Endless UG provides good support against PC.

Sundial: While only active for one turn, Sundial can fend off enemy monsters, and it's an effective draw tool.

Wind Tower: Good source of air quanta for the nymphs and UGs.

Unstable Gas: Good damage outlet.

Time Tower: Outlet for the Sundials and Hourglasses.

Electrum Hourglass: More Draw mechanics for UG rush.

Time Pendulum: Quanta split between fire for the UGs and time.

This deck was taken from the time trials final battle results. It leans more towards the rush factor, due to the extensive amount of draw mechanics and the superior damage this deck holds.
Spoiler for August 2016:

Deck Idea of the Month
The Cold Void by iancudorinmarian

This deck review was written by dark ripper
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The deck featured this month was made by iancudorinmarian and Physsion.

Card by card:

Mark of Darkness: Since the deck revolves around SoV, mark of darkness is the obvious choice for this deck.

Shard of Void: SoV is the the heart of the deck. The rest of the cards in the deck want to stall enough for SoV's to chip away at the enemy's HP.

Arctic Octopus: The octopi are the main supportive cards of the deck. Even though they have low defense, their hard CC helps the deck stall enough.

Water Tower: Cause quanta never hurt anybody.

Water Pendulum: Cause more quanta never hurt anybody.

Vampire Dagger: It's OP. We know it. It's both great at stalling due to its healing and at offense with its 6 attack per turn.

Improved Dusk: Hax fits exceptionally well in this deck. Since both the dagger and SoV's are quite cheap, it's an easy way to stall your opponent's damage.

Inundation: Inundation is a situational card in this deck. Against some decks it will be useless but against some decks (e.g. fractal decks) it might be the difference between win and lose.

Ice Lance: Ice Lance can be used in many ways with this deck, but the primary role of this card is to work as a finisher after SoV's have eaten enough hp.

Strategy:

Play SoV's as soon as possible. You want to start chipping away your opponent's HP as fast as possible. After you start playing your SoV's you want to start stalling. Play your squids for CC and the dagger for sustain. Inundation might be a better choice against decks that play a lot of creatures, like fractal decks or pharaoh ones. Unless absolutely necessary, keep your Ice Lance on hand to use it as a finisher and keep stalling until you have chipped away enough hp with SoV's to finish off your opponent.

Strengths:

This deck is essentially a stall, so most rushes without CC and PC will struggle against it. You have great CC and sustain from daggers so low damage decks shouldn't pose a threat either. As of its nature SoV eats away HP so healing stalls will not work against this deck.

Weaknesses:

1HKO decks, mono air rush with SoFree, SoD/granite skin, poison, bolts, hard PC decks(pulvy), SoFo, and bad RNG are your greatest enemies. Stalls arent invincible after all, deal with it.
Spoiler for July 2016:

Deck Idea of the Month
Shocking The Void by Afdarenty

This deck review was written by dark ripper
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The deck featured this month was made by Afdarenty.

Since it's Trials time, I said I would review a trials deck. This time we saw a particular shard making its debut in trials and be played quite a lot.That would be the Shard Of Void. Several trialists decided to build SoV stalls for their own reasons, some succeeded and some didn't. But it looks fun to play, doesn't it?! (This deck was not altered at all)

Card by card:

Mark Of Darkness: Since the only quanta in the deck are air quanta, mark of darkness alone fuels the Shards of Void.

Wind Tower: Wind Towers are used here in order to play the air cards as fast as possible. Pends wouldn't be the correct choice here since the only darkness cards are the 1 darkness quanta SoV's.

Shard Of Void: The core of the deck. All the cards in this deck play a secondary role to buy enough time for the SoV's to eat away the opponent's hp.

Shockwave: Shockwaves act as the primary CC of the deck. With just one air quantum you can kill any targettable creature with 4 or lower hp. Plus, it can be used sometimes as a finisher when the SoV's have eaten enough hp.

Fog Shield: Hax shield is obviously OP. Jk. An easy shield to play that can block 100 40% of the opponent's creatures and weapons attack. It tries to buy enough time for the SoV's to do their job.

Eagle's Eye: Air's weapon is a very good addition to this deck. Not only does it deal decent (7) damage to the opponent but it acts as CC when needed. For some creatures with more than 4 hp that shockwaves cannot kill, or for rushes that shockwaves just aren't enough. Of course it can be used as finisher as well.

Luciferin: Huh? Luciferin? ... Afda pls... some people might say. But in a trial's match those 10 hp that a luciferin can offer might be what grants you the win. Since it doesn't cost quanta from a particular element it's easy enough to add to this deck.

Strategy:

 The strategy for this deck is quite simple. Play all your cards as fast as possible and try to prevent the opponent from rushing you till your SoV's eat enough hp. Ideally you want a quick fog shield, an EE by turn ~3, a couple of shockwaves on hand and  ~3-4 SoVs in the first ~10 cards. That way you have enough damage and enough stall to accomplish your goal.

Strengths:

  This deck is essentially a stall. So decks that rely on brute rush wont work easily against it. Every deck that rushes with low hp creatures. For example grabbows or immorushes will find themselves lack damage after shockwaves and EEs kill their creatures. Also, stalls that depend on healing are useless against this deck or stalls that dont have damage. In general, decks that dont pack PC will have a hard time playing vs this deck.

Weaknesses:

Of course, SoV stall has several weakness as well. Quite a lot of cards are counters to such a deck. It hates PC, too much damage, SoD based stalls with damage, 1HKO decks, quinted creatures(+SoW), cloaks, Poison, high hp creatures,Fahrenheit+Bolts etc. are bad matchups for this deck.
Spoiler for June 2016:

The Blue DenialBow
This Deck idea of the Month is brought to you by Afdarenty

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Continuing to highlight powerful PVP decks, I bring you a deck used by Team Air in both Wars #8 and #9. The deck uses a powerful selection of denial cards to disrupt your opponent, and the devastating Blue Nymph to finish games. Don't feel that you can't play this deck if you don't have 5 Blue Nymphs - just swap them for Azure Dragons or upgraded Wyrms. In fact, Wyrms are more effective than the Nymphs against decks with Reverse Time or Reflective Shields, though they leave you more vulnerable to the majority of shields.

Card by card:

Nova/Supernova: The most efficient way to provide quanta for the various denial cards, as well as the Fire quanta needed to trigger Unstable Gas. Although Nova/Supernova generate a lot of wasted quanta, focusing on the core strategy is more important than quanta efficiency here. Although Supernova provides more quanta, Nova will allow you to play Discord one turn earlier. This is the reason for the 3/3 split in the deck.

Discord: Arguably the best denial card in the game. This will slow down most decks you play against by two to three turns. Synergises well with Black Hole and Earthquake.

Earthquake/Quicksand: Slows down your opponents quanta generation significantly. An individually powerful card that becomes ridiculous when used with either Discord or Black Hole, or ideally both.

Blue Nymph: The main source of damage in the deck. If you have the quanta to use their ability each turn they become a 26 damage creature - far more powerful than any other creature in the game. They also give the deck an excellent solution to shields.

Reverse Time: Cheap creature control. Forcing your opponent to pay double the quanta cost of their creature will often be enough to lock your opponent out of the game when used with all the other denial cards.

Black Hole: A combo card that enables Discord to work at maximum efficiency and punishes slow quanta production after Earthquakes.

Strategy:

Your game plan is similar against all decks. Use your denial cards (Discord, Earthquake and Black Hole) to slow down your opponent and to protect your Nymphs, use your Nymphs to generate a lot of Unstable Gas, then enjoy the explosive end to the game.

When using Reverse Time, make sure to only target creatures that can effect the outcome of the game. For example, don't feel the need to Rewind your opponents Horned Frog. Wait for them to play Adrenaline on it first, then Rewind it. That way it will really hurt them. Similarly, it is rarely worthwhile to use your Earthquakes on only 1 Pillar or Pendulum.

Strengths:

Blue Nymph is a notoriously difficult card to deal with, even without factoring denial into the mix. Discord, Earthquake, Black Hole and Reverse Time all synergise extremely well with each other. If you draw the right combination of cards few decks will be able to keep up with you.

Weaknesses:

Occasionally you'll have draws where you don't draw many Nova, leaving you unable to play your denial cards, or a draw without many Air Pillars, leaving you with slow damage. Reflective Shields will prevent all of your damage from Unstable Gas, slowing the deck significantly. Decks using Nova and Immolation will allow your opponent to play creatures quickly despite your denial cards, however Black Hole and Reverse Time are especially effective against those strategies.

Speaking of Black Hole and Reverse Time against nova decks, both are effective cards against this deck. Nymphs are expensive creatures, so one Reverse Time can slow you down by two or three turns, and Black Hole is strong denial and healing against Nova. Also, any deck with enough creature control to kill your Nymphs can cause you problems if they escape the quanta lock.

Alternate Cards Selections:

As mentioned earlier, Wyrms and Azure Dragons both fit into the deck well, and Fog is worth considering in any Air deck. Purify is a good tech card if you expect Poison decks. Quintessence is a fine card to include as a 1-off if you expect to play decks with a lot of creature control cards. Forest Spirit can become a major threat if given enough time, although it starts off slowly.
Spoiler for May 2016:

King Bloodwall by Physsion
This deck review was written by JonathanCrazyJ
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Card by card:

Parasite: The work-horse of the deck. In most decks, it is simply a sub-par control creature. In this deck, it has multiple synergies, making it not only viable, but a thorn in the side of many opponents. It acts as reliable CC against low and mid HP creatures, who's death fuels the Bonewalls. More valuable, however is its synergy with Voodoo Dolls...

Voodoo Doll: Voodoo Dolls transfer poison and damage inflicted on them to the opponent. In this deck, Parasites and Gray Nymphs are used to inflict poison on opponents via Voodoo Dolls, which deal additional damage as the Doll loses health from its own poison.

Gray Nymph: Solid, high HP damaging creature, able to deal poison damage at double the rate of Parasites. The quanta balance of this deck means they are likely to come out later than the Parasites, which may mean the opponent has wasted CC on the darkness critters, allowing the Gray Nymphs to survive. Once an Aflatoxined Voodoo Doll dies, your board will start to fill with Malignant Cells, dealing additional minor damage. Be wary of using Nymphs as CC, because opponent Malignant cells could be harmful to your Bone Walls.

Bone Wall: Able to capitalize on various death causing effects, these act as a great defense for this deck.

Vampire Dagger: One of the best weapons in the game, it gives excellent healing and damage at a low cost. Allows you to heal up while a Bone Wall is active.

Siphon Life: A versatile card in this deck. Against rush decks, it can be used as CC with added healing benefit, fueling your Bone Walls. Against a more stall orientated deck, they can be saved, along with your darkness quanta, to provide a late-game burst of damage.

Strategy:

This deck is so effective, because it is so versatile. It can be considered a stall deck, yet matches up quite favorably against various other stall decks because of its own stall breaking strategies.
Early game, you want to set up a Vampire Dagger and Parasites quickly, especially against rush decks. Once your parasite has sprayed a few infections around, bring a Bone Wall out to capitalize on those death effects. As early as possible you should aim to get a Voodoo Doll on the field, and start racking up poison damage on your opponent. When you start getting towards the mid-game, bring out a nymph, and increase the speed of your poisoning. Against rush decks, Siphon Life should be used as and when it is available, trying to only use it when you have enough quanta to outright kill a creature. Against slower decks, or more stally decks, especially those with healing, you should save your Siphon Life cards in order to finish off your opponent.

Strengths:

While there are decks which can do aspects of what this deck does better than it, in a smaller meta, it can be an excellent Jack-of-All-Trades. Stallbreaking power from Voodoo Doll poison and Siphon Life is valuable, and excellent stalling power of its own through CC and Bone Walls make it a tough opponent to beat consistently.

Weaknesses:

Because there is a finite amount of poison that can be applied due to its Voodoo delivery system, purify crushes its stall breaking. Fractal would prove too much to deal with, as would many other stallbreaking tactics. It is also extremely vulnerable to denial tactics***, due to being tight on quanta and low on Pendulums. You would have to have a pretty good idea of what your opponent was likely to play in order deploy your strategy without being disrupted or circumvented.

***: This particular version was designed for a set of rules where up to 6 cards could be removed by its opponent. 12 Pendulums / 32 Cards leaves it less tight on quanta, though still able to function at 12 Pendulums / 38 cards.
Spoiler for April 2016:

Deck Idea of the Month
*SoPa Dials by Physsion

This deck review was written by dark ripper
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The deck featured this month was made by Team Darkness

Card by card:

Nova: The ring that connects all rainbow decks together that is nova has 4 uses in this deck. First of all it enables the core of the deck which is the Shards of Patience and the Sundials. Nova also provides quanta to speed up the deck using the sundials' hasten, plus they  facilitate the damage output of the deck with the burrow of the pests under SoPa.

Sundial: Sundial is one of the core cards of the deck. Acting as a stall tactic, it buys time for the deck to draw its creatures and and place them under SoPa to complete the deck's strategy. It also accelarates the deck if needed with hasten.

Steal: Steal is a necessary PC that this deck might need to finish off the opponent or steal any other permanents that might annoy the well-being of the deck.

Voodoo Doll: Voodoo Doll is a multitasking creature to this deck. By nature voodoo dolls cannot, or rather should not be targeted by CC, it is a cheap darkness creature that fits the deck perfectly and of course with Shard Of Patience on the field it delays the weapon of the opponent.

Shard Of Patience: Shard Of Patience indirectly provides the damage of this deck.

Pest: Pests are the main source of damage of this deck. Burrowing them and letting them grow their attack under SoPa only to release the SoPa and unborrow them to double their accumulated damage.

Vampire Dagger: Vampire Dagger is a cheap and very useful weapon to this deck. Helping to prolong the earlier turns by stealing some hp back and dealing some damage in return as well.

Nightmare: Nightmare is a nice one-card addition to round out this deck. It's just one copy of the card to the deck, but against certain decks like rushes it might be the reason to win the game.


Strategy:

 This deck is a semi stall-OTK deck that focuses around buying time to quickly finish off the opponent in 2-3 turns after the creatures on the field have gained enough damage. In an ideal world you would want to draw a couple of novas, pests, a voodoo doll, a sundial, a dagger and a SoPa. You want to place your dagger and the SoPa along with pests and borrow them. Pests should take priority over voodoo dolls unless you believe that the opponent's weapon is a threat. After that you have to calculate the opponent's damage and use your sundials accordingly. Last you might need to save your steal in hand to finish off the opponent. The average turns you need to win are about ~10.

Strengths:

 This deck is really strong against stalls as you have plenty of time to carry your strategy and your creatures are mostly untargetable. Also this deck thrives against deck that focus on CC for the same reason. In general, against almost any type of deck that gives you time to breath and carry on your strategy this deck has a high chance of coming out victorious. As well, because of pests this deck does well against most monos. Its versatility allows it to have chances of beating any kind of deck.

Weaknesses:

 This deck although not being entirely a rainbow it relies on RNG. Decks like mono fire that dish out loads of damage are difficult to deal with unless you can draw all of your sundials when the time is right.Also cards like RT, BW and heavy PC mess up your strategy. Another minor weakness is the vulnerability of pest before they burrow. In general, the biggest concern is that you can lose the game before you can complete your strategy.
Spoiler for March 2016:

Drainbolt
This Deck idea of the Month is brought to you by Calindu

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Hello, my name is Calindu and this month I'm presenting you a strong PvP deck used heavily by team Darkness in War #9. The deck utilizes a great deal of CC cards and the Dusk Shield/Vampire Dagger combo to stay alive and to control the board and the Black Dragon/Fractal combo to finish off the opponent.

Card by card:

Black Dragon: Very strong finisher combined with fractal, can combo for a maximum of 70 damage.

Drain Life: Crucial card for this strategy, strong CC card with the added benefit of healing.

Vampire Dagger: The MVP of this deck, it's a 12 hp swing per turn, for 2 quanta.

Dusk Mantle: Very good shield for this deck, makes sure you won't get bursted down by creatures and comboed with Vampire Dagger it makes your opponent wish he packed PC.

Lightning: Cheap and reliable CC card, kills most threats in unupgraded meta.

Fractal: Finisher and stallbreaker card when combined with Black Dragon.

Strategy:

This deck has a pretty straightforward strategy, but differs from archetype to archetype:

Against rushes, your main game plan is to kill every creature that poses a threat, and slowly heal and chip their HP with the vampire dagger. A rush deck will usually run a great deal of creatures, so it's important to not use 2 CC cards on a single creature unless it's absolutely needed(Nymph Queen needs to be dealt with right away for example) and value whether a creature is enough of a threat to ask for a CC card.

Against stalls, the game plan is very different, you want to build up darkness quanta for high damage drains and to get a hand capable of OTK. You'll periodically use lightnings directly on their hp to clean up your hand but try to use them only if you need to discard. The Black Dragon-Fractal combo is key against a stall, as it is a 60 damage combo(considering you have to use drains for OTK too) for only 2 cards. If you suspect a stall, steal is a great card to ensure you can deal damage through a shield.

Against domination decks, the game plan is similar to the one against rushes, just that they'll often pack sturdier creatures and some utility cards. The match up can be hard or easy depending on their build, some cards like Sky Blitz, Fire Bolts, PC cards or stall-breaker combos can be really hard to deal with.

Of course, there are some decks not included here but those are the main categories of decks you will probably encounter.

Weaknesses:

Fractal decks: A good fractal deck can flood the board so hard not even 11 CC cards can deal with it.

Stalls with reflective shield: Reflective shield blocks any spell damage, so with a full fractal combo, you can deal at most 70 damage, not enough to OTK. At that point, CC cards and miracle will follow and you'll not be able to finish the game.

Creatures with more than 6 hp: They need 2 CC cards or a 20+ quanta drain to kill, so until you get that quanta you are split between taking damage or using 2 cards to remove it.

Burst damage: Burst combos are very hard to deal with, you don't really have great ways to stop it and you can't really win before them too.

Quanta control: This deck needs a lot of quanta to do its job, Lightnings are mainly powered by mark, and drain life need quanta to be able to kill creatures. If that quanta is denied you can easily be rushed down by them. A great way to make this match up better is to upgrade lightnings.

Different versions:

Spoiler for Steals version:
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A great version if you suspect a lot of stalls or annoying permanents, not so great otherwise

Spoiler for Anti quanta denial version:
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This version is way better in case you face a quanta denial deck, upgraded lightnings don't really care about most quanta denial forms and you have more quanta to play with.

Spoiler for Fire version:
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This deck can be built even with fire as main element, it deals more damage but can't survive as well.
Spoiler for February 2016:

Adrenaflies by Timdood3
This Deck idea of the Month was brought to you by Vineroz

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Card#Description
Adrenaline5Essential boost for damage. Will not work without this card.
Golden Dragon2Extra damage when necessary
Firefly6Main attacker, also plays a very important role in building tempo
Damselfly4Quanta source and alternate attacker. Strongly recommended to be upgraded because of quanta distribution.
Shard of Freedom6A boost on attack and protection to Fireflies. Strongly recommended to be upgraded because of quanta distribution.
Air Pendulum7Quanta source

This month we once again look into deck synergies with Adrenaline:air :life combo is one of the earliest combos that caught many new player's eyes, all because of one card - Firefly Queen. It is so popular that there is a False God (Fire Queen) made with this synergy, also the introduction of Hope and Sanctuary gave FFQ decks a more versatile approach.

Because of this reason, Firefly as a standalone card is usually being overlooked. Why would I waste a card slot for one creature instead of the creature's generator? The card value just seems to be superior. Moreover, if we compare Firefly with other 3-attack creatures (because of Adrenaline synergy), it does look kind of lame:

CardCostStatAbility
Firefly3 :air3|2Bioluminescence: Generate :light per turn
Horned Frog2 :life2|2-
Flesh Spider3 :death3|3 :air Web: Target creature loses "airborne"

So why are we using this poor card? Aren't we trying to be the very best, like no one ever was? The answer is very simple, just one card:

One single card that can 1. boost your airbourne creature's attack 2. helps them bypass shield 3. prevents targeting from opponent. Can you find another card that serves more purpose and fills up so many weakness in every aspect? NO YOU CAN'T. With the boost of Adrenaline and Shard of Freedom, a single Firefly can do up to 20 unstoppable damage per turn. That's twice as much as a dragon!

Play style

Damsels and SoFree are the first priority to play. Although Firefly is your main attacker and this is quite a rushy deck, you want to protect your Fireflies by playing SoFree first. Always reserve Adrenaline on Fireflies, unless you can win the game by Adrenaline'ing your Damsels.

Best against

Although SoFree can provide exponential growth on attack/turn, the combo is a drawback to bring the tempo back on curve. With this reason this deck is best against 100HP opponents.

Why you should use this deck
  • SoFree is OP
  • SoFree is OP
  • SoFree is OP
What beats this deck easily
  • Reverse Time, just like any other combo decks
  • Quanta denial: This deck is quite tight on quanta generation
  • Lots of CC/PC: They can just destroy and kill everything
Spoiler for January 2016:

This Deck idea of the Month was brought to you by Discord

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Minority Report is an interesting deck to use which only requires minimum amount of quanta. Six Nova can still hold a lot, for being such a small quantity of quanta. With Time being the main element w/ Deja Vu, this deck is also a very powerful rainbow. From the Epinephrine to rush damage down to the silences to deny your opponent from drawing. This deck is a very useful rainbow.

Nova (6): The main and only source of quanta in this deck. Six of these can go a long way.

Chaos Power (4): This spell is the perfect way to boost your Deja Vu for more damage, and double when it splits!

Epinephrine (1): More damage is a key to winning faster. Epinephrine is a good way to rush out damage faster.

Shard of Bravery (4): This deck needs a way to rush itself out aswell. Got this in your hand but nothing else? Use it, it might do you some good.

Elite Deja Vu (4): Four creatures for 4 copies of buff spell. Four turns into eight, which can only mean more damage!

Rewind (4): What is a deck without some creature control? If there's too much damage coming from your opponent, then just rewind it!

Precognition (3): Looking to see what your opponent has in his hand for you? Use this and prepare yourself with one extra card.

Nightmare (2): A great way to prevent your opponent from drawing, while restoring health to you.

Silence (2): Another good way to prevent your opponent from drawing cards. Use it wisely, however. It only lasts one turn.

Strengths: With all this rainbow power, this deck is good against an unsuspecting opponent, or for grinding AIs with. The rushing damage is good against stalls, and the draw denial is great against a rush. This rainbow deck could be the million in one chance you get to finally beat that one AI you couldn't beat before.

Weaknesses: With only 6 quanta producers, it could be hard to draw one in a 30 card deck, which in then turn can slow down the deck. Bad hands can lead to bad consequences. With no hard CC, this deck can easily break in half.

This deck is an interesting way to experiment with rainbows and brings you one step closer to understanding what goes good in a rainbow whilst being fun and effective.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2017, 05:31:47 pm by mathman101 »

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1147123#msg1147123
« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2014, 05:15:39 pm »
Spoiler for December 2015:

This Deck Idea Of The Month is brought to you by Vineroz
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Druidic Staff (6) : Despite the healing, Druidic Staff is also a substantial damage source in this deck. The unupgraded version is used so that the healing can be maximized with Adrenaline effect.                 
Life Pendulum (10) : Quanta source and target for Nymph's Tears. The Green Nymphs generated will be crucial in building up damage and healing.                 
Water Tower (1) Quanta source and target for Nymph's Tears.                   
Water Pendulum (3) : Quanta source and target for Nymph's Tears.                   
Nymph's Tears (5) : The main card in this deck. You need it to start building up damage.                 
Animate Weapon (5) : Flying Druidic Staffs so that you can heal more.                 
                           
"Nymph's Tears (NT) is a tricky card to be placed in a deck. NT itself is not a top tier card as it is rather slow to build up, therefore it is often overlooked by elite deckbuilders (with a very special exception of Swallow). However, it is undoubtedly a very fun card to play with because of it's variation that can bring in different decks. This time, it is included in a very well-known strategy, Flying Staffs, to form a hybrid of a rush and healing deck.

Traditionally, Flying Staffs follows 1 simple strategy with 3 main cards: Druidic Staff, Adrenaline and Flying Weapon. By introducing NT, the Adrenaline part will be replaced by Life Nymphs, which can be generated by directly targeting NT on Life Pendulums, or using using the NT -> Water Tower/Pendulum -> Life Pendulums combo. Being a 3/7 creature, Life Nymph is not that easy to be controlled. This gives a huge mid-game advantage as putting every creature on Adrenaline can boost your attack very fast, not to mention the Nymph itself has a sweet spot damage for Adrenaline.

NT decks as mentioned before is fun because of it's variation. In this deck there can be another source of damage, which is Water Nymph army. Since the last buff of nymphs, Water Nymph becomes a 6/7 creature that is capable to replicated itself with the expense of another Water Tower/Pendulum and 4 quanta. With such stats it is capable to be a mid-range creature that urges the opponent to deal with it in 2-3 turns."                           
Play style:
You will want to get a Staff played as soon as possible, if you are not expecting any permanent control. The early healings are crucial for you to buy time and accumulate the quanta you need. Then depends on the board you will have to make a decision between Life Nymph and Water Nymph. Do you desparately need extra healing because you are being rushed? Or is your opponent still building up the board? If you are short on water quanta, you might even want to let those Life Pendulums run 1-2 more turns to gather more quanta before summoning a Life Nymph. While playing NT decks you can learn when to sacrifice quanta generation for damage/board presence, as you need to at least foresee a few more turns for your quanta distribution."                           
Best against:
This deck is capable to be played against AI4, due to its generally slower setup. The amount of healing can usually sustain long enough against AI4's attack.

For Arena, it really depends on the current meta that if it can go Gold or above, despite what is suggested in the original post. Usually Gold league is filled with 2/3 upped decks, with at least a 2x mark and often a double-sized deck. It is like an enhanced AI4 with better deck builds. Such opponents can easily outrush you or have enough control before you can set anything up. Therefore, for the sake of consistency I would not recommend to bring this deck against Gold or Platinum."                           
"Why you should use this deck:
1. 2 strategies in 1 deck
2. Learn to control quanta
3. Nymphs are fun                           
What beats this deck easily:
1. Reverse Time, just like any other combo decks
2. Quanta denial, hurts NT decks really bad
3. Gravity Shield, auto ragequit. Yes AI4 will have those.
Spoiler for November 2015:

Jade Stafftal

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Yes, this is a thing.

Basically a Frogtal, but because nobody likes Dims, we use the healing power of Jade Staves. Built by dawn for Trials of Life 9, though he actually didn't use it. This deck is rushy while providing good healing.

Card by Card Breakdown
Fractal (4): Fractal is a powerful card, that fills your hand with the targeted creature. It can be used in any deck if it has enough quanta sources. Better hope you have enough quanta!
Aether Pendulum (2): To boost the amount of aether quanta you get, also a way for quanta split in case of Earthquakes.
Giant Frog (5): What was meant to be the original target of fractal, this card is strong with a low cost. A worthy opponent.
Jade Staff (3): This was originally meant for healing as well as a boost of four extra damage to your opponent. For kicks and giggles, you can Fractal these instead of your Frogs.
Life Pendulum (10): Ten of these for more quanta for all those creatures you get with Fractal. Provides a good quanta base for both Life and Aether.
Animate Weapon (6): These are meant to make the staff in your hand airborne so you can bring out another staff. There's six in case your opponent is carrying Reverse Time!

Strengths
-Like many other Fractal based decks, Jade Stafftal does well against many stalls.
-It is fairly fast, capable of 8 ttw games.
-Fractal is easy to use, even easier if half your deck is quanta producers.

Weaknesses
-If Staves decide to clog your hand, and you don't draw any Animate Weapon, it often screws you over as you get outrushed.
-Shields and Mass CC are pesky to deal with, especially damage reduction and Dims. If you want to play around Mass CC, always keep a frog in hand.
-As usual, bad draws can be a problem with this deck.
-Reverse Time and Eternity can be troublesome!

This deck is fun, and helps you understand the properties of Fractal. Plus, it's a fun way to experiment with aether and life duos.
Spoiler for October 2015:

Creator: 5aruman
Deck review by: MeowMeowCat

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The Mourning Sage is a Light/Aether/Air deck based around using the built-in immortality of a flown Morning Glory as a tool to make it deal spell damage via the use of Shard of Wisdom. It excels at having, for the majority of the time, a large amount of spell damage hitting your opponent. Fancy a 24 | 4 immortal, spell damage dealing creature? If so, I think this is a deck for you.

Strategy
Play your pendulums, play the Morning Glory, Animate Weapon it, and throw your SoW on it. This is the main strategy for this deck. If the enemy seems to be dealing just a bit more damage than you'd like, play your Phase Shield to eliminate some of that damage. When your HP starts to dwindle to low numbers, play an Improved Miracle to bring your HP back to good shape.

Card Breakdown

Morning Glory (5x): The backbone of this deck, and your sole source of damage. This card costs 5 quanta to play, and it is a 8 | 4 creature when you use Animate Weapon when you have it equipped. Without this card, this deck would be... well, nothing.

Animate Weapon (4x): Another core card of this deck. Animate Weapon is a part of a 2 part combo of playing Morning Glory, then playing Animate Weapon to summon a 8 | 4 immortal creature. It's also a part of the 3 card combo this deck uses, involving the combo stated before, but with the addition of Shard of Wisdom, to give the Morning Glory an increase in ATK, and make it deal spell damage.

Shard of Wisdom (4x): The third core card of this deck. Shard of Wisdom, when played on an immortal creature, grants it +4 | 0, and makes the immortal creature deal spell damage, which completely bypasses all the shields in the game, except for Reflective Shield, and Emerald Shield. This card is what makes this deck shine.

Phase Shield (5x): One of the sources of defense for this deck. When played, it completely negates all physical damage that would be dealt to you, for 3 turns. Although it can be stole from you in game, usually this isn't an issue, due to your spell damage dealing Morning Glories.

Improved Miracle (2x): The second source of defense for this deck. When played, it restores your HP back up to your max HP, minus one. This card is extremely useful for later in the game, when you have your Morning Glories out and attacking, but you notice that your HP is starting to get low. Just pop one of these, and your HP is back up into good shape.

Light Pendulum (10x): It's quanta. Play it to get quanta so that you can use your other cards.

Strengths
Deals spell damage to bypass most shields
Immune to CC
CC usually not an issue


Weaknesses
Reflective Shield and Emerald Shield can put a damper on things
Prone to bad draws
Denial can put you in a sticky situation


General Thoughts
If you're looking for a deck that can kill your opponent quickly and efficiently,
while feeling nigh un-killable yourself, this is the deck for you.
Spoiler for September 2015:


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Stalling Shards is a deck based on luck and skill, as well as your hand. It could be good, it could be bad, you'll never know for certain. Things in this deck are risky, make the wrong move and you're dead! From the Deadly Poison to the Purify, this deck could easily win with the right draw. Lots of healing factors in this deck also help keep you alive long enough to either deck your opponent out or kill them with damage.

Quantum Tower (16): Quantum Towers The only source of Quanta you'll get in this deck, use it all! Quantum towers will provide 6-3 random quantum for each one tower, i don't fee mathy today, but i'm pretty sure that's alot of quanta!

Discord (1): This weapon is very useful against monos or duos, dealing 6 damage to your opponent every turn, this weapon is very strong!

Shard Of Serendipity (6): On top of lucky draws, you better hope you get something good from this shard, it could be useful, it could be deadly, or, it could just be a simple, weaker creature. (we all get those eventually) but use it if you can, it might be useful!

Deadly Poison (6): Deadly Poison is a useful thing to use against any opponent, dealing 3 damage for each one you have, it's stackable, and annoying if your opponent doesn't have purify.

Gravitation Guard (3): Gravitation guard, in this deck, is just an extra damage boost. dealing 4 damage to your opponent each, it could get a little nasty for your opponent if they don't have enough Creature Control to stop a 7 health creature.

Pulverizer (1): If you draw this card, it's endless permanent destroying for you. With only the need for two Gravity quanta or destroying one permanent, and the chance of getting some from your Towers, your opponent's permanents are long gone as soon as your draw this card!

Granite Skin (2): Granite Skin requires lots of earth quanta to be successful, that's still possible with the towers, but it'll be slower.

Shard Of Gratitude (3): More healing! This shard is very useful in more ways than one. If you're looking for an EM, no creatures left on the field and only a weapon, this shard will give you tat if you're at almost full health.

Purify (4): Purify helps if your opponents have Poison, less Poison for each Purify you have, and stackable. Also another good healing source.

Mirror Shield (1): Mirror shield is great for blocking your opponent's spells! Put it on as soon as you get it, and your opponent's spells will just bounce right back, no more worries over UG and Poison!

Improved Miracle (2): Low on health? If you have an Improved Miracle out, and enough quanta, use it! Improved Miracle might be expensive, but it's worth it when you're still alive in the end.

Improved Fog (1): Improved Fog has a high chance of blocking creatures, if you get lucky enough, none of the creatures on your opponent's side will hit you at all!

Electrum Hourglass (3): Missing a card for your combo to be complete? Try drawing a second card to see if it's what you need, or speed up your deck a little more with this lovely card, just don't deck yourself out!

Improved Steal (1): Like stealing things? Use this wisely, and you might get lucky with your choice, steal your opponent's shield, or a weapon. the possibilities are endless!

Deck weaknesses: The lack of a few certain cards can be often deadly if you're not careful with your actions. only one steal, that might be hard to draw. Too much healing, where's all the damage? Not enough CC, maybe too much random luck from Shard of Serendipity. This whole deck is based on luck and draw, anf often times, your luk cannot be the best. Of course, if you have a good draw, none of this could be a huge problem.

Deck Strengths: All this healing can be very useful, if you use it wisely, you could get an EM, or maybe, if you don't. you'll just barely survive with only one HP left. Shard of Serendipity can give you some really cool things too, whether it be more healing, or some CC or another creature. Two shield and two weapons for a higher chance of drawing one of the four available in this deck.
Spoiler for August 2015:


Electromare [death][darkness][AI4][Arena] by montrossen

This deck review was written by Discord

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Electromare is not a deck to use in pvp duel, it's used to grind any ague in arena and even AI4. this deck is fun, and is just as strong as you would expect. playing this deck i noticed that bad hands can really throw you off, same with cards like tower shield and plague, lightning storm and pandemonium. then again this deck throws off deck arenas as well, when this deck works, you'll have an easy victory.

Spark(6): the main part of this deck if you want it to work right, spark dies after dealing 3 damage to your opponent. they may not be very strong, but the combo with it in this deck proves spark's worth.

Bone Tower(2): helping you get out the boneyards faster, you only need two with the help of all those pendulums. they're pretty much a backup in case you need the deck to go faster, but they are there if you need them.

Graveyard(6): in order for this deck to work the way you want it to, the boneyards are used for when the sparks die. getting them out as soon as you possibly can would be advised, seeing as the moment you plat a spark, you can no longer put it back in your hand. so if you misclick, then there's no worry.

Death Pendulum(5): these are just used in case you don't exactly get a tower on the first hand, and generate double quantum.

Imrpoved Steal(3): just in case you envy something the opponent has, or if the opponent steals something of yours first, use it wisely.

Eclipse(3): used for buffing the skeletons when the time comes.

Nightmare(6): playing this deck against AI, the AI would be foolish enough to play whatever you nightmare into it's hand, specifically, sparks. make the AI play sparks when you have boneyards out, and it gives you more creatures!

Deck weaknesses: obviously Pandemonium, Plague, Rain Of Fire, and Lightning Storm are huge threats to this deck, when played they can kill off any creatures you already have in your field.with not much in the way of protection, and at the times this deck is slow, the AI could have a little more of a chance of killing you. this deck is also weak against stalls, so be careful which AI you choose.

Deck strengths: of course when you get everything you need out, this deck is going to be a blast of fun grinding arena and AI4. you can just sit there and watch as you play whatever you want out of this deck. when sparks die, or any other of your opponent's creatures, it turns into a skeleton on your side. how fun is that? winning against AI with no trouble while having fun with Death, Aether and Dark all in the same deck?

This deck may be useless against people opponents, but it sure is handy against AIs. you can easily kill off any AI while just having fun with this deck.
Spoiler for July 2015:


Fireflight [Air/Fire] by Puff

This deck review was written by Discord

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Fireflight is a basic deck, easy and simple to use, all you have to do is watch out for certain unpredictable cards. Fireflies and Damselflies are the two main sources of quantum you need, keep and eye on those! of course as soon as you get the shards out, keeping them safe from targeting will be a breeze. phoenixes are for extra damage, and the sword are just in case you have nothing else to use against your opponent.

Long sword:2 : these are just in case you have nothing else to use against your opponent, a backup in a way, and they barely cost anything, it might be worth it if your opponent is close to dying and all your creatures are gone.

Minor Phoenix:3 : these are for extra damage, and a very low cost too. even now, if they die, you can always re spawn them. that way the damage just keeps coming!

Wind Tower:5 : in case you don't get exactly what you need on the first turn, towers should always be a second option. they provide quanta as much as damselflies do, and cost nothing as well. without these towers, you'll only get a dragon out slower.

Damselfly:6 : Damselflies are used for excess quanta as well as dealing a little bit of damage to your opponent. they look cute, don't they? don't be fooled, they may not deliver much in the way of damage, but they are still important to getting the quanta you need.

Sky Dragon:2 : also built for dealing damage, they may cost alot in the way of quanta, but you'll find it's useful once out. they deal a fair amount of damage, at the price of quanta. but quanta build up faster when you have everything you need out.

Elite Firefly:6 : fireflies are good, they do a little more damage than damselflies, and produce the much needed fire quanta for this deck and the phoenixes. they are still important to this deck, if you want this deck to be complete. it does damage as well as deliver fire quanta to you.

Shard Of Freedom:6 : in order for your creatures to be safe, these shards are pretty much wanted for this deck, wouldn't you hate it if all your creatures were killed? this allows creatures to avoid targeting as well as deal double damage, therefore killing your opponent faster.

deck weaknesses: again, lobo is bad for this deck, lobotomizing your creatures' abilities means no more excess quantum. Fire storm and plague or retrovirus and Discord are just as bad  for this deck. with no counters, this deck has quiet a few weaknesses. Skull Buckler/skull shield are huge in the interference of this deck, wouldn't want your creatures turning into skeletons would you?

deck strengths: plenty of quantum to go around here! pests shouldn't be a problem, neither should any other quantum stealers. once you get the shards out, the creatures can't be targeted with anything, they do double damage too. the extra quantum can be used in case of reverse times.

Firelight is a basic, fun deck, but calls for many precautions. it provides experience for the element of air and fire both, and it's just to have a little fun.
Spoiler for June 2015:


Freeze-dried tears by ggabriel2

This deck review was written by Discord

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Known as Freeze Dried tears, this deck has the strategy of hitting your opponent when they least expect it. In case of the problem of no nymphs, just use three extra nymph tears. Strategy goes as far as stalling your opponent by freezing their creatures, or using Dry Spell/Dessication for killing the creatures enough to get a nymph out, and the rest takes place from there.

Water Tower:7 :the only thing other than your mark that'll get you far enough to beating your opponent;

Dry Spell:2 :this is where the damage to low HP creatures comes in, such things like Deja Vu's and Vultures, etc will either be wekened or instantly killed off if not already buffed;

Congeal:3 : stalling creature damage is important if you want to survive long enough to get a nymph and some damage out on your opponent;

Arctic Octopus:2 : in case you run out of Congeal spells, this will help keep your opponent's creatures at bay, so use them wisely;

Nymph Tears: 3 : these will help get a nymph if you can't quite afford one already in your hand! In which turn can be used to make more nymphs, until you get a nymph army!

Dessication:3 : A stronger version of Dry Spell, this spell does two damage, (better than one isn't it?);

Water Nymph:3 : (in case you don't have nymphs, use Nymph Tears) these are vital to your system

Water Pendulums:7 : in case opponent has Earthquakes or Quicksands.

Deck weaknesses: it's obvious Lobo and steal are big things to avoid. When it comes to this deck, it's because if you can't produce nymphs from what you already have, there's no reason to this deck. If your opponent has either of the two, they can lobotomize your nymphs, no more nymph production, and they could steal your pillars, less pillars/pends means less quantum production, which means less chance of getting enough quantum to use your creature's abilities. Same goes with Devourers/Pests in this case.

Deck strengths: the cards such as Desiccation, and arctic squid can hold the creatures back while you get what you need out. Desiccation can kill low HP creatures, stalling your opponent even more while you get some more damage on them. The Congeal does just as much in the way of stalling creatures.

This deck is fun and easy to use, and provides good experience with the  :water element while easily surprising and killing any opponent!
Spoiler for May 2015:

MrSexington's "Rage Quit"
This deck review was written by Dm

A very old deck called... MrSexington's "Rage Quit" Deck.

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Now, most of you "newer" players might have never heard of this deck. Or probably you've only heard of "Rage Quit" with Chapuz' "Ragequit Factory" deck (well, it's already a bit old since it's from 2012 though...). And so you might think that this is just an older, slower, crappier version of the newer "Ragequit Factory" deck.
And honestly, you wouldn't be too far off. The "Ragequit Factory" is just a trimmed down version of this. But that does not mean that this deck is any less funnier than it. And because you are packing 60 cards, you can bring a bit more to the table. Let's look at the cards.
Quantum Tower: We don't know what this is for, but maybe you can figure it out for us.
Supernova: We have a small guess that this might serve the same purpose of Quantum Towers, except that it gives it a bit of an extra boost. Don't play twice of it, we're not focusing on singularities with this deck. Some people like exchanging this for other cards; but we'll tackle that later.
Improved Antimatter:This is where things start getting fun. Find the opponent's creature with the highest attack power (and if you're afraid that the opponent might want to CC himself, with a higher HP too.) and use Antimatter on it. I think the description of the card is accurate enough - The creature will now be healing you. Leave it there and proceed to the next card of the combo.
Aflatoxin: Which is this one. You're not supposed to use this on your own creatures (Well, not like you have any to start with...) but rather on your opponent. This will fill his field with Malignant Cells. Of course this would be a very stupid move if you don't have shields, but thankfully, we are not stupid, and we do have shields. You should aim to keep the only creatures on his side either Malignant Cells or Antimattered Creatures.
Protect Artifact: Fairly straight forward, this protects your permanents. Such as your shield, which is pretty important if you didn't notice. Or your towers, so you don't go quanta starved. Or your Hourglass, to draw more. It's situational, but you should quickly grab the hang of it.
Spine Carapace: One of your shields. Spine Carapace is a good shield since it will block the damage from all the Malignant Cells; simultaneously, Spine Carapace will, with enough time, kill any other creature that is not either Antimattered or a Malignant Cell. All in all, a pretty standard shield to have in decks like this.
Shard of Gratitude: This card was in this deck back when it healed 5 HP independent of your mark. Now that it is no longer like this (and now that Sanctuary is in the game) you can swap this for Sanctuary no problem. Or you can tweak it a bit yourself and just use Shard of Gratitude none the less.
Purify: In case you find someone who only has an arsenic and deadly poisons. Just in case. Also, added healing.
Inundation: An underused little card that has been "recently" (warning: definitions of recently may vary) been buffed to include more slots. Basically, any creature that isn't water or other and remains in "Flooded" slots will die. This hampers the opponent even more, as he will only have five active slots to play with, and they'll either die to your shield, be malignant cells, or be antimattered. Yep, pretty good to have in this deck. But it's not a necessity - it's more of a commodity in case you face something like Fractal. For example.
Mirror Shield: This shield also blocks exactly 1 damage so that the Malignant Cells won't hit you. Apart from that, it holds a few other good points, like the ability to block spell-damage creatures (Which are now a problem with Shard of Wisdom or Psion, which again did not exist back then) or some older decks that already existed back then (Like Firestall).
Improved Miracle: In case you somehow have a huge streak of bad luck or your opponent simply has a quinted purified Steam Machine at a retardedly high attack or something like that, use this to save yourself from near-death. Quite self-explanatory.
Shard of Divinity: Again, a card that was stronger back then, but still strong enough to be included today, this card will simply raise your maximum HP. This will give you a bit more Electrum when EM'ing, make you harder to kill, et cetera. You may swap this for a Stone Skin if you so desire - the effect will be the same, but you'll need to wait a bit more before using it.
Wings: Another Shield. For the love of all that is holy and unholy in this earth do not substitute a Spine Carapace or a Mirror Shield with this. Use this to stall while you get your combo out. That's it. It blocks a lot of things and is "better" to have, in this scenario, than a DimShield - It lasts longer, blocks most attacks, and what it doesn't you're likely healing back anyway.
Electrum Hourglass: Draw stuff, get your combo out faster, make the opponent rage earlier.
Sundial: Stalls opponent for one turn. Blocks all incoming damage (Except weapons.) Also gives you a bit of drawing. Good stalling card overall.
Improved Steal: Steal stuff. Annoying permanents. (Like Fahrenheit, or Titan, or breaking an Eternity + Photon combo..)
Electrocutor: Some damage. No, just kidding. The main point of this is to take away annoying abilities. Like the Psion's if you don't draw a mirror shield, or butterfly effect. Well, not that anyone uses the latter, but hey.

The whole deck concept has already been explained and is fairly straightforward - Lock the opponent down with a combination of Flooding, Antimatter, Aflatoxin, and one of your shields. The point of this deck is to simply make your opponent ragequit. You will not gain a lot of electrum with it, and you will not farm fast with it - it is simply to have a bit of fun. The great point about it is being highly customizable - as pointed out, you can swap some cards for others, and always add in new ones. For example, adding a Permafrost Shield instead of a Spine Carapace, or adding a Pandemonium to help clear the opponent's field in case something goes awry; or adding the classical Eternity + Photon combo so you avoid decking out (in case you meet someone else who is as sadistic as you and uses this kind of stuff.)
Spoiler for April 2015:



SoSeDBH of Superstition by theelkspeaks

This deck review was written by agdhar

Have you been searching for a SoSer deck which is fun but also equally effective?  Then this deck is for you.

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This deck was made by theelkspeaks for the weekly tournament. He went on to win that edition, well that's something you already read.

Mark  :entropy: The features 4 Chaos power, 4 Super Nova, 3 Discord,  SoSer. Hence The mark has to be  :entropy. Not to mention the entropy cards you will get from SoSer.

SoSer: The card you want to build your deck around. Feeling lucky Punk?

Super Nova: 2 quanta generated in all elements is quite useful to play the  :rainbow cards. Exercise caution when you suspect BH in the opponent deck, playing only when necessary.

Discord: An early discord is a match-winner against most mono or duo. Combined with Blackhole its lethal to the opponent. Also the heal from BH comes in handy. Even if it gets stolen not, it's not much harm since this is a  :rainbow deck.

Chaos Power: Buff. Buff. More Buff. But make sure you buff the right creature.

Flesh Recluse: Low cost high damage. Comes with a useful skill Web.

Graboid: Low cost, high damage. You can buff the Elite Graboid and burrow if you suspect CC.

Lava Golem: If you get this out early it can turn into a monster for your opponent. A good candidate for CP to survive initially.

Abyss Crawler: Nice damage output, can survive even lightning.

Elite Wyrm: Best candidate for CP. Can cause some serious damage when buffed.

Phase Shield: Offers some protection when things aren't going your way.

Strategy:
It is simple yet complicated. Your strategy keeps changing with cards you draw and cards you get from SoSer. Play each card to its merit and you give yourself a good chance at winning.
A late Blackhole can also be used as heal to survive that one turn so you can kill your opponent. Or to get an EM.
You want your hand to have empty slots to be able to get cards from SoSer. Don't be reluctant to discard SoSer if you have more than a few in your hand.

Strengths:
The 6 creatures with 4 Chaos Powers are sufficient to cause enough damage to kill the opponent. Any cards obtained from SoSer are really a bonus.

Weaknesses:
This deck comes with a risk where your SN may decide to bottomdeck. Still, you can survive with QP.
Draw dependent.

I like using SoSer. The excitement is in the unpredictability of the cards you will be getting. The problem is selecting the quanta source and other cards to be used in the deck. This deck tackles that very efficiently.
I played 25 matches in bronze arena using this deck, winning 22 matches with 4 Special wins. The losses came against top ranked decks in the league. Average TTW was 9.5.
Spoiler for March 2015:


SoPa Pestbow by Youpla

This deck review was written by iancudorinmarian

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If you are one of the people who likes trying new strategies, like SoR on a rustler (which, by the way, it doesn't work as you think it will), this deck is perfect for you. Ever wondered what happens if you burrow a creature, let it grow under SoPa and unburrow it? I won't spoil the surprise, after all, this will determine you to try this deck yourself. These are the notes about the deck, written by the one who created the deck, Youpla:

Nova: the only 0-card cost. You are assured to go with 1 in the starting hand, allowing to play a Pest in the second turn if starting first. Stats are superiors to get 2 Novas when starting second.

Skull Buckler: may be switched by a Fog Shield, but is superior vs some hard-decks to play against, see below. Rarely, it allows you to fill AI hand (with Nightmare) with Skelletons if it play  :darkness and not  :death

Jade Staff: probably more interresting than Vamp Dagger, because the gain of life is assured (Vamp is sensible to shields), and also because  :darkness quantas are limited.

SoPa: 3 seems reasonable to get one enough early.

Rewind: CC. Is used also as an indirect quanta denial, since opponent will not draw a pillar/pendulum, and will pay 2 times the casting cost (if able!). Also cool with Nightmare.

Pest: Since the first is casted, others come. Don't forget to burrow them asap...

Steal: Mainly quanta denial. The first target is pendulums (giving you some  :darkness quantas), second is towers, and may be used in a more classical way. (Vs Ghostmare, steal the Time Towers. It delays the cast of Ghosts, and more, allow you later to cast them).

Vampire: Tempo when SoPa isn't there, and big healing when SoPa do the job.

Nightmare: To use wisely: I mean, you have to play it when you are sure than when you do, you will prevent for several rounds AI to draw 2 cards/turn. It's really an important part of the denial, healing a bit.

Thunderbolt: CC.

Spoiler for February 2015:


Pendulum Berserker by ZBlader

This deck review was written by dark ripper
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The deck featured this month was made by ZBlader.

Card by card:

Mark Of Water: WIth the key card of the deck being Nymph's Tears, the mark needs to match the element of the card to fuel it faster. So, wadur.

Poison: Cheap and immediate damage to the opponent, makes the damage output a tad faster.

Nymph's Tears: The key card of the deck. You can choose which pendulum to pick according to each match. Fire pendulums will give red nymphs, thus strong CC or buff if needed and death pendulums will give grey nymphs, durable-high attack creatures with cheap CC.

Death Pendulum: Nothing much to say here, fueling needed quanta for poison and for the nymphs.

Fire Pendulum: Same goes here. Fueling water and fire qunta for NT, deflag and after the creation of red nymph, fueling its ability.

Deflagration: Permanent Control. You dun want dem shields holding you back.


Strategy:

Control based deck. You need quick quanta production and a couple of nymphs in the first ~5 turns. From that moment, it all depends on your opponent's deck and your priorities. Cast poison as soon as you draw-can afford it for maximum damage output. Watch out for your deflagration usage cause you cant use it forever. Also, care your quanta.

Strengths:

Its a heavily CC based deck. If a creature based deck cant outrush you, then you will be able to kill it and finish the game. It overwhelms decks without any CC as long as you can produce nymphs quickly enough. Having high-hp creatures it can beat some stalls as well.

~Its very fun~

Weaknesses:

Well, it certainly has weaknesses. You need a fat quanta start to be able to control the game, if you dont get one you can be outrushed quite easily. Thus, being a trio deck, any form of quanta distruption affects negatively the effect of the deck. Early Discord or BH can destroy you. Several stalls which possess healing will outlast you. Mass CC decks could be a problem too.

You should definately give it a go and most of all, have fun!
Spoiler for January 2015:

Fast-Draw FG Killer by DJ Hopper :)
This deck review was written by the Deck Helper, willng3.
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The deck featured this month is a classic variant of the deck archetype commonly referred to as "Ghostal", whose power is demonstrated both in PvP and against False Gods.

Card by card:

Golden Hourglass: Increases draw power, leading to faster Dimensional Shield retrieval, faster quanta production, and a faster deck in general.

Eternity: In the event that the opponent puts up more of a fight than expected, Eternity can be used to counteract excessive drawing by preventing the player from decking out. It also doubles as creature control by dismissing certain threatening cards from the board for another turn, if needed.

Ghost of the Past: Damage dealer. With quanta being restricted to 75 for any Element, Ghost of the Past makes a more efficient choice here than the Devonian Dragon. However, the latter can also be used in some cases to counter Wings.

Dimensional Shield: Arguably the strongest shield in the game. With this deck's ability to burn through its cards quickly, 18 turns is more than enough turns of stalling to finish off the opponent in most cases.

Fractal: The ultimate stall-breaker. Two copies of this card in this deck ensures that a single Ghost of the Past receives as much as a ×8 damage multiplier for each copy.

Strategy:

The beauty of this deck is, as its name implies, its incredible drawing speed. Excessive amounts of quanta producers help to make sure that the Golden Hourglasses can both be played and activated quickly. The additional drawing power in the early game reduces the drawbacks of having a deck size over 30 by reducing the risk of not being able to draw a Dimensional Shield in time to stop the opponent's damage dealers. Once the player has neutralized most of the opponent's opposition they may then begin to accumulate quanta in preparation for a spam of Ghosts of the Past later in the game. Some variants of this deck also include a few copies of Silence to ensure that the spam of Ghosts cannot be prevented or countered.

Strengths:

Fast drawing speed, powerful shields, and burst damage. Ghost of the Past having 4 HP in addition to Fractal lead to the player having to worry very little about the opponent's creature control as long as they hold off on playing Ghosts until a Fractal can be played during the same turn. Stalls will have a very hard time dealing with this deck's speed and decks that can't deal with Dimensional Shields will be forced to look on hopelessly as the player sets up for a mid to late game spam of Ghosts of the Past. Multiple copies of important permanents reduces the power of decks that use one or two copies of permanent control, aside from those that aim to win in a single turn. The use of Aether in this deck also means that it can be customized for multiple uses in PvP.

Weaknesses:

The player must be wary of how much they draw from their own deck, as the player's greed may set themselves up for the opponent destroying an Eternity towards the end of the game, forcing the player to lose via deck out. While one or two copies of permanent control generally is not enough to break this deck, continuous permanent control such as Pulverizer or even Psion and Momentum can present problems. The deck in this form has no means to bypass Dimensional Shields, meaning that it will be forced to hope that its own supply of Dimensional Shields outlasts those of the opponent. Quanta control in the form of Discord and Earthquake has the potential to disrupt the deck enough in the early game to allow rushes to win before the deck can stabilize its output of quanta.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2017, 05:30:59 pm by mathman101 »

Offline SpikeSpiegel

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1173600#msg1173600
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2015, 09:33:03 pm »
Past Decks

Spoiler for December 2014:

Parasitic Barbie Dolls (aka ParaWall) by Team Darkness (War #7)
This deck review was written by the Deck Helper, willng3.
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52r 534 5un 5un 5un 5un 5un 5un 5up 5up 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v8 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 71b 71b 71b 8pk

The deck featured this month won the Community Vote for War #7's favorite team deck, built and used by Team Darkness.

Card by card:

Parasite: Quite an uncommon card to see in the War environment, but it works to fantastic effect here. This card serves a dual role as both a constant means to inflict poison damage on the opponent's creatures as well as poison Voodoo Dolls (and the opponent) as they are drawn.

Bone Wall: The ultimate form of defense for a deck like this. In conjunction with the poison inflicted by Parasites, a single one of these may very well result in the user never taking a single hit all game.

Steal: Utility card. Takes care of pesky cards such as Lobotomizer that would otherwise cause problems for this deck.

Grey Nymph: This lady takes the Creature Control displayed by Parasites to a whole new extreme. Not only can she inflict 2 poison damage for the same price, the Malignant Cell produced on the opponent's side of the field almost guarantees another charge will be added to the user's Bone Wall. Furthermore, her Aflatoxin can be applied to the player's Voodoo Dolls when the opponent doesn't have any damage reducing shields, allowing for a potential swarm of Malignant Cells later in the game.

Voodoo Doll: This may seem like an odd choice at first glance, but the use of this card makes it so that the user no longer needs to rely on the opponent to play creatures throughout the game in order to win. Let's say that the opponent decides to stop playing creatures for a bit in order to take down the player's Bone Walls all at once and avoid the Parasites' poison from getting stacked on one creature en masse. Well with Voodoo Dolls the opponent is put on a clock since the poison damage will rack up quickly.

Black Nymph: While the ability to Vampire your own creatures might not come in as much handy as the poison counter(s), the ability to remove potential threatening abilities from creatures such as Otyugh or Mindflayer can be quite useful as well.

Strategy:

This deck aims to overwhelm the opponent's creatures with poison damage from Parasites with assistance from various Nymphs and Malignant Cells as needed. Bone Walls keep the damage off of the player while the opponent watches their creatures bite the dust one by one. For smarter players who try to hold off on playing creatures one by one to avoid a stockpile of poison counters, Parasite's Infection ability can also double as a form of direct poison damage when used on Voodoo Dolls; stalling isn't always an option.

Strengths:

Fast to set up Parasites which means very early Creature Control and it can force the opponent to play creatures even when they may not want to. Voodoo Dolls and Parasites have the potential to make games go by very quickly if the player's starting hand is favorable enough. This deck is capable of taking a War battle and turning the duel into a battle of the mind for the opponent.

Weaknesses:

Creature Control can cause problems when used on Parasites. The death effect may seem like a good thing since this deck uses Bone Wall, but the deck relies on its Parasites and their ability to obtain the best results. Decks using Flying Titans are very big threats given Titan's ungodly amounts of HP as well as Momentum. Quanta control/denial can also cause problems, though this won't stop a Parasite from wreaking havoc for long most of the time. Decks using large amounts of healing through Sanctuary, Miracle, etc. can also potentially stall out this deck.
Spoiler for November 2014:

SoPaBow by SpikeSpiegel
This deck review was written by dark ripper
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 71a 74j 77m 77m 77m 77m 7dm 7dm 7hi 7hi 7hi 7hi 7n0 7qa 7qa 7t6 7t6 7t6 80m 8pm

Spoiler for unupgraded version:
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 563 596 596 596 596 5f6 5f6 5j2 5j2 5j2 5j2 5og 5rq 5rq 5um 5um 5um 626 8pm

The deck featured this month was made by SpikeSpiegel.

Card by card:

Mark Of Earth: Mark of earth is a must in this deck because it provides Wardens with the necessary quanta to stall as long as it takes and fuels devourers/pests to borrow and when unborrowed after SoPa their damage is doubled.

Nova: Nova goes without saying, fuels the deck with needed quanta to have faster start and dominate quicklier.

Quantum Pillar: Nova alone can't take care of all the quanta needed for the deck to work, thus quantum pillars are there for that reason.

Iridium Warden: Wardens play a really important part on the deck. Due to their skill to attack non airborne creatures, while being under the effect of Shard Of Patience, their damage increases and thus they are able to at least stall rushing if not kill the creatures. Plus, their low cost makes it even easier to play.

Shard Of Patience: The key card of the deck. It fuels every creature on the field, increasing their damage and augmenting their ablities.

Devourer: Devourers are not there only for their passive which is the quanta draw. Their active ability to borrow with earth quanta fits perfectly the deck as when unborrowed their damage doubles something that helps winning faster.

Scarab: Scarabs become nasty creatures when their hp increases. Under SoPa they can devour almost everything in only a few turns.

Deflagration: Not much to say here, deflagration provides the necessary permanent control to OTK when the deck has evolved enough.

Arsenic: Probably the best weapon choice on bows. Low cost and 1 poison counter its turn makes can be very helpful.

Fog Shield: Again, probably the best shield choice one bows. The hax shield's low cost plus its blocking pretty much everything(no not 40% that is a big lie), prevents the opponent from rushing easily.

Graviton Salvager: A deck that is based on one card needs as much protection of that card as you can give it. Low cost, decent stats and a very useful for this deck passive that will bring back to life a potentially deflagged SoPa, or any other permanent.

Phase Salvager: Same here. Low cost, helpful passive.

Strategy:

Play SoPa, grow your creatures, kill everything, OTK them. That's pretty much it. More seriously, you aim for a quick start. Fast Shard of Patience and a couple of creatures(preferably scarabs and wardens) should be a pretty good start. In the mid game you should be able to control the game, your creatures provide the necessary CC to stall enough time till you are able to win. Scarabs are able to devour potentially airborne creatures that wardens cant kill and devourers just sitting and growing their attack borrowed. Always keep a deflagration in hand in case of annoying permanents. At the end, you just pop the SoPa and your creatures will OTK your opponent. It is a very dominant deck.

Strengths:

Should be able to crush rush decks since it provides immediate and limitless cc. Because of its low cost creatures, with a good start it should survive most control decks. Same goes with stalls since it is an OTK it can pretty much deal with most stalls and destroy them.

Weaknesses:

You won't always get good draws. A draw without wardens or Shard of Patience could mean a loss depending on what you are up against. It can also have problems against other faster OTK's. Black holes are a huge problem due to the low quanta production. In most rare cases, mono aether, PA'd gravity shield decks, maybe some really fast Immorushes can beat it.

This deck is for fun, be sure to use it on PvP or wherever else you feel like! Have fun using it!
Spoiler for October 2014:


In honor of his recent Trial victory and victory as the best liked Trials Final Battle Deck, this month we're going to feature one of Jen-i's decks from the Trials of Light finals!

The deck itself looked as follows:

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596 596 5lf 5ll 5ll 5ll 749 749 77f 77f 77f 77f 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7k5 7k5 7k5 8pl


The requirements for the deck involved a 40% Light requirement, no more of any other element than Light, and a 24 upgrade maximum.  Let's look card-by-card at the deck and see what Jen-i did!

The key combo of this deck is Crusader + Pulverizer, which is a quanta trio - requiring  :light:earth, and  :gravity quanta.  :earth is the least used quanta in the base combo, so Jen-i decides to use spare :earth quanta which will inevitably be created to power Iridium Wardens.

Mark of Gravity - Allows earth pendulums to provide Gravity quanta reliably for using the pulverizer effect.

Light Towers - The main quanta source for the light in the deck.

Earth Pendulums - Generate both Earth and Gravity quanta in order to power the two control effects in the deck - Guard and Pulverize - on alternate turns.

Pulverizer - The weapon card that the Crusaders will endow and that serves as repeatable PC.  Jen-i makes the unusual choice to include 4 weapons in the deck in order to ensure an early Pulvy - absolutely key to the success of this deck.

Crusader - Having several crusaders will allow Jen to multiply his pulverizer effect to gain absolute control over the opponent's board.  Having 6 crusaders virtually guarantees 3 or more permanents smashed per turn, if the quanta can keep up.

Gravity Shield - a somewhat unusual choice, especially given the need for high amounts of Gravity quanta in the deck.  Consider that the opponent has to be playing a highly light-based deck as well.  Many Light creatures have high HP, so Jen's use of Gravity Shield will block a significant number of them.

Iridium Warden - Uses the remaining earth quanta not used to play the Pulverizer in order to gain a repeatable source of CC.  Together with the Gravity shield, this allows Jen-i to prevent the majority of damage threats.

Blessing - This can increase the damage of a single crusader, or allow a warden to actually damage opposing creatures.  With only one copy, this isn't a core strategy of the deck, but it can help in some situations.

This deck is very quanta-hungry, so Jen decided to upgrade Quanta first, then weapons and Crusaders for more damage.

Congratulations to Jen-i!  You can see the deck in action here!

Spoiler for September 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month: The Brave Malignant Ball that Could by Keeps

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This month, we bring you a high-winrate FG grinder, the Brave Malignant Ball That Could.

This deck is based on a simple principle - the AI considers Malignant Cell a card that harms its owner, and never targets cells with CC.  So what if you could grow truly massive cells and overrun the AI with them?  Let's find out!

Card-by-Card

Nova - This provides all the :water and :light quanta this deck needs, since the mark provides :fire and the rest of the quanta is :death

Bone Towers - This deck primarily needs :death quanta to fuel Aflatoxin, the key card of this deck.

Mark of Fire - This gives you the quanta to play your upped Shard of Bravery, at a rate of one shard per turn.  This lets you powerdraw through your deck and get your combo out as fast as possible.

Aflatoxin - This card turns your Ball Lightning into a Malignant Cell, letting your deck start rolling.

Ball Lightning - This card is the fodder for your Aflatoxin to create your horde of Malignant Cells.

Shard of Bravery - This card lets you draw very quickly to get to your key combo of your deck.

Shard of Patience - This card is the other key to your deck's combo - once played, your Cells will grow and grow until they become out of control.

Shard of Sacrifice - This card will help buy you a couple extra turns for your Cells to wallop away should you need them.

Sundial - This card delays opponent's creatures by a turn and also lets you draw a card from your deck.  This makes it useful both for drawing into your combo faster and for stalling once your Cells are out.

Explosion - This card gives you OTK potential against Dimensional Shields - a vital tool for winning otherwise lost matchups!
Spoiler for August 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month

SoB Air Rush by dark ripper

This deck review was written by the Trial Overseer Zawadx.

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Rushes form a significant portion of the metagame for Elements, especially when you consider grinding. A fast rush can easily outpace a slower deck when it comes down to electrum gain. This month’s deck is perhaps the fastest consistent rush deck devised for grinding, SoB Air Rush. According to the Decks used against the Arena with Stats thread, a mod of SoB Air rush performs the best against ALL Arena Levels. It is also the best deck to use against AI4 as per the Halfblood Stats Thread. It was devised by dark ripper, a young PvPer and grinder who will become, most likely, a great member of this community.

Card by Card:

Mark of Fire: Mark of Fire fuels the Shards of Bravery, allowing you to get out of fail draws without any hassle.

Shard of Bravery: Shard of Bravery is the best instant card draw in the game, allowing you to draw upto three cards. It is what propels this deck to Ãœber Rush levels.

Wind Towers: Allows you to get :air quanta fast.

Damselfly: Aside from proving :air quanta, Damselflies also damage the opponent taking advantage of the Shards of Freedom. Thanks to the shards, they also soon become immune to single-target CC.

Wyrm: The primary attacker of the deck. Wyrm is an efficient attacker at 5 damage for 4 :air, but its Dive skill simply makes it a monstrous rusher. With 4 Shards of Freedom on the field, a dived Wyrm deals 15 damage – the same as a Ruby Dragon.

Shards of Freedom: Shards of Freedom are staples for any Air Rush. They provide your creatures with extra damage, shield bypass and CC protection, at the same time. Arguably the most overpowered shard of them all, Shards of Freedom are what makes this deck a consistent rush.

Sky Blitz (Optional): jd_k has tested a mod of the SoB Air Rush with -1 Wyrm +1 Sky Blitz, which is currently the best against all arena leagues. The Sky Blitz is a perfect finisher and can win you some almost lost games.

Improved Fog (Optional): While SoB Air Rush is generally focused on Speed, an improved fog shield can help in an anti-rush matchup.

Strategy:

The Strategy is really simple; fast damage. Draw with Shards of Bravery, but take care not to overdraw and deck yourself out. Successive uses of Shard of Bravery might also lead to getting outrushed. Generally, you should use the Shard of Bravery only if you have enough quanta to play the cards you draw, or if you had a bad starting hand and need to recover. Aside from that, simply keep playing stuff. Generally diving two wyrms is better than playing one, but try to think ahead and play the wyrm if it will net you more damage. Take caution against mass CC.

Strengths:

It is extremely fast with a really good winrate, so this deck just rains money. The short games also make grinding much more enjoyable (especially when you’re biting your nails worrying about whether your opponent will play that mass CC). It does very well with slow setup decks, and can ignore shields easily.

Weaknesses:

Mass CC just wrecks this deck in the face. Pandemonium, Rain of Fire, Dry Spell and Thunderstorm are all spells which just beat this deck into a pulp and then swallows it whole. Recovering from an AoE is usually not possible. PC is also a problem for this deck, as your Shards of Freedom are really essential. Devourers in Mono Dark can also be a pain, as they chomp on precious :fire and stolen Shards of Freedom empower Vampires. Discord and Black Hole can also hurt (don’t they always?), but you can usually recover.

Spoiler for July 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month
In an attempt to get some more community participation in the newsletter, this Deck Idea of the Month article was written by our member dark ripper. Thank him.

Deck Idea of the Month
Don't Cut Yourself by mesaprotector

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The deck featured this month was made by mesaprotector, a former master of light, and it is a fun OTK deck that works against any kind of opponent including False Gods and Platinum Arena.

Card by card:

Mark of Entropy: Mark of Entropy triggers alone supernovas which play a major part at stracture of the deck.

Earth Tower: The need of :earth quanta is ergent, as you will need at least 40 :earth quanta to finish a 200hp opponent.

Supernova: Supernova fuels all other cards other than Shard of Integrity, thus making it a highly essential card for the deck to work.

Sundial: An OTK deck of course needs stalling, sundials save some time for the combination to be achieved and at the same time give the ability of drawing more cards, with barely any cost.

Shard Of Bravery: Instead of the drawing power, Shards of Bravery contribute in making powerful Shard Golems.

Shard Of Integrity: The superstar of the combination. The card that units them all. Shard of Integrity will eventually make the Shard Golem that will win you the game.

Shard Of Freedom: A key card as it provides the created Shard Golem with the airborne ability.

Sky Blitz: One of the most needed cards of the combination, as it is the only card that can grant you the win against high hp opponents, doubling the attack of the airborne golems.

Fractal: Of course one of the most important cards of this combination to be achieved. Once you have formed your Shard Golem, fractal it for the final hit.

Golden Hourglass: Being a deck that in effort to work will probably need the whole deck drawn, Golden Horglass provides it with more speed with the ability of one extra card drawn per turn.

Chimera: In case you have already achieved the combination and there is a shield that might be a burden, chimera will solve the problem uniting your golems and providing them with momentum.

Strategy:

Start by gathering :earth quanta as much as possible, as you will need many of them. Once you have 2 :entropy quanta start casting supernovas, in order to draw faster and getting one step closer to the achievement of the combination. In case the opponent starts spamming creatures, try to start chaining sundials as late as possible, because you will have only one chance to make the combination. For the full combination, you will need: 1 Shard of Integrity , 3 Shards of Bravery , 1 Shard of Freedom, the fractal and the Skyblitz. The Shard Golem that will be formed will have 17 attack and 11 health. Later on, depending on the hp of the opponent, start calculating the :earth quanta you will need for the final hit. In case of a False God, you will need at least 40 :earth quanta as you will need at least 6 17/11 skyblitz'd (34 attack) Shard Golems, each one needing 8 :earth quanta to summon, which leads as to the exact amount of 40 :earth quanta and 204 attack. In case there is any shield that could ruin the attack(Bonewall, Dimensional Shield, Fog etc.) use the chimera for bypassing it, and just press your spacebar!

Strengths:

Decks that count on healing, creature control or even sometimes rush decks, will face a huge problem against this deck. Being an OTK (One Turn Kill), this deck , doesn't let the opponent affect the creature, and it will finish the game quickly and harshly!

Weaknesses:

This deck has a huge weakness on PC and denial. Cards that could mess with your sundial chain(like deflags, pulvies, SoFos) can cause a lot of problems, if not immediately kill the deck. Also denial cards, like Black Hole, Silence, Earthquake can easily break the normal operation of the deck.

Spoiler for June 2014:
There was none and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, ever.
Spoiler for May 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month
Enlightenment by omegareaper7

This deck review was written by the Jolly Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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7dm 7dm 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7du 7du 7du 7du 7du 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7k2 7k2 8pq

The deck featured this month was made by a veteran of this game, omegareaper7.

Card by card:

Mark of Light: You need the light quanta to use Miracle, another choice may be the mark of Fire, but the advantage you can get from first turn Seraph is probably better.

Explosion: You can't question this card, it's needed against those pesky shields that can slow your rush down.

Fire Pendulum: Hard to get that 12 light quanta, those help you get there and also the fire quanta helps over time.

Cremation: Every Cremation rush needs those, it's part of how you play this deck.

Minor Phoenix: 4 damage for 2 quanta is always interesting, they can also be used to draw CC at first to keep the nasty creature controll away from your precious Seraphs, they can also be a cremation target if you need the light quanta and you don't want to kill your RoLs too quickly.

Seraph: Your main damage creature, once you get one of those down and it survives one turn, you are almost guaranteed to keep it on the board till the end of the game.

Ray of Light: Your everyday cremation fodder, adds light quanta too that you can use to Miracle and obviously, the 1 damage per turn makes them OP.

Improved Miracle: That's why you use this deck instead of your normal Immorush, it adds so many nice comebacks.

Strategy:

Well, it's pretty straightforward, be fast and hit hard, keep quanta for Miracle when needed, against CC always keep your Seraphs protected, if you're scared of CC, try to play Phoenixes first to draw the opponent's first CC cards on tehm.

Strengths:

It's fast and deals a lot of damage, wins most rush vs. rush games if you get your Miracle down, and Seraphs don't care about CC after 1 turn.

Weaknesses:

Heavy Creature Control, Fire Shield/Buckler and Spines hurt this deck a lot, your Seraphs can survive CC, but not the damage from a shield or fast CC that can kill them before you get them protected.
Spoiler for April 2014:
Check the April 2014 spoiler in "Card Idea of the Month Archive" thread.
Spoiler for March 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month
Calindu's Brushfire mod by Calindu

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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7an 7an 7an 7an 7an 7an 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dn 7dn 7dn 7n2 7n2 8po

The deck featured this month was made by one of our deck helpers, Calindu, it's efficient and fun to play.

Card by card:

Mark of Fire: Well... you definitely need :fire Quanta for this to work.

Epinephrine: Very good card in this deck, adds up 6 damage to your brimstones, allowing them to generate quanta way faster too. If used on a flying Fahrenheit you can dish out a lot of damage.

Life Pendulum: :fire Quanta alone won't do so they seem quite useful.

Brimstone Eater: They're not in there for their breathtaking ability to hit your opponent with two damage per turn, even though that can sometimes help. Combined with Epinephrine, they accelerate your :fire Quanta production immensely and will actually do damage.

Fire Lance: Probably the reason why you go through all that trouble, use them to bolt your opponent's HP, alternatively, use one as Creature Control to kill your opponent's creature if he will outdamage you or have a creature that can put you problems.

Fahrenheit: The higher your :fire Quanta, the harder it hits, with a maximum of 20 damage points per turn, also a good target for Epinephrine to make it hit several times.

Animate Weapon: One Fahrenheit isn't enough for you? Make 'em fly and use more!

Strategy:

Well, it's pretty straightforward, be fast and hit hard.

You can beat your opponent by using your Fire Lances or use them for Creature Control and rely on your Fahrenheit and adrenalined brimstones to do the job.

Strengths:

It's fast and hits hard (sounds familiar?), if a shield blocks your Fahrenheit and Brimstone Eaters, you still have Fire Bolts to beat your opponent, if they play a Jade or Reflective Shield, Fahrenheit will wear them down while your Fire Bolts provide good Creature Control.

Weaknesses:

Heavy Creature Control, Fire Shield/Buckler and Spines hurt this deck a lot, without your Brimstone Eaters, the deck gets a lot slower.

A Jade or Reflective Shield combined with a lot of healing (Creature spam with Feral Bonds for example) can be a problem too as your Fire Bolts won't be able to hit your opponent's HP and you'll have to rely on your Fahrenheit(s) to wear them down.

Possible cards to be added:

Explosion: If you're running into Fire Bucklers or Spines too often, they might come in handy.

Jade Shield: If you're tired or afraid of your opponents running Jade Shields and reducing the efficiency of your Fire Bolts, just use one too and play the Fire Bolts on your own HP, they will be reflected onto your opponent by your own Jade Shield.

Improved Heal: Viable card to be honest, but only if you get rushed a lot and feel like you need another bit of hp to help you survive.

Phoenix: Yes, Phoenix, not minor Phoenix, to take full advantage of your adrenalines, can do a lot of damage fast to help you get your opponent in bolt range easier.

Spoiler for initial Brushfire by Terran 3
Spoiler for Hidden:
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Spoiler for February 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month
bripod's 500hp EM Deck mod by bripod

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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The deck featured this month was made by an old veteran, bripod, to be used against the higher levels of the arena, Gold and Platinum. The deck may look very boring (actually it is boring, as most stalls are), but the electrum and score you're going to get will make the boredom worth it.

Card by card:

Mark of Life: The mark used is not for quanta as much as it is for the extra healing you get from SoG, another choice may be Mark of Light, taking out SoGs and adding more Sanctuaries and SoDs (SoDs are really good for taking off the early game pressure).

Sundial: Try to keep them for late game, only use them early game if you really can't take more damage or if you want to accelerate your draw.

Quantum Towers: To run this deck you need quanta.

Protect Artifact: Makes you less vulnerable to PC, you must (!) keep one for your Eternity, and the rest are best used on SoGs (all of them stack), your shield, your quanta if you are facing EQs, and your HGs.

Granite Skin: Use them at 75 earth quanta to get yourself tol 500 HP, those can also act as emergency healing, you can play one early game and still get to 500 HP end game.

Spine Carapace: Best shield to take in this deck, slowly kills all creatures except for Psions, for those, steal the opponents Lobotomizer if he has one.

Shard of Gratitude: Lots of healing, all 6 of them stacked means 30 healing/turn.

Explosion: You just can't go wrong with PC, take down a weapon, slow them down by destroying an hourglass, you can do a lot with this card.

Purify: I think this is pretty obvious, there are a lot of poison decks in arena, and this card just slows them down a lot.

Ray of Light: Just that random low-cost creature that you are using to not deck out, can be any no- or low cost creature, Pest might be a good pick too.

Sanctuary: More healing, protection from Black Holes, Pests, Silences, awesome.

Shard of Divinity: It's a good heal early game, also increases max HP if you are going to need miracle early to survive.

Time Towers: Make it easier to get the drawing power in use and assure yourself of 3 Time Quanta per turn end game to rewind that critter.

Electrum Hourglass: Drawing power, it really speeds up your gameplay.

Eternity: Core part of the deck, use it or you're going to deck out most probably.

Improved Steal: Read Explosion, just that this time you're going to keep this! So try not to steal their pesky Vampire Dagger when you have your Eternity on...

Strategy:

The basic idea of this deck is to set up Quanta generation, Shields, and Healing while you produce Earth Quanta to reach 500 hps and then deck your opponent out, gaining a healthy bonus in electrum and score.

Many strategies are available with this deck:
- Use Eternity to draw lock your opponent and get set up.
- Stealing an opponents weapon or shield to use against them.
- Deflaging early Quanta producers to slow down your opponent.
- Spam healing to survive the first onslaught until you can set up.

It's not your usual "if you can click it, play it" kind of deck. It is more of a chess match. Many games you think that you will loose, you could win if you think it through.

Strengths:

This deck is really strong once it sets up, so once you play like 20 turns, there's a pretty big chance you are going to win. It's also strong against most PC spam decks as it has quite a lot of Protect Artifacts. Also, a 500 HP EM in Platinum can earn you enough Electrum for one upgrade if the Arena payout is at 250 and above.

Weaknesses:

Early pressure on you means you're most probably doomed or you will barely make it to mid-late game, and if you do, you'll probably have wasted that much healing power, including Stone Skins, to stay alive, that you won't achieve the full bonus.

Possible mod
Spoiler for Hidden:
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Spoiler for January 2014:
Deck Idea of the Month
(Chaos Wyrms revised) [Epi-dam lookin' good] [3 Finalized deck topics] [Rainbow] by BrandenC6

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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The deck presented this month was made by one of our most prolific members, BrandenC6, and it was made for use in pvp2, Silver arena and vs AI4.

Card by card:

Mark of Fire: Allows for your Shard of Bravery to make you draw 3 cards instead of 2, making this deck even faster.

Nova: This deck doesn't need much quanta and the Novas should be enough to fuel the non :air cards present here.

Chaos Power: Used to buff your Wyrms or alternatively Damselflies.

Protect Artifact: Makes your Shards of Freedom invulnerable to permanent control.

Epinephrine: Used on a Damselfly, it accelerates the quanta production and helps you play your Wyrm(s) more quickly, the damage increase on the epinephrined Damselfly can also help if the opponent manages to kill your Wyrms.

Shard of Bravery: Accelerates your draw and makes you less RNG-dependant.

Shard of Divinity: Use to heal yourself and increase your HP.

Damselfly: Your main producer for :air quanta, alternatively a damage dealer.

Elite Wyrm: Your main hitter, play as quickly as you can, buff the hell out of it and hope for the best.

Shard of Freedom: Once 4 of those shards are in play, your :air creatures bypass shields and are protected from pretty much anything but mass creature control.

Silence: Prevents your opponent from playing any card the turn it is played and gains you a precious advantage.

Alternatives could be Blessing for Shard of Divinity and Lightning for Silence

Strategy:

Regarding the strategy, BrandenC6 probably expressed it better than we could, so allow us to use his words:

Protect artifact is a quirk over chaos wyrms. Gotta love being free! Also makes for some almost immortal wyrms. Ai will target the biggest of the hurd, which in this case will be very hard to take down. Thus giving immateriality to all your other creatures. Just pray for no mass-cc. Even then the 1 fully powered wyrm can kill the AI. Epi allows for damselflies to be more useful, and help get more then just 1 wyrm to go to the field+ability for both of them. In the case of your big wyrm dying, an epi damselfly can usually finish off the last remaining HP. Also AI will target epi-fly before a non-buffed wyrm. Which can give you the lending hand if you just so happen to draw choas power. Or if you play it differently by chaos power the first turn you can use its ability and not the first turn it goes out. Shard of divinity has allowed for you to get +1 turn of health. Thus +1 whole turn to kill the AI, same with silence, and guarentees a whole turn if enemy is doing 15 damage and you use both same turn. Bravery! Makes this less draw reliant then chaos wyrms which is a HUGE benefit!

Strengths:

It's a very fast deck that can be pretty hard to counter, once 4 Shards of Freedom are in play and protected, your creatures are very hard to kill, even if mass CC gets rid of your low-HP creatures, it will be very hard to take out a buffed Wyrm that laughs at any shield your opponent might play. The fact that it's pillarless also makes it quite resistant to quanta denial.

Weaknesses:

Early creature control can be a problem, if your Damsels are killed straight away, you might have a hard time producing enough :air quanta to play your Wyrms and your Shards of Freedom, and even though the Shards of Bravery make this deck less draw-dependant, bottom decking your 3 Wyrms can still happen.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2017, 05:30:15 pm by mathman101 »
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Offline SpikeSpiegel

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1173601#msg1173601
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2015, 09:33:14 pm »
Spoiler for December 2013:
Nope, nothing here.
Spoiler for November 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Ballmare by TribalTrouble

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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710 710 710 710 710 710 710 718 718 718 718 718 718 71a 71a 71b 71b 71b 71b 71b 7th 7th 7th 7th 7th 7th 809 809 809 809 8pt



The deck presented this month is mainly a fun deck for pvp matches, but it also does very well versus AI3 and even Silver and gets you a fair share of EMs.

Card by card:

Bone Pillar: We've been trying to work out what that one's for but we really have no clue.

Deadly Poison: After much debating, we finally agreed that this card was probably used to build up damage necessary to beat your opponent.

Arsenic: As Deadly Poison alone often isn't enough, early Arsenic helps building up damage.

Bonewall: First key card and your main protection, you can use it early to stall your opponent if he has a fast start or if you're still waiting for the Nightmare/Ball Lightning combo.

Nightmare: Key card number two, nightmare as many Ball Lightnings into your opponent's hand as you can and watch them discard or - especially when it's AI - watch them play their hand full of Ball Lightnings in front of your Bonewall, making it grow. The fact that nightmaring creatures into your opponent's hand also gains you HP (yes, yes it does, read the card) makes you more difficult to beat and allows for quite frequent Elemental Mastery.

Ball Lightning: That looks just like the third and last key card in this deck. If you're really desperate, throw it out and enjoy the one-time 5 damage, but those 4 Ball Lightnings will not be enough to beat your opponent, so don't just throw them out there when you have no Nightmare or Bonewall in hand or when your opponent has one lonely card spot open, no, you do it right, you put up your Bonewall, Nightmare your Ball Lightning, and read again what happens then by returning to the Nightmare card description right above.


Strategy:

Hope for a good draw (Mulligan loves this deck), spam Deadly Poison, hope for an early Bonewall/Nightmare/Ball Lightning combo and good quanta, spam deadly Poison, play Arsenic whenever you can unless you need to hold your quanta for a Bonewall (don't be stupid, play smart), spam Deadly Poison, when your opponent has a few card spots available in his hand, play your Bonewall, Nightmare a Ball Lightning, and imagine them banging their head onto the keyboard while deciding whether to discard the Ball Lightnings or make your Bonewall grow, spam Deadly Poison, hope to win.

Strengths:

Well, it's fun to play, it can be pretty fast, decks with few creatures will have a hard time beating this.

The biggest strength is probably that it's annoying, you don't play this to get a Platinum League special spin, you play it to make your opponent rage.

Weaknesses:

Sanctuary, obviously. Swarm decks or Adrenaline can be a problem also, as usual for decks that rely on Bonewall.
As poison is pretty much the only damage Purify is not your friend, too much healing kills it also.
The biggest weakness is probably the tendency to fail draws, Mulligan doesn't like Ball Lightnings.
Spoiler for October 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Psiontal by Team Aether of war 6

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 622 625 625 625 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 80l 80l 80l 8pu

The deck presented this month was the killer of war 6, made by team aether and ended with 12 wins. It is strong, versatile and it's hard to counter it, exactly what's needed in war.

Card by card:

  • Fractal: The card that makes this deck so good, it's used to quickly ramp up more damage.
  • Psion: The creature that's used to deal damage, it has a pseudo-momentum against the shields that are mostly used in war.
  • Dimensional Shield: We all know why this card is used, and we all know its power, it's the defensive card in this deck, 3 turns of stalling, works great early as you usually fractal when you have 7 quanta sources(2 psions/turn).

Strategy:

This deck is easy to be played, a little bit harder to be played than the classic mono aether but you have more attack power.
Stall with Dimensional Shields while getting the quanta sources you need, after you get all the cards you need do Psion+Fractal, it's best to do it when you have a fresh/1 turn old Dim Shield up so you can rack up more damage before you need another shield.
Against people that may have PC cards you want to play your Dimensional Shields earlier, leave yourself hp to take 2 PC cards, and if you know they have CC cards, keep 1 Psion in hand.

Strengths:

A generally very fast deck that avoids most of the classic shields except for reflecting shields (Emerald Shield/ Reflective Shield), the Dims Shields are als very hard to overcome for any opponent without PC or Momentum.
Even though Fractal consumes all the Aether Quanta, the fact that it's a mono makes it quite reliable.

Weaknesses:

  • Reflective shields, obviously.
  • Lobotomiser/Mind Flayer combined with shields can stall this deck for a while.
  • Quanta Denial: This deck needs a lot of quanta to work, a single EQ can slow them down a couple of turns.
  • PC and momentum: It destroys all this deck has to defend with.

Card variants:
  • Lightnings: A good alternative instead of Dimensional Shields, especially if you expect PC cards, it usually kills most good damage dealers and doesn't need a lot of quanta to be played, so it actually helps the deck's overall speed.
  • Lobotomizer: It's usually paired with Dimensional Shields, very good at taking Momentum, bad abilities that may slow you down but it's also an anti-counter for reflective shield.
  • Phase Recluses: A fractal target alternative if you suspect a reflective shield, it makes the deck faster too.
  • Silence: A cool and situational card, can be versatile in this deck, silence combined with dimensional shield makes a 1 turn free of damage in case of PC(Deflagration, Steal), but can also be used against cards like CC, Miracle, or to prevent some more damage in case you need to survive 1 turn.
Spoiler for September 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Zso_Zso's Shining Dolls by Zso_Zso

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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The deck presented this month was voted the most innovative deck used during the 7th Trials, it was made by Light challenger (and now Master) Zso_Zso and we decided to call it Zso_Zso's Shining Dolls.
It's a pillarless deck with Voodoo Dolls and Shard of Void run solely off the Mark and Rays of Light and Luciferine for Light Quanta production.

Card by card:

Voodoo Doll: Does this need a explanation? You can use it to damage your opponent by using Holy Light and make it produce Light Quanta by using Luciferin, increasing the Hope Shield through that or even get an inexperienced opponent to commit suicide.

Shard of Void: You need a way to damage, this is a sure and slow way to reduce your opponent's HP, but easily destroyed by PC

Holy Light: You need something to take the last 1 hp off your opponent, and the Voodoo Doll+Holy Light combo is the best way to do it. You can also use it as a 10 HP healing when you are in danger.

Luciferin: Used to heal yourself in tight situations and also to give your Voodoo Dolls "Bioluminescence", which triggers the production of Light Quanta and also strengthens your Hope Shield.

Hope: Not much to say here, play it when you can and hope for the best.

Ray of Light: Used mainly for the production of Light Quanta and for the strengthening of your Hope shield, it can however also be used for the finishing blow once your opponent's HP has been reduced far enough.

Light Nymph: It can be useless or it can win games, when you draw it with little to no light quanta it doesn't help your situation at all, but when you have enough quanta and need some healing, the 10 hp per turn can make the game be yours, the 6 damage per turn come in handy and it can also be used to finish your opponent.

Sundial: Used to accelerate your draw to set up more quickly, and also to stall your opponent before you have the possibility to play your Hope shield.


Strategy:

Obviously, try to play your Voodoo Dolls and Rays of Light as quickly as possible, use Sundials to accelerate your draw and prevent your opponent from doing too much damage before you can set up.
Once you have a few Voodoo Dolls out, play Luciferine and get your Hope shield up, which should be a very good defense, any attack on your light producing Voodoo Dolls will result in your opponent reducing his HP even further, so once the Voodoo Dolls are out and the Hope shield is played, it gets quite difficult to counter.
Shards of Void will slowly reduce your opponent's HP, while his damage dealers have to get past a very good shield. In the end, you can deal the finishing blow using either Holy Light on one of your own Voodoo Dolls, or simply let your Rays of Light/Light Nymph finish the opponent.
During the match, you can use your Light Nymph and Luciferine or even Holy Light to heal yourself, just keep in mind not to use all Holy Lights or you might very well be stuck in front of a shield with your opponent at 1HP but no way to finish him off, a good way to avoid this is to always keep a Holy Light in hand.

Strengths:

The Voodoo Dolls are very CC-resistant and once the combo is set up, it gets quite difficult to counter without Momentum or growing creatures. The opponent will most likely need to deal far more than 100 damage to win the game as the Light Nymph, Luciferin and Holy Light provide a lot of healing, the fact that it's pillarless makes it resistant to some forms of Quanta denial.

Weaknesses:

Heavy PC and CC can be a problem, if your Shards of Void are destroyed, there isn't much potential for damage left, the destruction of your Sundials can leave you w/o any defense. early game.
Early destruction of the Rays of Light can terribly slow down your light Quanta production and reduce the effect of your Hope shield.
Spoiler for August 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Bond of Silence by Youpla

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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This month's deck can be both good and fun, if played right, the principle is pretty simple, use Bravery early to get some more damage then use Silence to create yourself a big advantage in the rush game. This deck fits mostly PvP, it's too slow compared to other Ai3/Bronze/Silver farmers and doesn't have enough damage for Gold/Plat and FGs. This deck mainly suffers from bad draws, bad RNG can destroy you, but draw power can fix that.

Parts of the deck:

  • Quanta: As this deck needs a lot of aether quanta, you need some aether towers. The rest is simple rainbow quanta as you need it.
  • Silence chain: 6 of them so you can chain like 3 to kill the opponent.
  • Reverse Time: Great card in this deck, keeps away potential threats and also damage combined with silence chain.
  • Draw power: Use SoB to either draw your cards more quickly or to fill your opponent's hand right before silencing him, therefore forcing him to discard.
  • Damage: You need to actually deal damage to opponent, cheap creatures that do some damage are the best ones (Graboid, Lycan).
  • Joker cards: Cards like Fog/PC can make the difference in some games.

Weaknesses:

  • Sanctuary: It destroys all your strategy, and you can't even outdamage those.
  • Black Hole: When played well, it can deprive you of the oh-so-needed Quanta you get from your Novas and slow you down significantly.
  • Heavy CC: As your damage sources are limited, decks with heavy creature control can be quite crippling.
  • RNG: You need good RNG mostly, if you get a bad quanta start or no damage til late you are dead.

Deck skeleton and variants:

Spoiler for Hidden:
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Rest of the cards can be everything you want, but make sure it's low cost and you actually include some damage.

This is a variant we found good, it's basically more of everything:

Spoiler for Hidden:
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Spoiler for July 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Integral Pain by Calindu

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 786 786 786 786 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7ds 7ds 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 8po

As the new patch 1.322 came, so did the new shards, people started to see the power of the new Shard of Bravery, easy to splash, versatile(can deck out your opponent if played right). As time went, a lot of immorushes using some Bravery were posted on the forum, but there was none that could fully use that power, there's where Integrity helps, you take your leftover Bravery to create a new, big creature.

How to play it:
  • Play Gemfinder and immolate it
  • Play Destroyers and Minor Phoenixes
  • If opponent has over 2 or more cards free in hand, use Shard of Bravery, if not, play Shard of Integrity
  • Continue like that, probably it won't take more than 4 turns.

Weaknesses:
  • Early Hard(damage based) CC, before your golems can grow
  • Soft CC, that includes RT, BB, Freeze, AM and all that stuff.
  • Shields and sundials: this problem can be easily solved with some PC, but that will just slow down the deck

Card Selection:
  • 6 Gnome Gemfinders: Your usual Immorush fodder, produces earth for abilities too.
  • 4 SoI: Main inovation of the deck, uses leftover SoBras to create more damage.
  • 6 Cremations: Fire quanta producer.
  • 6 Lava Destroyers: Main source of damage, starts at 7 damage and grows too.
  • 2 Minor Phoenix: Filler cards, not much damage but helps a lot with consistency as it goes great with Cremations.
  • 6 SoBra: Speeds up the deck a lot, and if there are too many, you can always use them to make a golem.

The deck's speed was tested against Ai1 in 100 games, netting an average turn to win of 4,67, according to Turns to Win (1.32), and it's the second fastest deck tested.
Spoiler for June 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Swallow by SnoWeb

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers, Calindu and inthisroom.
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744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 74b 74b 74b 74b 74b 74d 74d 752 752 752 752 75m 75m 75m 7gq 7gq 7h0 7h0 7hi 7hi 7hi 8pp

The principle seems obvious, Otyughs for CC and attack, SoFo for PC and used as a shield when Gravity Pulled, grow the Otyughs with the help of SoP and make them even more lethal, also protecting them from shields, play Nymph's Tears to tie your opponent down through Quanta denial, in short, clear all creatures from the board, destroy all perms, all that while you Black Hole your opponent into oblivion, as before mentionned, it's fun and efficient.

Weaknesses:

  • Return Time/ Rewind/Eternity: As rewound creatures don't keep their stats, the SoP effect on the Otyughs is cancelled and Gravity Pull is removed from the SoFo.
  • Denial: It's a duo that runs tight on quanta.
  • Quintessence/Immaterial: Immune to any CC other than shields, you must hope for a SoFo/Gravity Pull combo to stop your opponent's creature's attack.
  • Protect Artifact: SoFo's best friend, combined with a Gravity Shield or FoG/Dusk for example it can make things very tricky, also if the opponent plays Protect Artifact on your Pillars/Pends, the Nymph's Tears are turned into dead cards.
  • Lobotomizer/Mind Flayer: Removes abilities from Otyugh as well as from SoFo or Gravity Nymph, having you rely on sole damage to win the game.
  • Steal: You don't want your opponent to steal all your SoP, if you can't grow your Otyughs and Gravity Nymphs, you'll most likely deck out.
  • Early CC: If Otyughs and SoFo get hit with CC before they had the chance to grow, your chances get slim.

Card Selection:

  • 9 Gravity Towers and 3 Gravity Pendulums: Decent ammount, as this is a semi-stall, it's enough.
  • 5 Otyughs: Key cards in this deck, you need one early.
  • 2 Gravity Forces: Versatile card in this deck, sinergies well with Shard of Focus and you can also use it for killing creatures or bringing them to low HP.
  • 4 Shards of Focus: It's good to have a lot of PC in this deck, as there are many permanents that can put problems, this and the sinergy between it and Gravity Force makes this a good card for this deck.
  • 2 Purifies: Anti SoSac/Poison and healing mostly, can be used to heal Oty too.
  • 2 Nymph's Tears: You get out Gravity Nymphs for denial against rainbow and healing, you can use it to destroy a pillar and give your Oty a lunch too.
  • 3 Shard of Patiences: Combo card in this deck, you need one early so you can grow your Otyies.

Skeleton Deck and variations:

As most of the decks, this one has multiple variants, it all depends on the style of the player, one may like a fast combo, one may like more attack and one may like soft CC, but for everyone, there is a Skeleton Deck:

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744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 74b 74b 74b 74b 74b 74d 74d 752 752 752 752 7hi 7hi 7hi 8pp


As you can see, there are only 9 gravity towers in the skeleton deck, because depending on the version, you may need more water and more gravity.
We personally like this version:

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It has 1 more combo card, maxed out Otyughs and 2 Overdrives for more attack(A creature under SoP that has Overdrive gets +5|+1 a turn).

This deck is mostly a deck for grinders, as it grinds Platinum and Gold at a good win rate, while it keeps your attention, unlike some other decks.
Spoiler for May 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
LuciVoid by mega plini

This deck was nominated by Gandora and reviewed by the Deck Helpers inthisroom and Calindu.
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563 563 563 563 563 563 576 576 576 576 576 576 5lc 5lj 5lj 5lj 5lk 5lk 5lk 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 5vi 5vi 5vi 5vi 5vi 5vi 8pt



This month features a deck that gives some rarely used cards a little creative love: Shard of Void, Graviton Salvager and Luciferin. This combo can create a growing Hope Shield and make your opponent's healing useless.

The Strategy:

Reduce the opponent's HP with Shard of Void, use Graviton Salvagers to protect the SoV, and play Luciferin once enough creatures are out so you can protect yourself with the Hope Shield. Once this happens, finish the opponent with Holy Light on a Voodoo Doll once his HP is equal to or below 10. If you're lucky enough, the damage dealt by Salvagers will be sufficient enough to end the game.

Deck details:

Dark Mark: This gives the Shards of Void that extra HP sucking bonus (from 2 to 3), which adds up when there is more than one in play. Also, the Voodoo Doll isn't there for no reason.

Gravity Pendulum: Hm...to get both types of Quanta probably.

Graviton Salvager: The passive ability protects the Shards of Void from destruction, and the absence of an active skill makes them a good target for Luciferin as they will produce Light Quanta.

Holy Light: Play on a Voodoo Doll once the opponent is at or below 10 HP. If you don't need that to win, or are in a desperate situation where you will lose otherwise, you can also heal yourself for 10 HP.

Luciferin: Heals you for 10 hp and gives all creatures Bioluminescence, making them start Light Quanta production.

Hope: Indestructible Shield with protection that can only be reduced through Creature Control.

Voodoo Dolls: CC resistant creature with a passive skill, therefore also suited for the use of Luciferin. Can be used for the finishing blow by hitting it with Holy Light.

Shard of Void: Reduce opponent's max HP by 3/turn, per Shard.

Weaknesses:

Steal: As the Graviton Salvagers only protect from destruction and not from theft, your Shards of Void are very vulnerable to Steals. Beyond that, the 1 damage caused by each Graviton Salvager is rarely enough to win the match.

Discord: It's a trio, duh.

Mutation/Druid: You generally need to play Holy Light on a Voodoo Doll to end the game, if you don't have any left, that might be a problem.

SoP/Growing Creatures: Due to the limited amount of creatures, the max protection you can get with unupped Hope is 11. Shard of Patience decks easily outgrow that, and with a fast start, Lava Golems or Forest Spirits can be a problem too.

Eternity/Rewind: Rewinding creatures with Bioluminescence makes them lose their skill when they are played again, hence reducing the Light Quanta production and the protection given by Hope Shield.

Momentum: Gets past your shield, will probably kill you before you can finish your opponent.

A fun little deck that has the advantage of making good use of the neglected Shard of Void and the almost as neglected Graviton Salvager. The aforementioned cards can hurt it, but otherwise it can be quite effective and hard to beat. It's definitely destined for fun PvP trolling and maybe even AI3 grinding.
Spoiler for April 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Microwave Ovens by RavingRabbid

This deck review was written by Deck Helpers inthisroom and Calindu.
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6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 74i 74i 74i 7ee 7ee 7ee 7hi 7hi 7n0 7qb 7qb 7qb 7tg 7tg 7tg 80b 80b 80b 80h 8pu

This month features a deck which at first sight may look like a "only for fun" deck, but playing with it proves otherwise. It's not only fun, but it's pretty fast too, doing heavy damage quickly.
As its colorful name suggests, this deck is an explosive surprise. You won't do much damage when the match starts, but by the end of it, you'll probably kill your opponent with 40+ damage, breaking almost any defense.
There are many strategies to play this deck, but I'll point out only the 2 that look best:

  • The first one is better if your opponent has any kind of defence: Play Doll+Overdrive as soon as you can then try to get SoP down, once it has about 20 attack or so take the SoP away and twin the doll, that will probably lead to a 2TK.
  • The second one is mainly for those that like to rush, basically SoP+Overdrive the dolls till you can twin it, after that don't SoP anymore and go for the kill.

Just by taking a look at strategies you see that you need 3 cards to start rolling. Sure, this requires a little luck, but that's where "bravery" and precognition step in. Those 2 cards make the deck play much smaller, making your draws a lot smoother.

Now the fun thing about this deck: it's customizable! By looking at the deck's skeleton, you can add cards to your own liking.

Spoiler for Skeleton deck:
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6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 74i 74i 74i 7hi 7hi 7qb 7qb 7qb 7tg 7tg 7tg 80b 80b 80b 8pu

Of course, some cards are better suited to be added than others, but here are the usual options:

  • Shard of Bravery: Not even a doubt about it, this shard makes your draws cleaner and smoother.
  • Another Shard of Patience: Having 3 of those helps in drawing a early one.
  • Another Twin Universe: This way you can rush faster and get higher damage output.
  • Rage Elixir: This adds a lot of damage without the need for waiting.
  • Sundial: This is more for those that like to stall, but it can help with drawing.
  • Gravity Pull: In case you have a doll that sits and does nothing, this will keep you alive and deal some damage.
  • Epinephrine: Shard of Patience + Epinephrine is a cool combo, even cooler when you add Overdrive and Twin Universe in the mix, all on a single Voodoo Doll.
  • Explosion: Mainly for annoying shields and sundials, as weapons will be delayed by Shard of Patience+Voodoo Doll combo.

While this deck may not be the fastest or the best, it's very funny and certainly not slow, adding a fresh taste to Shard of Patience combos.
Spoiler for March 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
Firecell FG OTK by Chapuz

This deck review was written by Council Member and Master of Entropy, Calindu.
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 52k 52s 52s 52s 560 5f8 5f8 5lm 5lm 5lm 5op 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 8pu

Once Instosis came into the game, OTK decks quickly gained popularity in the forums. Unfortunately, these decks were fully upped and not newb-friendly, so there were many attempts to make such a newbie OTK deck, which would fulfill the need of no rares or upped cards. Until this deck was posted, the best variant was Limitless Speed, which was made by Chapuz as well, and needs a minimum of 3 upgrades.
This deck is fairly simple, it’s based around a 6 (or 5 against gods where you don’t need Chimera) card combo. The combo would be: Vulture + Fractal + Rain of Fire + Rain of Fire(This one is actually optional too, but you may need it to kill 4+ HP creatures) + Sky Blitz + Chimera. This combination will result into 200+ unstoppable damage, perfect for destroying False Gods. Of course, all this needs preparation before you play the combo: Aflatoxin 1 enemy creature.
This deck, as simple as it is, has a few tricks you must use in order to maximize the winrate:
  • Unless you are really quanta flooded in the beginning discard 2 Aflatoxins and 3 hourglasses before preparing the combo. You can play the hourglasses you have left, but don’t risk with Aflatoxins as you might get bellow the quanta needed for OTK.
  • Play your defense when you can’t stand damage anymore or if you have a very good draw with early Hourglasses start the chain early so the Sanctuaries can give you a nice EM.
  • If you are about to get killed and have no defense use one of yours Rain of Fire(After you do it, use Aflatoxin again) in order to survive, if you can(And your opponent doesn’t have Creature Control), play(and fractal if you have it) vulture.
  • Learn the FG decks, know against who you need Chimera, against who you need the 2nd Rain of Fire and against who you must play the defense earlier.
Spoiler for Playable FGs:
Destiny
Elidnis
Ferox
Incarnate
Gemini
Miracle
Neptune
Paradox
Chaos Lord
Decay
Dream Catcher
Fire Queen
Hecate
Serket
Lionheart
Spoiler for damage table:
Horizontal = Creatures </= 3hp
Vertical   = Condors
1234567891011121314151617181920212223
14681012141618202224262830323436384042444648
2812162024283236404448525660646872768084889296
3121824303642485460667278849096102108114120126132138144
41624324048566472808896104112120128136144152160168176184192
52030405060708090100110120130140150160170180190OTKOTKOTKOTKOTK
624364860728496108120132144156168180192OTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTK
7284256708498112126140154168182196OTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTKOTK
Right now, this deck is probably the best one for farming FGs as a newbie, but just remember one thing: You probably will not be able use the deck to its full potential after more than 100 games. Even so, being easy to play is assured, but mastering it will take some practice.




Spoiler for Not Winners:
Integral Pain by Calindu
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77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 786 786 786 786 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7ds 7ds 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 8po


Gravitybow by BunKer
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 55t 55t 55u 56i 56i 56i 590 5c1 5fb 5if 5lm 5on 5on 5rk 5ur 61q 8pl


Patiently biding their time: Brave little creatures by Exarp
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 7af 7af 7af 7af 7af 7dm 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7hi 7hi 7k0 7mu 7n1 7n1 7n9 7nq 7nq 8po


Ying-Yang by Maximito
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6uq 71a 71a 71a 74a 74a 74a 7al 7al 7al 7an 7an 7an 7n0 7n0 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pn

Spoiler for February 2013:
Deck Idea of the Month
S(t)oP. Hammertime! by dragonsdemesne

This deck review was written by Council Member and Master of Entropy, Calindu.
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7hi 7hi 7hi 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7k4 7k4 7k4 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 80i 80i 80i 80i 80i 8pp

Shard of Patience was used in RoL/Hope decks pretty early after it got released because of its low cost and making up for the need of additional attackers to actually kill. It was pretty much the perfect fit, and it had problems only against the False Gods that were deemed impossible for the original deck. Even without the power of patience it made some False Gods a joke (like Ferox for example).

But now, in 1.32, shards got moved to their elements. While SoP was hugely boosted, it now needs a trio to be used. This makes the low quanta availability for Aether even lower, so it clearly needed a better quanta build or another stalling ability. While the idea of Dimensional Shields may work, Sundial was a clever choice, providing a 1 turn stalling ability and providing the user to make the deck much smaller through hasten.

The main problem of this deck compared to other versions of RoL/Hope is that Lobotomizer is missing, making many gods a much bigger threat, but it compensates by winning against some gods it couldn't before(mainly Ferox and Eternal Phoenix) by its superior stalling abilities.

There's no doubt that this deck is a unique one and adds a fresh feeling for many users of a old RoL/Hope deck that know how many times they needed just 1 more turn to get their defense going.
Spoiler for January 2013:
Tha Gold League Killer, V2.0 by ralouf
This deck review was written by deck helper and Master of Life, willng3.
The deck idea was originally Brave Phalanx by Jawdirk (reviewed by Calindu), but the recent update of 1.32 makes the deck less than optimal.

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6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6s1 6s1 6s1 6s1 6s1 6tt 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 71b 74b 77f 7an 7dq 7gv 7k5 7n3 7q5 7t9 7t9 80b 8pj
[/center]
This month features a deck which has inspired the creation of a seemingly infinite number of variants because of its sheer versatility and ability to be customized using nearly any card selection.

As the title implies, this deck is renowned for its ability to defeat Gold League opponents using its amazing speed and surprisingly defensive card choice.  The power of Supernova and Quantum Towers allows the deck to speed through a number of defenses and also allows it to easily use the Shards of Serendipity (SoSe) for added utility.  Shard of Serendipity alone is sometimes enough to win the game with what it grants the player.

However, SoSe can also be the player's greatest downfall if it doesn't provide what the player needs.  It's because of this that lucky players can expect this deck to perform astronomically well for them while others can make claims that the deck is obsolete and no longer functions at all.  The somewhat random nature of Gold League doesn't help much with this either.

All in all, Tha gold league killer V2.0 is a deck that may take some time for players to acquire because of the Shards and upgrade requirements, but it easily makes up for this by being both versatile and very fun to play. 

The only question remaining before using it is:  You feelin' lucky?  "Well, do ya, punk?"
« Last Edit: February 25, 2017, 05:29:23 pm by mathman101 »
Game questions? Go FAQ yourself!
Forum questions? Go FAQ yourself, again!

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1173602#msg1173602
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2015, 09:33:26 pm »
Past Deck Reviews

Spoiler for December 2012:
The deck idea of the month is regen2k9's Unupped Monodark by regen2k9.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it below.

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5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5up 5ur 5us 5us 5us 606 606 606 606 606 8pt

Newer players are often faced with a rather infuriating problem when it comes to gathering electrum for new decks and new upgrades:  They need rare cards.  But where does a person go to obtain rares as quickly as possible?  Most players would say Bronze League due to its rare spins.  And this month's deck serves as a reliable Bronze League grinder which is easily obtainable by players that are new to the game.

The beauty of this Mono Darkness is not just the fact that it's so cheap and easy to build, but that the strategy that it uses to defeat Bronze League opponents is quite simple and straight forward.  A player only needs to play Devourers and then use the quanta they produce to play their Dragons to deal the damage needed.  Steals are then used to take care of cards impeding the player's progress such as Dimensional Shields, Empathic Bonds and Sanctuary.  You may also Steal Pillars versus Monos or Duos to cause quanta denial.  Drain Life can be used as Creature Control or to help you keep you alive as needed.

The deck doesn't have a flawless winrate (it is unupped, after all) versus Bronze League, but the sheer number of consecutive wins that the deck is able to gain should be enough to where special spins are obtainable more often than not.  The player can expect to have problems when facing Mono Entropy decks (mostly due to Maxwell's Demon), but otherwise the deck is solid.

Another positive aspect of this deck is that is is also available shortly after a player has just started their game assuming they have picked the Darkness starter.  Until the player has finished the 500 score quest and picked their Vampire Stiletto, they can grind AI3 with nearly any other Darkness card/Other Weapon as a replacement.

With this deck, a new player's dream of one day owning their own Instosis, Poison Dials, etc. becomes more of a reality, though it will still take some time.
Spoiler for October 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is a surprise, reviewed by three different users at once! Click on the spoiler to see each reviewer's take!

Spoiler for 1:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is
Time-Life Rush: Instaghost
by choongmyoungAbsol reviewed it.
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 7ap 7ap 7ap 7ap 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7qe 7qe 7qe 7qe 8pn

Quote from: Absol
When hearing about Mitosis and SoR, what comes to mind? Instosis. The combo of MitoSoR Silurian can quickly overwhelm the False Gods in just about seven turns. This makes it the favored False God killer after its invention. But apparently, someone has found a faster, more satisfying deck which uses similar combo. That person is choongmyoung.

Instaghost runs on a similar principle: by using Mitosis on a Time creature and then chaining SoR to spam the field. The main difference between the two is that while Instosis is designed as an OTK deck, Instaghost is designed as a somewhat rushy deck. This allows for faster win since you can start the combo and keep it running till the opposing deck is beaten. It is also less prone to bad draws since the combo itself can be done with as few as 3 cards while Instosis requires all seven (on some case, even eight) cards to win.

When first reported, words spread that this deck can kill False Gods in about five turns, which is normally hard to achieve even against mere AI3. This made people skeptical about this deck's efficiency. After more testing, even more five-turn-kill was reported, confirming this deck's power against the feared Gods. However, it has not been thoroughly tested yet, which makes Instosis still the best tested False God killer.

To sum it up, this deck do have potential in rushing Gods to death, something that older players could only dream before. Truly, the potential to kill False Gods in five turns sounds awesome. But as it is now, this deck is still a rough diamond, need more testing and tweaking before it is "officially" approved as the False God killer of this era.

Spoiler for 2:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is Instaghost by choongmyoung.
ARTHANASIOS reviewed it.
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 7ap 7ap 7ap 7ap 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7qe 7qe 7qe 7qe 8pn

Quote from:  Arthanasios

Prologue:
 This deck takes the idea of Instosis into another dimension. What if we combined the Time Creature & Mitosis & Shard of Readiness combo with a rush instead of a stall? What if we used Ghosts of the Past instead of Devonians or Silurians? The result is choongmyoung's excellent idea; Instaghost.

Effectiveness:
As far as I've tested this deck, after exactly 50 games against False Gods this deck won 20 times and lost 30 times, mostly due to bad RNG or heavy bombardment of Counter-Creature effects.
Though this gives Instaghost a winrate of 40%, games are pretty fast with an average TTW of about 7 turns and here is where the power of this deck lies; it has the ability to rush False Gods to death with a decent draw and with adecent absent of powerful CCs like paradox, mutation, congeal or rewind.

Alternative Built:
There are a few alternative builts, though none of them seem to be more effective; they usually decrease the speed of the deck, which is by far its greater advantage. Here are the two most common ones:

Sundial version
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Sundials instead of Shards of Bravery. Offers both defense and drawing power.
Advantage: Less rares.
Disadvantage: Less speed.

unupped ghost
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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6rq 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 6s3 7ap 7ap 7ap 7ap 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 8pn

Unupgraded Ghosts of the Past instead of upgraded ones. This offers easier and earlier playing of Ghosts, since unupped Gotp costs 1 :time less. However, it overall has 2 less attack, which means 2 less damage per Ghost unit. Because of this, it has difficulties in slaying FGs fast enough. Despite of that, this version is still a fair FG killer and an ideal HB farmer.
Advantage: Faster, less upgrades.
Disadvantage: Less damage.

Epilogue:
A fresh idea in ETG deckbuilding which shows the following:
a} False Gods can be rushed.
b} Ghost of the Past is deadly even when not combined with Nightmare.
c} Mitosis + SoR combo is not just for Silurians.
d} Half-bloods can be farmed (?!)

Spoiler for 3:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,44027.0.html
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Even in the beginning Shard of Readiness and Mitosis were paired together. It was like a match made in heaven: create expensive creatures...for free?
Shard of Readiness and the Mitosis combo got a huge boost in power from the 1.29 patch in where Time creatures could use an ability twice. The connection was instant. Many decks abounded with the idea of an expensive time creature creating many copies. Two creatures stuck out: the powerful Silurian Dragon, and the Ghost of the Past. While going down the dragon path there has been the famous instosis, less has been said about how the ghost fits into all of this.

There have been many attempts to create a good rusher with Ghost of the Past and Mitosis with Shard of Readiness, but it wasn't until patch 1.30 that the final key to the puzzle was found. As a three, often times four card combo that requires not an insignificant amount of quanta, very few "ghostosis" decks caught on, most of them being arena decks or gimmicky ones. Patch 1.30 introduced the draw-accelerating Shard of Bravery, which immediately sped up the combo to the point where it became viable.

Just how viable is such a combo? Instaghost has the ability to outrush even False Gods in 5 turns, averaging 40 damage per turn. You will be hard pressed to find a deck with such vicious speed, but Instaghost also has its downsides. A capricious deck, if the combo is not drawn out early enough, death is almost inevitably the result. Once the combo is achieved however....even the stiffest of False Gods would struggle. Instaghost lacks permanent control, but it makes up for that in pure speed. While perhaps not consistent enough to be the next Instosis, Instaghost nevertheless glows with potential, and a few tweaks here and there could potentially make it the next fastest False God killer.
Spoiler for August 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is My RoL/Hope (mostly) unupped by Krathos.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.
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5la 5la 5lk 5lk 5lk 5lk 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61u 61u 61u 622 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 8pu

Quote from: willng3
Normally when a deck is posted that begins with the word "My", players can be expected to become skeptical of that deck's efficiency due to an implied lack of professional.  Krathos's variant of RoL/Hope proves to break from that tradition by being a beginner-friendly version of a FG grinder which has continued to remain effective for nearly two years after it was posted.

RoL/Hope was by no means a new concept when this variant was posted, but the aim of this deck was to go in greater detail about a mostly unupped version of a highly efficient FG grinder which would function well for anyone interested in creating the deck.  The basic principle of killing FGs fast to sell upgraded cards for the purpose of upgrading other cards would allow this mostly unupped RoL/Hope to be transformed into a more effective RoL/Hope mod such as Perpetual Light.  Regardless of the various updates that Elements has undergone since RoL/Hope's introduction to the game, both Krathos's mostly unupped variant and Perpetual Light have shown to continue to work well with respect to their grinding purposes.  In short, an investment in either deck made nearly two years ago would still be capable of paying off at the present.

While many FG grinders have been designed over the years to better counteract FGs than RoL/Hope, each update seems to remove yet another one of these designs from the top FG grinder list while RoL/Hope makes it through the storm standing as strong as ever.  With current updates bringing large changes via Shards and the like we can wonder if this will change in the approaching future.  However, if we adhere to past trends then it looks like RoL/Hope, upped or mostly unupped, is here to stay for quite some time.
Spoiler for July 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is Nightmares of the Past! by Acsabi44.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.
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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ro 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 8pt

Quote
Nightmares of the Past! serves as one of the most basic examples of the infamous Ghost of the Past + Nightmare (Ghostmare) combination in its prime.  Ghostmare acts as an extremely lethal force in both PvP and Arena where the deck uses the sinister synergy of Ghost of the Past and Nightmare to prevent the opponent from drawing cards for a turn and potentially fill the opponent's hand with dead cards that cause considerable amounts of damage to their HP if discarded.  Reverse Time and Eternity further strengthen the Ghostmare combination by sending creatures back to the top of the opposing player's deck, thereby removing yet another drawing opportunity for the opponent by turning their own creatures against them. 

There are few decks which exist in the game that have the ability to play as many mind games with the opponent as Ghostmare can.  For instance, from starting the duel and observing a Darkness Mark together with Time Factories one can generally assume that the deck they will have to face will indeed be a Ghostmare variant of some sort.  But even then the correct course of action to counter that deck can be difficult to discern: Would it be wisest to empty the player's starting hand immediately in the hopes of finishing the Ghostmare as quickly as possible or would it be better to play cards at a slower rate in order to mitigate Nightmare's power and remove the threat of forced discards?  Later on in the duel another issue to resolve will arise in the form of creatures: If a deck relies on creatures to do damage then it would be reasonable to assume that it could not win without them inflicting damage to the opponent.  However, if those creatures could then be rewound as Nightmare is used to prevent the player from drawing any cards during the next turn, then is playing them necessarily the best course of action to take?  Psychological warfare is perhaps one of the greatest weapons a player can use during a duel, and few combinations can utilize this power like Ghostmare.

As stated before, Nightmares of the Past! is a basic yet effective form of the Ghostmare deck type.  Ghostmare is also a common foe in the Arena where it is easily one of the most hated decks to face.  The reason for this animosity is quite simple: By abusing the ability to draw two cards during a single turn while the player is forced to skip a draw due to Nightmare (or Reverse Time in a sense), the player then becomes at a considerable card disadvantage.  In Gold and Platinum Leagues it is not at all uncommon to see a well-built Ghostmare variant reach the top 10 of its league.  In PvP Ghostmare is just as much a force to be feared, especially when restrictive deck building permits it to be used against other (less effective) combinations.  One of the best cases of Ghostmare displaying its horrifying potential is found within the forum's largest PvP event, War.  While the Ghostmare combo wasn't available prior to War 3, it has been a dominant force for both Teams Darkness and Time ever since it was made available to the both of them.  In War 3 it netted Team Time the most wins (5) of any deck they used.  In War 4 Team Darkness was able to gather 9 wins using its own Ghostmare variant which also happened to be the highest number of wins for any deck during the event.  Team Time then went on to surpass this record during War 5 by netting 11 wins using a Ghostmare variant during War 5; no other deck used by any team came close to this number during War 5.

Ghostmare and, by extension, Nightmares of the Past! proves to be one of the most infamous forces within the EtG realm and will continue to impart a foreboding presence upon the game itself for some time to come.  Though it is not by any means an invincible combination, it oftentimes requires quite a bit of skill and counter-decking in order to bring it to its knees.
Spoiler for June 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is PVP Graboid Rainbow (unupped) by Antagon.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.
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Speedbows are among the most familiar deck types to both new players and veterans alike with hundreds of variants existing throughout the forums.  However, within those hundreds of variants lie many specific decks whose fame has caused them to become nearly synonymous with the term Speedbow itself.  In the unupped realm, that role defers to the PVP Graboid Rainbow.

Though PVP Graboid Rainbow may possess several individual nicknames (Antbow, Antagon's Grabbow, etc.), its use and power is far from disputed by its user.  PVP Graboid Rainbow manages to incorporate a blend of control and power in order to form a deck which manages to negate the strength of some rush decks and also is able to break through less capable stalls.  That PVP tag in its title isn't just for show, this deck has been a formidable opponent in PVP since its creation.

However, PVP Graboid Rainbow's use is not limited to solely play against PVP.  In fact, the deck is one of the most commonly used unupped decks against Bronze League.  The many strengths that PVP Graboid Rainbow brought to the PVP scene are also incorporated when facing the opponents of Bronze League.  It can also be used against level 3 opponents for some quick electrum, but its lack of speed in comparison to other AI3 grinding decks makes it less useful for this purpose.

During the time that PVP Graboid Rainbow has existed the game has changed and evolved, but the deck's abilities have remained largely untouched.  The biggest changes to the deck's potential arose in the form of the Deflagration nerf and the Nova nerf.  However, while the Deflagration nerf can be observed from time to time due to a lack of quanta, the Nova nerf is incredibly insignificant and is usually only observed when the player receives a starting hand of 3 Nova.  PVP Graboid Rainbow is sure to remain a force to be feared in the unupped PVP domain for quite some time.
Spoiler for May 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH
The deck idea of the month is Day Traitors by Essence.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.
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With zanzarino announcing a nerf of Half-Bloods from 200 to 150 HP during the 1.31 patch update, it seems fitting that the Deck Idea of the month would be dedicated to an enjoyable, popular Half-Blood grinder in anticipation of the change.

Day Traitors is quite an innovative deck which serves as the very pinnacle of AI abuse.  The basic strategy involves playing 1-2 Rays of Light, generating enough quanta to play your first Solar Buckler, and then Nightmare'ing a Ray of Light.  The end result is that the opponent's hand becomes full of free-costing 1/1 creatures which the AI will waste little time in spamming on the field.  Such a tactic is able to provide creatures to fuel your Solar Buckler as well as potentially disable a Half-Blood's access to double draw for a single turn, giving the player a turn of considerable draw advantage.  This trick generates a great amount of :light very quickly, effectively making what would be expensive cards easy to play.

But this is only the core of the deck's strategy.  Day Traitors also enlists the help of Endowed Vampire Daggers to give it additional menacing potential.  By Blessing a single Vampire Dagger the user effectively grants the same attack bonus to every Endowing Crusader.  With the addition of Endow's ability to replicate the abilities of a target weapon, this becomes quite a sinister tactic which allows the user to endure several different forms of assault through the Vampire ability.  It is for this reason that the deck has also functioned well in Gold League.  Light Dragons further add to the arsenal, granting access to high attack creatures resilient to creature control.

However, despite its rather enticing features, Day Traitors also has a few weaknesses.  Dissipation Shield has the ability to block off attacking creatures completely, Otyughs are able to feast on Rays of Light early in the game, and Maxwell's Demon poses a serious threat to the deck at just about any time.

Regardless, due to AI4's incredibly random nature and the ability to grant 10-15 EM wins constantly, Day Traitors serves as a fun, effective grinder that allows hours of enjoyment to be experienced by nearly any user.
Spoiler for March 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH

The deck idea of the month is USEM by jmdt.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.


Quote from: willng3
Some users may find it odd to hear of senior players spending the vast majority of their Elements time warring against the Elders, an opponent level that one might expect to be abandoned once a player has obtained the tools to face more difficult enemies such as False Gods.  But with USEM this reasoning is very well founded and quite obvious after experimenting with the deck for a few games. 

USEM lives up to its name (Ultimate Speed Elemental Mastery) by being one of the fastest decks used and tested against Elders available on the forums.  And not only is the deck dangerously fast, but it's also easily capable of EMing its opponent swiftly and many times without much effort.  Very few decks can boast being able to net over 1500 score per hour versus AI3 and those that can manage this feat consistently are even more uncommon.  USEM also made it possible for more dedicated grinders to earn several tens of thousands of score per week while maintaining a ridiculously high numbers of wins compared to losses.

The sheer simplicity of USEM is yet another of its more enticing factors.  Some decks require significant amounts of clicking, thinking, and prediction each turn which cuts down on the deck's speed.  However, USEM does not have this problem because its strategy is to use brute force and rush the opponent while healing as necessary.  The deck's Mono-Life nature cuts back on bad draws tremendously as it's nearly impossible for it to receive a horrible starting hand which hinders its speed for the remainder of the duel as opposed to numerous Speed Rainbows which attempt to serve the same purpose as USEM.  As such, the deck becomes quite useful to players who might be trying to multitask or stay alert when at work because it requires very little thought to put it to great use.

USEM remained the undisputed champion of score grinding for many, many months before a breakthrough in deck design caused its crown to be lost.  Prior to the Arena's release, AI3 was the proven place to go if a player wanted to increase their score quickly for the simple reason that with the right deck games were completed quickly, losses were kept to a minimum, and EMs earning a player bonuses for score were relatively easy to achieve.  But even as easy as this sounds, the quest to find a deck which possessed the perfect balance between speed, win rate, and Elemental Mastery ability was very difficult to find.  Though some Speedbows may be faster than USEM and others may possess better variety, their reliance on luck makes them hard pressed to make USEM do much more than scoff at them and their attempts to surpass it.  However, TADAbow has shown to be able to surpass USEM's score farming ability ever so slightly, seemingly causing the deck to be forgotten and disowned...or is there more to USEM's story?

As it turns out USEM received a bit of a bonus in its efficiency when Mitosis was released, causing the "Ultimate" deck to become even more supreme before the advent of TADAbow.  The simplest modification of -1 Giant Frog and -1 Elite Cockatrice for +2 Mitosis has shown to improve the deck's efficiency rate by a noticeable amount (though the difference was still relatively minuscule) to the point that the variation was given the name "USEMosis".  The deck's one downside is that games become less mindless with the addition of Mitosis, and it will take a more experienced player's judgement and knowledge to produce more noticeable differences in grinding efficiency.  This nudge forward causes testing for both USEMosis and TADAbow to yield varying results, as some statistics will support one's supremacy over the other but do little to confirm either case.  As such it is generally accepted that the two decks share the title of "Best AI3 grinder" together.  However, with the Arena completely removing the purpose of upgraded AI3 score grinding it is highly unlikely that players will see USEM return to its former glory, despite weathering the storm of countless game updates that had little effect on its performance one way or the other.
Spoiler for February 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH

The deck idea of the month is SPlat by Bonestorm.  Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.


Quote from: willng3

Few Platinum League farmers are strangers to the terrible power of SPlat.  Shortened from Scorpion Platinum Farmer, SPlat does much more than simply live up to its name; it remains the most popular deck used against Platinum Arena for one simple reason:  It works.  And it works well.  SPlat possesses the ability to negate a wide variety of decks ranging from stalls to rushes while simultaneously obtaining an incredible number of Elemental Masteries.  In addition, the Shards of Divinity allow the user to increase their HP to terrifying amounts, further increasing their reward.  With these factors combined it's not at all uncommon for a user to find themselves earning over 600 electrum at the end of a duel.  Such a feat is only otherwise possible from grinding False Gods and selling upgraded cards won, but defeating some of the top ranked players can leave the user staring at over 2000 electrum as a reward.  In these particular cases, SPlat reigns supreme over all commonly used farming decks.

SPlat currently features two separate variations.  The Nova variation, as posted above, was the first version of SPlat to be featured and that also demonstrated its powers against the Arena.  However, the deck was further fine-tuned to the point where Novae where no longer necessary and the deck's success skyrocketed further.  When Shard of Sacrifice was still a relatively new face to Elements the Game, Platinum found itself completely unprepared for the pure power this deck possessed.  It was possible for a dedicated farmer to net at least 30k+ score daily with special spins to seal the deal, while even casual users of the deck found themselves reaping huge benefits.  SPlat has the ability to effectively negate all forms of offense from creatures and poison using Shard of Sacrifice while Neurotoxin continues to chip away at the opponent's HP at an alarming rate as the duel continues longer.  Only the fastest of rushes are able to thwart the efforts of Shard of Sacrifice, and even then Shards of Divinity can be used to extend the deck's lifespan, allowing it to come back from defeat and still win with an Elemental Mastery.

However, current times have SPlat seeing a reduced winrate for the simple reason that Platinum League members have found the most effective ways to counter it.  Healing, especially healing in the forms of Miracle, Feral Bond, Vampires and oftentimes opponent Shards of Sacrifice, makes it near impossible for SPlat to deal the amount of damage it needs before the player decks out or runs out of Shards of Sacrifice to fall back on.  Purify also removes all Neurotoxin counters, putting SPlat back at square one and oftentimes sealing its fate.  In addition, the AI has been programmed to better understand Shard of Sacrifice, meaning that cards such as Fire Lance, Sky Blitz, and Unstable Gas are much harder to counter.  Special spins are also much harder to obtain for these reasons.

Alternatively, SPlat makes a very effective False God farmer, with tests showing that the deck is capable of earning just under 1000 electrum per hour at a winrate of only slightly above 50%.  It may not take the place of the current False God farming champion, Instosis, but it's certainly nothing to scoff at nonetheless.

Even with the various new obstacles SPlat must face, it still remains a very efficient Platinum League farmer.  The deck can easily outperform even the best of AI3 farmers in terms of both Electrum and Score on its worst of days simply due to the incredibly large rewards its Elemental Masteries produce.  Despite most current unofficial testing indicating that SPlat has an average winrate of less than 50% against Platinum League, the sheer amount of Electrum obtained from a single duel completely outweighs any and all Electrum lost from defeat.  Unless the game itself undergoes drastic changes or all Platinum League members work on specifically countering this one deck, SPlat will remain a threat to Platinum League for quite some time.
Spoiler for January 2012:
DECK IDEA OF THE MONTH

The deck idea of the month is Instosis by Sevs, winner of the Best FG Deck for 2011. Deck Helper willng3 reviewed it.


Quote from: willng3
In an age where the Arena was quickly dominating the farming scene, Instosis became a gem which returned False God farming to its former glory seemingly overnight. To put the raw power of Instosis into perspective, there are several statistics that users should be aware of. Firstly, the deck has been tested and recorded to have a 67% win-rate, higher than any of the most recently recorded win-rates (before Shard of Gratitude was nerfed) of the most effective False God grinders. Furthermore, the deck is capable of earning the player more than 10,000 electrum per hour as well as more than 1,100 score per hour; no other False grinder comes anywhere near these values. Instosis's score gain also makes it one of the few decks able to collect more than 1,000 score in an hour, a feat previously exclusive to Elder grinding. Instosis is especially enticing due to its fast game speed and is currently clocked at a supersonic average of 2:20 minutes per game.

Because Instosis specializes in a One Turn Kill (OTK) method for winning, it is easily capable of avoiding some of the biggest obstacles that impede other False God grinders. Cards such as Miracle, Phase Shield, and Granite Skin are no longer a concern because the AI is not able to detect when over 200 damage is about to suddenly appear on the field during the next turn. With the power of Sundials behind it for stalling creatures as well as Hourglasses for draw advantage, Instosis oftentimes doesn't allow the AI to set up before utterly destroying it.  Creature Control is also completely wasted as Instosis doesn't even give the AI a chance to target anything before Instosis runs it over.

Despite these fantastic advantages, Instosis also comes with its weaknesses as well. Decay, Dream Catcher, and Dark Matter are all considered skip Gods because they all drain Instosis of the quanta it desperately needs to set off its game winning combo. Black Hole is undoubtedly the biggest threat to this deck. Instosis also runs into a few problems with clogged hands where the player draws the cards they need at the wrong time, restricting their draw speed and playing options considerably. Though the deck is suggested to nearly all players looking for a False God grinder, it can take a good amount of play time before adjusting to the deck itself. For instance, knowing when and where to play Sundials is an acquired skill obtained after playing the deck for a considerable number of games.

Overall, Instosis is one of the greatest decks to be introduced to players interested in False God grinding since the fall of The ULTIMATE False God killing deck during the 1.15 patch update. Will it experience the same treatment and become a relic to be remembered during the months or years to come? Possibly, but it will be sure to provide an excellent grinding experience before that time arrives.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2017, 05:28:45 pm by mathman101 »
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Offline SpikeSpiegel

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Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1173603#msg1173603
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2015, 09:33:40 pm »

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Offline SpikeSpiegel

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  • Awards: Weekly Tournament Winner9th Trials - Master of TimeWeekly Tournament WinnerSlice of Elements 6th Birthday CakeWar #8 - Sportsmanship AwardWeekly Tournament Winner8th Trials - Master of TimeBrawl #3 Winner - Divine LightSlice of Elements 5th Birthday CakeWeekly Tournament WinnerChampionship League 3/2013 2nd PlaceSlice of Elements 3rd Birthday Cake3rd Trials - Master of TimeMS Paint Card Art #3 WinnerWeekly Tournament WinnerChampionship League 3/2010 3rd Place
Re: Deck Idea of the Month Archive https://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=47143.msg1195788#msg1195788
« Reply #7 on: July 06, 2015, 01:21:42 pm »
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