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December 2014 | | CHRISTMAS IS COMING!
If you want to have a chance to get a Christmas gift, read the second post! |
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- War is currently in its 6th round! Fire, Darkness, and Time are in a tight battle for the lead, with the other elements duking it out behind them. Gravity’s 2-0 in round 6 helped them narrowly escape 12th place, as Life’s 0-2 eliminated them from the competition. With 24 card discards per loss, every match counts and a single poor round could doom a team.
- Heir of the False Gods is currently in extended time of its third round – several players will be eliminated this round.
- The first announcement of qualified players for the 2014 PvP World Championship has been made. With 22 prequalified players and numerous others attempting to play their way in, stakes will be high and the field will be intense.
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- The Wiki Revival competition was hosted this month, though the turnout was a bit sad. The three entries are in voting now; be sure to leave a vote as the winning article will be featured on our wiki!
- Considering the sad turnout for the last comp, COs would like some feedback on whether competitions should be run during these war rounds. If you'd like to voice an opinion on the matter, please contact the Competition Organizers.
This section was written by CO Zawadx
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- Happy, yet tired for missing six hours of sleep, eljoemo
 won his first Weekly Tournament ever, in HAPPY HALLOWEEN - Unupgraded on the 1st of November. How did he feel about it? "The best answer is a combination of exhilaration and exhaustion. I was really happy with winning, especially for the first time, seeing as I didn't really expect to. It feels like I've started my journey to become a PvP master." Congratulations on your first WT win, and we indeed wish you luck in becoming a PvP master! 
- Wow! So many players flocked to Submachine's birthday party on the 8th of November! Unbelievable! The party took place in the second Weekly Tournament of the month, Submachine's present - Unupgraded, where players had limited options when it came to deckbuilding.
 The luckiest man in the tourney was iancudorinmarian who also won his first WT ever! He stated: "It felt really good and I felt like I completed a goal in my life. In the first two rounds I thought I'll just lose again, but when I reached the third round I began to feel nervous and excited at the same time. I can't describe how I felt during the final." Congratulations and good luck in the future tourneys!
- Is theelkspeaks going to be another jack of all trades? He took over hosting Venomous Poison - Unupgraded on the 15th of November, when there was no host available. Unexpectedly, the winner of that tournament turned out to be a newbie member of our community: iNuzzle. He admitted that he was actually surprised by the win himself. He said: "I think I had a good deck and had a fair idea of the metagame, but you've got to string together a lot of wins to come out on top. In the back of my mind I thought 'I bet that doesn't happen too often,' but at the forefront was how I could do better and improve for next time." Obviously, his deck must have been great if he managed to beat all of his opponents. Congratulations and best of luck to you in future tourneys and other PvP events!
- The month of November continues to be a good month for first time ever tournament winners! This time the trophy went to first time winner hainkarga, who won Specialization #3 - Upgraded on the 22nd of November. He said that the tourney was short but fun, and brought him memories of TPvP; "just like this tourney, I used a lot of nymph-trident decks in there." He had a hard time versus iancudorinmarian due to Fog Shield's "hax block," as he showed on the pic he had sent to me:
Congratulations on your first win in Weekly Tournaments and of course good luck in future tourneys and obviously in War #8!
- The amazing winning streak of players who won Weekly Tournaments for the first time has finally come to a conclusion. Obviously, pvp veterans have not yet had their last say, as RootRanger received his 10th Weekly Tournament trophy by winning No Country for Old Men - Unupgraded on the 29th of November. The winner was satisfied with the tournament, as he said: "It was a true test of deckbuilding skill because a player needed to come up with 10-12 solid decks in order to win." He also stated: "It was fun to play so many different decks in one tourney." Congratulations to RootRanger for his 10th WT win and to Tournament Organizers for coming up with a challenging tourney, even for PvP veterans.
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- A new season of Leagues will be starting in the very near future, the 1/2015 season. As an LO, I can tell you that a couple of exciting surprises are waiting to be announced with the upcoming season, and we’re looking to update and improve our Leagues record book and Hall of Fame. Good luck to all!
- Elements Mafia 42 has ended with a victory for the
 mafia. Aether exterminated the other elements and reigns forever!
- Elements Mafia 43 is underway, and with just 7 players alive, it won’t be long until we see who wins this round! Can one of the mafia couples slay the townies, or will town finally get a win?
- Elements Mastermind is in Round 3, and only 5 players remain. Just one more is to be cut before the final 4!
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- We welcome back UTAlan who holds the highest forum position again. Say hello to our old/new admin and make sure you don't spam his inbox
- Helping to ease the burden on justaburd's wings as League Organizer, we added theelkspeaks, my fellow Newsletter Writer. Say big thank you to justaburd for his great work and we wish good luck to theelkspeaks who likes being overburdened
- Tournament Organizer application process has been closed and we are waiting for the hiring announcement, likely within the next week or so!
Tea Time with Giants: Kris Kringle
Well hello Mr. Kringle! What brings you here to the world of Elements?
Well, ho, ho, ho, I just love giving things away to people, and I hear everyone wants a card or two!
What is your favorite element?
Well, the holiday season fills me with Adrenaline, so perhaps Life. On the other hand, a man of my size ought to prefer Gravity. Finally, my sleigh clearly loves Air.
Is it true about your list of naughty and nice?
Well, if you’ve been naughty, I have a little rain of Fire in my back pocket aimed just for you. Enjoy! Hohohohoho!
And what sort of presents do you have for the community?
A small chance at a nymph every day, my favorite presents to give away, any time of year! Hohohoho!
Seems you're busy so I'm not stopping you, thanks for talking!
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New Members
Spoiler for Introduction posts: Here are the members who posted in the Introduce Yourself board. Just click a certain name to be redirected to corresponding introduction post. Don't be rude, say hello to new comers |
This is the third and the last part of Krzysiekxd's comic about new Masters. Enjoy!
(Below it's only an excerpt of a comic. Don't miss a link to full comic under the excerpt!)
LINK TO A FULL COMIC
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.
Did you ever feel like you would like to discard a useless card? What about discarding it and benefiting from it? Yep, you heard me. This card let's you discard that useless card and draw those creatures that hide at the bottom of your deck.
This gives life a new capability to rush. You can use an aether mark in your mono life and pack a few of these. If you get too much quantum, just discard your pillars (from your hand) to draw 2 creatures. Is your hand clogged with adrenaline, but no frogs to use them on? Use this card and discard one of those adrenalines to get a potential of 24 damage!
This card is not only a competitive card, but it can be a fun card too. You can use it in a Shard of Serendipity deck or mindgate deck to get rid of the cards you don't need or simply can't play.
To sum up, this card can help in a lot of situations. Just be sure to not use it with Ghost of the Past
Puzzle of the Month
Elements Nonogram
A nonogram is a game of logic where you can use a set of given numbers to produce a black and white picture (or my representation of one).
The numbers tell you the sequences of black squares contained in that row or column. There will be at least one white (empty) square between each set of numbers.
Spoiler for help in solving: If you notice in the picture below, there are six squares in a column, and the first column has all 6 squares required, so blacken all six of those squares in that column. Also, there are four squares in a row, and the first and last rows lists 4, so blacken all spaces in those two rows. It can be useful to mark squares you know to be empty, with a small dot. And since the 2nd and 3rd rows only list 1, and that space is already used, place dots in the remaining spaces of those rows. Now, see that fourth row? Since the first number is a 1, and you already have one blackened space in the first space, the next space must be blank. The second number in that row is 2, and since there are only two spaces left, the 3rd and 4th spaces must be darkened. If you notice the 2nd and 3rd column, you see that the required blackened spaces have been used, so the remaining space in those columns are blank (place dots there). Finally, there is only one space left not already dealt with. It can be solved either by the row or the column. Lets give the example of the row first. It lists a 1 1, so since you have the required blackened space followed by at least one blank space, and there is only room for one more space, that last space should be blackened. If you had solved from the column instead, you would see a 1 3. You already have one blackened space followed by 2 blank spaces, then black space black, so you know that this space is darkened as there are to be the three black spaces in that column. (The resulting picture is the capital letter G.) Spoiler for if you get stuck, here are my own personal notes from solving this puzzle:
(Keep in mind, the picture was my best attempt at trying to recreate an Elements related picture in block formation.)
While most of the puzzle was just a matter of noticing the right place to determine placement of “x”s or “.”s, there were a couple of harder sections.
There was a section (about 2/3rds the way through), where I had to think: if this set where here, then this goes here and this doesn't go there, and this goes here and this doesn't go there, etc., until I could determine that that set's possible placement was impossible. Then I tried the set again, in the next possibility; if the set were here, then ..., then ..., then ..., but it didn't go there either. Finally, with only one option left, I knew where the set belonged. Remember, if you try this and believe that a set (or single "x") goes somewhere, you will want to make sure that the set does not go in the other possible placements before determining that your belief is correct. Which is why, when attempting this, I chose to first try what I believed were the least likely correct positions.
Near the very end of the puzzle I had to do a much easier version of “what if?”
Spoiler for help in getting an answer to me: Spoiler for if you have no idea how send an answer to me, here are instructions on how to pm a picture to me:
After scanning a hard copy or using paint to save the picture in your computer, upload your picture to the internet. Different sites can be used, but here are a few options: imgur.com, photobucket.com, and tinypic.com. Once it is uploaded, on another page, pm me and above the smilies is a square [Mona Lisa] picture, which when moused over says “insert image.” When clicked on, it makes two sets of brackets with img. Using your mouse, click inbetween the two sets of brackets. Then copy the link of where you uploaded your picture to where you clicked. At the end of the link that you inserted (but before the 2nd bracket), now make sure that it has a “.png” at the end of it (you can type it in). If you prefer, you can use “.jpg” or “.gif” instead; but do not forget to add the period before the three letters. Now preview your pm to see if the picture shows. If it doesn't, then recheck. When ready, click send.
Spoiler for an example of how to send those typed answers: Here I use the previous example puzzle, except that the rows have letters representing them, and the columns have numbers representing them. Accordingly, the top left square is A1 while the bottom right square is F4. To the right of the puzzle is the example answer of that puzzle, and what you would type in your pm.  If you would like to send in an answer and are still confused or have difficulties doing so, you are welcome to pm me, and I will try to help. I would much prefer a pm to someone's disappointment that they can't accomplish such a task. This goes for all my puzzles.
If you solve this puzzle and send the answers via pm to J617 by the deadline, your name will be listed in next month's Newsletter.
The countdown has concluded.
Last month's phrase puzzle solution:
Many thanks to:
-Zawadx for Competitions section;
-willng3 for Deck Idea of the Month;
-iancudorinmarian for Card Idea of the month;
-J617 for tha Puzzle of the Month, help with WT entries and with proofreading;
-all readers for reading
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