| December 2015 | | WAR #9 & THE PVP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP STILL ONGOING!
NEW TOURNAMENT ORGANIZER!
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- The PVP World Championship has been whittled down to just 12 players remaining. Who will make the top 8 and chase the elusive title?
- In the 9th War, four teams have already gone down. Darkness tops the tables with gravity and air close behind; stay tuned to see if any of the other five teams can close the gap, or whether we'll have a brand new War champion!
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- In the Raise the Banners competition, Cleanonion's new Brawlmaster banner narrowly eked out a tiebreaker victory over Treldon's new Newsletter Writer banner. Conratulations to him!
- Time is almost up for writing some Thank You Notes to give everyone a chuckle; good thing you don't have to write very much! Let's see if we can get a record turnout on this low word count competition!
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- Dancing of the Dead - Unupgraded was originally was supposed to take place October 31st but suffered from a lack of participants when Hallow'een arrived. Perhaps everyone was gone for treats? Whatever the cause of quiet, the tournament was rescheduled for November 1st - and winner JonathanCrazyJ
 certainly didn't give anyone treats. Instead, he tricked all of his opponents using a single deck for almost the entire competition. Here is a short interview with him (see spoiler).
Spoiler for Interview with the winner: That was your first Weekly Tournament win, but you already have two Leagues trophies; PvP is no mystery to you. Were you unlucky earlier, or didn't you have the opportunity to join many tournaments before? And finally how did you feel after winning your first WT? I work the weekends as a children's party entertainer, and if I have booked time off, I'm usually doing something else! The stars aligned, and I arrived in chat 10 mins before a Tourney that I didn't realise had been delayed!
With that in mind, since my return to the game (some 10 months ago) I have (I think) played 3 tourneys. I have placed 3rd twice, and now won one!
And it feels great, as this time I didn't get a Nymph. I'm a proud owner of a Water Mark 8)
-Did you like the rules and the tourney in general? I liked them more with every win. It was interesting, being forced to have 8 cards (skelies and boneyards) which were essentially dead cards that made it necessary to work around them. The best decks were either a speed mono Death, or my fat, heavy draw time duo with Eternity (because it turned the skelies into fate eggs, and allowed Eternity-lockdown). My 3 Time Nymphs helped too  -What was the most exciting moment of the tourney for you? Realizing that there was no need to change my deck. It was a deck I enjoyed playing, and I realised that I stood my best chance without messing around too much.-How would you summarize the whole tourney in one very short sentence or even one word? Found the Meta-Hole
- "On the 7th of November we returned Back to the Roots." "Roger!" No, not just 'roger', it was rogerluc who won this unupgraded tournament that kept much of the game's starting decks. He described his path to victory here; you can also read an interview with him in the spoiler below.
Spoiler for Interview with the Winner:: - How did it feel to win your first Weekly Tournament ever (which was also your first forum award)? I am super happy with my performance! I've only played 2 tournaments now, both in a row, and I finished 2nd and 1st. I'm also very glad to get my first forum award - I was so scared that I'd finish 2nd again, but the RNG was on my side.- Did you like the rules and the tourney in general? I like the work of Tournament Organizers. Very nice job. There's diversity in the rules, and they change the time every week to keep it fair for different schedules so everyone can usually play at least once a month. Before now I did not participate because I thought I had no chance against the stars and famous names in Elements. Either it wasn't the case in this tourney, or maybe they were absent this time - What was the most exciting moment of the tourney for you? Hmm, clearly the moment facing off against treebeard_xiii (the semi-final). I used a Parallel Universe then a Mutation on his Steam Machine when it was around 26/6, it was funny This time RNG with Mutation saved me, unlike the previous tourney when I finished 2nd; that time to win the tourney I just needed to rewind a skeleton to a creature with 3 attack, but I got a Red Nymph and lost the final.
But this time, Mutation was my revenge.
After my winning vs. treebeard_xiii, he spoiled my deck in chat by mentioning the dim shield, but it was still another exciting moment above all against aves for the final...it was a nice final. - How would you summarize the whole tourney in one very short sentence or even one word? Try to play tourney and you will fly away...
- The Weekly Tournament on November 14th, Potluck Rules - Unupgraded was played with interesting rules: only trio decks with no pendulums permitted. We're all quite curious what kind of decks tournament winner worldwideweb3
 used, but exact details haven't been shared with us. However, he did share some thoughts about his tournament participation. Read the interview in the spoiler below!
Spoiler for Interview with the Winner: - You've won two rewards from Leagues in the past, making this both your third PvP trophy and your first Weekly Tournament win! How did your first tournament triumph feel? Was it somehow special?
It felt special indeed. It was on top of the list of things I wanted to win at the time, as it was one of the pvp competitions I hadn't won. As my weekend is normally busy, it is really difficult to play tournies since I usually cannot stay for the whole time. So it was a relief when I won it.
- Did you like the tourney in general? How about the rules?
I love speedbuilding and I liked this tourney even more because it was one of those tourneys where it was near impossible to play your everyday decks. The two decks I mainly played were a Grabbix and DBH+Graboid. The DBH worked wonders for me. The first game in the final was really close. His Discord/Graboid, eq+rt vs. my DBH Graboid. He got a low pillar draw, but I think I didn't have disc in the opening hand. But I had a lot of BH's so that kept his quanta low. His Discord was kinda useless cause of Nova. Second game was Devtal+BB vs Grabbix. Again, Immo countered Devs decently. BB's gave some trouble but I had enough creatures. Yay! Congrats MMC on reaching the final and hopefully you will win one soon too!
- When, for you, was the most exciting moment of the tournament?
The most exciting moment had to be when I realised I won it. The last game was really close, so when I dealt the final blow, I was really joyous.
- In just a short sentence, or even one word, how would you summarize the whole competition?
Creative.
- Poker Me Joker - Upgraded, a tournament with quite complex rules (or at least some players admitted that) which was unusually held on Wednesday (November 25th) as no one showed up on Saturday when it was originally planned. The most pro poker player turned out to be Blacksmith
 who used these decks. The winner's most exciting moment was when he realized that he had won the first match in the final versus the hard counter of his deck. He also liked the fact that the tournament encouraged duo-decks. He summed up the tourney in one word: creative.
Congratulations and we wish you more successful poker games! 
- Only two days passed and we had another tournament, Speedbuilding - Naming of the Gaming - Unupgraded which took place on November 28th. The player with the best speedbuilding skills was theelkspeaks who shared some thoughts with us about the tournament. Please read it in the spoiler below.
Spoiler for elk's tournament summary: I thought this tournament had a pretty exciting ruleset! The format of having to build decks around a single card lent itself to trying to find a single best deck for most rounds rather than try to get too cute, so I tried to do exactly that. Noticing the ban on EQ with a water card forced into play in round 1, but Trident not on the ban list, I assumed that EQ effects were extremely powerful and just jammed it. In round 2, I needed a good target to accelerate, and stone dragon gave me access to pulverizer and several nymphs, so I decided to focus on that duo to lock my opponent out of the game. Round 3 was the Voodoo round, which was a bit tricky as it was more RPS than other rounds which were DECK A rounds. With no deck having a good matchup against the field, I went for It's a Trap game 1, then a paradolls game 2. Choosing a version with Drain Life in it gave me a way to stay alive and possibly neuter some damage from my opponent or kill an important creature. The matchup turned grindy, and a dusk and dagger came through for me, probably the most exciting game of the tournament. In the finals, I saw vulture come up and needed to maximize it without traditional synergy. Easiest way seemed to be monodeath, since that's already in a good place in the meta. During game 1, I realized the lack of bypass on both my and math's decks since we'd replaced poisons of a traditional monodeath with vultures and plagues. I decided to board into a Dim deck and consider decking him out, with Psiontal for bypass damage that's hard to remove, and some vultures/plagues as another wincon. After I dropped game 2 to a firecell bow, I went to game 3 with effectively the same deck and ran into a wings deck, an effective hard counter. As far as I can tell, 3 of the four rounds had single best decks you were well positioned if you found, which is the most exciting type of speedbuilding tournament, so extra congratulations to the TO team as a whole!
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- The 3/2015 Season of Leagues is coming to a close. Stay tuned for the final standings!
- Witch Game 5 has started! It's a detective game where you need to solve the mysterious cases without ever believing that it was done by the witch's magic.Can you solve the mysteries using the power of Blue Truths?
- The path through the Relic Sweeper maze has grown tense. See which player or team can survive!
- Mafia 53, hosted by Zawadx, has come to a very abrupt end. The town purged the mafia in short order and returned to peace. Good job, town!
- Mafia 54 with theelkspeaks as host has just started. Can a small band of heroes bring down the greatest villains of all time? Check out this unexpected reversal of sides!
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- The Elements Council is looking to hire Card Curators; be sure to apply if you are interested!
- MeowMeowCat has been hired as the latest addition to the Tournament Organizer team. Congrats to the Cat!
What is your favourite kind of happiness, and the kind of happiness that you feel represents you best? (Clean0nion)
This is actually a really insightful question. One of my happiest memories of my father who passed away in 2007, was after a play I performed in, and it was simply "I'm really proud of you." I think, being a performer at heart, my happiest form of happiness is feeling applauded. If I feel proud of producing a performance, a joke, or... anything really, then my most fulfilling form of happiness is when anyone applauds me for it. [censored] is nice too.
If you had to choose a female community member, who would you date? Assume that none of you are in a relationship, even if you are. (anonymous)
Yeesh who turned up the heat? Actually as many of you know (as you'll see by the next question) I just got engaged in real life! But I said I'd answer anything sooo... I'd have to say I value humour hugely in a long-term relationship. And nobody has a closer approximation of my slightly deranged sense of humour than Naesala. She gets me. I mean she understands me - I don't mean she physically gets me.
Regale us with the super-awesome story of how you proposed to your fiance. (anonymous)
Well first I learnt dutch over a period of about 6 months, so I could ask her....
Find this answer and more here: LINK. You cannot find this interview in the first post of Featured Community Member thread because it is full. This is only a temporal issue and council is working on solving this.
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New Members
Spoiler for Introduction posts: Here are the members who posted in the Introduce Yourself board (but not later than in 2 months prior to Newsletter). Just click a certain name to be redirected to corresponding introduction post. Don't be rude, say hello to new comers |
Event Card Panic Below it's only an excerpt of the comic, don't miss to click on the link to the full comic! Enjoy!
LINK TO A FULL COMIC
This Deck Idea Of The Month is brought to you by Vineroz Hover over cards for details, click for permalink 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7gk 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h0 7h0 7i6 7i6 7i6 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pp
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.
This Card review was written by Espithel.
Promethean Arsenal is a confusing card at first glance, but it is a beautiful one. Before going into the details of why this card is so pretty, I'm first going to explain how it works. In short, Promethean Arsenal is a substitute for Flying Weapon in mono fire or water, air or earth decks that duo with fire. It's a deceptive card that looks far more powerful than it is, at least unupped, but still a card that gives you a good amount to think with.
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First of all, this card is designed in mind with a card called Material Pillar, which alternates between generating 1 or 2 of  ,  ,  , or  a turn. However, as I'm about to explain, that doesn't really matter for reasons I'm describing below. This is why the card may look strange to the uninitiated.
When you play Promethean Arsenal, it absorbs one fire, air, water, or earth quanta. Of the quanta it absorbs, it adds the corresponding weapon (Fahrenheit, Owl's Eye, Trident, or Pulverizer, respectively.) into your hand. If you can't drain any quanta, it'll generate a non-rare weapon, currently Dagger, Short Sword, Bow, and Hammer.
Promethean Arsenal then provides a status effect to your current weapon, if you have one, that allows it to be animated it would be replaced (Not destroyed, but replaced. That means steal it for massive damage!) when you play another weapon.
So, essentially, it's a better FW, right? ... No. First of all, its main drawback is the RNG built in to it. Let's say you have all four types of quanta when you play this card. That means you have a 25% chance of getting a Fahrenheit, a Trident, a Pulverizer, and an Owl's Eye. That alone is a huge drawback; you will not always get what you want.
Of those cards, Pulverizer, is completely useless. You pay 3 , drain 1 , then pay another 4 to get something that deals four damage! You pay seven  for Shard of Wisdom, without the main upside to SoW. Its ability is in gravity, making it the last thing you want.
Second of all, what if you get Trident? Well, first of all, that's 4 and 3 to play an inferior SoW. And, whilst you can use its ability in a quartet with Material Pillar, doing so runs the risk of getting a Pulverizer, making something you're likely to exclude in decks that run the Arsenal... You just made NTUG cry.
This leaves us with two desirable results: Owl's Eye, which can kill creatures and deals fair, if not inefficient damage, and Fahrenheit, the monster it is... If you weren't paying 3 all the time to play more Fahrenheits. However, this card can be used with Fahrenheit alone, mitigating the damage that the RNG absorption gives it.
And this is all assuming you want to animate either one of these four weapons, which most decks do not. The RNG factor makes the card severely take a hit; if it was "Drain your highest of ", It would be a much easier card to work with. If it gave an actual damage buff to your main weapon, or readied its skill, that would be very kind, too.
However, this is the unupped. Upgraded, this card becomes much more viable. Whilst it forces you to run at least fire and air, forcing a maximum of 50% chance to get what you want, it is a very resistant (but slow) way of generating extra damage from thin air, giving it a home in fire/air stalls. After all, you could destroy this... If you want to have no answer to that wings or Eagle's Eye already in place. In this sense, it should be treated more like a mutated, bizarre Forest Spectre. You pay 1 and however much your weapon costs to get that much attack out.
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This card could create new duos for fire with the three other elements, with no loss to your previous weapon, encouraging weapon spamming, especially with the upgraded Promethean Foundry's duplication. Whilst not being a go-to card for these duos, it can help all four of these elements stallbreak when upgraded, which is its main upside. Even though at least Fire and Water are already good at stallbreaking, the Foundry allows you to it in a more compact and unexpected way.
This card needs some changes to make work, and it should be noted, seeing we're going full blown Cygnia here, that this card can pull other elemental , , and weapons should they get added, which people will eventually make and will alter this card's properties. This card may even have to work alongside FW to see its full potential, which could cause many strange and interesting decks to appear; What would this, some Long Swords, Freedoms and Animates look like? Or
To conclude, whilst this isn't powerful, it looks like a very fun card to toy around with, much like cat decks. A lot of weak but interesting experiments are to be found with this card, and I merely scratched the surface. And, after all, isn't that what's most important?
(And yes. The card has a typo in its name.)
Discord's War Diary
So much has happened this month, it's hard to believe that it all started just 30 days ago. Light is dead as a stone, and i'm still listening to the voices of those fallen soldiers. Those poor guys. iancu always tells me not to worry about it, that they'd be back next war. As for preparing, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. My team falls deeper into the dread zone. I'm still trying to do my very best to keep them up, but i suppose things like that can only last so long...
Many thanks to:
-Vineroz for Deck idea of the Month.
-Espithel for Card Idea of the Month.
-JonathanCrazyJ for the interview.
-Physsion for comic idea & script and to Zawadx for a comic script.
-Silver Emerald and Zawadx for proofreading Weekly Tournaments section.
-all readers for reading
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