Guest posts by Ashebrethafe

121

Forum News and Announcements / Re: New rules for deck categorizing on this forum

« on: March 23, 2010, 12:06:23 am »

So let's you have a trio deck (let's use my time/earth/aether). It has time towers, 3x aether towers, and mark of earth. It has 6x quicksands from earth and 2x TU from aether (in one version). It has eternities, anubii, silurian dragons, and *flying weapons*.

It's now a rainbow deck? Even though it only uses 3 types of quanta, no quantum towers, and no novas? And in reality it really only makes a lot of use with time; earth and aether are simply support elements?

Yes. It has cards from 4 different elements, therefore it's a rainbow. What cards it has is irrelevant.

I assume Scaredgirl meant "What quanta it has is irrelevant."

I find myself disagreeing with the new definition for the opposite reason from PuppyChow: pillars and marks whose quanta are used only for abilities. Marks because they're the first indication to my opponent of my deck's quanta, and pillars... probably because I've seen them called lands, and lands in Magic are colorless.

If I understand correctly, I now have a deck which I consider mono-air, but SG would call it a trio-deck (air/life/fire) because it contains emerald pillars so my FFQs can generate fireflies and burning pillars to ignite unstable gas. If I removed the burning pillars and changed my mark to fire, we'd agree that it was a duo-deck, but I'd call it fire/air and SG would call it air/life. And we agree that I have a mono-water deck -- SG would say it was at one or two points a rainbow deck (water/death/air/aether), but when that happened I replaced a sapphire pillar, a bone pillar, a wind pillar, and an aether pillar with four quantum pillars, and it now contains only water cards and quantum pillars.

I do have one deck that is definitely not mono, because I couldn't resist using the rare cards I won from the slots: my fire deck contains light pillars and a Miracle. And my first deck was undeniably a life rainbow (not-entropy), but so bad that I deleted it -- including my other rare non-weapon, a Shard.

Also, because I was looking at the accounts that have these decks, I just won my first card from the oracle: a Blessing for my water deck. I'll keep it mono.

122

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: [POLL] 5 most important things Elements needs right now?

« on: March 20, 2010, 05:56:33 pm »

I'd like to rank and explain my votes, for anyone who will listen to the forum's (apparently) newest member:

• PvP desync bug fixed. Resolving known bugs should always take priority over the addition of new features, since those features will almost certainly add more bugs.
• New cards. Like doomeister, I will always vote for more cards. (Unless, of course, there are five bug resolutions to vote for. ) If the card pool stays the same, so does the pool of possible decks, and players trying to come up with a new deck idea will find that all the good ones have already been taken. Also, new cards seem to be the best route to...
• Better game balance (as evidenced by the shoot-down of the proposed nerf to graboids). I've been trying to rank the elements, based on my win/loss record (primarily the losses) with a deck of each element upon completing the quests. My worst so far, out of the elements I've completed them with, is 81/29 with the air deck -- but my light deck already has 29 losses, and hasn't even reached a score of 150, let alone 500!
• Card trading system has been repeatedly suggested, and each time shot down on the grounds that "trading would be abused" -- presumably by conning newbies out of rare cards, or funneling several accounts' cards into one. It seems to me that these problems could be sufficiently controlled, if not completely solved, by:
  
  • allowing trades for electrum (i.e. buying and selling of cards),
  • providing the same warning against trading away/selling rares that the bazaar does, and
  • only allowing trades that are a better deal for both sides than they would get at the bazaar (or in the extreme case, automatically adjusting the electrum traded to make all trades equivalent to buying and/or selling cards for a price halfway between the bazaar's buy and sell prices for those cards).
• Separate ON/OFF buttons for music and sound effects -- actually, I'm not sure what this means, since the only music in the game is at the login screen. I interpreted it as meaning "Put Elements Radio in the game with a mute button, not in the chat with a pause button." I think this is a good idea on both counts. I've sometimes logged into chat and not entered a room, so I can listen to Elements Radio without being constantly interrupted by the sound of new messages; and I mute my computer rather than hitting that pause button, because when i do see someone refer to Elements Radio in chat, I want to know that it refers to what I'm hearing now, not earlier or later (because one of us has paused the radio for longer than the other).

Finally, while I know Elements is not Magic, I'd like to know the reason for having a maximum deck size, since Wizards of the Coast had a reason for not having one -- namely, that larger decks are more unreliable (especially with the four-of limit, or six-of in Elements), and so only newbies and Battle of Wits (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=83133) players will have a deck much, if at all, larger than the minimum. Lack of space on the screen, as I see it, is an excuse only to limit decks to 60 unique cards, since the number of each could be displayed next to the card -- and already is, for cards outside the deck.

123

Patch Notes and Development News / Re: Card Usage Statistics

« on: March 18, 2010, 02:30:26 am »

Rainbow decks are at their weakest early in the game before they have the quantum to play much.   Reducing quantum generation would hit Rainbow decks the hardest when they are the most weak.

Increasing the casting cost of hourglasses and other rainbow deck cards, which are most needed early in the game, is again a huge nerf to rainbows.

How about a progressive nerf to the quantum pillars/towers? For example, they could still produce 3 random quanta per turn, but as the total number of quanta a player has exceeds X, Y, and Z, start consuming a random quantum as well -- so that overall quantum production per turn can drop to one (mark's), but the chance of playing (or activating) any specific card never drops to zero.

If the quanta to be consumed are selected randomly from all the quanta the player has (as opposed to all the types of quanta the player has), then such towers would also tend to decrease the difference between the number of quanta of each type. I don't know if this is how "other" cards and Discord's ability currently work (is this information available elsewhere on the forum?)

On a complete tangent, I think I was responsible for a handful of those 1000 draws of unupped Shards of Gratitude, with my terrible original deck that happened to win one from a top50 deck (which I have now deleted). More, if you counted me as drawing the Shard again each time I played it -- when I happened to win with it in my hand, I would completely drain my quantum pool before finishing my turn.

124

Forum Game Archive / Re: Come Join the Chain Game!

« on: March 15, 2010, 12:19:13 am »

Epic Fail Guy

125

Forum Game Archive / Re: Shift Letters

« on: March 11, 2010, 06:59:52 pm »

Sandy

So far, there have been two cases of letters being rearranged with no substitution, and one with two substitutions (tons-->tips). I assume these are where two people replied to the same entry, and I hope I am not doing the same!

126

Tutorials / Re: 10 Tips for Better Deck Building

« on: March 10, 2010, 04:10:44 pm »

Well, the mana in MtG don't stay there until you use it.

Unless there's an Upwelling in play, which removes this rule, or you control Omnath, Locus of Mana (only preserves green mana, but that mana makes it bigger). Also, MtG limits you to playing only one land per turn, unlike Elements' pillars (but again, certain cards can relax or eliminate this constraint for you).

It actually hurts you if you don't use until the final of your turn.

If you're talking about mana burn, it's been eliminated now. The mana just disappears without causing damage. (Yes, this makes some cards better and others worse. No cards received errata to preserve the way they worked with mana burn.)

127

Issue Archive / Re: Adrenaline versus Freeze

« on: March 08, 2010, 10:45:54 pm »

Adrenaline is a pretty weird card. A Horned Frog will do more damage than a Cockatrice if both are adrenalined -- the Frog does 3+3+3+3 = 12, while the Cockatrice does 4+3+2 = 9.

It does give the creature multiple turns, so if these adrenalined creatures were frozen they would thaw, and the Frog would attack for 3, on the following turn; if they were petrified (Basilisk Blood/Brown Nymph's ability) they would take 2 turns instead of 6 to un-stasis and the Frog would attack for 6 on the second turn.

I do believe certain cards with Adrenaline were given specific effects in order for them not to be overpowered so it's not always once per 'attack' but it is always more than once per turn.

I haven't seen any of these cards adrenalined myself, but from what I've read the number of activations of the Devourer's passive ability (does it have a name?) and venom (on Puffer Fish and flying Arsenics) was cut in half. Xinef's post here may or may not contradict that, depending on whether some of the Devourers were buffed to raise their attack above 3. (This would remove their fourth turn, and possibly their second quantum-steal. Maybe it would make them steal 3 quanta per 2 turns?)