Guest posts by archayts

1

Duo-Decks / Re: Unstable Gas AI5. Nymphs needed

« on: June 14, 2010, 02:33:57 am »

I've been tinkering with a similar deck recently (and yes, I have enough air nymphs to build it). Haven't settled on a final version yet, but have found that for the most part Aether mark, 6 phase shields, 3 quints and 2-3 immolation tends to work a little better (in my experience).

Reason being that only the first (and occasionally 2nd) actually end up being used to generate gas, and extra you draw can be used to fuel immolation when enough gas is on the field. Phase shields are more plentiful, and are reliable, since the AI will reliably target unstable gas with permanent control rather than your shields.

Unfortunately, reflective shields will shut down this deck and since you cannot pick a target for detonating gas, the standard trick of targeting yourself with your own shield up does not work.

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Archived Decks / Re: Eternal Concordance (Time/Aether)

« on: June 14, 2010, 02:20:52 am »

Shard of readiness has the potential to change this deck significantly, since the reason it was 60 cards initially was because of the need to generate enough time quantum to power multiple rewinds each turn, since that is no longer the case, the deck might be able to be slimmed considerably.

Currently working on a new version, but am quite busy for the next two weeks or so.

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Archived Decks / Re: Eternal Concordance (Time/Aether)

« on: March 20, 2010, 10:28:45 am »

The precogs serve a purpose within the deck, they are used to show how many creature control spells your opponent can level against you before you commit to floating eternity. In some cases they are useful for other purposes as well, revealing quakes, explosions, parallel universes and miracles so you can adjust your strategy. They do also do not slow the deck down as a normal card would, due to their cantrip nature.

For this deck, damage should not be a big issue if you are adaptive with your strategy (easier said than done, despite how straightforward and inflexible the deck appears ‘on paper’), whether it is with rewinding your own field for a rush pass miracle or being creative with your use of parallel universe. Elidnis especially, if you have phase shields backed up, let Elidnis grow her forest spirits and copy them when they are large, the combination of immaterial creatures + feral bond is the only significant heal that cannot be bypassed with this deck, but in most circumstances, it doesn’t heal Elidnis for enough to matter.

Personally, I think 4 SoGs are adequate, though adding more would certainly help against a few of the gods, Octane especially (against whom keeping them alive becomes a central strategy). The reasoning for 4 is that it’s the amount that I’ve found is able to just cope with accumulated poison prior to establishing deck control and momentumed creatures getting past the shield

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Archived Decks / Re: Eternal Concordance (Time/Aether)

« on: March 19, 2010, 11:12:49 pm »

Vreely, I have considered putting quintessence in this deck several times, but have eventually decided against doing so. The reason for which is that in most games, Anubis actually using his immortalize ability is not very useful, added to which, drawing Anubis is by no means guaranteed before the field is set up. Mostly, if you get him early, he’s used as bait.

Anubis’s ability is only of great use against equipped god weapons, the deck can deal with all other types of control, without immortality. Creature-based creature control will be rewound; Spell-based creature control simply won’t be played after a point.

Also, since you more than likely will wish to copy eternity with parallel universe, you’d still have at least one unprotected eternity on the turn they’re played, to get blasted anyway, else you’ll be stuck with only a single immortal eternity which cannot be copied.

As to the cost of the deck, I don’t think I can really offer much help there, It is extremely expensive to construct, and requires 4 SoG and 4 Eternity which most people don’t have and it doesn’t work well un-upgraded (and not at all without the hourglasses/AW/SoG upgrades), but still attainable, eventually. I suppose if you wanted to try out how it worked before committing, try a few games with it in the trainer, though that still doesn’t help with the electrum problems.

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Archived Decks / Eternal Concordance (Time/Aether)

« on: March 18, 2010, 11:21:19 pm »

Eternal Concordance (Time/Aether)

Finally decided to register for the forums to share and get some feedback. This is my unique anti-FG deck I’ve been using for a while now:

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 7n2 7n2 7n2 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q7 7q7 7q8 7q8 7q8 7q8 7qb 7qb 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 80b 80b 80b 80b 80b 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 8pu

The deck operates by stalling with phase shields until you are able to use the reverse time ability of Eternity to gain control of the opponent’s deck. A pair of eternities using rewind time each turn can lock down most False Gods into drawing and replaying the same two creatures over and over. More than two and you can rewind the opponent’s entire field back to the top of their decks and ensure that they can only play two of their weakest critters. Keep in mind it is the last two creatures you rewind in any turn are the two that the opponent will draw.

This also means that the False God will not be able to draw any more creature/permanent control, shields, poisons, miracles or anything else.

From my admittedly less-than-reliable and haphazard notes, I have found the win rate of this deck to be somewhere >50% (perhaps significantly higher, competitive with rainbows), with ~80% of wins being masteries. It has a decent chance against all the current False Gods, (including Divine Glory, see notes) with Rainbow being the hardest.

EDIT: Now that I feel that I've mastered the subtleties in the playstyle of this deck, I've started keeping more coherent notes. After 50 games (still a small sample size), it has produced 31 wins and 19 losses and gained 3609 score (implies 79% mastery rate, assuming loss is -15, wins average +90 and EM wins are +135).

EDIT2: After 100 games, I have managed 56 wins and 44 losses, gaining 6385 score (implies 80% mastery rate, or roughly 44 games)

Additional notes:

The priority of permanent control for the opponent is as follows:

Eternity>Hourglass>Phase Shield

This means that the phase shields in the deck are quite robust and more likely to remain untouched. Healing from SoGs may mean that in a pinch you can take a turn’s worth of damage between shields.

If you are able, keep one phase shield for when you are about to defeat your opponent, in order to gain mastery. If you can’t, or if you have poison, for the finishing blow rewind your own field so that your weapon gets the final strike. This way, any SoGs that are earlier in the permanent order will still heal you.

Anubis has a higher target profile than eternity, against some gods, you can use it as bait. If it survives (congeal, infect, lobotomize) it may be worthwhile to rewind it and try again. Against any god with twin universe, however, be very careful about playing Anubis, you do not want to let your opponent copy it and immortalize their field. In such a case ensure first that you have enough eternities on the field to immediately rewind all copies of Anubis. It is also used in ensuring your flying eternities are not eventually thinned by an opponent’s equipped weapon, which cannot be targeted by reverse time. Usually one is kept for last, to avoid decking out.

Parallel universe is most often used for copying eternity, though sometimes it is used to copy Anubis so that at least one survives the initial assault of control. If you are confident of victory, it can also be used to copy some of the opponent’s larger creatures for extra damage.

Special note about Divine Glory:

This god is beatable, despite the inability to gain control over Divine Glory’s deck. Eternities are mostly used as sacrifices to protect hourglasses/phase shields. One still needs to be put on the field to avoid deck out, an interesting approach is to parallel such an eternity, and then have it reverse itself, in order to get extra protection. In this way, you can actually have Morning Glory deck out, as the 12 explosions will be used on Eternities/hourglasses, leaving your phase shields untouched. More often though, you will be able to bypass miracle by playing a lot of damage in one turn, when Divine Glory is on low health and doesn’t feel too threatened by the relatively small damage present on the field (you can rewind your own field in order to make this work better).