No Land Stompy 1.25

[plastiqe]

History

No Land Stompy was originally the name of a deck from the Old Wiki.

I independantly came up with a very similar deck for the old AI3 Farming Challenge, which was the top deck in that challenge.  Also I made a very, very bad youtube video for the old deck that you can see here. 

In patch 1.21 Lava Golem was nerfed from 4 cost to 5 which stopped people from playing an unupgraded Golem and an upgraded Destroyer with one Cremation, and had the side effect of ruining my perfect little deck.  : (

...

Then for a long time nothing happened.

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The current version with mark of fire was created for the Turns to win study and is currently the fastest unupgraded deck in that study against AI3's (has since dropped to 3rd place).  After it was added to the Elder Archive this thread was created because No Land Stompy needed a new home.


Deck

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

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4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 5f3 5f3 5f6 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fb 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 8po

• Use Immolation on smaller creatures to play your bigger creatures, preferably on the first turn.  Above all else this is a rush deck, your goal is to kill them before they kill you.
• Pump up your Fire Spirit or save up for a Golem is a game time decision, usually involving what you're playing against and which option will likely net you more damage.
• Rage Potion is for creature control and sometimes for buffing a Lycan or Golem, be careful because you might lower your HP into the opponents killing range.
• Use caution when playing the Arsenic against a darkness deck because they might steal it.
• Deflag is for nasty weapons and shields that stop your creatures, there is only one so I suggest you try to draw it at exactly the right time.

Variants

Other cards you might consider include:

• Forest Spirit
• Momentum
• Graviton Fire Eater
• Mind Flayer
• Vampiric Stiletto
• Fog Shield
• Lightning

If you don't have the Arsenic use a Forest Spirit.  I would not use any non fire card that costs more than 2-3 quanta because you'll end up waiting a long time to get it out.  Remember you need to play 1 card (Nova or Immolation) per quanta so if you're running something like Morning Star you'd have to get at least 5 cards before you could even play it.

Mark of Earth is an option and it does provide more earth for buffing Golems but for an unupgraded deck I often find myself lacking one or two fire quanta to play the next Golem so I prefer Mark of Fire.


Upgrades

Q.  Does this deck work upgraded?
A.  Yes, everthing except for the Novas.

Q.  What order would you upgrade the cards in?
A.  First upgrade 6x Cremation, then you have the option of playing the pre 1.21 style and switching to mark of earth.  Next upgrade 6x Lava Golems, followed by Arsenic, Fire Spirit, Rage Potion, Deflag, Lycans and Photons.  Lycans and Photons can be upgraded if you're overly concerned about things like Pests and Discord stealing your quanta.

Q.  Can you show an example of your mostly upgraded version?
A.  Yes.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 71a 77g 7ae 7dm 7dm 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 8pm

The End.  : )

[kintar]

Can you explain why there's fire spirits in the deck?

[jmdt]

I can say for experience this is a fast little deck.  It can outrun a number of fully upped decks.  I'll link this in the deck archive.

[plastiqe]

Can you explain why there's fire spirits in the deck?

Immolation = 7
Lava Golem + Fire Spirit = 7
Mark of Fire + Immolations usually results in lots of excess fire Quanta
Fire Spirits can be Immolated to play bigger creatures.
Fire Spirit can be played with the mark on your third turn in the bad situation where you don't draw enough Nova's and Photons.

[Bozzie]

I like this deck a lot. It is very fast and even unupped quite effective against T50. I play it with a mark of earth, because I want to grow my golems. However, since that reduces the number of fire quanta significantly, I find replacing the fire spirits with forest spirits makes it work better.

[guolin]

When I feel like farming level 3's, I usually use this deck, despite the fact that certain people (*cough* J *cough*) think it's less reliable. While that is true, I feel that the extra speed and flexibility outweighs it.

[jmdt]

When I feel like farming level 3's, I usually use this deck, despite the fact that certain people (*cough* J *cough*) think it's less reliable. While that is true, I feel that the extra speed and flexibility outweighs it.

Its definately fast, no doubt, and fun to play.  It will however lose a few more games than some other AI3 grinders.

[guolin]

When I feel like farming level 3's, I usually use this deck, despite the fact that certain people (*cough* J *cough*) think it's less reliable. While that is true, I feel that the extra speed and flexibility outweighs it.

Its definately fast, no doubt, and fun to play.  It will however lose a few more games than some other AI3 grinders.

It's a risk I'm willing to take in exchange for my sanity.

[jmdt]

It's a risk I'm willing to take in exchange for my sanity.

Its definately more fun to play than mono death or shrieker rush.

[Furin]

When I started the game roughly a week ago I used a fire deck with phoenixes and dragons first, then switched to this deck for grinding AI3. It works very well. The only card I switched was the arsenic, for a heal. This gives you a slight chance for elemental mastery while without heal you can hardly ever have a mastery with this deck. And a total beginner will not have arsenic I think.

So for a total beginner, this deck and 1 heal instead of arsenic, is my choice.

[plastiqe]

When I started the game roughly a week ago I used a fire deck with phoenixes and dragons first, then switched to this deck for grinding AI3. It works very well. The only card I switched was the arsenic, for a heal. This gives you a slight chance for elemental mastery while without heal you can hardly ever have a mastery with this deck. And a total beginner will not have arsenic I think.

So for a total beginner, this deck and 1 heal instead of arsenic, is my choice.

While I can see the appeal of getting an EM once in a while, I don't think adding 1 heal is a good choice for this deck.  The only situation where I could see it helping is drawing heal on the 6th-8th turn when you're about to win anyways, but there are many other times (like in your opening hand) where drawing heal would be bad.  And if you want to get EM's there are better decks designed to do that.

I admit that life quanta is woefully underused but if anything I'd take a Forest Spirit if you don't have Arsenic.

[Furin]

Well from my observation you will almost certainly win against the AI3 with this deck, unless you have a draw of like all golems at once, and no immolation to fuel. But in general you win within a couple of turns and you really don't need more immidiate damage. You will very often win for 15-19 quanta, and that's where the one heal comes in handy. Even if you get it on turn one, once you have immolated one photon and cast one nova you are good to go and the usual golem routine isn't affected too much, if at all. Your enemies do not live long enough for a poison weapon to make that difference. Granted the card that is the heal there could be a golem, but at least in my games, I can play the damage cards continously and couldn't play one more even if I had it at that time. For example on turn one you come out with almost your whole hand and then the heal hangs around, but even if that was a golem you couldn't have played it in the first place.

From what I understood so far, shields, stuns, creature control and healing is usually seen as stalling, so you can delay the enemy, while this deck is more, "make as much damage as soon as possible", so the heal does not fit in. But this heal isn't really a stall, it's more like the "card that won't be used anyway, as the enemy is already dead", but gives you a mastery once in a while. It is funny though how often you will see that heal, even if it is only a chance of 1 to 30(29?) to get it.

I am an elements noob though, so take it with a grain of salt, just saying that the arsenic card can be switched with other stuff without breaking the deck. I even tried the vampire dagger and druid staff for a while but those can be stolen or destroyed so they don't help with the mastery goal.