Lone Stalker [1.26 FG grinder]

[zse]

Deck Helper comment: 
This deck was posted before the 1.32 game update and as a result may work very differently now.  Use at your own risk.
Light Brigade (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,18285) gone to diet, let me introduce
New! Ultra thin!
 
Lone Stalker

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6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 71c 77f 7aj 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7gp 7gq 7k0 7k5 7q8 7q8 80h 80j 8ps

To reach 30 cards limit, I had to leave Hourglasses out. Sad but true.
Parts of the defense were inspired by deck Mind Riot. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15966.0.html)
Purify is the newest tech here making Puffer Fish, Physalia, Poison and infected Trebuchet targets less of a threat. And getting that lite "7th SoG" effect from it, makes it useful in every match-up.
Some general things and specific tips how to play with this deck.

• This deck is slow. And by slow I mean that games will take more than 20 rounds, and some 10+ mins in average. If you want to grind FGs fast, look somewhere else.
• Towers. 13 Towers in a deck with just 30 cards. It's just to make sure you'll get enough quanta to play and use Eternity and other high cost cards. 10-12 Towers might be enough to give >3 quanta per round, but having all those give you faster starts, and you can also use them to lure FG to use Explosions.
• Defense with stalling. Everything in this deck is about surviving the initial rush FG puts up - SoG & Purify to keep you alive, Eternity to bounce back, Shields to slow FG damage, Aflatoxin to fill FG side with Malignant Cells. Crusader and Pulvy are great supportive cards for doing all that.
• Offense with Mindgate. There's basically only that 1 card in this deck that has offensive role - but that's really all that is needed. FGs don't generally have any bad cards, so every time you'll use it, you'll get something nice. But there's more! Although getting some random cards is fun and all, but what if you could choose what cards you'll want to get from FG deck. Well there's that Eternity, that allows you to put the wanted creature on top of deck, or when FG has it's hand filled and will draw only 1 card, you can repeatedly get copies of that same card FG had on top of deck.
• Eternity. Usually this weapon is thought to be used only for avoiding deck-out, but oh it can do much much more. Use it ASAP to bounce whatnot FG has to offer, so you'll mess its card-drawing and sometimes even whole quanta balance - Chaos Lord, Destiny & Gemini (who has taken the bait and TU'd your un-quinted Crusader).
• Aflatoxin. One of the most important cards in the deck. This card can reduce the damage FG can potentially do from huge to some in just couple of turns: 1-2-4-8-16-full. Together with Eternity, you can get more creature-slots filled with those cute little 1|1s. And with any of the shields used in the deck, they wont do any damage at all.
• Shields. Great mix of shields with versatile abilities with one common feature - they block at least 1 damage, so Malignant Cells can freely fill the FGs side of the table.
  
  • Mirror Shield is great for it's low cost, and it alone can put Octane and Decay in bad position.
  • Permafrost Shield, used when FG has too aggressive rush and you'll need time to recover from it. Best shield against Graveyard using FGs before Malignant Cells have filled table.
  • Spine Carapace is simply the best shield in this deck. It blocks damage and it kills creatures that are bigger than Malignant Cell, just pure gold! What else can be asked for just 1 card that doesn't even need activation cost every turn? It can alone win games against Neptune and Paradox.
• Crusader. Usually you'll use this to get Quinted Eternity wielding bouncer, but sometimes you can mix it up a bit - give it Pulvy, or borrow Electrocutor, Eagle's Eye, or Trident from FG. If you have enough , you can use it together with Eternity, so you'll bounce 2 creatures. Then you can either Eternity lock FG, or use it for your own Mindgated creatures.
• Pulverizer. Nothing special, just great support card that can destroy nasty permanents.

I got ~67% wins with this deck in preliminary testing. Games went like this:
Chaos Lord 2/2
Dark Matter 0 games
Decay 0/1
Destiny 3/3
Divine Glory 0/2
Dream Catcher 0 games
Elidnis 3/3
Eternal Phoenix 0/3
Ferox 1/1
Fire Queeen 2/2
Gemini 1/1
Graviton 0/2
Hermes 0/2
Incarnate 1/1
Miracle 3/3
Morte 0 games
Neptune 3/3
Obliterator 0 games
Octane 3/3
Osiris 1/1
Paradox 3/3
Rainbow 0/1
Scorpio 0 games
Seism 0/3
Total 26 wins 14 losses.

Stats from longer test (225 games), win rate 48%, 69% wins with EM
9 Easy FGs, combined win rate 81%:
Destiny 6+2/9
Elidnis 7+0/10
Fire Queen 3+3/6
Gemini 5+2/8
Incarnate 9+1/13
Miracle 4+6/12
Neptune 8+2/11
Octane 3+2/7
Paradox 4+3/10

4 Relatively Easy FGs, combined win rate 57%:
Chaos Lord 4+2/14
Decay 4+0/6
Morte 2+1/5
Osiris 4+3/12

4 Quite Hard FGs, combined win rate 32%:
Dream Catcher 1+1/13
Ferox 4+0/10
Graviton 3+0/13
Scorpio 2+3/10

7 Almost Impossible FGs, combined win rate 9%:
Dark Matter 0+0/7
Divine Glory 0+0/8
Eternal Phoenix 0+0/5
Hermes 1+0/10
Obliterator 1+1/8
Rainbow 0+0/10
Seism 0+2/7

200 games played so far, 96 wins, 104 losses: win rate 48%.
65 EM wins, 31 wins without EM: EM rate 68%.
Average win rate 48%.
Average win rate without 7 Almost Impossible FGs: 64%.
Win rate comparison CCYB vs Lone Stalker

FG	CCYB	LoneS	Better?
Chaos Lord	42 %	50 %
Dark Matter	0 %	0 %
Decay	48 %	67 %	LoneS
Destiny	83 %	88 %
Divine Glory	32 %	0 %	CCYB
Dream Catcher	4 %	17 %	LoneS
Elidnis	66 %	67 %
Eternal Phoenix	31 %	0 %	CCYB
Ferox	71 %	38 %	CCYB
Firefly Queen	68 %	100 %	LoneS
Gemini	63 %	75 %	LoneS
Graviton	21 %	25 %
Hermes	0 %	10 %	?
Incarnate	97 %	80 %	CCYB
Miracle	47 %	82 %	LoneS
Morte	76 %	50 %	CCYB
Neptune	92 %	90 %
Obliterator	56 %	17 %	CCYB
Octane	54 %	80 %	LoneS
Osiris	???	50 %	?
Paradox	58 %	70 %	LoneS
Rainbow	0 %	0 %
Scorpio	39 %	50 %	LoneS
Seism	58 %	29 %	CCYB
average	48 %	48 %

CCYB win rates are averages calculated from results posted on CCYB topic (post#) by Amilir (1), The Emperor (638), Averam (697), and Wushu (817). Some of the results on CCYB have been obtained on verions 1.24 and 1.25, so the win rates may be little bit lower now at version 1.26.
Due to the major buff to Osiris (Trebuchet) on version 1.26, that FG can't be compared at all.

CCYB has higher win rate against 7 FGs.
CCYB and Lone Stalker have equal win rates against 8 FGs, Osiris uncertain.
Lone Stalker has higher win rate against 8 FGs.
(http://imageplay.net/view/m7Gbd135040/LoneS_Neptune1) (http://imageplay.net/view/m7Gbd135039/LoneS_Neptune2) (http://imageplay.net/view/m7Gbd135038/LoneS_Neptune3)
1st image: Make strong defense with Shield, Eternity and SoGs. Use Aflatoxin to kill 1 strong creature - here Dragon just killed.
Keep on using Eternity and wait until Malignant Cells fill the field.
Don't play any creatures at this point, those will only eat CC cards and thus help FG to draw more cards!

2nd image: Play Spine Carapace and kill big enemy creatures. Play Crusader with Quint, Endow Eternity.
Wait until you can safely play Pulvy, and then take out all problematic permanents FG should have.
Play Mindgated creatures to deal damage faster, but remember to keep 1 going back into deck whole time.

3rd image: Profit - yet another EM win. This time it took 36 turns, price with 1 card won & sold: 1282 .(http://imageplay.net/img/m7Gbd136608/LoneS_Hermes.bmp)

[Baily18]

I like this alot more than what i came up with. I think Jade over Spine Carapace would be better, then you can cut the Mirror for something like an oty(in my opinion 2 shields should be enough for 30 cards), or an animate

[wavedash]

How do you win if you lose your Mindgate? You deal a pathetically small amount of damage without it.

[Baily18]

From my experiences, gods with alot of PC are very hard/impossiblish for this deck anyways, and SoGs and some of your weapons/shields will usually take the hit

[zse]

How do you win if you lose your Mindgate? You deal a pathetically small amount of damage without it.

Really REEAAALLLLY sslllloooowwwwwwllllllyyy... 

Rule 1 Don't Lose Mindgate.
Rule 2 In order not to lose Mindgate, never ever play it when AI would destroy it.
Rule 3a Give AI something else to target with Explosions: Shields and whatnot.
Rule 3b If AI has Pulvy, destroy it with Crusader.

[wavedash]

So basically it takes so long to win that you shouldn't even bother. But in a more serious sense, you basically auto-quit against Gods with PC?

[k3jeff]

Nice deck, I like it!
Quite a perm heavy deck (most successful FG decks are anyway), but looks very fun to play with.
It also has built-in anti-deckout, which I personally think is a must for non-rush small decks.

Bear in mind only 1/2 of the FGs have any form PC, and only 1/4 of them have very heavy PC.
So I would not really be that bothered about PC.

You actually only really have 2 viable options vs PC, Protect Artifact and Bonewall.
Perhaps a 1-2 PA for the Mindgate or Towers?

Interesting 3 shields in the deck.
Might run into problems with immortaled Fgs - Divine Glory (is that why you have the carapace?), and gravitational/momentumed Fgs - Graviton, Gemini, Obliterator, but you already have the SoGs to mitigate against them.

Another note, Aflaxing you own crits and can potentially generate about 20ish att per round.

[TheForbiddenOracle]

I recommend you skip gods with any type of PC, because usually they have several of them (Explosions, Destroys, etc.) BTW looks like you avoided a lot of Gods that would screw you over.

[zse]

So basically it takes so long to win that you shouldn't even bother. But in a more serious sense, you basically auto-quit against Gods with PC?

FG with no PC - almost auto-win
(except Dark Matter)

FG with little PC - easy to win
Chaos Lord, Octane

FG with some PC - can go either way
Graviton, Obliterator

FG with too much PC - almost worth auto-quit
Divine Glory, Eternal Phoenix, Hermes, Seism

FG with PC I haven't met yet - don't know
Decay, Dream Catcher, Rainbow

Interesting 3 shields in the deck.
Might run into problems with immortaled Fgs - Divine Glory (is that why you have the carapace?), and gravitational/momentumed Fgs - Graviton, Gemini, Obliterator, but you already have the SoGs to mitigate against them.

Another note, Aflaxing you own crits and can potentially generate about 20ish att per round.

Spine Carapace is for making combo with Aflatoxin. Infects everything with attack>1 = anything but Malignant Cells.

Using Mindgate gives potentially 100ish att per round. Works only vs Miracle, every other FG is killed before it gets that far.

[wavedash]

I tried out this deck a bit, and relying on Mindgate for Rewind fodder is really unreliable.

[k3jeff]

Thanks for that zse.
Just learnt something new.

I already had the mirror shield, permafrost shield, and aflax in my existing anti-fg.
Seems like spine carapace would make an excellent addition, and get rid of those pesty quinted critters.

[k3jeff]

I tried out this deck a bit, and relying on Mindgate for Rewind fodder is really unreliable.

I normally have a RoL or malignant cell when I Alflax myself just for fodder.