5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5li 5li 5li 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2
Fractal devs was a pretty obvious call for darkness. Everyone who plays darkness seems to have a hard-on for it, (the Blood v. Kael trials where it was the only deck played). Dune scorpion, the original counter for fractal, seemed like the best pick to beat it, especially with sanctuaries to stop the lock, and sundials to let him poison to death and stop vampire healing. Their deck was predicted and countered.
Except not really.
Game 1 he stole my sanctuaries (whoops). Not all of them, but enough to heal his way out of the hole the poison was digging. His vampires and devourers dragged him from 3-health to the win. Blessing would have killed him. Sundial would have shut down his healing. Miracle would have spelled GG. Another sanctuary would have stalled him enough to lose. I have >50% chance of drawing any card that would have won it for me.
I drew an 8th pendulum.
Game 2 I didn't play any sanctuaries. This wasn't some sort of poor strategy move, this was a poor draw. 3 hourglasses, scorp, blessing, pillar, pendulum. Not exactly what I was hoping for versus devtal. I did manage to drop the blessed scorp early, and I top-decked enough pillars to require seven devourers for the lock. Darkness, having a hardon for devtal, thought that fractalling it's devourers instead of it's healing would lock me down (sanctuaries in deck), kill me (devourers do no damage) and protect it (poison). It happened to be right on all three accounts. He got enough quanta to fractal vampires immediately after the lock, and I knew it was GG. Last turn I had 8 quanta to his seven devourers, and a sundial. The sundial would have stopped his healing, and poisoned him to death. I think the quanta count was even 6-time to 2-light.
He sucked my time quanta dry.
I don't mean to discount his win. His use of steals first game was strategy we didn't expect, and the upgrades show a good amount of strategy. However, we predicted the deck. In testing, this deck won handily on a good draw (like the one in game 1, with a second turn sanct, and another 4th turn). Dune scorpions were added to the game as a direct counter to fractal, and yet here it's cleared they don't manage to do that. Maybe we should have upgraded some cards we didn't. Maybe we made the deck too thick, and botched the QI. Maybe I misplayed the deck, going for a second dune scorp early in game 2 instead of playing the sundial. Maybe I saved that sundial for too late in the game, preventing it from ever seeing play. I just can't help but feel we mostly did things right (and they did quite a few things wrong), but still let him get a flawless victory. Just doesn't seem fair.
(Sorry I'm bitter, it's early in the morning for me, and I just came off a crushing robotics defeat, so I get to look forward to catching up in all the school work I missed while sucking at everything.)
Congratulations malignant, by the way, your playing turned a loss into a win. That's not a small feat.
I'ma go eat/sleep now.
