The premise of the oracleBow is an unupped deck with no (or minimal) rares that can stay in the t500 of gold league regardless of what the oracle gives you. It is a basic framework you can tweak to preference and hopefully it will make you 100+ electrum a day. Yeah that's kind of measly but it takes almost no work! (the blank cards are whatever the oracle gives you)
jmdt's oracleBow
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vn 4vn 52p 55v 55v 55v 58v 58v 593 593 593 5c3 5c3 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5ig 5ig 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5om 5om 5om 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5up 623 623 8ps x x x x xMore sustainable PC with pulvys in place of steals (but use steals if you don't have the "rare" pulverizors), and back up to 3 earthquakes to make sure they are pillar crippled all game. 2 antimatters in case they land something early, but not much single target CC. Thorn carapaces, a plague, and unstable gases should be able to clear the field of little things quickly and often and big things over a few turns. The regen of the sanctuaries should be able to sustain you until the thorn carapace removes threats (even Quinted ones). The deck runs no creatures, but 2 nymphs tears give you a chance of getting something great or at least something useful, and 2 mindgates can borrow all the killing power you need of the top of the enemy deck. And with 6 gases total in the deck... it may just win by blowing your opponent away.
CCC's oracleBow (v2):
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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vn 52p 52p 55v 55v 55v 55v 593 593 5c1 5c1 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5ia 5ia 5ia 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5on 5on 5on 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rl 5up 5up 5up 623 x x x x xI feel the deck needs at least a couple creatures of it's own that just get meaner all game, and a little more single target CC to counter rushes. I know this leaves it pretty wide open against big creatures with early buffs, and especially flying titans... but I think it can lock them out before they get more than 1 on the field, and that it can survive that one.
My card yesterday was wyrm and I was 36-5. I left it up again today, but made these changes. I don't think the -2 hp will affect much, so I can see how the changes affect the win rate (at least on a small scale).
So there are a lot of people right now complaining about rainbows in the arena. I can't blame them really, as it is very annoying to play against and takes very little "creativity" to produce. But to me, that is like saying speedbows take no creativity... because they are all speedbows... which a lot of people would disagree with, because the specific choices of creatures and support spells (PC or CC) change the way the deck functions a lot. So I wanted to start a thread here about how to make an oracleBow (a rainbow deck full of everything people hate playing against, with the oracle card thrown in as, at best, an afterthought). Like all deck types, changing the cards in it still affects its efficiency, and as we all want to maximize the work our arena deck does for us... why not try to make a more efficient oracleBow? It is ultimately your deck that fights for you... and while creativity is good, simple with effective results is also good.
There are archived decks of typical PvP decks, which are all good, but often variations of them work better... There are huge studies on FG farming decks and AI3 speed or EM farming... and often slight variations of these decks are just as good.
So here is sort of a base to build from for your Arena deck (in gold league or higher). I know a lot of people with 20k+ score have more creativity than this, or enough upgraded cards to build better decks than this... and a lot of people that farm Gold or Plat league will see this, and maybe work out ways to counter it. But until then, enjoy the 75% win rate of the oracleBow. I really doubt it will get you top10, but I've never had it drop out of top500, and never failed to have it make money.
I don't have lots of stats yet, but I have run a couple variants, and have those results, and also tested both versions against CCYB myself. Some of my analysis is speculative, but I tried to limit it to just common sense kind of things. The decks I ran
My first attempt looked something like this:
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lvl 56
2x mark
2x draw
20x upgrade
170 hp
This was before we had the luxury of the test function, and after losing to it myself, it became clear the computer did not optimally save the quints for the 3 real creatures... the deck was also too slow, even with double draw, because I had no hourglasses, and it was too heavy on certain elements... namely aether and air. I had run gravity as my mark to fuel the BHs and devouring scarabs but in retrospect that probably wasn't necessary. This deck went 60-17 over 3 days.
Then I put it up the exact same but with pufferfish instead of skeleton, and went 30-7 over 2 days.
After the new test function was added, I played a handful of games against this basic oracleBow with both CCYB and RoL-Hope, the decks I most often hear people are running against Gold League. It was pretty mean to CCYB, but if RoL-Hope got a decent hand, it just didn't kill them before they could fractal dragons and have a hope out that stopped the damage. So I changed it up some.
lvl 56
2x mark
2x draw
10x upgrade
190 hp
The increase in health at the cost of a few upgraded cards seems to pay off (17-3 after day 1). As long as you can stuff 6 SoGs into the deck, other upgrades don't really add much. I am towards the top of Gold league, so I have a lot of points to use, but even at the bottom of Gold league you can get 160 hp if you just drop the double mark to single mark, which will marginally slow the draw with hourglasses... But the 6 SoGs is much better than sacrificing down to 5 upgrades and trying to run more sanctuaries. SoGs come out much faster and help stave off rushes until the PC cripples them and the CC weakens their attack to below your regen.
Hourglasses were an important addition to multiply the card advantage, which is why the time mark is so important. (If you want to try and speed it up with SN and entropy mark, I imagine you can, but 5 copies of any oracle card will fit better into a control style deck than into a speed oriented deck, and then you are adding more upgrades, which costs you at least 20 hp) With this large a deck, you need hourglasses to get enough PC when you need it to cripple them, and still get some CC to clear the field of anything dangerous.
And clearing the field is important, which is why any AoE is going to outperform single target CCs. Originally I ran a bunch of shockwaves, but I switched over to plague instead. It takes less of them to keep the field clear, and really does wonders against RoL decks. The AI also is less likely to waste it than it will single target skills, which it has a tendency to use as soon as it can against whatever it can. It waits on plague til several creatures hit the table and then slowly kills them all as your deck sits back on its regen.
I also added some RTs to the deck, because one of the best ways to beat a rainbow control is to kill it before it sets up... and the only decks that can really do that are speedbows and immo based decks, which RT really messes with. RT also gives you a good defense against voodoo decks... but that only really matters if you spun a creature.
Because the oracleBow doesn't really have a good way of killing people (even if you spin a creature it's 10 of 120 cards) mindgate becomes a pretty effective solution for borrowing killing power. But with so much regen and PC... if the game goes on long enough, it has a high chance of decking the opponent, which is what it usually did to my CCYB in testing. I just couldn't generate enough quanta to kill the permanents if I landed a PA's pulvy... and when I added an eternity to try and avoid the deck out, I didn't have enough time quanta to recycle a creature til I decked it.
The other weird thing about the oracleBow is that it can totally run out of space to play permanents... 12 SoGs, 4 Sanctuaries, 8 hourglasses, (up to 8 stolen things), 6 mindgates... but if it ever does run out of space... it'd take an amazing deck to beat it... that is a lot of draw power and regen. And it runs no weapons or shields because most decks it'll play against will have things worth stealing that will go there. And I wanted to keep as little on my side that has game changing impact if the opponent steals it. I just don't care if they take an SoG or an hourglass.
Well, if people have suggestions for how to improve the oracleBow, feel free to add it in. And if anyone wants to test it by all means, be my guest. I'm particularly interested in if it can keep 75% win rate if the oracle card is a non-creature. So if anyone will run this oracleBow or slight mods of it for a few days at a time then post it along with your record, that'd be great.
If you hate the oracleBow, the place to complain is here
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,28129.0/topicseen.html (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,28129.0/topicseen.html) But in as much as the arena is something we play against... it is also something that plays for us. If we have "cheap almost-unupped FG farmers" so new people can farm things for themselves, why not have "cheap unupped arena decks" that they can have farm for them? One of the first cards everyone should upgrade is SoGs (which I guess is harder to get now, but I expect most people in gold have at least a few...), and other than the SoGs this deck costs only 1300 electrum. Even if I didn't use most of these cards for other decks, over a week it would pay for itself. If don't have SoGs, you can play more sanctuaries and black holes, which makes you about as effective mid to late game, but makes you more vulnerable to rushes.
*Added purifies to both versions to combat neurotoxin or poison rushes. Changed the quanta balance a little so it doesn't get stuck as often with unplayable cards after the first few turns.
Note: if the oracle spins you a card that is already present in the deck, then it frees up between 1 and 5 deckslots... I highly suggest filling those spots with Purifies and/or reverse times.
