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6rs 6rs 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6u2 6u2 6u2 6u2 6u2 6u2 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 7te 7te 7te 7te 7te 7te 8ptI've talked about this deck in a couple of places, but it seems to have garnered some interest so I figured it might need its own thread for discussion.
Originally I thought this was a "decent" FG farmer that I used mostly for fun. It seemed to earn money faster than turbo RoL/Hope variants, but I chalked that up to me having more experience with this one. (They do, incidentally, make a very good complementary pair; swapping between antimatter and RoL/Hope decks lets you quickly collect a good variety of FG cards, because the two decks are both fast and have strengths/weaknesses that target very different gods.)
Apparently the results I've been getting have not been typical, though--I have been reliably hitting 6000+ electrum per hour over the past three weeks. Partly that's a matter of reaching a 40% win rate with a deck that tends to establish wins/losses very early in a match; partly it's a matter of having a lot of gods that are either
very easy or
very hard, which lets you skip the hard ones and milk the easy ones. Generally speaking I think that the community overvalues raw win% for money farming;
most decks will earn money faster if you're selectively skipping a third or more of the gods to focus on your cash cows, even if you are passing up some victories in the process. So while I knew I was farming pretty well, I never knew whether that was the deck, or just having a more effective skip strategy.
I will say that it takes a little practice. When I started measuring statistics I was barely above 30% victories and didn't think I'd be able to top 40%; I was still earning money at a very decent speed, but it took some experimenting to get to where I'm at now.
The basic strategy is the same as unupped liquid antimatter: play antimatter, liquid shadow the anti'd creatures, sit back while they heal you and kill the opponent. The upped deck adds several substantial advantages. For one, it's way more quanta-efficient, with each tower adding one extra quanta and each antimatter costing two less. This lets you run very slim on towers, which is good, because you need to make room for chaos powers--which save you
even more quanta, because for 1 entropy quanta you can stretch your anti'd vampires out a lot farther. CP especially shows its worth against creatures with very lopsided stats: with unupped liquid antimatter, a shrieker gives you a crappy total of 40 damage before they die to poison. If you chain 3x CP onto a shrieker first, you will often get a beast capable of doing 200 damage all by itself.
You can reach your win condition for a grand total of 9 
and 3 
, and most gods cannot counter it at all (well, outside of killing you.) Granted, that's not entirely typical--you'll usually need at least a second vampire'd creature. But you can still count on being able to win a lot of fights with 7-8 cards and < 25 quanta, and thanks to all the healing you usually get plenty of time to save up for what you need.
The shields help; they're a big part of what got me from ~30% to 40% wins. I play Elements off and on, so tower shields were new to me, but they're a godsend. Having a decent shield vastly increases your survivability, but while dusk is an option I never really managed to get the quanta balance to work out: you don't have enough darkness quanta for both dusk shields and liquid shadow, but you can't really afford to shift your towers towards more
. Tower shields solve that problem by letting you spend quanta from both pools, and they work well with your strategy here--the damage reduction is ideal for soaking hits from small to midsize creatures, and large creatures get nailed with antimatter. Also, they are about the only thing that makes Serket doable for this deck.
I'm not 100% sure that this is the best possible version of the deck, but I am pretty happy with it. I've done much of my testing with +1 SoG thrown in and honestly it doesn't seem to matter much for the overall win percentage--having the SoG helps you against slower matches and matches with a lot of non-creature damage, but hurts you a little against Explosion gods (since it will rarely last more than a turn) and hurts you a
lot against Steal gods (enemy healing is a huge problem for this deck.) Ultimately it made almost literally no difference overall, though. I've also contemplated going +1 pendulum/-1 tower, but outside of the out-and-out skips most of this deck's losses come from being outrushed and losing any
is going to hurt your ability to play antimatters in time. There are also some utility cards that would help out some marginal matchups, but I don't think any of them would save enough games to justify padding the deck out or replacing any existing cards. Steal is fun, but you don't really have a lot of use for most of the things you can steal; the main use would be to get rid of 1 Feral Bond, which is only really relevant against Elidnis and maybe very rarely Fire Queen (Ferox just has way too much healing for steal to matter.) Unupped pandemonium can be used as a panic button for mass CC, but it's still not likely to save you very often. Improved Mutation is a really interesting card that can be used as a combination of CC + buffing, but fitting it in is tricky--in the sort of desperate situations where you'd really want it, typically every quantum counts and even adding 2
over a chaos power might break you.
Miracle/Stone Skin: Normally the AI only plays to this in response to damage on your side of the field, so you'll usually bypass these. But if the AI starts the turn at ~20-21 HP or less, they will enter self-preservation mode and play their emergency healing anyhow. You don't have to worry about doing burst damage like you do with other decks, but you
do have to be able to do 21+ damage and make sure that you don't end up putting the AI < 21 health. Being good at math helps.
Mutation/Improve/Devour: The AI does not normally consider its own antimattered creatures as CC targets, but it's programmed to use these powers on creatures that it judges aren't worth keeping around. The AI's valuation is somewhat exploitable, though. A creature with sufficiently high HP compared to its attack will often be left alone. So a creature with an attack:HP ratio of around -1:1 might slide by, but as soon as its HP starts dropping it will get eaten/mutated in a heartbeat.
Rage Elixir/Overdrive: These are nice setup cards that give you juicy targets to antimatter, but once you've got an antimattered creature they can easily undo your hard work if you're not careful. The AI prioritizes higher HP creatures and prefers unpoisoned targets, and if all else is equal they will prioritize targets by their position in the attack order. There is some other factor involved, since Akebono will prioritize armagios over equal-HP dragons regardless of their position in the attack order. I know other buffs tend to over-value special abilities (Destiny/Chaos Lord will heavily weight Maxwell's Demons when targetting their own Chaos Powers for example), so it could be that the AI decides that armagios are worthier than the ability-less dragons.
Akebono (27-8, 77% win, 40% EM): Fast, easy, profitable. Ideally you can let an overdrive creature build up for several turns, then drop AM+LS to get a big damage dealer. Try to hold off on playing your cards unless there is a non-overdrive creature on the field; if there's only one creature and you play LS, Akebono will probably just overdrive it again and undo your card. There will probably be so many dragons you will need to anti a couple of normal ones for extra healing--target dragons played later in the attack order, because Akebono will tend to overdrive the earliest one in the attack order. Play chaos powers sparingly--you generally don't need the extra boost, and if you make a super high HP creature you might encourage Akebono to overdrive it. Akebono will normally prefer to overdrive armagios instead of dragons, which is bad for you because you want higher-attack dragons instead; if you're waiting for Akebono to play an overdrive you can bait it onto a dragon by playing a single chaos power. Shields help blunt damage from dragon spam, but watch your quanta pools.
Chaos Lord (9-19, 32% win, 22% EM): Skip it unless you're looking for a challenge; battles are long, hard, and don't pay out well. He can quanta-screw you by taking away towers and then hitting you with Discord and he has a ton of mutation sources that will mess with anti'd creatures, plus he can put out a lot of damage in his own right. Your gameplan is to get 1-2 really, really big creatures going, then spend the rest of your liquid shadows nailing druids so that they don't mutate your antimatter away.
Dark Matter (12-17, 41% win, 50% EM): A decent fight. Either he locks down your
quanta before you get your damage going, or you win. Angels will keep vampired creatures alive, but there is still a danger of a blessed otyugh eating your vampires if they're too fragile. Can get 9+ healing per turn from BH spam, so make sure you build up tons of damage--save up your chaos powers and make them count, because you're not going to be able to get more than a couple of vampires going. If a nymph comes out you're going to be a couple of turns at most away from being locked out of your darkness quanta, so play any liquid shadows you can--preferably on the nymph.
Decay (negligible % win):
Always skip, virtually impossible. Theoretically a really, really slow start might give you the opportunity to string a lucky chain of 4-5 chaos powers and get a really fat pest vampired, but even if you manage to get a -15|15 or so pest you will still probably lose due to Siphon Life.
Destiny (31-10, 76% win, 55% EM): A tricky but entertaining fight. Has no PC outside of really lucky mutations, so putting up a shield will save you a lot of incoming damage. Between his fate eggs and chaos powers he will usually get out very juicy targets for your liquid antimatter, which is good because you need to save liquid shadows to take out druids and anything nasty that hatches (there are several nymphs that will mess you up badly.) He usually does a good job of Chaos Powering himself up, so if possible try to save a bunch of chaos powers and play them
on the druids before hitting them with AM+LS--that way you simultaneously remove a dangerous mutation power and get a reasonably good vampire to work for you.
Divine Glory (0% win):
Literally impossible.Dream Catcher (negligible % win):
Always skip. Swarms you with tiny creatures, but your shields are useless in the face of Butterfly Effect spam. Good antimatter targets are extremely rare since his creatures are all tiny, and heavy quanta denial means you can't afford to waste your quanta on bad antimatter targets. Even if by some miracle you do manage to get a CP'd abomination or a dragon from a Fate Egg hatch, he can shut you down with nymphs. Winning is an outside possibility, but not even remotely worth pursuing.
Elidnis (negligible % win):
Always skip. It is definitely possible to beat Elidnis, but for every win you'll spend an hour in frustrating battles that take forever and get tantalizingly close only to lose out to his healing. If you threw in a Steal or a Pandemonium to take out bonds/creatures you could win maybe 1 time in 10. I don't think it's worth it.
Eternal Phoenix (8-29, 22% win, 75% EM): Possible skip. You will usually lose, but you will lose
quickly. Mostly you're praying for an early dragon that you can drop a few CPs; once in a great while you will be able to CP a phoenix high enough to ride it to victory. You will often need to AM a couple of phoenixes for survival, but save your CP for dragons unless you absolutely need the extra healing right now (in which case you will probably die anyhow.)
Ferox (negligible % win):
Always skip. If everything goes absolutely perfect, you have a maximum output of 102 damage/turn, and more realistically you can count on about 80 since you're not going to get max chaos powers and you'll often have to waste an antimatter on a cockatrice while you wait for dragons to show up (even with a shield up.) That's not nearly enough to outdamage his healing. If you include a couple Pandemoniums you can give yourself a Hail Mary longshot option, but you'd be weakening the deck badly just for something like a 2% shot at this one guy.
Fire Queen (negligible % win):
Always skip. Fire Queen's deck is oversized and bad and is vulnerable to ridiculously bad draws, so amazingly this is actually possible. Don't count on winning more than 1 in 20, though.
Gemini (23-6, 79% win, 61% EM): A little tricky, not too bad. Save CPs and try to chain 2 or 3 onto a phase spider before playing anti. You can probably win with one buff CP'd spider + one dragon, so you can afford to AM some extra just for healing. If there are way too many spiders, don't be afraid to use LS to kill off one or two. Do not be in too big of a hurry to get your damage going--Gemini will drop his TUs at ~120 HP, and you want to make sure you have plenty of healing in place before then (ideally you want to have all his non-immortal creatures antimattered at that point, although you can't stop him from playing something new.) Having a shield out helps too--sometimes he'll Momentum his way through it, but half the time he plays his TU bomb
before momentum, meaning you're still blocking 2 damage from most of the clones.
Graviton (17-18, 49% win, 41% EM): Would be super easy if it weren't for his habit of feeding your vampires to his otyughs. Your basic strategy is to wait for a decently big Firemaster, chain 2-3 or more CPs to make a huge vampire, then hope it kills Graviton fast enough (if you're lucky, you'll have the opportunity to do this with a second Firemaster.) You can play antimatter on chargers for safe healing--at full health he won't bother eating them, but if you play LS on them they're lunch. In a pinch you can vampire the otyughs to stop them from eating your firemasters, but there are usually so many otyughs that they'll just eat the poisoned ones, and then they'll be big enough to eat the firemasters one turn earlier. Really tough match, you're going to have to fight for this one.
Hecate (14-12, 54% win, 50% EM): Looks easy on paper--good at generating very beefy creatures, and even plays LS so that you don't have to. Rage Elixir is a nasty damn card that takes some getting used to, though. Play CP sparingly, because Rage Elixir tends to go onto the healthiest creature and you do
not want it to get played on an anti'd doll. If she plays 3x elixirs and ends up with a crazy 20|3 doll, one possible strategy is to play AM+LS, wait for it to get to 1 HP, and
then play a CP on it; you will lose some of its healing power, but you'll still keep it alive to do more healing/damage in the long run, and playing CP on a 1 HP target means it will stay at 6 HP or less no matter what the bonus roll is. Hecate tends to start out slowly, so you generally want to be patient and wait for her to play her Eclipse and as many elixirs as possible before you start playing your anti. Just remember that she can do a bit of burst damage with rage elixirs and nightmares.
Hermes (11-20, 35% win, 64% EM): Really tough, but fast and fun--if you really hate this fight you can skip it without missing too much, but it's so short I'd still go for it every time. Again rage elixirs are a huge problem, because you need to CP any of his creatures to make them last long enough to work for you, and chances are that a CPed creature will be the first and only target for elixir. If you can afford it, consider playing CP one turn and holding off on antimatter to bait any elixirs he's holding it. Otherwise, throw everything you have at him ASAP--it's normally not worth saving things for next turn, because at any given moment there is probably not going to be a "next turn."
Incarnate (21-8, 72% win, 67% EM): Incarnate seems like he should be super easy--you can just play CP+AM on his vampires and get your damage going without needing to risk poison damage from liquid shadow at all! Unfortunately he can spam lots of creatures at you, and does not play any big creatures that you can soak up damage with. Getting a shield up is crucial, especially if he takes his time putting up Eclipse--ideally you never want to play antimatter unless Eclipse is out, and if you do, use as much CP as you can (a base vampire that gets antimattered is only -4|3, which Eclipse turns into a pathetic -2|4.) Since you don't need LS for damage you can use it for CC--early on you can play it on skeletons to thin out his damage a bit while you wait to draw AM/shields, and if he has way too many vampires out you can kill a couple of them off (beware of graveyards though, especially if you don't have your shield out yet.)
Jezebel (negligible % win):
Always skip. Capable of spending the entire game chaining cloaks, in which case you will sit there hitting spacebar without ever getting a chance to do anything. Even if her cloak falls, you will usually discover that she's stolen all your towers and turned them into purple nymphs, making it impossible to get any damage on her since she'll undo your antimatter.
Lionheart (5-8, 38%? win, 20% EM): I don't have much experience with Lionheart, as initially I'd had him on my skip list, and honestly he might still belong there--that 38% might be high, and fights tend to run moderately long. Lionheart seems like a fairly good target starting out, but what happens every game is that he draws through his deck with terrifying speed and then goes into rewind mode and takes away your vampires. He also liberally quints his creatures, making it difficult for you to get anti'd creatures, and he can get scarab swarms going that will eat your vampires before they finish. So: don't hesitate. You are racing against a very tight time limit before he reaches the end of his deck. Your sole goal is to shovel out 200 damage as fast as humanly possible. Do not be afraid to just toss AM+LS without waiting for chaos powers, especially if you can nail his first anubis before he quints it; you can get 40-49 damage out of his creatures and every bit counts. The lack of high attack creatures is a mixed blessing; it makes it hard to kill him fast enough, but on the plus side your shield can do a good job of keeping you alive until it's too late to matter anyhow.
Miracle (23-2, 92% win, 70% EM): Dead easy. Dragons are ideal AM targets, and his firefly swarms are not a threat once you get your shield up. Keep an eye on his HP count--you do not want him to fall into the 20 HP danger zone, and he can easily throw off your damage calculations by playing an unexpected staff (once he has Morning Glory out you're safe, though, since he won't play a staff over it.) The good news is that even if you accidentally trip his miracle, buffed vampire dragons usually have enough juice to take him down from 199 HP.
Morte (15-11, 58% win, 67% EM): Another god that seems like he should be easier than he is. His archangels will heal poisoned creatures, so you don't have to worry too much about boosting your vampires' HP; the main problem is that Morte is usually very slow to get his big creatures out and can chip off a lot of damage with his small creatures + poison. You do not want to be in the position of having to drop all your CPs on a skeleton and hoping for the best. Having shields makes a huge difference, since it will completely negate most of his creatures while you wait for a dragon or angel to show up.
Neptune (24-1, 96% win, 100% EM): I'm not even going to deign writing a strategy for this other than KA-CHING KA-CHING KA-CHING.
Obliterator (32-4, 89% win, 59% EM): An easy money-making fight, although it can go wrong sometimes. Dragons are beefy enough to take AM+LS without buffing, so save your chaos powers for shriekers; if you can pull off 2x CP + AM + LS on a shrieker, your chances of winning look really damn nice. If he has a lot of dragons out, of course, just dump your CPs on them instead.
Octane (13-8, 62% win, 46% EM): Octane is a jerk. His gas spam will blow up anti'd bows and deny you EMs. He's a nightmare for unupped liquid antimatter, but buffing his Eagle Eyes makes them feasible antimatter targets despite all the damage from the gas. Unfortunately you're very reliant on his draw; sometimes he just plays 5 unstable gas before he gets a flying bow, and there's nothing you can do.
Osiris (0% win):
Always skip. Theoretically it may be possible to win, but scarab swarms make him almost impossible even
before he got catapults to play with. As soon as a trebuchet comes out, you lose unless you can finish him off that turn. If you get perfect draws and he has all 4 trebuchets literally on the bottom of the deck, maybe you could pull it off? Obviously, this just ain't feasible.
Paradox (30-3, 91% win, 80% EM): Your shield makes this fight a joke. Don't be in too big of a rush to play it--during the first several turns he'll sometimes wind up with an unsplit blessed Deja Vu, which is a prime target for further buffing + AM. His miracle is a bit of a hassle to work around, since you usually won't see super buff creatures in play; you can't chip him to death and often have to wait for 3 or even 4 liquid shadows to get enough vampire damage to make sure you get the 20+ damage necessary to keep his HP out of the danger zone, and if you do trigger miracle you might not have enough juice left to take him down from 199 HP.
Rainbow (16-12, 57% win, 50% EM): Actually a respectable target, although he doesn't go down all that quickly and he's still stingy about card drops. Your goal here is to chain 2-3 CPs onto a shrieker and use that to get going, then either wait for a spectre to get into the double digits or else hope you get enough CPs for another shrieker. If you have excess antimatter, hit werewolves. If you have excess liquid shadow, hit newly played werewolves/spectres to keep them from growing into problems.
Scorpio (negligible % win):
Always skip. Once in a blue moon you will see an early ice dragon and hopefully a crawler or two, and also have enough antimatter and CPs to ride them to victory. But mostly he will poison you to death before you get any good AM targets.
Seism (30-13, 70% win, 70% EM): Possibly the most surprising outcome. You'd expect a really brutal fight, but again, your total quanta usage is quite low and the tower/pendulum split helps you work around his EQs. Manage your towers/pendulums carefully until you've built up 12-15
, but in the midgame if you have a hand full of towers don't be afraid to just blow them all at once--the big burst of quanta is usually worth it. Your shield is a huge help, since most of his creatures (including burrowed shriekers) top out at 5-6 damage, but watch your quanta pools; ideally you can play the shield when you either have hardly any
quanta (so it gets played out of your easily replenishable
) or when you have tons of it.
Serket (14-19, 42% win, 50% EM): Of all the matchups here, this one's outcome is the most mathematically certain since it is pegged very closely to your odds of drawing a tower shield. Thankfully Serket is
really slow and you can typically draw through 12-14 cards looking for a shield before it becomes a problem, possibly more (especially if you can anti an early recluse to buy some time.) Unfortunately, having a shield out does not guarantee you'll win by any means--several cloaks chained together at an inopportune time can kill you. You need to string a few CPs onto a recluse (preferably with Eclipse out) or else you'll never get enough damage to win, but if you wait too long you might not get an opportunity due to cloak.
If you have any questions on specific matches or situations, or ideas for a variant that might work better, feel free to post them.
