This was originally a reply to another post, where I was going to explain meta discussion, but then I felt I needed to explain the topic of general strengths. And by that point it got long winded enough that I decided to just bite the bullet, throw in the rest of the steps, and make it into a full-on guide to creativity. The whole process will take a little work, but it can be fun, and once you know the rules it doesn't take more than a couple minutes more for the deck building process. But lets start with the common frustration people have with this sort of thing.
What's the point of being quirky and losing?
Put simply, there is none. The catch is to be quirky and
win. I can see how it'd be hard to do this, but it 'is' possible, I'd like to think I've proven that. Although each deck you make like this will require a lot of work, even after you learn how to do it. I'm starting with the evaluation process because the 'creative deck building' comes from seeing what would be effective in this process. I will be going through the process with my current deck as an example for most things.
Subterranean BansheeHover over cards for details, click for permalink
778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 779 779 779 779 77c 77c 77e 77e 77e 77e 77f 77f 77f 77f 77f 77h 77h 77h 77h 77h 7ac 7ac 7ac 7ac 7ac 7ac 7ac 7ac 7am 7am 7am 7ap 7ap 7b0 7n2 7n2 8plThe first thing you want to do is state at least three good things about the deck you have. These things should be generally good and not that dependent on the type of deck your opponent has, i.e., something you expect to be effective against the majority of decks. Generally you usually won't have an exact deck at the start, but you should have some combination, and working towards getting at least three good significant factors will make sure you are on the right track.
1. Good healing through bonds and Mitosis.
2. Flying Pulvy for mass repeatable Permanent Control.
3. Decently fast and consistent damage through Shriekers.
Meta DiscussionAfter you do this you will want to look at the meta of the game and figure out how your deck matches up against each of the common farmers. You can technically do this as your first step, and use this as the reason for your deck, e.g., making a counterdeck towards SPlat when it was overwhelmingly prominent.
SPlat:
Does a decent amount of healing with bonds and can deck SPlat out, or kill it if it can't consistently chain SoSa. The only reason SPlat even stands a chance is because the AI is dumb and doesn't know to UNburrow when SoSa ends.Instosis:
Flying Pulverizers and good speedy damage. Enough said.Defensive Rainbow/CCYB:
Burrowed units means some consistent damage that most defensive rainbows can't stop, and flying pulvies means that a lot of the permanents in these that'll go 'poof'. Can be a hard match especially if they get a pulvy first or Protected, or steal your pulvy, but thats what flying weapon is for.SoSe Bow:
Always a bit weird, but this is resistant to damage, and can dish out damage pretty easily. Shouldn't be that difficult of a fight spare the deck getting a bad enough hand to be unable to deal with the rush, or SoSe lands a couple clutch cards.Ghostmare:
A bit of a harder match, but a dab of Burrowed Shriekers will do as most Ghostmares have no defense or healing. Also, no Gravity except through the mark so they can't steal anything to power Pulvy which means the Diamond Shield and Feral Bonds make the deck extremely resistant to damage.Now you don't have to go through this process with a fine tooth, or even test to see if your intuitions are right, although you will want to test out if your quanta balance is right ideally with a couple test games to make sure you're not terribly over or under quanta'd. Which leads into the next point-Quanta Issues.
Quanta BalanceThere are a few rules for using quanta in your deck, and this focuses more on non-rainbow, that gets its own section later. But the rule for whether you should have a rainbow deck is that if your deck uses more than 3 elements, it is probably better off being made into a full on rainbow.
First off, you generally want to be slightly over-quanta'd than underquanta'd. An excess of quanta means that you'll have a lot for once you do start getting cards, while a lack of quanta will mean that you will A: have to wait a few turns even after get the quanta producers, and B: potentially lose draws through hand clogging. Plus, being overquanta'd is actually an
advantage when it comes to any sort of Quanta denial deck. Card Advantage isn't nearly the factor it is for FG's as it is for Players, you already get Dexterity for that so you can afford to sink a little into being certain about your quanta.
Second point is that you always want enough cards and quanta spent of a given element to
justify the element. This is just good deck design, and unlike a lot of the other things with building FG's it 'is' the same as when building Player Decks. The least you can depend on an element is if you are running that supply purely off of the mark. In Subterranean Banshee I run my entire Gravity supply off of the mark. This is because I exclusively use this x2 mark for the Destroy of the Pulvy. But if you aren't using the mark, the general rule is that you want to be using enough of the element to justify having 7+ Pillar/Pends dedicated to it (before duplication). This is because if your deck requires a certain element to run, and it can't gain that element consistently the deck will have problems functioning.
And the third constant of Quanta production is the concept of Quanta Now versus Quanta Later. This is also a rule for Player Decks, but it especially stands out in FG decks. The idea behind this is that there are types of quanta you will want ASAP, and types of quanta you will only care about
eventually. Since Subterranean Banshee can't use pends due to powering Pulvy the way it does, this principle doesn't apply to it in the same way. I will use another of my decks to prove this point as it shows a clear-cut case, a
duo.
Thirst of GaiaHover over cards for details, click for permalink
5cg 5cg 7an 7an 7an 7an 7an 7ap 7ap 7ap 7t5 7t5 7t5 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t6 7t9 7t9 7ta 7ta 7tc 7tc 7tc 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 8pnWith this deck, the Pendulums are all Dark, which means usually it can play a Devourer or maybe even 2 on the first turn. Even if it gets quanta-screwed and only gets a single Pendulum it can still play a Devourer turn 2. Sure it won't Adrenaline anything until turn 3, but the Life cards are in general only things I care about getting out eventually, whereas the Dark quanta I need up front for maximum effectiveness. This is compared to Life Pendulums, where I won't be able to play anything at all on turn 1, and only a single devourer on turn 2, and I have to wait until turn 3 to Spam anything Darkness.
Rainbow Quanta BalanceRainbows have their own rules for using Quanta. I won't be talking about full rainbows extensively here, because if you are making a full rainbow you are probably throwing in some speedbow, stallbow, or something tried and true, and that is already easy enough. But some decks are quirky in the sense they aren't full rainbows but have rainbow elements, such as using SNova to power Mindgates in a
duo, using SNova to power control cards while the main deck focuses on getting Obsidian Dragons out (credit Qohelet), or making a
duo (Underworld representing "insert your element here"). These two styles of SNova powering and Rainbow Duals function differently from each other also so I will outline them separately.
But first, a general rule with any Rainbow is that you do not want to pressure too hard on any element that is only fed on Rainbow sources. This means using a lot of different cards, and ideally using at least 9 different elements. If you are using under 5 elements you can probably push it down to a trio and take the rainbow element out of it.
In a SNova deck, you generally want it to be a duo other than the Rainbow / Entropy. This is because SNova's can not only provide quanta for your rainbow cards, but speed up immensely the powering of high cost and/or high upkeep cards. Abuse this. The examples in the above decks are that Obsidian Dragons are heavy in quanta, but using SNovas to feed your deck also makes it significantly easier to cast them. And in the Mindgate deck not only do the SNova's power the mindgated things until you mindgate Towers for them, but they also make the Mindgates themselves come out far faster.
In a
duo, you generally want your "primary element" to be the quanta NOW element, and all the things in the rainbow to be the quanta
eventually "element". Reasoning being that about half your deck is one element, so the cards of that element are going to hit the field first. Specifically, when making a deck like this you should focus on making sure that the cards in your primary elements benefit from being your quanta NOW cards, and the Rainbow cards will in general be ok with being quanta
eventually.
That Silly AI
One of the biggest issues with making your deck though, is and always will be the AI of the computer. You don't have any control over what this will do, so generally you will want to make things as simple as possible, and avoid obvious AI roadbumps. For example, with Chaos Power Wyrms you have to account for the fact that the comp "will" use the CP's on other creatures, or that Immolation will not be played on Phoenixes. AI flaws are too extensive, changing, and vast for me to put a guide here on avoiding them-that is worthy of a whole different guide. All I can really say here is be aware of how the Comp will play the cards, and try to make it as simple as possible so as to reduce the chance of the AI 'messing up' the play of the deck.
Deck Size and Complexity
The ending bit of advice I want to give is to not be afraid of making the deck more complex. These decks have to be 35 cards, but normally my decks go up to 40-45. A lot of card combinations just can't be done in 35 cards effectively, and trying to squeeze everything into 35 cards makes the deck single minded, which decreases its capacity to adapt and to be multi-dimensional in its strengths. Also sometimes, you can make the inconsistency and delay of a big deck into an advantage.
For example Thirst of Gaia has but 2 Eclipses in its 40 cards. This usually means that Eclipse doesn't hit the field for several turns. This is fine, since it is a "need eventually" card. For the first several turns playing it will not benefit significantly and perhaps even hurt you as it eats up darkness quanta better spent on mitosis'd Devourers and Obsidian Dragons. But also, this turned it into a pure terror for SPlat decks. This was a time when SPlat was more prominent, before the AI intelligence change and if I remember right perhaps before the 32 to 40 nerf to SoSa. Having the threat of eclipse in the deck but not on the board meant that SoSa decks were left with a cruel and unusual choice. Play SoSa and risk not getting significant benefit out of it, or not play it, and risk those 5+ adrenapests suddenly turning into 8 damage beasts. Combined with the fact that quanta was likely scarce thusly very few SoD's to divide the gap, and this deck tore apart SPlat.
Afterthoughts and Change Log
In general this should function as a good guide for building creative decks, and should lay out some of the more complex issues when it comes to designing decks. I take an evaluation of this from a platinum view, but with a little adaption this can work in gold or silver league as well. However I understand in the lower leagues there are card limitations, and a few plat, some gold, most silver, and all bronze players won't have the card variation to make competitive creative decks. One of the big focuses with being creative and effective is looking at your card mixture, finding out what is good about it, fine-tune those factors, and effectively put multiple good combinations together.
Nothing yet.
