Root's Strategy Corner
Damage vs Defense. Some decks work well with pure damage and little defense, while other decks do not do well by adding a significant amount of defense. Other decks can't work with pure damage but are excellent with a hefty amount of defense. So, how do we balance damage with defense?
"Instant" Decks
Instants are decks that focus on getting out their cards quickly, at the start of the game. Instants tend to have short term methods of generating quanta (Immo, Nova) or use low-cost cards that can come out early in the game. Would grabbow go here? Yes.k, ty.
Instants tend to do better with a large focus on damage. Life or Death Rush manages to work pretty well because it combines the use of instant cards (Frogs, Cocks, Mummies, Recluses, Poisons) with a high focus on damage.
However, instants that focus on defense tend to be weaker. A deck composed of six chaos seeeds, heals, and frogs would not do very well. It is highly focused on defense, but its cards are all instants.
"Ramp" Decks
Ramps are more focused on late-game power. Their cards are often expensive or rely on combos. Examples include Fractal + Dims, Catitans, Steam Machines, Stall Faster, and heavy usage of Dragons or other expensive cards.
This works in practice because Instants are better in short games due to their low cost and quick quanta. Ramps are better in long games because they can reach high damage/power late in the game. In order to shorten a game, you use a rush. In order to prolong a game, you use a stall.
Burst Cards
Fractal, for example, has an easy answer. It's a ramp card because it has low damage early in the game but strong damage late in the game.
Unstable Gas is tricky. Based on its stats, it would seem like a ramp card. 20 damage for 7 quanta. Good deal early game, less efficient late game. However, Unstable Gas is also a bypass, it can evade most standard methods of defense - CC. Stalls and heavy domins are pretty much required to use bypasses for damage. Other bypass cards include Phase Dragon, Fractal, and Poison. They all are strong against single-target CC and shields, the two most common defense cards. Phase dragon & fractal not so much vs shields, imo. Yeah. CC tends to have a larger effect than shields though. Agreed.
What matters a lot as well is using instant cards in a deck with other instant cards (with the exception of quanta sinks, which I will talk about later) and using ramp cards with other ramp cards.
Generally speaking, which would be stronger: Dims + Adrenafrogs or Dims + Fractal Frogs?
Generally speaking, which would be stronger: Poison + Bone Dragons or Poison + Upped Recluses and Mummies?
The "Dim Shield" Effect.
This may seem like a simple concept, but it is something that even strong players can overlook. Basically, if you're using any Dim Shields at all, use 6, outside of a few exceptions (Bone Wall, Hourglass, Sundial.)
Imagine a deck that has a 12.5 ttw. You can choose any amount of Dim Shields. However, I would imagine that the only decent option is using 6.
In 12.5 turns, this deck will go through 20/30=2/3 of its cards. Since little damage is done in the first 1.5 turns, those turns will be excluded. Thus, this deck needs to block as much damage as possible over 11 turns.
6 Dim Shields = 4, on average, throughout the game. This will cover an average of 12 turns, which gives you protection for the entire game a large amount of the time.
3 Dim Shields = 2, on average, throughout the game. This covers an average 6 turns out of the 11 you need to survive. For just 3 cards, your defense greatly drops, while your damage hardly improves.
The "Dim Shield" effect can also be applied to Wings and Bone Wall.
Direct vs Bypass Damage
Direct Damage
Efficient damage that is susceptible to most CC. Examples include almost any creature with 5 hp or less.
Direct Damage tends to be most effective in Rushes and Domins.
Bypass Damage
Less efficient but more resilient damage. Examples include Poison, UG, Fractal, and Deckout.
Bypass Damage tends to be most effective in Stalls and Breaks.
Rushes, Domins, Breaks, and Stalls
Rush
High focus on damage. Almost always uses direct damage.
Examples: Immogolems, Life rush.
Strong against Breaks.
Domin
Mix of damage and defense. Usually uses direct damage.
Examples: Defensive Mono Entropy, pretty much anything with 6 RTs.
Strong against Rushes.
Stall
High focus on defense. Almost always uses bypass damage.
Examples: Firestall, Miracle/SS.
Strong against Domins.
Break
Mix of damage and defense. Usually uses bypass damage.
Examples: Catitans, 3+ Fractals.
Strong against Stalls.
Some decks can be classified as a mix between two of these categories. A Stall-Domin would be Pandebonium. A Break-Stall would be Dims/Fractal. A Domin-Rush would be Grabbow (with some defensive cards.) A Rush-Break would be Fractix.
We need to keep a balance of Rushes, Domins, Stalls, and Breaks in our vault in order to prevent being weak to one type of deck. Air's strengths are Domins and Stalls, but remember to include Rushes and Breaks to be able to handle Breaks and Stalls. Actually, expectation are ON our domins & stalls. having rushes & breaks in a ... dominant manner would be prefferable, imo. Well, since our heaviest strength is Domins, our vault will be a little shifted towards Domins, and should be. But a severe shift towards domins would be a problem.
Standardizing Quanta Sources
The amount of quanta generation for each element is highly important, but what also matters is how this quanta generation is distributed. Unless you expect earthquake, it's better to have fewer different quanta sources. This is more reliable because you're less likely to get bad quant draws.
Imagine a duo with 8 Earth Pillars, 8 Time Pillars, and a Time mark.
Let's say you draw exactly 4 quanta sources in your opening hand. You only have a 3/8 chance to draw 2 of each pillar. You have a 1/2 chance to draw 3 of one pillar and 1 of the other. Lastly, you have a 1/8 chance to draw 4 of one pillar and none of the other! This will cause highly unreliable quanta draws that can slow down your game.
Now, imagine that this duo instead had 16 Earth Pendulums.
Let's say you draw exactly 4 quanta sources in your opening hand. This means you draw 4 Earth Pendulums. This is much more reliable, because you now have a better mix of Earth and Time quanta. SQS is a way to improve decks you've made.
I've noticed that a lot of teams have 1 signature card that they can add to nearly any deck, but is countered easily. For death, it was poison. Great card, but countered pretty hard by purify/any healing, really.Arguable. Death rush with poisons can take down some stalls. Poison is only hard countered by healing if it is the only source of damage. Anyways, I learned that we had to limit our amount of Poisons or else Purify would be used every time against us and really hurt us. For Air, that card is Wings. It's a good card, but we need to seriously limit it or else it loses its effect.Agreed. Considering it was spammed vs life last war (for example), i doubt they won't make decks specifically against it. An aproach that might be risky is spamming a card then switching to counters to counters. A good card to go with Air is Basilisk Blood. Covers those bulky dragons that hit past Wings, Shockwaves, and OE. Antimatter, too? (and dims
) Antimatter, yes. Dims are hard to work with because we don't have a good Fractal target. Agreed, damstell is cheap spam but very weak vs shields. PugonsYeah, better. Less efficient though. Based on its speed, Pugons is ideal in a mid-defense deck. Dim sheilds are heavy defense cards though, and their natural pair is Fractal, a late game damage card. Agreed. Dims in pugon is against decks which would outrush it but have little/none PC. yeah.See what i wrote on life in element discussion
