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5l9 5l9 5l9 5la 5la 5la 5la 5la 5la 5ld 5ld 5ld 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uu 5uu 5uu 5uu 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 8pq
This deck is inspired by
Day Traitors. It uses the same nightmare/photon strategy, but is otherwise completely rebuilt for unupped/rareless (which I don't believe has been done before according to the searching I did). It isn't as absurdly effective, as is to be expected, but it still works quite well for unupped.
After 100 games against AI4, I was 52-48 (52%), with an average of 11.75 TTW, and 10 EMs (19.23%). My current profit projection formula puts this barely above mono aether in money over time.
For those of you who haven't seen the strategy before, the way it works is to play a photon, nightmare it repeatedly, and then sit behind a solar shield. When playing AI4, the AI often winds up drawing some cheap, 1-power in-element creature pretty early; nightmaring that is an option over waiting for a photon, as this situation seems less prone to triggering the suspicion check for nightmared creatures. Once you've got it rolling, the idea is (hopefully) to completely deny creature slots to the opponent while simultaneously generating extremely rapid quanta through solar shield, then turn around and spam golden dragons. Liquid shadows can be used for healing/EM (along with nightmare), and are also extremely handy to lobotomize enemy squid/wardens/whatever.
There's several modifications which could be made to this deck, mostly involving switching some liquid shadows out for other things. Drain life or steal could both be quite useful. Removing a pair of LS's in exchange for a fourth each photon and solar shield could do quite a bit for getting the combo out earlier. I'm working purely on completely unupped/rareless, but adding miracles and/or stilettos (or even some SoDs) is definitely an option.
I haven't tried it anywhere else, but due to how the combo works, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn this deck was effective in various arena leagues, and it could probably even beat some of the FGs. Don't bother trying it against an intelligent human player, though, because it relies entirely upon the AI's willingness to spam 1-power creatures against a 1DR shield.