Nymph Tears Rush [AI3][Unupped][Rareless]

[ColorlessGreen]

Full credit for this deck goes to furballdn, as this deck is almost exactly just an unupped version of Look Ma! No rares!. However, as the target audience of this post is quite unlikely to go looking for an unupped AI3 grinder on page three of a thread about a fully upgraded deck, I thought a new post was appropriate.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ig 5ig 5ig 5ig 5ig 5ig 8pp

Wins: 46   Losses: 4   Win Rate: 92%   TTW: 7.61   EMs: 5   EM Rate: 10.87%

This deck has been around for quite a while, but I've always considered it just a rather effective gimmick. However, the other day, I started playing around with it and noticed it seemed to be a lot more than "rather effective", so I did a 50-game test in AI3. It turns out it's a full TTW faster than monodeath (according to kev's simulated stats) and is basically all-around wonderful.

This has now become the top thing I will recommend as a starter deck to new players. In addition to being super quick, it's also cheap, at a total cost of only 510 electrum, so it is well within the means of anyone, regardless of wealth.

TTW distribution:

Code: [Select]

TTW   #Games
 6     6
 7    18
 8    13
 9     7
10     1
11     1
As you can see, most games end on turn 7. Turn 8 happens if there was a bad draw or a low end shield (low end in this case meaning anything other than gravity shield, wings, or dim shield). Turn 9 happens if you have to wait out a dim shield or a wings or something. Turn 10-11 happens due to combination of bad draw and dim shield spam or something to that effect. Turn 6 happens if everything goes perfectly.

The deck's biggest weakness in AI3 is gravity shield. If one of those gets played, you might as well quit. Fortunately, due to the speed, most of the time you'll win before one hits the table. Dim shield chains, wings chains, and pandemonium spam are also problems, but again the speed often means you win before the chains/pandes get started, and if a shield does get played, you can just sit there and build up your army and then win the turn the shield drops (assuming they don't just chain you to death (which they usually don't)).

The current UEI formula puts this at just over 1800 electrum per hour, which is almost 400 per hour more than the simulated monodeath provides in AI3, which is just amazing IMO.

Gameplay tips:

Spoiler for Hidden:

-Play all the pillars pretty much all the time. Even if you're neurotoxined. The neurotoxin AI3 isn't fast enough to deal with the queen swarms, so just swarm more and win.
-Play one NT on one of your pillars as soon as you can. Play no more NTs unless you wind up without any nymphs on the board (quite uncommon) or you wind up with a huge surplus of quanta (also uncommon, usually due to a bad draw).
-After you've got one queen out, use every queen's ability every turn (to the extent possible). Don't worry about saving any of your pillars. Turn every pillar you can into queens, even if it's your last one.
-If you're up against a dim shield or a wings, rather than spamming all the queens, I like to make sure I have as many queens as I have pillars and then bank quanta. When the shield drops, immediately turn every single pillar into queens (which will probably result in the AI3 dying that turn).
-If the AI plays a gravity shield, quit.

Possible modifications:

Spoiler for Hidden:

-Pillar/pend split. There is really no good reason not to do this other than that it adds almost 50% to the total electrum cost of the deck. However, it's less important here than it is in most decks, since basically all of the time you're going to have a stack of >=3 pillars out on the table unless you already have a huge queen swarm, and if you have a huge queen swarm, you're probably going to win.
-Freeze, ice bolt, or ice shield. Probably a good idea to add a shield or two and/or a freeze or two or something if you're going to take it into PvP, bronze, or AI4, but totally unnecessary in AI3. I have not done any recorded tests about what/how much to add for other targets.
-Non-water pillars/pends. You can add whatever nymphs you want. I have not tested anything else really since the doubling-basically-every-turn 5 attack queens are so awesome, but if you want to play with something else, go for it. Decent possibility there's some strong non-mono NT rush decks out there.

edit: Regarding bad draws: They don't happen nearly as often as you'd think. Of the 50 games, I had a total of two where I didn't have a nymph within the first few turns. One of those two I lost due to the AI3 concurrently getting a good draw (including a procrastination, which sucks when you're first getting your army going), and the other I won at 9 TTW IIRC. In most cases, a "bad draw" actually means too many nymph tears, meaning you can't grow your army fast enough, and pretty much just means that particular game is going to take a turn or two longer.

[Chapuz]

I think I posted this exact deck when the nymphs got buffed. 5-6 freezes increase the win rate

[ColorlessGreen]

I think I posted this exact deck when the nymphs got buffed. 5-6 freezes increase the win rate

My search through the mono water subforum turned up two copies of the fully upped one (the earliest of which was the one I linked, and the later of which was identical and full of nothing but people pointing at the earlier) and no copies of the unupped one. If you can point me at another thread I'll either credit it as well or support moving this into that thread (assuming that thread is anywhere visible). I want no credit for the creation of this deck, as I didn't make it, but I do want it visible.

Regarding the freezes, I find that extremely unlikely for AI3. No game I lost had anything to do with freezable creatures - two of them were due to gravity shield, one was due to an unbroken dim shield chain, and one was due to no NT until turn 12 or so. On the other hand, having freezes instead of pillars hastens the point where you cease doubling your nymphs and quickly ramping up damage, thus probably increasing average TTW.

I find the addition of freezes (and ice shields) to be likely a very good idea for non-AI3 targets, though, which I mentioned in the "modifications" spoiler.

[PlayerOa]

Tried some Ice Bolts? Can act both as CC and chip down the HP of your opponent.

[rob77dp]

Tried some Ice Bolts? Can act both as CC and chip down the HP of your opponent.

Ice bolt is also sort of soft PC.  Spiel abused me in Avatar a couple days ago with it.  You do have to accept that sometimes a <10 Ice Bolt (single hit) will freeze the weapon slot, and other times >20 (three hits) doesn't freeze.  In its AI3 pure form, I recommend just the Tears version but would agree that Freeze and/or Ice Bolt would be beneficial in the right setting (PvP, events, etc).

[ColorlessGreen]

Regarding ice bolt, bear in mind that, if played properly (at least properly IMO), you almost never have more than a few water quanta after the first turn, so any ice bolts are pretty much always going to be in the <10 quanta category.

That said, they could still be quite handy for PvP/etc (not AI3) where strategies other than "turn every single pillar into a nymph RIGHT NAO" become more of an option.

[KSmash]

This is an unbelievably fast deck. I highly recommend this be put down as the new MonoWater.

[Afdarenty]

Why not give dry spell some love? It can produce a ton of quanta late game where you tend to be a little quanta starved. It also gives you a counter to gravity shield, though I doubt that turns up often against AI3.

[Calindu]

Why not give dry spell some love? It can produce a ton of quanta late game where you tend to be a little quanta starved. It also gives you a counter to gravity shield, though I doubt that turns up often against AI3.

It's slower overall, faster first nymph=faster win, a better chance to get a second turn nymph is needed.

[dragonsdemesne]

Why not give dry spell some love? It can produce a ton of quanta late game where you tend to be a little quanta starved. It also gives you a counter to gravity shield, though I doubt that turns up often against AI3.

That's actually a brilliant counter to gravity shield; however, that shield is so rarely used (I'd argue underused) that I'm not sure whether including a few dry spells would actually be useful or not.  It would definitely be worth testing, and nobody ever seems to expect dry spell :p

[grimdragon64]

I wonder if flooding could work...

[dragonsdemesne]

No, for a few different reasons.  One, despite the fact that the deck has 24 pillars, it's actually quite quanta starved.  (hard to believe, but play it and see...)  Two, the game will be over fairly quickly most games, one way or the other.  (either you will overwhelm your opponent with nymph queens very quickly, or your opponent will counter your strategy completely, and you might as well quit)  Thirdly, flooding is generally weak in almost every game, even if the first two facts didn't apply here.