Discords Flying into a Black Hole

[Scaredgirl]

I always though that the biggest problem of Black Hole was the fact that it's almost useless against mono-decks. Then I realized that I could use flying Discords to first break down those quanta piles, then use Black Hole to burn them all, healing myself nicely in the process.

I present to you..

Discords Flying into a Black Hole

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6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u5 6u5 6u5 6u5 6u5 719 74f 74f 74f 74f 74f 77j 7dm 7dm 7n0 7n0 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 7qb 7qb 8pl

Strategy:
- Play Discords and make them fly!
- Try to use Black Hole early in the game if possible, to slow down your opponent
- Explode nasty shields and weapons, or some other annoying permanents
- Use Improved Plague to clear the table if opponent manages to play many creatures
- Slowly kill your helpless opponent, while saving one Black Hole for Elemental Mastery

Pros:
- Elemental Mastery is common
- Totally shutting down the opponent is fun

Cons:
- Not fully tested or tweaked (will fix flaws later)
- Very low max damage (only 5 Discords doing the damage, max total 30)
- Can be slow because of the above

Customizing:
- Try a variation that has 4-5 Supernovas. This way you can take 3-4 cost cards like Steal or Quintessence from other Elements

[PuppyChow]

Just my take on this deck (I really like the idea of adding supernovas to a black hole/discord deck).

-1 Tower
-1 Precognition
+1 Supernova
+1 Quicksand
(EDIT: This was after version 1. Now my mods on the deck are -1 Fog shield, -1 Plague, -2 Precognition, +2 Lightning, +1 Quicksand, +1 Supernova)

Reasoning:

-Mulligan will still let you draw an amethyst tower on nearly every draw.

-Most of the deck's quanta relies on supernova. 7/30 cards can only be played with one, and 16/30 are only really effective with them (you don't want animates taking gravity or entropy quanta). I'd feel better about drawing one early with at least four.

-1 Quicksand is rather situational imo. I like having at least 4-6 in a deck that uses them, since you need them early to be effective, but in this case with the quanta control drawing it mid-game is just as good. Only problem is that even with only 1 drawing it mid-game is kinda sketchy; I'd feel better about drawing one early or mid-game with two.

-If you're adding in another quicksand, you need to add in another nova since to play a quicksand you need a nova for each, and you don't want to be caught with a quicksand in hand and no nova.


You could also replace the other precognition with a amethyst tower if you're that worried about not drawing one. Or the plague.

[Scaredgirl]

I changed the number of Pillars from 6 to 5 like you suggested in chat and it was a good idea because there was overproduction of . Now I could take a second Improved Fog which improved my defenses a lot.

I actually had these in the original version:
+1 Supernova
+1 Quicksand

But because I wanted this to be 30 cards, there just wasn't slots left.

My reasoning for having only 3 x Supernovas is that I only need one of them. All non-:gravity cards cost 2 or less, so I can pay them with 1 Supernova.

Improved Plague is definitely one card that can be replaced. During my testing, I don't think I had a single situation where it was absolutely needed. I took it mostly because:

A) I didn't use
B) It helps with totally shutting down the opponent (first burn his quanta, then kill all his creatures)
C) I just plain old like the card

To increase damage dealing, I though about doing this variation:

- Plague
- Precognition
+ Arsenic
+ Animated Weapon

.. but I haven't tested it yet.

[unionruler]

And the deck is for? Probably T50 and PvP but I wonder how it'd fair against AI5.

The deck is rather strong. Offhand I guess it's primary weakness would be decks that use quanta on the go, cremation decks and the fastest rainbow weenies. It's quite hard to out-deny I suppose, with say fractal Pest, but I wouldn't be surprised if it loses to a lucky RoL-Hope.

Not a fan of precogs.

(EDIT: This was after version 1. Now my mods on the deck are -1 Fog shield, -1 Plague, -2 Precognition, +2 Lightning, +1 Quicksand, +1 Supernova)

This looks like the calibration closest to me, except I would take 2 rewinds instead of 2 lightnings because rewinds effectively prevent your opponent drawing a land on the next card. I can see where SG is coming from (the shutdown then burn his creatures argument), but by then you probably wld've killed him with the damage from the discords--just saying that it wouldn't affect the game result in perhaps 99% of games.

[humptydumper]

i would try to fit in at least one adrenaline so the wuanta is rlly shuffled nd then a black hole rlly locks them down

[guy_fawkes]

i'm gonna try this one as soon as the game goes up again..
interesting style

i am always searching for a deck that PREVENTS enemy's strategy instead of countering it!

[Jumbalumba]

If the concept is just to deny your opponent then a simple Gravity deck with Mark of Entropy for Discords is good enough. You don't need flying Discords because 1 will do the job just fine. You could say packing a lot of Discords without Animate Weapon is a waste but then having flying Discords is a waste as well when there are better creatures you want to play. You could also say non-flying Discords are easy to destroy. That's why we want to pack a lot. You could say they could get stolen but then your opponent is not likely to have Black Hole to really hurt you so much. Steal is also pretty uncommon.

[crimsonflippa]

What I use is only gravity and entropy (flying discord,black hole and chargers). But I will not post the deck since it's a creation of jmdt  . Try working with that.

[Scaredgirl]

If the concept is just to deny your opponent then a simple Gravity deck with Mark of Entropy for Discords is good enough. You don't need flying Discords because 1 will do the job just fine. You could say packing a lot of Discords without Animate Weapon is a waste but then having flying Discords is a waste as well when there are better creatures you want to play. You could also say non-flying Discords are easy to destroy. That's why we want to pack a lot. You could say they could get stolen but then your opponent is not likely to have Black Hole to really hurt you so much. Steal is also pretty uncommon.

The disadvantage of that deck is that you can play Discord no sooner than round 4. With this deck you can play it during rounds 2-3. There's a big difference because getting that early shutdown is crucial.

[jmdt]

If the concept is just to deny your opponent then a simple Gravity deck with Mark of Entropy for Discords is good enough. You don't need flying Discords because 1 will do the job just fine. You could say packing a lot of Discords without Animate Weapon is a waste but then having flying Discords is a waste as well when there are better creatures you want to play. You could also say non-flying Discords are easy to destroy. That's why we want to pack a lot. You could say they could get stolen but then your opponent is not likely to have Black Hole to really hurt you so much. Steal is also pretty uncommon.

The disadvantage of that deck is that you can play Discord no sooner than round 4. With this deck you can play it during rounds 2-3. There's a big difference because getting that early shutdown is crucial.

I have extensive experience with the discords/black hole so I will throw out a few things I learned in testing.  With an entropy mark you need 1 amethyst tower in the starting hand to play a discord on the second turn.  Early discords are very important to getting this deck to work.  Any yes flying discords is important.  Against a mono deck a single discord will not scramble all the quanta.  Depending on the number of pillars out, it can take 3 discord for a complete scramble.  Early black holes are also important.  Playing just off the mark means you can only play a black hole on turn four and then every three turns after.  Often black holes this infrequent are not enough for a complete lockdown of your opponent.  If you can get three gravity towers out, you can chain black holes and your opponent will be helpless.  40-50% of the time I win wil my opponent play no cards at all. Another thing is damage.  Discords need help with damage incase the opponent gets a few cards out.  Also with only 3 hp, flown discord is vulnerable to cheap CC spells such as fire lance and lightning bolt. You need some other, preferably high hp attacks to help finish the job.

[Jumbalumba]

I don't see what's wrong with 4th turn Discord. Sure your opponent will probably have 2 creatures out but you'll have that as well and then you'll win in the end as you begin to deny your opponent for a short while at least but enough to get ahead and win.

With your deck once your opponent gets ahead you can't catch up because you (virtually) have nothing to deal with the creatures and you don't have the attacking power. You must rely on Black Holes to stay alive. As jmdt noted, Discords are also fragile when flown.

An alternative is an Entropy deck with Black Holes and Mark of Gravity. One good thing is you want Discord before Black Hole and this provides that. The problem is that Entropy doesn't have very useful creatures.

[safko01]

I don't see what's wrong with 4th turn Discord. Sure your opponent will probably have 2 creatures out but you'll have that as well and then you'll win in the end as you begin to deny your opponent for a short while at least but enough to get ahead and win.

With your deck once your opponent gets ahead you can't catch up because you (virtually) have nothing to deal with the creatures and you don't have the attacking power. You must rely on Black Holes to stay alive. As jmdt noted, Discords are also fragile when flown.

An alternative is an Entropy deck with Black Holes and Mark of Gravity. One good thing is you want Discord before Black Hole and this provides that. The problem is that Entropy doesn't have very useful creatures.

Jumba, if you can't understand the importance of the early discords then you clearly have not tried this deck or similar gravity/discord decks out yet.  I've played this deck, gravity/entropy decks, entropy/gravity decks and several variations of each of the before mentioned.  I've had a lot of experience with this style and if you allow your opponent to build up too much quantum early on then your always going to be denying him of only a small percentage of his establish quantum pool.  Playing the catch up game with this deck can be very dangerous because it doesn't have a lot of damage and only one real creature control card so you can end up losing the race before you ever get your opponent under control.


On a side note i've been playing with this variation

-2 precogs
-1 tower

+1 quick sand
+1 super nova
+1 discord


I added another discord because I've found that if you don't get on early discord with this deck than your out of luck.  I was having trouble using the other cards in this deck because I was not drawing my super novas and I just like having two quick sands instead of one.