I've experimented with many versions of this deck, and settled on this one:
5lk 5lk 5lk 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jq 7jq 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 80e 80e 80e 80i 80i 80i 80i 80iNOTE: I've been playing with one less shard and one more tower, and I think it works slightly better over all (I was getting the feeling over ~100 games that I didn't have enough towers).
Personal Preference:
-You can add a miracle, luciferin (don't upgrade - with only 7-8 towers, you can't risk getting stuck with no towers because of automulligan seeing luciferin as a zero-cost card), and/or quantum tower
-You can take out up to 2 shards of gratitude, but you need at least 4 to have a decent chance at winning against most of the gods, though Scorpio and Morte will be a LOT harder (with any less than 4 they're pretty much impossible)
-You can play with 4 hopes/electrocuters, but I find that 3 of each works best. 4 clogs up your hand, and you need them both equally quickly in almost all situations, so having more of one just makes it less consistent overall.
Necessary upgrades:
-Rays of Light and Shards. You need at LEAST 10 upgrades for this deck to work properly. Without the rays or shards, it's simply not viable to farm with this deck. I suppose you could win against some gods without shards, but I wouldn't recommend trying.
-Fractals, and UNUPGRADED hopes. An awful lot of the time, I have exactly enough quanta to play these crucial cards. Upgrading the hopes or not upgrading fractals will actually drop your winning percentage quite a lot.
-Dragons. Against gods such as Ferox and Elidinis, that extra damage is crucial.
Basic Strategy: Keep one ray in your hand at all times against gods with fire storm. Against most gods, get your hope shield up and accumulate light quanta until you can spam dragons and kill your opponent in one or two turns. This doesn't always work, however, as detailed below.
Easy Gods:
Destiny, Divine Glory, Fire Queen, Incarnate, Miracle, Osiris, Paradox, Seism, Chaos Lord
Strategy Notes: Against Destiny, Fire Queen, Incarnate, and Osiris, an early electrocuter is crucial. You need to lobotomize Destiny's fate eggs, Fire Queen's firefly queens and flying eagle's eyes, Incarnate's bloodsuckers and retroviruses, and Osiris's Pharaohs and any Scarabs that get out.
Breakdown:
Divine Glory: focus on getting out 8 rays of light and a hope as quickly as possible while playing as few shards of gratitude as possible (yes, as few). Once that's set, you can relax. You're *completely* safe from receiving any more damage. Wait until you have 3-4 shards in your hand and 1-2 electrocuters (try to wait for 2). Then play all your shards and an electrocuter. Divine Glory will explode your electrocuter and hopefully only 1 or possibly 2 if any of your shards. Play another electrocuter your next turn. This will let you get an elemental mastery a lot of the time.
Incarnate:
EDIT: If you have two fractals on-hand, wait until incarnate's field is void of retros, then play as many rays as necessary for them to fill his field with skellies upon death. In my experience, it's only worth trying if he has 3 graveyards. Once he plagues you, play another fractal on your rays, and laugh as his field fills up with skellies. You only need 4 rays to reduce his damage to a crawl with your hope.Electrocute all the retroviruses and bloodsuckers if you have enough health to survive long enough to play hope with 6 rays of light out before dying, otherwise just fractal+play the rays of light after lobotomizing the viruses. Another option is to play 2 rays at a time and let him use his retroviruses, filling his board with skeletons that can't hurt you (or 4 rays if he plays an eclipse, though at that point it's somewhat harder to pull this off), so he can't play 2-3 viruses in one turn. If you draw and have the light quanta to play (after the hope) a dragon early in the game, doing so will buy you more time to lobotomize the bloodsuckers. Light dragons have 12 health to go through, which makes them great at absorbing damage (3 shockwaves, 4 snipes, or several turns of blooduckage). Sometimes, unavoidably, he'll play 2 viruses at once. Lobotomize one, and get ready to empty your hand and fractal+play 6 rays your next turn. Because of this annoyance, I recommend only playing 6 rays at a time, especially after a fractal, where you're vulnerable for 2-3 turns before you have enough quanta for an emergency fractal.
Miracle: Get your hope up (pun intended) and as many rays as you can as quickly as possible. He'll start dropping light dragons and pegusi very quickly, so you have to be ready for it. Lobotomizing the pegusi will limit their damage, especially if he blesses them, but usually at least in the beginning the dragons are a bigger problem. Once you're dug in with your hope and rays of light, build up your rays until you're safely blocking (almost) all damage, then wait until you're at least another two turns way from killing him, you don't want to risk this. Now fractal+spam light dragons, killing him in one turn. If you screw this up, he'll play miracles until you deck out.
Osiris: If he gets going with the pharaohs+scarabs before you can get an electrocuter out, just quit. You can't win. Sometimes he'll get a pharaoh out on his second turn, so you'll just have to cross your fingers. Lobotomize all the pharaohs first, then the scarabs if there are any. He'll often precog once or twice and play two or even three pharaohs in one turn. Don't panic, just lobotomize them and wait until you've taken care of all the scarabs and pharaohs (again, lobotomize the pharaohs first) before fractaling a ray and getting back on top again.
Paradox: Make sure your shield is at 12 before you play a dragon, because he can and will parallel universe spam your dragons. If you can, lobotomize all his rays so he can't play lots of improved blessings. This guy is ridiculously easy, I've only lost once or twice in all the times I've faced him.
Seism: Also coincidentally very easy. Play one tower at a time, and any rays and shards you have. Try to empty your hand. If you have 2+ electrocuters/hopes, discard for a few turns to start off, don't worry, he doesn't build damage up very quickly. Once you have 13 rays out, fractal spam dragons. Easy. Except that he quicksands all your towers, making building up the quanta slow. Fortunately, he'll rewind your rays of light, giving you the extra turns necessary to get a mastery against him. My dragons were the last two cards of my deck and I still beat him with elemental mastery because he rewinded 3 of my dragons.
Chaos Lord: 2 explosions and steals, so playing an electrocuter is a risk (he has quantum towers, so he can use it against you if he steals it). Without it, he may draw unstoppables or generate huge creatures (such as a dragon with dive) and break through your shield, but the vast majority of the time, just getting around 15 rays out and then starting on the dragons works fine. The timing works out so that around the time he starts mutating lots of creaturse you should be draining his quanta if he has a diss field or health if he doesn't. Never play an electrocuter without trying to lure any steals with shards of gratitude. Remember, an electrocuter is very bad news to your deck.
Medium Gods:
Chaos Lord, Dark Matter, Dream Catcher, Elidinis, Ferox, Gemini, Morte, Neptune, Obliterator, Scorpio
Strategy notes: Against gods with permanent control, play your shards for several turns before your electrocuter to weed out their steals and explosions. Once the electrocuter's out, the next steal/explosion they draw will target it, and an electrocuter is bad news for this deck (a luciferin/luciferase will remedy this problem, but you'll have to play it at the last possible moment to get the most use out of it. If you have a light nymph, definitely include it in this deck, possibly replacing a dragon).
Breakdown:
Chaos Lord: 2 explosions, 2 steals. If you can lure out one of his steals, chances are good you can survive the rest of the match without seeing the other. The electrocuter will take care of his druids and mutations, limiting his damage output to stacking chaos powers on his strongest creature. This can get scary, however, when a mutation turns a lobotomized druid into a light dragon, and chaos powers buff it to 30 attack. Don't fret, though, fractaling your rays two or three times and waiting until you can fractal a dragon works fine against him even without an electrocuter. He'll mutate your dragons, but he can't kill them, so he can only drop your damage, not stop it. Play your dragons earlier against him than other gods, because his shield will take a few turns to drain.
Dark Matter: No permanent control, so play your electrocuter as early as possible. Don't play any rays until you have enough quanta to fractal them. This is a toss-up, since sometimes he'll come out with an early gravity nymph before you can get an electrocuter out (or be left with enough quanta to use it), and other times he'll link black holes in between playing creatures, and you're completely disabled until he pummels you. Your savior against Dark matter are towers, and lots of them. Try to keep your quanta supply above 3, so that he can't black hole all of it. Discard extra hopes/electrocuters if you have to discard, or play a ray if you have 2+ in your hand. Once you get your electrocuter out and fractal a ray, you just have to hope you can survive for another two or three turns until you have enough light quanta to play a hope, and then you're home free. He has 8 gravity forces and no other creature control, and only 2 unstoppables. Lobotomize his chargers and anything he plays his unstoppables on, and fall back on your general strategy. Buff up your hope, then spam dragons.
Dream Catcher: Doesn't look too bad on paper, but in practice he's harder than the easy ones. An electrocuter is helpful, but since butterfly effect can be used the turn it's played, your electrocuter will be zapped before you can zap the butterfly effected creatures, so count on your shards dissapearing very quickly. An early discord is almost death, but he's slow to build up damage. Try to fractal a ray of light as quickly as possible and play one tower your first turn, and the rest the next (to weed on a quicksand if he drew it). Your goal here is to generate as much quanta as possible so that when the inevitable discord drops, you can produce enough quanta so that after a few turns it's effects are mitigated and you can fractal a ray+play a hope and stop it from hitting you. Once your hope's out, fractaling your rays once is usually enough, since he only has 8 creature control cards. Sometimes he'll use butterfly effect to destroy all of your towers, and combined with the effects of your shards
Elidinis: No creature control beyond congeals, no permanent control. Electrocuter is essential against his Ulitharids, forest specters, and early puffer fish. Your biggest challenge here is out-damaging his 10 feral bonds. The key to this is to get 10-13 (13 is ideal) rays out as soon as possible, and fractal a dragon at your nearest opportunity, ideally playing 2-3 and then one every turn. If you can start playing dragons before he gets too many bonds+creatures out, you can beat him into submission and overcome his healing. If he gets too many bonds+creatures out and you're late with the dragons, you'll never be able to accumulate enough damage to beat him.
Ferox: Just like Elidinis, but 2 more bonds, and 6 more creatures. Ferox is extremely difficult, but I'm putting him as medium because the strategy is very straightforward and it's just a question of speed. The key here is to discard for a couple turns if necessary. Drop any electrocuters, extra hopes, extra dragons, etc. that you have so that you get the most rays out of your fractals. Play dragons as soon as you have 10-13 (don't play more than 13 or 14, since you need as many dragons as possible against his bonds and shield), and keep playing them. Cross your fingers and lay down the damage. If you can't overcome his healing early on, you can't win.
Gemini: An early electrocuter on his part is death to you. You need an early electrocuter and phase shield with 8-10 rays out against him. Lobotomize the spiders he plays unstoppable on, and make sure your shield is as 12 before you play dragons. The big challenge here is his phase shields. He has 8, and you have no way of dealing with them other than waiting them out. In light of this, try to get your shield to 12 as soon as possible and start playing dragons to force him to start playing shields as early as you can. He can and will chain them until you deck out if he draws enough. He will draw an electrocuter at some point in almost every match, so be ready for it. Your only counter is playing more rays, so if he starts lobotomizing them while chaining shields, he can easily drop your shield too low and pummel you to death while sitting pretty. Another strategy of his is to play unstoppable on a dragon and spam Twin Universes on it, killing you in a couple turns. Just hope he doesn't. You should win around half the time against Gemini, though the games will often swing wildly in his or your favor (a couple times he was a cakewalk, a couple I was completely pwned by an early electrocuter). A light nymph or luciferin would help you tremendously against him (but would only help against a couple other gods that have steals in addition, so I don't carry a luciferin).
Neptune: Focus on fractaling a ray as soon as possible. Your goal is to force the AI to play inundation early on, preventing it from building up water quanta and dropping dragons, of which it has 4. Dragons are terrible news, since once inundation hits, you'll only have 7 creature slots to work with, and shockwaves and eagle's eye will be making life difficult for you. The worst of it is that he will congeal your dragons and then kill your rays, instead of focusing all of his efforts on your dragons (smart bugger). Since your rays tend to rapidly disappear, I've found that playing and keeping 7 rays out as long as possible (unless you're nearing deckout - remember that permafrost shield and octopi will congeal your dragons while shockwaves and eagle's eye kill them) before spamming dragons works well. The strategy here is to replace your rays as he kills them with dragons once you can't play any more rays (have only 1 fractal left and no more rays - against all gods you should only fractal dragons once). If you're lucky, your dragons won't all be frozen (an electrocuter, if you can slip one in between fractals, will take care of the octopi), and he'll focus the shockwaves and snipes on dragons, allowing you to keep a couple rays for a while longer as you try to finish him off. Decking out is a real danger here, but also not being able to fractal a ray early to force an inundation will severely limit your chances. For this reason, you can try discarding any extra hopes and electrocuters for the first 1-2 turns so that you can get the most out of your fractal. Remember those shockwaves? He'll hit you with a lot of them every time as soon as your rays pop up, so you'll have to fractal twice to get that inundation, which means you can't blow
on playing/using an electrocuter, so I usually discard it if I draw it first turn against him, so I don't have to play it and drain
or keep it in my hand and get 1 less ray from fractal.
Obliterator: In theory, he's fairly easy, but he's hardly a cakewalk because he can often rush you to death before you can get control of the board. If he draws enough creatures, unstoppables, and/or gravity forces, he can get rid of your rays and pile on the damage, playing momentum to get past however meager a shield you get up, and kill you before you have a chance to lobotomize the creatures with momentum and fractal your rays to boost your hope. Don't worry about keeping a ray in your hand since he only has 10 gravity forces in a big deck. Worry about that pulverizer getting out before you can lobotomize the momentumed creatures. If it does, you're in trouble. He'll play more and more unstoppables and there will be nothing you can do about it. He's like Seism with extra pinch. Forces kill your rays instead of just rewinding them, which also means that you don't get more turns, though you also don't need them since your towers are (pretty) safe except for that pesky pesky pulverizer (which seism can't use). The unstoppables make the match a toss-up if he doesn't play many of them before the pulverizer or plays his pulverizer early on.
Scorpio: With 6 shards he's usually more on the easy side, but most games will end with you well below 100 health, so it's very much a question of surviving long enough to kill him as opposed to completing shutting him out with hope. An early electrocuter is very helpful, especially if you're having trouble getting that hope up (no fractals, hope, towers, or rays). The hope will help mostly against the puffer fish, though the electrocuter is a must against physalia and to a lesser degree ultharids. Keep in mind that he has 2 dragons, so usually it's better to electrocuter the physalia first and play just enough rays to keep your hope at 2 to stop puffer fish. DO NOT play a dragon prematurely against Scorpio. He'll twin universe it. Now for the poison. If he gets that arsenic out early, get your hope to 4 PRONTO. That 1 extra unpreventable damage a turn can make or break you. Your basic strategy is to get your hope up, lobotomize physalias and then ultharids, and then focus on fractaling+playing more rays and finally spamming dragons. When you should start playing dragons depends on how much poison (and any dragons he's gotten out) he's gotten on you, your current health, and how many rays you have (and to a lesser degree how many you have left to draw in your deck). If you're play 4 shards, try to start playing dragons as soon as you have the board under control: electrocuted all the physalia and ultharids - ignore puffer fish once your hope's up and at 2 - get them after the physalias before the ultharids if you can't get that hope up because poison sucks big time, which is why he has a purify (don't play your deck with one - the only two gods it would help against are very beatable without it, and it will just take up space in your deck).
Hard Gods:
Scorpio, Morte, Decay, Eternal Phoenix, Graviton, Hermes,
Strategy Notes:
Breakdown:
*TO BE CONTINUED!*
I'm currently filling in many of the gods now that I have access to a computer and internet. I went camping shortly after starting this thread, and have had very very limited access to a computer and internet since - sorry for the big delay. I have good enough connection now through my cellphone (for free with verizon on weekends and after 9:00 pm) to work on this. This is a work in progress, and I will continually add tips to gods and in general for this deck. If they're of huge help, I'll type "EDIT:" and add it at the end of the breakdown for that particular god.
Please add your own suggestions/tips/strategies in the comments.
