So there I was, grinding the heck out of Bronze League for Shards with my trusty
Arena Destruction 101 and then I realized something: All of these Mono Aether decks are really annoying. Sure, I could manage to kill them off about 75% of the time, but with SO many of them popping up all over the place, I was getting really annoyed by having my string of wins broken even once. But how to resolve this issue? AD101 can't really afford a 3rd form of PC without sacrificing defense or speed, and there was always the chance that I still wouldn't have enough PC to make it through the Dim Shield chains. But then it dawned on me:
What if I tried focusing on Pulverizer instead?That was what sparked this idea. I started off by taking out Discords, replacing them all with Pulvys. Next the BHs had to go. I wasn't really sure of what to do from there, so I experimented with a lot of other card choices including Improved Fog, Improved Dusk, Dissipation Field, Twin Universe, Chaos Power, and Skull Buckler. The bottomline was that I just didn't have enough defense to stand up against the rushier decks; Wings is still necessary for the deck's survival in many cases. If Wings stays then maxing out on Spiders will offer the highest amount of success. But I still needed a way to reduce damage coming at me even further, and I needed a renewable form of Creature Control for this to work. Eagle's Eye conflicts too much with Wings and I wasn't sure I would be able to sustain that much
anyways, Otyugh conflicts too much with Pulvy and just seemed too slow to me. Then my gaze fell upon Maxwell's Demon and I felt a connection immediately. In its previous state the deck had serious problems with Firestall mods fitted with Phoenixes and Crimson Dragons, but the Demons take care of that. Of course, that doesn't work if the Demons are killed before you can kill off the other creatures - yet another problem. But seeing as how I had 3 Pulvys (and a Crusader since it works extremely well with Pulvy) and the 2 Steals were pretty much overkill, why not trade them out for Cloaks to give myself some extra CC
and PC protection? This works extremely well for a number of reasons:
1) Complete protection from CC (for 3 turns). Late game this is less effective because of AoE spells, but early game you can set up easily without being disturbed.
2) Forces decks to waste at least 1 PC before going after anything else. Early game Firestalls usually won't have enough quanta to be able to execute a Deflag + Deflag or Deflag + Rage Potion/Fire Bolt play, and not being able to do that in the same turn can often signal victory for you. Steal is laughable due to you being able to smash your own Cloak with Pulvy (at which point it's not very useful to you anyways).
3) Counters enemy Pulvys. Once you play Cloak + Pulvy in the same turn it's pretty much given that your own Pulvy won't be destroyed any time soon.
With that aside, I still had some room for other cards so I went ahead and added a second Hourglass. I rarely find myself able to sustain 2 at the same time unless I get a lot of quanta early game (lots of Supernova, Quantum Towers, etc.), but this increases my chance of drawing 1 early significantly and also allows me to use them as PC bait more often to protect my other cards. Doubled my Maxwell's as well since I want to get them out ASAP. Aside from this, most of the cards are standard Speedbow material.
