Personal StatementHey everyone, I have been around the community for a little over a year now. The more I get involved, the more I fall in love with this game. Some things about me are that I am currently a medical student and an aspiring surgeon (thinking ENT right now, but we'll see). I also have a ninja dog named Cameron. I am really into sci fi shows/movies (stargate, eureka, star trek) and I love RPG games (especially the final fantasy series).
I was drawn to aether when I first joined because of it's overwhelming power and sense of invincibility. I loved my monoaether deck for so long, but once I ventured into forming duos with other elements, that is when I truly realized it's power. I feel like I can identify with the element of aether because I love the sense of limitlessness and being untouchable, which I think is a common theme amongst my other interests (see above). I have to give thanks to Higurashi for taking a chance on me in war 3 because I probably would not be as obsessed about aether if it wasn't for her. She allowed me to form great friendships with pika and UT, whom I am proud to be fighting with for the chance to be master of aether. I think aether will be in good hands regardless of who takes the title in the final battle.
Question answersTime for my Trials question! ^_^
Q: “Which of the following abilities regarding your own 'physical tangibility' would you rather have assuming you can use them in real life?"
- Being able to see through walls/solid objects (X-ray vision ftw!)
- Being able to go through walls/solid objects (Kitty Pryde ain't got nothing)
- Being able to create invisible walls/solid objects? (Conjure: An invisible jet!)
Personality matters. Of course, it's always tough with these trials... 
I had fun thinking about this question while taking out half a lung yesterday.
"X-ray vision" would be cool, but it's usefulness would be limiting. Aside from using it to look at people naked and cheating in casinos, i could probably use it as a surgeon, but I will be cutting people open anyways, so it's not all that beneficial.
The ability to pass through solid objects is a bit more interesting. Very easy to get in trouble with this ability, but you could never get physically caught since you can pass through everything. More personally, this ability could be very useful as a surgeon assuming that I can control the phase of the objects I touch (would be weird if your clothes fell off every time you went out of phase
). But this ability for a surgeon would be kind of useless without "x-ray vision".
The ability to create invisible objects is probably the most badass ability of the 3 listed (or I am just a fan of the wonder twins
). This ability is only limited by your imagination. You can literally create ANYTHING that you need out of thin air. Sticking with the whole surgical theme, there would be no need for me to scrub in since I can create a sterile field around myself, and I wouldn't need a scrub nurse to hand me things because i can instantly create whatever tool I need and I can still see what I am doing since the tool is invisible!
These powers I associated with the concept I got of 
(DERP, Additional lame question you shouldn't really answer to: What is Aether?)
- Psychokinesis
- Teleportation
- Telepathy
You are granted two of these in real life. Which of these do you drop?
If silence makes a sound and no one can hear it, does silence make a sound? And could you make a deck about it?
Also, give me a song (not necessarily a war song) related to Aether.
a. drop telepathy because cell phones practically accomplish the same function and mind reading would probably give me a head ache. Teleportation and psychokinesis are much more useful. Just think of how much time you waste every day just traveling to and from places, teleportation allows you to live a much more efficient life with a lot less stress. And psychokinesis is just badass. You can move anything without having to lift a finger. From a personal standpoint, this is awesome because I could treat patients and perform surgeries without having to worry about needle sticks or cutting myself resulting in the contraction of bloodborne diseases.
b. if silence makes a sound, then silence makes a sound...even if no one is around to hear it. As for the deck, obviously you have to have silences, and since no one is around there should be no creatures. My initial thought was to use SoV + lightning as win condition, but then I saw Higs already used SoV. So, I will use fire lances instead. Since it is pretty much a stall, I made it 31 cards to make deckout a win condition against most decks. The silences can allow you to play dims a turn or 2 earlier, so you can kill your opponents creatures with lances then chain a couple silences to keep your enemy's creatures in hand. Not the best deck, but it's functional and fits the theme
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7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dk 7dn 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80k 80k 80k 80k 8puc. first song that comes to mind (really only related to aether in title) is Parallel Universe by Red Hot Chili Peppers. But my favorite is probably Princes of the Universe by Queen because it is the theme song from Highlander, who is immortal
The following questions/comments may be sharp and pointed. They may hurt your feelings, but they are meant to help me and the community see how you handled adversity and tough questions. So, don't take too much offense to them, I'm gonna be grilling everyone. Also, I don't hate any of you, it's just my RL interviewing being used for the community vote. 
deuce22
Why would you explode the Arsenic? ~ here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32757.0.html)
Thanks majofa for this question, I still remember that match distinctly. I suppose my match summary doesn't do justice the situation and the decision I made to use the deflag.
It was very late in the game, I just finished off a bonewall last turn. Higs already has 2 dragons on the field and plays arse but no shield knocking me down to 25 HP with 2 poison counters. Higs had around 50 HP, I evolved my grabbies to get within kill range, for the next turn but I had to mull on whether or not to deflag the arse. I had fog out, but 3 of 3 hits would result in defeat (6.4% chance). Higs still had 1 lightning (if she had 1 in hand, her chance of winning was 50.4% with arse in play) and 1 bonewall left in her deck (>90% win for her if she drew it), and I suspected a dim shield too (based on my experience with her) although I had not seen it yet in the previous 3 games. Plus, I had 1 additional deflag left in my deck, which was only 5 or 6 cards.
I ultimately decided to deflag the arse because I did not have enough evidence to assume she had a dim shield in hand, and i did not want to let RNG determine the outcome of this match. Even with a surprise dim shield, i had a decent chance of drawing my final deflag for the win. Plus, if she drew her final bonewall, I would have had a better chance of hax shield saving me against 2 lonely dragons than 2 dragons + arse. My statement about winning with 1 HP was not entirely accurate because that was what higs knocked me down to next turn without the arse.
If I were faced with the same situation today, I would still make the same decision because I feel the odds favored her too greatly when not deflagging the arse.
Most people blame Dimensional Shield for being OP.
But in all those wars, team Aether showed us a lot of very good decks w/o using Dimensional Shield.
Q:"What would happen with aether if Dimensional Shield gets removed, would it become a underused elements between the newbies?"
If dim shields were removed, aether's best pvp decks would still survive: Bonebolt, Devtal, and Fractix (upped environment). As for newbies, aether might be less used without dims because dim-based decks are very simple to use regardless of skill level, whereas fractal-based decks require a little more skill in deckbuilding and playing.
Deuce: What factors led you to winning the in element part of phase 1?
In pvp, I believe there are 4 factors to success. The most important factor was understanding the metagame, building expected decks and possible counters. 2nd, deck choice/mindgating/unpredictability/instincts. 3rd, RNG...fail draws are fail for everyone. 4th gameplay, which rarely determines the outcome of matches and I don't think it did in any of my trials matches. I believe I executed factors 1 and 2 better than my opponents. I attribute my sole loss to Vin as not trusting my instincts, but RNG was not kind to me either.
Given the restrictions is the most important factor as it determines your deckbuilding strategies. The lack of dims and bonewalls really made stalling very difficult, which means rushes are going to dominate, especially fractal decks. The only shield that was really worth using was wings. Unfortunately, most fractal/PU decks happen to use flying creatures, but phase recluses help solve that problem giving you a chance against almost every deck. Since there are almost no usable shields/weapons/perms, PC becomes pretty obsolete. And given the expected frequency of fractal and upped dragons, lightning and other CC becomes less useful. Thus, most of my decks were pure rushes that were actually pretty simple builds.
I played UT first. I was expecting some sort of fractal deck game 1, so I used a diamond shield based deck with fractal spiders. UT didn't use fractal but only had 8 creatures. diamond shield was enough to slow down his spiders while my fractaled spiders easily overpowered his fire shield. In game 2, I was paranoid about wings, so I used 3 cocks and 3 frogs instead of pure frogtal. Unfortunately, UT won the toss and I drew all of my cocks initially, which was just slow enough to lose to PU chargers... Game 3 I used wings (my favorite deck), which was a decent counter to UT's deck. He had a misplay, but the outcome likely would not have changed. Game 4 was a major RNG fail, all of my spiders were at the bottom of my deck as I waited several turns as UT's vamps could not get past my shield. By the time I drew one, he had 23 vamps and eclipse out. Was still fairly close despite the RNG fail. Game 5, decided to take a chance and use pure frogtal as it is the fastest deck in this metagame. RNG decided to give me a heart attack as I drew 5 frogs but no fractal, but it was luckily still faster than UT's PU dragons.
Against pika, I was much more confident in my deck choices after having played UT. Game 1, pika topdecked 3 of his 4 EQs and I had poor quanta draw, which ultimately led to pika destroying me. Game 2, I was unsure if he would switch it up or use the same deck, so I turned to wings since it has a chance against every deck. I had quantafail again, but I still enough quanta and spiders to lock down his dragons for an easy win. Game 3, I thought he would try and use vamptal or fractix, so I used pure frogtal since it is faster than both. I was surprised with the mark, but I pretty much instantly knew this was going to be an easy win. 19 pends > discord. Pika questioned whether he should have used pandas, but the result would not have changed at all. Game 4, was paranoid about wings or other shields, so I used Charger PU. Pika had a ridiculous quanta draw, which made his PU dragons just as fast as my chargers. I ultimately won by cointoss, but I think my deck would have won most games against his deck.
What card of aether would you choose to be nerfed and which to be buffed? And list these changes.
nerfed = fractal. It is by far the most powerful card in aether's arsenal. All of aether's best pvp decks utilize fractal. There are far less cards that can counter it (devs are only counter, EQ and disco delay it) in comparison to dims (steal, deflag, pulvy, momentum, poison, various CC, catapult) The best way I can think of to nerf it without killing it is to set a limit on the number of creatures it adds to your deck. I think 5 is a decent compromise in that it still makes fractal an effective card, but doesn't kill it. This would probably need some serious testing tho.
buffed = silence. You could make an argument for immortal or mindgate here, but I have actually won matches using those cards. I'm not saying silence is completely useless, but every time I try to use it in a deck, I find myself substituting it for lightning or dims as they are much more effective. I think most people would advocate for the cost to be less, but I think the effect of silence should change. When I think of silence in RPG games like final fantasy, I think of it as blocking spells/magic. I suggest silence blocks spell cards from being played for 2 turns at the cost of 5/4 quanta.
To deuce22:
You haven't held any sort of forum position before the (possible) Mastership of Aether. Why do you think that you'll handle the new responsibility well if you become Master?
Cheesy, I appreciate this question as it is a very important one. While holding a forum position is a common characteristic seen amongst masters, it is not a requirement. I have always been very interested in holding a forum position, specifically a tourney organizer or PvP event organizer as PvP events are what makes Elements so awesome. My reluctance in the past to apply to one of these positions was in large part due to the fact that I did not believe I had the time in my schedule to hold such a position. The same can be said of my participation in war, team pvp, and these trials. As I've participated in more events, I've found that I have more time than what I realize. I've been waiting the last 2 or 3 months for a new position to become available that I find interesting, but none have been posted that suit my interest and/or skills. So I will continue to wait.
To answer your question more directly, I think I would handle the responsibilities of Master of Aether just fine. I am in chat whenever I am home and especially on weekends, I respond to all PMs (even tho I don't get all that many atm), I make sure I fulfill all of my duties for any event I participate in. I take pride in myself and my work, and trials is the first step I am taking to try and solidify myself in the community.
In the past, I have heard a lot of people speak of mono-aether as a stalling only element. Could you build a mono, or a duo without using fractal or PU, that can rush well?
Depends on unupped vs. upped environment. For unupped, rushing without fractal is going to be slower compared to most other elements. For upped, phase recluses become your best friend. And since we are talking about rushing, I basically leaving out CC and shields.
unupped mono - dragons and spiders (faster but more fragile than immortals, plus they last longer than lightning) are probably your best bet, but you have to have a lot of quanta so that you can start playing dragons fast.
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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61u 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v 620 620 620 620 620 620 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8puunupped duo - spiders are still your best bet here as dragons and immortals take too long to come into play in duos. frogs are probably your best off-element choice as they are the cheap, have a decent attack-cost ratio, and mitosis is a decent alternative to fractal.
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5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 620 620 620 620 620 620 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pnUpped mono - Upped spiders are epic. Because of the increased cost of dragons and spiders, I feel that immortals would be better here as you can get more creatures out faster. Plus, with dragons gone, the deck requires less quanta, and a couple nymphs can be added to help protect your spiders.
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62c 62c 6rk 6rk 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 80c 80c 80c 80c 80c 80c 80g 80g 80g 80g 80g 80g 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 8puUpped duo - Could have easily gone with life like the unupped rush as it is technically the fastest, but I decided to go with fire because MPs are almost as fast as frogs, but explosions help take care of shields. Fire pends allow for a slightly faster deck.
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7dm 7dm 7dq 7dq 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 80g 80g 80g 80g 80g 80g 8puMitosis and Fractal have been compared to one another on several occasions. Yet despite these comparisons, there is no card that exists that is capable of functioning as Fractal does.
Q: Fractal is indeed a powerful, fun card to use and is generally labeled as a favorite card of Aether by many players. But at the same time, card idea after card idea is shot down for the simple reason that it's far too powerful when combined with Fractal. Imagine for a moment that Fractal never existed and allowed for a more diverse card pool. In this scenario, do you think that the players would be more content with the selection of cards and the game in general than they are now?
It is also noted that Aether is tied for the lowest number of cards possessed by an Element. If Fractal never existed, do you suspect this number would have increased?
a. I don't think fractal is severely limiting a more diverse card pool. The only limitations I can see in terms of new cards are creatures that cost 1 or less with decent attack strength. If fractal did not exist, I do not think players would be more content with the card pool and the game as a whole. As of now, only fractal and mitosis (kind of nightmare) can add creatures to your deck, which I think is a very important card type to have within the game. Is fractal OP and needs to nerfed so that more diverse cards can be added? Possibly. But fractal is not dominating the metagame, which is why it will likely never be nerfed. Otherwise, aether would likely have a war win by now
b. Most definitely. Fractal is the strongest aether card, period. Some may argue dim shields, but if you look at aether's best decks, none of them use dims, and they all use fractal. Without fractal, aether would need some serious card additions. Most aether based decks would have to rely on dims to be effective, which can be countered by several cards. Essentially, aether would at the very least need another cheap and semi-powerful creature, plus some other spell or permanent that would make aether more balanced.
I find it hard not to vote for Higurashi given the success she has had with Aether. If it ain't broken, why fix it?
response here (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,36639.msg492276#msg492276)
Aether is the power of beings from another dimension, immortals, and possibly outer space.
Given the extent of such power, what do you feels is Aether's biggest weakness in Elements the Game? Do you feel this weakness helps to balance or imbalance Aether?
aether has a weakness? BLAPSHEMY!!!
Aether has a lot of very powerful cards, but with power comes great cost. The amount of quanta required to run many aether decks is pretty significant. It not only slows down your decks, but also limits the amount of useful cards within the deck since more quanta is needed in order to survive cards like EQ or discord. There are always exceptions, but I think this helps balance aether because otherwise it would be severely OP (shields that block everything, creatures that can't die, spells that create even more creatures). The only thing that is preventing aether from being a completely balanced element is PC. But I think this is a good thing because it further helps to balance aether's power against other elements.
