A light breeze wanders through the clearing, gently shaking the shrubs that litter the mossy ground. Looking around, you can sense no trace of your objective. Though your map displays a marker, you can discern only the faintest remnants of your intended path: A shorter cluster of trees here, a small clump of exposed stones there. It's as if nature itself had risen up and claimed dominion over the trail you were following. You pause, hesitant in continuing without the steady guidance your visual aid had promised. Your objective should be here, but you can't sense it. Your confusion ends when your hear a faint sound above you. Wingbeats.
All answers will be spoilered here. Good luck, and may the best Air elemental win!
You have lost your match against a STANDIN. Why should I believe you have what it takes to be master of air if you can't even beat someone who did not sign up for it?
I'll be the first to admit that my PvP was a bit rusty. CCCombobreaker was the first opponent that I didn't speedbuild for in a long while, and the 0-3 results were a good shakeup to get things back into the groove. I strongly credit that loss for my improved performance in the rest of my matches, with an 8/9 in the rest of my 3 matches, the second loss being a 2-3 against Manuel. And to pre-empt the question of why I should be considered worthy if I lost to my fellow in-element contender, I'll say it was a close series and I'm definitely looking forward to the rematch.
Edit: And if STANDIN had been ji412jo like it has everywhere else, I'd totally have won. :P
What is your definition of Leadership?
Dictionary entries usually have multiple definitions, and for good reason.
Leadership is the measure of your ability to accomplish a set of tasks or objectives. This is the managerial view, of results and actions.
Leadership is the measure of your ability to inspire and challenge others. This is the competitive view, of athletes and players.
Which of these applies to the Master of Air? Is it a managerial position, for leading your War Team? Is it a challenger's position, to dare others to match your example?
I think it's clear that any Master should strive for both.
For everyone that Trials not for their favourite element: If you end up not becoming a Master for the element you're Trialling in, will you consider an approach from WMs to General your favourite element?
Darkness is a popular element. I'm sure that even if Torb or Cactus become unavailable, there will be others to pick up the torch. If I win this Trial I will be General for Air, barring unforeseen circumstances.
Whoops, misread the question. Definitely!
Why did you not ban UG/Blue Nymph?
Banning UG means not banning Shard of Freedom. UG is a nice win condition, but it's not as versatile as SoFree, which can feasibly be used in every duo. I think this is very similar to the question of banning dims vs banning fractal in :aether, where dims are extremely powerful but fractal is far more versatile.
Why did you not run reflective/emerald shields in your stalls?
Honestly, it slipped my mind, and it was banned in some of my other matches. The one time I did end up including them, they didn't have an effect on the game. It's something I'll definitely remember in the future. As I stated in our match thread, it was very illuminating.
In a future match with the same unlocks/upgrades, what cards would you ban?
I'd most likely ban the same things. I don't think the bans were a big issue in our match, only deck choices/builds.
Banning an in-element card is a given, and we've gone over SoFree vs UG above.
Banning nova significantly weakens your :rainbow: options.
SoP is incredibly strong, and banning it should be a no-brainer on par with SoFree. It's just too powerful given the plentiful cheap creatures and high viability of stall decks.
Miracle is the only ban that I'd consider swapping out for anything else, and imo it remains a strong choice in weakening :light.
Everybody (should) know each Element has its own trait, its strenght and weakness. Being a Master means to know them perfectly.
Said that, explain what's the strenght and weakness of your Element, and, if you had the chance to add just one card (creature, spell, PC, CC, etc...) to your Element, what would it be and why?
Air has strong and quick attackers supported by damage amplifiers and mountains of CC. Fog is one of the best shields in the game, and that's not even getting into the shield bypass options that UG and SoFree offer.
For all that power, it still lacks heavily in defensive measures. Mass CC is a big weakness with all the weak creatures, and blue nymphs can still get zapped or rage potted. If I could add a card to Air, I'd want it to be a penalty trigger, something applied reactively. Our creatures are fragile, and that's fine. But let's throw some automatic shockwaves in response for damaging the flock.
Which element do you consider the anti-you? Which ones rubs you the wrong way or resonates least with you personally? Please help us understand why this is the case.
I don't consider any element to be an anathema. Each has qualities that I can enjoy or like, even an element represented by the slow and plodding Massive Dragon. After all, if elements weren't likeable, then they probably wouldn't be in the game. Maybe that's why we never got void (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/series/(series)-void-a-new-pseudo-element/)...
Name two previous/current masters (you can include yourself if you wish) who you respect and have been excellent trialists, generals, and representatives of their element. What traits do these two individuals share? How are they different?
Physsion and JonathanCrazyJ. For differences, I think Physsion is more laid back while JcJ is more outwardly energetic, but the effect they have on their teams remains the same. Despite their recent inactivity, I can still clearly remember the amount of influence and impact they had on the community when I returned to active Foruming for War 9, with Physsion as the new Master of Darkness and JcJ as Master of Water and Competition Organizer.
Both are fairly strong PvPers, but they also had a way of encouraging those around them to participate more and to focus on the steps it takes to win. Anybody who's seen their teams in action knows that their team members always seemed to be a little more active and energetic than the rest, with excellent sportsmanship to boot-- and the results of War 9/10 and Brawl 5/6 reflect that.
I know that my time with Team Darkness in War 9 was one of the best experiences I've had on this forum, and that quality is something our community needs more of.
Will you participate in the next Brawl under the flag of your trialing element?
Possibly, but probably not. Being a CO, Brawl basically acts like a break period for me.
Aves What happens with your darkside?
By the time I signed up for Trials, a good third of them still had only one participant, and it didn't look like there would be a lot more signups. While I would've enjoyed gunning for that Master of Darkness title, I felt it would be better to increase the number of people competing for titles, instead of pushing potential contenders out of the Final Battle when there are so many empty slots in there already. More people getting Final Battle experience = better challengers next year :)
Out of the 1-Trialist elements, Manuel was the one with the most experience, and Air one of the elements that I think my name shares a pretty decent connection with, so it was a pretty easy choice from there.
Darkness will always be my favorite element, but I'm sure Torb or Cactus can step up to the plate.
First off, best of luck in the final battle! I'm curious to see how each of you approach it - it seems you both have a very different play style to me.
I would argue that no element has more deck building options than Air. Specifically, cards like OE, Fog, Wings, Shockwave, Thunderstorm, Skyblitz mean that you can play something as basic as a Mono deck in dozens of different styles, each with a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Often, changing a single card can be enough to turn a bad match up into a good one.
I strongly believe that the key to success with Air is to pair the right deck type (e.g. Mono, Dark Duo, Stall, Grabbow, etc) with the right support cards, while still squeezing in enough pillars to make the deck run smoothly.
On that note, why did you choose the decks you played, and the specific cards in those decks during phase 2? In hindsight, would you want to play a different deck? Would you want to build the deck you did play differently? Was the quanta balance okay? Would you make different bans?
I won't ask you to answer these questions for every deck you played - I imagine that would be quite time consuming - but I would like to hear a few thoughts even if all you say is that it was a good deck choice. At minimum I'd like to hear about the following decks, though your thoughts on other decks are also very welcome.
For Aves:
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5c2 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5og 5og 5oh 5oh 5oi 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5p0 7ms 7ms 7ms 7n3 7n5 7n5 7oe 7oe 7oe 8pn
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5oc 5oc 5oc 5og 5og 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 718 718 718 718 718 718 71a 71a 7oe 8pk
Thanks Afda! It's always good to have advice from the Master.
That game 3 deck against STANDIN would have gone much much better with a few emerald shields tossed in there, so that point about a single card making all the difference in a matchup is something I've painfully experienced first hand.
STANDIN: Shard of Patience, Miracle, Shard of Freedom, Nova
Aves: Shard of Freedom. Druidic Staff. Steal
Going into that game, I was down 0-2 and I'd already used :life and :air (:life :darkness :death remaining), while CCC had used :time and :rainbow.
With :air, :water, and :light on the table for my opponent, I was expecting either nymphs with water or air, or a stall with light. There was no way that I could outrush nymphs and running a rush or domin into a sancstall would be pretty bad. Out of my remaining options, :life was the best to stall with. As long as 5 UG didn't enter the field all at once, I could deal with any nymphs that popped up with CC. Of course, that all ended up being moot when his deck had no nymphs at all and just played the UGs straight up. Emerald shield was already mentioned above, so I'll skip that here.
The single blue nymph and Elite Queen technically have the capacity to stallbreak, in case my stall somehow met a bigger stall, though in hindsight they wouldn't stand up to much CC.
deuce22: Nova, Fractal, Drain Life, Miracle
Aves: Sofree, SoSac, steal, BW
In this context, I had :death and :air left against :rainbow :gravity, and was up 2-1. I was expecting some sort of PU Chargers or whatever a 50% :aether rainbow without nova looks like. Some sort of Mindgate stall or PUbow?
A mono Air with creatures and no SoFree isn't a good idea into the possibility of dims or lightning, so the only viable mono was UG. Blue nymphs aren't ideal into lobo, and I wanted to shut down whatever creatures he put out quickly-- and relying on UGs alone can be iffy . The other form of damage that can bypass dims? Poison. With that in mind, I decided to go all out with the CC so that no charger, psion, recluse, etc would live long enough to outpace my poisons. In the event that he used immortal creatures, they still have a bad cost to power ratio and the shockwaves can double up for direct targeting.
Besides the STANDIN match, I'm fairly happy with my phase 2 performance, and there's not too much I'd change there in terms of bans or deck choices. I will say that my game 1 deck against deuce was pretty wacky, and could stand for a bit of optimization. When it works, it's a lot of fun against MA! The Pulvy makes dims and lobo moot, and EQ means that all those expensive aether creatures don't get much of a chance to get out. It's always a bittersweet moment when your prediction is correct but your counter isn't.