12th Trials - Challenger's Entrance

[iancudorinmarian]

TIME TO ENTER THE TRIALS
HAS RUN OUT



Please make sure you've read the Rules very carefully. Also, here are the Phase 1 Rules for information on Phase 1 tasks.

To join these Trials, post in this thread a single post containing the following information:

Spoiler for Requirements:

- Evidence of Score Requirement
- Evidence of Established Account Requirement
- Evidence of PvP Event Participation
OR
- Evidence of PvP Event Achievement

Spoiler for Phase 1:

-Name of Task
-Evidence of completion

Spoiler for War Bonus:

-Evidence of participation/WMing last war
-If you were a General, and were in the same War team as the element you are trialing for, evidence of your General-ship

Spoiler for Brawl Bonus:

-Evidence of participation/BMing/Voter's Panel position last brawl
-If you were a Boss, evidence of your Boss-ship

Spoiler for Loyalty Bonus:

-Tell us how many times you have participated in Trials for this element before
-Give us evidence of your participation in each of those trials

You can find more information on the Phase 1 tasks in the Phase 1 Rules. Remember, the Requirements to Challenge are:

• Any ONE from:
• Winning a Weekly Tournament
• A top 3 finish in either of the PVP Leagues
• A top 3 finish in a PVP event
• Finishing on 1 of the top 3 War teams
• Becoming a Master of any Element
• OR ALL of the following:
• 30,000+ score in Elements
• 10+ forum posts
• Joined the forums no less than 3 weeks ago (at the time of signing up)
• Participation in at least three separate PVP Events (Leagues, War, Weekly Tournaments, etc.)

Note: In the event more there are more than four challengers for one element, priority will be given first to players with the higher Phase 1 scores and second to a combination of score/post count.

Challengers:

• TheonlyrealBeef
• CactusKing

Master Physsion of has his decision pending.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Count me in. Loyalty bonus and requirements can be found in the three Darkness icons there <=.
War bonus: I was a part of team Aether last war: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/war/war-11-rosters/

Spoiler for submission:

The Militant

Spoiler for tournament rules:

Weekly Tournament - Slow and Steady - Unupgraded
Special rules:

• Upgraded cards, shards and nymphs are banned.
• Quanta generating spells are banned.
• Creatures with more attack than quanta cost are banned.
• Quantum Pillar, Graboid, Lycanthrope, Discord, Sanctuary, Nymph's Tears and Flying Weapon are banned.
• At most 40% of your deck's cards are allowed to be pillars/pendulums/mark cards.
• Spoiler for table for 40%:

  Deck size:	Maximum number of pillars/pendulums/mark cards:
  30	12
  31	12
  32	12
  33	13
  34	13
  35	14
  36	14
  37	14
  38	15
  39	15
  40	16
  41	16
  42	16
  43	17
  44	17
  45	18
  46	18
  47	18
  48	19
  49	19
  50	20
  51	20
  52	20
  53	21
  54	21
  55	22
  56	22
  57	22
  58	23
  59	23
  60	24

  Spoiler for pictures of all banned cards:

  

  Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

  Deck import code : [Select]

  4sa 4vh 4vj 4vl 500 50a 52t 534 53e 568 56i 590 59c 59m 5bu 5c0 5cg 5cq 5f1 5f2 5f9 5fe 5fk 5fu 5ie 5ig 5io 5j2 5l9 5lm 5ls 5m6 5oi 5p0 5pa 5ru 5s4 5se 5v8 5vi 61p 620 626 62c 62m 8pt

Spoiler for rules clarification:

For starters, the tournament is unupgraded, with shards and nymphs banned. This is pretty standard for a tournament and suits the theme really well. Banning creatures with more attack than quanta cost along with quanta generating spells -Nova and Immolation- significantly slows down the pace of the tournament, with pillar/pendulum restrictions adding to that to prevent dragon rushes. Graboid and Lycanthrope are cheats that bypass the attack > quanta cost rule with their abilities. Flying Weapon is in a similar position. Sanctuary and Quantum Pillar bans should significantly weaken stalls.

Spoiler for meta discussion:

With the low amount of pillars/pendulums/mark cards, this is a natural meta for slower decks including stalls. However, with Sanctuary and Quantum Pillars banned, there is no cheap way for stalls to defend themselves against denial. Abomination, Phoenix and Dragons are solid attackers and control cards like Reverse Time and Antimatter will likely be popular to counter these threats. However, with the low amount of quanta generation, a true rush is almost impossible to accomplish. The key is to bypass the pillar quota with creatures like Devourers.
Dimensional Shield is worth mentioning as allowed, causing concern for most non-Darkness elements.

Now, since the task asked for advantages for Darkness, I went overboard by making Devourers ridiculously overpowered in this meta. Just having six of them will halve the already slow speed of any deck using only pillars/pendulums/marks for quanta. And that is not counting the possible use of Earthquake, Fractal or Mitosis. To use this for an actual tournament, one would likely want to ban Devourer, Earthquake and Trident.

Spoiler for decks:

All of the following decks should work great in this meta, ordered by preference. If you wanted just one deck, take the first.

Spoiler for Devtal:

Just generally awesome. Slightly slow in setup, which may give decks with quanta generating creatures an opening. Faster denial decks are its main weakness in this meta.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5uo 5up 5uq 5ur 5ut 5ut 5ut 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 622 622 622 622 622 8pu

Spoiler for Devquake:

Destroyer of duos and stalls. Lacks defense or HP recovery, relying on complete and utter shutdown early. Lacking against monos, especially with mark cards, pillar/pend split and possibly even quanta generating creatures.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

591 591 591 591 593 593 593 593 593 593 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 8pm

Spoiler for Devtosis:

Similar to Devtal, but faster in setup, giving it a better chance against the two aforementioned decks.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5uo 5up 5up 5uq 5ur 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 8pn

Spoiler for Mono Darkness:

Good enough to beat splash decks and most monos. The fastest and most versatile of the options listed here.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

4st 4st 4st 4st 4st 4st 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5ur 5v1 606 606 606 8pt

Spoiler for Dimgons:

With Dimensional Shields not banned, this deck is at least worth mentioning. Crippled by any of the aforementioned decks, however.

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5up 5up 5ur 5uu 5uu 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 61r 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 8pu

Spoiler for lore:

For time immemorial, other elements have mocked Darkness for its lack of speed. "Hah, 7 average ttw for a fully upgraded Mono Darkness rush? You call that a rush? HAHAHAHAHA!" Annoyed, a particular Dark Lord sought revenge for such mockery. Despite its lack of speed, Darkness was obviously the best element. A challenge was issued to the other elements: "If your elements are that awesome, surely you will be able to beat me without having to resort to rushes?" The other elementals glanced at each other, Darkness was known for its trickery and they fully suspected a trap. Still, in their arrogance, they accepted the challenge.

Only when the tournament was about to begin in earnest, did the elementals bother to read the full rule set, as was customary for elemental tournaments. But the restrictions did not just stop at rushes, even the rainbows and the sanctuary stalls were banned. The quick-tempered Fire elemental protested: "Banning rushes is one thing, but I do not remember any mention of banning Fire Stall!" The Dark Lord gleefully smiled from behind his mask. "You have Miracles and you have Fire Bolts, what more could you possibly need?" Knowing these cards would usually make for a solid fire stall, this was a clear mockery. After all, without Sanctuary, the Fire Stall would not stand a chance against denial decks.

The rest of the elementals managed to keep their cool: they had agreed to the challenge, all they could do now was their best. The stage was set, the cards dealt. All that was left was to duke it out.

Spoiler for Phase 2 element choice:

Own choice:
Choice for opponent:

[CactusKing]

Spoiler for proof of worthiness:

Tournament win (see trophy <-)
2nd place in the latest league, although the organisers haven't distributed trophies yet.

Loyalty bonus: 11th Trial of Darkness
War bonus: Darkness soldier in War 11

Spoiler for Task 5 - The Illustrator:

DUSK MANTLE
The sole shield of Darkness, as I recall, is of a gold and stone construction with an abstract shape— curves and spikes surrounded by blue smoke. You know the one? Let me draw it for you...

Spoiler for development:

It was around the point of the third save here that I realised dusk is probably the hardest darkness card to choose for this task.

A nice artifact for sure, but it doesn't really look like a shield does it? I certainly wouldn't know how to hold one.
If I was in charge of the darkness armoury, my soldiers would carry something more functional;



The shield's crescent moon profile and gold leafage in the shape of our mark gives the wielder an instantly recognisable affinity to darkness.

Spoiler for development:

The shape was the first thing I determined to change, planning something to better embody the concept of dusk, as well as being more practical for deflecting oncoming attacks (or at least half of them in practice). The initial plan was to make it a crescent-shaped shield of wood, with a grey metallic rim bolted on, and the standard mark of darkness somewhere in the middle, hence the inner circle in the first drawing. Wood didn't fit darkness' colour scheme though, so I opted for a blackened body to contrast the silver lining. Redrawing the original Dusk Mantle provided much needed practice in airbrushing metallic surfaces, applied here for a high-impact darkness sign.

I'll take and for round two thanks, opponent can have