I am more or less typing whatever pops in my head, so I apologize for the lack of organization (if applicable).
The main thing that concerns me is 30-card discards starting round 4. I've mentioned this in chat, but we basically use 4 main cards (dims, fractal, lightning, and PU) in all of our decks (dragons and spiders are really the only other cards we sometimes use). Let's say we start with 18 of each, and only use 6 (any combination) in a given deck. This basically gives use 12 decks to lose (realistically, it would be less) starting round 4 assuming we have max amounts of each card. I was freaking out before because I wasn't considering PU, but 10-12 decks to lose is much better than 9 or less. But let's look at some of the numbers to get a better idea.
If we go 5-1 (optimisitic) in rounds 1-3, our vault would be 321 at the beginning of round 4. If we then went 4-2 each round, we would net lose 36 cards, but lose 2 decks worth of aether cards. Basically, after 5 rounds of this, we would lose all of our aether cards and still have 141 nonaether cards left. In other words, we would have to suicide 4-5 times to break even (almost once per round).
Now if we went 4-2 (more realistic) in rounds 1-3, our vault would be 249 going into round 4. Keeping the same win rate gets us to 69 nonaether cards left, or 2 suicides to keep even.
And if we went 3-3 (worst case scenario) in rounds 1-3, our vault would be 180-200 (too lazy to . If we maintained a win rate of 66%, shouldn't need to suicide ever.
So, what am I trying to get at?
First, we need to max out dims, fractals, lightnings, and PUs. I believe Pika suggested maxing out dragons and spiders as well. I am hesitant in maxing out dragons and spiders because dragons are really only useful in monoaether, and spiders are mostly used as splash (with a couple exceptions). I would likely take 12 at most of each. Considering running 2 monoaethers in round 1 would be very low risk and conceal a lot of our vault, but I would rather win than conceal our vault
Second, we CANNOT discard any aether cards during rounds 1-3.
Third, if we do well early on, we essentially have 3 options:
A = keep fielding strongest decks possible, don't suicide until absolutely necessary. I view this as a risky option as 1 bad round can basically destroy our entire vault. THe only positive is that our vault will be as diverse as possible. However, we will have weaker support players if we are winning, which may give us few ups and weaker against other teams (See my support analysis for further details).
B = field decks in matchups we feel we can absolutely win, and suicide once per round as necessary. guaranteed not to lose all of our aether cards in a round, but could limit our vault.
C = mass suicide during round 4, except for 1 or 2 battles. This will basically know us down to 4 or 5 battles per round and have most/all of our aether cards at our disposal. vault will be the most limited with this option, but much better long-term survival and more help from support team.
I honestly don't know what would be best, but there are a lot of variables that will determine our choice when the time comes.
Support Team TutorialI know a number of you have not mastered the rules about the support team, so I will explain everything here in as much detail as possible that is relevant to our team and overall strategy.
Starting with attackers, they can use any non-rare card in the game EXCEPT for the cards used by the main team during the previous round. What this means is that early in war, teams will have very few in-element cards that their support players can actually use. As a team goes through war and fields fewer battles, the support team grows, and the restrictions on attackers decreases as fewer decks are used by the main team. What does this mean for aether? For the majority of war, we will be using our 4 main cards in all of our decks, so our attackers will almost never be able to use fractal, dims, PU, or lightning. Outside of that, there are very few in-element cards that are left, which are even useful. I have a few deck ideas when the time comes, but we will otherwise have to rely on off-element cards in our attacking decks.
Defenders are a little different story. Same deckbuilding rules as attackers EXCEPT they can use cards that the main team used up to the number of defending support players on the team. So early in war, our defenders will be able to use only 2 of the cards from the cardpool used by the main team (i.e 6 lightning and 5 bonewalls) if both support players were defending. As war goes on, we can field more defenders, which can therefore use more cards from our main cardpool. IMO, we should never need to field more than 3 defenders in a given round.
So, why not field only 1 defender, and all the rest attackers? Well, most of our main aether cards syngergize well with the other cards that were used. The options available would therefore be limited and our defenders would be much weaker than they should be.
So, what's the plan for our support team? Bottom line is, I don't know yet. Early on, most teams will use steals and deflags, so their attackers likely won't have much PC. This would make dims a powerful card by itself, which may deter many teams from trying to attack us early on. However, I feel that if we have at least 2 defenders during the early rounds, we can defeat any other team that attacks us.
So, will we ever attack? maybe. I see 2 options early on.
A = defend x2, which will scare away attackers, then do 1 defender and 1 attacker the next round.
B = attack x1, defend x1. This may open us up to attacks the following round, but it may give us an extra upped card early on.
Bottom line, later in war teams at the bottom of the standings have stronger support and far more attackers. Teams at the top are going to have fewer ups, which is going to really suck, especially with 30-card discards.
At this point, my brain is farting, so I will add/edit this later if I feel necessary. Please leaves comments/suggestions for discussion.
