Round 3 - Salvaging, Discarding, Penalties, and Converting

[EvaRia]

Okay guys, this Salvage/Discard thing is INCREDIBLY important, and we should really base ideas around this.

I don't think we should go around and just randomly picking cards that we think may randomly be useful later or are gernerally good, we really need to get good decks going NOW.

The idea should be to build good decks as best as possible with what we can possibly salvage, and with the wins we can get with good decks rather than mediocre ones, we can salvage even more.

With that said, I think we should concentrate our salvaging based on many copies of key cards we can use to make effective decks NOW.

These are only my suggestions, feel free to question them.
Let's take a look at some of these decks:

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52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52h 52h 52j 52q 52q 52r 52r 52r 52t 52t 52t 52t 542 542 542 593 593 593 593 593 593
We already have a variety of existing death cards in our vault, and efficient decks call for efficient attackers.
Mummies are a great choice from here. That leaves 2 cards. Arsenics are great, as Poison stalls work quite effectively with Aether's arsenal. The EQs are tempting, but we do not have many earth cards at the moment, and we can't afford to waste salvages on cards that we may choose not to use in this round.

My suggestion is 4x Mummy, 2x Arsenic.

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52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52h 52h 52h 52p 52p 52q 52r 52r 542 542 542 55q 55q 55q 55q 55q 55q 55s
Again, death is great in our current vault. Momentum is tempting, but keep in mind we only have a very limited amount of cards that can benefit from it. Once again, building on current cards, I suggest 3x Death Pendulum, 1x Arsenic, 2x Bone Pillar

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This one is tough. There is a very limited amount here that we can effectively use. However, we DO have some Chrysaoras, so I would pick 6x Freeze or Conversion fodder.

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This is a question of Fire vs. Darkness. I personally think the Darkness cards will benefit us more. 6x Devourer.

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Flying Weapons are always useful, and wings have great synergy with aether since we have spiders. The time cards will benefit us very little anyways. 2x Flying Weapon, 4x Wings.

I will post this for now, a more in-depth look at our losses and discarding will come up in a sec.

[EvaRia]

Okay, now on to Discards.

The goal here is to get rid of as many dead cards as possible. Aether Cards are important to keep, as we will ultimately be basing our decks off these. Pendulums and pillars are less of a problem, since we can always convert.

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5f0 5f0 5f0 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f8 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7ds 7ds 7ds
Do we or do we not want to do another Fractal Phoenix? I don't think we do this round. It would be slightly predictable, and our fire cards are limited. As I said, I think Darkness cards are more valuable than Fire in our position, so it would be better IMO to take out phoenixes altogether for the sake of leaving our aether cards more intact, as they are the most important to keep.

Key cards to keep are the fractals and dimshields. My suggestion: 3x Minor Phoenix, 3x Burning pillar, 4x Deflag, 1x Rof, 3x Aether Pillars, 4x Aether Pendulums depending on what decks we want to use.

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Darkness is useful. Aether is more important to keep, however. Nightfalls have the least use in general, especially after trying to squeeze in 50% aether at the same time. 2x Nightfall, 1x Dusk Mantle, 2x steal, 3x minor vampire, 4x Devourer, 6x Aether Pendulums.

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592 592 592 593 593 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61s 61s 61s 61t 61t 61t 61t 61v 61v 61v 620 63a 63a 63a 63a
This one is tough. It'll just continually get difficult as the games go on if we keep scrapping aether cards. The Earth cards I admit are mighty useful, but way might not be able to keep them with such a low card pool.
3x EA, 2x EQ, 3x immortal, 4x dim Shield, 4x aether Pillar, 2x Aether Pendulum

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This one is simple. Do we or do we not want to keep frogtal? It still is a valid deck idea.
If yes, then 6x heal, 4x dim shield, 2x Aether Pillar, 5x Aether Pendulum.

If not, then 6x Heal, 4x Frog, 2x Aether Pillar, 5x Aether Pendulum.



The penalty and the conversions will just be recycling of dead cards, only if necessary.


What do you guys think?

[Toimu13]

Boingo and I think is one of our best decks and we should keep those 3 EAs from tinkady's deck and discard 3 DSs instead.

[Toimu13]

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15553.0.html   Boingo  (Win)
Salvage:  2 x Momentum  and  2 x Bone Dragon  and  2 x Bone Pillar

Bone Dragons cost too much, I say 2 more Bone Pillars.

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15603.0.html   Toimu13  (Win)
Salvage:  2 x Morning Star  and  2 x Reflective Shield  and  2 x Water Pendulum

I don't think we need more Morning Stars, I say 2 Freezes.

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15605.0.html   Artagas  (Win)
Salvage:  4 x Phoenix  and  2 x Steal

We don't need 4 more Phoenixs, we need 4 more Devourers!

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15611.0.html   ICB  (Win)
Salvage:  2 x Flying Weapon  and  4 x Time Pendulum

3 x Eternity and 3 x Time Pendulums.  1 Flying weapons deck is enough, and Eternitys will crush a few decks, like Flying Titans, or double rewind mummies.

[Boingo]

@EvaRia and Toimu:

Thank you for carefully looking through this salvage/discard business.  Unfortunately I do not have the time this week to do it, but I agree that we need to focus on a few things (in order of importance):

1) Take/keep cards we need to win this round--that means, actually creating entire decks for everyone and then seeing what is left over to toss out.  I would LOVE to have a decent fractal phoenix deck, but we dropped the ball in the second round when we had total surprise factor and round 2 had bad matchup.  At this point, if it isn't going to win we need to let it go.


2) After step 1 is completed, if we have options, take flexible cards that build on existing decks (e.g., adding freeze to our water decks or supporting our death decks with pillars/mummies/bonewalls). 

3) If we get through #1 and #2, looking to branch out into other elements to give us other options.  The flying eternity deck idea Toimu put together falls in this category since it is a lock deck that doesn't use fractal or dim shields.

[Gocubbies1212]

I found a problem, we only have 4 Water Pendulums to convert.

oops, thought we had 4 then we salvaged 2 to get 6.  my fault...  but it is now fixed

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15605.0.html   Artagas  (Win)
Salvage:  4 x Phoenix  and  2 x Steal

We don't need 4 more Phoenixs, we need 4 more Devourers!

so we should give up on phoenix fractal decks?


NOTICE: We are discarding 4 Dim Shields!  if we do this, there won't be enough for the team.  please post suggestions soon. 
Also, thanks Eva and Toimu for the help

UPDATED

[Toimu13]

I found a problem, we only have 4 Water Pendulums to convert.

oops, thought we had 4 then we salvaged 2 to get 6.  my fault...  but it is now fixed

NOES!  The thread got locked, we had enough because of Salvaging, I just miss-counted.  I forgot to tell you that yestorday in chat.

We had 4 from another round, and we are salvaging 2.

[Toimu13]

Salvaging
4 x Mummy
2 x Earthquake
2 x momentum 
4 x Bone Pillar 
4 x Devourer
2 x Steal
2 x Freeze
2 x Reflective Shield 
2 x Water Pendulum
3 x Time Pendulum
3 x Eternity
Discarding
4 x Deflagration
1 x Rain of Fire
3 x Phoenix   
6 x Fractal
10 x Dimensional Shield
2 x Lightning
2 x Steal
4 x Devourer
3 x Minor Vampire
3 x Phase Dragon
3 x Immortal
1 x Phase Spider
2 x Earthquake
4 x Horned Frog
6 x Heal
18 x Aether Pendulum

Penalties
6 x Nova

Converting
6 x Water Pendulum into 6 x Aether Pendulum
3 x Arctit Squid into 3 x Aether Pendulum
2 x Time Pendulum into 2 x Aether Pillar
1 x Reflective Shield into 1 x Aether Pendulum

Updated vault to this.

[thraexis11]

Can you keep 3 novas you mean to discard as penalty ? So me and Evaria could play those 2 decks posted on deck page ? Otherwise we are 3 novas short!

[Toimu13]

NOTICE: We are discarding 10 Dim Shields!  if we do this, there won't be enough for the team.  please post suggestions soon. 

Boingo and myself where thinking we run 4+4+3+3, but that leaves 5 people without Dim Shields.

Can you keep 3 novas you mean to discard as penalty ? So me and Evaria could play those 2 decks posted on deck page ? Otherwise we are 3 novas short!

Sure, no matter what, I'm for us keeping 12 novas BTW.

[Toimu13]

We have used in 2 decks out of 36 so far, we might want to look at converting 11 more cards and saving the others, or using 6 cards for the penalty instead of those Novas.  I like the idea of a stall, but we just aren't doing it.

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,15603.0.html   Toimu13  (Win)
Salvage:  2 x Reflective Shield  and  2 x Water Pendulum  and  2 x Freeze

And maybe taking 4 Freezes instead of those 2 Reflective Shields.

[EvaRia]

Reflective shields are not worth keeping, really.

Freezes are great, take them.