Round 5 - Main Topic

[EngPhys]

This week has been hell. Please put me down with the mummytal pika listed, I can't even access a computer and I'm about to drive 3 hours home. I haven't had enough time to test anything else unfortunately. I can't apologize any more, and hopefully I'm freer for future rounds.

[willng3]

Right.  The 6 Mummies is a problem for right now.  I'm advising that it receive modifications of -1 Mummy, -1 Dim Shield, +2 Bone Walls (I'm concerned that lucky hands for them with nothing but PC are going to give us hell even with that number of permanents in the deck).  I'll have to play around with this idea a bit though; I hadn't originally built Mummytal to combat opposing rushes to be quite honest.

[UTAlan]

Scratch Mono . I choose you, Bonebolt!

by UTAlan

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52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52q 52q 52q 52r 52r 52r 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pk

Pretty much dominates / duo, so if we're gonna try to mindgate them with that deck, this is the way to go.

[UTAlan]

Conversion suggestion (based on post by Higs and irc conv with will):

12 Silence
3 Immortal
3 Armagio
2 Gravity Shield
2 Momentum
2 Graviton Fire Eaters (unused thus far)

Anyone have any problems with this?

[willng3]

Couple of tips just to make sure everything goes smooth in that Bonebolt deck against .
In the first round, I doubt they'll play EQs early on to wipe out Pillar/Pend stacks with 2 on them until they see they're in real danger.  If they get crushed during that first round though, they'll rethink that strategy instantly.  If you're given a starting hand during the second game with at least 1 Pend and 2+ Pillars, play 1 Pend and 2 Pillars; simple math analysis means they'll target that before moving on to the Pends (and they usually won't gather up 6 before the Pendulum switches to which is where you really need it here).  If you can afford to, try not to play Dim Shields during the first match unless you're left with no other options; if they think it's just a typical Bonebolt deck then during the second match they'll probably be more likely to hold off on playing creatures until they can spam them all at once and tear down Bone Wall; Dim Shield puts a nail in their coffin at that point.  Just monitor your quanta and the opponent's quanta and you'll be fine.

I'm good with those conversions.

[willng3]

Kay, tested that Mummytal I proposed earlier...and I see where the problems are already.  There's just not enough produced to make Bone Wall AND Fractal Mummies extremely powerful.  I went back to pika's original version with another Pend to make up for the additional Mummy, and I found that the AI sometimes got lucky hands and Deflagged everything I could play (and then other times not drawing a Dim Shield causes another issue).  Thus, I'm using a version with 6 Dim Shields.  It wins almost every time...

But.
Taking a view of this from the enemy's perspective, I'm sure they're going to assume that we're running Bonebolt and NOT Mummytal.  Therefore, they will have 0 hesitation in Deflagging an Arsenic thrown out early and will play their creatures as fast as possible to scale over Bone Wall.  Unless we get quanta screwed, I'd imagine this deck would trump easily...for the first round at least.  In the second round, they'll have a very different tactic to defeat us; they will purposely hold Deflags and try rushing us at the last minute which has me a bit worried since it will undoubtedly catch us off guard.  Bone Wall prevents this, but decreases the overall winrate...

I'm still leaning towards a Bone Wall variant, but maybe I'm overthinking all of this...pika, how do you feel about this?

[pikachufan2164]

We have 3 Bone Walls left in the Vault (8-2-3=3), so we could pull off a variant with both Bone Wall and Dim Shield. We'd be able to use the same confusion tactics, but it's going to be a very tight balance of quanta, because we won't necessarily have enough for both Walls and Mummies.

It's also prone to bad draws because of the split in shields, but we'd be able to keep guessing as to which shield we're going to play.

[willng3]

Alright.  Posting time (EP vs. Fire)

by willng3

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52q 52q 52r 52r 52r 52t 52t 52t 52t 52t 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pk

It's gone 9-1 against that same Reverse Time Immo Rush.  I was doing more poorly with it before; I don't know what changed after reverting back to this build after hearing pika's comments about it.  It might be just experience from playing with the deck for quite some time; EP, if you have time on your hands, I strongly urge you to play this deck and get a feel for it before it's time for your duel.  That's really the only way you'll figure out what needs to be played in what order; I really can't explain it in words.

[EngPhys]

Ugh. I feel so bad for not pulling my weight this round. I'm actually just pulled over on the road to see how we're faring. Thanks so much will and pika, I can't see the deck image but I trust you guys 100%

[pikachufan2164]

Ugh. I feel so bad for not pulling my weight this round. I'm actually just pulled over on the road to see how we're faring. Thanks so much will and pika, I can't see the deck image but I trust you guys 100%

It's 2 Arsenic, 3 Bone Wall, 5 Mummy, 3 Aether Pillar, 3 Dim Shield, 4 Fractal, 10 Aether Pendulum, Death mark.

The key to playing this version of Mummytal is to know when to lay down Bone Wall, and when to use Dim Shield instead. There's also a neat little strategy of deception, in which you play one type of shield in one game, and the other type in the next (to catch them off-guard).

That being said, it would be very nice if you had a decent amount of playtesting time before your match to get a good feel for your shield-playing intuition.

[Higurashi]

Higs, there are 7 ups in the deck you posted O_o"

Yeah, I ended up upping another MP and forgot about the second pend. Gonna test Entropic Fission nao.

Ugh. I feel so bad for not pulling my weight this round. I'm actually just pulled over on the road to see how we're faring. Thanks so much will and pika, I can't see the deck image but I trust you guys 100%

Haha, so diligent. Don't worry about it, Fizzy. Real life takes priority :>

[pikachufan2164]

Higs, right now we have you down for the version of Fractix with Lightnings that you posted; turns out we had extra Lightnings, but not as many Dim Shields as we wanted X)

If your testing reveals that Panda Dragons is the better option, then we will require a change in the conversions and we'll need to change the discards so that we're discarding fewer Dim Shields and Pillars. I've loaded stuff into the Vault a few hours ago, but hopefully I'll wake up an hour or so before the deadline if we need to make any last minute changes.