Round 8 - Main Topic

[hainkarga]

I made a quick vault edit to see how it would look like with phoenix, deflag, charger, momentum salvages. Gonna change after discussion.

Salvage pile:
Salvage 6 from Higurashi's win.

by hainkarga

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4ve 4ve 4ve 4ve 4ve 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 55l 55l 55l 55l 55q 55q 55q 55v 6u2 6u2 6u2 8pl

Salvage 6 from mrpaper's win

by hainkarga

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5fc 5fc 5fc 5rg 5rm 5rs 5rs 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

Salvage 6 from Evaria's win

by hainkarga

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 8pn

Matchups:

Battles

# Player vs Player 1 ralouf1 vs UTAlan 3 Bonestorm vs Gen. Higurashi 4 Gen. 10 men vs EvaRia 5 Lt. Mithcairion vs Lt. mrpaper

Decks for round 8:
Higurashi vs

by hainkarga

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808 808 808 80a 80a 80a 80a 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80e 80f 80f 80f 80f 80f 80f 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 8pu

mrpaper vs

by hainkarga

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61o 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 808 808 808 808 808 80a 80a 80a 80a 80d 80d 80d 80d 80f 80f 80g 80g 80g 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 81q 8pu

Evaria vs

by hainkarga

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

UTAlan vs

by hainkarga

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 55q 590 590 590 590 5og 61o 61o 61o 61o 61q 61q 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 63a 63a 77g 7ae 7dm 8pm

[hainkarga]

On round 8, we do 4 matches. Assuming we use graboid and  14 pillars per the other 3 decks on average, we need around 49 pillars.
We have 12 pillars and 27 pendulums. Need around 10 more, 6 comes from Emerald pillar conversions and 4 from the other two decks we won against.

What we could use from salvages are creatures. The available in order of usefulness are;
- 6 Phoenix (Can support double fractix. And these serve another purpose; in case fractix loses, we will have the room to save 6 non-phoenix cards from the losing deck, like fractals. So they would also a be served as backup)
- 4 Charger (We kept losing with fractal chargers, but perhaps can make a PU chargers with these)
- 2 Pharaoh (Well, they spawn creatures)
- 5 Abomination (Don't have entropy cards to support an entropy duo. But they are the average joe cards for fractaling anyways. Or we make a fractal minor abomination deck with these fellas)
- 2 Ghost of the past (Only useful if we salvage all of the time creatures.)
- 1 Devonain Dragon (Only useful if we salvage all of the time creatures.)

Salvage of spells would depend on the creature salvage. At a first glance, we can take 3-4x phoenix, 1-2 deflag, 3-4 chargers OR 3-4 abominations and convert 3-4 more of the salvage from higs & mrpaper's wins.

Then what we will have are;
- Graboid
- Fractix
- Bonebolt (with or wo mummies)
- MA
- Fractal frogs

Plus, depending on the salvage;
- fractal or pu chargers
- fractal abominations
- second fractix
- Some duo

[mrpaper]

I would say we go with having 2 fractix deck which are better then fractal chargers since faster and can crash through walls with deflags.  So we salvage a combo of 6 deflags/phoenix from my salvage an duse most of higs to convert.

I believe it is time to bring back bonebolt, our opponents will prolly not think we still have this left so it's a great bet for us.

 

[hainkarga]

I would say we go with having 2 fractix deck which are better then fractal chargers since faster and can crash through walls with deflags.  So we salvage a combo of 6 deflags/phoenix from my salvage an duse most of higs to convert.

I believe it is time to bring back bonebolt, our opponents will prolly not think we still have this left so it's a great bet for us.

Current salvage & conversion i made have both extra phoenixes and chargers while having sufficient pillars / pendulums for 4 decks (assuming one of them is graboid). Click this (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqCh8-BfWOzYdGd5YU9TMkhMM0xwRGVnTUlyZ19YTlE&hl=en_US#gid=35)

Right now i'm trying to figure out how to plan the future salvage / discards.

For example;
- if graboid deck loses what are we going to save ?
Surely we can't save graboids and novas together if we don't win against a deck either with novas or graboids. So it would just die out. In the past we managed to revive this deck because either we had multiple graboid decks or we had good salvage. We could just save aether cards in it, but we better not be pigeonholed into mono aethers. So stuff like chargers could give us the room to make a deck with PU saves from a losing graboid or we can save nova cards and make a deck with gravity mark with stuff like deflags or some cards from some supporting salvage. Losing the graboid potentially would result massive conversions if we will have to field 4 decks again which could mean we not only lose graboids but some other support cards.

- Fractix deck losing: We could cover this by the extra phoenix salvage this round. They allow us to ditch a losing fractix deck's phoenixes and save critical cards like fractal while still preserving another fractix deck.

- Fielding mono aether is very dangerous for our vault, when you think about discards. It is also stressing to choose between fractals and parallel universe discards when we don't know what the future salvage will bring us. Dragons & graboids we want to PU, rest we want to fractal.

- Bonebolt losing: Like graboid deck, it is hard to save a losing bonebolt deck with mummies. We could get 3 mummy + 3 bonewall in which case we lose our precious and limited fractals. So I think this is another reason to salvage a few more creatures to fractal. So if bonebolt loses we can save aether cards to make another fractal deck. Another alternative could be saving bonewalls only, to make a stall deck combined with DS.

- It is important not to have too similar decks, otherwise our opponents chances to counter us would increase dramatically. Our opponents should be forced to leave it on luck. More variety, the better. For example, graboid, bonebolt, fractix, mono aether have sufficiently different playstyles.

[mrpaper]

All you said is true, but we must deal with whatever is left and other teams are at the same point too. 
If graboid deck loses it is likely out unless we salvages from similar decks once or twice in rounds 8-9.  It is really unlikely we will need 4 decks anymore if we are to lose some decks in the future so I wouldn't worry much about that.  Chargers won't make good duo by themselves and as said before are not as strong as phonixes, plus they cost too many quanta to be in a nova deck.  Same could be said about pharaoh and devonian dragon.  If you really want to keep cards from higs salvage for a future nova, why not keep momentum and chaos power?

[UTAlan]

Sorry I wasn't around much for Round 7 - the holiday week had me running around all over town. I'll be much more available this week.

Salvages look pretty straightforward:
Higs - Maybe 1 momentum, the rest conversions.
mrpaper - Between 1 and 3 Phoenix's (enough to field 2 Fractix decks), the rest conversion. We have 6 deflags in the vault - I doubt we need more than that.
Eva - Conversion.

I agree with mrpaper that Chargers aren't going to do us any good in the long run. We have 5-6 viable decks right now, so we're in decent shape. If we have to resort to throwing a random deck together, we're probably not going to win anyway, so I say we focus on strengthening the decks we do have and try to make some great mindgates once matchups are posted.

[hainkarga]

After seeing the current standings, we are in good shape right now. Only 57 card difference with the #1 team! At the end of this round it is very possible to sit on their seat. Still waiting to see who our opponents will be. The reason i'd like to salvage more deflags has the same reason why we would salvage phoenixes: Backup. We would have graboid and two fractix decks which all use multiple deflags and in case one or more of those decks lose we will have a room to revive them by saving 6 cards and those 6 cards can hardly be deflags. Salvaging deflags now, would give us the room to discard them. Since we will be fielding 2-3 decks that use it, there is a high chance for that.

About the non-phoenix creature salvage; think of them as choosing between frogs. Like; we can now either convert frogs or chargers or abominations. The reason why i consider abominations a possibility is the high chances of looting entropy cards for future duo, because team still has a huge vault and we will likely salvage them more. Get a few purple dragons / discords next round, we have some sweet-er abominations.

* The reason we would want to convert everything but phoenixes now; would only be the future possibility of having to convert more than 24 cards to make non-suicide decks. Otherwise no need to convert anything more than what we need to field 4 decks this round.

* Worst case scenerio is we lose with all 4 duels which would leave us with 51 cards: 1 deck. 24 card conversion would be much more than enough to field a deck. Or we win all and have to field 5 players. Again, 14-15 conversions will be enough. Plus, if we convert now we will have the drama of having to choose between saving stuff like fractals or stuff like creatures. So the more creatures, the more aether we can save.

* Conclusion; no need to convert anything more than what we need for 4 decks this round. We can just salvage abominations, chargers, more deflags, or whatever we like. Maybe even emerald pillars seeing we have a possible frog deck :p

[Shaliyah]

Sorry for not being around much either, I was busy with interviews and applications. I will catch up asap though! =)

[mrpaper]

with the new event card on... It seems obvious to me we must the option of having more upgraded cards with monos.  We don't have marks left so this is useless ( I doubt many still do)  and converting to get more aether cards i not that useful since our leftovers becomes more pillars/pends anyway.  Let's try to build two MA if possible, we will think if its the best option, but I could use 24 upgraded cards while higs could use up to 36 (so a full upped deck).  I could use it well against earth, keeping 6 unnupped pends/pillars in case of eq and fully upped for the rest.  I should beat a mono earth if they went that way (even with SS to heals) and grabs deck too with lightnings + tons of DS.
I'd like somthing like this:

by mrpaper

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61o 61o 61o 63a 63a 63a 808 808 808 808 80a 80a 80a 80a 80a 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80e 80f 80f 80f 80f 80f 80f 81q 81q 81q 8pu

[mrpaper]

** also, the new rule of 0 salvage from now on (mostly to end war faster of course) means taking those chargers is really useless now, we can't really hope to build on that piece + something else that would come later.

[Odii Odsen]

I like mrpaper's idea. But on the other side, our opponents, could expect that. Monoaether is one of the most strongest mono decks.
It protects our creatures, plus we have maybe the best defense (lightnings+dim shield)
Nevertheless, this idea seems to me to be the best.

[mrpaper]

My only fears with my deck is if they come with pulvy to destroy shields (I hope lightning will be enough then) or if they we're to bring 6 DS also and try to stall me, is it worth taking like 32 cards to make him run out of shields?

We better hurry for other decks too... where is the best pllace to run the other MA?

time? we face the general and it would give us the upper hand and mono time is useless against mono aether, but I just beated time last round with MA, so it is more then expected from em and everyone (which is making MA safer against others).  They could save deflags from a loss of last round to get deflags back (though it worked bad against me) or stalled with DS also.

death? mono death would lose to us unless they use diss shield and 20 pillars... would be really bold, arsenic becoming soon useless when the shield is on and bonewalls getting destroyed fast by dragons.  They could also use DS to stall (run 32 cards again), or a grabs deck with 2 deflags and a steal (steal would hurt a lot if they poison us).

entropy? mono entropy would lose also to us and it allows us to use a full upped deck.  They could bring DS to stall (so we could bring more cards and still upped em all), they might save chargers, but it just lost against Higs so I doubt it, or bring they're steal/lycan deck which seems like the best bet for em.  To counter that, I'd be sure to have 6 lightnings ( 1 ready everytime a lycan pops in play!) and maybe less DS (around 3) since they are better not played if they steals em from us.  maybe fractal spiders to overrun em?