Strategies for Round 1

[Toimu13]

I just appointed mrpaper to be the Strategist this round.  The Strategist should make a thread each round (Strategies for Round 1, 2, ect...).  Because we already had a thread like this, I just renamed mine until mrpaper founds out about his job

Please read all of this post!
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,14352.0.html

Event Card:
- 2-0 win enables you to salvage 9 cards
- Substitute can salvage a total of 6 cards
- Other team members substituting salvage 3 cards
- No changes to round discarding rules
Deckbuilding:
Duel phase has started
Teams have to build decks for all players who are fighting during this round. Decks are to be posted on the secret team section. Team Deckbuilder starts the topic, and all team members participate in the planning. Please do not post your decks in public or talk about them in chat.

All decks must be made ready before the timer goes to zero, after which editing deck post is strictly forbidden. Failure to have all the decks ready will lead to a severe card penalty, and/or automatic losses. It is highly recommended that all team members double-check their decks before the duels start.
Duels:
Round has ended
Duel phase starts when deckbuilding ends.

PM your opponent and try to find a time that suits you both. Time Zone Converter (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html) might be useful here. If you cannot find a time when you are both are online, please contact ddevans96 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=3167) (Warmaster) immediately. If the match doesn't happen, you both lose by default, unless one of you is clearly more active and/or more flexible.

Duels are "best-of-three", you must use the deck and mark built during the previous phase, and you cannot make any changes to your deck or mark during the round.

Know your enemy!
Essence
gocubbies1212

Bluesky
mrpaper

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,155.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,202.0.html
artagas
Asymmetry

icecoldbro
Wizardcat

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,153.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,200.0.html
Boingo
Acsabi44

Dragoon1140
catalyzeme

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,150.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,197.0.html
Toimu13
Mastermind79

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,147.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,194.0.html
senabmi
thraexis11

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,154.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,201.0.html
Tinkady
Gyrodiot

War 1 Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,145.0.html
Trail of Archive  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/board,192.0.html

Winning/Losing Battles:

After each win, the team can salvage cards from the opponent. Winning team picks 6 cards from the deck posted by the losing player, which will be added to their Vault. These cards become part of the Vault and can be later used by anyone on that team. Salvaged cards are always unupped even if the original card is upped. Maximum card amount of 18 doesn't apply to salvaged cards.

When you salvage cards, you are not really taking cards from the opponent, you are merely taking a copy of that card and putting it into your Vault. In Elements terms, you are using Parallel Universe on those cards.

4.2. LOSING A BATTLE
When a team loses a battle, they have to discard cards. The numbers of cards discarded is determined by the round number. The further the event goes, the more cards are discarded.

ROUND 1: discard 6
ROUND 2: discard 12
ROUND 3: discard 18
ROUND 4: discard 24
ROUND 5: discard 30
ROUND 6: discard 30
ROUND 7: discard 30
etc.

Cards that are left in the deck after discarding, are returned back to Vault.

If we lose, we must discard cards from the deck we lost with.
Strategy/Counter-strategy:

**WARNING: The following is pure speculation, but something to at least think about as we head into War.**

We have been reviewing multiple deck ideas and possible opposing decks.  This is great exercise as we'll need the mental flexibility of putting ourselves in the opponent's shoes to do come up with some great decks during the War as well.  Our initial vault is in some ways the easiest part (since we can put many different variations of cards in it) but also the hardest (these are the cards we have more or less for the duration of the War, so we have to make them count.)  After the vault is set, deck building will be hard but at the same time liberating (we don't have to find the best possible deck, just the best ones we can put together with the cards available--just like every other team.)

Seriously consider what other teams are going to be thinking about strategy against :
>The matches aether lost in War #1 included mono-decks (or mono + enchant artifact)--they will look at the decks that defeated them and use similar strategies
>Dimensional shield is a problem only if you don't have steal/deflag/momentum or quantum denial. Anticipate every team to have these cards and thus duo (or rainbow) with .  The more deck ideas we come up with that limit the usefulness of these counter cards, the more dead cards they will have in their hands.
>They will look for us to be heavy on the creatures and shields.  We will probably need to be more creative and give different looks so they have a hard time countering.


>There is no such thing as an rush.   The best we can do is creature spam with other elements via Fractal (e.g., Frogtal).
>Aether has the least helpful nymph of all elements.  It's not even worth including in any of our decks (even if we all had one.)
>Aether has one of the best CC spell cards--we will use it at every possible turn.

What we have to worry about from each element:
  Not sure really.  Unstable gas deck maybe?  Wings/shockwave/owl's eye not much help against immortals.  Fog shield can be problematic.
  We seem to have an unnatural fear of the fractal devourer deck.  We may face it and it may kill us.  Steal, devourer (denial) and dusk mantle are the biggest threats.
  Poison/arsenic.   The arsenic gets played early, the poison doesn't care about shields.  Immortals/dragons are too slow to catch up.  Need purify.
  Pulverizer, earthquake, shrieker rush--lots of options.  May have to find a nearly pillarless option for this one.
  Discord early, dissipation shield late.  We need to either chain shields early and often or go rainbow (but antimatter/mutate/chaos seed will hurt us).  Deflag or steal here.
  Fast and balanced element.  So many threats.  They went all the way and had just as many losses as aether did.  If we don't find an answer, don't worry--nobody else did either.
  Momentum/gravity shield.  Maybe flying titans.  That shield renders our only heavy hitter useless.
  Rushes, thorn carapace (a killer for our immortals.)
  Multiple miracles, untouchable weapon/shield.  Dragons with crazy hp.  I don't know if we can outdamage their healing potential with aether alone.
  Eternity can be a problem.  Will have card drawing advantage.
  Frozen creatures do not attack.  Essence is a good deck-builder.

Possible Enemy Decks:Fire Stall: My two versions.

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5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f5 5f5 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5f7 5f7 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi

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592 592 594 594 594 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5f7 5f8 5f8 5fb 5fb 5fb 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5giCounter: Quantum Denial and/or PC.

Life Rush:

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c5 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5deCounter: Stall and/or CC.

No Land Stompy:

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4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 590 5c2 5f3 5f3 5f6 5f6 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5ogCounter: Stall and/or CC.

Shrieker Rush:

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58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58s 590 590 590 590 590 590 591 591 591 593 593 593 594 594 595 595Counter: Stall and/or CC.

[Dragoon1140]

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5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63aI expect Darkness to use something like this against us.  Simple to use, fast, and the perfect counter to Aether.

[Boingo]

  creatureless poison deck (from War #1) that destroyed an deck (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,7802.0.html):

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52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52p 52p 52q 52q 52r 52r 52t 52t 5uo 5up 5up 5up
@Toimu13:  Those decks could win.  I'm concerned about the size--if we plan to deck out, we'd probably want to push the deck closer to 40 cards since many first round decks last war were ~34-35 cards.

  deck would be great against the creatureless poison deck ^^ (maybe trade our shields for permafrosts given the arsenics)

  decks need tweaks (not 50% as is)

deck is very frustrating to play against--I tried it out in PVP1 and dominated every game till I decked out every time (they were all 40 card opponents)

[Boingo]

Boingo and I did testing last night. I didn't know how hard it would be to counter a fractal darkness deck without a rainbow. None of the above decks worked!

I think we just need to focus on making good decks.  Let's not get fixated on one deck we may or may not face.  Looking through the first 2 rounds of War #1, there was a lot of creativity there, lots of stall decks ( typically packed 2-3 miracles!) and there were many trio/rainbow decks.  We don't have a good answer to earthquake decks as yet--maybe need to focus on at least 1 nearly pillarless/aether deck, if that's even possible.

[thraexis11]

Ok my first match is against time. I don´t expect much CC from my opponent but I do expect deflegrations. A lot!
He will probably expect me to go with immortal creatures so he will not bother with CC. I am expecting something like this :

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rj 5rj 5rj 5rl 5rl 5ro 5rs 5rm 5rm 5rm
I think the best counter for that would be fire growth or maybe some fractal deck - frogs or something. These are just my ideas but I guess ICB and deckbuilder will make a decision.
So everybody just  post what are you against and what do you expect they will play.

[Toimu13]

If we win all 9 of our battles 2-0 we can salvage 81 cards!

Toimu, time for you to use those Holy Lights.   

and can make nice counters to with a Chrysaora/Poison deck.  Two others are fighting , but I'm the only one fighting and none are fighting this round, so a deck would be best for me.  gocubbies or mrpaper should think about taking a deck to counter the Poison, or at least a deck with Healing or CC.

I'm thinking about a deck like this, but would like it to be smaller.

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5lc 5lc 5lc 5lc 5lc 5lc 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lh 5li 5li 61r 61r 61r 61r 61u 620 620 620 620 620 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63aPlaying AI3 I beat a / deck pretty easy.
  / was VERY close, I need a Lobo out early.
  / Discord + Max Demons killed me.

[thraexis11]

Since we don´t have many cards from other elements the best I could think of is this :

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61s 61s 61s 61t 61t 61t 61t 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v
or maybe this one :

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52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52q 52q 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 61t 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v
If someone has better idea how to stop time deck with perma control and some eternities and probably procrastination ( with our Vault cards ofc)  please let me know.

[Dragoon1140]

Use that Poison deck, imo.  It is simple enough and gets the job done.

[mrpaper]

Not quite sure what my job is, I guess It's giving out advice on every possible Thing we can face, but I think this is a team concept.  For my own enemy who's water, all I can see that can hurt me is poison and the trident is he wants to destroy my pillars/pendulums... the answer to that would be a couple of water pendulums for diversity and a couple of  purify.  Sounds good to all?
I'm pretty sure he won't go mono water on me though would be too easy... I am hoping to get lucky and he doesnt steal or deflag much of my shields.  For the rest, i count on 6 lightnings (cc if needed) and a few dragons to do the damage!
 

[Toimu13]

Not quite sure what my job is, I guess It's giving out advice on every possible Thing we can face, but I think this is a team concept.

Strategist - mrpaper
Strategist is in charge of planning team overall strategy. Each round, Strategist starts a topic that talks about opponents strengths and weaknesses, for example what cards the opponents have left, what kind of decks they like to use, etc.

Your job is to start a 'Strategies for Round x' thread and post the following info:

-A link to the main Round x thread.
-Event Card in a spoiler.
-Deck Building Timer with rules reminder in a spoiler.
-Duel Timer with whom we are facing in a spoiler.
-Each deck everyone used last round broken up by Team, in 12 spoilers, or 13 once Team Underworld comes in.

And anything else you think will be helpful for the team to come up with strategies.

[icecoldbro]

we got ourselves acouple days people lets make the best of them i think we should get this finished as soon as possible
ill be testing out some decks

[tinkady]

what would go well against ?
the best counter for i can think of would be unstable gases. which would mean i could take some deflags. but i dont wanna waste the deflags on a random guess. anything good ideas?