Deck ideas

[pervepic]

Just a strategical thought: what if we play in the first round only or almost only with the decks that have some solid permanent control:  Novabows,  ,  and  decks. That would make things a bit easier for us, because then we know what they are preparing against and we can do quite opposite things in the second round - play our decks that won't have permanent control at all (rushes, healing decks, stalls etc). Just a thought...

[TuckingFypo]

For convenience, this is the timer for how long we have to build our vault and roughly plan our decks.
No more time, apparently.

@plastique
This could be a moot point, but because immo/novabows are fast, we want access to RT's as fast as possible.  We also have the option to convert those time pendulums into air ones if needed.  Wings, ehh...I thought would help versus Shriekers; now that I think about it it could be a bit redundant.

@Pervepic
Again this could be a moot point, but I think that's sort of a gamble.  If we get unlucky and lose enough of those first round matches along with all our PC cards, the other teams could realize that we could no longer manage to have PC in our decks and use that against us.

I think the next best step is to look at what other popular decks we could be facing against and to make sure we have at least one check against each or most of them. 

[DrunkDestroyer]

In total we have 369 cards to play around with before any other propaganda bonues. (If needed, we can add a few more novas/whatever from this).

That is a grand total of 12! 30 card decks. (and 9 spare cards, probably pendulums, or rewinds/ect to splash in our monos).

Eventually we're going to have to decide how many decks we want to serve each purpose, and which ones. (I doubt we will be using two exact copies of anything. Maybe two entropy/darkness/rainbows, but all of those are already 6 decks!)

Sample. Not to be taken with any weight whatsoever.


2 x Grabbow
2 x Darkness Duo
1 x Entropy Duo
1 x Death Duo (Spiders)
1 x Light Stall (40-42 cards!!!)
1 x Life Duo
1 x Flying Tridents
1 x Fire Duo
1 x Air Rush (w/ Deflags)

11 decks. Looking up at that, I would say that it's wrong, we would probably want two Air decks, and the Life/Water/Light duos (which are unnamed and unspecific) could be anything else, and could be tweaked with. It doesn't include a lot of decks I want to put in, but it shows the general idea of what we are going to have to do.
I like Perves strategy idea - if we do that, R2 they will be expecting all the War #2 greats, and we can bust out some new styles

(I have to confess that the flying Trident deck was actually one of Legit's, given to me before the War. I just threw it into my brainstorming PM, and copied pasted it without crediting. whoops, good job Legit!)

@Bloom.

Just some basic strategy notes in terms of deckbuilding - try to use  pendulums when applicaple, because they can be reused in every other Duo, while life pendulums can only be used with life. (Also helps to reach the 50% air cards rule which we're bound by)

I like the nightmares in the darkness duo, as well as the fireflies to duo with light. I'd be a little hesitant using Immolations though-specially with Phoenixes, with the nerf coming up and such.


@TuckingFypo (If I was a couple seconds faster I wouldn't even be writing this ).
I've been thinking that we will likely face Ghostmare from Darkness (and possibly time), who know its a strong deck and know rewinds are powerful vs Air.
Grabbows are hugely popular, although being team Air I don't know how many we'll be facing. Poison stalls are as popular as ever though, and I think we might go against a few of them.

Looking through round 1 of last war, Team Air went up against:  Miracle Ice Bolt Stall    Fractal Scarabs (rainbow, with 3 RTs)  Duo with Otyughs Chargers, Momentum, carpace adren scorps.  Stone Skin stall  EQ devs Gargoyles  TU dragons and dimshields  Fractal chargers and dimshields . And that seems to be it. Not an accurate indication of what teams this time will use though.

[pervepic]

@ TuckinFypo I don't think that these decks, if made normally, could lose very much. As I mentioned  and  decks are well tested in War 2; they both lasted very long (we had 2 of both of them, or even 3  decks, we didn't get the second place just by accident there). Novabows are well tested by other teams. And now we can play decent air decks feeded by fire mark with some explosions for example . That was quite dangerous to do in the previous wars, because there was a danger to lose very important hitters what air had - Dragons. Now a possibility of having upgraded Wyrms helps a lot. So we can afford more mono-like decks, since war doesn't last so long anymore and we have enough hitters.

Even if some decks will lose in the round 1, they still have to prepare against those decks they know we have for round 2. They will use Google Docs to pick decks. So we can relatively peacefully play whtever we want. Besides, they don't know what we actually discarded, and also the element of salvage should confuse things.

I'm not very sure what to do against Ghost of the Past - Rewind decks. Discords, Antimatters and Maxwells could help. Some kind of massive creature control, maybe.

@ DD, I think that now when we can convert a lot, we could take 9 decks with the quanta producers and 5 decks without them to the vault, so 14 decks approximately.

@plastiqe : I totally agree about Fog - it has decide the fate of the battle so many times. Another very good card is Owl. Wings are more situational and teams usually send us airborne critters anyway. So, Wings are usually good only with the spiders, especially in the beginning of the war, because team can choose what kind of critters to send against us.
About the Rage Pots - these are not necessary but still better that Shockwaves, since many critters have 5 Hp. Besides, people know that we have SW.

And i think that it's good not to use UG and Sky Blitzes and unupped Wyrms very much - those are 1 trick ponies. UG is usable only when you have insane amount of cc. It is so slow compared with the Dragons: they make 20 damage with 6 quanta with the 2 turns when Dragons make the same damage with the same time but using 10 quanta. But they continue to make damage. So, after 3 turns a Dragon has done 30 Damage for 10 quanta, but Ug are preparing to make damage for 12 quanta (20 is already done). The point is that the 1 single Dragon is worth the same as spamming 1 UG in every second turn and they eat a lot of quanta. And Sky Blitzes - totally emty card at he beginning of the battle, when its cost is almost Dragon's cost. I don't know, maybe some decks can have 1 of those, but hardly more.  Compared with Dragons, unupped Wyrms are not very good - for Dragons, it takes some more time to come to play, but when they are already in the game, they catch up the damage Wyrms has made pretty soon (not to mention higher HP). Upgraded Wyrms are much better.

[Robotocracy]

I agree with pervepic in that we should steer away from unnupped wyrms - they're weak and cost-inefficient until you upgrade them.  Sky blitz, also is highly situational and difficult to use.  I do think that UG has certain advantages, but only for specific builds - a creatureless UG deck can work nicely if you surprise an opponent who was counting on CC to pull them through.

I think we should have a few good novabows at the core of our vault.  They're strong decks, and most importantly they're highly adaptable and can be tweaked depending on the circumstances.  If we play mostly    oriented decks, fast rainbows with good control etc. the first round we might be able to test the waters, then take the other teams off guard by shifting strategies the next round.  More specialized decks,  monos and the like can come later.

Here's a deck idea that I like, maybe with more testing it can be used in later rounds:

by Robotocracy

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5lk 5lk 5lk 5ok 5ok 5ok 5ok 5ok 5ok 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 622 622 622 622 80e 80e 80e 8pu

[TuckingFypo]

@Robo
I don't think that you'd need more than two Lobo's, also considering that they aren't a key card in the strategy.  I also don't like the quanta production base, if you're even 1-2 quanta short of a Fractal you'd have to wait two more turns. You could also compare to the version in the OP.

Wyrms are supposed to be upped, which I don't have yet.
GotP is killed by Shockwaves upped or not, and they clog your hand to weaken Nightmares, sort of.  Upped Wyrms have a sort of cheap casting cost to counter Rewinds.  Bonewall is there as a safety net that works with or without Shockwaves, is resilient to Steals, and is card efficient because we're using them in other Air/Death duos too.  It seems a bit slow, but that's because of we can't use Dragons.  The other cards are debatable.

Upped Flesh Spiders>Mummies but are upped cards.
OE or Arsenics could be added, and with Bonewalls I doubt they'll cause any difference when stolen.

by TuckingFypo

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52r 52r 52r 52r 52t 52t 52t 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oe 5oe 5oe 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 8pk

[Robotocracy]

@TuckingFypo
Oh wow, I didn't see that deck in the OP, I feel kind of stupid now.  Mine was just an idea for fractal fireflies, that one is obviously more fleshed out.  Still, I like having a larger number of lobotomizers/electrocuters because I consider them vital to the deck strategy - without being able to lobotomize, maxwell's demon, devour creatures, and infecting creatures are all hard counters, fallen elf, iridium warden, mind flayer, and arctic squid are all soft counters, growth creatures can outgrow your shield, and momentum creatures ignore your shield.


If you're looking specifically to counter ghostmares, have you tried using sanctuary?

[pervepic]

I'm starting to post decks which according for my subjective opinion are 14 decks which I think that would be good candidates for being in Vault. Everybody should criticize those and offer better solutions, because I may be wrong. First 8 have some permanent control as I thought, the rest I'll pick later here . Things can change and the final decision must be made by General.

1. I added a second Fog here, because I don't think that opponents start to play agains us with non-airborne critters already in the first round.

by Pervepic

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4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vo 4vo 50u 50u 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5og 5og 5oi 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 6tu 6tu 6u7 8pj

2. DD-s deck a bit modified. Sneaked 1 BE in here  :

by Pervepic

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4vc 4vc 4vf 4vf 4vl 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vo 50u 50u 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5og 5og 5oi 5oi 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 6tu 6u7 6u7 8pj

3.

by Pervepic

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 590 590 590 590 595 5f6 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5og 5og 5ol 61q 7dm 7mu 7mu 8pm

4. The point here is to get Discord out sooner.

by Pervepic

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4vd 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 595 5f6 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5og 5og 5oi 5on 5rk 7dm 7mu 7mu 8pj

5. Deck removed.

6.

by Pervepic

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5of 5of 5og 5og 5ol 5ol 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 8po

Others can replace 3 Wyrms with the 2 Dragons and a Pillar.

7.

by Pervepic

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5og 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5uq 7td 7td 7td 7td 7td 7td 8pt

For those who can't have 6 upped Vamps, you can add whatever you want (maybe it's good to differ from the next deck a little) - Stiletto (good card!), Nightmares (?!), Dusk or maybe just to add some Air cards (Owl, Fog).

8.

by Pervepic

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5og 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5uq 5uu 5uu 7td 7td 7td 8pt

9. Plstiqe's deck. Depends, if there should be Wings or Fogs.

by Pervepic

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5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 8pn

10. Spiders and Wings. Both me and DD thought about the same thing. Now I'm prefering this, because Spiders Work together well with Wings.

by Pervepic

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52g 52h 52j 52j 52j 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52q 5of 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 713 713 713 8pk

11. Many of you have made different water duos, but mine is basically an anti-Poison deck too. I still think that this kind of deck should have a decent amount of hitters  to break through the Bone Wall, for example. But this is a matter of discussion.

by Pervepic

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5i4 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5jm 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5og 5ol 5oo 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 7mu 7mv 7n5 8pp

A new version:

by Pervepic

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5i4 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5og 5ol 5oo 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 7mu 7mv 7n5 8pp

12. Me and Robot are in the similar opinions about the following deck. Mine is a bit different, since it also has the point of hitting hard and break through the stall walls:

by Pervepic

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5la 5la 5lk 5lk 5lk 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5ok 5ok 5ok 5ok 5ok 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 61o 61o 61o 61u 622 622 63a 63a 80i 80i 80i 8pu

13. Legit's deck. Probably good against big quanta consumers. Maybe even can be changed for better:

by Pervepic

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58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ie 5ie 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 77b 7n8 7n8 8pp

14. DD's deck. Perhaps having 2 Mirror Shield would be a good idea, so different bolts couldn't do anything.

by Pervepic

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5l8 5l8 5ld 5lg 5lg 5lh 5lh 5lh 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5mq 5mq 5mq 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 7k2 7k2 7k2 8pq

If there is room, we could take just some Black Holes for using it in the future. Hi Legit 

[Legit]

1/2. Would it be more efficient to use Dragonflies instead of Micro Abominations for BE targets? Otherwise I think the Entropy duos look solid.

3/4. Nova rushes: I don't like them, but because we're a team I figure it's a necessity.

5. Yeah, we need at least 1 Unstable Gas deck. Perhaps take a nymph or two for the vault because we can. Also, Shockwaves?

6. Good.

7. Perhaps.

8. Well-rounded Darkness duo looks great.

9. Rewind is a killer here, but adrenastaves will do well against creature-based decks.

10. Great.

11. Yep, Water duo we need one of those.

Also I think we need at least 2 stalls (I like the Air/Light and Air/Aether). And 1 Hope deck.

My commentary is so in depth.

EDIT:
We have 369 cards in the vault, +12 from propaganda if I remember correctly, so we can probably take at least 10 solid decks (including stalls) and have a few cards left over for pillars and filler cards like BH. Keep in mind that cards like Dragons and Owl's Eye are present in the majority of decks posted above, but that doesn't mean we need to take an abundance of them, because we won't use all of them at any given time. Plus, we keep 6 key cards from all losing decks this time around (Although this means more converting and focusing on the decks we really need).

[pervepic]

I'm not sure how good this  stall is was what I posted, but this or something similar may be useful and could be put in, but then we should take something out, I guess that 1 of the 2 relatively simlar decks then. And we need dicussion which deck isn't killer enough to go out and some testing.

[Robotocracy]

I'm going to start running tests on Pervepic's 14 decks and keep tallies on their wins/losses - if anyone else wants a list of possible decks to be tested we can add them too.  I'm probably going to play them against Ai3 a bunch of times; although this isn't a completely realistic simulation of pvp competition, playing it against pvp1 wouldn't allow use of unnupped cards and playing pvp2 would end up facing a bunch of decks with every card upgraded (plus it would take much, much longer).  If a few other team members want to help out we can split up the decks between us and test them individually.

[DrunkDestroyer]

Playing around with some of the decks right now, notes coming as I play them. Against AI3, it would be slightly embarrassing to come against Higs or some other war member. Not sure if its happening this time too, but some people camp out on spectate to try catch team members playing each other. Once we have an idea of what decks to expect, we can make use of the Trainers export deck function.


Deck 3 seems to be as strong as it was before.

Deck 5 I am a little worried about. Even with good draws, creature spams end up beating it out, since 6 UGs are spread out and OEs don't always come as early as you'd like. Plus, immortal, High HP, Phoenix, Creatureless, Voodoo! decks all have a huge advantage there. Not sure whether its worth taking, even if we add nymphs.

Deck 7 (Fire) again, I just don't trust with the immo nerf, since it wont be possible to one turn a phoenix. Not truly dominant in the (very) few games I played.

Deck 10, confused as to why the second arsenic is upped rather than another Recluse.