Preliminary strategy and possible decks

[pervepic]

I'm quite certain that our Vault building must be based on the actual decks we are planning to use. Currently (when I am writeing this) we can make at least 15 decks. We can take max 24 cards from our element (per card) and max 12 cards from others to our Vault. Our decks and Vault should have at least 50 percent cards form our element.

What kind of decks we should make? We are an element of annoying permanents for many opponent; at the same time we are don't have permanent control ourselves. Therefore we shouldn't rely on our permanents too much (because others will try to play against them anyway) and we should play against their permanents, having permanent control ourselves. Therefore,  duos with ,  ,  are often good for us.

Here you can find out those elements which could be in trouble against Wings: http://elementswiki.co.cc/ability/passive-airborne/

Ok, now I am just gonna throw out some ideas which could be possible decks against other elements. Some of them are pretty good, but others are just in the level an idea and need further development (or should be just abandoned). It is always good to have different kind of decks and not to be predictable. I also mentioned here which specific elements I had in mind when designing those decks. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad against other elements I didn't mention or that they will win for sure against those I mentioned.

1. Against  and  :, ( )

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  would like to have permanent control against us; besides  combo is very natural and good for them anyway. This deck is basically against  -  duo. If  starts to stall with the Dissipation Shield, then hopefully this single Arsenic has done its job already .

If this deck meets  as a main element, then maybe it should have 1 more Pendulum (because of Pests). And in both cases it is usually good not to play Owl's Eye or Arsenic out before it can be flied.
2. Against  ( ,  )

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Well, this one is a bit slow but it heals at least and goes through Bone Walls effectively. It probably loses to speed poison, but I wouldn't afraid of that too much, since  knows that already 1 Owl's Eye would ruin their plans of poisoning.    -s combo with  is more probable therefore.

This deck may be effective against  and  too. Empathic Bonds can heal even more than Miracles do.
3. Against  ( ,  )

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The plan here is the same as in previous deck (breaking through Bone Walls), but this deck tries to fulfill it's goal quicker and without healing. It may outrush several slow decks, and because of it's relatively cheap cost of critters, it is not so vulnerable to  -th Eartquakes (and can outrush some  decks too). But in case of  it should probably have 1 additional Pendulum. Now, probably I'm not gonna use it, since this is rush that is not rush enough.
4. Against  ,  ,  ,  ,  , 

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5of 5of 5og 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5uq 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut

Universal deck, but Vampires are far better if upgraded. Therefore it is a good deck for me to play.   

5. Against ,  ,  ,  , 

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5of 5of 5og 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5uq 5ur 5uu 5uu 5uu
Again, quite universal deck. Works well if totally unupped, too.

6. Against  ( )

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Although I am not a big fan of unupped Wyrms (they are too expensive and weak), this deck has them because of the possibility of Gravity Shield. If there is no that kind of danger, Wyrms should probably be replaced with Dragons. Wyrms are considerably better when upped though (a deck for me again?).
7. Against  ( ,  ,  )

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This one is meant to crush any deck that needs a lot of quanta to work properly. Again, Wyrms may be replaced with Dragons. But if this deck meets  or  , it still may even better with Wyrms, because Rewind-Basilisk Blood doesn't hurt so much.


8. Against   ,  ,  ,  , 

 

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4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vo 5od 5od 5of 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu9. Against  ( ,  )

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The idea here is pretty obvious - to try to neutralize Airborne creatures. It might work as a surprise-deck against  , because they may think that we don't use Wings anyway (because all their critters are Airborne).
10. Against  ( ,  ,  ,  ,  )

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A simple and universal deck. Something like this (or similar) may be doubled. Now I added a Nymph there.
11. Against  ( )

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A good deck against  and  . Gravity pull is for Titans (in order to absorb damage). Nevertherless, if someone manages to predict our Flying Weapons decks, we are most certainly lost. It is too easy to counter those. Therefore we just can't make too many of decks like that (with Flying Weapons).
12. Against  ,  , 

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61u 621 621 621 621 621
A semi-stall deck. We should certainly take Phase Shields, because these are overpowered.
13. Against  ,  , 

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4vf 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vo 4vo 5od 5od 5od 5of 5of 5of 5og 5ol 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu
This deck tries to discoordinate  -s quanta and destroy Pillars with the Butterfly.
14. Against  ,  , ( )

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Who is healing more?  Now modified.

I didn't try to take away a deckbuilder's work with that, I just offered some ideas here. If anyone has good thoughts about decks we should (or shouldn't) use or ideas how to improve decks I made, please write about that.

Our Vault-building must be based on our preliminary decks, but we still have some freedom here - we can convert up to 12 cards (per round) from our Vault to Pendulums/Pillars. So we don't have to worry about Pillars at least. It is very good to have some backup cards, especially from the elements we use at least in 2 decks ( ,  ,  ,  ). Basically, our Vault should have Pillars for 9 rounds plus other cards we use in decks, plus backup cards.

Btw, there is a team Rainbow coming, so some Black Holes for them.

[Klaymore]

What about a deck based on Unstable Gas as main source of damage? That would probably be too risky against teams which element have permanent control but might work nicely if not. This is what i came up with:

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[pervepic]

Sure, it could work against  and  for example and probably it would be a good idea to take some UG-s to the Vault. But, compared with the classical Dragons, Ug-s are still weak: a Dragon needs only hit twice and he has already done almost the same damage as UG (actually UG needs 2 turns to make damage too). And what is more important - he continues to do the damage. Azure Dargons are great also because they have 6 HP - it is much harder to get rid of them (compared with Dragons with less HP and Ug-s).

[Klaymore]

Yes I kinda intuitively though that UG's dmgs weren't good compared with creatures, what I had in mind really was facing decks with tough CC or stall (Maxwell, Arctic Squid, Dimensional Shield etc etc...) , in that case it might really be better than a dragon. Somehow it would be betting on an opponent with CC rather than PC.

[truddy02]

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I was thinking of something like this against  .  It probably needs some adjusting because I haven't done a whole lot of testing with it.  Also a possibility is hope instead of fog shield (especially against darkness) or maybe one of each.

Edit:  OK I just realized it is almost exactly the same as one of the decks you put up but I think the addition of holy lights would be good against death.  Out heal any poison and kill their creatures with holy light.

[Istari.]

Well I think our main goal should be to figure out what cards will be good for us, obviously max Owl's eye, firefly queen and wings is obvious. But we should narrow down exactly what we want and figure out what we can afford. Which should be alot since we have a big card advantage.

[truddy02]

Just some notes on our starting vault:

1.  We should start with at least 493 cards (500-19 for bids +12 for doing propaganda page) We could get 6 or 12 more if we finish first or second in the propaganda competition.

2.  These 14 decks are a total of 427.  So if we take all 14 as is we can still take 66 more cards.

3.  Taking these 14 decks would keep our vault legal except for azure dragons.  These decks have a total of 29 azure dragons, limit is 24.

4.  The limit on off element cards is 12.  Using all of these decks uses no more than 6 of any off element cards so there is plenty of room for there.

5.  The only other air cards that are even close to approaching their limit are Owls Eye at 17 and Flying weapon at 15.

[chum3]

Just a quick thought (I'm a little busy tonight): For decks 4 & 5, the comment is use against  . Both utilize vampiric creatures. Is that the best idea, considering Entropy has Antimatter? I guess you can always CC your own creatures (which is definitely a strategy, and something Air can do well with Owl's Eye).

Also, the Fractal Spiders deck: I like how it uses both Wings and Phase Recluses, but can we pull it off successfully with pendulums? I see the main problem being that you can only play your spiders half the time because of pendulums (half the time it's creating Aether quanta, the other half Air), so if you Fractal Spiders on a turn that ends with you producing Air quanta, you won't be able to play spiders the next turn either (making for 2 turns in a row with no creature output, since Fractal saps all your Aether quanta).

I haven't tested any of these decks yet, but I'll try to get the chance to do so on the weekend.

[pervepic]

Just a quick thought (I'm a little busy tonight): For decks 4 & 5, the comment is use against  . Both utilize vampiric creatures. Is that the best idea, considering Entropy has Antimatter? I guess you can always CC your own creatures (which is definitely a strategy, and something Air can do well with Owl's Eye).

Also, the Fractal Spiders deck: I like how it uses both Wings and Phase Recluses, but can we pull it off successfully with pendulums? I see the main problem being that you can only play your spiders half the time because of pendulums (half the time it's creating Aether quanta, the other half Air), so if you Fractal Spiders on a turn that ends with you producing Air quanta, you won't be able to play spiders the next turn either (making for 2 turns in a row with no creature output, since Fractal saps all your Aether quanta).

I haven't tested any of these decks yet, but I'll try to get the chance to do so on the weekend.

Definitely good points here. Fractal - Spiders is better with some Aether Pillars (I'll change it now).  And  is kinda problem anyway; actually I'm seeing only deck 1 as a direct counter to it but I just thought some  decks might be usable there. About Antimatter - this is definetely a problem but may be not too big problem, since it's price is relatively high. Actually with  I still meant rather their duo with  . And yep, Owl's Eyes can kill themselves and because of that deck 10 would be good against  (along with the a deck which Klaymore made); I'll add it to the anti- list.

Just some notes on our starting vault:

3.  Taking these 14 decks would keep our vault legal except for azure dragons.  These decks have a total of 29 azure dragons, limit is 24.

damn, seems like more UG-s and Wyrms then

Well I think our main goal should be to figure out what cards will be good for us, obviously max Owl's eye, firefly queen and wings is obvious. But we should narrow down exactly what we want and figure out what we can afford. Which should be alot since we have a big card advantage.

That's exactly the problem with the Firefly Queen type of decks - they are too obvious. I have always some mixed feelings about them. Remember that each team can use 12 Phase shields for example. What would be more conventient than using them against stupid  , who thinks that he can outheal them with the spamming Fireflies? Besides, healing Firefly Queen deck is slow and assumes that opponent doesn't have cc AND pc. I would be glad if we won't have more than 1 Firefly Queen deck.

About Wings... Actually not too many elements have trouble with them and who do play against them anyway. Rather, let's max Phase Shields ourselves.

[Klaymore]

Here is a deck I just tested for a bit and seems to work quite nicely. Basically you get the Fireflies out first to get some dmg and pump up your light quantum to get fat pegasus fast. It can be quite fast and make use of 2 nice synergies between Light and Air. I think this could work against  , maybe some others: what do you think?
Concerning the vault we would need quite some new cards with pegasus, blessings and fireflies.

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[pervepic]

Great, if you let me to play this deck and I can use upped Fireflies and sneak some deflags in But then there is not so much  quanta anymore...

Yea, I know, I am quite stubborn about this permanent control thing...but trust me, I am usually correct 

[truddy02]

I think it might be a good idea to also take a few mirror shields or emerald shields.  Otherwise some elements like darkness and fire may choose to use lots of bolt decks against us if they realize we don't have them.

I also like Klaymore's deck.  I have ran something like that before and it can be pretty effective.  Stand alone fireflies tend to not be used as much but I think they can be quite effective in duos with air or when upped fire, without having to put as many pillars in.