Preliminary strategy and possible decks

[Dogg]

Ah   Well, just PM me on chat any time, or even better, here on the forum, since there is a better chance i will see the msg.

[truddy02]

I just saw that the propaganda bonus won't e given until the beginning of round 2.  This means we have to pick 12 cards we were going to put in the vault and hold them out until round 2 starts.

[pervepic]

Ok, we should get those 12 cards anyway, so we can just add 6 Animates and 6 Deflags, for example, a bit later. The banner is not finished though, I asked Hyroen (who is the original author of it) yesterday to write your names to it, but he has not answered yet.   

Truddy, if you have  , maybe you could start with the Vault (putting cards there). Just leave 6 Animates, 3 Deflags and -I don't know - 3 Dragons out first.

[QuantumT]

I'll dive into the specific decks in a minute, but one thing that needs to be considered when choosing to place a deck into the vault is not only how many elements it's strong against, but also how many it's playable against. If it isn't playable against at least 3-4 elements, it's probably not worth spending the cards on unless we can't come up with anything better.

Here's one deck that I don't think I saw posted that's tested fairly well for me:

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As far as specific cards go, I'll talk about what I think of a couple of the big air cards and how many we should take.

Azure Dragon- Basically the only heavy hitter air can bring to the table. Decent hp that survives every base level removal spell (rage potion is the biggest at 5), so it will generally take 2 cards to remove. Take 24

Owl's Eye- Probably the signature card of air. Easily among the best creature control in the game. Potential for virtual shutdown of creatures when combined with Flying Weapon, but still very strong even with only one. I recommend that any deck that doesn't have other weapons to be using has 2 in it. Take 20-24

Flying Weapon- Flying weapon decks can be very strong, but if they're predicted they have no chance, as reverse time completely destroys them and is cheap enough to be played off of the mark alone (the exception to this is a flying morning star deck, which obviously has no problems with reverse time). The flying morning glory deck is sturdy enough that I recommend we take 2 copies of it to the vault.

Fog Shield- A very good card. Cuts damage received more or less in half, and only costs 2 to boot. Similarly to Owl's Eye, I recommend that any deck that doesn't have other shields to be using takes 1-2. Take 10-15

That's it for the cards I have specific recommendations for. Now for some others.

Wings- Can be a very stifling card against some decks. Depending on what your opponent is playing, it can sometimes stop them dead in their tracks. Strong rush decks like golem rush and shrieker rush almost just fold upon a wings being played as there is often nothing they can do.

I'll try and post about the decks themselves as soon as possible. I've just had some stuff going on in real life that has limited my available time somewhat recently.

[QuantumT]

I haven't had time to put in a large amount of testing for the decks but here are some first impressions:

1) Seems reasonable. The Owl's Eyes will be able to feed the bone walls, and even if they get the shield out to be able to stall you, chances are decent that you can win by decking.

-Another possible variation of death/air is a wings/death spider deck.

2) A decent deck. I've never been the biggest fan of firefly queen because of how slow it is, but against certain opponents that let it build up it can be strong. One thing I have a problem with is that hope and bonds seem to be fighting for the same position, and since e bonds will come out sooner I think the Hopes can be dropped. A couple rustler can also help feed the queens. Right now it also seems a bit quanta heavy and a little lacking in CC. I'd recommend -1 pend -2 hope +1 OE +2 Rustler.

3)Actually better than it might initially appear. It's capable of getting some fairly quick kills (I got several 6 turn wins), so you might be able to catch some people off guard with it. Obviously it has problems with CC, and shouldn't be used in matches where the opponents are likely to have a decent amount of CC.

I'll get to the rest of the decks when I can (probably tomorrow).

[pervepic]

Ok, thanks QuantumT.

About your deck. This is actually a combo I thought about too. Does your deck needs really those 2  Pillars there? It seems to use more  than . But sure, it is a great deck. Now we have basically a choices to make: if we are gonna use this one, then we have to abandon something similar. The closest one is my deck 14, (useing  and Miracles, no permanent control), but then there might be a trouble because we are useing 3 (!) Flying weapon's decks.  The second possibility is to abandon Flying Titans. I personally like Flying Titans because they defend and go through shields (no need perm control). But I agree again that rewinds just kill that deck (although they must predict it first!). There is also a possibility also to abandon Klaymore's deck.

Also thanks for the testing decks, but sadly enough I already thought about trowing away my deck nr 3 . But I might reconsider my decision though. In makeing deck 2 I actually kept mind  and its highly probable combo with  ; therefore it has a bit more Pillars and Hope along with Bonds (might be getting Stealed, Hope is for avoiding Vampires).

I also agree about the cards we should take in the Vault, but there is no chance that we can take less than 24 Flying Weapons there. You just said that my deck nr 1 is fine and you made a Flying Weapon's deck youreself... Even if we abandon Flying Titans, then still decks like 10 can use casually like 2-4 of them without being severely harmed by rewinds.

[chum3]

Super apologies for not being around and posting  . I had to take care of some non-Elements things in my life.

I liked QuantumT's deck; Morning Star's immaterial ability is great in preventing Rewinds/creature control (and the only things that would be of bother are Fire Shield and Thorn Carapace, which aren't that bad because of the 7 HP). Tested it against AI3 and it works well too. Haven't tested it without the 2 air pillars (as opposed to adding 2 more air pillars), although I do like having a steady source of air quanta for the Owl's Eyes.

There's a lot to discuss, so I'll be posting more soon. I just have a jumbled mind right now.

[truddy02]

If we can just find room in our extra cards for 5 morning stars and a miracle, we can take QuantumT's deck as a sort of alternate deck to some of the flying weapons and light decks because we don't want to run too many of either per round or we start to become predictable.  We could even make this deck without adding a miracle as long as we don't run it at the same time as deck 14.  I will also start working on putting what we have into the official vault.

Edit: Vault is updated with all current cards.


While updating the vault I realized the extra cards only added up to 124 cards (I recounted twice).  This means we have two more cards we can add.  If we just took out say 3 phase shields we could add 5 morning stars and make QuantumTs deck available.  Or we could add 2 butterfly effects and use QuantumTs deck in place of another one.

[chum3]

Just used decks 5 and 8. Both worked fine against AI3. My question for #8, though: is 1 Butterfly Effect enough? If we're going to have some sort of PC, we might want to have at least 2 in that deck.

Also, random comment: Black Holes can be useful for more than just Team Underworld (they also have the potential to be used against Immolation decks, so particularly against Fire).

[QuantumT]

I don't think the miracles in my deck are strictly necessary. I put them there because it seems like it could be helpful to stall out for the morning stars to be able to do their thing, but the cost is also very high at 15, so I'm not sure how useful they are. It might be better to just replace them with dragons to speed up the deck.

[truddy02]

I put 2 dragons back in the vault so we are filled out for now.  We can still make changes but I didn't want to get stuck 2 cards short when the vault time runs out. 

[pervepic]

I made some minor changes in the Vault (put Glories in, added some fogs and Butterflires), took out few  Dargons, Miracles, Pegasuses, 1 Pendulum (deck 2 can have 1 less) and 2 air Dragons (we can put them back later) but sadly I clicked somewhere and this card counter stopped working