Quantum Flash | Quantum Flash

[The_Mormegil]

It's a little OP, by my point of view. Basically, the upped version means that, with a little quantum convertion, you can thin up your deck to crazy levels. Imagine the Shrieker Rush deck with this card.

5x Shrieker
5x Graboid
1x Long Sword
6x Earth Flash
3x Time Flash
10x Stone Tower

Mark of Time


You can cycle 9 cards out of 30, making it effectively an insanely fast deck. You would have only 14 cards in your deck at the start of the game (the flashes are counted out since you can start playing them by turn 2 with just one tower). And the quantum convertion can actually be useful...

Or, rather, start thinking about the RoL+Fractal deck. 6 Aether Flashes mean that the deck can be built with 24 cards. Or any mono-deck: it's 6 less cards in the deck. It's a cycle out mechanic that reminds me of old sundials... this can't be good.

I think this is OP, as it allows for too much speed on rush decks, on mono decks, even on rainbow decks and well, on decks in general. I think this is OP because I would play it in every single deck I made.

[ratcharmer]

If my math is right something like this can kill 2 turns after it draws its first nova and is likely to kill 3 turns after it draws its first novas. The ability to weave your quanta is nuts, assuming you have every kind of quanta in your pool you have a 0.16% chance of it taking from either of the kinds of quanta you want. The fact that over half your deck draws cards should make it insanely consistant too.
 
5 Aether Flash
6 Fire Flash
7 Assorted flash (all 7 should be different types)
3 Ruby Dragon
2 Parallel Universe
6 Nova

Mark Fire

Well, at the very least you misplaced a decimal point in your % calculation (~17% chance of pulling from aether or fire on each random quanta, not 0.16%). This means that you'd lose roughly 1 or every 2 flashes used.*edit* I just realized my math was off too. I was treating it as if each flash only cost one quanta. It actually works out that 43% of the time one of the flashes will draw at least one or , assuming you never run out of quanta in any of your pools.

Additionally, I've tested this deck out using playing cards (king = dragon, joker = PU etc. . .) and I can NOT get this deck to work at all, even assuming the flashes never pull from or . Think of it this way- each fire flash provides a max of 3 and each dragon costs 12 . Thus you can produce a max of 18 with the flashes, which means you can only play ONE of your dragons. PU is better than the dragons, but you need to have a dragon in play to use it.

A lot of time this decks itself out before it does 100 damage, and it doesn't seem reliable at all.

[Ant-n-ero]

Well with the card draw and potential unlimited play, I'd have to say it is overpowered as you can cycle as much of the deck as you wish providing you have starting quanta, which makes any deck with 6+ of these extremely strong....

BUT, would you really use more than 6 of these? try it out in a deck you think will work, like someone said, by using playing cards, it may take some time but then you can see the desired effect....
if you are playing Dragons, you won't have enough quanta to play each dragon --> not enough damage --> deck out
if you play low creatures --> not enough total to summon all + not enough damage total --> deck out

this card at most would be used for AI3 speedgrind or maybe a handful in T50 decks/others as starting boosts, nowhere will you see a deck with 12+ of these taht will work consistently, sure you'll get a few 3 or so turn wins (maybe) but it'll be rare...
I think there is a fine balance between too many and too little of these, thus this card may be overpowered stat wis, but in reality it's not that op, just a strong card

[ratcharmer]

Most of the "OP" decks being posted for this would not be workable at all. That being said though, there are a couple of things that make me hesitant to throw my full support behind this:

-It's a HUGE game changer. Introducing these cards would alter gameplay mechanics so dramatically that most currently used decks would no longer be competitive. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is one we need to keep in mind when discussing the card)

-As someone (I think EvaRia?Mormegil) said, I can't see NOT using at least one or two of these in every deck I play. I'm not sure if this is due to it being OP, or simply having a huge variety of uses.

-There are a couple of decks that I am concerned about:
1) Light flashes in rustler decks has come up several times. Basically the idea is you put light flash in a life deck that uses rustler, and you can turn to then back to and double your quanta. I haven't found any really ridiculous decks with this yet, but I haven't tested exhaustively either. To be honest I actually kind of like this one, but I still want to make sure it's balanced.
2 & 3) I'm also really worried about aether flashes in RoL/hope or fractal devourers. Both of these decks produce huge amounts of a second element, which if you could channel into aether you could fractal much more often. Since these are both already really strong decks I'm not sure if this is a good thing.
4) The forth deck I'd be concerned about this in is the fire cremation rush- normally this deck just doesn't use the off-element quanta produced by cremation, so you could toss in fire flashes and basically get free quanta in an already fast deck. Might be possible to get into 2 or 3 turns to kill range.

-It puts even more emphasis on rush decks. This might make me unpopular, but as it stands now I think the game is too focused on speed decks. There are already decks out there that can fairly reliably kill by the 4th turn. This card would allow for decks even faster than that. It's getting dangerously close to first turn kill decks. (which I don't think anyone wants)

Now a few points in defense of the card:
-A deck consisting of a few novas, these and dragons will very rarely get you a lethal dose of dragon on the field before you deck out.

-Any deck that uses more than one type of flash runs into problems. Namely that if you're using multiple types of flash usually you need to draw & play them in the right order. If played in the wrong order or at the wrong time you end up pulling quanta back out of a pool you need it in.

-Trying to get things out quickly with nova & flashes (or something similar) is much less reliable than it seems.
Consider this scenario: I just played a nova and now I'm playing an aether flash. For the first quanta in the cost there is only a 1 in 12 chance that it will pull from . But on the second quanta of the cost, one of my quanta pools is now empty so the odds have gone to 1 in 11 (assuming I didn't lose to the first). Similarly on the third the odds have become 1 in 10. And that's just to play one flash. If I play a second the odds are 1/9 + 1/8 + 1/7. Basically it becomes less likely to work the more quanta you're trying to get early on, especially using novas or cremations.

[TDenverFan]

Personally, I don't think this is OP. Why?

Nova~ +12 Q for Free, +22(NET Gain) Upped, Costs 2
Immotalation~ +18Q for Free but needs a card (Photon,Spark) to play, +20Q Upped For Free, but requires one creature to play
This~ -1 Q, 0Q Gain, Upped. Also, you need A card played before you play this to play it (Quantinum Tower, or 2). And, it doesn't tecnically cause you to gain a card. You play a card, to draw a card. So, your hand size stays the same.

Yes, it will be placed in many (All?) Rainbows, but so is Dimmensional Shield and Hourglass, but neither of those are considedered OP.

[The_Mormegil]

Personally, I don't think this is OP. Why?

Nova~ +12 Q for Free, +22(NET Gain) Upped, Costs 2
Immotalation~ +18Q for Free but needs a card (Photon,Spark) to play, +20Q Upped For Free, but requires one creature to play
This~ -1 Q, 0Q Gain, Upped. Also, you need A card played before you play this to play it (Quantinum Tower, or 2). And, it doesn't tecnically cause you to gain a card. You play a card, to draw a card. So, your hand size stays the same.

Yes, it will be placed in many (All?) Rainbows, but so is Dimmensional Shield and Hourglass, but neither of those are considedered OP.

The problem is NOT quanta production (which is fair, imo). The problem is that this draws a card. If you can draw a card by using a card, than that card wasn't really there. It's like Precognition. Why do you use Precognition in decks like Sacredgirl's AI3 Pillarless Farmer? For speed. For having less cards in your deck. You use it because it's a great card to cycle out your deck. It does absolutely nothing, except making the whole deck thinner.

This is worse: this doesn't even cost quanta (and TIME quanta, nonetheless). You can use it in mono rushes with good effect (think Shrieker Rush with this... 6x are basically FREE, and you can play with 24 cards). You can use it in about any deck. It's just a bad idea, in my opinion.

[TDenverFan]

So the reason it's op is because it's basically a free card? (I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just making sure)

But, if you have just 24 cards, any Quantnum Control will destroy your deck, because you will have very few pillars. Also, with 24 cards, you will not have many replacement cards (I.E., cards you can play after your cards die).

However, I think it could be very useful (Possibly OP) in Fractal decks, because you could comepletely remove Aether  from the deck and simply use these.

[The_Mormegil]

So the reason it's op is because it's basically a free card? (I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just making sure)

But, if you have just 24 cards, any Quantnum Control will destroy your deck, because you will have very few pillars. Also, with 24 cards, you will not have many replacement cards (I.E., cards you can play after your cards die).

However, I think it could be very useful (Possibly OP) in Fractal decks, because you could comepletely remove Aether  from the deck and simply use these.

Well, the main use of these would be in a rush deck. You don't really have to use many pillars in a fractal rush deck (in fact, some good decks are pillarless), and you don't need replacement cards when your ttw is 4...

[TDenverFan]

So the reason it's op is because it's basically a free card? (I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just making sure)

But, if you have just 24 cards, any Quantnum Control will destroy your deck, because you will have very few pillars. Also, with 24 cards, you will not have many replacement cards (I.E., cards you can play after your cards die).

However, I think it could be very useful (Possibly OP) in Fractal decks, because you could comepletely remove Aether  from the deck and simply use these.

Well, the main use of these would be in a rush deck. You don't really have to use many pillars in a fractal deck (in fact, some good decks are pillarless), and you don't need replacement cards when your ttw is 4...

Hmmm.... I see your point. I'm still not convinced it's OP, however what if this change was made:
Both versions cost 4 , but the upgraded version also says: The quantnum consumed when playing this card, if possible, is not (Insert type this flash is. I.E. For Gravemetric Flash, would not consume when played).

Also, what's ttw?

[ratcharmer]

ttw = turns to win

it's basically how to measure how fast a deck is. See link for more details
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,17903.0/topicseen.html

basically mormegil is saying that an already fast deck could get much faster with these.

@mormegil
I don't know as I've seen any pillarless fractal decks o_O

or am I misreading your post?

[TDenverFan]

Oh that makes more sense then, thanks. But how could these really make a rush deck faster? Rushes are mostly mono element, right? So I don't see their use in these.

And also, some people call this OP because it lets you draw your deck, potentially, in 2 turns. Why is this useful? Won't you deck out and lose, then?

[ratcharmer]

Oh that makes more sense then, thanks. But how could these really make a rush deck faster? Rushes are mostly mono element, right? So I don't see their use in these.

And also, some people call this OP because it lets you draw your deck, potentially, in 2 turns. Why is this useful? Won't you deck out and lose, then?

The concern isn't so much the "OMG I decked myself out" decks people keep posting as much as it is using a couple of these to effectively shrink your deck, making it more likely you'll draw the cards you want.

Consider, for instance, the classic cremation rush. This deck is very fast because it uses cremation on a free creature to instantly gain 9 , which let's it bring out high damage creatures very early on. However, cremation also gives 1 quanta of every other element as well, which this deck usually doesn't use (some versions throw in a few cheap creatures from other elements).

Consider what would happen if I put 6 fire flash in this deck. It could be quite possible to get 30 45 damage on the field in your first turn. That's a 4 3 turn kill even if you don't do anything else the entire game.

(assuming a very lucky draw)