This one is now doing reasonably well in the Arena, at L39 i gave it 175 hp, 5 upgraded cards and double card drawing.
I changed into this version when it already stood 4 wins 3 losses (and barely in the arena), currently it is 13 wins 4 losses.
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5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 6rn 6rn 6rn 7dh 7ds 8pmSome design decisions:
1) No Earthquakes. At best these slow the enemy down to a crawl, but drawing one late in the game is useless, as the opponent will have gazillions of mana anyway. When keeping the deck the same size, other more critical cards must go, and when increasing the size to fit them, more critical cards have less chance of being drawn. In effect youre slowing yourself down too.
2) Only Phoenixes/Lava Golems as main creatures. The Brimstone is as much a source of mana/creature destruction target as a creature. Phoenixes are reasonably tough as creatures, and Lava Golems can become reasonably tough, if they are ignored for a while. While i could have included other creatures, i chose not to as it would just provide more targets for mass creature control, like pandemonium, plague, rain of fire, etc. The Decks reaction to these is simple, just generate new creatures =)
3) Fire Pendulums. While it could be argued that only pillars is sufficient, as the mark of earth provides 1 mana disruption free, more than 1 mana is needed when multiple lava golems are out. Also, it provides some buffer against enemy decks that mess with your mana, like Discord, Devourer, Black Hole, etc. Another reason for the Pendulums is mana source diversification in case of enemy earthquakes. Usually the more plentyful pillars are targeted, and the 1-2 pendulums are ignored.
Lastly the earth mana pays for the shards just as well as fire mana, although the Arena AI seldoms takes advantage of that fact.
So why not more pendulums? Because every one on the field is only a half source of fire mana, so they also slow you down.
4) Why the shards/fire shields? Well, i have found the cumulative effect of having both seriously slows down the kill speed of certain deck types. The typical Dimensional Shield/Immortal one for example has only 3 turns for every immortal, and one shard out can pretty much keep you healed long enough to score your own kill. Thats the point here, just to delay them killing you long enough to kill them. As long as scarabs are played singly for example, they all will die to the fire shield. Another point for the shards/fire shields is that it keeps your mana/fahrenheits alive longer. There are only so much defrags, steals etc in the enemy deck, so more permanents means the enemy cant kill them all.
5) Lastly, there are 3 seperate roads to victory (Creatures/Firebolts/Fahrenheits) so it is pretty hard to block them all. Even better, the mana flood situation (you draw 12 mana sources out of 14 cards... ) Actually helps the firebolt/fahrenheit kills...
