Everything below is written for 1.28 and 5-healing shards. The deck never relied very much on shards so I don't think the nerf will have a big effect, either you'll just take it or add a couple for the same overall effect and a small hit in consistency.
This deck is basically a copy of Djhopper :
)'s unupped deck, see this thread (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,29973.0.html). This post is started as a copy of my quick and dirty guide from the third page of the original thread, which I decided to split to its own thread when mixing up the two versions got confusing enough. The guide still isn't quite as polished as I'd like, but check out 10 men's post (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,30623.msg423095#msg423095) and False God Efficiency Study stats (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25609.msg349339#msg349339) (FGES later in this post) for more information.
At the time of writing this I'm at 171 games played with 67 win%, 64 normalized, about 78% of the wins with EM. Updated stats can be found here in this spreadsheet (
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_GB&hl=en_GB&key=0AgxDeoyDoRYZdGltLUNHXzF6WXlMbFUtNnZGcjBwSkE&output=html). FGES has 500 games by 10 men with very similar stats.
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
6rn 6rn 6rn 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q8 7q8 7qe 7qe 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80i 80i 8puHistory of the deck:
- Djhopper builds the unupped version
- Artois tries it exactly the same but upped
- I add 3 shards
- +1 pend -1 tower per 10 men's suggestion
In general, once you've got your first shield and hourglass, you're on. Once you're rolling, it will only take a few turns to draw your deck, leaving 10 cards or so. Later on you might look into filling your hand with spells and discarding extra Eternity, hourglasses and shields. Once you're set, keep producing time quanta and Fractal for ~5-7 Ghosts. Pay attention to the state of your Pendulums so you don't accidentally break your shield chain with a Fractal. A single Eternity is surprisingly effective in shutting down opposing strategies. Even if they do draw one card a turn, they won't actually be able to do a whole lot. If you ever get them draw- and quanta-locked, that's game right there. Eternity also works as a poor man's Lobo against activated abilities and as a superior Lobo against abilities granted by spells.
You'll lose maybe 1 out of... 20? 30? games to simply crapping out with no shields or no hourglasses. It happens less often than you might imagine for a 41-card deck since Shields buy you time to draw into hourglasses and hourglasses cycle through your deck extremely fast, but it does happen. Also you might need to hold back Shards early so you don't fuck up your first Shield drop, or think about the correct order for playing out stuff. The one loss against Miracle was because I played an hourglass instead of Eternity and barely died the turn before getting to 5 aether, and I probably could have won a few more games against permanent control by baiting correctly. Permanent control in general isn't really a big problem if you get started, since they'll just nuke your Eternities and extra hourglasses, leaving shields and shards untouched. Jezebel and Rainbow are an exception as they'll USE those hourglasses to bury you.
Most things you're supposed to do are pretty straightforward to figure out. Two things I'd imagine might not be are that you don't really need more than two or three hourglasses in most matchups, and defensive use of Eternity. Two hourglasses are easily enough to keep your shield chain going and eventually draw your deck, and often you're going to need a large amount of time to go for the kill. By going slow and holding back extra hourglasses you can usually discard some of them and the second Eternity to save quanta, and you'll have your towers running for more turns. Eternity's defensive use is keeping your ghosts active against CC that doesn't instantly kill them. By rewinding and replaying them you can, most commonly, refresh their health against Eagle's Eyes or unfreeze them against squids.
Gods with no answer to shields and no real threats:Destiny - 8W 0L 8EM
Incarnate - 2W 1L 2EM
Lionheart - 5W 0L 5EM
Miracle - 4W 1L 4EM
Morte - 7W 1L 1EM
Neptune - 10W 0L 10EM
Paradox - 6W 0L 6EM
Serket - 8W 0L 6EM
Piece of cake unless you crap out. Just execute your normal gameplan.
Feral bond gods:Elidnis - 3W 0L 3EM
Ferox - 6W 0L 6EM
Fire Queen - 10W 0L 8EM
For some reason people keep telling me these aren't supposed to be good matchups, and I have no idea what they are thinking or doing. Fire Queen I can still understand, but Elidnis shouldn't ever be able to outheal you and against Ferox that's highly unlikely. 10 men's stats from 500 games are 16-0-15 vs Elidnis, 11-1-11 vs Ferox and 10-8-10 vs Fire Queen. I have no idea what's causing the discrepancy between our FQ results and I'm pretty sure I've been very lucky and 10 men very unlucky here, but it's a big discrepancy to chalk up to luck. I do see how you could lose as 10 men described in his post further on this page.
First dig as fast as you can until you find an Eternity, then use it to slow them down. The only perm control these guys have is Elidnis's congeals which only slow you down, FQ's Eagle's Eyes which won't kill your ghosts immediately and FQ's fire bolts which she can't play without fireflies and at first won't kill your ghosts immediately either. Thus you generally want play your ghosts out early to get some leeway before their healing starts to build up.
Unless you won before they set up you'll end up fighting against a huge amount of healing each turn, so respond by building up a huge amount of damage each turn. Your theoretical maximum is Eternity + 2 ghosts + 16 more ghosts from fractals. Don't settle for much less. Don't draw your whole deck immediately so you'll still have shields in deck instead of in your hand clogging up your fractals, and so you won't have to rewind your ghosts just to avoid decking out. Once you've got a decent amount of towers and pends you can just chill and build up time quanta. Against FQ rewind your ghosts after the first hit from EE to keep up your damage output.
Gods with nothing too bad:Akebono - 8W 0L 6EM
Not too many creatures, all expensive. Find a shard or two and an Eternity and he'll choke on his dragons.
Chaos Lord - 5W 0L 3EM
Little CC, 4 pieces of PC. You'll punch through a Dissipation Field np.
Gemini - 2W 1L 2EM
Only three games played. 20-5-17 for 10 men. Nothing very interesting here I think, find an Eternity to rewind his momentums.
Osiris - 4W 2L 3EM
13-3-6 for 10 men. Eternity, even drawn late, limits his Scarab production even if it rarely shuts it down completely. The catapults won't start firing until his field is full and will have a hard time overcoming shards unless he drew multiples.
Seism - 8W 2L 8EM
Bait out his first quakes on single towers and pends and get an Eternity ASAP. When limited to one card a turn his quakes should stay manageable. Of course, sometimes he just draws too many quakes to do anything, even with proper baiting. One game I lost he nuked literally every tower and pendulum in my deck.
Fairly even matchups:Dark Matter - 2W 1L 0EM
Only three games played, 7-7-3 for 10 men. Your plan is to get an Eternity lock before he has too many momentum dudes.
Scorpio - 1W 3L 1EM
You'll need to get set really, really fast. Chrysaoras are stupidly dangerous for you and killing him through permafrost and squids is a pain. Only 4 games played so not too sure about this, 16-10-1 for 10 men so it can't be too bad.
Gods with PC:If you manage to set up, the game should go like I described in the beginning. Sometimes they kill all your stuff before you can start drawing more and you lose.
Divine Glory - 2W 2L 2EM
Eternal Phoenix - 2W 4L 0EM
Graviton - 0W 4L 0EM
Hecate - 3W 2L 0EM
Hermes - 3W 2L 2EM
Octane - 1W 3L 0EM
10 men got much better stats, ranging from 83% wins vs DG and Hermes to 44% vs Graviton. I think most of my losses come from thinking I'll lose anyway if I don't start drawing immediately and thus lose my hourglasses unnecessarily. That might be true for some decks, but this one does have a good chance if you just don't punt it.
Jezebel - 2W 6L 1EM
Going by your usual plan, you can't really let her have hourglasses and you'll also need to dodge the worst nymphs. If you manage to keep rewinding her stuff for a while, you're doing good. 10 men recommends a deckout plan as described here (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,22028.msg331182#msg331182). He went 5-11-4, I haven't tried that myself.
Rainbow - 1W 8L 1EM
Better for you than for most decks, but you'll still lose if he gets going. Again, I'm pretty sure I'm playing this wrong, 10 men is 6-9-5 here.
Bad matchups:Dream Catcher - 2W 4L 2EM
Unlike Lobo, Eternity is the first thing BE'd dudes will kill. It's still possible though. If you manage to start rewinding some expensive dude to keep him entropy-starved, you're probably winning.
Obliterator - 1W 3L 0EM
Like with most other permanent-based strategies, you'll need to draw your anti-momentum thing (Eternity) early-ish and have him not draw a Pulvy.
Decay - 0W 5L 0EM
Probably a skip. I also faced him four times with the shardless version and in those six games, a couple of times
almost got enough aether for a Fractal. 10 men went 2-13-1.
