Didn't mean to cause you pain 10. Any more constructive criticism?
Ok since you didn't mean to cause me pain, I'll go over it more constructively.
While the deck was plain and boring - it was about the only deck at the time that could summon enough stall power to survive wearing down a false god's 200 HP. This is really the principle behind every Anti-False God deck in this list, find a way to survive long enough to win. I believe that originally the deck used phase dragons and PU, but when Dragons became immaterial it shifted the focus from massed beatsticks to untouchable ones. The win rates with this deck were atrocious (iirc in the ballpark of 20% or less) but they were the best that was on offer at the time.
Mono Aether being used as the only god farmer in the beginning is true, but why such an awful build? 6 Immortals? Also, pretty much the only ones who used more intensively it were people who had Lobotomizers (not many - they were extremely rare back then), as that would at least allow you to beat Fire Queen once in a while.
I believe that originally the deck used phase dragons and PU, but when Dragons became immaterial it shifted the focus from massed beatsticks to untouchable ones.
To clarify this, there used to be a deck that used (non-immaterial) Aether Dragons with PU as a rush. This was before FGs existed. The same patch that introduced FGs also made the Dragons immaterial. The PU-Dragon deck was used against AI3 and in PvP, the mono Aether Dim Shield stall against FGs and in PvP. Both decks were very notorious in PvP and in Top 50, and had lots of Aether Pillars, but aside from that they were pretty much completely different.
We began to hear on the forums of a mythical deck with 75%, some claimed 85% or even better win rates.
The highest that was ever claimed back in the day was 85%. The highest believable account would be around 80%. Much later, a lot after Sundial was nerfed some people said there were winrates up to 90% which is weird (but not true).
Then there is SG's original deck, which was groundbreaking but not something anybody used after a couple weeks as it contains a lot suboptimal cards. Here is a streamlined version with Entropy Mark (which quickly became the most popular build, at least with forum goers):
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52n 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 71b 71b 74b 74b 77f 7am 7am 7do 7do 7n3 7n3 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7t9 7t9 8pjAnd a Time Mark version which remained popular (with myself for example).
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52n 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u6 6u6 71b 71b 74b 74b 74b 7am 7am 7do 7do 7n3 7n3 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7t9 7t9 7t9 80d 8psEternity and Pulverizer became "the" weapons to have because of their use in these decks.
Eternity and Pulverizer were never 100% staples in these decks. Pulverizer would have been good but strongly conflicted with Otyugh for Gravity quanta. It only started seeing massive play with CCYB. Eternity was sometimes used in Entropy bows as a safety net against decking out, but many builds didn't include it as it pretty much could not do anything else - Time quanta were too scarce for offensive use. The Timebows had less danger of decking out and were completely fine with just eating/Fire Storming all the opponent's creatures and using their Time Quanta to draw.
other Anti-False God rainbow decks built on the same principles that continue to be built and used to this day, nearly 3 years later.
SGbow style decks nowadays are pretty much dead. SGbow went for full control over the game, meaning the aim was to cripple the FG's board completely and then finish the job with mutants. Nowadays most decks just go for some defense mechanism that tries to minimize interaction (i.e. let the FG do whatever he wants) and kill with untouchable damage (Poison, Dune Scorpions) or an OTK. The last FG deck that played out similarly to SGbow was IGT.
3) Sundial Gets Broken Eventually the power of this card was realized and thus the first "Firestall" deck was born.
List: Explosions were not used much, Mirror Shield is missing - two of the more beatable FGs (Fire Queen and Miracle) had Reflective Shields.
Secondly the deck was crap - in addition to Hermes, Rainbow, Morte and Scorpion ranched it pretty badly as well, Graviton and Chaos Lord were difficult and the other FGs sometimes outrushed you as well. Note that Sundial cost 2
to activate so you couldn't draw every turn. It was a nice change of pace but not nearly as efficient as the Rainbows.
4) The end on an Era When sundial was finally nerfed (and yes, yes it needed it). The shockwaves that went through the community were huge. Players quit the game in frustration at the now massive difficulty the false god's presented. Without sundial the easy answers were gone, and while a few people played SGbows or other rainbow decks they were a shadow of what they had been. It was during this time that Shard of Gratitude moved from being a "collectors only" item and became a staple in many decks. This opened a whole new series of Anti-FG decks and sparked a return to many of the rainbow decks of the past.
A deck that really ought to be mentioned here is the PuppyChow FG deck, it was for months the absolute go-to deck for FG farmers.
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52n 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 71b 71b 74b 74b 77f 7do 7do 7gp 7n3 7q5 7q5 7q8 7t9 80h 80h 8pjEven though Puppy Chow vastly overestimated its winrate (topped at about 50%), it was certainly one of the best-performing decks at the time (and also still very reminiscient of the SGBow).
CCYB and RoL Hope are obviously legit.
Eternal Chaos on the other hand gained some popularity but didn't offer a big improvement in winrate while also being very slow. It tested pretty badly in the
FG deck efficiency study.
Which is something that should definitely be mentioned in the article, the study created an excellent snapshot of which decks were effective and which weren't at the time.
On the other hand, a deck that should definitely be mentioned is IGT:
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6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 7n2 7n2 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q0 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q7 7q8 7q8 7q8 7q8 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7qe 80b 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80h 80i 8puIt gained popularity a little after Eternal Chaos and was the first deck after the Sundial nerf to rise significantly above the 50% winrate threshold (and was actually confirmed by independant testers to do so), easily reaching 60% and more, at the price of somewhat slow games.
A modification of it, Ghostal, even solved this problem by eschewing the full board-control plan in favour of a quick Fractal-Ghost rush. It became one of the best-performing decks in the FG-efficiency study.
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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 8puTwo decks that could be worth mentioning are Mono-Aether, which (re)gained some popularity for some time and Liquid Antimatter which was playable both unupgraded and upgraded. Another famous almost-unupgraded FG farmer was Flay'Em.
Shak'ars
Shak'ars gained some tremendous popularity for some time. A lot of this was due to the creator (Jangoo) writing a beyond-awesome teaser for the deck. The deck itself had some hype but did not perform very well in the FG efficiency study. Moreover it was discovered that Sundials are just strictly better than Precognitions.
but games were blisteringly fast, usually over in less than 5 minutes.
less than 3 minutes, with 5 minutes you are already getting into IGT territory.
Cloaked Dragon (...) Win rate was fairly solid 50% - 60% (iirc)
A solid 40-50. Ok, nitpicking there.
The new decks are obviously ok, FG farming has become a little less relevant nowadays as people can farm Arena which yields a little less money gain per time but multiple times the score, usually making it more attractive. Oh and I don't see a Sundial in the last deck.
Poll
