DL (round 5 forum expert task)

[CrockettRocket]

     Speaking about draw power we first want to start with draw chances of those cards. It get's very confusing, and there's a thread with a bunch of people debating the formula for draw chances. It's often rumored in Kongregate chat that precognition lowers the amount of cards you have in a 30 card deck. This is entirely false. Usually for pillars you can run at minimum 6 for a 30 card deck and expect one pillar in your hand more then 50% of the time. This is what makes pillarless nova decks powerful and viable. If you had smaller then a 30 card deck the percentage would increase. Just because you put in precognitions though in the 30 card deck doesn't increase your chances to get a single nova or pillar at the start. Mind you,(unupped card talk only for right now) precognitions are a bit expensive as well costing 2 time, but you don't have to split up your quanta to use it like a sundial. Bravery costs you 2 fire and you don't have to split it up so using precognition over bravery when you can use both simply because it's rumored to decrease deck size or because you don't require a quanta split should never be your reason to use it.

     The only time you would use precognition over bravery is when the number of CC cards is few or you have low defense anyway. You may also have a deck where seeing the opponents hand at a random time is very useful. The only reason you'd want to use precognition over sundial is because of seeing the opponents hand, and so you don't need to split your quanta. Their is also precognition draws a card instantly, rather then waiting a turn.
     However, there's a time where you want to use sundial over precogniton even if you don't generate light quanta. To determine this we must set cards into three categories. 1.) The card is best used in short duration lasting games. 2.) the card is best used in long duration games. 3.) The card is a spell, and isn't strong or get stronger in short or long lasting games. For example: lightning.

     Now for upped gameplay. The only time you would use unupped sundial over the upped version is to get more consistant quanta generating starts due to mulligan.
     The reason to use sundial over precognition is if you have cards that get stronger over longer durations of time. Like shard of graditude for example. It heals 5 each turn, per shard of graditude. Besides Arsenic and Fharenhite, the max damage a weapon can do is 8, so usually 2 shards of graditudes and one sundial will give you HP back. Nova decks especially get good when your draw power is upped. 1 nova=1 precog and/or 1 bravery and/or 1 sundial.

     Bravery is the jack of all trades for draw power. It gives you 3 cards (with fire mark, without fire mark you draw 2) instantly instead of waiting a turn to draw them. (Of course, that's a double edged sword so you have to be picky when you put in shards of bravery to make sure that point doesn't kill you!) It gives you two more cards then any other draw power and you can combine this draw power with other forms, probably precog, because it's fire instead of time.

    The problem with using a bravery over a precog is that it gives your opponent cards as well, which again is a double edged sword. They might not be able to play cards because their not expecting such a short duration game so their quanta isn't sufficent. Under this logic, bravery would do well in quanta denial decks and hand locking right? Well, it'd be so good it'd be OP, so you can only draw 3 cards if your mark is fire and the opponent has 3 free slots. To combine it with quanta denial would be pre-acting to your opponent to stop them, which is almost never allowed in elements except the card silence.

     But where bravery doesn't have a true counter, which would be filling up your hand, silence does. (and to fill up your hand you'd have to purposely pick cards that you just wont play, which can be rather difficult.

Under this play style OTK's usually kill decks with bravery, except the OTKs would be forced to get their quanta faster then usual. Mostly nova/supernova generated quanta for OTKs then are best. If you exclude nova/supernova decks the remainding OTKs vs decks with bravery in them usually gives bravery decks a 50% win chance in my honest opinion, not a real statistic just a guess.) Silence's counter is sanctary. [P.S. If you have a sanctuary in hand vsing a deck with aether, or gravity or darkness quanta you should probably lay it first among a lot of things. I can't think of an exception to this rule, as the exception would be pretty situational.]

     If you want to do a stall/deck out deck with bravery then bravery can still be rather effective. You'll probably want cards like max wells demon, or artic squid, or pharoah, or miracle, or heal. These are all examples that are good or allow you to react well to the opponent. Healing forms of reacting to your opponent don't typically have a counter. Sosac is an exception to that because they can kill their creatures, antimatter them, or liquid shadow them. Silence can potentially conquar all if their isnt a sanctuary, so healing forms are beat by silence. 
   
     Bravery is the one and only true card that is good is long duration matches as well as short duration and hence is why it's my favorite card. It is a strong card in short or long lasting games though. For example, 6 braveries if all goes according to plan, makes the opponent draw a total of 18 cards. Thats 18 turns the opponent didnt attack you which is 18 turns multiplied by the sum of the turn by turn damage your opponent is doing when you cast bravery. So, lets say the opponent already has his max damage potential already out, which is 40 damage because in upped game play it is typically easy to aquire 40 damage a turn.Then you start using braveries. 18*40=720 HP you didn't have to heal. That's a lot of healing to be done, that you didn't have to do. That's a strong card for long lasting games if you got lucky with timing up your braveries. Imho I think you'll save yourself around 300 HP a game in pvp2 if your using 6 braveries.

     Bravery is also good with silence, it's just you have to get use to them and time up each one well. Usually when you don't need any more key cards for like a combo or something you silence them. Silence is typically then played super early or super late in the game. Meaning you don't want 6 silences and 6 braveries in a 30 card deck. Most 30 card decks shouldn't even use 6 braveries though so that could be a bad example, but you get my point. Bravery is strong in short lasting games because it shortens the number of turns the game lasts and thus does exactly what you want.

    Earlier I said it was rumored 6 precognitions in a 30 card deck essentially makes it a 24 card deck and exploited the very true flaw about this. This paragrapgh may seem contradictory to that because precognition is draw power. Precognition doesnt make your deck smaller, if that was true then I could have a 72 card deck. (I'd have a 60 card deck, then apply 6 precogs, making it now a 54 card deck if precogs made the deck smaller, then apply 6 more cards.) Which is impossible. What makes any deck seem smaller in playing is 2 things. 1.) Just having a lower amount of cards. 2.) Draw power. Why precognition is the only card that is rumored to lower your deck size is because it draws a single card instead of 2 or 3 then it draws it instantly instead of waiting a turn. If people said draw power makes your deck act like its smaller, along with adding on that's if you have the spare quanta, then and only then would I agree with them. Precognition replicates this feeling the most, however, it's not always the best form of draw power.

                                                Have a good day, and draw forth your weapons!

[CrockettRocket]

     In the first category, short duration games: Nova, Discord, Pandemonium, Chaos power, Virus, Armagio, Elite Otygue (The unupped one being 2 lesser HP's doesn't really hold a good front for short games. but Elite Oty can change up a short lasting game with 2 or 3 devorers on medium-heavy hitting creatures of the opponents.) Gravity Pull, Black hole, Earthquake, Basilisk Blood, Rustler, Heal, Adrenalin, Deflagration, Rain of fire, Immolation, Rage potion, Shard of Bravery,Fire bolt if you target the opponents creature that has 3 hp or less, Freeze, Ice bolt if you target an opponents creature with 2 HP or less, but it might freeze the creature so you may go on a limb and freeze something with higher HP even with insufficient quanta. Dry spell, holy light, Blessing, Crusader, if you combine it with a burst damage weapon like titan or with discord. Fog shield, it's good both short or bad, but particularly if you're going short your going to want dusk mantle or fog shield or shield. Thunderstorm, Unstable Gas, Shockwave, Wings, Skyblitz. Reverse time, Precognition, Devourer, Dusk mantle, Steal, Drain Life you can target anything, just usually try to bide your time, but can be used as CC on like a ruby dragon or something with 2 HP or less, but you gain HP back so its usually more effective to use it long duration and I don't approve of using it as a short duration card. Nightmare, Cloak (but you can chain them,) Spark, Dim shield (but you can chain them) Silence.

     Second category, cards that grow stronger over time: All pillars and pendalums, Butterfly effect, Scrodingers cat, Skull shield, more hits against it is higher chance for the creature to turn into a skeli, hence it gets stronger turn by turn (or is best used in longer duration games.) Boneyard, Vulture, Bonewall, Aflatoxin, Deathstalker, Oty, Gravitation firemaster, Chimera can only really be used long game, and thus I've decided not to put it into the third category. Acceleration, Enchant artifact (same reasoning as chimera,) Stone skin, empathic bond, Forest scorpion, Mitosis, fire spirit, lava golem, Seraph because it can choose to be immortal turn by turn, so even sow reflect decks wont negate him, but he has high enough damage and cost to be burst damage to also work in short duration games as well, Chrysaora, Ice bolt if your aiming it at their HP or a game changing creature of the opponents, Toad fish poisoning takes time and also the turn for it to use its ability makes it only really suitable for long duration games also puffer fish. Steam machine, Luciferin it does heal 10 HP like holy light, but it's second ability to give light makes it usually better for long lasting games and wont be completely overcome light holy light if you use it that way. Holy light's only other option is to kill a death darkness creature which is so situational that it's not worth it to rely on it that way unless you're vsing a master of death or darkness, they shall fear the holy light! Solar shield, Hope (same reasoning as chimera,) sanctuary, chained Wings, fireflyqueen, firefly, Procrastination, Golden Hourglass, Sundial, Scarab, Dune scorpion, Drain life, Parasite (same reasoning as toad fish,) Voodoo Doll (same reasoning as chimera) excpet VDB is a very good deck that has utilized voodoo doll for short duration game, so good job! Not mentioning chained cloak here because I just find it less and less effective as time wears on. Not that the effect changes, just less effective.

     The third category: Dissipation shield, Mutation, Lycanthrope, Chaos seed, Fallen Elf's ability belongs here because it's more just so of something that happens but it kind of gets stronger in time and may deserve to go the 2nd category because it can mutate bad mutants, I didn't put it their though because a mutant could be worse then the original mutant for the situation. Antimatter, its kind of good in both short or long lasting games, but overall it's a good card. Flesh spider and it's upped form, stating both because of the drastic change when upgrading. Poison, Plague, Saphire charger and elite charger, Unupped gravitation Mercenary (upped is kind of a good rush card for short duration games,) Momentum, Gravity pull, catapult, gravitation salvager, antlion, plate armor, earthquake, iridium warden but when buffed it kills more and more creatures over time therfore would belong to the second category. Cockratrice, but upped it does some good damage to be in the first. Deflagration, rain of fire, blue crawler and upped it does great damage to be in the first category, mind flayer due to having not really game changing stats but skill is good, lobo, flooding, luci, it might belong here more so then the other, but whatever. Flying weapon, skyblitz, deja vu, fate egg, sundial although really good usage in long term decks, gotp+nightmare, liquid shadow, gargoyal's ability, lightning, Parralel universe, phase dragon, immortal, phase spider, (moves to second category when combined with wings,) fractal (basically a good stall break card in long term games and can be good at rushing, but especially for fractaling aether creatures its something that just happens.) and Mindgate (usually used in long term games however.)

     I've forgotten rares for the most part because I can't look at them in the bazaar, and if you need any clearification to what the 3 categories mean because of a bad explanation leading to a misunderstanding, try looking at the cards and see if you can figure what I mean out. Cards in multiple categories because they deserve to be in their according to the versatile play of the card. Remember, bravery is really the only card that belongs to all three categories. Sofo kind of could too if it was a spell that allowed you to explode 3 permanents and then cast black hole.