Strategy

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Strategy relevant information comes here, can't wait to see what kind of goodie info Mithcairion is brewing up
Screenshots like last war isn't really worth your time, you wouldn't like to be spectated in your testing matches either : P

Round 1 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23481.msg328008#msg328008)
Round 2 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23481.msg332910#msg332910)
Round 3 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23481.msg339333#msg339333)
Round 4 (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23481.msg345139#msg345139)

[Mithcairion]

The project that I have been working on shall be forthcoming soon, I'm putting the finishing touches on it as I write this, but I did just want to mention some things that have been bouncing around in my head and I wanted to make sure we were all keeping in mind when building decks/counters.

There have (obviously) been several new cards introduced.  Some are quite powerful, others, not so much.  These cards are Shield, Soul Catcher, Shrodinger's Cat, Acceleration, Catapult, Iridium Warden, Mitosis, Crusader, Sanctuary, Sky Blitz, Ghost of the Past, and Cloak.  The way I rank these as far as how often we will see them/how strong they are go:

SanctuaryCrusaderAccelerationIridium WardenMitosisGhost of the PastSky BlitzCatapultCloakSchrodinger's CatShieldSoul Catcher

Please, feel free to discuss these and disagree with my rankings, I would be more than happy to explain my thought processes behind why I ranked them the way I did.

As a corollary to this thought process, several existing cards received new wrinkles that either make them viable where they weren't before, or give them synergies where none were present before.  Some of these include, but are not limited to, Skull Shield, Gnome Gemfinder, Dragonfly, Solar Shield, Arctic Squid, Luciferin, and Nightmare.

I bring all of these up because these are some significant changes since the last war.  A deck containing both Skull Shield and Sanctuary has the ability to stop any Graboid or Phoenix rush in its tracks.  As such, we need to be sure that we have appropriate measures available to us in our vault to account for strategies that are new in this war, rather than looking only at the previous wars for reference. 

War 2 Card Usage (https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0AprBQuUifY8mdGtablFjZ0t1Tzl1SlhuaFU5TE1xYnc&output=html)

Ok, here it is!  This comes a little later than I was hoping, as the actual data entry took me longer than I anticipated (big thanks to suxerz for his help there).  First off, if anyone has any questions about anything they see in this, please do not hesitate to ask me.  Now, for the nuts and bolts of what exactly you're looking at.

This breaks down, round by round, how many times a team used a card in that round, and what percentage of the known non-pillar cards in a team's vault that card constitutes.  Yeah, you're right, that was a helluva sentence, but I'll break it down for you.  Let's say Entropy has 400 cards in their vault in round 1.  Of these 400 cards, they use 100 pillars/pendulums and 12 Antimatters in that round.  I subtract 100 from 400 (300), then take the number of cards (12) and divide it by that total to get the percentage (4%).

 What this basically shows are trends in what cards teams liked to use during the last War.  During each round I highlighted values that were significantly above the average.  I skipped this for the last couple of rounds due to the fact that there were so few cards used by all the teams (except for Entropy), and it really wouldn't have shown anything useful.  I invite everyone to comment on anything that they see in this table (or any others, for that matter).  Enjoy!

Vault Intel (https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ApI-50p2LmlcdHpGb3V2cG00elpRT3VCT21rS3JEemc&hl=en&authkey=CPO4wqoF#gid=2)

This is suxerz's baby, based of of Dragoon's very helpful topic.  What this will do is help us to track our opponent's vaults to the best of our abilities.  I would ask that only suxerz and I do any editing to this page in order to keep the errors to a minimum, but please feel free to point out any and all discrepancies that you see.  Also, since we never know exactly what the other teams will be salvaging, we will have to do the best we can until we "know" what they have.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

Well I'll be the first to disagree with the ranking: Sky Blitz.
I think you overrated Sky Blitz, since it's use is extremely limited, right now, it's barely worth the quanta and card space IMO.
I'd put it below Cloak.

[Mithcairion]

Well I'll be the first to disagree with the ranking: Sky Blitz.
I think you overrated Sky Blitz, since it's use is extremely limited, right now, it's barely worth the quanta and card space IMO.
I'd put it below Cloak.

I'm very happy that you disagree with me, these sorts of conversations are important for the success of our team.  The more people that put their mind to something, the better off we will be.

Now, the reason I rated Sky Blitz specifically above Cloak is due to who will be using them.  Due to every element having dragons, any element can duo with air and Sky Blitz and have a powerful hammer.  Cloak, on the other hand, really isn't widely useful enough to be used by many teams other than us.

[Onizuka]

I would rank GoTP above sky blitz, probably even higher than mitosis. 

At 5 cost unupgraded, I don't see much use for it. The only reason why it would be used against us is to prevent nightmare, which I don't see us using too often to matter. Fractal will most likely be used regardless.

In addition, GoTP is time's new midrange attacker. If time doesn't go for a stall, then I'd expect to at least see a few of those.

And sky blitz has virtually no use in an unupgraded environment. 9 cost makes it too expensive, and its only good for one turn kills. Which would happen in the next turn. Against h4x shields, the quanta use isn't worth it.

[Mithcairion]

I would rank GoTP above sky blitz, probably even higher than mitosis. 

At 5 cost unupgraded, I don't see much use for it. The only reason why it would be used against us is to prevent nightmare, which I don't see us using too often to matter. Fractal will most likely be used regardless.

In addition, GoTP is time's new midrange attacker. If time doesn't go for a stall, then I'd expect to at least see a few of those.

And sky blitz has virtually no use in an unupgraded environment. 9 cost makes it too expensive, and its only good for one turn kills. Which would happen in the next turn. Against h4x shields, the quanta use isn't worth it.

You make a good point about Sky Blitz being less useful than GotP, and as such I'm switching the rankings now.  I'm not going to put it above Mitosis, however, since Mitosis gives mono Life the ability to reproduce great quantities of creatures, albeit at a slower pace than Fractal.  What this means is that strategies that were once viable to stop that tactic (namely Dimensional Shield chaining) are now rendered vulnerable.  Where / duo has no PC at all, when Mitosis is brought into the fray, now / and / duos with similar reproductive qualities to / , but now with the threat of PC for whatever shields we may throw out.

[Onizuka]

Hm.. Yeah, that's true. I was looking at it from a purely mono standpoint, which was wrong of me.

I'd also like to think that Soul Catcher would rank above both shield and the cat. The cat is way too fragile, and considering we may be packing drains, isn't that useful. We'd only be seeing it by entropy or death, since the two cost ability limits its usefulness. Shield would be used by virtually no one, the only teams that would use it is Entropy and Fire, since they both lack damage reducing shields (without the quanta drain). If fire is going for a rush, no shields. If they stall, fire shield. If they do something with immo, fog shield.

While entropy is more likely to use it, I don't think it would be used that often. Considering its only effect is to block one damage, even if it is one quanta, that one draw could be so much more useful.

Actually, scrap all of that. I don't think we'll see any one of these 3 cards during the war, period. The highest chance is a weird soulcatcher deck from death.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

I can think up pvp viable decks for Cloak (Life), Catapult (Gravity, Earth and Air) or Soul Catcher(Fire and Death), but I can't think of decks that benifit from Sky Blitz, especially not against Darkness. It might be useful as a surprise attack against Miracle and/or Stone Skin, but since it's best of 3 it would only work for one duel, or maybe not at all.

Those are the main reasons I estimate it that much lower

[mrpaper]

Well rank em how you want, but to me, crusader and sanctuary are the only 2 cards that we will face off elements. Acceleration ,Iridium Warden Mitosis ,Ghost of the Past, Sky Blitz, Catapult.. all of em,  MAYBE when we face the element ...and the last ones we should care about em at all.
And I agree with those who says sky blitz is overrated, it only looks great in theory + we got dusk mantle so I wouldn't use it against darkness.  I think You forgot silence in the new cards.. but it shouldnt be much of an impact either.

[Onizuka]

In an unupped environment, silence is nearly a 0 possibility.
It loses its chance to force you to drop a card in most cases., and only works when your main strategy is playing denial.

Iridium warden could be utilized by both light and earth, or any other element than wants to do a deckout deck.

[Mithcairion]

Well rank em how you want, but to me, crusader and sanctuary are the only 2 cards that we will face off elements. Acceleration ,Iridium Warden Mitosis ,Ghost of the Past, Sky Blitz, Catapult.. all of em,  MAYBE when we face the element ...and the last ones we should care about em at all.
And I agree with those who says sky blitz is overrated, it only looks great in theory + we got dusk mantle so I wouldn't use it against darkness.  I think You forgot silence in the new cards.. but it shouldnt be much of an impact either.

I quite agree that Sanctuary and Crusader are by far the two most important on this list and that there is a considerable gap between those two and the rest of the list.  The thing about crusaders that could help us is that they're slow.  5 to get out, a turn to stay alive,  another 3 to gain an ability, another turn to stay alive, and then they can finally start using their ability (if it's an activated ability).

Warden and Acceleration are definitely the next two on the list due to their duo capabilities.  Warden becomes devastating in an Earth/Light deckout deck and provides a phenomenal stall element to mono Earth, as well.  Acceleration seems to be most popular when used with mono Gravity, but it can also be used very well with Earth, and we need to be aware of the fact that Earth's creatures generally have high HP.  Even the ones that don't will be at 14 when they hit us for the final time (10+12+14=ouch).  When used in conjunction with Pulvy, this becomes a much more dangerous duo than it was in the past.  Neither of these are as dangerous as the first two on the list, this needs to be kept in mind.

Also, I just wanted to mention that the OP has been updated with some statistics from the previous War.  As always, the more comments, the merrier.

[suxerz]

I offered to help Mith by creating a new spreadsheet similar to Dragoon's (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,21833.0.html). So, here is our Vault Intel (https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ApI-50p2LmlcdHpGb3V2cG00elpRT3VCT21rS3JEemc&hl=en&authkey=CPO4wqoF#gid=2).

Unfortunately, I can't think a better way to avoid the manual part of inputting the opponents' vault. Basically, input in the beige-coloured cells and the "summary" will be shown in the "Winning cards", "Losing cards" and "Salvaged cards".