Round 1 discussion

[dragonsdemesne]

dragon's musings on the first round matchups

ROUND 1 MATCHUPS
Gen rob vs LIGHT AD TienzuStorm
Crockett vs GRAVITY Naesala
eljoemo vs Gen. AIR Afdarenty
dragonsdemesne vs DARKNESS Calindu (ugh, this guy has a history of incredible RNG vs me :p)
majofa vs Gen. WATER ddevans96

event: a 3-0 win gives us 1 relic (so 6 relics this round guys?)


vs light: due to sanc/miracles, something with high burst damage seems like a good choice, either fractal whatever or PUgons, and we could add bone walls and plagues (defeats Rol/hope, which probably wins vs this idea otherwise) and bone walls do well vs most other decks light can bring

-vs gravity: catatitans strikes me as being one of their best options, if we have anything to counter that.  if i were gravity, I think that's by far their best 'standard' deck against us.  I'm not sure what to bring here that reliably beats that.  I'm open to suggestions here.  Fractal chargers could also be a possibility, but I suspect they'll save that for someone else for some reason.  (though I have nothing beyond my gut to justify that)

-vs air: I know afdarenty has 6 blue nymphs, so that's a possibility.  rob mentione that people like to bring wings vs death, and who better to do that than air :p  it would probably be wise to bring a deck that can beat wings, either with dragons or poison or deflags or something.  Perhaps the firebolt duo?  I think afda has upped blue nymphs, so lightning would be a fail if he brings upped nymphs, and 10 quanta firebolt kills upped ones.  It also laughs at wings because poison and firebolts.  The other new thing air could do is a SoFr rush, and rain of fire will eat that alive

-vs darkness: sancs will beat devtal pretty hard; we could maybe do a stall here.  pandebonium might be pretty solid as well (maybe should test this vs a few things like pugons), not sure what else to suggest here

-vs water: Shard of patience is going to define this war, and I think we'd better be ready for it here.  Water also has purify, unfortunately, and we got the general, so I think this will be our hardest matchup.  I think we should bring an air duo with recluses and wings and whatever other creatures.  That should handle any SoP rush not including dragons, and even dragons will have a problem.  It also outrushes a fair number of other decks.  A hefty stall might clobber it, though, so some method of bypassing that might be a good idea

[rob77dp]

Rob additions to dragon's musings on Round 1 matchups:

vs light: due to sanc/miracles, something with high burst damage seems like a good choice, either fractal whatever or PUgons, and we could add bone walls and plagues (defeats Rol/hope, which probably wins vs this idea otherwise) and bone walls do well vs most other decks light can bring
Plague x1-2, Silence x1-2, Fractal x1-2, Dims/PU/Dragons with either some poison _and/or_ Arsenic strikes me as a good play here.

-vs gravity: catatitans strikes me as being one of their best options, if we have anything to counter that.  if i were gravity, I think that's by far their best 'standard' deck against us.  I'm not sure what to bring here that reliably beats that.  I'm open to suggestions here.  Fractal chargers could also be a possibility, but I suspect they'll save that for someone else for some reason.  (though I have nothing beyond my gut to justify that)
Ginyu is by far the most capable (sorry, CS), present (oh, nilsie), and invested-in-the-game-right-now (Laxa :/ ) general I have experienced on Gravity's side.  From this, my gut of possibly facing something like Cata-titans or Adrena-chargers or Adrena-Titans may not be how Ginyu runs his ship...  If any of our matchups this round screams PDials_SoSa to me, it is this one...

-vs air: I know afdarenty has 6 blue nymphs, so that's a possibility.  rob mentione that people like to bring wings vs death, and who better to do that than air :p  it would probably be wise to bring a deck that can beat wings, either with dragons or poison or deflags or something.  Perhaps the firebolt duo?  I think afda has upped blue nymphs, so lightning would be a fail if he brings upped nymphs, and 10 quanta firebolt kills upped ones.  It also laughs at wings because poison and firebolts.  The other new thing air could do is a SoFr rush, and rain of fire will eat that alive
I concur with something like our FireWall bolt-stall.

-vs darkness: sancs will beat devtal pretty hard; we could maybe do a stall here.  pandebonium might be pretty solid as well (maybe should test this vs a few things like pugons), not sure what else to suggest here
I cannot divulge how I know this, but I have decent information that Darkness' vault includes at least a ParaWall deck and a BB/Dev/Gargoyle/Liquid Shadow deck. Whatever we field here, if it is not Mono-death we need to hedge the pendulum quantity UP to account for Dev's ability to devastate mark-splashes.

-vs water: Shard of patience is going to define this war, and I think we'd better be ready for it here.  Water also has purify, unfortunately, and we got the general, so I think this will be our hardest matchup.  I think we should bring an air duo with recluses and wings and whatever other creatures.  That should handle any SoP rush not including dragons, and even dragons will have a problem.  It also outrushes a fair number of other decks.  A hefty stall might clobber it, though, so some method of bypassing that might be a good idea
I know dd fairly well and was even on his War team last war.  He will have us bringing a Wings-deck to this matchup at the top of his mindgate list.  I am 95% sure of it. The only good water I can think of, even drawing on my experience on that team last war combined with a minor love affair with SoP deck tinkering, to counter our Wings is the Frostbite ( / ) stall.  The water/light stall is DEVASTATING to Death - bank that.  Now, how do we counter a water/light stall from our vault? Do we dare bring our own SoP into Waters lap (if we should lose, they would get to salvage FOUR SoP R1 out of the gate...)... do we bring a simple Fractal-Recluse with a couple Silence (Miracle-prevention)?

[dragonsdemesne]

vs light: You have a decent point there; the dims beat several decks that bone walls do not.  The only problem might be spreading our aether cards too thin.  The other thing we could do against light is gravity shield.  It actually hoses every creature they have except for ray of light and crusader, and if we use plagues, we hose RoL, and if they endow crusader, unless it's titan sader, then it's too fat to attack us.  We also get access to otyugh and momentum, which eat RoLs and bypass hope/whatever other shields.  We could even hedge our bets shieldwise and include bone walls as well, although I'm not sure there's any point to that.  (skull shield might actually be better in that regard; skulls kill small stuff and gravity stops big stuff, plus otys can nom skeletonized things)

vs gravity: I'm not sure that SoSa is all that good against catatitans, because they can OTK with catapults, but the rest of the typical pdial base is (dials, SoD) and without SoSa, I think sancs might work pretty well, although I had thought of those vs darkness, so I'm not sure if we should use it here.

vs air: okay, let's bring the fire duo unless anyone has a good reason not to

vs darkness: Definitely correct on the devourer thing.  I don't know about their vault contents, but I'd bet good money that they have those decks regardless.  Monodeath with bone walls actually seems fairly solid here.

vs water: Yeah, the water/light stall was up there in my mind as well; in war 5 I think it was, it was wrecking my team (entropy) all over the place.  Unfortunately, silence sucks vs sanctuary, so if we think they're bringing that deck, silence is near-worthless.  If we think they're bringing this deck, I think we have to go with fractal something.  The only problem there is this is pretty much what I think we should bring vs light, and we have 6 fractals to go around, so 3 each if we did both.  The firebolt deck would probably beat the water/light stall, if it didn't pack reflective shield (and they'd have to mindgate pretty damn well to pack that vs death).

[CrockettRocket]

Against gravity, I was thinking about one of our death/life duos. Heal the damage up like a sosa deck would, and if they try to OTK with the deck then just out rush them, which shouldn't be too hard, especially if we have any scorpions in our vault.

[rob77dp]

Against gravity, I was thinking about one of our death/life duos. Heal the damage up like a sosa deck would, and if they try to OTK with the deck then just out rush them, which shouldn't be too hard, especially if we have any scorpions in our vault.

CR-
From our vault results after end of vault-building phase, there are no Life/Death duos in the final vault.

dragons-

vs light: You have a decent point there; the dims beat several decks that bone walls do not.  The only problem might be spreading our aether cards too thin.  The other thing we could do against light is gravity shield.  It actually hoses every creature they have except for ray of light and crusader, and if we use plagues, we hose RoL, and if they endow crusader, unless it's titan sader, then it's too fat to attack us.  We also get access to otyugh and momentum, which eat RoLs and bypass hope/whatever other shields.  We could even hedge our bets shieldwise and include bone walls as well, although I'm not sure there's any point to that.  (skull shield might actually be better in that regard; skulls kill small stuff and gravity stops big stuff, plus otys can nom skeletonized things)
* No boosts allowed for Generals / Lt...
~~ What rob thinks Light might bring in order of expected likelihood:
(Field SoP/Chrys/Squid deck here?)
SoP/Chrys/Squid - Deck Image Link
a. Stall including Holy Light (historically Death struggles against stalls and now they have SoD to play with!)
   * Chrys/Squid > Holy Light; SoP/Chrys/Arsenic > Sanct/Miracle-stalling
b. Purify Stall (Purify will be in-vogue against us this War)
   * SoP ramps around Purify and Chrys can beat down Purify healing to negation
c. Mid-range power with AA's (AA's resist our slow-type CC)
   * Squids can stall three AA's per each!
d. Grabow rush (unlikely as BW stops this cold-ish)
   * might be a challenge - an early squid that survives typically-minimal Grabow CC would be critical
e. RoL/Hope (unlikely as we can buy Plagues cheap in the Market-War era)
   * SoP > Hope; Squid > Nymph/AA/Dragon
z. Wildcard idea -- they bring PDials against us!?

vs gravity: I'm not sure that SoSa is all that good against catatitans, because they can OTK with catapults, but the rest of the typical pdial base is (dials, SoD) and without SoSa, I think sancs might work pretty well, although I had thought of those vs darkness, so I'm not sure if we should use it here.
* How about applying the +2 Upgrades boost here?
Mono - Deck Image Link Perhaps this Mono-death, with everything getting in under Grav Shield (not a big likelihood to face that though) and enough physical damage to push the pace and poison as alternate damage source (note: this is the +2 upgrades boost for 9 total mono-upgrades)

vs air: okay, let's bring the fire duo unless anyone has a good reason not to
The more I ponder the more I really expect UG in some fashion here -- Air will decide that UG is great against Death for 3 reasons - 1. bypasses BW shield 2. Can be 'held on to' as way around SoSa 3. What are the chances Death would carry in vault and then bring against Air a reflect-type shield?
* How about applying the -2 Discard boost here?
FireWall - Deck Image Link
Perhaps this with Bolts that kill Air's nymphs if used with 10+ Fire quanta, Poison will kill before deckout unless Purify somehow gets packed in, and against Purify 36 cards is probably enough for deckout win...

vs darkness: Definitely correct on the devourer thing.  I don't know about their vault contents, but I'd bet good money that they have those decks regardless.  Monodeath with bone walls actually seems fairly solid here.
* How about sending Lieutenant here?
We could do Mono-death here... Or a Grabow just in case of Dev's?
Mono - Deck Image Link
Grabow - Deck Image Link

vs water: Yeah, the water/light stall was up there in my mind as well; in war 5 I think it was, it was wrecking my team (entropy) all over the place.  Unfortunately, silence sucks vs sanctuary, so if we think they're bringing that deck, silence is near-worthless.  If we think they're bringing this deck, I think we have to go with fractal something.  The only problem there is this is pretty much what I think we should bring vs light, and we have 6 fractals to go around, so 3 each if we did both.  The firebolt deck would probably beat the water/light stall, if it didn't pack reflective shield (and they'd have to mindgate pretty damn well to pack that vs death).
My dd-sense is tingling saying Water will expect Wings or Dim (water is VERY paranoid about opposing shields) and against us a Dims and Dragons _or_ SoP and Poison...  BW eats up SoP and using Poison against Death is somewhat taboo, generally.  This leaves me suspecting PU-gons Dims... also Purify splash is likely (per WIFOM logic on both sides).  Hence, I want to suggest either:
a) 33-card Dims... with Fractal-Recluse
_or_
b) ParaWall...
* How about applying the Sideboard-of-3 here?
Dimensional Frac-luse: Deck Image Link
~ After game 1, where the FULL deck must be used, can sideboard-out 3 Dim if stopping physical damage is not useful _or_ the Silence and 1-quanta if not a stall etc etc.
* How about applying the +2 Salvage boost here?
ParaWall: Deck Image Link

[dragonsdemesne]

vs light: I was just thinking that SoP/squid might work well against light, and rob has already posted it

vs gravity: Not sure that the upgrades boost is necessary here, but I don't really care where it goes, so here is fine.  Monodeath seems a decent choice here.  With only our nymph caring about gravity shield, they'd never bring it anyway.

vs air: 5 bolts and 3 bone walls seems like 1 too few each, but I'm a lot more used to non-war events, so this might be fine.  We also don't want to make the deck too big (then it needs more quanta, then it's even fatter, etc)

vs darkness: If we go the grabbow route, I think -1 fog +1 shockwave, to better synergize with bone wall.  The monodeath seems alright; do we think we can beat the annoying dusk/vamp thing without poisons?   Not including arsenic is probably correct, to create basically dead steals.  I do have two marks of death, but I also know that Calindu's time zone is on the opposite side of the planet from me, so it is possible I will need a sub, depending how things go, and if 1-2 marks are used here, we'd need a sub with that.  Also, I doubt that it's likely we'd face earthquakes here, anyway.

vs water: I think the aether sideboard idea is strong, because water will probably be our hardest match.  I'm not sure about the parawall deck; I don't really know how that deck performs, not really having any experience with it.

[rob77dp]

vs light: I was just thinking that SoP/squid might work well against light, and rob has already posted it
Ahoy!

vs gravity: Not sure that the upgrades boost is necessary here, but I don't really care where it goes, so here is fine.  Monodeath seems a decent choice here.  With only our nymph caring about gravity shield, they'd never bring it anyway.
Ahoy!

vs air: 5 bolts and 3 bone walls seems like 1 too few each, but I'm a lot more used to non-war events, so this might be fine.  We also don't want to make the deck too big (then it needs more quanta, then it's even fatter, etc)
Oops - got a wrong deck code somehow... edited in my post, now.

vs darkness: If we go the grabbow route, I think -1 fog +1 shockwave, to better synergize with bone wall.  The monodeath seems alright; do we think we can beat the annoying dusk/vamp thing without poisons?   Not including arsenic is probably correct, to create basically dead steals.  I do have two marks of death, but I also know that Calindu's time zone is on the opposite side of the planet from me, so it is possible I will need a sub, depending how things go, and if 1-2 marks are used here, we'd need a sub with that.  Also, I doubt that it's likely we'd face earthquakes here, anyway.
Yep - somehow that Fog despite our Bone Walls being present keeps getting in my Grabow code!  Edited now...
Grabow edited -1 Arsenic +1 Mummy; Mono edited -6 Mummy +6 Poison.

vs water: I think the aether sideboard idea is strong, because water will probably be our hardest match.  I'm not sure about the parawall deck; I don't really know how that deck performs, not really having any experience with it.
I like the aether too -- parawall is there mostly so we keep it mind if someone brings up good counterpoints to use of Aether here...