Just tried out ddevans' deck fully upped and went 1/6 in the trainer. Here are my observations:
- All the losses were due to deckout. A couple were sheer bad luck (all 3 firemasters in the last 4 cards? really?) but even when I got a good hand I couldn't normally finish Decay off before I ran out of deck.
- It feels like it needs more PAs. You really want to stick a Sanctuary (obviously.) The two ways to go about this are drop one and PA it, or overload his steals (since he only has 4, and you have 6 sancts). While you can run him out of steals, the extra life gain Decay gets off your Sanctuaries is hard to overcome. I PAed my towers, which may not have been the right play, as it took up an early PA that could have been used for a Sanctuary. I was frequently left with a handful of sanctuaries that I was unable to play because they'd just be stolen
- I really don't like BE over Pulv. With 3 Firemasters, it seems like the first one gets pumped for damage, you need to BE the second so you can start getting in for damage (killing shields and stolen sancts) and you draw the third too late to be useful.
My own conclusions:
-3 firemasters, -1 quint, +2 lava destroyers: the destroyers have a much more immediate presence on the board.
-1 BE, +2 pulv: pulverizer doubles as a source of damage, which I found sorely lacking in the build
-1 sanctuary, +2 PA: With Jade Shield, I was never in any real danger of dying to damage. Once you land Jade Shield and a PA'd Sanctuary, you literally can't die to damage. And while you want to stick a Sanctuary, your towers will outproduce Decay's Pests even without it.
With these changes, I went 5/6 games, losing one where my bottom two cards were my two quints. I feel this build is much more resilient.