Please criticize my aether deck.

[brain9h]

I have yesterday proved mathematically that for all matters the Immortal is a useless card. If you're counting on him to win against gravity shields (which dragons can't bypass), you're better off staying with dragons anyway, lose to gravity, and compensate your score/electrum losses elsewhere

My mono-aether:

by brain9h

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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61u 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v 8pu

My ather-life for farming lvl 3 masteries:

by brain9h

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5c2 5c2 5c5 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61u 61v 61v 61v 61v 61v 8pn

2-Weapons-Aether (good if you just got another rare weapon)
Standard deck, replace 1 Dragon for a Morningstar, +Mark of Light

This works well, because weapons do high damage, cost very little quanta, have special abilities and are protected from creature attack. Adding a second weapon to your aether deck will make it faster and less quanta-intensive, and you will get a VERY HIGH probability of starting out with a weapon to play, which is great, not to mention you will have an edge in pvp against other mono-aether decks.

[brain9h]

Then all you proved is that you don't bother too loose some games. Which is ok.
You did not prove that immortal is useless.

True, I should have worded my original statement better. I do believe immortals to be a liability in a mono-aether deck, it's better not to use them.

[brain9h]

With no immortals in my deck hitting an enemy with gravity shield = instant loooose!

Your math is wrong.

The calculations didn't prove I would win every game. I don't bother losing some of the games against gravity shields, as long as I can win others in return

[brain9h]

but "proving" such a thing is 1) ridiculously complicated and 2) flies in the face of the empirical observations of myself and other players, so I can't help but look askance at this kind of declaration.)

Exactly, it is complicated. For a while I thought about the hypothetical advantages of Immortals and decided to run some numbers to check it out. What I did was plot damage done X turn X quanta generated X enemy shields (-0, -1 or -2 physical dmg reduction). To simplify I modelled pillar drawing as a real number, quanta/turn, which starts at turn 1 with an integer number [1,7]; I did not bother to plot all possible combinations of everything because after a couple of tests I saw the pattern and felt satisfied.

What I noticed as result was that a deck that only plays dragons instead of playing immortals will be even in damage at maximum after 11 turns. That's because in many scenarios of slow quanta starts, playing an early immortal 'speeds' you up, but unless you can win before 11 turns, phase dragons catch up. Actually phase dragons catch up most of the times by turn 5-6, depending on the opening, 11 turns is like a worst-case scenario

A typical game: you will have at least 6 quanta by the 3rd turn, but not 13 (let's say, end turn 1 with 4 pillars, draw a pillar, end turn, draw non-pillar); Therefore by turn 3 you could play an immortal, or you could save quanta and play a dragon later, at turn 4 or the 5; If you actually calculate you will see that it does more damage if you don't play the immortal and save for the phase dragon. Damage contribution of that single immortal played at turn 2 will be (0,0,4,4,4,4,4...) or 4*(n-2); If you delay 2 turns instead while you build quanta and play a Dragon, that dragon damage contribution will be (0,0,0,0,8,8,8,8...) or 8*(n-4), resolving 8n-32 >= 4n-8 ===> n >= 6; That means after turn 6 phase dragon is already doing more damage. After turn 6 the only way for immortals to catch up would be to play another Immortal, in which case balance starts to favor HEAVILY towards dragons because of card cost: the chance that you will draw lots of immortals in succession is small, and as quanta builds up you might as well play dragons instead. You can variate upon this scenario, and you will notice that the results doesn't change, slower starts will only increase that number to 8-11, depending on shields;

This game is statistical, which means it doesn't matter against whom you win a game, as long as your grand total of wins is a larger number. In my experience I found 3 situations where immortals have advantage, and here is why I don't bother
- Against boneyards: more cards, easier to break through, but honestly, its impractical to deck 6 immortals, the deck won't do damage, and decking only 1 or 2 immortals and hoping that them will appear early to help against the boneyard is just wishful thinking. If you want you can wishful think that your enemy will be unlucky on his draws, its the same thing. Also, even immortal is an expensive card compared to what other decks can do to break boneyard, and boneyard is balanced against them. I found to be best to build as solid base of 4-5 dragons and pack a huge punch of dmg when boneyard is down instead of relying on a quicker kill of the shield. And I have shields, so I can afford to wait.
- Against gravity shield: Don't bother losing some here. Against the AI I can win most of the times using a smart PU, but honestly, if the gravity guy is luck to drawn gravity shield early... I doubt even 2 early immortals would win you a game. An armagio alone can soak all your damage. Winning against gravity is either something you seriously plan your deck for or give up... 2 or 3 extra immortals in your deck is just hoping for the good luck to draw 6 pillars and 2 immortals in the first 8 cards... with luck like that you can do it without immortals as well.
- Against quanta denial: sometimes in the very beginning of games against denial decks you will have 6 quanta to play an immortal, but the enemy will soon start pulling out steals/EQ/devourers to keep you from ever reaching 13 to play a dragon. I recognize it would be good to have some immortals here, but honestly I think immortals slow you down so much overall that its better not work bothering for a general-purpose deck.

Where more dragons help, immensely
- Against poison: need DAMAGE
- Against FFQ+Empatic bond: need DAMAGE
- Against dissipation shield: need LOTS OF DAMAGE

[count]

Then all you proved is that you don't bother too loose some games. Which is ok.
You did not prove that immortal is useless.

[count]

With no immortals in my deck hitting an enemy with gravity shield = instant loooose!

And after the last upgrade 2 immortals are less expensive than one phase dragon. so same damage for less money.
Your math is wrong.

[eNonymous]

My Aether deck is:

5x Immortal
4x Phase Dragon
6x Dimensional Shield
3x Quantum Pillar
12x Aether Pillar

The Quantum pillars are there to defend against Devourers.

I never got good use out of Lightning cards. They were always taking away the mana quanta I needed to get my dragons out fast.

What situations do you use Lightning that aren't covered by Dimensional Shield?
The only thing I can think of is Momentum-heavy Gravity decks.

[ggabriel]

That means after turn 6 phase dragon is already doing more damage. After turn 6 the only way for immortals to catch up would be to play another Immortal, in which case balance starts to favor HEAVILY towards dragons because of card cost: the chance that you will draw lots of immortals in succession is small, and as quanta builds up you might as well play dragons instead.

I never made it past Calc II in college. What's the mathematical symbol for "gratuitous handwaving"?

With 6 creatures in a 30-card deck, the odds of drawing a second creature by the time you have 13 quanta built up are quite good. In the long run, sure, you're not going to draw enough immortals to keep up--but 1. in the long run, after turn 5ish at the latest you'll have to burn quanta to keep shields running, which is going to slow down dragons; and 2. there's not going to be all that much of a long run at all unless you either have a very slow start or are running against a deck that's quite stall-ish, where immortals more often than not are handy to have.

[ggabriel]

I have yesterday proved mathematically that for all matters the Immortal is a useless card.

That's nothing; yesterday I proved mathematically that I'm the grand duchess Anastasia! You wouldn't think it would be true, given that I'm male, have no Russian ancestry, and am about a century too young. But, y'know. Math!

Care to elaborate on this "proof", or should we just take your word for it?

(Not trying to be hostile just for hostility's sake, but "proving" such a thing is 1) ridiculously complicated and 2) flies in the face of the empirical observations of myself and other players, so I can't help but look askance at this kind of declaration.)

[ggabriel]

I never got good use out of Lightning cards. They were always taking away the mana quanta I needed to get my dragons out fast.

What situations do you use Lightning that aren't covered by Dimensional Shield?
The only thing I can think of is Momentum-heavy Gravity decks.

I've never bothered running aether in PvP myself, but in my experience playing against it I've had several decks that would generally beat aether if I didn't get lightning bolted too much. If I'm allowed to build up my attack force to overwhelming levels I can just play a couple of deflagrations and beat the aether player to death where a timely lightning bolt or three could have taken out a key part of my attacking force and prevented me from doing lethal damage, buying them time to set up more shields.

Alternately I sometimes run FFQ, often with novas as the only source of life quanta to get rustlers going. This makes for very fast setups, so left to my own devices I can frequently get enough fireflies+empathic bonds to slow down and eventually completely outheal whatever an aether deck can throw at me, but spells that kill the rustlers are a serious setback for this deck.

[markson]

I don't think you have enough pillars in your deck, though I do tend to run closer to 50% pillars than 33%, and with your deck (very few dragons) it's not as quanta intensive as mine.  I'd lose 2-3 Lightnings, the short sword (though it is a nice cheap source of damage) and one Immortal and replace them with pillars.  With 6 dimensional shields, you don't really have to worry so much about the opponents creatures, though Lightnings can be nice to get rid of troublesome creatures with annoying activated abilities.

Don't forget to do the quests, as there is one that once you reach 500 in score, you can select a rare weapon, which I suggest you choose the Lobotomizer, unless you plan to switch to another type of deck.

[Osmposm]

I've never had a problem with the amount of pillars. And that's something to say since I have always had trouble with pillars =P