Please criticize my aether deck.

[kraze]

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

lol actually that proof is not mathematical/complicated as you claim it to be

but I do agree that Phase dragons are better than Immortals except when versus gravity shield, FYI if ppl think immortals are better just let it be because it is their loss lol, there is no point of getting flamed by everybody when you are trying to help

[kraze]

if ppl think immortals are better just let it be

We only said that immortal is not useless. We never said it is better.
Your attacks are totally out of context.

Again with the flames, but that's ok

if immortals are not better than dragons then it is useless since you won't put it in the deck, let's face it the typical pillar/dragons/shield/pu deck has no room for an inferior card

[kraze]

lol actually that proof is not mathematical/complicated as you claim it to be

but I do agree that Phase dragons are better than Immortals except when versus gravity shield, FYI if ppl think immortals are better just let it be because it is their loss lol, there is no point of getting flamed by everybody when you are trying to help

Just because I disagree with brain's analysis doesn't mean it's flaming. Okay, I threw in a couple snarky comments but that's it.

Still, when you put it that way, I just have to apologize. I never realized brain was simply trying to help non-aether players like me by suggesting that aether players stick to relatively easy to beat dragon-only decks instead of promoting more dangerous mixed decks.

I'm not sure what you mean by easy to beat dragon-only deck but ppl only use aether to god farm and only pvp with it if they are extremely bored...I personally never pvp with my deck since let's face it aether sucks in pvp period unless you are playing one of those decks that are designed for aether to beat

[markson]

Aye, that's where I became impressed by them.  I'm aware a good setup for Gemini doesn't mean the same for a player without the advantages, it's just I've had a lot of games lately come down to where if I had one more turn of damage, I would've won.  So maybe recluses can help with that, if they don't slow down the deck too much.

[markson]

I remembered what I initially logged on for now.  Has anyone started using the phase recluses in their aether decks?  They're not invulnerable, but they only cost 4 aether quanta, hit almost as hard as dragons, and can bypass gravity shield.  Imo they can add a lot of speed to the aether deck, but I'm not sure how well they would actually work with only 2 life.

[markson]

Hello guys. My deck is not mono-aether, but i decided that i'll post it here.

Mark of Darkness
17 Aether Pillars
5 Lighting
1 Lobotomizer
6 Dimensional Shield
6 Phase Dragon
4 Steal

I also own 2 Miracles, but dunno how to fit them into my deck.  ???

I really like this deck, except for maybe the lightnings, I'd probably take them out.  Even if the mark makes the deck somewhat slower, steals can solve a number of weaknesses in the standard monoaether deck.

[OneLeggedRhino]

There are some decks that try to get lots of creatures out and win before your opponent gets set up (FFQ comes to mind).  Aether is not one of those decks.  The point of Aether is to play Dim Shield and stall while your unstoppable creatures come out.  The most important part isn't speed (since you can stall so well), it's long-term damage.  That's why I go with dragons over immortals.  (Same for Phase Recluse).

Sadly, Mono-Aether has a ton of weaknesses.  It's a very simple deck, so it's good for doing your first set of false god runs, but any deck this simple to play probably isn't that robust.  It loses to:
-Regen decks (FFQ / Empathic Bond - play actual life pillars, rather than relying on Rustlers, to make the deck robust) since you can't do enough damage to kill
-Steal, deflag.  When playing vs Aether, hold your anti-permanent cards until late in the game when you are doing 30+ damage/turn (if they are stalling to build up, you do the same).

Aether is a decent choice for false gods.  In that case, add 1 PU to take the decks with Miracle.  They are triggered to play it when they are 1 turn from dead, so you need to boost your damage on the turn they are 2 turns from dead so you can win that turn.  PU is a great way to do it since they will usually have some big buffed creature.  Just hold it for then, don't play it except to win.  Also, vs false gods, lightning doesn't help much, since they have so many big creatures.

[brain9h]

So for a couple days after saying Immortals are useless, spending hours at excel, and get bashed here in the forums, I decided to actually TRY them, so I replaced 1 dragon for 2 immortals in a 32 card deck. (only 2 upgrades -- towers)

First I played for about 1 hour against AI lvl 3. There was not one game that immortals made any difference whatsoever. Either I won easily (95%), or I lost because of AI super drawing / rainbow decks with massive luck.

Then I played Top 50, something I never did with mono-aether before... and I must admit, it was a great failure. Not the immortals, the deck itself. I can't say for sure but it appeared to me that nearly 100% of top50 decks have a way chain-disable our shields OR chain-sabotage our quanta OR spam so much damage so fast that my deck without full upgrades pillars were too slow. Most top50 aether decks are not pure-aether (I fought many aether, but only 1 was "pure"), mostly are aether + conflag or steal, some using mark of fire, some using pillars.

Then I played against gods, and was fairly decent, better than last time, 20 fights, 3 wins, 1 card.

Back on the topic, I don't think it makes much difference if you choose an immortal over a dragon, the fact that weird mathematical numbers done in excel indicate marginal advantages of one card over the other is of little importance when you look at the big picture.

Out of topic now, I'm quite disappointed with Elements, I played top 50 decks I saw the power of upgraded cards and the power of other decks, and I don't have the time or patience to farm them, and I'm regretting that my 2 hard earned upgrades were put in aether pillars because right now all I want is to play other elements and start to build my rainbow deck, which require quantum towers

[eNonymous]

One of my (very few) mono-Aether losses was by decking out against a Darkness deck, which had lots of Devourers out, and slowed me down considerably.

Having Immortals would have helped in that situation as well, so I put some in my deck.