Heh, thanks for all the replies. About the upgrades: I have upgraded no fire cards, ever. The upgraded fire cards you see above all came from FGs. I'll consider the -3pillars, but sometimes I'm already getting bad draws where I'm getting only 1 or 2 pillars- and slow start=near death games if I get a shield, death if I don't.
As for how well it's doing in bronze- really good. Perm control doesn't affect me much, with the number of perms I have. and I can explode pulvy. But there are three main problems:
1: Dragons. Fire shield really takes a lot of time to get through those, and if there's more than 2 in the early game I have a good chance of dying.
2. Chrysoras. I only have 1 RoF, and I'm not wasting fire bolts on chrysoras. A problem comes when there's too many chrysoras and my 2 CC cards simply don't come fast enough.
3. Immo rush. Golems usually get out before my shields...RoF isn't going to take them down after turn 2, and rage pot takes down 1 and only 1. Adding more CC would detract from the bolts.
Now, these things aren't necessarily causing autolosses- it simply becomes a really really close game where it all depends on luck (a lot more so than usual)