Improving deck design (FFQ base)

[pulli23]

Hi there, this is my personal flavour of a FFQ deck I made.. However I run in some problems (more to that later).

by pulli23

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bv 5bv 5bv 5c2 5c3 5c5 5c6 5c6 5c6 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5lk 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5ol 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 8pr

mark is air, last card is shockwave.

thorn shield added for fall-back damage against things like undead or when facing another firefly queen.
Shockwave for those characters with devour. (same for the blue weapon).


Many level 3 matches I win without any troubles however there are a few I'm facing major difficulties with:. I'll name them below (in order of difficulty):

1) First of all, the "water + fire" (steam machine) deck. His machine simply devastates me, and 1 machine in the 3rd-4th turn will outdamage me (unless I have duo shocks already). This opponenets is simply the one I'm skipping right now as soon as he turns up. Is there anything I can do?

2) Mainly in pvp, though also in quite a few arena matches: a "mono fire" deck I also have much trouble with. Firestorm removes my whole army and when followed by dragons it's almost a guaranteed victory. Also if a pure fire starts with a fireshield in turn 5 (or has one after a firestorm) I'm stuck and can't ever build.

3) The scarab-time based opponents always seems like russian roulette. If I can't outdamage the opponent fast he'll outdamage me very quickly. (often getting suddenly 3 pharaos ready to spam scarabs). Is there actually any counter to this build apart from doing a rush?

4) Not often a problem, but the dark-chaos opponent has quite a pack against me. Always casting butterfly effect on his dolls. This would completely destroy me if the AI didn't always drop it in favour of "vampire" ability. Also his pandemonium card is quite a difficult thing: destroying my whole deck, and leaving me vulnerable for 4-5 turns. And late game suddenly an 11/6 dragon comes up to finish me.



If anyone can give me some advice how to play against those opponents (or should I skip them?) I'd be happy. Also general advice about my build is very welcome!

[kev]

I'd recommend taking out the rustlers since they're only useful late in the game and you probably don't need the life quanta much at that point.  Eliminating more cards to get your deck closer to 30 will improve draws and adding 1-2 Hopes means you'll get them earlier and more consistently.  Hope that helps.

[LongDono]

by LongDono

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- 1 hope, and thorn shield. Why? Cost too much quanta when you most likely won't need them. You have tons of CC and healing to stay alive. The only issue really is getting firefly queen out. It seems your piller and pend spread is fair so I wont mess with it. I added a heal in the deck to keep you alive longer to pull off your combos.
I would test your deck in 30 games and take notes of what is good and what lets you down to get a good idea on what you need to cut out of the deck. The closer to 30 cards you get the faster you will draw your power cards and win. You might end up taking rustlers out if it turns out you have enough life quanta, so keep track of that. I also like the use of CC in this deck mixed with healing, it is very smart. The sooner you kill a creature the less damage over time it can do to you, and if you need to you can save shockwaves and nuke your opponent with them on the last turn and make them misjudge how long they had to live.
You can also change the mark and piller/pend set up to get faster FFQ's. I changed the pillers and pends around but it might not be good, but what you can do is play around with it until you get something that gets FFQ out fast and gets you the life quanta you need as well. So change stuff up but keep track of what you change. Slowly you will make this deck as good as it could ever get and then all that work will pay off. This sort of deck is the kind that can work well without balance but works great when you take time to balance it.
If you need anymore help PM me ( not just on this deck. ) but right now I am preparing to go out of town for like 4 days so I wont be around to help tomorrow or the days to follow. I would really like to see how well this idea could do, I think the thing that makes or breaks this deck is finding balance between healing and CC as well as getting FFQ out fast enough with enough Life quanta. Also try to narrow down to about 30-33 cards. because of the mass healing you can get from bonds you might be able to pull off a deck out now and again. ^^ So you have 2 win conditions now. ( if the opponent plays less cards than you that is. ) Best of luck and I hope to see this be a monster of a deck when I come back, peace!

[willng3]

Ah FFQ decks, such beautiful synergy.
The common problem with FFQ is that the combination can be slow to set up considering your deck is almost always full of other key cards that work towards your strategy/goal.  Now if you draw too many of these and can't draw something such as a FFQ, then that's a problem.  It can also take a while to produce enough Fireflies to power Hope, buuuuut there are ways to solve these problems.  For instance, this is a deck we used in Team Life during War #2:

by willng3

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However for the opponents you're facing, I would consider dropping the 3 Wings and adding 1 FFQ and a Shockwave as a minimum.  Personally I would create something like this:

by willng3

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5c2 5c2 5c6 5c6 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5lk 5lk 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5ol 5on 5on 5on 5on 8pr

AI3 is usually pretty slow so you don't need to worry about getting that Hope up that fast, especially when you have so much healing otherwise.  You definitely want a FFQ in your hand at the start of every game, so 6 ensures that of happening almost every time.  Adrenaline + Firefly causes the Firefly to both attach 4 times and produce 4 times that turn which is incredibly useful when facing Discord or for getting up Hope faster.  And the extra CC of course deals with Otys, Maxwell's and Squids who wreck this deck pretty badly sometimes.  It's not perfect, but it possesses great stability.