My Newbie Scarab Deck

[Brae43]

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Hi.  I'm pretty new.  I picked time when I started, because it sounded cool, and I'm really enjoying it.  The only rares I have worth mentioning are one pharoah and one eternity (I have a few of the other rare weapons, the aether nymph, but no shards, and nothing else too fun.)

My original deck was 30 cards, focused on scarabs, my lone pharoah, 6 reverse times (and my eternity and a procrastination) to stall the other guy until I draw something good, and devonian dragons pretty much as place holders and damage dealers until I got a few more rares.  But I lost all the time against those aggravating mono-aether decks with dimensional shields galore and creatures I can't reverse or devour.  So I threw in a few momentums and a single chimera (which has saved my bacon a few times toward the end of the game due to its gravity pull).  The momentums are a nice touch for people who think their creatures are safe, play something, then surprise, I give a scarab +1/+1 and devour it.

My current problems:

1. I get a lot of bad quanta draws.  Do I not have enough pillars or too much other stuff?  This is doubly bad if I'm up against someone who's destroying or stealing my pillars.

2. I can't do anything against permanents, or against getting mine stolen.  I just have to hope I get enough damage out there before the other guy gets set up with something I can't overpower.  Is this an okay deficiency to have, or should I look at adding/swapping something?

3. It's a coin toss if I'm up against a rush deck (it only takes 4 scarabs or an equal combination of scarabs and momentus to devour a shrieker, but I have to draw that quickly while stalling with reverse times), or a deck with some good creature control of its own.  I have to get lucky, or the other guy really unlucky.

4. I'm especially clueless against decks that don't even use creatures (poison, lots of sanctuaries and unstable gasses, etc.), unless I get lucky and get enough damage out there before the other guy manages to do whatever he does.

5. I'm having next to no luck finding another eternity or two, or more pharoahs, and don't know where to look reliably.

Any suggestions from the veterans?

[ColorlessGreen]

A few thoughts in no particular order:

(1) Quanta: I'd say add a few more pillars/pends. If you stick with 3 momentums, a chimera, and devour, I'd probably start around 4 pends and ~10 pillars.

(2) Damage: You could try switching the dragons out for ghosts of the past. They're cheaper and still quite good damage.

(3) Permanents: Momentum to bypass shields is really all you have to work with without adding another element (or shards of focus).

(4) Pharaohs: Play some ai3 and get some more pharaohs. They come fairly quickly in ai3, and a pharaoh/scarab deck works much better when it has more than one pharaoh.

(5) Gravity cards: You can probably safely drop down to two momentums (if you're keeping the chimera). It might not be a bad idea to ditch the chimera, though. Pay attention to how often it helps you while keeping in mind that being able to focus more on time with just a splash from gravity will make your quanta balance (and speed) better. I can't really predict whether you'd do better with or without it, so it's up to you.

(6) Read #4 again. You really could use more pharaohs. You can make a pretty quick AI3 time rush out of pillars, dragons, and ghosts of the past (and even a few precognitions if you want) that'll have quite quick games in AI3, and AI3 has loads of pharaohs in it. If you can get up to 3-6 pharaohs, this deck will get a lot better.

(7) Possibly play some bronze league and hope to get shards of readiness. They go wonderfully with pharaohs.

(8) If you want to play with scarabs and you don't want to deal with obtaining more pharaohs (or SoRs), you could consider trying to add aether for fractal. Fractal scarab is a reasonably effective strategy. It's a lot harder to balance a trio with that much quanta usage, though, so I'd kinda recommend looking for one that someone else made on the forums and working from there if you choose this route.

(9) You might be helped by adding a couple hourglasses to speed up your draws. Draw power is one of time's biggest advantages, and I could see it being quite helpful in this deck, particularly since you're over 30 cards.

(10) If you don't add hourglasses, drop down to 30 cards for more draw consistency.

I'll add more if I think of anything else. Hope some of that helps. Enjoy!

edit: Regarding the weaknesses you mentioned: First of all, it's pretty much impossible to beat everything - every deck has some things it's weak against. For rushes, you pretty much have to hope that your reverse times/eternity/shield slow them down enough to let you get your deck rolling. CC spam will be much less of an issue once you've got some more pharaohs to be able to spam scarabs. Creatureless decks are probably just going to remain a weakness unless you're able to take them down before they accomplish whatever they're trying to do.

[neuroleptics]

Given that you do not have many pharoahs, here are the options.

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You don't have to include SoFo

Your original deck is ok, but a larger deck can be made efficient by including 2 hourglasses. Otherwise, it should be ok. the momentum isn't needed. Once you achieve field control, you should be ok. The chimera will do the final job but if it's against Dims, the momentum will save you a bit.

[Brae43]

Thanks for all of the great advice!  Here's a revised version I kind of like.

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I'd played a 30 card deck without hourglasses for so long that I forgot how much fun and faster they made everything.  The few more pillars has helped offset bad quanta draws, and the chimera just saved my butt 30 seconds ago, yet again, so I think I'll keep it around for a little longer until I get more pharoahs and can get those scarabs out faster.  I might try out time-aether again in the future -- I actually started out with a time-aether deck, using annubis, fractal, parallel universe, etc.  It was tough to do well, which is why I ended up trying out a scarab deck instead.  I started with all time cards, and just powered my devour using the gravity mark until I decided to throw in shield-passing cards because all of the mono-aether decks were starting to tick me off.

AI3 is short for the level 3 ("Elder") computer, right?  I fight that thing all the time, and it's hardly ever a time opponent with pharoahs.  Maybe once in a blue moon, but I haven't gotten lucky on the slots since my first one.  Anyway, I win about 2/3 of my games, whether PvP, arena, or Level 3 (the occasional Level 4), so I'm doing okay.  But I'm really impressed how just a couple of tweaks made everything noticeably better.  Thanks for helping me fine-tune things, and if there's anything else I ought to consider, let me know.

[ColorlessGreen]

AI3 is shorthand for AI Level 3 (Elders).

Assuming the list is still up to date (which I believe it to be), there are 13 possible AI3 decks. One of those 13 contains four pharaohs, which makes it a fairly common spin from that one. An AI3 rush like the one I mentioned can reliably burn through games of AI3 in 60-90 seconds (just basically completely disregard defense and go for fast damage and don't worry too much about when you lose - lots of wins over time is more important than win rate for this purpose), so you should be able to spin up some more pharaohs within a few hours of rushy grinding.

Of course, the RNG knows when you're looking for something specific and tends to make sure you don't get that specific thing anywhere near as frequently as the odds would dictate, but it's still the basically best place to look. Bronze league arena would be another option (which would get you a bunch of other rares as well (including shards)).

[Brae43]

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So here's my newest iteration of the scarab deck.  I've managed to land a second pharoah (after way too much grinding), as well as a shard of readiness and a shard of focus.  I swapped out a dragon for a pharoah, then just tossed both shards and some extra pillars into my deck.

1. Is it getting too big and clunky?  I get gummed up with cards I don't have an immediate use for and bad quanta draws quite often, but most of the time, I'm able to stall the other guy and power my way through the bad stretch with hourglasses.  Most of the time.

2. Am I trying to do too much by having pharoas/scarabs, reverse times, shield passing gravity cards (3x momentum and a chimera), as well as the shard of focus to destroy permanents (I totally love that shard, by the way.  I frequently deploy it, spend two turns destroying two permanents I don't like, then reverse time it and summon it again -- sometimes even on the same turn if I have an hourglass out.  Plus, the AI is dumb as snot and will sometimes gravity pull, rage potion, or owl bow my shard so I can use it a third time.)

[treebeard xiii]

yeah this is a common difficulty all newer players have i remember when i was like this. You want to do everything in the same deck despite how big it makes your deck, ultimately you have to decide on one and possibly two strategies only, sofo is just to expensive unupped unless you have a very large flow of gravy quanta, personally i would keep the shield passing cards and scrap the sofo but that is just m hate on sofo talking, either you remove the sofo and stick with mom or get a more even pillar pend split and keep the sole sofo (not advised relying on getting one copy of a card is this size deck is like looking for a needle in a haystack), I would drop the sor until you get three copies at least, i wouldn't use sofo until i had two copies of it minimum you might as well keep the scarabs until you get three or four pharoahs i'd prefer four personally but that is also a matter of taste.

[Brae43]

That seems to be the general advice around the forums.  "Keep your deck at 30 cards and no more, and set yourself up for one strategy only.  Accept any weaknesses you might have.  Otherwise, you're just going to draw bad stuff and lose a lot more than you'd normally lose if you'd stuck with 30 cards and one strategy."

Since I'm new and don't have the time to build a bunch of different decks, I've been stacking this one to be my go-to, "all-around grinding" deck.  At least until I'm ready for FGs and higher tier arenas.  I grind AI3, PVP1, and Bronze and easily win 2/3 of my games without breaking a sweat.  Sure, it takes me 10+ turns per game, but it's fun.  PVP people rage quit on me all the time.  Some quit as soon as I get a pharoah out, or when they get ticked off the fourth time I reverse time something.

So I kind of like having shield-passers (that chimera has saved my bacon twice today.  In a long arena match, I'll sometimes use it to clean the field when I've filed every space with scarabs and want to summon something else), and the shard of focus scares the heck out of people and combines well with chimera.  Even if people blast the shard as soon as they see it, it forces their hand next turn, giving me another round to get stuff out.

Here's the latest iteration.

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I finally got myself a second eternity, and five pharoahs in all.  So I got rid of my scarabs (sometimes I have to sit on my hands a few turns early on, which sucks), but taking out the scarabs and sitting at 40 cards has really helped reduce my bad quanta draws.

Anything I should tweak, or consider?  Is there a good way to slim down to 30-35 cards while keeping the spirit of the deck intact?

[Brae43]

Can someone recommend some good tweaks to the concept based on my latest iteration?

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I have a third eternity I could toss in to help ensure I draw one (but I recently took it out to make room for my second shard of readiness).  I have six pharaohs, but don't like getting gummed up with a bunch of them early so I cut the deck to three.  Same with most of my cards, actually.  Three of each thing seems to be about right to last me until the end of the game, though sometimes I find myself wishing for just one more reverse time or momentum near the end.

I'm not sure how to trim down to 30 cards without making some really painful cuts, and for the most part, with the reverses, eternities, procrastination, and two hourglasses, I can usually keep the game going long enough to get to what I need out of my deck.

I originally debated not having the scarabs since I have pharaohs, but it's actually been really effective getting them out early, using momentums as needed, and running an early-game creature control.  Keeps people's small creatures at bay without me having to waste all my reverse times.  Plus, people panic when they see scarabs and start wasting all kinds of CC cards killing them.  Then, I'll play a pharaoh or my shard of focus after they've burned out blasting scarabs.  If anything, the procrastination is the most useless card there (since most of the time, I'm prepared to reverse or devour creatures the turn after they're out), but it keeps a lot of heat off of me if I'm losing early to a rush deck, or against those annoying mono-aether decks with invulnerable creatures.

[brgst13]

One thing I'd suggest is to take out one time factory and put in Gravity Pull.  Combo that with SoF to soak their damage and give you re-usable permanent control.

[Brae43]

Thought about that, but didn't want to mess up my painfully delicate quanta balance.  I think I'll actually try it out.  I played this really interesting game against a guy with multiple SoFs and gravity pulls who just kept me at bay the whole time.  I could have beaten him if I'd gotten going a little faster a little sooner, but that's true about everyone every time they lose.  Once he got that madness going really strong, I didn't even have pillars left.

[Brae43]

It's been a long while, but here's my latest version of the concept. It's a little vanilla, but gives me good results.

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Here's some flaws you experts might be able to help with:

1. Quanta draws - My quanta balance is about right, but seriously, if I draw fewer than 3 pillars, I might as well quit. I'll never get going fast enough before a real deck (meaning a deck that beats you in <9 turns) has me beaten down too badly to make a comeback.

2. That chimera - On paper, it pairs really well with scarabs, as well as shards of focus, and is a great failsafe for shield-passing shields I can't destroy either due to indestructability or not drawing a shard, or when I don't manage to draw my gravity pull until nearly the end of the game. In practice, I hardly ever use it and it's wasting space, but I'm not sure what to swap in for it (another shard of focus? another eternity? another gravity force? another pillar?).

3. Denial decks usually eat me alive unless I get a really good start (i.e. a gravity forced shard of focus and a readiness pharaoh, early on).  Otherwise, I'm meat to swarms of devourers/pests, black holes, earthquake/quicksand, etc.

4. Those annoying shard of wisdom decks beat me badly unless I get a really good start.  Gravity force + Shard of Focus doesn't do much good against them. You just have to be faster, and this deck's kind of slow.

5. Those annoying spam-poison decks beat me more often than I'd like, too, but not as badly as the other two.

6. Any gold or platnium arena deck usually out-rushes me easily.

3-6 can pretty much be summarized: My deck's too slow. Is there a good way to speed it up?