Time Speedbow? AI3 Grinder

[Thiefboy109]

First, the deck....

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6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u7 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 713 745 77g 77g 7ah 7dj 7gl 7ju 7n8 7n8 7q0 7q0 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q8 7t9 80gWhy use a Mark of Time instead of Entropy?
The speedy draws from the hourglasses easily make up for not playing a supernova in the first round, and with the pends, you can play the supernova by turn 2 or 3 easily.
Eternity is used to remove annoying creatures from the opposing side, such as growth creatures. It can also be used to prevent deckout by rewinding the physalia.

Card to Card Breakdown:
Supernovas- 2 quanta of each element, this is a must for speedbows.

Improved Antimatter- Good because after awhile the entropy pends start to generate quite a bit of excess entropy. Also makes an opponent's dragon or other strong creature heal you.

Entropy Pends- Generates the important Entropy quanta to fuel supernovas, and also provides enough time to power the hourglasses.

Flesh Recluse- Good damage for its cost. I would use Arsenic for Death, but I prefer to use Entropy in my weapons slot. Also, the ability can make wings even better.

Elite Charger- Good damage and momentum. You can replace this with an Unstoppable if you wish.

Elite Grabloid- Makes the great Shrieker, works great.

Forest Spectre- Growth for life and water, which this deck hardly uses.

Fire Spectre- Growth. Its filler really... you could try Fire Storm if you wished =)

Physalia- Poison is nice. Its really cheap cost too! It is really quite good, most people don't give it the credit it deserves.

Archangel- Damage and can heal itself. Great.

Wings- Stalling. Good to help stop damage.

Time Towers- More time to power hourglasses

Electrum Hourglasses- MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE DECK! This lets you draw through the deck REALLY fast so you can play alot of creatures for massive damage.

Eternity- Good CC for oppodent's field, certinly annoying. Also prevents deckout sometimes.

Improved Steal- Take a shield or weapon.

Phase Recluse- Damage. And the ability makes wings even better.


Here is a version using precogs.

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Suggetions? Ideas?

[omegareaper7]

I would take out the time towers for another supernova and an explosion. Or maybe lighting/shockwave.

[Genuinous]

If going for speed, Precognition beats hourglasses.

[Thiefboy109]

I would take out the time towers for another supernova and an explosion. Or maybe lighting/shockwave.

Time towers really do help with being able to consistently use hourglasses.
But explosion is good for shield too. I just like the towers because I don't really like to rely on pends.

If going for speed, Precognition beats hourglasses.

Yes, but you need 6 precogs. You can fit an extra 3 cards in with hourglasses, instead of 3 precogs. Also, I built this deck thinking about slightly longer matches. The hourglasses are better in this case because you only need to use 1 6 times to beat 6 precogs, and using 6 precogs is almost like a waste of 6 cards. Because of the hourglasses, you can draw even more than with precogs.

[omegareaper7]

If your not going to rely on the pendulums, why use them?

[RootRanger]

In a speedbow, precognition is better than hourglass.
Precog is better short-term; hourglass is better long-term.
I wouldn't use many of either, but if you have to, precog would be prefered.

[TheForbiddenOracle]

Have you considered adding some GotPs?

[Thiefboy109]

If your not going to rely on the pendulums, why use them?

Because they are more versatile than towers.

In a speedbow, precognition is better than hourglass.
Precog is better short-term; hourglass is better long-term.
I wouldn't use many of either, but if you have to, precog would be prefered.

Yes, but hourglasses end up drawing more cards in total once you have two or three.  Let me make a version with precogs...

Have you considered adding some GotPs?

Good Idea. Thanks.

[MatrimKK]

Okay Thiefboy, at first glance I saw your first deck and was intriged by the wings and the hourglasses.  Hourglasses can direct permanent control away from your all important shield.  But then I saw how many hourglasses (three) were in the deck and eternity and that this was a pendulum supernova deck with only five supernovas.  To be honest this looks like a quanta balance train wreck.  You have included some of the best speedbow creatures but then I saw the forest spectre and fire spectre.  This may draw fast but killing your opponent is another matter.  Also I believe that a creature who is antimattered is still blocked by wings unless it is airborn.  Then I saw you had a second deck using precognition. While this had the six supernovas needed it was very low on creatures and with three Ghost of the Past, I was afraid this too might have damage and/or quanta issues. 

As the topic suggested you are looking for a Speedbow for AI3 Grindage.  Being a AI3 Grinder you want to focus on your offense, and being reliant on Supernovas they have to be low cost.  So to my dismay the first thing I trashed was wings, which meant the hourglass had to go as well.  Needing the supernovas to be able to function and having time at my disposal I dumped six precognitions in to speed your draw to getting the key cards.  Grabboids obvious fit in well since you won't be short on time and I included every 3-4 cost speed demon but the damage still looked a bit lacking so I added a few 5 cost critters as well as Ghost of the past.  Now that I had my army in hand and the speed and resources to play them I just had to figure out my ideal number of entropy pendulums and filler.  To be honest I was torn between 4 and 5 pendulums so I ran the statistics of drawing at least one (which can power a supernova by turn two) and suprisingly after consider the mulligan 5 only offered a 4% higher chance so I decided with all the precognitions it was worth the gamble.  This left me 3 filler cards.  I considered discord but the small ammount of entropy was already devoted to supernova early (in addition it would be the only permenant) and often another time card was a possibility but I didn't want to overload quanta which I had purposely gone light on.  Permanent and creature control was on my mind but hey if this works lets hope you don't need it!  So this an important feature of grinding open, healing for an elemental mastery!  Blackhole was out do to discord not being included and I didn't have room for both so I loaded up on heals. 

Hope you like the final product, I took it out for a test drive and it delivered!  After a few games I was winning at 8-10 turns on a bad draw and often getting good draw at 5-6 turns.  The main weakness to this deck is early shields, Blackhole if you haven't been able to drop your hand, and possibly early mass creature control like pandemonium and rain of fire. 

by MatrimKK

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Deck import code : [Select]

6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 713 713 745 77g 77g 7ai 7ai 7ai 7dq 7gm 7jr 7qb 7qb 7qb 7qb 7qb 7qb 7qe 7tf 80g 8ps

[mrbarbarian]

Got any stats yet?

[MatrimKK]

base stats of 20 games on ai3 95% win 57.9% EM 7.6 TTW
its quite possible to get 4ttw but seems that lower ttw is less likely because of the reliance on supernovas to launch. 
while mulligan still gives you a 90% chance to have 1 pendulum in hand chance to supernova early is slightly lower not factoring in precognition. 
unfortunately you need at least 2 early supernovas to launch and possibly a third for a final burst of damage. 
precognition does wonders for this, essentially giving you a 24 card deck. 
I think given more games win% will start to approach 90% (the chance to draw 1 pendulum to start.)
ttw will likely go down but I'm not sure which way EM% may trend.

[kirchj33]

Looks fun Matrim.  I never found PSNbows to be extremely consistent, but I know jmdt has messed with PSNcogbows a bit in the past.  I like the way you reasoned that cutting pillars is viable in a precog deck.  Its always fun in an instant to poop your whole deck out with those cogs.