Voodoo Wall

[dstrick2989]

I came up with this deck sometime last week, and it's been incredibly fun to play.

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55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55t 55t 55t 55t 55t 55t 561 561 595 595 595 595 595 595 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5up 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0

Element	QI
Gravity	4.4
Darkness	4
Earth (mark = 1 pillar)	12
Overall (excluding mark)	5.5

As you can imagine, the idea is to use gravity pull and basilisk blood on a voodoo doll and watch your
opponent commit suicide. The catapults are there to launch any extra voodoo dolls that end up in your
hand. One naked voodoo doll does 14 damage when launched and one doll with BB does 25 damage
when launched. The steal is just there because I needed to get up to 30 cards and I didn't want to add
another pillar (although after testing, another obsidian pillar might be necessary).

Things I don't like:

You

have to draw at least one of each card (excluding catapult and steal) for it to work.Reverse time, mutation, and mass momentum stop it cold.Speed decks usually break down your wall faster than you can build it.[/list]
If you do manage to get your wall set up, though, only the three things listed above counter it, as far
as I know (lobotomy does not remove voodoo*). None of the damage dealt by this deck is affected by
shields, and your opponent's weapon is delayed 6 turns every time you BB a voodoo doll.

I know I'm breaking a lot of guidelines for good deck building, but it's not a bad deck, regardless. I
logged a benchmark of 20 matches against AI3 and came out with 13 wins, 7 losses--not quite good
enough for grinding, but better than I expected. Three of the losses were because I ran out of basilisk
blood, two were because I didn't draw any obsidian pillars, and my dolls were mutated or sent back to
my deck on the other two.

It didn't do as well at PvP (probably about 40%-50% wins), but it led so some hilarious games. 

I was mainly posting just to share, but I was wondering if a strategy like this might have any potential
with upgraded cards (I only have one so far). If someone has already tried this and it turned out to be
a dead end I would like to know.

I also thought about using novae and/or quantum pillars instead so you would only have to draw one
type of tower (increasing your odds), but I haven't tried it yet.

Any questions, comments, criticisms, or recommendations are more than welcome.

*You might want to check me on this.

[hrmmm]

very nice deck post - a pleasure to read 

just a few thoughts i had while reading this:

- rewind/mutation/monumentum are natural counters to this deck.
there is hardly a way to beat that with this kind of deck.
you could add 2 nightmares to gain some cc (along with gravity pull). this might give you a little chance to stand vs. monumentumed stuff.

- this deck seems better to work with darkness pendulums instead of the pillar split.
the chance to get one is much better and you can produce everything you need.

- and yes, this kind of decks have quite a potential.
even to farm false gods:
Shak'ars Revenge (FG-Voodoo) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,14435.0.html)

as you see some upgraded versions are using supernovas or quantumtowers.

[deadsteve]

I have been trying to make a deck like this and it is very good.
The main problem for me was i ran  out of cards way to soon!
I would maybe try a mark of darkness and a few less pillars as this deck is cheap to use in battle.
Gl and Hf!!

[dstrick2989]

Thanks for the replies. They've given me lots of new ideas. In particular, parallel/twin universe has
great synergy with the rest of the deck, and even provides some resistance against mutation/reverse
time. I do have another question, though.

- this deck seems better to work with darkness pendulums instead of the pillar split.
the chance to get one is much better and you can produce everything you need.

I'm not sure I quite understand your advice. Unless I am mistaken, darkness pendulums would not
give me a source of gravity quanta. Did you mean that I should use darkness pendulums and another
type of pillar?

I've had very little trouble with running out of cards in this deck. Most of my games end very quickly (in
victory or defeat). I think the catapults help with this because I've usually built up enough ammunition
to kill my opponent in one or two turns by the time my deck is low.

I'm reluctant to take out pillars because I've had trouble drawing them soon enough. The essential part
is getting the wall up. Afterwards my quanta usually skyrockets, but I'm convinced that there's no way
around it after testing. Like I mentioned, even with this amount of pillars I still had trouble getting
darkness quanta when I needed it. I also like the mark of earth because it guarantees that I will be
able to play multiple BBs (provided they are drawn).

I'm currently experimenting with parallel universe using all quantum pillars and an aether mark. I'll
post what I come up with when it's tested.

[hrmmm]

im sorry.
the hint with the darkness pendulums where a fail advice from me (i might should more sleep for preventing such incidents ^^).
you are right, they make not much sense this way.

i spot some quanta problems (like in any other trio) if you not get the right pillars in your starting hand - or at all.

i didnt found a solution for this problem yet, but replacing the steal with another pillars seems a first step for me.


dont care about skyrocking quanta... have the right amount in time is really more important. to much quanta wont hurt you, to less quanta...

using novas in such a deck could be also a idea worth testing.
with 2 novas you can start a wall immediately.
but this might only be really effective with upgraded gravity pulls.

im checking this again, if you post your next generation of this deck

[dstrick2989]

No worries. I've had my share of awful ideas for getting quanta in this deck. 
Here's what I settled on.

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 55t 55t 55t 55t 561 561 595 595 595 595 595 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 61r 61r 61r 61rThe key here is that casting parallel universe on a damaged voodoo doll deals (max hp - current hp)
damage to the opponent (That took me ages to figure out. I thought it was a glitch at first). I
considered replacing the catapults entirely with parallel universes, but I like the options that the
catapults provide. They allow for victories that would have been impossible otherwise.

A quanta index analysis isn't really appropriate for this deck, but I played another 20 matches against
AI3. Here are the results:

Wins	16
Losses	4
Median Match Length	11

Reasons for losses:

misplaymutationno parallel universeno earth quanta (in 12 turns with 5 pillars--clearly a fluke!)

I don't have numbers, but it does pretty well against the top 50 and in PvP. Much better than the first
version.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with these results. Playing the deck is entertaining and challenging, but it still
has a reasonable chance of victory against almost any strategy. This was my intention all along, so
thanks for the help getting there!

Note: I did not talk much about the strategy because it is best discovered through experimentation.
However, unlike with most other decks, a single strategic error will probably result in defeat. I would be
happy to answer any questions about my experience with it.