Deathstalker fun [unupped][pvp1]

[Fareley]

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So you probably have seen this kind of deck tons of times, with varying additions ranging from Otyughs over Gravity Shield and Gravity Pull up to Black Hole. This is my version of the deck, if you don't like it or think it is not unique/new enough please tell me.

Also I have read quite a lot of opinions (and decks) that say Deathstalkers should primarily be used with Eclipse/Nightfall, as you only need one of them for all Deathstalkers. If you take a closer look however, you won't get through shields with that combo. So you have to add in shield removal cards, namely Steal. Which requires both more Death quanta than you would like and is even more dependant on draws (first you have to draw the Steals, then you have to bank on the fact that your opponent only has 2 shields. In case of Dimensional shields which are most common, this is usually not the case).
The bone walls are in there to beat out tough creatures rushes (as in Dragon rush or similar stuff). They might not be effective against mass creatures, but those take time to build up anyways. They do not protect much against medium amounts of medium strength creatures or stuff like adrenalined Frogs.

The weak points of the deck are:
- bad starting hand (duh)
- getting all the Deathstalkers CCed immediately (you still get a fair amount of poison ticking thanks to the first attack, but probably not enough to win)
- poison removal/compensation (enough heal every turn or purify)
- quanta denial (although as you only need 2 quanta of both Death and Gravity each, you probably still get out 1-2 early Deathstalkers and maybe an arsenic until full lockdown, which might be enough to beat out the eventual Vampires/Black Dragons to follow up the Devourers or whatever follows the Earthquakes)
- hard rushes (such as Life adrenaline rush, probably some forms of Grabbow as well)

The strong points are:
- Immortal creature reliant Aether decks, as they get countered pretty hard by bone wall and Deathstalkers just ignore Dims. Deals okay-ish with Psion-based Aether, as those are still rather slow in building up (compared to pure rush) and their Dims are worthless, even though Bone Walls have nothing on Psions
- does not care about permanent control much/at all
- other decks that do not cover the weaknesses of this deck (listed above)

Because this deck does have a few crucial weaknesses it is not great to farm arena, as you do get shut down a couple times here and there. But for PvP1 it still is a fun deck with fair winning chances

[Keolino]

You think bypassing shields (and using gravity) is strictly better than using darkness? With darkness, you can bypass shields AND do many more stuff. This deck is my own (death/darkness), with lots of useful stuff (just like yours, I wouldn't recommend it for arena...)

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So I can buff my scorps (3 nightfall) and let them bypass shields (3 steals), making it 6 cards just like your gravity. But since I have darkness, I can use funny cards like dusk mantle to block attacks (You can use a second one for more draw chance) And nice Cloaks to protect my stalkers.
Normally, I play this deck without playing much at first, and when I finally get enough quanta, I play 2-3 stalkers, one nightfall and one or better two cloaks at once. That way, you can get at least 12-18 poison counters on your opponent, without having to fear nasty lightnings, fire bolts or reverse times.



But since you use gravity, which is perfectly fine as well, I would definitely add two otyughs into your deck. (And add some more death pends instead of pillars) I would remove a death stalker and a momentum to get some card space for the otyughs. The little otys fit so perfectly into your deck, it would be a shame to leave them out... With upping the deck (and adding the otyughs) this deck should be able to at least get some shards from bronze, and probably silver as well...

[Rutarete]

I would also support adding 2 Otys to the deck, because of the synergy, and there's potential rom for it. Since everything's a really low cost, you only need switch 2 or three more pillars to pendulums than you already have. You can make room for them by having only 5 each of deathstalker and momentum.

[Fareley]

I have thought about the Otyugh situation, and I am not yet convinced:

- The deck is rush based; every turn I don't get out the scorpions is an exponential increase in chance of losing the game. So I would rather not take out scorpions

- for the very same reason I thought having a balance of 6 Quanta Index for Gravity and 4 Quanta Index for Death is totally fine: I can get out enough momentums out in time with just 0-1 early pendulums. If I get more, I often times run into the problem of stacking up on Gravity Quantum and not having enough Death Quantum to play the Bone Walls as soon as possible. Which is where that overflow of Death Quanta comes in handy. To run 2 Otys, I would probably need 5+ more pendulums, which would eat hard at my bone shields I think.

- pendulums are one-sided every turn: If I play 3 pendulums on turn one, I have 3 Death Quanta and one Gravity Quanta on turn 2. So I will have to wait for turn 3 anyway for the first Deathstalker. Not much gain in speed there, but I do risk to screw my Quanta balance with it if I draw too much of one or the other. Even now, I don't know if I shouldn't take out the only 2 pendulums, just for extra consistency, even though it would make the deck slightly slower I guess.

- weird enough, the cards that I am confident that I don't need are both arsenic weapons and a few Death pillars. The weapon has the inherent drawback of putting out a weakness (getting stolen, then I can't deal with it) while not benefitting my damage enough for the risk (although it is very nice to play it on turn 2). I would be willing to take them out of the deck in favour of something with more offensive potential, not something with more control potential.


Maybe I have to think some more about the deck. I really dislike doing more than a small Gravity splash, as it increases inconsistency in playing the deck. However I do see the wisdom of getting more Gravity and maybe will explore what can be done if I actually switch to pendulums only instead of a mix.

[Rutarete]

Hearing that, I'll withdraw the Oty support

If the arsenics aren't working well enough, you could try mummies to get more rush p-damage in.

[Higurashi]

4 BW's and slow damage is not rush-based in any way, shape or form. It would be more accurate to say it only has one win condition: damage by Scorps. This also highlights the deck's extreme weakness to CC and thus shows you the value of Arsenics, Poisons or Mummies.

While it's true Momentum Stalkers is mostly inferior to Nightfall Stalkers because of the different Elements supporting them (I run Nightfall Stalkers with 6 Drain Lives, 2 Dusks and one Stiletto because it needs stall power), Momentum Stalkers can get out early damage faster. Otys would be cool with BW, except for the fact that unupped, unbuffed Otys can't eat much at all. If anything I'd do a GP+BW thing with Mummies and Momentum Stalkers, but that changes the deck a lot because the combo would have to go down to 4 cards each.

When it comes down to it, this works fine as is. I will note Lobo and Lightnings stops this cold, and thus it doesn't fare well against Aether at all in my experience.