Lance-a-lot-Charge (Lance-deck reloaded)

[Jangoo]

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A pretty fast (turn 6-9 kill) fractal deck which was designed to bring glory to the fire-lance again.

It is hard to bog down, since 5 fractals bring you back into the game with the Brimstoners over and over again while fire-quantum supply constantly grows to make those lances and the Fahrenheit ever more dangerous from turn to turn.
Phoenix is a side option to open up another source of dmg and serves best as aggro-magnet against the AI who will then leave your Brimstoners at peace.

This is the rush-edition (within the Charge-frame of decks), that counts on outrushing the opponent while possibly sacrifizing lances to take out any critter that's just too dangerous ... A decent 50HP+ usually come from the little guys alone by the time your HP start getting troublesome.

Modifications that have also proven good are:

* 2-phase phoenix-fractal: bringing in another phoenix for a lance or tower
-> phase 1: fractal Brimstoners for quantum-generation; phase 2: fractal phoenix for that army

* Fahrenheit-focus: a 2nd Fahrenheit for a lance, fractal, phoenix or tower

* slight defense: the common 1-2 phase-shields in the mix for phoenix, tower, explosion, fractal
-> more time to sit behind a shield and make best use of those lances

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Lance-a-lots Conquest of America

Officially approved by the Master of Water as "tight" and "absolutely BRUTAL"

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Deck types in a general categorization:


                     -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ]
                 --
             --
RUSH:                                              (shrieker-, destroyer-, defenseless mono-rushes ...)


                                             -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ]
                            -- -- -- -- --
STALL:   -- -- -- --                             (FG-rainbows, heal-, cc-, shield-intensive decks)
       

                                                       -- -- -- -- -- ]
                                                -- --
                                           --
                                    -- --
CHARGE: -- -- -- -- -- --                    (certain fractal decks, classic lance-decks, decks with a "breakpoint" like many TU-decks)



I like to call decks like the Lance-a-lot-deck a "Charge"-deck.
A charge-deck indeed kind of mimics a good old traditional war charge:
Slowly approaching for a while then charging in to destroy the opponent with certainty while taking heavy casualties oneself.

Charges generally exceed a rushes damage-output and ramp up their dmg to deadly proportions within very few turns. The difference in dmg-quality is that rushes can be stopped and broken with hardly a chance for recovery whereas a well orchestrated charge can't really be stopped anymore. (Chaaaarge!)

The price for an awesome Charge is of course some needed time for preparation. Here, a Charge is sort of like a stall deck, the difference being however that there is much less focus on actual survival and disruption tactics. A charge deck doesn't need this because it counts on the charge finishing the job before it gets too nasty.

[RedRevive]

So do you usually fractal brimstones or situationally fractal phoenixes as well?

[Lanidrak]

I made something more or less identical to this, except with a few Cremations thrown in. A phoenix is the perfect target for Cremation.

Here is my version - sorry for topic stealing,  Jangoo. But Cremation is invaluable at boosting your , especially now we have Phoenix.

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Other changes include:
+2 Fire Buckler
+2 Fire Lances
+1 Fahrenheit
+1 Rain of Fire

-3 Fractal

Just for your information too. I'm sad to announce that the Fire-Lance deck is officially obsolete.

Try this out:

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[Jangoo]

So do you usually fractal brimstones or situationally fractal phoenixes as well?

The original version didn't even have a phoenix.
4/1 isn't exactly a shield breaking dmg, so if there is a Permafrost, Thorn, Diamond, Turtle, Jade, Dusk-shield out chances are you wont really get to him via your critters. In that case stick to the Brimstoners and finish it with lances and Fahrenheit as usual.
Actually, best uses for the phoenixes are often the last turn kill dmg, when you explode that pesky shield, unload a couple lances and fractal the phoenix to get those remaining HP in.
Against the AI, even the single phoenix does a great job in soaking up those lances, lightnings, Otys etc.


@ Lanidrak:

Hm ... I am not really sure why the ball-lightning-deck would outdate any lance-deck.

I tried it in T50 and it sure is fun and fast. However, it lacks exactly those two critical features that make a lance-deck (still) so good: Hitting past shields and dealing huge dmg in one turn.
I would lose every second game simply because a Permafrost or Bonewall came up and consequently crippled my whole dmg-output -> gameover.

With a lance-focus this doesn't happen to you ...

[Lanidrak]

If you come across a Fire Shield, then you get no more quanta from your Brimstone Eaters. That is pretty much a loss.
If you come across any shield that reflects spells, you can pretty much quit right there.

In my tests, using the Fire Lance Deck above, my Fire Lance Deck (with the Phoenix/Cremation/Fahrenheit/Shield) and then comparing these to the Fractal Ball Lightning deck...

In T50 I had maybe 1 win out of 20 with any attempt at a Lance deck. SoG's/Empathic Bonds/Improved Miracles all completely owned it, as well as the shields listed above.

Whereas, the sheer speed of the Ball Lightning version, is enough to tie down your opponent before he has quanta to play any significant shields or miracles, you even out damage his SoG's, which is invaluable. The quanta generating lance version is too slow.

Obviously, Titanium Shield, Bone Wall and Phase Shield are your main enemies when running the Fractal. But I find that it's speed and sheer damage is more impressive than a lance deck, even though it functions more like a Creature-Rush than a Spell-Blast.

*dreams of an update where Ball Lightnings gain Momentum*... :p

[RedRevive]

I don't understand how ball lightning fractal makes a completely different deck 'obsolete.'  Although it might be faster on some occasions, in order to kill with ball lightning you need what... 100/5 = 20 Ball Lightnings?  So that means that you need to drop ~3-5 on the table, fractal with very little in hand, and then do it again, but you leave your opponent a small gap to heal if you cannot get the combination perfect.  Also, Ball Lightning against shields that reduce damage kind of nullify that deck Lani

P.S.  Didn't see your comment about the shield hate of this deck beforehand- must have just been posted

[Lanidrak]

Fractal with empty hand = 8 new cards.
Fractal with one card = 7 new cards
Fractal with two cards = 6 new cards

Empty hand Fractal on a Ball Lightning translates into 45 damage. 8 Ball Lightnings + 1 In Play.

That kind of damage is only really possible from a Fire Lance if you have 141 Fire Quanta - that is, 1 Quanta to play the Fire Lance, and 140 / 10 = 14*3 additional damage.

With the deck's listed here, and any variation I can think of, it is relatively impossible to get this amount of quanta in the time you can get 8 Aether quanta and 1 Ball Lightning.

[Jangoo]

You see Lanidrak, these really are two completely different decks we are talking about.

The Lance-a-lot-Charge is not even a real rush deck, it's a charge-deck where the finishing move (the charge) has to be prepared over a couple turns but stands a good chance of actually getting through with deadly effect. Thus, a decent turn 8 kill can almost be counted on if you didn't die before that.

A rush deck such as the ball-lightning bets on ramping up that dmg as fast as possible by using a single, focused critter-strategy. From my experience, chances of actually getting through are more based on luck than anything else: Am I faster than his SoG-output + quantum generation for the shields?

Also, I think that your version of the lance-deck is just a bit too large and undecided to function well, so you probably shouldn't use it's losses to evaluate Lance-a-lot:
Why are there 6 aether-towers in the deck? They only power two measly fractals which you will probably not even draw in time. If playing T50 with the deck, why would you run the risk of getting a fire-buckler stolen when you know that this is the bane of your own strategy? ...

[Lanidrak]

So then, would a deck using a lot of Burning Towers/Pillars and an two Protect Artifacts not function better?

Especially considering how pillars provide cumulative generation, and are a lot less susceptible to control - compared to a 2/1 Brimstone Eater.

I'm in class right now, didn't mean to start an argument over this :p but I'll post a more complete deck idea soon, this is just a rough draft.

16 Burning Towers
4 Enchant Artefact's
6 Fire Lances
1 Fire buckler
1 Fahrenheit
2 Rain of Fires

Edit: Mark of Earth obviously :p

[Jangoo]

Yeah, that would be more or less the classic lance-deck, except it used to survive via packing 6 sundials which was necessary because towers simply are too slow if you draw them one at a time.
Eversince the sundial got nerfed, it's chances to outdamage/survive opposing strategies have been severely crippled.

I tried to compensate for this by using a build similar to the Conquest-build in the OP (edit):
Phase-shields instead of sundials, more towers instead of fractals, Brimstoners and explosions.
This way it does work somehow, it's just really slow and boring and will never award you an 8 turn kill ... also it is more susceptible to perm-control than the sundial-version because simply stealing a phase-shield is an option.

Overall you are right of course: Lance-a-lot has some big drawbacks concerning that fragile Brimstone-army.
I still found that it is definitely worth it because normally you will have ~3 towers and some 7 Brimstoners by turn 4 while another load of them is on the way two turns later. The decent standard to have ~16 fire-generating entities fielded by turn 6, which even deal 24 dmg/turn (provided there is no shield) is just crushingly awesome. 
Also, the resurrection of the Brimstoners can be done pretty easily with 5 fractals. You will simply keep one in hand and throw out the next round of 6-7 little naggers as soon as you draw fractal.
Otys feast a bit too slow to cope with that mass-spam, plagues award you one more turn of dmg and quantum-generation and are not that common ... RoF really is the biggest problem but not many decks carry more than one or two and draw them in time to stop you fast enough:
Only two turns of survival and your cannon-fodder Brimstoner has sufficiently done his job.