Water/Death "barebones" poison rusher

[pookie1337]

Water/Death "Barebones" Poison Rush

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5i5 5i5 5i5 5i5 5i5 5i5 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 718 718 718 718 718 718 71a 71b 71b 71b 71b 71b 71b 8pp

Mark: 
Cards (30)
11x Bone Tower
6x Chrysaora
6x Deadly Poison
6x Bone Wall
1x Arsenic

Strengths
Poison damage ignores shields.
Bone Wall is extremely tough to cut through in a short game.
Draws and plays cards very consistently.

Weaknesses
Purify can ruin everything.

Strategy
Focus is on poisoning your opponent, then watching them die while you hide behind Bone Wall. The poisons come mainly from Deadly Poison spam, and then additional poison from Chrysaora if your opponent can't creature-control. The deck pulls Bone Wall consistently and with more than enough Death quanta to play them.

Disclaimer/Other
I came up with this on my own while dinking around in the trainer. Poking through the forums, I saw that it's pretty similar to Scaredgirl's 'Got Poison?' deck (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,365), but with a few key differences:

Physalia is employed un-upgraded. I prefer this because they cannot be harmed by reactive shielding (thorny, stasis, fire, ice)
Congeal is replaced by Bone Wall. With a high concentration of Bone Walls in your deck and overflowing Death quanta, they provide an extremely reliable early-game shield.

Edit: In retrospect, upped Sundials could also provide a decent defense, especially vs. momentum and/or swarms of creatures.

[MrSexington]

Pretty good.

But without any way to kill creatures, the 6x Bone Walls feel like they wouldn't be as effective as they could be.

I'd probably do:

-2 Bone Wall
+2 Improved Plague

• You keep the poison theme.
• You get the ability to kill creatures.
• A lot of times, the creatures that die will power your remaining Bone Walls and will easily make up the defense of the missing ones.

 

[TheoCT]

The 6x bonewall is ridiculous for what it is, they cost way too much. For my speed poison deck I don't run ANY bonewalls because it slow the deck down a good bit and it is not nearly as fast as it could be. What I have is the same deck but w/ Physalia's instead, not too many people run shields that really make a difference and the little bit of extra damage does make a difference, I also have 6x congeal instead of 6x bonewall. I think this deck has been posted by somebody before.

[coinich]

Speed poison's a pretty old theme.  This is an interesting version.  I like your idea with the Chrysoras, but does the match ever end because you can't do enough damage and deck out?

[pookie1337]

I don't think I've ever decked out before. I'm not really sure the Physalia/Chrysaora makes much of a difference at all...

I like the idea of swapping a couple Bone Walls for Plague. There'd still be a good amount available so you'd (likely) have them on hand.

[PuppyChow]

I'll say from experience (I used to use Chrysora in my speed poison too) that having Physalias DOES make a big difference. Think about it. Over 7 turns, if you have an average of 3 physalia out, you do 42 damage.

That, and fire shields are rather rare, permafrost shields don't affect them, procrastination is very rare, and thorn shields are also rare to come by.

[Uncle Jellyfish]

I'll say from experience (I used to use Chrysora in my speed poison too) that having Physalias DOES make a big difference. Think about it. Over 7 turns, if you have an average of 3 physalia out, you do 42 damage.

That, and fire shields are rather rare, permafrost shields don't affect them, procrastination is very rare, and thorn shields are also rare to come by.

I completely agree. I've been using the standard Speed Poison (6x Physalia, 6x Congeal, 10x Bone Tower, 6x Deadly Poison, 2x Upgraded Arsenic, Mark of Water) for a long time, primarily as my main deck, and I have to say that Physalia do make a HUGE difference (though it should be mentioned that you should never play more than 2 at a time, or else they will be targeted by RoF).

As Puppy stated, the shields that are a threat, such as Fire and Thorn, hardly slow the deck down at all. You can usually attack twice and poison once against a Fire Shield (or poison twice, if the creature was out before the shield), and against the Thorn Shield, there is a chance that it won't even poison. I have personally played against both types of shields with my Speed Poison, though less against the Thorn, and I must say that the shields, if gotten early, only slow me down by about a turn, while late game, they don't make a difference.

Through my own extensive personal experience, Physalia is better in every occasion.