Duo: Darkness & Aether "The double dragon"

[Vikingblood]

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5uo 5up 5up 5ur 5uu 5uu 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61u 622 63a 63a 63a 8pt

Hi folks,

I'm just playing elements for an week. Here is one deck suggestion I'm currently using (quite successfully). I started with darkness mark. Any help, feedback, suggestions are welcome!  As I experience more, I will add to this post/topic.

The idea behind is to quickly get some dragons out and with few attacks finish your opponent off. I call it "Double Dragon" cause a Black dragon and a Parallel universe are played in the same round, meaning 2 dragons appear on the battlefield. 

Ok now some explanation to the cards I've chosen and how to play that deck. My mark is  and the ?? is the Aether pendulum.

The cards

 

• Obsidian pillar: You should have at least one in your starting hand, once you gain 5-6 quanta each turn you should be able to play almost all of your darkness cards.
• Devourer:  Usually you are able to play 1 devourer in your second turn, they help to get you mana in the beginning, stop your opponent a bit and beeing the preys for opponents spells.
• Black Dragon: The main creature of that deck. Once you gain 5 quanta per turn, you can play a dragon every second turn. It's a good idea to keep 1 dragon in your hand for the use with Parallel Dimension or later Fractal.
• Dusk mantle: Prevent your opponent from attacking, 1 should be enough cause in hard times you will use the Dimensional shield.
• Steal: A must have in every darkness deck but wait until you get really something useful, or steal the opponents most essential permanent. Most of the time it is used to remove your opponents shield, that your dragons can attack.
• Vampire Stiletto: Not much to say, weapon but the drain life 4 is more useful. Play it when you can. Better to have this destroyed than your shields.
• Liquid Shadow: Another real nasty card after steal. Usually you use it on low health/attack cards with nasty abilities (Maxwells demon, Phoenix, Fallen elf...) as lobotomize+infection or in the end of an battle use it on your own dragons to gain life if neccessary.

Some comments/ideas on other  cards:

• Nightfall: Get the hand off that card. You want to win with few monsters so usually with Nightfall you don't get anything but may be helping your opponent.Only may be 1 health more for your dragons seems nice.
• Other creatures ( Gargoyle, Parasite, Minor Vampire ) are not needed, slow things down.
• Drain Life: May be an option to kill creatures and heal. Usually you spent the quanta for your dragons.

• Aether Pillar: When you get 3-4 quanta each turn, it should be ok, 1 is defintely too less.
• Parallel Universe: Works instantly, so together with the dragon you do 20 damage (on surprise) for only 17 quanta - not too bad I guess. Usually your opponent will be able to take out one black dragon or weaken it in some way. So when you play the dragon one round earlier you might not be able to copy it or just copy it with an negative effect on it. Of course you also can copy useful creatures from your opponent.
• Dimensional shield: Used when you will be hurt seriously, even dusk mantle can be replaced by that if necessary. Nice combination with Liquid Shadow when the creatures can't drain for 3 turns.
• Fractal: Play it on a dragon to finish your opponent off. No I'm not joking. Do this when you can play 2-3 dragons this turn or you need just 1 more dragon to win the game. The good thing this also can be played on "ill" dragons.You will not be able to play all of them, 2 or 3 are usually enough.Your opponent can't react to this attack. (like playing Stone skin, Miracle or Heal.)
• Lobotomizer: Weapon doing 5 dmg, skill is used seldom, usually Liquid Shadow is just better..
• Aether Peundulum: Since you need quanta from both types this works well.

Some comments/ideas on other  cards:

• Quintessence: Don't use this, you can't copy your dragons then.
• Other creatures (Spark, Immortal, Phase Dragon, Phase Spider) are not needed.
• Mindgate: How to use this? Don't see anthing...
• Lightning: May be an option to kill creatures.

The (basic) stategy:

A good starting hand is when you have an Obsidian Pillar, Aether Pillar, Devourer, Black Dragon and Parallel Universe.
Play the Devourers as soon as you can.
Try to save the quanta to be able to play a Black Dragon and a Parallel Universe on the same turn.
React to your opponent (Steal, Liquid Shadow, Shields, Vampire Stiletto) don't waste these cards.
Try to use fractal on your dragons to finish your opponent in one big attack.

(Level 3 farming takes less than 2 minutes per game with an win rate of over 90 %. Don't laugh I'm new to the game.)

What to steal:

• Shields (be sure not to try to steal bonewall!)
• Weapons (more in a defensive way to prevent your opponent from attacking or using special abbilities)
• Other permanent that might help your opponent (Boneyard, Empathic Bond, Golden Hourglass, Mindgate)

Weaknesses:

General stuff

- anything that drains your quanta (Devourer,Earthquake, Discord)
- anything that prevents you from attacking (Dissipation Shield, Sundial, Freeze, Basilisk Blood, Dimensional Shield,Procrastination)
- anything that "removes" your shields (Steal, Deflagration, Momentum)


Certain cards

- maxwell's demon (can kill 1 dragon per turn)
- bonewall (don't know how to overcome this)
- otyugh (devour the devourers and then the dragons)
-...

Against other marks in general: (some impressions)

- Hard:  , ,
- Middle:  ,  , 
- "Easy":  ,  ,   ,  ,  ,

Against certain decks:
- Rainbow: good rainbow decks are very hard to beat, since usually they try to go for a long game
- Mono Aether: Dragons + Dimensional shield, easy to beat never lost a single game
- Mono Darkness: Devourers or Darkness : Aether Devourer  + Fractal..very hard to beat, if you can stop them in the beginning and get some dragons out you have a small chance..otherwise you'll loose
- Life: Forest scorpion + adrenaline...when you get your shields out you should win this

CU Viking  8)

-------
Changelog:

• 27.08.2010 Original post
• 29.08.2010 Update: Deck (added 1 Black Dragon, 1 Lobotomizer, 2 Aether Pendulums), some deck description,formating text, weaknesses, against other marks
  Add: what to steal , against certain decks

[jmdt]

I like the title.  Have you looked at pendalums?

[Vikingblood]

I like the title.  Have you looked at pendalums?

I added 2 Aether Pendulums and things instantly improved.  I added the Lobotomizer...lets see if it works.

I will not add quintessence to the deck as I cannot use Parallel Universe nor Fractal on my dragons.
Thought of adding 3rd Liquid shadow but try the Lobotiomizer first.
3rd steal?
No more devourers
No more dragons
2 Steals are ok I guess
Remove Dusk mantle?

I think I'll try to add a 3rd Parallel Universe using enemy units against them.

PVP resumee:

- still lost to Devourer+Fractal Deck...lobotimized 2 devourers..useless
- beat an Entropy deck using Azure Dragons in a tough fight.. I would have lost if my opp had more Maxwell deamons and Dissipative shields
- beat an Earth -Time Graboid:Shrieker  deck easily
- beat an Life Forest Scorpion + Adrenaline very easily
- beat an (chaotic) Time deck

[Vikingblood]

I tried with 3rd Parallel Universe but this wasn't so effective, instead I added a 5th black dragon - much better. 

Now devourers appear more seldom in your starting hand.

The Lobotomizer - well it's a 5 dmg weapon. The effect of the weapon it's not used so often cause : you need the quanta otherwise, Liquid Shadow removes passive skills where this weapon don't and LS works instantly, you can not use this weapon in the round you play it. Anyway I keep this in my deck. 

The combination Liquid Shadow + Dimensional Shield is quite really nice.  Liquid shadow is seldom used on your dragons. Its effective on opponent creatures with adrenaline..so they die faster. 

Fractal on devourers doesn't really work well in this deck. To play Fractal correctly you really need to think about the order you play cards in this turn. 1 Fractal should be enough in this deck.

Paralell universe is used most of the time on your dragons or on boosted opponent creatures.

The thing to do much damage on surprise is really a strength of this deck. Against a really good Fire-Gravity deck  I was able with 1 Black Dragon, 1 Parallel universe, 1 Fractal to play 6 Dragons in one turn and instantly won the game (my opp had 60! health left) ..otherwise I would have lost on the next attack. (with only 12 health left and many creatures hitting me)
Against a rainbow deck with 2 dragons out I was able to play 7 dragons in one turn (+steal)  doing 90 dmg..but this was not enough and I still lost.