Nobody knows we still have graboids for certain, as we haven't used them since we had the opportunity to salvage. As far as everyone is certain of, we have 3 dragons remaining, along with thorn carapace and dim shields for stalling. They'll see the possibility of adrenaline or forest scorps for a rush from our lastest salvage. Our only real potential for surprise here lies in our remaining graboids.
In some ways it's kind of nice how we've imploded our vault. Down to our last deck and we still have 2 very viable stalls, and maybe 2 viable rushes. We don't have any pc, but we still have both cc (lightning) and poison (scorp).
We pretty much have to win here, which means round 9 we'll be fielding 2 decks with 62 cards, so we need to emerge from salvage here with 2 viable rush decks.
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Round has been updated, our opponent is life, this round life faces:
Glitch vs
Terroking
Killsdazombies vs
Nyma
Some deck options for us:
Straight graboid rush:58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 590 590 594 594 594 594 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5rk 77b 77b 77b 77g 77g 77gForest scorp rush:58r 58r 58r 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c3 5c3 5c3 7an 7an 7ao 7ao 7ao 7aoThorn stall:58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 592 592 594 594 594 594 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c8 5c8 77b 77b 77b 7aj 7aj 7ajThunder Dragons:*note, you can't pop the graboids unless they use a discord, they're still better than nothing
58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 590 590 590 590 590 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61u 778 778 778 77b 77b 77bOur fight is:
Terroking vs
Glitch
Life will be wary of our thorn shields this round and being decked out. They have 16 cards to use as a buffer, they may well try to cover the scenario where we deck them out.
Tactics:I think you'll need scorps and graboids both to manage the antimatter deck.. The dragons are important against their fire stall.
These tactics don't match the deck above, I'm not sure what deck has the best option to win here. The graboids are only poppable with a discord helping so those +scorps can't really kill the fire deck (dragons needed), SS will also be needed to ward off fire bolts, and EAs would sure be nice facing deflags. On the other hand, the dragons are nearly unplayable vs their entropy/antimatter option, EAs useless. Against entropy we'd want the graboids (who's very presence can make them want to hold back their discord), as well as the forest scorps (unupgraded is better if they AM them).
I can build a counter for one or the other, but both is hard. We may have to guess which we'll face here and go for it. Figuring out what they'll use against entropy tells us what we'll get too (if that's easier to figure out), at least one of us must face the fire stall.
Entropy mark: - I think this is most likely (45%)
Tricky one, we could use graboids so we benefit from a discord (lol). Forest scorps don't make sense for them to antimatter. This deck has a modest creature rush but modest healing (probably 3 heals), so put up the thorn carapace and focus on healing and SS. Put out graboids and forest scorps early and just leave them down until kill shot time. Keep dragons back for killshot burst or they'll get antimattered and ruin your day. The discord might mess with getting the shield out.
If they decide to use this against entropy, they'd use the fire deck on us. It doesn't make a lot of sense to use entropy against entropy, and the potential salvage if they lost would be bad too, but it has a modest chance. If they believe we have no graboids (they couldn't be sure), antimatter looks like a great choice against our dragons, although less so if they expect scorps from us.
Fire mark: - second most likely (35%)
If you see Fire mark, that means they have 5 fire bolts, 1 rage pot, 2 deflags, and 2 fire shields. Sounds like a lot of cc, but they need the firebolts to kill you through stoneskin so they can't afford to waste them on cc. A PA'd thorn carapace makes this about whether your creatures kill before they can bolt you to death. Alternatively, you could just replay shields they destroy, you have 3 shields, they have 2 deflags - a bit of a gamble though and hard on quanta.
They used this fire deck vs entropy and won last round, the question is do they have the stones to try the same deck again. They typically don't like to reuse decks like that. Their vault is barely big enough to not use the fire deck, if entropy doesn't get it, we will.
Aether mark: (20%)
Thorn shield up and rush hard, they have 3 lightnings for cc and 2 dim shields tops, they'll have fractals and healing in the form of 3 heals and possibly 1 empathic bond.
I don't even know for sure that they kept their fractals (but I do know they had them before last rounds conversion and didn't lose them in combat). If they use this against entropy, we get the fire deck.
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Life has a total of 76 cards across 2 decks, which means they have 16 cards to play with as options. They're very aware of their vulnerability to deck out versus us.
Decks to expect from life
Copied from the Test deck thread:
Terroking vs
Glitch
I'm pretty much expecting a 35 card deck from life out of deck-out paranoia. They've tried everything else against us and failed and they have the card buffer available to try in this round.
Here's a few decks to be ready to face:
I'm looking at their salvages and there's no real way to improve their entropy option from that. They could add a fourth discord or a few entropy pendulums, but it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference. Flying weapon is a possible addition here, but I don't really think it makes it stronger.
Discord Antimatter deck:4vl 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bu 5bu 5bu 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5deHere's the upgraded fire deck with the extra 2 deflags thrown in. I think it's likely they take at least 35 cards vs us now that they're so wary of being decked out. It also gives them time to build their firebolts vs our potential stoneskin.
Fire Stall:5bt 5bt 5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c4 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f6 5f6 5f7 5f7 5fb 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dk 7dkFractal deck:They don't have more than 2 dim shields max:
They have many options for the fractal.
3-4 cockatrice, 2-3 horned frog, 4 emerald dragons, 0-2 forest scorp, the only thing that makes dragons appealing is the hp vs our thorn carapace3 heal, 0-1 empathic bond, 0-3 adrenaline0-3 lightning0-2 dim shield
They prefer 30 card fractal decks, but they might go up to 35 if they're paranoid enough about us decking them out again. For their way of deckbuilding, 4 fractals in a healing based deck like this is light.
Take this with a grain of salt, it's just there to give an idea, it could be altered any of the above ways easily. If they do pull out fractals and combine it with salvage, I'd expect them to throw it at entropy. Either they're going for the element of surprise or avoiding them with previous decks (and throwing scraps at them), either way I'd expect a hidden/salvage deck to get used against entropy over us.
5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bu 5bu 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c6 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 622 622 622 622Life has some novas and graboids they could try to salvage, but the rest of their vault sucks for making rainbows. If they do that, they'll just put it in storage this round. I think it's much more likely they try to bolster existing decks. Salvaging deflags for their fire deck is something they will deeply desire. There is also a strong possibility the 4 cards we don't know are all fractals. They definitely had a stack of them last round they didn't use. Even if they converted part of them, they may have a few left.
As for the cards they save from their losses, it'll be creatures, a set of adrenalines, or 1 empathic bond. The off-element stuff is useless to them in 1-2 card increments so they'll pitch that in favor of on element cards.
In total we know 72 of life's 76 cards in their vault.Life's winning decks from last round:
63 of their 76 cards comes from this:
Discord/Antimatter deck - *** - this could easily have a flying weapon or two added to it.
4vl 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bu 5bu 5c0 5c0 5c0 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5deFire stall - *** this will have 2 deflags in it the next time they use it
5bt 5bt 5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c4 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5f7 5f7 5fb 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dk 7dkLife subbed one of their matches, so they only get to salvage 6 cards from this one deck.
6 of their 76 cards comes from this:
The two obvious choices for salvage here are:
Option 1) 2 deflags really strengthen their fire stall, they could easily take those to punch through our shields. They could also lift the flying weapons to bolster their discord deck at the same time.
Option 2) Graboids or novas for a rainbow. I think this is far less likely as they'd need both the novas and the graboids to make that work but can only take one or the other, also, life no longer has adrenalines I believe, which is what they like to use with grabbies.
4vc 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 4vl 50u 50u 50u 50u 590 590 590 590 590 590 593 593 595 5f6 5f6 5og 5oi 5oi 61qThat leaves 7 cards unaccounted for. But we know some of those from surplus cards in their losses as well.
2 of life's 76 cards come from:
5bu 5c0 5c7 5c7 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t1 of life's 76 cards comes from:
It'll probably be an empathic bond or an adrenaline.
5bs 5c6 5c6 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5lk 5lk 5lk 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5oj 5ol 7n8 7n8 7n8Then there are 4 remaining cards, which could very easily be fractals or lightnings unless those got converted in the prior round (they may well have been).
