What would be better?
The skins and EA's are interchangeable. Basically I want to know if yall think pendulums or pillars would be better. If we go with pendulums, we won't need aether towers and can get rid of them, and have more initial pendulums (less earth pillars too, though).
I tried 3 rounds of each vs AI3.
The pendulum option:Round 1 vs life: LOSS
-Had enough aether quanta to put up dim shields, lobo, and fractal. Didn't have much to spare, but it worked.
-Lobo worked great to enfeeble a momentumed dragon, a growth forest spirit, and a parasite. Around the 12 round or so he deflag'd it and I never saw the other one.
-Ended up losing, because of the earth quanta. Never had enough to use SS effectively, so I used them with around 15 hp each or so. Also, even with 11 pendulums up that can only power just under 1 shrieker a round. He had a thorn shield that wiped them out as fast as I could play them. I could barely make headway vs a single druid staff. Shriekers are too expensive to fractal with only pendulums and no mark.
Round 2 vs fire : WIN
-Got a lucky start draw with both shriekers, a lobo, a dim shield, and pendulums, drew more dim shields and the other lobo within a couple cards.
-He deflag'd the first lobo right away, I played the second which stayed.
-Played the first shrieker, which he fire bolted. Had to keep the second in my hand since it was my last.
-Eventually killed him with just the second lobo, while using the lobo to wipe out fire spirit growth, and other issues.
-Never saw a fractal all game, killed him with the lobo mostly.
-Never had the earth quanta to use the SS properly, but they weren't needed with the dim shields and lobo anyway.
Round 3 vs fire: LOSS
-Bad pendulum draw, 1 starting pend. Several rounds went by before I got next, meanwhile he deflag'd my only pillar.
-Eventually I played a lobo, which he also deflag'd.
-By the time I got a single shield up, I was over half dead, and when it wore off he hit me a couple times before I got the next shield up, then he fire bolted me a few times into death.
Pillar Option:
Round 1 vs death: WIN
-Took 15 rounds to find a fractal.
-Mostly put up dim shields and waited, and waited.
-Eventually I got about 4-5 shriekers out which killed him before his parasites finished them off.
Round 2 vs fire: LOSS
-Good draw.
-Got a shrieker fractaled by turn 7. Had no quanta to play them though. Played an average of one every 2 rounds with my 4 earth pillars powering them, which he killed with a lone parasite by the time I was playing the next one.
-After 3 dim shields I failed to find another one and he tooled me with his host of fire creatures (built up fire spirit, and dragon mainly).
Round 3 vs entropy: LOSS
-Decent draw with pillars, fractal, shrieker and dim shields.
-By the third card I could tell I was going to lose when he played a maxwell's demon.
-About round 7, I tried to save a couple quanta for a fractal, he played a discord and destroyed my aether quanta. I never got to use fractal and saw that I never would. His 2 maxwell demons were going to take out both my shriekers as soon as I played them. I also no longer had the quanta to keep dim shields up.
-Round 10 I played both shrieker just so he wouldn't EM me. lol. He paradoxed them both and killed me with a purple dragon and other assorted creatures.
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I went 1 for 3 with both these decks, there were a couple main reasons:
-Putting two of an important card in a deck is too unreliable. You need more fractals and shriekers to not be a crapshoot. There is stuff that can go through dim shields, and if any of that happens, they'll kill you before you get your fractal going (which on average, should take you 7 cards in your hand, plus 9 drawn cards to see one of, and you need to do the same with shriekers).
-Shriekers are too expensive to work well with fractals. I never really got more than 5 out even in an 18+ round fight. I think either it needs something else costing 4 or less quanta, or just ditch the fractals and play a batch of them straight. Even in the straight earth pillar version, by 9th card (beginning of round 10), you have an average of 4.5 earth pillars and 29.1 total earth quanta, enough for 3 shriekers. In the pendulum version, you have 3.5 earth pillars worth (7 pendulums), and 22.64 earth quanta. That's enough to play a shrieker, fractal it, then if play a second one. That's not an unlucky draw, that's an average/expected draw.
-There's not enough earth quanta in the pendulum version to fully use SS, esp while trying to fund shriekers.
-Lobo's work really well with dim shields.