Beelzebub

[DrBla]

BEELZEBUB

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7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dh 7dm 7dm 7dm 7dn 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7k6 7k6 7k6 7k6 7k6 7k6 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7n0 7n0 7n1 7n1 7n1 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 8po

The Lord of the Flies

Spoiler for art:

by pamansazz from Deviantart

Strategy & Concept:
Beelzebub is a rather typical demonic figure used in both gaming and fantasy in general. If we go beyond the current popculture references, and trace him (I think... maybe it... I'll be using him) back in "historic" sources, we can easily find that Beelzebub is a demon related to the seven deadly sins, however in different times people related Beelzebub to different sins. Most commonly Beelzebub was either connected to gluttony or to lust, but other times he was simply equal to the devil, so depending on where you look, you might end up seeing vastly differnet views on him.  Not even the beelike/flylike nature is always shared, but I ended up implementing this strand in this FG proposal. On a gameplay level this basically means lots of small and preferably flying creatures (from a thematical standpoint if Brimstone Eater could fly that'd be great, but hey, you can' have it all ).

Unique features of Beelzebub:

• No pillars or pendulums
• Only extremely cheap creatures
• Fast paced FG with loads of cards being played every turn
• Decent CC&PC but this FG doesn't excel in either field
• Possible win condition by making the player overdraw

The theme fits together into a rather adept False God with clear strengths and weaknesses. Beelzebub is fast, but does not let the player be also fast by dumping cards from their hand, because decking out quickly becames a serious issue. While the board is filled really quickly, the damage that Beelzebub dishes out is, not exceptional, but definitely something to look out for. It is also important to state, that the maximum damage cap for this FG (per turn) is relatively small. At most 12 Dameslflies (12*3=36) and 12 of any other creatures (12*2=24) can be dealt by creatures which means at most 60 creature damage per turn, and a max quanta Fahrenheit can also only add 5+75/5=20 damage, so with everything taken into account the max damage of  Beelzebub can not excede 80/turn. He can't one turn kill players or kill playes on max hp. On a defensive side Beelzebub is rather mixed. Damselflies are likely to have resistance to cc because of shards therefore, and the fact that there will be a lot of targets on board, single target cc might have some problems, but that asides... well... Every single creature he plays has 1 health so mass CC easily shuts Beelzebub down.
It's also worht mentioning that on a card usage basis Beelzebub either has cards that are overused by other FGs (Explosion, RoL) or seriously underused. No FG uses, Damselfly, Sanctuary, Improved Fog, either shard, Lightning storm, what's more even cards that are used by other FGs such as Brimstone eater and Fahrenheit aren't exactly common either. Alltogether it'd increase card diversity in FGs a lot. A real questionable bit is the question of shards. Two kind of shards, both included six times, results in getting these in upped versions relatively easy.

Testruns:
Out of curiosity and diligence I ran a few testruns to see how this FG works, and unless you're playing Swallow, it's a lot tougher than I at first thought. As a general conclusion I found it to be an enjoyable opponent with the common FG grinding decks. Samples are small, 25 matches each.  For testing purposes I used Swallow, Pdialsosac, Limitless Speed, Voodoo Bravery. Results down below:

Swallow:

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744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 74b 74b 74b 74b 74b 74d 74d 752 752 752 752 75m 75m 75m 7gq 7gq 7h0 7h0 7hi 7hi 7hi 8pp

Stats:

Wins:	18
Loses:	7
Win Rate:	72.00%
EMs:	3
EM Rate:	12.00%
TTL:	9.857142857
TTW:	16.72222222

With Swallow Beelzebub is easy. If the AI would realise that freshly played SoFo-s are dangerous and would cast Lightning Storm than it'd be a real pain, but with the current ai not much can go wrong. That not much being either you being to greedy and emptying your hend, thus decking out before a win, or explosions on SoP. If I remember correctly I only lost once because of being rushed down. Filling the board can result in Lightning Storm chains which can at times be extremely annoying, but with proper planning you can mitigate most of the damage. All in all a great matchup.

Pdialsosac:

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710 710 710 710 710 710 710 718 718 718 718 718 718 71a 71a 71u 71u 71u 71u 71u 71u 7km 7km 7km 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 8pq

Stats:

Wins:	2
Loses:	23
Win Rate:	8.00%
EMs:	1
EM Rate:	4.00%
TTL:	11.65217391
TTW:	14

This is not impossible, but damn near close. If you ever see more than 1 RoL on the other side of the board you might as well surrender, because that means sanctuaries are imminent. What's more you need to empty your hand for early poison stacks. Now most of the times, because of SoB you can keep your sundials and intentionally clog you own hand, making it less likely to deck out and not allowing Beelzebub to draw too much. Everything considered, with a lot of luck it is possible to win, but it's very very difficult.

Limitless Speed:

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6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 74a 7dr 7dr 7jq 7la 7la 7la 7n9 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 80b 80b 80b 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 8pu

Stats:

Wins:	1
Loses:	24
Win Rate:	4.00%
EMs:	0
EM Rate:	0.00%
TTL:	9.416666667
TTW:	11

I have to admit this result surprised me. I thought that the SoBs will allow you to draw more card, get the combo faster and win. Instead you simply lose. Either because your shield gets ignored and you die too early, or because it gets exploded, or because the speed becames too limitless, and by the time you have your combo you don't have enough quanta.

Spoiler for image of not enough quanta:

Voodoo Bravery:

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6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 74d 74d 77l 77l 77l 77l 77l 77l 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7tg 7tg 80b 80b 80b 80b 8pu

Stats:

Wins:	4
Loses:	21
Win Rate:	16.00%
EMs:	1
EM Rate:	4.00%
TTL:	8
TTW:	9

Before testing I expected Voodo Bravery to do similarly well to Limitless Speed, because the Bravery part is being done for you. Well Limitless Speed didn't do good, so... The problem is similar to the one with Limitless Speed: Your defences get bypassed. Flying creatures will eventually not attack your dolls, and if you don't have enough damage accumulated by that time, then you are likely going to lose. This matchup however was more interesting than Limitless Speed, as it is easier to deliberately empty your hand (since you don't need to hog combo peaces as much), allowing you to abuse the SoBs of the AI a bit, and if you actually need to get cards you can with relatively good cerainity get some free card draws.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Considering that it's the lord of the flies, interesting choice to leave out Fireflies, especially since they match the quanta perfectly as well.

Also, any particular thematic reasons for Light or is that just to include the free RoLs?

[DrBla]

My main problem with Fireflie is, that it's too big. Yes I know I'm talking about a 3 cost card, but still. Even if it fits perfectly well in terms of quanta, it does not seem to fit (for me at least) with the many very small creatures setup. Albeit technically it could easily be converted into a working version with an air mark instead of a fire one which would allow playing 1 Firefly a turn, which then in turn could induce fire quanta generation and mabe even warrant totally leaving bromstone eater out. This would also increase he synergy between SoFre and the creatures on average as -Brimstone eater with no synergy and +Firefly with synergy. However this would also slow down the deck a lot, as the first turn Bravery could be played would be turn 3 instead of turn 2.

RoLs and light in general comes in from three different angles. The first, and greatest reason is being a 0 cost creature, and the concept at one time was having no pillars and only 0 cost creatures. In the very first version I had I wanted Gnome gemfinders, but earth quanta simply didn't click with everything else. The other aspect being simply the fact that flies are small creatures that fly. RoL (while definitely not a "creature" in the biological sense, cos you know... its a particle of light) is exactly that. 1/1 is basically as small as you go and it does fly. Finally, I know this'll be a dumb reason, but I used to be a Ragnarok Online player for quite a while and the Cursed Abbey(a dungeon in that game) has a Beelzebub boss kinda stuck in my head.  Tho I'm pretty sure Beelzebub being related to cursed and corrupted holy places is not unique to that game, as far as I know it's only something games media invented as a theme (tho it might just be that my research was inadequate on this).

[MasterofPun]

I don't the name will get you into too much trouble with people, but I'm not too big of a fan.

The deck looks great though!