Round 5-Strategy

[majofa]

With a vault of 240, for everyone in Team Underworld to play their decks will have to be 30 cards. This can be their undoing. Stall them and it's done as Acsabi44 mentioned.

jmdt and I might want to go with stalls of some sort, and with 3 copies of any card in a deck, the most they can pack is what, 3 Deflags, 3 Butterfly Effects and 3 Pulverizers as permanent control?

The Wings deck Acsabi44 shows is a very good shot.

OFF-TOPIC: Is it just me or are there 2 Fire symbols you can put in a post? 1 between and , which is the normal one, and another between and .

1) : fire
2) : veryhot_post:

I added an extra space

[kev]

Edited my 1st page post.

Deckbuilding and duel phases were each extended by 1 day due to Thanksgiving.  Let's make the most of this time by putting a lot of thought into deck choices here.

Just as I said last round, I'd like everyone to post a preliminary deck in the Decks thread two days before the deckbuilding deadline.  A lot of changes will occur subsequently but it'll really help to know everyone's thoughts in advance.

 until that time.

Thanks!

[Acsabi44]

I looked at all our previous matches and came to the following observations: (win/loss ratio)

stall (bolt, suddenkiller, posionbolt, wings-stall): 9/5   64,3% win
rainbow (immophoenix or novagrabby): 5/1   83,33% win
other(dragon powa, RT deck,  decks, Vreely, fractixes; generally, decks which tend to "attack" but not rainbows.):10/5   67,7% win

the conclusion is that our rainbows are the best and boltdecks are the worst so far.
I know that  this is not statistically relevant, but I have the same feeling empyrically too.

[jmdt]

I looked at all our previous matches and came to the following observations: (win/loss ratio)

stall (bolt, suddenkiller, posionbolt, wings-stall): 9/5   64,3% win
rainbow (immophoenix or novagrabby): 5/1   83,33% win
other(dragon powa, RT deck,  decks, Vreely, fractixes; generally, decks which tend to "attack" but not rainbows.):10/5   67,7% win

the conclusion is that our rainbows are the best and boltdecks are the worst so far.
I know that  this is not statistically relevant, but I have the same feeling empyrically too.

Our rainbow decks are faster and much harder to stop for the most part.  However the fact that we run bolt decks causes a change in the decks we face making life easier for the both.  1 deck can't stop both a bolt deck and arainbow effectively, and if by chance it can, several of out other decks have a shot in winning.

variety of ways to kill is why , , and are all doing pretty well this war and more 1 dimensional elements like and are struggling.

[catalyzeme]

Is anyone else worried that the underworld will be prepared for a wings stall? I mean, they know every team wants to bring a stall against them since they have to play 30 card decks. Multiple teams have explicitly said that they think UW would be susceptible to stalls (in threads directed at team UW), IIRC. Looking at our decks, the Wings stall is the obvious choice for taking down UW. I have a hard time believing they won't know that's the deck we'll be using. There are only so many ways to counter it, but a PC-heavy or flying creature deck seems like an obvious choice for UW to use against us. If I were on UW, I would pack deflags, steals, pulvies, no matter who I was facing. Although since we've already shown our Wings, I think they would assume we would use those. If we could bring the Wings deck out as a suprise, then I think it would be effective, but as it is now, I'm not sure.

I will try to build a deck following UW's rules built specifically to counter the Wings deck, if anyone is interested. They might have quanta issues that still make it difficult to win, so it might still be a good choice. Their decks might just be overall too slow to beat even a simpler deck from us, though. I feel like Wings might be better used elsewhere.

Sample UW decks to test Wings stall against:
Air/Light (they could use mirror shields in a deck like this, as well)

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Entropy/Darkness

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Haven't had time to play this one (gotta go to class) so it may have quanta issues, but. This is a weird enough deck that I wouldn't expect something like it to show up, though. And it might not work, anyway.

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Maybe the Wings deck could beat all of these, I'm not sure. But I will be surprised if UW doesn't bring something specifically to counter it. They can really only afford to consider match-ups this round, not what decks will carry into future rounds.

[Acsabi44]

They have to expect stalls from every team directed at them, but they can only pack a limited amount of counter. Either they spread it among decks or concentrate on the matchups they feel they can win. I don't think they'll consider    among their easier matchups.

If not stall, what would you propose? The two decks you posted are quite likely, what should we bring to counter them?

[catalyzeme]

They have to expect stalls from every team directed at them, but they can only pack a limited amount of counter. Either they spread it among decks or concentrate on the matchups they feel they can win. I don't think they'll consider    among their easier matchups.

If not stall, what would you propose? The two decks you posted are quite likely, what should we bring to counter them?

The way their deck-building is structured, they could have 4 copies of the same deck, so I think if they have a way to counter, they'll use it. They are limited in what they can bring in a single deck, but that same limitation gives them the freedom to easily duplicate decks. I could see them bringing 4 discord decks, for example. They could, if they wanted, only use 2 decks repeated for all 8 of their matches, so I don't think spreading around the good cards will be an issue. I think bolt/wings might still work, though, since it's heavy on CC. I think CC will be an issue for them, since they are going to have to focus on outdamaging a stall. The Wings stall might still work, I just think we should test it a bit. The CC in it might be able to take care of flying creatures. Flying Discord might be its biggest weakness, but I think that would have to come from a rainbow (I don't predict an entropy/air duo) and rainbows seem pretty tough to make with only 3 novas/3 immolations allowed. They might use one, but I don't think it would be terribly difficult to take care of if they did. They would have to use 3 novas, 3 immos, some immolatable creatures like spark/photon... I think rainbows would be highly susceptible to a bad draw. But, against the Wings stall, they would have a lot of time to get stuff out.

We can't run 2 Wings stalls anyway, so we need another deck even if we use it, but I think a deck built at least somewhat for speed would surprise UW.

EDIT: For myself against gravity, I do like kevkev's novagrabby suggestion. Perhaps with extra deflags to push through Phase Shields. At first I was thinking Phoenixes would be good, but an otyugh could take care of those even without blessing it. It would be susceptible to the deck they beat us with last round, but it could just be a race in that instance. I would deflag pends if it showed up, and could slow it down that way.

EDIT2: After talking to jmdt for a while, I think I am going to use Dragon Powa. I don't expect gravity to bring one of their best decks in our match-up, and looking at who we are facing, mine is probably our least important match. Plus, if we lose Dragon Powa... well, it's not like it's been much use so far.

jmdt and I agree that just rushing UW is the way to go. They don't have to be our fastest deck, just coherent, solid decks. Most of what we have should do the job.

EDIT3: jmdt and I did some testing on a deck that could be used against life (a modified nova/grabby) with 7 pillars, 2 rage pots, 2 fireshields, 2 deflags, and 1 spirit for fire cards, i think (jmdt will post the exact deck tomorrow i imagine)

[jmdt]

well I came up with a few ideas.  Its crazy late so I'll update more later.

versus we will need both speed and control to tackle what they have left.  They have nova grabby, ffq, and a bunch of thrown together scraps for decks.  I fully expect us to see the novagrabby deck as we're too fast and have too much control for the ffq deck to set hope up.

I came up with this modified nova grabby that should combat whatever they bring at us.

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Versus I expect a weak deck as they are at bare bones and GG, jumba and Napalm will take the strongest decks.  DragonPowa should have the mustard to anniliate whatever scraps they bring.  Only blessed otyugh's could really hurt it and even then, we could wait and spam 4-5 were they have 0 chance of actually hurting us.

I may agree with kev on a bolt deck versus .  We showed 2 decks hightly succeptable to RT and strong versus eq so I doubt they pull eq.  Since eq is a threat, the strongest bolt deck is prolly poison bolt. if they show eq, we can prolly gather enough quanta to use bolts as CC while poison whittles them away.

The other matchups are a bit tougher to gauge.  I will post on those later.

[kev]

I know there's still over two days until the deadline, but I'm not super comfortable with the way things stand.  Some secondary thoughts:

kevkev60614 vs Amilir and Acsabi44 vs 10 men
These again are our two most important matches.  Acs and I have both asked for feedback.  We really need everybody's thoughts here.

Stinnger vs  Wizardcat and Lava Golem vs  Implosion
As I think about this more I think it's pretty likely we'll see at least one, and possibly both, Miracle/bolt decks.  Lava's first thought was a discord duo, and I love the thought.  I think 4 discords is prolly inappropriate given how seldom they use PC and we can't afford to use immos here because we need them for immophoenixes, No Land Stompy or Vreely's, fractix, etc.  We can actually salvage up to 3 additional discords.  What would both Stinnger and Lava think of something like this:

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Hyroen vs  hainkarga and jmdt vs Slim8stack
I might not have been clear enough in how opposed to a Wings stall I am.  If we were to do a Wings stall, I'd want one with an additional win condition.  If this is a bolt deck w/wings, it should have 6 bolts and 2 FHs.  Someone questioned this team's ability to build decks.  I don't know any of them very well but I'd recommend we don't underestimate them.  Either way I expect them to look at the top pvp decks and then vary them to meet their deckbuilding restrictions.  Look again at the top pvp decks.  Wings might be a serious misstep.  Our rainbow decks OTOH are at best faster than they could hope to accomplish due to their 3-card restriction, and at worst a modest underdog.  And if I'm right about nova/immo being widespread, RT is a kill card.  We need to keep thinking about options here.

brettbstock vs killsdazombies
I probably wasn't emphatic enough and didn't offer any explanation for my novagrabby choice.  My bad.  I think our novagrabby with ragepots is very likely a win against theirs with adrenaline.  Ours is also very likely a win against their FFQ hope deck, though I think we're a little less likely to see that.  We can't build two novagrabbys exactly, though, so if it's been tested I'd be comfortable with jmdt's proposed variant.  I am not as comfortable with quintspirits, which loses to PC.  Additionally we only have 8 spirits and we need two each in novagrabby and No Land Stompy, and might also be used in a Wings deck.

catalyzeme PhantomFox
I recommended novagrabby.  Would someone test Dragon Powa against the fire duo they used last round?  My concern is that firestorm singlehandedly beats our deck.  If that's not the case, Dragon Powa is a good option.

majofa Dreggs
maj, if you spend more time testing poisonbolt against their potential decks I think you'll switch.  I feel like a lot of their remaining cards are grabbys, and that's among the reasons we're likely to see splash of time decks.  Poisonbolt struggles against grabby rushes.  Just ask brett.   Their biggest weakness at this point is a lack of PC.  What little PC they have (I'm guessing) they'll be unlikely to pack against us.  I still like my recommendations of sudden killer or a Wings deck with however many fspirits we have remaining.

[catalyzeme]

I think Immophoenix style decks are the way to go against Entropy. They have a lot of options, we just have to throw something at them that can beat anything. It's threatened by expensive cards like Maxwell, we just have to hope to get the damage out to stop something like that, and be able to immolate AM'd phoenixes. 6 salvages + a lot of variety already means predicting what they'll bring seems fairly difficult to me.

I like the discord decks against Light. All of light's decks are good against us, they are a horrible match-up. And the fact that they relied on both stalls and rushes last round makes them hard to prepare for. I think the discord deck has a good chance, and I would be surprised if we didn't see the fire/miracle stall in at least one of our matches. It's a great deck to beat almost anything we have, and they'll want the wins to get more fire cards to work in.

I don't like novagrabby against gravity, kevkev, not because I don't think it would be a good choice, I just think it would be better used elsewhere. If we have the cards for it after all else is said and done, I would love to use it, but I think playing it against, say, UW, would be a better choice. UW will have complete decks, gravity is scraping by. They will almost certainly use 2 of their solid decks with their general and lt. It seems unlikely that we will see something that difficult. RoF would hurt Dragon Powa, and I would certainly like to test against it, but I think Dragon Powa might have the damage to recover. If I do face fire, I don't think it would be impossible to plan a big TU turn at a time where they can't use it (fairly easy to do against a pendulum deck that's consuming a lot of fire). Plus, they will have TU-able creatures as well, if I don't have a Dragon to play. I can test it out tonight (or, if anyone else has the time today, they are welcome to and let me know what the results are). Again, though, it doesn't seem likely to me that they would risk playing that fire deck against us twice in a row when they have other winnable matches from people higher on GG's list. Other fire members were thinking that GG, jumba, and napalm will get their better decks (which includes the fire duo).

[jmdt]

majofa and I tested no land stompy versus several of entropies decks.  I outrushed them all handily.  The bonewall/antimatter deck was difficult, but was still defeated.

[kev]

I don't like novagrabby against gravity, kevkev, not because I don't think it would be a good choice, I just think it would be better used elsewhere. If we have the cards for it after all else is said and done, I would love to use it, but I think playing it against, say, UW, would be a better choice. UW will have complete decks, gravity is scraping by. They will almost certainly use 2 of their solid decks with their general and lt. It seems unlikely that we will see something that difficult. RoF would hurt Dragon Powa, and I would certainly like to test against it, but I think Dragon Powa might have the damage to recover. If I do face fire, I don't think it would be impossible to plan a big TU turn at a time where they can't use it (fairly easy to do against a pendulum deck that's consuming a lot of fire). Plus, they will have TU-able creatures as well, if I don't have a Dragon to play. I can test it out tonight (or, if anyone else has the time today, they are welcome to and let me know what the results are). Again, though, it doesn't seem likely to me that they would risk playing that fire deck against us twice in a row when they have other winnable matches from people higher on GG's list. Other fire members were thinking that GG, jumba, and napalm will get their better decks (which includes the fire duo).

My grav/fire duo went 3-1 against Dragon Powa.  I made some assumptions while playing like a) we were in game 2 or 3 and I'd already seen your deck, and b) I'm a competent player.

I'm among the "other fire members" who believe we're most likely to get a suicide deck.  But it's best to prepare.  If Team Gravity is getting lazy, they could just resort to the last deck, which beat us.  The combination of it being unlikely we'll face fire/grav duo, our reasonable winrate against blessed otys, and a great winrate against pretty much anything else makes me totally confortable w/Dragon Powa.  It's looking more and more like novagrabbys have another home anyway.