The Gauntlet - PvE Challenge [v1]

[ddevans96]

THE GAUNTLET
Welcome to the Gauntlet. In this chamber are some of the most powerful mortal beings in this world. Can you take them on, stripped of your most powerful tools with your strength slowly draining? How long will you last?

Step 1: Forming Your Weapon
Build a deck for use against Half-Bloods. It must meet the following requirements:
- exactly 40 cards
- three or four elements
- seven or more cards in each element used (pillars/pends included)
- all cards must be playable through normal means
- all quanta produced must be consumable through normal means
- fully upgraded

Half-Bloods are possible to beat relatively consistently with a fully unupped deck, given no restrictions. These restrictions were chosen to be challenging enough to make getting to zero upgrades extremely difficult, but not too challenging as to overwhelm players with early losses. I'm sure there's workarounds to the rules and I'm eager to see how players discover and utilize them, as this is essentially a prototype.

Don't worry about not having upgrades or rares - you can do this challenge in the Trainer! Just select 'Level 40' on the left panel.

Step 2: Facing the Gauntlet
Send your deck against Half-Bloods. When you win, unupgrade a card, and repeat. When you lose, you get one more chance to win and remove an upgrade - if you lose two in a row, the challenge ends. The goal is to make it as far as possible, with increasing difficulty due to losing upgrades. If you reach 0 upgrades and win that game, congratulations, you have beaten the Gauntlet.

Ideally, post the deck you started with, as well as a log of who you played, what you unupgraded upon wins, and who you lost to. Anything else (screenshots, lore, thought process, etc) is welcome, but not required.

Appendix: Variants
If you use a variant, please note it. Attempting the challenge without variants is preferred.
Quick: remove 2 upgrades instead of 1 upon each win. (slightly easier)

[RootRanger]

This is interesting. I'll give it a try some time.

[iancudorinmarian]

I’d say removing 2 upgrades after a win, otherwise it takes too long. Will do this sometime and record it.

[RootRanger]

Well, I'm 10-0 so far, although Teriel was admittedly a bit of a challenge.

It shouldn't be difficult for anyone who knows me well to guess the deck I'm using.

[iancudorinmarian]

Started from this:

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77c 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7am 7am 7ap 7ap 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7ba 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q8 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 8pn

Ended up with this:

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5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5c6 5c6 5c9 5c9 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5cq 5ro 77c 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77e 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 7ri 8pn

Note: I removed 2 upgrades after every win instead of just 1.

Video

[RootRanger]

Hm, lost twice with 21 upgrades left in the deck. 4 losses overall, most of which were more towards the end. Will have to try again with the Quick variant.

[rob77dp]

I plan to give the Standard version a go tonight (or sometime near future).  This looks like a lot of fun here, dd.  Thanks for posting!

[Higurashi]

- seven or more cards in each element used (pillars/pends included)

I've gotten over halfway with the variant change that I don't count pillars/pends towards this limit since it'd be too easy, cheap and make the deck look ugly. Will post deck, losses, strat if I finish.

[Submachine]

Do I get it right that if we simply find a fully unupgraded deck with 40 cards that fits the requirements, then we essentially found the way to beat the Gauntlet?

[Higurashi]

With persistence, yes. It's an ordeal to get through 40 games, and it's legit difficult not to lose 2 in a row while doing it. Even the deck with the fewest weaknesses (which I've found) can match up against a very specific counter twice in a row. It'll lose by only a turn, but it's still a loss.


Finally did it with my 4th iteration of the stallbow. All finished versions, in order of conception:

Spoiler for Chrystalbow:

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 5i5 5i5 5i5 5ia 5ia 5j2 5j2 5j2 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 8pu

This was my personal favorite and first thought because it wins much faster than all the others and works beautifully alongside Dials. After a loss to early Pulvy by one turn (only thanks to its speed) and another to AoE, I moved to the next idea. Unupgrading order isn't very important besides doing half quanta, HG's, rest quanta and Physalia last.

Spoiler for Pure Steam Soul:

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ii 5ii 5ii 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 621 621 621 8pu

I really liked the extra Purifies because it makes a lot of matchups more consistent in that you don't lose to various and fast offence thanks to the healing. They mitigate early offence and allow some wins against the likes of Momentum/Poison. The Quinted grower strat obviously ignores AoE. After getting pretty far, I finally lost twice in a row to Pulvy (once EA'd, but late). Unupgrading order goes half quanta, HG's, rest quanta last.

Spoiler for Gnometalbow:

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 58r 58r 58u 58u 58u 58v 58v 58v 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 8pu

My first foray into Earth because I just had to have Pulvy. This is certainly capable of running the Gauntlet, but BE showed up twice in a row. Note that you can survive mid-game Pulvy/BE if your deck is fast and late-game Pulvy/BE if it's not, but early Pulvy/BE twice in a row is too much. Unupgrading order puts half quanta, Pulvies, HG's, rest quanta and Gnomes last.

This is when I had to concede that I needed both PC and CC. I considered Lightnings, but there wasn't room. I tried a variant with Lobo (works best with the Water base and can likely make the Gauntlet), but my search for perfection forced me to move on to Wardens/Squids. Squids were nice because Chrystal remains really fast, but Pulvy is just too good in the long race.

Spoiler for Wardenbow:

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 58o 58v 58v 58v 596 596 596 596 5rl 5rl 5rl 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 8pu

The pinnacle of trio HB safety. Yes, the Stone Pillar is intentional. Unupgrading order puts half quanta, Pulvies, HG's, rest quanta and Wardens last. That gives you only 4 games of slight CC vulnerability.

Some screenies:

Spoiler for Do what you must to win:

Guess if the Ice Bolt almost gave me a heart attack.

Spoiler for RNG pls:

Far from the only RNG loss. It was a frustrating journey.

Spoiler for Y'see why I love Chrystal?:

There would've been a risk of decking out with any other deck here. That's the main strength of Chrystal: redonkulous stallbreaking power.

I imagine more will come. I enjoyed the challenge and saw a lot of interesting/colorful board states, but that took a decent amount of time. I think the next challenge will be to do it with an actual trio/quartet quanta base instead of QP's.

[ddevans96]

Congrats Higs, that Wardenbow looks incredibly solid.

Memo to self: Consider banning or restricting QT for future challenges - they weren't intended to be allowed here, but since I failed to cover them properly in the rules, I have no room to complain, haha. As it is, I might amend the challenge to restrict them.

I’d say removing 2 upgrades after a win, otherwise it takes too long. Will do this sometime and record it.

I can understand 40+ games being tedious. As such, I've added a variants section to the OP, including 2-upgrades, and I'll add more in the future.

I plan to give the Standard version a go tonight (or sometime near future).  This looks like a lot of fun here, dd.  Thanks for posting!

No problem, I look forward to your attempt :3

[rob77dp]

My best run yet obeying ALL THE RULES and especially the using all quanta generated and -1 upgrade after each win rules.

END at 28-11:

Spoiler for Dark/Time/Earth thingy:

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590 590 590 590 590 590 595 595 595 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rr 5rr 5up 5up 5ur 5ur 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 606 606 606 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7um 7um 7um 7um 8ps

START at all-upgraded:

Spoiler for Faster Dark/Time/Earth thingy:

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77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77l 77l 77l 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 78q 7q6 7q6 7q6 7q6 7q6 7qb 7qb 7t9 7t9 7tb 7tb 7th 7th 7th 7th 7th 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 8ps

Looooong video here that I may shorten or speed up later if I have time and desire...

*EDIT1: Yeah, 1h 25m is probably too long to really get any views.  However, I will say there are some remarkable results/games in the set of 39 duels so if you care to see it look for me to bump this post after I've edited the video for playback speed.

*EDIT2: Shorter video has now replaced the original via the above link.