Round 7 discussion

[dragonsdemesne]

For the event card, I think we should choose 'up' to increase salvage/discards.  If we lose, we're screwed anyway, so we might as well go all in.  I'll look at deck possibilities later.

[trashduke]

For the event card, I think we should choose 'up' to increase salvage/discards.  If we lose, we're screwed anyway, so we might as well go all in.  I'll look at deck possibilities later.

This sounds good to me and makes sense given our situation.  Our match ups this round are Fire and Darkness - and two generals at that = yikes.  Depending on how the event card goes, we could actually survive one loss if we win the other match. Unfortunately I don't have the time to update the intel this week (real life stuff is getting intense), but I'll try to do some brainstorming as well. 

[trashduke]

What about something like this vs. Fire:

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4vl 55n 55n 55n 55v 55v 55v 55v 55v 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 6tv 6tv 6u5 6u5 6u5 74b 74b 74b 74b 8pj

 
We'd need to convert 8 cards into the 4 oty's but it might work out nicely (Captain doesn't have the nymphs so we can't add them here unfortunately).

It would really suck if they brought the fire stall....

[dragonsdemesne]

No, I think that deck will fail pretty hard against fire.  I'm expecting them to use firestall, because honestly, I don't think we can beat it.  I think that our best hope against fire is the fractal charger lightning deck.  If they play one of those immorushes, the lightnings can hopefully buy some time.  If they play firestall, we've got a lot of chargers that hopefully make a kill before we get bolted/fahrenheited to death.  Due to deflags, I think our pulvy-based deck will fail, and firestall will crush DBH, as would immorush, another strong possibility (they lost with it twice last round, but should be able to put one together still).  They could also do that fire/RT rush, their steam machine duo, or a fractal phoenix deck. 

It is true that DBH could probably manage alright against those, but I'm pretty worried about firestall, and if I were rootranger, I'd probably send it against us, unless they need it more somewhere else.  Also, scibra has 3 more upgrades, so I would do the three mercenaries (4/7 doesn't die to rage pot/elixir and needs a bigger firebolt, both of which are quite significant vs fire) and I'd do a pendulum after that, and probably unup a discord and up a 2nd pendulum.  I also think that this deck is way too quanta starved for gravity.  I'd replace 6-8 pendulums with pillars, and possibly even drop a card somewhere for one more quanta.  You do -not- want to be stuck waiting 3-4 turns to play an otyugh, for instance, and other than discords, there's just the two dragons, and I don't think we need any more than 6 pends for all the entropy cards.  Honestly, it really depends what you guys think fire will bring.  That DBH will go 0-3 against firestall, and might struggle vs immorush unless it gets otyugh early, but it will rape fractal phoenix and probably excel against the time or water duos.  I will be satisfied enough bringing DBH vs fire if we make the changes I suggested.  It might be better to bring DBH and hope fire brings a deck that we should be able to win, rather than bring fractal chargers that they might counter, since they know it's one of our top decks.  (though they know we've got DBH, too)

[dragonsdemesne]

Darkness has a darkstall (firestall but with drain life/vamp dagger/dusk), lost with a monodark, won with a wings/CC stall, won with a grabbow, won with another grabbow.  I think fractal chargers will wreck any stall they bring, but against grabbows, will probably suffer because of nightmare and speed and low CC count for us, just the lightnings.  Again, darkness knows fractal chargers is way up there on our top decks.   The pulvy earth duo might beat their stalls if they don't use steals, and they didn't use steals in their stalls last time, and it might outrace a grabbow, but I kinda doubt it.  (otyughs and/or gravity pulls would aid greatly for CC there)  Frankly, I think that we probably cannot beat a nightmare grabbow with our vault, but if we play fractal chargers, I think we beat anything else they have.  We could try the darkness duo again, since that's more nightmare resistant (oh, you gave us a bunch of gargoyles to play?  cool) and we'd have steals for their weapons/shields, but it's probably still going to be a tough battle.

So we could use fractal chargers, and hope they don't send a grabbow.  We could use the pulvy duo and hope they don't use steal or send a grabbow that's too fast.  (a deck very much like the one we sent vs time last round is what i'm suggesting here)  We could use the darkness duo, but I'm not sure that really beats anything they have.  Again, it's really up to the mindgating here.  If I were darkness, I'd send the grabbow against us.

[trashduke]

Yeah, a lot of good thoughts here, we're definitely in a tough spot vs. both teams. In terms of deck options we have: DBH (which got stronger with the dragons and abomination possibilities), Fractal X (chargers/mercs), Darkness duo, Fire duo, and an Earth duo.  And both teams have really strong PC potential.

If you really think Fire will go with a firestall, I think we could probably do better with fractal upped guards - you'd get faster burst damage (for 4 quanta = 8 damage) plus they are more resistant to bolts or rage pots.  If we transmute our time win into 3 more guards, we could bring 6 upped guards vs. them which could be pretty strong, and lightning for the finishing touches.  What do you think?  I'm not seeing that the other deck options would be viable here.
   
If we do send fractal to Fire, then we probably bring the darkness duo vs. darkness.

I guess the question is whether we think Fractal will do better vs. Darkness or Fire, and then just hope for the best. 

[trashduke]

Starting to run out of time on this decision.  I'll plan to load this in about 2 hours unless I hear otherwise:

vs. Darkness:

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4sl 4sl 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 568 568 576 576 576 576 576 576 5up 5up 5ur 5ur 5v1 5v1 745 745 745 745 745 745 7t8 7t9 7t9 8pt

vs. Fire:

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55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 622 744 744 745 745 745 747 747 747 747 747 75m 75m 8pu

[dragonsdemesne]

I really have no idea what the best deck choices are for these matchups.  I think that what you've got here are reasonable choices.  On the darkness deck, because I doubt we will face discords, I think that the stilettos should be upgraded instead of the steals.  (I wanted steals upped so we could steal discord easier last round if they used it)  Against fire, since some of those guards have to be converted, I think that -1 guard and run a 30 card deck is best.  That will give 2 salvage cards more that can be used to convert to pillars/pends instead of the gravity pulls.

[trashduke]

OK sounds good.

[trashduke]

We're all set for next round.

[dragonsdemesne]

Sadly, darkness used a grabbow like I predicted, and that combined with crappy RNG meant a 0-3 loss.  I didn't expect to win, but I did think we might scrape a win or two together, but I had crap quanta starts in games 1/2, and he had gargoyle/shrieker/dagger on turn 3 in games 1 and 3.  He had a slower draw in game 2, but so did I.  Game 3 was the only game I had a half-decent draw, and he got a power draw, and he won with like 38hp or something.

Discards mean we can only keep 1 card.  Quanta and darkness cards should all be discarded; saving 1 darkness card is pointless, and quanta can be converted if needed.  If we lose the other game vs fire, so that means we keep either a nymph or a charger.  I vote keeping the nymph, since we have a bunch of chargers already.  If we lose to fire, the decision is irrelevant, anyway.  (and fire will probably win war if we lose, because of that awesome aether salvage)