Round 4 discussion

[trashduke]

Here are our match ups this round:

Gen. Captain Scibra    CCCombobreaker
dragonsdemesne    Shinki12345
trashduke    Gen. Calindu

[Captain Scibra]

If we can still build them, these are my suggestions.

  Bonewalls
  Golem deck
  Novagrabby

[dragonsdemesne]

 

In round 3 they lost with a light/air sundial stall, lost with an elite wyrm/shockwave/deflag rush, lost with an adrenastaves/elite FFQ/deflag/bluenymph deck, lost with a second light/air sundial stall, won with a six blue nymph/deflag deck (played by Afdarenty) and lost with a grabbow.  Due to the size and fact they had two of them, they can definitely still build that stall, and I'm rather skeptical about our chances against that with the poison deck.  We have no need to fear the blue nymph deck, since it's combobreaker we face, and he likely can't field all those nymphs.   The adrenastaves/whatever and light/air stall look like they'd probably beat our bone walls, but our bone walls would wreck that wyrm deck and possibly grabbow, too, if we added some gravity pulls for CC.  If I were them, I would very likely use either the adrenastaves or light/air stall, so we should be prepared to beat those, and I don't feel bone wall can do it.  Since they can for sure still field the light/air stall, but adrenastaves is iffy since it lost (it can probably be fielded in nerfed form still) we should definitely prepare for the light stall.  I think fractal charger might be our best bet here.


 

In round 3 they won with an archangel/RT rush, lost with an archangel disquake, won with raging angels, won with pdials/miracle/sanc, won with titan crusader, and lost with monolight rush.  I think it likely they could field any of these next time if they wanted to salvage the right stuff.  Catatitans likely beats pdials and maybe monolight or titansader, but it probably loses to the RT deck, and might struggle with the others, too.  The golem deck scibra suggests with pulverizer might do well; pulvy would really neuter pdials by removing dials/arsenics, and it might succeed against some of the others as well.  Against titan crusader we'd have to be real careful we don't play into endow, though.

 

In round 3 they lost with a lycan/dark duo, lost with another lycan/dark duo, won with a DBH grabbow, lost with a discord/wings grabbow, won with dragon/pu/dims, and lost with pandebonium.  Odds are they've got a grabbow still kicking around, too, and we're facing their general, so it could even be a fast SNbow or something.  I'm in agreement with scibra's suggestion of novagrabby, perhaps with some sort of DBH/EQ module, if we can sneak some of that in somehow; I'll work on a version of that tomorrow night.

More stuff tomorrow night.

[Captain Scibra]

With CCC only having 1 nymph as per his application, it can be confirmed they can't run a deck with more than  1 nymph, 2 if by slim chance he oracle'd one (A war specifically states that players cannot use cards they do not own.  That being said it is indeed quite likely that the stall will be used.

This makes me want to sent the Golem deck at Air now, since they won't have the option of endowing our pulvies and using the Shatter against us.  It might be likely they send the stall.  So we gotta test the golem deck against the stall, adrenastaves, and deflag deck to make sure we have all three corners covered.

Light is a tough one, since we only have so many options.  DBH/EQ Grabbow seems like a silly option as they will probably send a sanc deck against us.  FraCharge would probably be halted by the Sundial/Miracle stall.  The poison variant of the bonewall deck may be a possibility, but check up on that.  Maybe a PC variant grabbow would work here since we can salvage some PC from our two wins.

Entropy, they have a formidable PUgons and DBH grabbow.  Fair to expect to those.  FraCharge has proven its worth against grabbows because of the Lightnings, and with only 3 fractals, it is a slow but surely steady deck.  We should test (player to player please) to make sure that it is difficult to lock out lightning, otherwise their burst potential and response is going to outmatch ours.  In the event of PUgon, we can zap them too, but be wary of the upgrade possibility (this is a General we are facing).  I recommend 6 upped Chargers and 3 Thunderbolts (upped Lightning) to build against the Dims in PUgons and DBH grabbow, respectively.  Being obvious, this is my suggestion to make this out Lt. match.

That being said, I feel that going 3-0 is rather crucial since we are at our last stand.  If we lose too much this round we will have a much smaller vault and greater predictability, and significantly less capability to salvage new tactics with fewer matches.  I will be able to do some major testing in about 5 hours from now (possibly a tad later), so we can solidify our tactics this round.  We may need extensive effort on that PC variant grabbow.

[trashduke]

Hi guys - thanks for getting the discussion going already.  I'm at a conference this week again so I'm going to be a bit busier than usual (but I'll check in at night for sure). I'll finish putting together the intel for these three elements for sure in case you want to look at all the decks they've fielded so far.  BTW  CCC definitely has two air nymphs and he used them in his round 2 deck:
 http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-2-247/(air-sld)-cccombobreaker-3-0-(darkness-sld)-deathknyte/
 
I think he had a spare code to use too... so if he's lucky, he might even bring 3.

I'll hope to write more soon.

[trashduke]

OK intel is updated for all 3 elements we are facing this round.

To help with mind gating, here are the other match ups that each element has:

34    Gen. Afdarenty    DeathKnyte
21    CCCombobreaker    Gen. Captain Scibra
6    PlayerOa    Dm1321
7    Submachine    willng3
2    iancudorinmarian    Gen. Jen-i
14    theelkspeaks    Malignant


29    Gen. Calindu    trashduke
13    Physsion    dark ripper
23    RavingRabbid    ARTHANASIOS
10    rogerluc    majofa
25    vagman13    Acsabi44
7    willng3    Submachine

2    Gen. Jen-i    iancudorinmarian
25    Acsabi44    vagman13
16    Cheesy111    Ginyu
18    Shinki12345    dragonsdemesne
31    rem4life    Laxadarap
19    xn0ize    propheon

[dragonsdemesne]

With those teams all having six matchups, it'll be really hard to figure out which decks they'll send where, but if you think you can do it, go ahead.  I think it'll be better to look at the kinds of decks they can field and just do our best against each possibility.

Against Air, the pulvy will definitely help against the stall; smashing weapons and sancs will hurt bad, but I'm not sure if it will have enough damage to win in time if they've got a bunch of miracles, and if memory serves, they had several in both their stalls.  I think the fractal charger will do well against their best options as well, though; I'll try to be around later tonight for playtesting.  The pulvy deck seems like it would be really good against light as well, though.  Pulvy could be put into a grabbow, but I think we only had 3 left, which isn't enough to split between two decks effectively.  If we converted that gravity shield last round (at work so can't check) I think that between gravity shield should be used here; between that and pulvy we can do well versus their stalls and adrenastaves.

Against entropy, if I were them, I'd use upped amethyst dragons, which doesn't die to a single lightning, so I think fractal chargers might be a really risky play; they won't have to wait for OTK, and can just dump their dragons/PUs out and rush.  I think disquake grabbow might be better here, though; it would really mess with pugons bad, as that needs a ton of quanta.  If they turn out to have used a grabbow or something, we can use the 'sideboard' event card and remove less effective cards.  We should definitely send the lieutenant against entropy, both for this reason, and because I think we need the ups more there, and because the ups benefit us more than they would in the other match.

Also remember that we can make a sort of sideboard with the event card; with the grabbow in particular, that will give us some valuable options.

More when I get home from work.

[Captain Scibra]

PUgons worries me, as it easily outpaces FraCharge.  He will undoubtedly use Amethysts.  Maybe bonewall deck here...

[dragonsdemesne]

Bonewall's got defense, but not much offense; it's why we lost to death's grabbow with it last round.

[Captain Scibra]

Did someone ask for a DBH/EQ Grabbow?

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55n 55n 55n 55n 55n 55n 55v 55v 55v 55v 593 593 593 6u5 6u5 6u5 77g 77g 77g 78q 78q 78q 8pj

I think I got it to work, but we salvage 3 pends from the Earth match, use them upgraded, and viola!

[dragonsdemesne]

The deck itself looks good, although I would run the earthquakes upped to ease strain on earth quanta, and run either discords or graboids unupped instead.  It means giving up on some of the other salvageable cards earth has to offer, but we can still get the two deflags we sorely need, and with 3 pends we can still salvage one more card from them.

[Captain Scibra]

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55n 55n 55n 55n 55n 55n 55v 55v 55v 55v 590 590 590 77j 77j 77j 78q 78q 78q 80a 80a 80a 8pj

Modified to include Lightning and more Gravity quanta, as this could be a crucial card if they run their own Grabbow.  Just be sure not to over spam Nova to always be able to play one, even after a well-placed Black Hole.  Basically, drop the Quicksands and (yeah, 37 cards still) it should fair decent against their Grabbow.  If PUgons, drop the Lightnings.

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55n 55n 55n 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f7 5fc 5fc 5fc 745 745 745 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

This is the best I think we can do with our Fire option.  Best to send this against Light imo.  Fahrenheit should put some pressure on Miracles if they decide to sundial us.