Round 5 discussion

[trashduke]

Our Round 5 matches:

iancudorinmarian    Gen Captain Scibra

dragonsdemesne    DeathKnyte

We got a bunch of cards back from round 3 and 4 b/c of the as-yet unexplained Aether penalty, so our vault is looking better than it was. We've got a 9 card penalty though to still take care of.

I'm thinking to drop 3 poison (no other death module present).
After that the choices are more difficult.  I'm thinking maybe 5 phoenixes and the fahrenheit (leaving us 2 deflags, 2 fireboats, and one phoenix in fire) - what do you all think?

[dragonsdemesne]

Wait, wow... interesting.  Wonder wtf happened with aether, that's dumb to do without explanation.  Suddenly, enthusiasm for war increases again (ignore PM sent 5 minutes ago, lol)  Also, guess this means I'm automatically lieutenant, so we'll plan my deck accordingly.

[dragonsdemesne]

Okay, tried to get into our vault and I was denied permission.  I requested access.

[serprex]

dragonsdemesne should now be able to access Gravity's vault

[trashduke]

Wait, wow... interesting.  Wonder wtf happened with aether, that's dumb to do without explanation.  Suddenly, enthusiasm for war increases again (ignore PM sent 5 minutes ago, lol)  Also, guess this means I'm automatically lieutenant, so we'll plan my deck accordingly.

Right on and glad to hear your enthusiasm increased.  @Aether it's very curious indeed.  Also curious that Higs isn't fighting for Aether this round....  I'm suspecting foul play (hence the increased security on the vault access), but I'll wait to hear from the WMs.

[trashduke]

Also, the Aether losses were reversed, so we've got two gravy nymphs back in the vault, so this deck could be considered (with two more upped discords and another pend?):

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Deck import code : [Select]

4vl 4vl 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55o 55o 55o 55v 55v 55v 55v 55v 55v 568 568 576 576 576 6u5 6u5 747 747 747 75m 8pj

Vs. Darkness it might be good to throw a few Novas in there in case of Devs....  But I'll put together the intel for Darkness and we can see what they've done so far.

[dragonsdemesne]

Lieutenant has 9 upgrades, remember.  I say go with the other 3 pends.

[dragonsdemesne]

DARKNESS:

Won with devtal, dragon/gargoyle rush with BB, lost with dragon/gargoyle rush with RT, won with gargoyle/graboid novabow, lost with entropy/dark stall, won with devtal.

So they've got 2 devtals available, a BB/darkness rush, and a grabbow, and might be still able to do other stuff as well, but they can do those for sure.  If we can counter devtal and rush, we're in good shape.

AIR:

Lost with OE/sanc stall, lost with fractal damsel/dragon/blitz, won with dragon/damsel/nightmare/dagger rush, lost with dragon/steal deck, lost with monoair dragon/tstorm/OE, won with adrenastaves/elite FFQ/deflag deck.

Catatitans might do well against air.  It will fail against darkness unless we upgrade flying weapons; devourers will probably mean no air quanta ever.  The DBH might work for either, but we haven't won with it, yet, and I'm not sure if scibra has the nymphs.  I think a variant of the gravity/fire deck we used last round might do alright against darkness; conversely, we could run a gravity mark catatitans against darkness with AWs (obviously no fog then), and if they pick the BB deck, we'll laugh because they can't really BB our titans, unless they want an even fatter titan catapulted at them.  Trouble is that would be vulnerable to steals, and the same issue arises with DBH; if discord is stolen, we will lose.

The other deck that might work is a gravity/darkness rush, just pack it with chargers and then all the darkness cards we have (steal/nightmare/dagger) and then we'd have a way around darkness's evil dusk/dagger with steal, as well as chargers, and nightmare would help against devtal.  As trashduke mentioned, a couple random novas could be thrown in, too, if we're that worried about devtal.

We've also got the fractal charger lightning as a possibility.  That probably fails pretty hard to devtal, though; not sure how it would fare against air.  It would beat any stall they bring, but I don't know about a rush.

I'll let people think on that and see what suggestions/criticisms are leveled, and then we can worry about specific deckbuilding once we have a general idea what we want to do.

[trashduke]

OK - I finally finished putting together the intel on darkness and air.

Darkness has sent essentially the same deck at us twice; in Round 2 they brought:

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5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5up 5up 5up 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 8pt

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-2-247/%28darkness-sld%29-lifehatelove-3-1-rutarete-%28gravity-sld%29/

and round 3 was:

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5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5up 5up 5up 5uv 5uv 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 7tb 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 8pt

 http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-3-248/10-men-%28darkness-sld%29-drakexiv-%28gravity-sld%29-3-1/

Given the perception of our vault situation, it wouldn't be crazy to send the same deck again if they think we can't beat this deck because of vault limitations.  I'll try a few tests given our vault to see if I can come up with something.  I agree that devtal is a threat, but I'm not sure how can we counter devtal AND rush threats like the above with our vault.  I'll think on this one.

Air beat us in round 2:

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5og 5og 5op 5of 5of 5of 5v1 5up 5up 5up 5up 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7tb 7tb 8pt

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-2-247/(air-gr-)-theelkspeaks-3-1-(gravity-sld)-skyironsword/

and round 4:

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5pu 5pu 5og 5og 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7tb 7tb 7tb 8pt

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-4-249/(air-lt-)-cccombobreaker-3-0-captain-scibra-(gravity-gen-)

Again very similar decks, and since they won with them and our vault is small, it's not crazy to think they'll bring something similar.  I'll think on this a bit too.

[trashduke]

I do like the idea of catatitans vs. air - if they end up dropping the steals again, it should be a win for us - plus we can put in a couple gravity pulls if we need to have a big meat shield.
Maybe a slight mod of the Round 3 deck (with captain's 12 ups):

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55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 55t 55t 561 561 561 5og 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 8pr

Edit: Well, this isn't doing so hot in testing @40-50% against the air decks above.  Cata-titans is so dependent on a good draw....  I don't know if we can do better, but we should think about this one more.

[dragonsdemesne]

Against darkness, maybe either a gravity/darkness duo or the fractal chargers.  Darkness hasn't been upping their dragons, so lightnings would do well against them, and even if they did in anticipation, it still works on gargoyles.

Against air, I don't want to use the DBH, because the damsels often mean that we can't deny enough quanta.  Catatitans might do alright if they don't bring steals.  Frankly, we haven't got a lot else to try.  We could do a fire duo; it is very similar to the darkness duo in role, but would have more offense with phoenixes and less defense.  We could also do the earth duo with pulvy, but I don't think that can beat their decks except the light stall.  I don't see anything else viable.

vs DARKNESS:

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4sl 4sl 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 576 576 576 576 576 576 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 622 745 745 745 745 745 745 75m 75m 75m 8pu

vs AIR

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55k 55k 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 561 561 561 5og 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 744 746 746 8pr

Opinions welcome!

[trashduke]

Thanks for these suggestions dragon.  I'll do some testing tomorrow and see if I have any suggestions (the armagios may help the cats-titan, but I was actually thinking that it was shy on damage, so chargers might be more useful, even if less pult-able). upped sundials might also be nice to have in there (we have 3).

In the mean time I've loaded everything into the vault, so we can change decks if we want, but we're ready for Round 5. I had to make some tough calls for conversions - the 2 nymphs, a farenheit, a phoenix, two chargers, and some other gravy.  Please take a look at the vault, maybe we don't need those sundials after all and should keep the fire stuff, or the nymphs....  opinions definitely welcome.  Here are the cards I converted:

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576 576 55l 55l 55t 55u 55v 568 568 5f7 5fc