Guest posts by Amphetryon

25

Deck Help / Re: Help with my time deck

« on: July 28, 2011, 04:34:05 pm »

Regardless of whether you take SpikeSpiegel's excellent advice regarding Nightmare, I'd strongly advocate swapping a few of your pillars for pendulums.  Even if they're dropping the same quanta round after round, they'll make you less susceptible to Earthquake and similar effects that can ruin your day.

FWIW, the Darkness/Time deck I'm currently running uses Minor Vampire instead of Steal, for a decent EM rate and so that all the Nightmares don't feel like quite such a trap against other  decks.

26

Deck Help / Re: SCorp deck

« on: July 26, 2011, 06:29:08 pm »

One of the biggest weaknesses of Forest Scorpions is their ineffectiveness against shields. Using upped Scorpions can alleviate some of this problem, except that if your opponent is also playing with upped cards, they may be using a shield that blocks 2 damage.

A way to get past this would be to duo with and add Blessings to your deck. This will give them 5 attack and make it so they can get past any damage blocking shields (except Hope). In addition, this will give them greater survivability. At 5 HP only Lightning Bolt and Rage Potion can take them down. So your poison can keep piling on.

Adding to your deck can also give you access to some other great cards:

Crusaders - Work well if you decide to use a Druidic/Jade Staff.
Sanctuary - They can heal you while your opponent is slowly dying to your poison.
Miracle - This card a lot of times can mean the difference between winning a game and losing one.

Another combo you can try with is using Rustlers. They can take each of your quanta and convert it into 2 quanta. Thus helping you to get out your cards faster.

Here's just a sample, feel free to do any tweaking you want.

Code: [Select]

7ad 7al 7ao 7ao 7ao 7ao 7ao 7ao 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jo 7jv 7jv 7jv 7jv 7jv 7jv 7k2 7k2 7la 7la 7la 7la 7la 7la 7la 7la

How does this suggested deck deal with a Bonewall, out of curiosity?

27

Deck Help / Re: Help with a Flying Owl's Eye Deck

« on: July 26, 2011, 10:59:07 am »

If only I had more than one Arsenic. 

28

Bronze League Decks / Re: What deck did you put up today? (Bronze)

« on: July 25, 2011, 10:26:25 pm »

I got lobotomizer/electrocutor, and put up a mindgate/lobotomy/rewind  atrocity with dimension shields.

29

Deck Help / Re: Survivability for Vulture Feeder

« on: July 25, 2011, 07:00:22 pm »

I would try:
-1 Aflatoxin
-1 Death Pendulum
+2 Virus.  Virus works to provide a two-fold boost to your Vultures, and you're running pretty quanta-heavy given a deck devoid of dragons or other huge critters.

The other change that springs to mind a using a bone wall in place of a thorn carapace, as it will provide more consistent stall at the cost of some slow removal.

30

Deck Help / Re: Help with a Flying Owl's Eye Deck

« on: July 25, 2011, 05:36:46 pm »

Modified to mono as follows:

by Amphetryon

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5oc 5oc 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5ol 5ol 5op 5op 5op 5op 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 8pr

I don't presently own another Owl's Eye.  One of the following scenarios shows up consistently - 21 trials, roughly seven occurrences each:

• 1. Hand looks something like Sky Blitz, Sky Blitz, Sky Blitz, Flying Weapon, Pendulum, Pendulum, Pillar, Pendulum, with quanta producers but no Dragonflies in a pocket to follow until dead.
• 2. Hand has 1 Pendulum, 2 Sky Blitzes, and 5 Owl's Eyes, followed by Dragonflies until dead.
• 3. Hand contains some mix of Dragonflies, a Pendulum or Pillar, and Flying Weapons, followed by Sky Blitzes.  The first Owl's Eye appears in hand around the point I'm hovering around 20 life and opponent can consistently expect to do +/- 15 damage.
  

This combination of outcomes tells me that the mix is off, the concept is bad, or karma had it in for me.

 

31

Deck Help / Help with a Flying Owl's Eye Deck

« on: July 25, 2011, 04:03:36 pm »

by Amphetryon

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5bs 5bs 5bt 5c7 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5oc 5oc 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5ol 5op 5op 5op 5op 8pr

It's almost painfully slow right now EDIT: in AI3.  I'm considering dropping the  entirely and using dragonflies for better quanta production.  Thoughts?

32

Deck Help / Re: SCorp deck

« on: July 25, 2011, 01:58:34 pm »

What I did when using Life Scorps was just to go:

Forest Scorpion - 6
Adrenaline - 6
Heal - 6
Life Pillar - 12

But this was against other mono-rush decks in a small, private comp so the pc/cc in arena might change things.

I had some success with:

Forest Scorpion 6
Adrenaline - 6
Heal - 3
Thorn Carapace - 3
Life Pillar - 6
Life Pendulum - 6.

33

Trio & Quartet / Re: Eternal Scorpion AI3 Grinder

« on: July 23, 2011, 12:43:42 pm »

After tinkering around with it some more, I swapped out Light and Aether for Gravity, and it's consistently winning by about turn 10, at a higher rate than the original:

by Amphetryon

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

55q 55q 55q 55q 55q 55r 55r 55r 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 7q8 7qd 8ps

With no life gain or quanta mitigation, it's just about game over if no scorpions have hit the hand by turn 3, but it runs pretty smoothly.  I've only used Momentum on the Oty once, against the Pharaoh's deck.

34

Trio & Quartet / Re: Eternal Scorpion AI3 Grinder

« on: July 23, 2011, 01:03:40 am »

Yeah, Grabbix can be inconsistent, though it's fast when it does go off. That does seem like quite a bit of bad luck though.

Try one of these:

Mono-death (Pillars, poison, mummies, dragons, Arsenics)
Mono-life (Pillars, frogs, cockatrices, adrenalines)
Mono-earth (Earth pillars, Mark of Time, graboids, shriekers)
Mono-time (Pillars, ghosts, precogs, dragons)
Novabow (4-5x quantum pillars, novas, up to 2 cheap cards from each element)

Sorry, I was apparently unclear.  I meant, I'm trying the suggestion of eliminating aether from my posted deck.  It's now 5 - 16.

EDIT: I note none of your suggestions involve scorpions, despite my comment in the first post about liking how they play.  Are they just that horrible, or what?

35

Trio & Quartet / Re: Eternal Scorpion AI3 Grinder

« on: July 23, 2011, 12:38:31 am »

try Grabbix (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,16828.0.html) if you want a faster deck

As for the deck i would ditch the whole aether part of the deck and add rewinds and a bit more quanta production
so -4 lighting - 4 aether pendulum -2 anubis +4 rewinds 

For dune scorpions to function you only need them to hit once so quint doesnt really do much. each rewind forces the opponent to play the cost of the card again, reset any buffs, and take an extra poison counter.

Plus a smaller deck allows you to get the combo out faster

Tried this; so far I have 2 wins versus 8 losses.  The combo has shown up faster only once so far.  I admit it's a small sample size.

36

Trio & Quartet / Re: Eternal Scorpion AI3 Grinder

« on: July 22, 2011, 03:29:09 pm »

a fast deck consistantly wins in 6(maybe 7) turns or less.

That's... remarkably fast.  I don't think I've ever seen a deck that consistently fast; maybe the RNG just hates me.