Guest posts by Daxx

49

Forum Bugs, Suggestions and Feedback / Re: CLAN TOURNAMENT

« on: April 02, 2011, 03:27:32 pm »

All of this can be done without any input from staff, aside from rewards for events. If you think you can get the demand for it, then give it a go. I for one am not going to stop people forming "clans" or other groups as long as it's not stirring up too much drama.

I don't think you'll get much demand, though. I'm not really sure that the effort required to run this would actually be worth it.

50

Humor / Re: War Rap Battle

« on: April 02, 2011, 02:05:00 pm »

Music (

)

They say it's 'bout Thug Life but Tupac's dead
Team Death are in the house like a bullet to the head
Legit's got some rhymes but he's nothin' but talk
And noobiecakes is running when he can't even walk

All you other teams should just drop out now
Death is gonna win and to us you're gonna bow
Got the best propaganda and the best team too
You know us all by now so don't dare say "Who?"

Blonde's on the job, gonna show us the way
With Kev and Rasta there to make other teams pay
xdude and xn0ize got the fighting skills
ICB and Steppingstone gonna rack up kills
Lastly you got me, with my g-mod hacks
Gonna end ya mother****er, yeah the name is Daxx

So you other little girls, are you scared to play?
Gonna get yourselves schooled, the Team Death way
Every foe that we kill comes to serve us in the end
Like them I was alive but I've managed to ascend
Your creatures don't scare us, and neither do your spells
We'll beat you down to zero til you're nothing but shells

And when you're under twenty-nine don't you run and cry
I've warned that Death is coming, so you shouldn't even try.
And even if you fight us 'til your dying breath
Just know that you can't win 'cause you're facing Death.

51

War Archive / Re: War #3 - Feedback

« on: April 02, 2011, 12:51:09 pm »

Heh, I miss a day and look what happens. As Bluepriest has asked, I'll sum up my thoughts.

I don't agree that the change should be implemented in order to prop up "weaker" elements. I don't think that increasing "fairness" in and of itself is a good goal to have (though I do believe it is a good goal to have where it reduces unfun outcomes).

I do, however, believe that the change is good for a different reason, in that it means that it reduces the chance for outlier results in the matchups and therefore is a better test of each team/element's abilities when fighting all other elements. It trades skill in adding flexibility and adaptiveness to your strategy for the skill it requires to play a wider variety of opponents. It also leads to fewer unfun outcomes, which I believe improves the game as a whole.

As an aside, I don't buy the argument that having "make this game as much fun for as many people" as a core design goal is for scrubs or "casual designers". Fundamentally my philosophy on game design is that designing elegant or technically excellent games is nice, but not in fact the aim of the process. I normally champion elegance and simplicity in game design, but usually as a means to the end of creating a game which is more fun to play. An elaborate and pretty optimisation problem can be beautiful from a design standpoint, but if it is not fun for its intended audience to play, then it is a failure as a game.

52

War Archive / Re: Discussion about Pairings Rule

« on: March 31, 2011, 10:52:47 pm »

It's lovely for all of us to talk about theories and this and that. I actually know what I'm talking about; I actually know how to design a successful game; I actually have designed successful games. But that's completely not the point and I'm not here to talk about my resumé.

If we're going to start making appeals to authority I should point out before chiming in that I am a game designer as well - and I have also designed successful games. I'm also well versed in game design theory and familar with how this works in practice.

We are trying to:

Try to make the game as fun as possible

The concept of "getting the short end of the stick" is CHILDISH. There is a reason why children are not put in charge of making rules for such events. Seriously Kael, the concept is childish. If you feel that way, you are simply not thinking about things correctly. It's a plain fact.

The fundamental mistake you have made here is in assuming that everyone must share the same conception of the aims of the game as you do. In fact you have made a number of assumptions and unsupported statements in this and other threads about the nature of the game, which are based on your opinions and not any agreed-upon schema for the game's scope and design. Making broad statements of fact is not conducive to helpful discussion if you refuse to recognise that your conception of the purpose of the game is not the only valid one.

The intent of the rule, as I see it, is to minimise potential for overly "unfun" outcomes. This is separate to any argument about fairness - both methods are perfectly "fair", given that they are both random and unbiased towards any given team. And there is a serious argument to be made for attempting to eliminate or reduce unfun outcomes, because they detract more from the game than the benefits of their inclusion improve it.

A more even distribution of matchups serves two purposes. Firstly, it eliminates these unfun outcomes, and it also has the side effect of increasing the relative skill required to win the event by reducing randomness. To elaborate - teams are less subject to matchups which are very easy or very difficult for reasons outside the realms of skill, and so their matches are more likely to represent the team's strength relative to all opposing teams. In fact I'm pretty surprised that you're not supporting this rule change for precisely this reason.

Thank you ddevans, I've thought this was necessary from day one. (I even got myself a warning and temporary ban as a result).

As you know, your warning and ban were not given because you wanted discussion on this topic, but for other reasons which I am told were made very clear to you at the time. Please don't resurrect the drama by dragging this out into public.[/list]

53

Politics / Re: Scott Walker vs. The Unions: The Real Public Enemy

« on: March 30, 2011, 11:17:06 pm »

It's not surprising that unions tend to support Democratic candidates, in the same way that it is not surprising that corporations (and other private sector employers) tend to support Republican candidates.

It's not immediately clear why this is a bad thing - constituents are represented and their money goes to candidates who support those constituents and their rights. This is how a representative democracy works. Union support is only damning if you believe that unions and collective bargaining are a bad idea for some bizarre reason (and if you do, we should probably start a new thread because I will probably end up talking about this at length).

Fundamentally the biggest problem with Walker's actions is that the measures were clearly not intended to repair the deficit (which, it's worth pointing out, he created in the first place). That the intention was to break the collective bargaining capacity of public sector employees was made clear the instant they took out all the financial elements of the bill in order to get it passed with a lower quorum.

54

Death / Re: Chat Archive

« on: March 30, 2011, 09:00:41 pm »

2011-03-30 22:00

Rule #1:  Play honorably and respectfully.  I understand the wish to win and competitiveness, but I will not abide by anyone on my team acting like a jackhole or cheating.  I highly doubt this will be a problem but just in case, there it is.  So, let's have fun! - MrBlonde

Don't forget to vote for death in propaganda! . ;]


0.  Reference

    * Chat colour key:

    * xn0ize

    * Mrblonde

    * xdude

    * (rastafla)  I have 3 gray nymphs

    * (icecoldbro)  I dont like afla

    * kevkev60614

    * Daxx

    * SteppingStone81


    * Alt accounts for PvP duel testing:

    * testbaby1234  (1234) - i spin with this each day and fight FG's ... not much of a card pool but it has 6 nymphs (not that we will see many in the war)

   


I.  Team Death

General            - Mrblonde
Lieutenant        - Kevkev
Strategist         - Xdude
Vault Organizer - Rastafla
Dogsbody         - Daxx
Duel Organizer  - ICB
Deck Builder     - Xnoize
Salvager           - SteppingStone81

Nymph totals

    * Mrblonde ( 4 entropy, 3 black,3 amber, 2 air, 1 fire, 1 earth, 1 light)

    * SteppingStone81:  (2 Aether, Air, Darkness, Earth, 2 Entropy, Gravity, Light, Time)

    * kevkev60614:  (Air, Darkness, 2 Earth, Entropy, 3 Light, Time, Water)

    * xdude: (1 Aether, 3 Entropy Nymphs (+1), 1 Death Nymph (+1), 1 Turquoise Nymph, (1 Lyght Nymph) )

    * xn0ize: ( 2 Earth  , 1 Air , 3 Entropy , 1 Death , 1 Life , 2 Darkness , 1 Aether , 2 Gravity , 1 Water , 1 Time )

    * Daxx: (2 Death, 2 Gravity, 2 Earth, 1 Life, 1 Fire, 2 Water, 1 Light, 2 Time)

    * icecoldbro (3 Entropy, 1 Red, 2 Light, 1 Blue,



II.  Vaultbuilding Strategy

    * We probably have a little over a week for Vaultbuilding.


    * Vaultbuilding strategy: a few counters vs. the key decks we are weakest against, some utility cards, and the rest of the Vault composed of strong decks in their own right.


    * Team Life, Team Light, Team Aether, and Team Fire built decks and then built the Vault around them. Blonde prefers something similar.



vault size and pillar / pendulum counts:

    * The new 24 card conversion means we can/should underpillar, and also we can take otherwise difficult cards like Mark of Death (SG said it's on-element) and nymphs. Though nymphs aren't always useful in their own right, and most are fragile.


The 24 card rule will help alot this war, but we still want to be careful with our starting pillar/death card counts.

so we should have (assume 512) - 52 = 460 cards in beginning vault.(24 - it's just that awesome)that's why 512 instead of 500.  i hope death wins in votes .
That's  14*30+40 cards, or 15 decks including one stall.  These numbers are very preliminary, but we should maybe focus on building 15ish good  decks.  I actually feel we can UNDERPILLAR our vault a tiny bit due to  new 24 convert rule.  But 15 decks is about right imo.  Thoughts on  this?

Remember, team death has only been able to salvage death cards one time in 2 wars so don't expect to gain any death cards from salvaging.


death mark:

    * no showing off rasta ,I was thinking it couldnt hurt to use it, some safety vs EQ.  I agree 100%.  No reason not to include it. Yeah, let Rasta have some fun




III.  Deckbuilding strategy

Best Death combos/strategies:

    * Speed Poison,

    * Bonewall Stall,

    * Novabow,

    * Fractal + soul catcher



Off-element combos / strategies:

    * We need good combos for off-element cards to be useful as the primary focus of the deck (example - Fractal+something).


There's another advantage to building decks focused around off-element cards: people can't counter them by building a typical "anti-death" deck.yes to stalker mitosis + dusk mantle!, fail intended .Triple elements.


Element-specific counters ???

xdude's thought was to build one counter for each element.  11-12 overall.  My question is this: I developed a rule of thumb last War to never use the same deck against the same opponent twice in a row.  Once we go 7-0 in round 1, how do we go forward with that strategy? Salvages, and some decks can beat multiple teams. But then again, I think Light might be more versatile, as it can stall a lot as well as go pretty fast. Agreed on that.



VI.  Decks

0.  Uncategorized

Xdude's spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmnzqQaMcm0OdFVBeWlfR09LeHMxd1FkWVdXY2Z6SWc&hl=en&authkey=CO-btJsC#gid=9


1.  Likely opposing decks

    * Key opposition decks:

    * Water Stall + Purify,

    * Grabbynovas,

    * Sanctuary Stall,

    * MVP decks from War 2, and

    * possibly immaterial creatures.


??? discord / BH


Deck codes for trainer AI3 opponents:

    * Light

    * Light / Water stall:

    * Entropy

    * Grabbow (entropy): 

    * 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 590 590 590 590 590 590 593 593 5ia 5ia 5oi 5oi 5oi 6u5 6u5 7n0 8pm  <-- (against-death version).

    * Entropy / Water stall: 

    * 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc  4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vi  4vn 4vn 4vn 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 5ia 5ia 5ia 8pp



2.  Rush decks


3.  Stall decks


4.  Counter-Decks

A.  Aether


B.  Air


C.  Darkness


D.  Earth


E. Entropy

    * Mumbow #5 (Gotta own 'em all!):

    * http://helltgivre.free.fr/elements/?deck=z54vjz352g52jz552tz3542z15f6z15i7z15og5roz161q8ps

    * DoSA:

    * http://helltgivre.free.fr/elements/?deck=z152hz552iz252rz552vz961oz46228pk



F.  Gravity


G.  Light


H.  Life


I.  Fire


J.  Time


K.  Water


L.  Underworld




IV.  Analysis of death

Poison / mummy
Mummy is AWESOME.
Again, I think some Lightnings would be great CC. BTW, in all my decks, Poisons can be replaced with Mummys (tweaking Pillar count, of course).  That's good, because it looks like we have poison and arsenic in a lot of decks.They're great for Stalls. Mummys would be worse because we'd need less of them, and thus have a smaller chance of drawing. Even worse with Dragons.  Yeah.  Poison is a great card for duos where you have a lot of pendulums cuz it's so cheap.  You can't have 10 pends to fuel your off element and then expect to be able to afford dragons.


Soul catcher

I'm wondering if there aren't some cards we should just not even think at. Like... Soul Catcher..soul catchers are handy-.-, fractal decks, immo decks.


Deathstalker / aflatoxin

One other snippet: I know blonde is disinclined to include any stalkers or aflas in the vault.
About ^ I'm sure we can convince him to if we have good reasons. He's a rational person.
Again, we need something not terribly slow, to be able to deal with Grabbow.
Im not a fan of stalker either.I dont like afla, takes too long to set up for not much benefit, Stalker I can live with, but not one of my faves.


Aflatoxin + voodoo ???

I have 3 gray nymphs but those suck. possibly with voodoo dolls  othervise bad. aflatoxin does good poison when applied ot dolls.hmm, but i don't see really a good point doing death nymph + voodoo deck, sounds like something will fail so hard that it's funny We should test it. We should use Trainer testing function for it.<--[ i used trainer for testing few decks today and yestraday ]
i have no problem testing it, i like testing things before throwing them to the can
Before building it and testing, which opponent are we willing to use it against? If there are betetr option its pointless to build and test. I was thinking at the same thing. Combo seems pretty hard to pull out.
The main advantage of voodoo is that we can duo with darkness and use steals imo.  Lack of PC is a real problem.



V.  Analysis of opposing elements (a.k.a., the soon-to-be-deceased)

1.  Aether
-i underesimated aether last war and paid the price later. Did well in the beginning, faltered in the middle until we countered them.

2.  Air


3.  Darkness


4.  Earth


5.  Entropy

    * Entropy will be a strong contender if Zeru gets off his arse. They still have an advantage due to having versatile cards. Sanctuaries can help.



Countering Diss Shield stall and grabbow

Although I don't like to say it, we have to find a deck to beat both Grabbow (Entropy version) and Diss/Antimatter/Pande/Purify Stall and be prety decent. Hard to do IMO. Momentumed stalkers would mess with that. lucky pandemoniums would screw the stalkersPande + Purify would kill the deck, not to mention Grabbow is loads faster. fractal viruses and soul catchers to fractal massive ammounts of bone dragons would break the dissipation. We could even infect the AM'd Dragons...mm, its decent. and that decks works vs other stuff. The problem is then entropy grabbow(<-- might be too fast)

Can we put together a credible anti-Grabby nova rush? If we pack Rewinds. Or Thunderbolts.

Fire bolt is an obvious option but I don't like most bolt decks with 50% death against anything else. Me neither. I thought at that.you know , against that Diss shield, i see that just 30 + cards deck fire bolt can do it, but risky.

Fractal and afla are too more solutions, though both are kinda icky, especially against other decks.

i think DoSa can do well against grabbow .  Or can it? If you don't kill the Virusi, you don't get up BoneWalls and  Dragons, but if you do (waste them), he can attack with unburrowed  Shrieks. Not to mention, this is IF you can get up in 6 turns.

Rewinded Dragons with Bonewalls? Perhaps not even Bonewalls, but more creatures. grabbow has pc?Dim  Shield decks wouldn't stnad a chance against the Diss Shield deck.  Also, they might have some, considering they can definitely add a lot of  utility cards in there (9, not counting Grabs)  Depends on the novagrabby.  I don't remember the Entropy version.
Straight out death rush probably won't make it either.  Not positive though.
One thing we can't forget though is Antimatter. Any antimatter deck will wreck a dragon deck.
Actually  either fractal or afla would be interesting.  Pande sometimes rewinds,  which would work against the deckout.  Maybe xn0 is right that DoSA  stands a chance against both.  I wish I had time to test now.


6.  Gravity

Gravity i fear alot, momentum is the worst thing we could face. Trebuchet can be brutal as well with flying titans and/or armagio (we have no in-element PC and trebuchet bypasses all shields).I also could see GG using a flying titan/catapult/freeze deck.

also, discord / BH could hurt a bit


7.  Light

-_-Miracle is teh reason light counters so well and stalls. Holy light is also a pain.
I can clearly see them tring to Water Stall us again.


8.  Life


9.  Fire
- Interestingly enough i think we have quite a bit of metagame here. Because of skull shield i'm sure they will be reluctant to use phoenix or LG types of decks and/or will pack extra deflags because of them. So using skull shields vs them may be not even necessary.


10.  Time


11.  Water


12.  Underworld




~~~~  Miscellaneous

Valimont - Apparantly he is causing quite a ruckus already and if he doesn't shape up he will be kicked out of War fairly soon. He already got a 24 hour ban today.

Oh, 1 thing. I suggest against posting too much strategy snippets on the (preferably win) threads. You still could post stuff like 'we saw it coming, countered',  but don't do stuff like 'they could've used this,  this or this, so we took this as it would beat 'em all'.

55

War Archive / Re: War betting - Win 10 upped Shards!

« on: March 29, 2011, 10:33:16 pm »

56

War Archive / Re: War - Feedback #3

« on: March 29, 2011, 10:21:51 pm »

Of course we are not "alright with backroom dealing." It is horrible for the event. This event is not about the "ability" to use "negotiation" tactics (that are really driven 99% by popularity and 1% by actual negotiating skill or intelligence) to get people to make deals with you behind the scenes. This event is about strategizing in PvP deckbuilding and vault management. It is about predicting your opponents' decks and building counters. It is about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each element.

I'm not sure that what War "is", is actually defined anywhere.

I'm sure some people like solving the optimisation problem and it's certainly an important part of any Elements-based competition, but equally I'm sure other people like the more human aspects of War as well. What is clear is that both aspects are currently supported by the ruleset and it appears that this is at least in part intentional, given the complexity of the event.

In my opinion keeping the less predictable human aspects makes for a much richer and deeper game than the very dry "solve for x" approach. Further, removing negotiation and dealmaking entirely is probably not particularly practical - if anything, I think we should be supporting that style of play with more interesting and effective options.

57

Death / Re: Chat Archive

« on: March 29, 2011, 09:34:17 pm »

2011-03-29 22:34

    * Rule #1: Play honorably and respectfully. I understand the wish to win and competitiveness but I will not abide by anyone on my team acting like a jackhole or cheating. I highly doubt this will be a problem but just in case, there it is. So, let's have fun! - MrBlonde

    * We probably have a little over a week for Vaultbuilding.

    * Team Life, Team Light, Team Aether, and Team Fire built decks and then built the Vault around them. Blonde prefers something similar.

    * We need good combos for off-element cards to be useful as the primary focus of the deck (example - Fractal+something).

    * Best Death combos/strategies: Speed Poison, Bonewall Stall.

    * Key opposition decks: Water Stall + Purify, Grabbynovas, Sanctuary Stall, MVP decks from War 2 and possibly immaterial creatures.

    * The new 24 card conversion means we can/should underpillar, and also we can take otherwise difficult cards like Mark of Death (SG said it's on-element) and nymphs. Though nymphs aren't always useful in their own right, and most are fragile.

    * Entropy will be a strong contender if Zeru gets off his arse. They still have an advantage due to having versatile cards. Sanctuaries can help.


The question is still, do we try to find counters or do we go for picking a certain flaw and making a deck to beat an element. I mean, how do i put it. Sometimes its better to ignore what an element will do and just go for a something with all youve got.
 You know how we did it War 2. Counters. Would've worked better if I could've helped though -_-Miracle is teh reason light counters so well and stalls.

Gravity i fear alot, momentum is the worst thing we could face. Trebuchet can be brutal as well with flying titans and/or armagio (we have no in-element PC and trebuchet bypasses all shields).


https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmnzqQaMcm0OdFVBeWlfR09LeHMxd1FkWVdXY2Z6SWc&hl=en&authkey=CO-btJsC#gid=9
Problem is Death could use a better middle attack, Mummy is kind of iffy.
Again, I think some Lightnings would be great CC. BTW, in all my decks, Poisons can be replaced with Mummys (tweaking Pillar count, of course).  That's good, because it looks like we have poison and arsenic in a lot of decks.They're great for Stalls. Mummys would be worse because we'd need less of them, and thus have a smaller chance of drawing. Even worse with Dragons.  Yeah.  Poison is a great card for duos where you have a lot of pendulums cuz it's so cheap.  You can't have 10 pends to fuel your off element and then expect to be able to afford dragons.

There's another advantage to building decks focused around off-element cards: people can't counter them by building a typical "anti-death" deck.yes to stalker mitosis + dusk mantle!, fail intended .Triple elements.

I'm wondering if there aren't some cards we should just not even think at. Like...rustlers Oh gods don't talk to me about Rustlers.
(I meant in-element) like Soul Catcher..soul catchers are handy-.-, fractal decks, immo decks.

no showing off rasta ,I was thinking it couldnt hurt to use it, some safety vs EQ.  I agree 100%.  No reason not to include it. Yeah, let Rasta have some fun :DI have 3 gray nymphs but those suck. possibly with voodoo dolls  othervise bad. aflatoxin does good poison when applied ot dolls.hmm, but i don't see really a good point doing death nymph + voodoo deck, sounds like something will fail so hard that it's funny We should test it. We should use Trainer testing function for it.<--[ i used trainer for testing few decks today and yestraday ]
i have no problem testing it, i like testing things before throwing them to the can
Before building it and testing, which opponent are we willing to use it against? If there are betetr option its pointless to build and test. I was thinking at the same thing. Combo seems pretty hard to pull out.
The main advantage of voodoo is that we can duo with darkness and use steals imo.  Lack of PC is a real problem.

hmm, Kev opened a thread with all war's decks, we should fight against decks that succeded well in war.

xn0, the vault will basically be made up of the decks we decide upon, plus a few filler cards (or maybe negative filler cards due to the 24 conversion rule).

Although I don't like to say it, we have to find a deck to beat both Grabbow (Entropy version) and Diss/Antimatter/Pande/Purify Stall and be prety decent. Hard to do IMO. Momentumed stalkers would mess with that. lucky pandemoniums would screw the stalkersPande + Purify would kill the deck, not to mention Grabbow is loads faster. fractal viruses and soul catchers to fractal massive ammounts of bone dragons would break the dissipation. We could even infect the AM'd Dragons...mm, its decent. and that decks works vs other stuff. The problem is then entropy grabbow(<-- might be too fast)
Was thinking something like this: http://helltgivre.free.fr/elements/?deck=zB52gz552hz152rz3542z55rk8ps
Can we put together a credible anti-Grabby nova rush? If we pack Rewinds. Or Thunderbolts.

One other snippet: I know blonde is disinclined to include any stalkers or aflas in the vault.
About ^ I'm sure we can convince him to if we have good reasons. He's a rational person.
Again, we need something not terribly slow, to be able to deal with Grabbow.
Im not a fan of stalker either.I dont like afla, takes too long to set up for not much benefit, Stalker I can live with, but not one of my faves.
OH, 1 thing. I suggest against posting too much strategy snippets on the (preferably win) threads. You still could post stuff like (we saw it coming, countered), but don't do stuff like (they could've used this, this or this, so we took this as it would beat 'em all).

Oh, my decks doc is being updated from time to time: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmnzqQaMcm0OdFVBeWlfR09LeHMxd1FkWVdXY2Z6SWc&hl=en&authkey=CO-btJsC#gid=9

Anyhow onto War. The 24 card rule will help alot this war, but we still want to be careful with our starting pillar/death card counts.

so we should have (assume 512) - 52 = 460 cards in beginning vault.(24 - it's just that awesome)that's why 512 instead of 500.  i hope death wins in votes .
That's 14*30+40 cards, or 15 decks including one stall.  These numbers are very preliminary, but we should maybe focus on building 15ish good decks.  I actually feel we can UNDERPILLAR our vault a tiny bit due to new 24 convert rule.  But 15 decks is about right imo.  Thoughts on this?

xdude's thought was to build one counter for each element.  11-12 overall.  My question is this: I developed a rule of thumb last War to never use the same deck against the same opponent twice in a row.  Once we go 7-0 in round 1, how do we go forward with that strategy? Salvages, and some decks can beat multiple teams. But then again, I think Light might be more versatile, as it can stall a lot as well as go pretty fast. Agreed on that.

Remember, team death has only been able to salvage death cards one time in 2 wars so don't expect to gain any death cards from salvaging.

So blonde, Fire's strategy had been to just make 15 solid decks and then allocate them during battles.  Light's strategy had been to make counters for each element.  Which makes most sense for Death? I'm voting for Fire's. I also say go for 15 strong decks. Although with the new structure of team pairing counters (which I hate) does make a bit of better sense.  That was my thought as well.  Makes even more sense under current rules.  So maybe it's a hybrid approach?  Solid decks with an eye towards counters? We could make 12 counters (or maybe less, some for multiple elements) and then add some half-decks for versatility?
Better yet, we should do it how Blonde already did it. It worked great for him both times. lol.. trust me improvement is always good. Having you guys streamline and make things better is... better.  How did blonde do it differently? We just went strong decks with an eye for specific counters. Like vs Light/Fire/Entropy. Funny enough we actually made 2 counters vs light. Against the light/water stall and a rol/hope deck (I remember that. Malduk spy fail). Lol. Shantu spy fail. =P Actually the spy waas not fail, but your luck... yeah I know... so not awesome. But we all know that you crush me everytime we play.
how about, making counters for elements that are being problemtic , and for those that solid deck can do well, just leave it . just a thought :\  Sounds like we're all on the same page. Pretty much. We should figure out the decks we are weakest against, make direct counters and then probably just general strong decks.  Agreed.  I'm looking forward to blonde's post in the Deck Ideas thread. lol
So, a counter for Entropy?

    * Options:
    * Rewinded Dragons with Bonewalls. (iffy vs Diss Shield stall) fractal spark is evil against this [ dragons included ]
    * DoSA - unupped. (very iffy vs Grabbow)   <- is awesome .


http://helltgivre.free.fr/elements/?deck=zM4vcz44vgz44viz14vnz54vpz25ia    Later on, less CS's, more AM's.
They used that against Death last War, I assume? yeah.  bleh.  Fire bolt is an obvious option but I don't like most bolt decks with 50% death against anything else. Me neither. I thought at that.you know , against that Diss shield, i see that just 30 + cards deck fire bolt can do it, but risky.
Fractal and afla are too more solutions, though both are kinda icky, especially against other decks. Again, I suspect Zeru might now we expect that and Grabbow us.
i think DoSa can do well against grabbow . Or can it? If you don't kill the Virusi, you don't get up BoneWalls and Dragons, but if you do (waste them), he can attack with unburrowed Shrieks. Not to mention, this is IF you can get up in 6 turns.
bleh.., then, ideas? Rewinded Dragons with Bonewalls? Perhaps not even Bonewalls, but more creatures. grabbow has pc?Dim Shield decks wouldn't stnad a chance against the Diss Shield deck. Also, they might have some, considering they can definitely add a lot of utility cards in there (9, not counting Grabs)  Depends on the novagrabby.  I don't remember the Entropy version.
Straight out death rush probably won't make it either.  Not positive though.
Actually either fractal or afla would be interesting.  Pande sometimes rewinds, which would work against the deckout.  Maybe xn0 is right that DoSA stands a chance against both.  I wish I had time to test now.kev, will you be on tomorrow? xnoize, Trainer is awesome.xdude, i use the trainer. , but working together , trainer or not ,it helps .fair enough.  you guys saw that we have a couple accounts from which to test?i saw that.I have an alt as well. Really small cardpool though   Mine is good but too few rares.  Maybe I'll find time to t50 grind during the War.

Alt accounts for PvP duel testing:
    * testbaby1234 (1234) - i spin with this each day and fight FG's ... not much of a card pool but it has ~6 nymphs (not that we will see many in the war)

Deck codes for trainer AI3 opponents:

    * light / water stall:
    * novagrabby (entropy):
    * entropy / water stall:  4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vg 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 5ia 5ia 5ia 8pp

    * Chat colour key:
    * xdude
    * SteppingStone81
    * xn0ize
    * Mrblonde
    * kevkev60614
    * Daxx

58

War Archive / Re: War - Feedback #3

« on: March 28, 2011, 10:28:06 pm »

The current bidding mechanics require you to bid higher than the last bid. Since he has bid 67 cards on every single player, there are no players available for less than the practical maximum of 67 cards. Therefore he is the only master capable of fielding a deck, and wins by default.

The only problem with this is that current rules allow you to purchase remaining players for 24 cards each if you cannot assemble a team by the end of the auction, but presumably that rule would have been scrapped under the proposed system.

As an aside, the proposed market's competition is neither wholly perfect nor is the nash equilibrium an optimal solution to the problem that people appear to want to solve. There is simply too much imperfect information, and there are too many distortions in the auction caused by the constraints of the tournament itself.

The best option I see is to embrace these imperfections in the auction mechanism as part of the War process. Allowing dealmaking and negotiation between Masters both in the auction phase and in other phases is not an inherently negative thing; it just tests for different abilities (ones that are arguably still relevant to the War) - trying to turn this into a simple optimisation problem makes for a very dull game.

59

Death / Re: Chat Archive

« on: March 28, 2011, 08:20:48 pm »

2011-03-28 21:20

    * Vaultbuilding probably has a little over a week.

    * Team Life, Team Light and Team Fire built decks and then built the Vault around them. Blonde prefers something similar.

    * need good combos for off-element cards to be useful as the primary focus of the deck.

    * Best Death combos/strategies: Speed Poison, Bonewall Stall.

    * Key opposition decks: Water Stall + Purify, Grabbynovas, Sanctuary Stall, MVP decks from War 2

i did test afla + flooding(<-- is why), sucked thought.lol
The question is still, do we try to find counters or do we go for picking a certain flaw and making a deck to beat an element. I mean, how do i put it. Sometimes its better to ignore what an element will do and just go for a something with all youve got.
 You know how we did it War 2. Counters. Would've worked better if I could've helped though -_-Miracle is teh reason light counters so well and stalls.

Gravity i fear alot, momentum is the worst thing we could face.
 rush solves many things, but hey, don't listen to me .

Can we put together a credible anti-Grabby nova rush? If we pack Rewinds. Or Thunderbolts.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmnzqQaMcm0OdFVBeWlfR09LeHMxd1FkWVdXY2Z6SWc&hl=en&authkey=CO-btJsC#gid=9
Problem is Death could use a better middle attack, Mummy is kind of iffy.
Again, I think some Lightnings would be great CC. BTW, in all my decks, Poisons can be replaced with Mummys (tweaking Pillar count, of course).  That's good, because it looks like we have poison and arsenic in a lot of decks.They're great for Stalls. Mummys would be worse because we'd need less of them, and thus have a smaller chance of drawing. Even worse with Dragons.  Yeah.  Poison is a great card for duos where you have a lot of pendulums cuz it's so cheap.  You can't have 10 pends to fuel your off element and then expect to be able to afford dragons.
sanctuary is a great anti discord card, entropy will start packing PC alot. We still need a good counter to Entropy's last War Death killer. I was thinking Dragons with Rewinds? (it was basically a Diss SHield stall with Purifies).  I'd love to hear from Rasta on the Entropy matchups, since he was on Entropy War1.
 Virus? Meh.
Entropy in war 1 was ages ago. Besides, it wasnt as important then as it is now and there are way more options now.
What? War 1 proved Entropy Was (and still is) DEFINITELY the best element War-wise. It started dominating once Zeru actually did... stuff, but it was too late.
All the decks was Pervepics doing. Zeru was AFK almost all of war 1. And he broke the rest of the decks in half for his own wishes. Perve IS a good deckbuilding.
Would you want me to come up with some Stalls? I like building Stalls.
I love helping making stall X]. I know you DO like Bolt decks (I still remember when we faced you War 2 )

How many nymphs can we realistically stick in the Vault? Bear in mind that nymphs are fantastic since they're hard to salvage.
i have a nice amount of nymphs , can't bring any harm
I have 2 Death ones, but one is upped (supid, stupid), i have 1 death nymph .
We can also ditch them fairly trivially if it turns out that they're taking up space and not everyone can use them. Mostly you'd have to design a nymph deck around a player. We could also add some Entropy Nymphs... (I have 3 unupped and 1 upped) But we need a heck of a lot of Pillars.
entropy nymph wont be seen from our side huh :[?, my 3 poor nymphs wont kill people.xunicorn, why you ninja me?!
one more important thing i wanted to add: the new conversion rule (24 cards) is a FRIGGIN HUGE change.AGREED  we should now UNDERPILLAR our starting vault.  which means we can take whatever and just overwrite those cards early if we don't see an opportunity to use them.  so maybe nymphs aren't complete garbage., not complete . Most nymphs are so fragile I dont like them for that reason also they are expensive. Which nymphs are we interested in? Which ones works well with death?
i like air nymphs, they are evil :] , wont really help us thought >.<.

Am I the only one who doesn't see Rasta's name up right?no, i don't see his name either. I do. Daxx has Mod powers all over the place o.O  I don't see him.  I thought he was gone. Im a ghost.

There's another advantage to building decks focused around off-element cards: people can't counter them by building a typical "anti-death" deck.yes to stalker mitosis + dusk mantle!, fail intended .Triple elements.

I'm wondering if there aren't some cards we should just not even think at. Like...rustlers Oh gods don't talk to me about Rustlers.
(I meant in-element) like Soul Catcher..soul catchers are handy-.-, fractal decks, immo decks.

Quick question: are we going all/mostly Death pends for the Vault?(I like Pillars too. FOr example first War Light had a great UG/FLying Stars deck. 2nd one we couldn't build it (no Pillars).Pick one death mark for vault cna be one of the first to be converted.Nevermind they count as other, bad idea.  They used to count as other.  SG's ruling is they should now be treated as death cards.
no showing off rasta ,I was thinking it couldnt hurt to use it, some safety vs EQ.  I agree 100%.  No reason not to include it.
well, it can hurt :\.They are other cards and thats not good when you try to balance 50%.

60

Death / Chat Archive

« on: March 28, 2011, 07:57:51 pm »

This is the raw contents of the chat doc. I will refactor and summarise these discussions in the doc as they are moved here.

2011-03-28 20:57 BST

No timeline for vaultbuilding yet.  I'd guess that means we have over a week?
Definitely. 1 Week official time, I guess.
Sounds about right.
Also, I suspect SG is dealing with forum stuff right now. I know there's a software upgrade coming soon. New chat, eh? Could be. More likely just the next version of the forum software
That's good.  I'm at my parents in Florida right now.  Will be back on 4/5.

Ok. ANy thoughts on deckbuilding? How did you do it kev, Daxx? (considering you were gen/Vault builder)

Basically Team Life were not hugely organised. What happened was we all built a load of decks we wanted to play from a bunch of different duos, and then I picked the best ones and built the Vault around them. (This was me not knowing how Vault building worked) It sort of worked out okay in the end because I deliberately picked decks where synergistic components could be swapped out.
Here's how Fire built the vault: - surprisingly similar, if a bit more formalised.  Yeah, some of the vault building "strategies" from War2 are appalling.  Just terrible.
It's one of the things I did best as General imo.  I talked to blonde about vaultbuilding strategy before auction started.  (Btw in case it wasn't obvious he and I had an agreement before the auction.)  blonde said he favors a similar vault building strategy of set decks plus filler.
I also kind of wanted to get to him, but I only got Zeru not to bid. Higs upbid once, but she didn't really want me so after blonde talked to her she didn't risk it. Ninja -_-
Anyways, I built Vaults like this: 12 counter decks. Fillers.
Sometimes more copies of counter decks if they were real good. (but War 2 I was gone and the team kind of... screwed up.

Here's a question: how possible is it to build half-decks, where we essentially create a number of half-built decks that can have certain combinations of cards swapped in and out? (mostly utility cards which we can then take lots of)
So, basically built half-decks made of mainly in element cards and then add other cards from other elements? Could be that way, or could be the other way around with the in-element stuff acting as support/filler. (BTW I am not an experienced deckbuilder so please tell me if this won't work) Basing decks on out-of-element cards is hard because it has to be a real good combination.  I liked adding some purifies and Holy Lights to the vault, but you're right that they have to fit in decks somewhere.  It's easier if you're using novas or immos.
I've mostly done it with my decks (check thread)

What are our best combos (that work in a PVP context)? It's probably worth stating them somewhere for reference. Speed Poison, Bonewall Stall. I can post these somewhere, as I'm likely to get the Strategist role (nobody else wants it anyways)
Can we put together a credible anti-Grabby nova rush? If we pack Rewinds. Or Thunderbolts.
https:
Problem is Death could use a better middle attack, Mummy is kind of iffy.
What do we think are going to be the key decks that opposing elements can field?
I'm suspecting Water Stalls with purifies.  You would.   I think nearly every team will take 1-2 grabbynovas and reuse their "most effective" deck found in the archive.  that's a good starting point.
Again, I think some Lightnings would be great CC. BTW, in all my decks, Poisons can be replaced with Mummys (tweaking Pillar count, of course).  That's good, because it looks like we have poison and arsenic in a lot of decks.They're great for Stalls. Mummys would be worse because we'd need less of them, and thus have a smaller chance of drawing. Even worse with Dragons.  Yeah.  Poison is a great card for duos where you have a lot of pendulums cuz it's so cheap.  You can't have 10 pends to fuel your off element and then expect to be able to afford dragons.
Sanctuary may make an appearance as well, I think.  Good call.  Most teams will have a sanctuary deck, I think.  PC will be even more important. Worth taking butterfly effect? We may need reusable PC (Uh, clearly this doesn't like people typing together). eh. Generally not effective Fragile and stuff.
i think all teams will have sanctuary deck, it's the new SoG :\. I love it.
sanctuary is a great anti discord card, entropy will start packing PC alot. We still need a good counter to Entropy's last War Death killer. I was thinking Dragons with Rewinds? (it was basically a Diss SHield stall with Purifies).  I'd love to hear from Rasta on the Entropy matchups, since he was on Entropy War1.
death killer?,wut?.  I need to read up on which matchups were problematic as well for Death.
hm, that sounds annoying, i think i saw it in Kev's thread.