Guest posts by Demut

73

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 11:22:11 pm »

A virus has three uses, soft cc, soft swarm and soft stall.

Virus combined with the boneyards creates a subpar skeletal swarm.

Virus with the bonewall, can create a somewhat weak stall.

And the Virus's poison is a weak CC which is only useful when combined with the stall and/or swarm.

He went skull shield in a poison deck, which as far as I know, skull shield is only really used with Aflatoxin.

That eliminated, Virus's swarm ability. Which would have been fine if he had gone aflatoxin or creature, but he went poison spells going around my stall completely.

By going creatureless he made my plagues dead cards.

I have nothing to do but to assume he used the metagame.

I could have been using Graboids/Shriekers to test of they were UP and using the metagame he could have gotten similar results making them look UP.

And thats why I am aggravated.

74

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 11:05:13 pm »

For the first four games he used a deck specifically designed to counter my deck. I changed to try to counter his, almost won the fifth, then he changed again to I don't know what.

I don't think that was a fair test due to the metagame he used against me, but whatever.

I know my test against 20 random PvP decks was positive.  But I won't say anything more, buff it, whatever.

75

Forum Bugs, Suggestions and Feedback / Green should mean active not online.

« on: November 16, 2010, 09:38:12 pm »

Having a green button should mean forum activity in the past five minutes, not merely logged in.

76

Tournament Archive / Re: Western Tournament - 20 November 2010 - Speed building - unupgraded

« on: November 16, 2010, 09:34:45 pm »

I can always sell other cards to buy what I need.

77

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 08:52:21 pm »

I said I disregarded starter decks and desyncs. Leaving only the better made decks in there. But fine then. If a direct pvp test is the only thing that will satisfy you. I'm in chat. We'll play a series of seven games. Lets see how many I win.

78

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 08:21:57 pm »

Ahh...I don't do upgraded so I can't really say anything beyond the math looking off.

79

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 08:03:21 pm »

That deck uses fractals viruses to create a cheap source of fuel for the bone wall, make a rapid mass spam of skeletons from the bone yard and pump up the condors to super bird levels. But it looks like it has a good chance of not getting the retrovirus and fractal in your hand soon enough.

80

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 07:45:07 pm »

Won 15
Loss 5
invaluable:10
Losses due to holding that in my hand rather then something else: 2

Code: [Select]

52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52h 52i 52i 52i 52i 52n 52n 52n 52n 52p 52p 52p 52r 52r 52r 52r
This is after disincluding desyncs and starter decks.

Now what happened an awful lot is that whether I was facing Shriekers, Lava Golems, Dragons, Pheonixes, Adrenalined Scorpions of both poisonous and neurotoxin type

The difference between win or loss was my ability to keep my bone wall standing so my dragon could kill them. For instance against an Aether deck I was facing Phase Dragons coupled with Phase Shields.

I was actually sacrificing my viruses without targeting anything just to keep my bone wall up a little bit longer. And it was because of that I was able to outlast his phase shield and win.

And that was basically the major value of the virus at least 40% of the time that is what I was using my viruses for and I tell you it was a very important use.

However rarely was any one use of the virus the thing that pulled me through it was usually its combination of CC, Bone wall and Bone yards that pulled my through. For instance.

 I was facing a shrieker deck that had basalisk blooded the dragons but I would virus his shriekers as soon as they appeared, the sacrifice of my virus boosting my bone wall so the shriekers didn't hurt me and giving me 2 and then 3 skeletons to do my own damage. Then right before he would get rid of my bonewall the shriekers would die giving me more skeletons and boosting my wall further.

Then near the end when I was running out of bonewall, plagues and viruses he put up a titanium shield. He had two shriekers left and it looked like he would win, when his basalisk bloods wore off and my dragons pulled me through.

It was a memorable win through the use of the combined arms.

And that was actually a common aspect. The combined synergy of all the cards is often what pulled me through.

Take my very last game, he placed a mantle halfway through and was using fractal dragons/devours. However he was wary of my plague and would set his units out piecemeal trying to draw me out. I instead held on to everything and just kept feeding bonewalls and my own dragons, picking off his dragons with viruses, feeding my bonewall and boneyard. He would pick my dragons off with drain.  I had to time my bonewalls to coincide with the death of his dragons though.

Finally he just said hell with it and placed everything out. I plagued him, he fractaled again. And at the end I was facing five dragons, a mantle and with only my bone walls and a shitload of skeletons and one last dragon.

My skeletons allowed me to just barely pull through.

If I hadn't had viruses feeding my  bonewall and taking out his dragons, he would have killed me a lot sooner.

Anyway, this has left me more convinced then ever before that virus is fine. If you doubt me still, I don't know what else to do.

81

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 06:54:53 pm »

Okay here is the math that has me convinced virus is fine.
The wall/cost ratio a virus gives between between two times and four times as good as the initial bone wall.

A bonewall costs 7 quantum for 7 walls.

A virus costs one quantum, its sacrifice gives two walls and the creature it kills gives another two walls.

It takes only three viruses to gain a positive damage/cost ratio with two boneyards.

Two viruses create 12 skeletons for the cost of 9 Quantum with two boneyards. With three boneyards you need only two viruses.

As you end up with 12 skeletons for the price of 11 quanta.  Every virus after that is just goldand creates extremely good damage/cost ratio.

Either one by itself is weak, but together it creates what seems to be a very mathematically sound strategy.

My initial deck was lackluster, thrown together wildly to act as the control. This next deck will be the actual test. And so far it seems good.

82

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 06:40:36 pm »

That deck list of Demut's is atrocious. Between the vultures, the boneyards, and the walls I don't see how 10 pillars powers it at all.

Never used the vultures and did a lot of holding back. It wasn't hard to get 10-15 skeletons out and then hide behind bone walls until I won. 

This rework is a lot better, and I am convinced the rework and the analysis will prove I'm right. Though now that I am not counting desyncs/ Bad decks, I've only gotten 14  usable games so far out of must be over a hundred.

83

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 05:13:36 pm »

Actually I spent forty minutes, not 15. And you should take your own advice. I'm pretty sure its clear you haven't taken your own advice. I am currently testing this tweaked deck. When I'm done I will give you the results.

It will take longer as I am disregarding wins/losses from desyncs and starter decks

84

Buff This Card! / Re: Virus - Retrovirus

« on: November 16, 2010, 04:17:40 pm »

Actually the vultures add nothing to it. It works better with them replaced by towers.

Anyway, the numbers said it works fine and I trust numbers more then anything. The only shields I came across with any regularity was Dusk Mantle and Aether.  Most common strategy by far was devour bit based. Second was Lava golem, third was Shrieker. And it worked fine against them.

I'm sure I could tweak it.