Guest posts by Mathaos

1

Card Ideas and Art / Nerf Bonewall

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

It's weakness is it can be destroyed without any permanent-affecting cards. You can save your steals/deflags for important cards like weapons and graveyards.

Worst case scenario- it's a speedbump. Just keep playing your deck like you would normally and it will fall. No strategy changes are needed to deal with it 95% of the time.

Uh-huh. You say that if you have FFQ or Boneyard and good creature control, and they don't have a Rain of Fire to wipe all that. If you have a small, fast deck with a few dragons for damage, or something with Growth/Ablaze? Yeah, right, that Bone Wall will hold forever. Doesn't matter if you keep four 51/51 forest spirits alive if they can kill two of their own fireflies or skeletons each turn. But hey, mass weenies doesn't always work either since they just stall with other means until they can play a Bone Wall and Rain of Fire on the same turn and suddenly have 40 shields.

Both Bone Wall and Rain of Fire cost quite a bit, and forty shields isn't that big of a deal if you're a mass creature deck.

But the point is no card should have only one counter. As it stands now, if you don't have a mass creature deck, if you face a bone wall, you will at best have a difficult time, and at the worst you are screwed. And face it, not everyone is going to want to play a mass creature deck.

I also do not agree with the contential that 'all' you have do do is save your deflags/steals and play them at once. I am all right with one card having the potential to tie up a few cards, but if you have to play 5+ cards just to deal with one, the card is not balanced. Because once you've played your deflags/steals your opponent can just play another one (and another, and another), and where are you then?

My suggestion is to implement one or more of the following:

1. Steal/Destruction type cards eliminate 3 Counters.
2. Bone Wall only gets counters from the destruction of opponent's creatures.
3. Bone Wall only gets one counter per creature kill.

Even if all of the above gets implemented (and I am not necessarily advocating all of them together, I think 1 plus either of 2 or 3 would do nicely), Bone Wall still remains quite potent and still keeps the potential of stonewalling the opponent, but it decreases the likelyhood that it alone will stop your opponent cold for the entire game.

2

Issue Archive / Mutants keeping natural abilities.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:49 pm »

What I mean by the title is that some creature when you mutate a creature into them, still keep their usual ability as well whatever ability it gets from the mutation. For example, a Devourer will use its quantum devour ability at the end of the turn even if it has something like Infect, a Graboid will auto burrow, and I believe there are a couple others. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or maybe it is the way it is intended, but I thought it should be noted.

This actually reminds me of another thing that may or may not be a bug. All creatures that have the burrow ability say that when burrowed, damage is cut in half. Well the graboid comes into play auto-burrowed, but when burrowed like this, they still keep their full 2 damage. Again, this could be the way it is intended, but I thought it should be noted, in case it is not.

3

Deck Help / Upgrading my fire/poison deck

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:48 pm »

The way I see it, unless you are running Rainbow, it is really hard to run a deck with more than 35-40 cards. This is the fire deck I use (or rather used before I went rainbow god hunting):

16 Fire Pillars
4 Crimson Dragons
5 Deflagration
6 Fire Bolt
1 Fire Shield
2 Farenheit
2 Rain of Fire
Total 36

With your deck, I would go with the above, drop one of the Farenheits, and then add the Arsenics and 5 of the poisons (maybe go with the full 6, but my gut says it is a good idea to go with slightly less) to give you a nice round number of 42. You might even get away with dropping an additional dragon (much of your damage will be coming from the poison) and the Fire Shield (In my experience, Fire Shield usually does not have much of an effect on the battle, so it usually just sits in my hand) to drop the number to 40. Trust me when I say that if you are running a primarily mono-fire deck, compactness is a key. You need this so that you can be sure you will have a good chance of drawing your destruction cards when you need them.

As for the upgrade order, the previous posters gave you good advice, though you might consider upgrading a few pillars before upgrading the rain of fires. Just keep in mind that upgrading the poisons makes them cost two, so upgrading them causes your death quanta requirements to increase a fair bit.

4

Deck Help / Rough Deck Idea - Otyugh/Vulture/Boneyard

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:37 pm »

    *  Entropy
          o 6x Nova [0: Instant, 1 mana of each color]
    * Death
          o 10x Bone Pillar [Land]
          o 6x Boneyard [3: Enchantment, creature dies -> 1/1 skeleton]
          o 6x Vulture [3: Creature (0/1), creature dies -> +1/+1]
    * Gravity
          o 8x Gravity Pillar [Land]
          o 6x Otyugh [3: Creature (0/3), absorbs creature with lower health -> +1/+1]
    * Light
          o 6x Photon [0: Creature (1/1)]
    * Time
          o 6x Deja Vu [1: Creature (1/1), 1: create a copy]
    * Aether
          o 6x Spark [0: Crature (2/0)]

You might consider dropping the Deja Vus, a couple photons and a couple gravity pillars and switch to a mark of gravity. That would cut your deck down to 50 (which means there is still some room for improvement). Just remember that once you get your boneyards going, you will have plenty of skeletons for your Otyughs to snack on. You might also consider dropping the novas since you will only be running two elements then.

5

General Discussion / The OMGWTFBBQ mutation thread

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:34 pm »

What'd the virus's deja vu do?

I don't know. I mutated the enemy dragon into that and the AI never deja vu'd it.

I've had a few mutated creatures with deja vu before. Basically it creates a mutated copy of itself. Same creature, but with random stats and powers.

6

Rainbow Decks / How to beat ALL the False Gods using the ULTIMATE False God killing deck

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:33 pm »

Perhaps it is also worth considering to add an enchant artifact. It would likely help greatly against Seism, and could prove useful against some of the others.

7

Deck Help / A Fire/Earth deck I've been thinking about.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:33 pm »

I'm not sure, but my guess would be the lack of Golems is due to the Earth mark being the only Earth quanta source. (One Earth quanta per turn for each Golem, you would gain no Earth quanta with 1 Golem, and lose 1 per turn with 2 Golems)  This Earth quanta lock would of course have the upside of really powerful Golem(s), but if the opponent can reverse time...

Gnome Gemfinders, as mentioned, would help greatly in the Earth quanta crunch.  Maybe the opponent would even waste a creature control card on them, allowing you to play a dragon safely.

What he said is mostly true. This deck is not meant to be a duo deck so much as it is meant to be a mono-fire deck with a few Earth cards to cover Fire's weaknesses and augment its destructive power. You are right about the Gemfinders though and it is definitely something I will consider.

8

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Wins/Losses and score should only apply to PvP.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:31 pm »

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I really thinking the wins/losses and score should only be gotten from PvP games. Pretty much everyone knows that the reason the top 50 have such high scores (for the most part anyways) is because they have a deck built to face the god matches or Level 3. That is not skill, and my belief is that a person's score should reflect their skill level more or less. As it stands now, a person can just build a rapid win deck and face level 3 a whole bunch of times to inflate their wins/score. Again, that is not skill. The only true way to determine skill is by facing other, real people.

So, I say score should only be modified by the results of PvP matches. AI matches definitely still give out coins, just not score or win/loss ratio. Now, I don't think it should happen just yet, as there are still plenty of bugs in PvP, as well as cheaters. As well, I think the match-up generator should be modified so that you are more likely to face someone around your point range. But once that is for the most part taken care of, I believe everyone's score and wins/losses should be wiped clean and the score from PvP change applied. Then, the highscore tables truly will reflect the top players.

Anyone else agree?

9

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Buff mono decks :]

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:31 pm »

Honestly, having pillars give 2 quantum seems a little bit too powerful. I do think going Mono-colour could use a bit of a boost, so how about something like this:

Mark of Focused Fire (or Dark, or Earth, etc.)
Generates 3 Fire quantum at the end of each turn. You may only include Fire cards in your deck.

I think that could be just what would be needed to make mono-decks more attractive.

10

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Mulligans

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:31 pm »

Maybe it could be done that you could select one or two cards from your deck, and they will always be in your hand at the start of the game? And make it that you could only select cards below a certain cost (like 1 or 2), since most of those type of cards that players would want right away cost 3 or more.

11

Deck Help / A Fire/Earth deck I've been thinking about.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:30 pm »

This is a deck I've been thinking about for a while now. The basic idea is to cover Fire's Defensive/Pillar dependence weakness with Enchant Artifact and Titanium/Diamond shield and augment its Destructive power with a few Earthquakes. Anyways, here's what I had in mind. note that I haven't actually used it yet, I am sticking to Mono-fire until I have enough of my fire cards upgraded (note that except in the case of the Crimson Dragons, the upgraded versions of the cards will be used if I get them).

Mark of Earth

Fire Pillar x14
Titanium x2
Earthquake x3
Enchant Artifact x3
Fire Bolt x6
Deflagration x3
Farenheit x2
Crimson Dragon x4
Rain of Fire x3

Total x40

Ultimately I'd like to keep the card total at around 35, but I don't really see much that could be removed. Can anyone else? Or have any suggestions?

12

General Discussion / Percentage of Pillars?

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:30 pm »

It really depends on the deck. Some decks, like my Mono-Fire deck use 14-15+ pillars in a 35 card deck. Other decks may only need 8-10 in a 40 card deck, and some decks don't use any pillars, regardless of their deck size.

Really, the only way to figure it out is to take your deck and play a bunch af matches. If it seems like you are generally not getting enough quantum, add a few pillars. If it seems like you are consistently having a fair overflow of quantum, take a few out. Alternatively, you can check out the wiki and copy/paste one of the decks listed there.