Guest posts by Pantheon

1

Design Theory / Re: Less powerful, more strategic cards!

« on: June 21, 2010, 10:16:57 am »

the sacrifice top half of deck thing might be OP. You could have a 60 card deck and just sacrifice 29/30 cards first turn to make a 30 or 29 damage creature. Or You could have multiple Eternities and reverse multiple cards into your deck (people have done this for a screen shot competition). Once you had a certain amount, you could summon a 60/60 megacreature and quint/momentum it.

Yep, the first situation might be overpowered. Second would not. I won't delve into why, but i'll say this: Please don't go into specific cards that are OP/UP. I wanted to discuss the principle in general.

2

Design Theory / Re: Less powerful, more strategic cards!

« on: June 21, 2010, 10:12:54 am »

A pillarless golem rush don't really suffer much of what you listed.

It would of course, cost quite a bit of quanta. Say something like 8-10 of a single color. Would be hard for that deck unless it was fire or earth.

But like i said: Let's not delve into individual card discussion. It's the general design principle i want to discuss.

3

Design Theory / Re: Less powerful, more strategic cards!

« on: June 20, 2010, 01:20:46 am »

I agree for more strategic cards.
Don't really agree with most of your suggested cards tho.
Often these sort of cards are extremely powerful when one side can setup the card. Imagine if I could cast your Pillar balancing card when I had 0 pillars. The opponent would be decimated and the card is supposed to hurt both players but you have suffered nothing.

Yeah and that's the whole point of cards like these. If you build your entire deck around that card going off with 0 pillars, it's powerful, but your deck is dedicated to it so you had to sacrifice a lot of power in other areas, like permanent/creature control, heavy damage, shields, et cetera.

Any ideas of your own?

4

General Discussion / Re: Should all cards be created equally?

« on: June 17, 2010, 11:20:18 am »

I have just written a long post on this in another forum. Go look here:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8257.0.html

It is my opinion that we need more cards that are not immediately OP, but are more situational and depend on the deck/opponent/board position.

5

Design Theory / Less powerful, more strategic cards!

« on: June 17, 2010, 11:07:25 am »

Topic is kind of misleading, but it's hard to express in few words.

What i am talking about is the tendency of people here to immediately assume a card sucks unless it's useful in a vaccuum. As Elements is expanded upon, you're gonna have a much more diverse card pool, and more room for sub optimal cards. I'm not talking about cards that always suck, but cards that, given a specific situation (specific enemy, specific board situation, specific deck) becomes very useful or enables you to do things differently. Cards that, in essence, are some times useless, but if you build and play for it, can make interesting decks or situations that aren't availible otherwise.

Some examples below. Bear in mind that these are not concrete cards, simply examples of how these types of cards can open up huge ammounts of gameplay options and strategies:

Symmetrical effects - Stuff that affect each player equally, but if you are ahead/behind, it affects you way more. Very situational, and you'll have to play strategically.

• Spell: "Kill pillars from the player with the most pillars, until both have the same ammount. When cast, depletes your quanta pool." This could be used in a low-pillar deck to compete with for instance, rainbow decks without supernova. It can also be a very powerful card if you are having a bad draw, or it can combo with the nymph that lets you sacrifice your own towers.
• Spell: "Equalize life totals." That means, if one player has 180 life, and the other has 20, then both end up with 100 life. It's a very powerful card in some situations, especially if you can predict your opponent so you use it when you are about to die. In other situations it can be nearly useless. If your opponent plays this, it's not the end of the world either, you can suddenly dump a lot of damage to kill them before they suspect it, for instance.
• Permanent: "Every time a creature deals damage, that creature's owner gets half of that damage in life." A very powerful card if played in the right deck, especially if you play in a metagame(metagame: The "environment" which includes what decks and cards are powerful) with lots of fast aggro decks, and you have a slight bit of creature control. Also rewards even attack values over odd.

Trading resources for others - This is, in my opinion, the one thing that will open up lots of new and creative decks and strategies, if executed properly. These cards will, in bulk (as a one shot spell) or over time (triggered once/more each turn like rustler) trade one resource for another. Resources being: Cards in hand, cards in deck, quanta, pillars, creatures, life, permanents.

• Permanent: "Destroy one of your own creatures: gain life equal to it's damage + health. Can be used multiple times per turn" Not only is this a great way to get rid of useless creatures like malignent cells and lobotomized creatures and free up space, but it can also pave the way for much more creature oriented control decks than what we see today.
• Permanent: "Lose n life, put a n/n creature into play and put a counter on this. n is the number of counters on this" Like boneyard and ffq, a creature generator. Unlike ffq which has all the vulnerability of a creature, and unlike boneyard which effectively just trades creatures for creatures, this can churn out increasingly powerful creatures at the cost of your own safety. Combos very well with the one above that lets you sacrifice creatures, and with feral bond. If you play against it, aggressive decks are very good: Don't let them keep their life for making creatures.
• Creature: "Discard a card: Deal n damage to a creature or player, where n is the quantum cost of that card" - lets you throw useless/redundant cards and wreak some havoc, also freeing up your hand for drawing spells.
• Spell: "Remove the top half of your deck from the game. Put a n/n creature into play where n is the number of cards removed" - Amazing in an aggro deck, but only in small numbers, as it becomes progressively weaker. Very susceptible to reverse time etc. Can cost low quanta and still not be playable in control, because it might remove essential cards.
• Spell: "Pay n life, where n is the number of cards originally in your deck. Restore your deck to it's full status, like at the start of the game." Face it: We really need more than one way to keep from decking out - forcing people to play way too many cards or to HAVE to play time to get access to Eternety is very restrictive in deckbuilding. Also, this will give some much needed redundancy - say you lost that one card that can help you win. Now you can at least hold on and try, instead of giving up instantly.

Those were some ideas of mine. I hope i got the point across. In this thread, i would like to discuss the usefulness and viability of different types of symmetrical effects and resource trading - and maybe other ideas that fill the same purpose. It is my belief that these kinds of cards will not be emphasized heavily enough with the democratic card addition system we are currently running, because for many people it sucks to have to lose something to get something in return - but that is an essential concept of strategy that i feel this game currently lacks. Feel free to put forth some specific card ideas, but not for validation but discussion around the general idea. Please keep specific card critisizm elsewhere.

6

General Discussion / Re: Deck building theory

« on: June 17, 2010, 10:01:30 am »

Xinef already adressed most of the points on why it sometimes can be better to run more than 30 cards. Here is another example of a deck which is better with more than 30 cards.
For a while I used this deck for AI5-Farming (don't use it anymore because win rate went down a little with the addition of Thorn Carapace):

14 Aether Tower
6 Shard of Gratitude
6 Phase Shield
6 Elite Phase Dragon
2 Elite Immortal
2 Electrocutor

36 cards

Now you might think "Why not play 30 cards and keep most of the ratios? You could play something like this:

12 Aether Tower
5 Shard of Gratitude
5 Phase Shield
5 Elite Phase Dragon
1 Elite Immortal
2 Electrocutor"

Well, that deck's win% was just much worse than the other's. The reason? Feral Bond and Dissipation Shield. With the 30 card version I just kept losing against those cards via deckout. The 36 card version not only had 6 more turns to break through, but it also dealt 15 more damage/turn in the endgame.

i think that Pantheon's theory is ALWAYS correct in a PVP enviroment.

I disagree. It's possibly correct right now because the best PVP decks are speed decks, and the theory is mostly right for those, as speed decks are usually very homogeneous.

On a sort of off-forum note, being a longtime MtG player myself, I'm pretty sure that, if MtG had a minimum deck size of 30, lots of people would play more than that. For example, you could never run a deck like this (http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=36066) with just 30. You'd constantly be in danger of decking out, you'd have a much smaller number of threats, you would't be able to run game-breaking 1-offs and you' just have a terrible endgame. Deck size just isn't an issue in MtG as 60 cards minimum is far above the number you'd go down to even as a control player.

Of course, the ratios have to be adjusted to the lower deck size - you can't just take a 36 card deck, remove 6 cards and call it a day. But yeah, this is one of my subtle points in the OP: If you have a deck without eternity, which VERY OFTEN has the chance to deck out, you might want to increase it slightly. However you need to check statistics, because you will, by the very nature of human psychology, feel that you lose to decking out a lot more than you ACTUALLY do. Also, you need to balance out the %chance to lose from decking out to the %chance to lose from bad/inconsistent draws.

Point is, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but they are MUCH fewer than most people think.

Also, in MtG there is a draft format, where you are allowed 40-card decks. Even in formats when almost EVERYONE plays cards that help deck out the opponent, everyone skilled still plays 40 cards. Why? Because it's better to have a consistent draw and win before the other player can get his stuff going, than to play a bad deck that is less susceptible to one single win condition.

7

General Discussion / Re: Deck building theory

« on: June 10, 2010, 01:15:45 pm »

"Pantheon, you made a decent post. Nothing to criticize here. Of course there are huge decks that are meant to deck out your opponent but they are not the majority."

Okay, that is one of the few reasons to make a big deck, but at this time there are no competitive decks that do this reliably and well, so it's really a moot point. I'm not talking about "fun decks", i'm talking about finely tuned decks, aiming for max win% and killing speed.

There are some decks that benefit from a larger number of cards for another reason.

For example my anti-FG rainbow aims at stalling until I almost deck out while drawing cards with hourglasses, then it starts growing it's offense with pharaohs.

If this deck was reduced to 30 cards (eg. I'd have to replace 6 SoGs and 6 sundials with 3 of each), in late game I'd only have 3 SoGs and I would only be able to stall with sundials 3 times. Thus, it would be harder to deal with poison, immortal creatures I cannot remove etc. in late game. Also, I am often able to play 6 hourglasses before a false god draws 6 deflags. If my deck was cut in half, by the time FG draws 6 deflags I'd have lost 3 hourglasses and 3 other cards (probably SoGs).

Also, some cards like Butterfly Effect are nice at 1/55 ratio and changing that to 1/30 ratio would be harmful, or I'd have to completely remove offensive permanent control. But that's already covered by your first point in OP.

The thing is that sometimes (though rarely) it's worth to sacrifice consistency for late game power. It's not useful in decks that try to win before reaching their bottom, but it is useful in some anti-FG decks. Especially if a deck is constructed carefully so that you can survive some clustering. (Eg. 6 SoGs at the bottom, because you still draw 6 sundials and eternity early, or 6 sundials at the bottom, because you draw 6 SoGs early).

My deck has a 53% winning ratio against False Gods with 55 cards, while variants with less cards had lower winning percentages, which proves that sacrificing consistency might improve winning rates in some cases.

A very simple explanation would be that a consistent deck that has only 5% bad draws and 95% good draws might be worse against False Gods than an inconsistent deck that has 40% bad draws and 60% awesome draws.

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1748.0.html
Rainbow deck with over 60% win rate, ie. better than yours, and it has 34 cards. I imagine it's pretty much the same kind of deck, but it's more consistent, and it's bound to win in around half (or less) of the time your deck takes. I can see that 55 cards can be FUN or good in a few ways, but the positives will almost always be overshadowed by the negatives.

Also, i'm not talking about taking a 55 card deck, and halving all the cards in the deck - you need card ratios adjusted to this deck size.

"Especially if a deck is constructed carefully so that you can survive some clustering. (Eg. 6 SoGs at the bottom, because you still draw 6 sundials and eternity early, or 6 sundials at the bottom, because you draw 6 SoGs early)." This isn't evidence or even an argument, it's a silly anecdote. Also, why build to survive clustering when you can just avoid it in the first place?

I know from your viewpoint it seems good, but having huge decks is worse than having a tight, well balanced and consistent small deck.

8

General Discussion / Re: Deck building theory

« on: June 08, 2010, 01:11:55 pm »

what can I say?
i agree with your point, a competitive and consistent deck should minimize "bad draws" as much as it can...

i condone 60 cards deck if they are for fun or are made for gimmick combos

Yeah true, but most gimmick combos can be done in 30 cards too, and go off much more often, resulting in more fun. Everyone knows drawing like crap isn't fun.

9

General Discussion / Deck building theory

« on: June 08, 2010, 12:40:46 pm »

Coming from 14 years of playing Magic The Gathering, i see a lot of bad tendencies among players. Especially having way over 30 cards. If you know the basics of probability theory, you will understand that a 60 card deck will have a LOT higher chance of getting bad draws, not getting what you need early on, and getting lots of something and nothing of something else.

There are only two reasons to have more than 30 cards:
- Ratio: This only applies to very heavily playtested and theorycrafted decks. If you need to have 16/32ths of your deck to be pillars to make it optimal, or need a very complex combo that would rob you of quantum if you reduced to 30 cards, it's ok to go slightly over 30.

- Not decking out: Most decks that draw out are decks with sundials/hourglasses, which already have access to Eternity, which will prevent you from decking out in most situations.

One last thing: Almost everyone seems to overplay the role of luck in this game. If you have more than 30 cards in your deck and don't draw what you need in time, it's not bad luck. It's bad deckbuilding. Random order of cards in your deck, does not mean they should be evenly distributed (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion) - and if you built your deck more consistently, you would have a much higher chance of getting what you needed.

As skill increases, the effect of luck on the outcome of a game approaches zero.

10

False Gods / Re: Discussion on making a better Anti-FG deck

« on: June 07, 2010, 09:05:20 pm »

I've been toying with semi-rainbow aggro decks that use only novas and immolations for quantum, by immolating ball lightnings. If i have enough quanta, the lightnings aren't dead draws because of momentum/chaos power/blessing - and i can use lava men and minor phoenixes from the excessive fire quantum.

The problem with this deck is that it's always a couple of turns short of winning a match, and it can't really be sped up much more. What if you could use a few discords and black holes to slow the gods down, instead of using that combo in a control deck?

11

Duo-Decks / Re: Turbo-speed false god farming

« on: June 07, 2010, 08:30:57 pm »

This is the most well thought out and described deck i've used so far, with quite a low entry cost (only need 6-10 upped cards, the rest is efficiency) - Kudos to the OP for writing out detailed but to-the-point descriptions. You also seem to know a lot about card game theory, something it seems a lot of elements players lack. Being a magic player for 14 years has tought me a lot about it too.

Yes RoL-Hope is best at electrum gained per hour, but I'm quite sure there are at least 2 variations of RoL-Hope that surpass your variation at that. Reason being you do quit a lot more games than is necessary with RoL-Hope, which you cite the /time part for, but from my own experience optimizing for a slightly greater amount of control would gain you the most electrum per hour. NOT as much as my deck is oriented towards that, BUT somewhere nearer.

In the light of my comment above regarding card game theory, can you please list the differences in cards, strategy and tactics in those 2 other variants you concider better? Why are they "better", and what are they "better" at?