Guest posts by RoKetha

37

Duo-Decks / Blessed Pegasus from Twin Universe

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

I prefer to play 6 Peg/6 Bless/1 archangel/1 morning glory/1 miracle when I play my old deck in PvP now, simply because the faster damage from TU is, in my opinion, offset by it being approx twice as slow to play (going off the incredibly unmathematical technique of two elements = half the pillars available).  I like Mirror Shield because it's INCREDIBLY cheap and can pose real problems for some decks that would really like to finish you off fast, but can rarely find room in a peg deck.

Think your logic is pretty flawed here... first, it's the same number of cards you need to draw (2 pegasi or 1 pegasus 1 TU) so it really can't be twice as a slow to play--you do only have a 76% chance of an aether tower in your first 7 cards but I don't think that's really twice as slow. And 2 pegasi = 12 damage while 1 pegasus 1 TU = 18 damage. 2 pegasi + 1 bless = 18 damage while 1 pegasus 1 bless 1 TU = 36 damage or 1 pegasus 2 TU = 40 damage. TU actually triple damage compared to the double damage of a second pegasus, or less than double with blessing.

If you could manage to work in momentum and a way to protect the pegasi, that would make it killer... but sadly I don't think there's a deck out there that can afford all the things it needs to protect your pegasi that long while including momentum and this deck's base cards. You'd end up with a deck so large you'd need hourglasses, and lots of defense... just starts getting ugly. Not to mention that you couldn't play the momentum card before TU due to associated bugs.

38

Duo-Decks / Blessed Pegasus from Twin Universe

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

Looks fun but it's so similar to the general fake god strategy of "hit hard and fast with creature damage" that all those anti-god decks with Sundials, Otyughs, Fallen Elves, Phase Shields, and Bone Walls aren't really going to have to adjust to counter it. Also, if they PU your creatures you're screwed.

39

Duo-Decks / Grav/Fire...Of course

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

With a top creature HP of 6 or 7 with momentum, I can safely say that not only are those fire bolts not optional, but you are still very likely to be paralyzed for a while when Otys appear. And Sundials will make sure that happens. Fire doesn't work without control at all.

I mean, you're basically running Graviton's deck without all his advantages...

40

General Discussion / Why can't I steal or destroy certain weapons?

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

Yeah, what's happening is that you likely already destroyed the lobotomizer, but you got desynched and on your opponent's end you never did that.

So when he uses it to lobotomize your creatures, the game magically pops up another on his end, but you can't do anything about it anymore.

It can get really nasty if desynch occurs with devour or buffs for example... this usually leads to both of you thinking you wiped or controlled the opponent's field of creatures and have a healthy field on your own end, and the game responds by respawning every creature that died to one of your desynched cards each and every time you kill it. You often notice that your opponent disconnects eventually... it's usually because on his/her end, they won the game.

41

Duo-Decks / Sabbers' Uber noob Mono-Fire deck ::Perfected:: Needs to be upped

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

When you get some more money, consider switching the Ash Eaters for the light creature Photon. It has no play cost, which means you save that one fire quantum. Either that, or remove the immolations and ash eaters entirely and add 1-2 pillars in place; they are likely actually slowing down the deck since you have plenty of pillars already and want to draw your power creatures sooner.

In my experience having a third deflagration is usually nice for AI level 3, as most of the decks have multiple shields and weapons.

42

Issue Archive / Minor graphical dejavu bug

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

I honestly have no idea how the Deja Vu ended up burrowed there either...

This glitch does happen when you get a Graboid with Deja Vu, but I've never seen it with another creature.
 

43

General Discussion / Can you deck out a god?

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

I think all the AIs, Rainbow included, completely ignore all other variables (like your remaining cards) when it comes to decking and stop the multi-draw at five cards. Which is really dumb, yes... doesn't take a genius to tell that you're well past all-in at that point.

44

General Discussion / Things that make Rainbow decks overpowered, solutions.

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

You forgot the part where they steal your shield, the part where you have 6 deflags tops for 3 phase shields and 6 sundials, the part where they get 2-3 cards per turn to your one, and the part where they heal a small amount every turn even if you do a pretty good job of controlling their creatures. They also get to completely control the pace of the game; creatures only attack when they're at an advantage for the most part, and when you get a creature advantage they have many ways to get around that, including Bone Wall which is almost certainly going to screw you up horribly, or their own rain of fire which WILL one-hit all your dragons.

I've tried both immolation and towers in a mono-fire deck and the game just looks like this: sundial, sundial, phase shield, phase shield, 0/11 oty, sundial, enchanted eagle's eye, bone wall, graveyard, empathic bond, FFQ, miracle, etc. The rainbow decks people play most are specifically designed to counter the creature blitz tactics that gods use, after all.

Rainbow also always just always ends up with a huge draw advantage over fire no matter what. It takes a lot of luck to pull off a win against it; your best friends are usually going to be momentum and immortality for attacking, not the fairly meaningless attack stat. Heck, gravity and aether dragons are way better than fire against rainbow and it doesn't take a lot of insight to see this.

Edit: Yeah, fire bolt does work, but it takes roughly ten turns of doing nothing to save enough quanta for even two bolts to actually kill them. Anything less gets Miracled away, and an eagle's eye by itself will knock out 70% of your health in that time... keep in mind you have no healing.

45

Issue Archive / Parallel Universe + Scarab (not the momentum bug)

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

Again, it's pretty obvious why this happens.

When a Scarab is played from your hand, it has 2/1 (or 3/1 upgraded) every time. At the end of your turn, it counts the total number of scarabs on the field and increases its current and max HP by (number of scarabs - 1); it can't just set it to (number of scarabs) because that would cancel any buff card you played on it.

Any Scarab that has already been on the field for at least one turn updates its HP in a different way. I think the most likely method for doing this is by keeping track of the scarabs at the end of every turn. At the end of the player turn, existing scarabs add (number of scarabs on the field this turn - number of scarabs on the field last turn) to their HP.

The "bug" occurs because PU'd and Deja Vu'd creatures count as freshly played cards; the game does not actually copy the full data for the card but rather its stats and certain attributes, and creates a totally new card with this partial data. This partial copying of the card is why PUed/Deja Vu'd mutants are rerandomized (some kind of isMutant attribute is being copied; likely the Improved Mutation ability itself creates a new card with isMutant and then all new cards check for isMutant and randomize if true), why Momentum replaces the default creature ability, and why the new Scarab is treated as if it's played from your hand.

46

Card Ideas and Art / Vampire Boost

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

The issue I'm seeing with it is that there's only really two possible scenarios with creatures that have 30 attack:

1) You're 1-2 turns from winning
2) They have a shield/sundial up that's completely nullifying the damage.

There's not many situations where you'd actually change the tide of the game with this card.

47

Rainbow Decks / Uzra's Anti-control.

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

Other than bad draws you only really have three weaknesses I think...

One is poison. I dunno how many people have caught on yet that poison always works no matter what permanents your opponent has, but I do see something like 1-2 Poison cards in some of the top 50 rainbows. That would actually be enough to kill you if the other deck had Eternity + enchant.

If you could score 1-2 shards of gratitude (good luck) that would counter the random poison decks. Pure poison isn't that common since it generally doesn't have enough creature control. So that's probably the biggest potential improvement I can think of that doesn't go out of synch with the current deck.

Second, I don't think you have any reliable counter to Chargers. You're right that they aren't that common since they're hard to work into a balanced deck, but still, if the opponent is able to counter the Plagues (Eternity again is not good for you) then you're left facing direct damage. You mentioned this already but you might have been thinking direct damage as in spells.

And finally, I don't think deck likes early Graveyards with Eclipse. With only four plagues I can see situations happening where you don't get sundials fast enough and you don't have enough pillars to play a shield.

48

Duo-Decks / Miracle fast mastery deck

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

You can use holy light instead of heal and change to mono light

The thing about that is that Rustlers actually give you double quanta, so you'd be slower to attack.