Guest posts by ggabriel

13

Deck Compilations / Please criticize my aether deck.

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:28 pm »

That means after turn 6 phase dragon is already doing more damage. After turn 6 the only way for immortals to catch up would be to play another Immortal, in which case balance starts to favor HEAVILY towards dragons because of card cost: the chance that you will draw lots of immortals in succession is small, and as quanta builds up you might as well play dragons instead.

I never made it past Calc II in college. What's the mathematical symbol for "gratuitous handwaving"?

With 6 creatures in a 30-card deck, the odds of drawing a second creature by the time you have 13 quanta built up are quite good. In the long run, sure, you're not going to draw enough immortals to keep up--but 1. in the long run, after turn 5ish at the latest you'll have to burn quanta to keep shields running, which is going to slow down dragons; and 2. there's not going to be all that much of a long run at all unless you either have a very slow start or are running against a deck that's quite stall-ish, where immortals more often than not are handy to have.

14

Life / Mono-life Aggro Deck

« on: December 15, 2009, 10:09:28 pm »

I've tried similar decks pre-upgrade and was not impressed; while you can get a lot of small creatures out fast, their un-upped damage output just isn't enough to kill most decks before they get their winning strategy into play. You're pretty vulnerable to creature control too, especially from repeatable sources; otyughs see all your frogs and cockatrices and yell "BUFFET TIME!" Ultimately I found that success hinged entirely on the dragons, and since every color has dragons I figured I'd be better off going for a color that has better abilities to contribute.

The upgrade for frogs is a very good one and might push it into competitive viability, but I don't have the firsthand experience to say for sure--most of the losses I racked up with mono-life before the upgrade pushed the enemy health low enough that I might have scored a kill with 5-damage frogs instead of 3, but those were against un-upgraded decks as well; similarly upgraded decks might have new answers for your new and improved frogs.

Bonus points for originality, to be sure--the life element doesn't get a lot of love, so it's always good to see someone eking some success out of it. I'm just not sure it's quite there yet in terms of the card available to it, though.