Thanks for the help guys. Maybe I'll try to reorient my deck to another color.
For what it's worth I was able to purchase 6 copies of nearly all of the basic aether cards.
My aether strategy revolved around the shield, and getting phase dragons / immortals out. But I also kept fractals around to multiply shocks and photons (free card from the light deck), to deal massive damage in a short period of time. I also kept lighting bolts around to deal with annoying creatures.
I experimented with other cards like mind gate, but it started to take me away from the focus of the original deck. I needed quantum pillars to make use of the cards I copied, and it started to inject too much randomness. I also found that parallel universe could be useful, but my deck became more effective as it became more lean. (Less risk of having not enough quanta, or not enough cards to use the quanta on.)
I actually beat some pretty experienced guys with 500+ score. Sometimes.
In spite of all that... the 30 card aether deck recommended in the tutorial beat the level 3 AI more consistently. I found this interesting. But also really frustrating.
I find the level 4 AI nearly impossible (at least with aether). If they manage to put up a good shield (e.g.: the one that poisons your creatures, the one that effectively turns quana into hitpoints, the one that filters all damage less than X, or all creatures with more than X hitpoints), I'm toast.
