Round 1 - Main Topic

[ak65ala]

EDIT: also, we need to start the decks topic ASAP. I wouldn't like inactivity penalties on round 1...

I spotted Terroking viewing the final battle between ak and myself, so it's likely that they're analyzing both of our play styles to think of a counter.  Since ak and I both used an Earth stall, that might be a risk to play.

My earth stall sucked.  Really bad.  I was running out of elements to use and thought it might work.  Silly will and using the one deck I did not want to see 3 times in a row.  Those duels were also with me coping with a massive upped card deficit, so I tailored my decks knowing this fact.  I'm glad if they look through those and get the wrong idea.  Will could have out rushed me all 9 duels, I am glad he choose other options, giving me a hint of a chance.

@ The Mormegil: One less mitosis sounds good.  I threw them in to get it a bit heavier on damage and they work nicely once you have a BB frog.  Only way to quickly kill that sucker is RT. 

@ Willng3: The upgrades can totally be changed, and we can even drop one of the shields too. They won't help against a rush drastically.  They are so we can guarantee their only way to kill us is by deckout if they go with a fire stall.   I like splitting pillars, but I did not see a drastic improvement (since we only have 3 upgrades to work with)

[TheCrazyMango]

for my matchup, if im gonna use poison, i want to use scorps. im thinking mebbe replace the cocks with scorps, and an arse with a jade.

[willng3]

Okay, I've been testing against random Fire decks and came to the following conclusions:

1)  Against Immo EQ Golems this deck is awesome.  Died once due to an insane first hand while I received one Pillar and was quanta starved almost the entire game, but all the others were won with 50%+ HP remaining.

2)  Against a CC Grabbow this deck is a bit iffy.  If the opponent gets an insane first hand then things can spell trouble, especially when you get a 1 Pillar draw at the beginning.  However most of my losses came from facing a lone Fog Shield; the damage output has the potential to put it into the 70%+ winrate range.

3)  Against a Firesancstall we have almost no chance of winning.  The assumptions that together with the Shields and the resilience of BB are fine and good until you consider a)  They have Fahrenheit b)  They have Reflective Shield.  Honestly, if it weren't for these two factors it would win almost every time.

I'm not really sure what to do about this at the moment.

[pikachufan2164]

In the match-up against Darkness:

Devtal is pretty much a clear winner for them, even after adding more quanta to our deck to fight against it.

What I've been experimenting with (with little success because Devtal is so dominating):

by pikachufan2164

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52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 71a 71a 7ak 8pk

[The_Mormegil]

@Will: how much worse would it perform splashing some EQs in the BB deck? Firestall sufferes from EQs...

@Pika: Our novabow should win vs devtal more often than not, right? Either we expect devtal and play novagrabby, or we expect them to expect novagrabby and play poison. I like the second, as Novagrabby is the obvious choice vs Darkness.

However, there is another possibility. Entropy duo splashing some Novas. Maxwells work well vs Vampires and Gargoyles and Dragons too. Drain Life can't kill upped Maxwells unless they have more than 20 quanta. Nova kind of answer the devtal problem. Scorpions and Adrenamaxwells support with good damage and fast poison. Also, Discord is a pain for everybody, and if it's stolen we have Novas.

[willng3]

I've been testing this deck against FSS:

by willng3

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593 593 593 593 595 595 595 595 595 595 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5bu 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 7ac 7ac 7ac 8pm

It works.  Unless you can't draw an EQ early or you can't draw BBs, you should be able to win.  I'd advise taking out the Fire Pends first though; ironically it's the healing that's the biggest problem.
Still testing...less than 6 hours to go.

EDIT:  Crushing EQ Golems.

EDIT:  Against Novagrabby it's basically the same deal.  All comes down to the starting hands.

[The_Mormegil]

I'm testing this deck vs pestal at the moment. Going 4-0 for now, but the AI is stupid. Notes: on a normal hand the lockdown comes too late. I don't know how it would go if the opponent decided to fractal vampires directly though. And most importantly, I don't know if a version with Duck and Steals would be worse. Steal doesn't worry me too much, Discord is useless after a while in any case, but Duck could be an issue.

by The Mormegil

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 4vl 5bs 5bs 5bs 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 6tt 6tt 6tt 8pj

by The Mormegil

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622 622 622 622 622 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 7ta 7ta 5ut 5ut 7td 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 8pu

EDIT: A little sample of reverse testing showed that Adrenalined Maxwells are just too much to handle for Devtal without shields, even if it's me playing devtal vs the AI, both fractalling devs or vamps. I'm going to use a version with some Dusks now.

Oh, take everything with a grain of salt, as I'm not running 200+ games as our General is probably doing... but even a small sample is still something to consider, IMO.

EDIT II: Dusks are a killer, they cut the damage and the scrambling down by a good deal, and the effectiveness of the deck is in danger. :/ It's still pretty effective, if the Dusk doesn't come in first hand and the deck draws some damage, it's too fast to keep up with. Always adrenaline your Maxwells ASAP!

EDIT III: All in all, it doesn't seem a bad option. However, I think a poison stall is still a better option, as I can't really see them playing a devtal. If we fear devtal, we should play either this or a novagrabby.

[pikachufan2164]

Last minute deckbuilding stuff:

http://pastie.org/private/bqmynxpmwhadvunhl1i3g

Included in chatlog: Death duo -- which cards to upgrade?

[Newbiecake]

Ahh fair enough. Just a question though: why upgrade the Pillars and not EQ or something?

Oracles and I have already set up time periods of when we can be online for the duel; now we just have to cross each other in chat at one of those times.

[willng3]

Ahh fair enough. Just a question though: why upgrade the Pillars and not EQ or something?

Pillar/Pend split in case of EQ; the less you need to make a decision when to play those cards against it, the better.  Also helps gather a bit faster which will be important sometimes.  EQ could have been just as useful as an upgrade, but I honestly didn't even think about it until it was too late.

Oracles and I have already set up time periods of when we can be online for the duel; now we just have to cross each other in chat at one of those times.

That's good to hear.  If you could post any information concerning your duel here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32341.0.html), that will help increase your post count the rest of us be more aware.

[Newbiecake]

He's online right now; maybe we can even do it right now~