Round 4 Discussion

[Helston]

Chatroom:  http://piratepad.net/OldLadySoap

Deckbuilding:
Duel phase has started

Duels:
Round has ended

Spoiler for Standing Vault:

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,38873.0.html

Spoiler for Discards:

We need to discard 24 cards from the following:

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c7 55t 55t 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 55s 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pl

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5bs 5bs 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 7ac 7ac 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 7bu 8pu

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5c6 5c6 5c6 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5up 7bu 7bu 8pt

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c5 5c5 61t 61t 61t 624 624 624 624 624 7ac 7bu 8pu

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c5 5l8 5l8 5mq 5mq 5ll 5ll 5ll 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 7k5 7k5 8pq

The following cards have been assassinated.

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55t 5c7 5f4 5up 5up 622 8pj

We also have a 3 card penalty to pay.

Spoiler for Event Card:

Notes:
- Both Event Cards are in effect this round; there is no need to choose between the two.  Generals (and Generals only) should create a "Round 4 Event Card decision" thread in their secret section and post how many upgrades each player is using.
- Example of Feint: if your team is fielding six players and two Relics, you'd normally use a total of 6+3+6*2=21 upgrades.  You may distribute these among your six players as you see fit (ie 21 ups for Gen, 0 for everyone else, 3 for all players except Lieutenant who gets 6, etc).  Alternatively you may distribute 9 upgrades among your six players to earn a Relic at the end of this battle phase.
- You may redistribute upgrades even if you aren't using the reduced amount to earn a Relic.
- The reduction in upgrades to earn a Relic can only be used once (ie you can't reduce by 4x fielded players to earn two Relics, etc).

Spoiler for Match-ups:

12

Gen. willng3

vs

Aether2

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5c9 5c9 5c9 5c9 5f6 5f6 5f6 8po

15

Lt. killsdazombies

vs

Gen. nilsieboy

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5c7 5c7 622 622 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 80a 80a 80a 80a 80i 80e 80e 8pu

Spoiler for Support Team Matches:

Kai attacks xn0ize (one player set to defend)
Belligerence attacks coinich (three players set to defend)
UnderneathTheLens attacks Bloom (one player set to defend)
drolly attacks ak65ala (one player set to defend)
killsdazombies attacks Daccoo (three players set to defend)

[Helston]

I've started work on the S/D/C/P/A for this round, check out the Vault tab to see where it's at. Long story short we're down to Life/Aether and a few Fire cards.

It might have been an option previously, but suicides are out of the question now. We want to send the best two decks we possibly can, and we want to win with both of them. It's a 30 card discard, so anything from a losing deck is gone for good. This means that we will have seven cards total which will not be used this round, and if we lose both matches then we're out of War. We will definitely be using our Lieutenant, and we definitely won't be gaining the extra relic from Feint. The only discussion point on the Event Card is the exact split of upgrades.

Our options for decks are pretty much limited to Frogtal, PUgon, mono-life and a Life/Fire duo for the Deflags. Unfortunately we're down to 3 fractals due to assassinations, so the Frogtal might have to mix in some Adrenaline or alternative damage sources. Even keeping PUgon looks like it will be difficult at this stage thanks to last round's loss, and if we go with some aether cards, we might be best to drop our cards completely and rely on Silences for getting past Dim shields.

The good news is that there's no guarantee that nilsie will be using his standard quota of 7 upgrades. The bad news is that because we'll have the highest average upgrades per deck, aether and gravity might be more include to include extra upgrades against us. I'll look into those teams later in the deckbuilding phase, seeing as we also have Support Battles to look after.

[killsdazombies]

I would say a frogtal with adrens will be best, prolly for general. Really this is a tough spot, I don't know what deck 2 would be, but as you suggested above, Life/fire is our only real deck.

[willng3]

Kay apparently Piratepad's being an ass, but this is what I'm thinking for Frogtal right now (extra upgrades not included).

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 61t 61u 61u 622 622 622 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 8pu

[Helston]

Hmm, are the Dims that useful? Barring a very mummy heavy hand from them and a slow hand from us, Adrenalines might serve us better. It might also help us very slightly vs a fractal deck if they bring that. Alternatively, an extra lightning. This also means we might be able to dump extra upgrades into Life Pendulums and just smash out the damage. It wouldn't surprise me to see six Upped Otyughs.

[willng3]

Idk.  It's nearly 5AM and I literally have 0 energy to think about this any longer.  I'll be online at least 2 hours before the deadline.

[Helston]

I'll work on it then, see you before the deadline.

Update 1: After doing a bit of work and checking out what we've seen from Gravity, I can confidently say that there's little point to us bringing Dims. Gravy has shown very, very few decks vulnerable to shields at all, and they've probably just discarded some Graviton Mercenaries in favour of keeping just about anything else, including aether cards in one case. Their mummies hardly do enough damage compared to a Frogtal to cause any concerns at all. What's more, the cheaper lightnings free up a lot of extra aether quanta for fractals and Lobos.

Update 2: For those behind on the subject, here's the plans so far as copy/pasted from Piratepad chat:

Spoiler for chat dump:

10:55 willu: Aether's Light duo looks like it'd counter every single deck we used last round with the exception of AdrenaTitans, which was destroyed by the discard.
10:58 willu: Hmm. And we don't seem to have any Fire Bolts left. Well that's not good.
10:59 Belligerence: The RoL/Hope or the Sanctuary one?
10:59 willu: Sanctuary.
11:01 Belligerence: Well... that doesn't look good
11:04 willu: Our only hope for defeating that deck is to use a fatter deck, so it looks like it'd be a better idea to give the Lt. like...all of the upgrades.
11:06 willu: Hmm...Gravity's Death duo is looking bad too.
11:08 Belligerence: Looks like Frogtal would at least have a chance, no? As long as you held a frog in your hand the whole time
11:08 willu: My biggest worry with Frogtal is that we only have 3 Fractals.
11:09 Belligerence: Ah, didn't think of that
11:10 willu: Then again, we can use Lightnings. That at least takes care of some of the Otys.
11:10 willu: Dims would hopefully be enough to hold off on any damage that comes our way.
11:13 willu: Hmm...Lobos too. Okay this isn't bad.
11:14 Belligerence: Oh, didn't even think of Lobos
11:22 Belligerence: I don't see much to do against the Aether/Light duo... hmm
16:38 Helston: Afternoon will.
16:38 willu: Hi.
16:40 Helston: I guess this is what happens when I make most of the deckbuilding decisions - I seem to have a good knack of getting counterdecked >.<
16:40 Helston: Although I'm claiming the Devtosis from Round 3 as a win, and FFQ vs Aether as our only option vs anything with Fractal.
16:42 willu: Well. We didn't have much of a card pool as attackers either way.
16:42 willu: Really not seeing much of a reliable deck choice versus Aether.
16:43 willu: At this point I think a Fire duo with Deflags and maybe Rage Potions with Dragons would be our best bet.
16:43 Helston: From the conversation you had earlier sounds like it'll be the good ol' play-every-card-in-the-vault 37 card deckouter.
16:45 willu: I wouldn't be surprised is Aether fielded 38 cards just to make sure deckout wins couldn't happen. They know there's no way we can field more than 38 cards.
16:45 willu: *37
16:46 Helston: Which in turn makes our best bet a 30 card rush of some sort.
16:46 willu: Most likely.
16:47 willu: If we use Mitosis Dragons then we have OTK capabilities versus Dims.
16:48 Helston: Mitosis Dragons with a Fire mark for some deflags?
16:48 willu: Yeah that's what I was considering.
16:52 willu: Hmm. They haven't used Devtal since Round 1 either.
16:57 Helston: That'd be an autoloss.
16:57 willu: Yup.
17:09 Helston: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/decks/cache/zG5bsz55btz35c9z25f68po.jpg look alright?
17:10 willu: Yep.
17:13 Helston: Hmm, if we prepare for Oty/BW, is there anything they might still have that could counter us?
17:15 willu: About the only thing they could use is some type of duo with Dims. Without Fractals and PUs I don't see how they'd pull that off though.
17:17 willu: Hmm...actually it looks like they might still have a few Fractals left over if they weren't converted last round.
17:17 Helston: Yeah, they could still pull off a deck like their win vs Aether in R2.
17:18 Helston: Although it's hard to tell if they still have the Fractals, because you'd imagine they would've played it in their Earth deck.
17:18 willu: Exactly.
17:18 Helston: *Deck vs Earth
17:22 Helston: Oh, now that's interesting.
17:22 Helston: Their match vs Earth is the one that wasn't played.
17:24 Helston: Although they might've actually won that one, a bit hard to tell.
17:38 Helston: Definitely go with the Frogtal.
17:38 Helston: They might suspect we've still got explosions kicking around, but we've shown no evidence of having Lobos.
17:39 willu: And last round we didn't show any lightnings either so Otys are even more likely.
17:39 Helston: And we've only shown three total.
17:40 Helston: What's more, we've played silences every round and there's no reason to think we mightn't play them again.
17:41 Helston: Before we get to building this deck though, we need to work out our last few discards, and by god is it a hard choice
17:43 Helston: Your deck and drolly's deck - we need to discard a combined total of 12 Dragons/PUs/Dims/Silences
17:45 Helston: Actually, probably best to work it all out together. Build the deck and figure out our 7 spare cards.

Testing results:

First of all, I've edited will's Frogtal a little. Gravity has shown very little vulnerability to Dims, and although their Oty/BW deck has no way around it, it's far too slow to be a problem. Here's my spin on the frogtal:

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5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 61q 61u 61u 622 622 622 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 8pu

Spoiler for round 1, My edit:

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52r 52r 52r 52r 52t 52t 52t 52t 52t 52t 55n 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 74b 74b 74b 74b 74b 74b 8pk

4-1. I edited their deck a bit to try to shut us down a little more. Killing a single frog with a Gravity Pull is a hard problem, so I dropped them for more Otyughs, and changed the upgrades away from 2 BWs, 2 Otys to 6 Otys. That loss was a bad start from me, but all of the wins were by very large margins. Unfortunately the AI doesn't exactly know how to play their deck, but in this case it wouldn't have made much of a difference; I had far too much CC.

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55k 55k 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 744 745 745 745 745 745 745 75m 8pu

0-2. Very, very hard counter. Not surprising at all. This version is -3 Graviton Mercs, +3 Chargers compared to the last time they played this.

Next up I did something different. I tried testing from their point of view, only using cards they've seen to get an idea what they might be thinking.

Spoiler for "gravity's testing":

Fractal Chargers vs Frogtal

Spoiler for Frogtal:

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5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 622 622 622 622 624 624 624 624 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 8pu

8-6 (compilation of a few results). This is what I can see them expecting from a Frogtal. We played three lightnings in round 1, and we've shown a tendency to play silences, so I figured I might as well include both of them. Didn't use Dims because it was an obvious exclusion (although I am actually wondering how well they'd go with Lobos now, but I still don't have high hopes). I tried testing with the Frogtal, dropping the Lightnings for more pendulums and testing from their point of view. Humans on both sides would probably favour gravity a little bit more, but the AI struggles with both decks. It doesn't understand that it playing its only Charger early on is dangerous if lightnings are around, or that Silence can be used to stop Dim Shields being chained.

Oty/BW vs Frogtal
4-1 playing as Life, 1-4 playing as Gravity, that may have been without Lightnings. With Lightnings I later went 3-3. Mixed results makes this one hard to judge.

Not so confident that they'll play Oty/BW anymore, but by the same token we didn't play our Frogtal last round so they mightn't consider it at all.

[willng3]

Okay I can't seem to locate anyone to talk to about where we're at with getting things settled in the Vault.  What's going on?

[Helston]

Vault-wise we need to input decks and finish the last few discards, and convert away a whole lot of excess material so we've got enough pends/pillars. I've joined every chat room we've got, so pick one and we can get discussin'.

[willng3]

Since it looks like we'll have 7 extra cards left over in our vault, I say we make those Dims and Silences for added variety to our card pool if we make it past this round.  4 Dims and 3 Silences should be fine.

From what I can see we had 1 Dim go unused last round.  Salvage 6 Dragons and 1 Dim from my deck last round and 2 Dims and 3 Silences from the other Aether duo used last round.  Salvage 2 Adrenaline from AdrenaTitans, 4 Mitosis from Devtosis.  Salvage as many Pends/Pillars as you can to make the conversion for the Fire duo possible.

[Helston]

Sure thing. I've done a bit of testing with Dim shields and they're not that useful at all. We're still well outstalled by fractal chargers, and fractalled charges still don't care for a lone Lobo. If we take up my mod, the next question is where to put our upgrades.

[willng3]

Looks like we've got 13 upgrades to throw around.  Since I'm still not confident about my duel at all, I say we give my deck 3 Explosions and then the remaining 10 to Frogtal.  Frogs need to be upgrade, then it would be smartest to upgrade the Lobos and then 2 of the Lightnings to make Otys/Chargers easier to bring down.