Round 5 Support Team Discussion

[Belligerence]

There's less than a day left for this rounds duels, so I figured I would use a bit of my free time to start making this list. Edit it as you see fit, or, if you can't edit it, let me know and I'll edit it.

Our cards used and usable:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
1/1 decks included.

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5bu 5c7 61t 622 624 8pn

Usable Cards:

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5bt 5bv 5c0 5c1 5c2 5c3 5c4 5c6 5c8 5c9 8pn

Number of supporters: 7
Number of Relics: 3

Elements are listed by Vault size:

 

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Used Cards:
5/5 decks included.

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4vj 52o 52r 590 595 5f4 5f5 5f6 5f9 5fb 5fc 5fe 5ia 5l9 5lm 5og 5v1 61q 61t 622 8po

Usable Cards:

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5f1 5f2 5f3 5f8 5fa 8po

Number of defenders: 2
Number of Relics: 5

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
5/5 decks included.

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4vj 55q 590 5f6 5fc 5od 5of 5og 5oi 5om 5on 5oo 5up 5v1 61q 61r 61t 8pr

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5oe 5oh 5oj 5ok 5op 8pr

Number of defenders: 4
Number of Relics: 3

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
5/5 decks included.

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4vf 4vj 52j 52r 52t 55q 590 5f6 5fc 5l9 5la 5lk 5um 5up 5uq 5ut 61q 61r 61t 622 8pu

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61p 61s 61v 620 621 623 624 625 8pu

??? is Psion.

Number of defenders: 2
Number of Relics: 3

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
4/4 decks included.

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4vj 590 5f6 5la 5le 5lf 5ll 5oi 61q 61r 61t 622 624 8pq

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5l9 5lb 5lc 5ld 5lg 5lj 5lk 5lm 8pq

Number of defenders: 5
Number of Relics: 4

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
3/3 decks included.

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4vp 52h 52j 52o 52r 52t 61q 61t 8pk

Usable Cards:

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52i 52k 52l 52m 52n 52p 52s 52u 52v 8pk

Number of defenders: 4
Number of Relics: 5

Elements we don't attack:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
1/3 decks included.

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4tc 4vj 5oi 5rk 5rl 5ru 5ul 5up 5v1 61q 8pt

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5um 5un 5uo 5uq 5us 5ut 5uu 5uv 5v0 5v2 8pt

Number of supporters: 5 - 7
Number of Relics: 3

 

Spoiler for Hidden:

Used Cards:
4/5 decks included.

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4vh 4vj 590 5f6 5ri 5rk 5rl 5rm 5ru 5up 5v1 61t 622 8ps

Usable Cards:

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5rh 5rj 5rn 5rp 5rq 5rr 5rt 8ps

Number of supporters: 3 - 4
Number of Relics: 5

Elements that have fallen:       

Card lists are complete for the following elements: 

If there are any errors, please edit this post or let me know. I'm not infallible, there are quite probably at least a few errors.

I'll update the lists tonight, if I have free time. If not, then soon™.

Edit: Number of defenders for elements we're attacking are now posted.

Second Edit: This post should now be complete with all relevant information for the elements we're attacking, as well as sorted by Vault size.

[Helston]

Hmm, didn't realise there was less than a day left already, better get some thoughts going.

[willng3]

Well the obvious thing to do here is leave 2 on defense, but...really I'm not sure about how we should go about initiating attacks.  I will say that I think attacking Time is probably not a wise idea, however simply because Reverse Time and Dim Shields (and not to mention Ghostmare) wreck a lot of our decks.

[Helston]

I'm not going to be around for the end of the round, so when I'll be putting up actions after this. If someone gets a chance and sees something better to do, again feel free to override me.

Current standings are:

= 184 cards
= 181 cards
= 147 cards
= 136 cards
= 78 cards
= 51 cards
= 47 cards

We have the fewest number of relics, tied with , , and . As such we have second priority in terms of who we can attack behind darkness who have a slightly smaller Vault than us.

I'm going to go with a spattering of the top teams again, although leave out Time. I will include Aether, despite the obvious Dim Shield weakness, because I don't think they'll use anything that we can't otherwise handle. Teams seem to be defending a lot more than I would have expected, and thus 2 defenders from is probably needed for us.

We'll be attacking , , , and .


Less than three defenders means a Firestall is almost completely off the cards, but we can probably expect Golems with either PC or CC.

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5up 5up 5up 5uu 5uu 5v1 5v1 5v1 8pt

Steals take care of any supposed weakness we have, Liquid Shadows double as both healing if they don't have CC or CC for their low HP creatures and Nightmares finish it off with some good ol' denial. Haven't tested this in the slightest, and it took a lot longer than I thought to build something that might be reasonable against fire.

Gotta head off to work for the evening, I'll be thinking about what else we can do in the meantime. This type of deckbuilding takes a lot of time for me, and unfortunately what I churn out almost never works according to plan, but I'll try.

[Belligerence]

  All have an unusually large number of defenders (4-5). Attacking these elements means they'll have the ability to field, quite literally, nearly any and all decks within the support team deckbuilding rules.

 

Spoiler for Air:

With OE being rare, Air's most dangerous CC is removed. I see either some type of DimShield deck (PUgons?), an Air/Fire duo (with Unstable Gas/Rage Potions/Deflags?), or some type of stall using one of Life's most hated cards; Wings. With 4 defenders, it's hard to accurately predict their deck.

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

Devtosis seems as good a choice as any, given that they do, in fact, use one of the decks above. Devourers drain quanta, even through DimShield, so you'd get the lock eventually. Devourers would (hopefully) drain Fire quanta before RoF (if included) got used. And Dragons scoff at Wings.

Other than Devtosis, a Nature's Wrath variant might do the trick, but I think that Nature's Wrath might be better served against Aether.

 

Spoiler for Hidden:

Ahh, Aether, home of the DimShield. Need I say that I expect to see DimShields? I expect to see DimShields. PUgons are a possibility, but which dragon they'd PU is beyond me. They could also pull out a random Fractal + <random low cost/decent attack/ability creature>. With 2 defenders, they're far more limited than  .

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5c0 5c0 5c0 5c0 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 8po

The Nature's Wrath variant Kai used in our Round 1 support defense battle. It should offer enough control to get past DimShields/PUgons, and if we face up against a stall of some sort, we'll have enough damage + Deflags to pull off a win, hopefully.

Also, we could try some kind of PUgon with Lightning instead of DimShield/Silence, but I expect that this would be wrecked by any deck with more than 2 DimShields.

 

Spoiler for Hidden:

My first thought is the same Nymph's Tears deck we used before. Then I remembered how perfectly Death mindgated that deck, so my second initial thought is either PUgons, or some type of Mitosis creature spam. IMO, it comes down to which is more likely; Skull Shield would mean PUgons, since high hp creatures die less often, while Bone Wall would mean some type of mindless Mitosis spam. I... really don't know what to throw against them.

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5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c3 5c3 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5gi 5gi 8po

When in doubt, post a Firestall. Or something. Yeah. Also:

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52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52o 52r 52r 52r 52r 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5c8 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 8pk

Should they choose to use some type of Bone Wall deck, they can't use kitties/mass CC without risking raising our Bone Wall count. If it comes down to who out-poisons whom, we have heals.

In addition to those decks above, consider PUgons or Mito-cockatrices (o_O)

 

Spoiler for Hidden:

I'll defer to Helston's suggestion, seeing as I don't see anything that's promising to be more effective.

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5up 5up 5up 5uu 5uu 5v1 5v1 5v1 8pt

 

Spoiler for Hidden:

For whatever reason, they have 5 defenders. Yes, 5. They should be able to field pretty much any deck they want to. Top guesses include PUgons, a Firestall, or possibly some kind of Pegasus/Blessing/Dive deck. This makes predicting them... hard, to say the least. If we don't use Firestall against Death, then maybe we could use it here.

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5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c3 5c3 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f0 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5gi 5gi 8po

If we do use a Firestall against another element, possibly a PUgons, or if we use that against someone else, maybe will's Unstable Gas deck?

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c8 5c8 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 8pr

If at all possible, I'd like to avoid using FFQ/Hope this round. We used it once in round 4, and twice in round 5, at this point it's no longer surprising, and may even be expected and countered.

With Mitosis and Emerald Dragons, we could use a Rustler/Emerald Dragon/Mitosis spam deck. Among other decks we couldn't use last round. Food for thought.

Just my thoughts.

[Helston]

I'd be a bit cautious about having those two extra Emerald Shields in the Devtosis. While it might be a hard counter to UG, we should be able to get a lockdown of sorts before they can bring out too many, so in the interests of reducing the luck required and increasing the speed of the deck we're probably better off going with the 32-card variant. Those two steals should be enough to take care of UG problems, anyway.

Vs Aether, I'm doubtful of how useful the Rage Pots would be. PUgons can easily be done with a 6HP dragon, and fractal solves the problem of individual CC entirely. I'm not too sure what else to do here because the fire duo is an otherwise great idea.

[Belligerence]

What about something like this:

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 8po

Rage Potions are for minor CC, or, since Fractal and larger hp dragons make them useless, for use on your dragons if the enemy doesn't have CC. Lots of Deflags, so you don't have to wait around for another one (hopefully...)

[Helston]

- This is more what I was looking for. I liked the thought of bringing phoenixes and deflags and this build feels about right to me:

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5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fc 5fc 5fc 8po

- ralouf's quite the thinker, so sending in a poison deck when we've got all our other options available to us sounds great as it should be completely unexpected. That deck looks alright as is.

- I'm happy to go along with a firestall. Being able to use our own dragons instead of Fire's is handy, too (although a Fahrenheit would really be best). Fire Shield generally bests Thorn Carapace, especially with other heavy CC to back it up, and I've thrown an Emerald Shield in there just in case.

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5bt 5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c4 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5f0 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f5 5f5 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5gi 8po

I'm sending a message off to Kai (really wish he could see the secret section).

, - I've got nothing more to add, they're looking good.

[drolly]

I'm currently doing some testing of the suggested version of Nature's Wrath against Aether's last support decks although this might not exactly be the right way of measurement. They seem to prefer PUgons (where it's always better for them to PU an Emerald Dragon) and big stalls.

PUIcegon: Counter, Heals make the difference

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5i9 5i9 5ia 5ia 5id 5id 5id 5id 61q 61q 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pp

Psiontal: No chance, too less Deflags against the Dims. We could hard-counter it by adding 2 Emeralds but this is exactly the reason why we don't expect them to use Psions (well, this is a nice dilemma for both teams, of course).

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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 622 622 622 625 625 625 625 625 625 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pu

PUblackgons: Not a counter. Lightnings are able to stall enough and once there is a LS dragon, it's worth more than our Heals.

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5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5up 5up 5us 5uu 5uu 61q 61q 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pt

Earth stall + Fractal Stone Dragon: Not a counter. Too much CC, Stone Skin OP and once a dragon gets fractalled, we lose.

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58o 58o 58r 58r 58s 58s 594 594 594 594 594 594 595 595 595 595 595 595 5aa 5aa 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pm

PUazuregons: Shockwave + Lightning = Too much CC. Wins against us even with Sky Blitz.

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5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5on 5on 5on 5on 5op 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pr

PUicegons: Closer than I thought (2-1) but shouldn't be too much of a problem. Mind Flayer + Lightning can take out Phoenixes but deflagged Ice Shields and Heals will let us win it.

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5i9 5i9 5ia 5ia 5id 5id 5id 5id 5if 5if 5if 61q 61q 61r 61r 61r 61r 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pp

Mindgate Firestall: Because we're not Team Fire, I don't expect them to play this. I thought that it could hard-counter us, though, if played correctly (Bolts on Dragons, Ragepots for the rest, mindgate pillars, Heals and Phoenixes, then wait for us to deck out), but even then we seem to win by outrushing.

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5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 623 623 623 623 623 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8po

Weird Entropy/Light/Aether trio: Can't be tested vs AI (either deflags pillars/pends and can't play Dissipation Shield correctly). Dunno if hard counter or not a counter. They CC all of our creatures, we deflag their shields. Would work better against us if Quints are exchanged for PUs and the Light part is left out.

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4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vg 4vg 4vg 50u 50u 5lg 5lg 5mq 5mq 621 621 621 621 621 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pj

Well, I've got no idea what to play. Because of Dims, we need a Fire duo (well, would it be better to use Momentum?) and this is definitely the best build we can play. By the way, I'll be available until short before the deadline, so I'm flexible with scheduling.

[willng3]

The only other idea I have at the moment would be to try the Entropy/Life stall again, this time making it fatter to make deck out less of an option.  6 Antimatter should be mandatory, 4 Diss Shields give higher draw chance.  But the chance of them bringing a fatter deck again or our Pandemonium rewinding creatures is a pressing concern.

Otherwise I really don't have any great suggestions.  If we had Dims I'd suggest a massive Aether/Life stall with Fractal Dragons as an alternate win condition, but we don't so meh.

[drolly]

Thanks for the quick answer, will. Well, my quickly built Life/Gravity duo isn't any better (especially because Phoenixes are sturdier than Chargers) and I don't know if an Entropy stall could do better - Aether itself has too many counters to CC in my opinion and will's concerns against it are justified, too.

So, if nobody objects during the next hour, I'll challenge Team Aether with Helston's Nature's Wrath build although the results were somewhat unsatisfying for me.