Round 6 Discussion

[willng3]

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:

None.

Spoiler for Salvaging:

We can salvage 6 cards from the following:

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52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52g 52h 52h 52t 52t 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 61t 61t 713 713 713 713 713 713 71a 71a 80d 80d 80d 8pu

Spoiler for Event Card:

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 6 Event Card decision" thread in their secret section and post how many Relics (0+) the team is hiding.  If a General doesn't do this, it's assumed no Relics are being hidden.
- Generals (and Generals only) of teams that have not been eliminated should reply to the public "Desperate Times" thread with their team's decision.  If a General doesn't do this, it's assumed the team has chosen to beckon Chaos Lord.
- Vault damage takes the form of a random discard, similar to Assassin damage.  Vault healing adds back a card that was in your starting vault and no longer is.  Damage and healing are not netted before randomizing.

Spoiler for Match-ups:

12

Gen. willng3

vs

5

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Spoiler for Support Team Matches:

Kai attacks (X players set to defend)
Belligerence attacks (X players set to defend)
UnderneathTheLens attacks (X players set to defend)
drolly attacks (X players set to defend)
Helston attacks (X players set to defend)

[willng3]

I'm not having a genius strategy formation against like I did against ...not yet at least.  As far as I'm concerned it's yet another case of them sending either Ghostmare or Ghostal against us and we need to decide on which of the two is more likely.  We might be able to develop a Frogtal which counters both simultaneously, but that's going to require testing to pull off.

Discards are about as difficult as last round.

Salvages...2 Mummies and 2 Arsenics should be a given.  Aside from them it would have to be 2 Spiders or 2 Dim Shields.  I don't really see a great use for 6 Dims, but you never know.

Support team match-ups are very interesting.  We're up to 3 Relics now, but we have 0 teams attacking us, meaning we can't lose anything this Round.  I'm going to assume that everyone's assuming that either we'd be eliminated this round anyways or that it'd be easier to take the Relics from other teams...something tells me the first is more likely.  But there's a separate topic for this so I won't go much further for now.

[Helston]

As far as I can tell we have to take a gamble vs - Dims/silences for a Ghostal or Lightnings/X (silences?) for a Ghostmare/grabbow. Dim would be good on the off chance the Chaos Lord takes one. Speaking of which I'd say it'd be best to hide no relics, and reject the Chaos Lord. Of we had a larger vault it's probably be a better idea to beckon hi
, but losing a Frog or Fractal at this stage would really hurt.

[Belligerence]

Long train of thought ahead, may or may not end up being directly useful for planning for this round...

Time won 4/5 of their duels last round. They lost 30/30 cards from the following Ghostmare, as a result of their loss.

Spoiler for Hidden:

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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5t2 5t2 5t2 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5s4 5up 5up 5up 5up 5v1 5v1 5v1 7q0 7q0 7ri 7qk 7tb 7tb 8pt

Of the remaining 4 decks that survived last round, there are 2 Ghostals, 1 Ghostmare, and 1 Novabow.

They also get to salvage 6 cards from the following:

Spoiler for Hidden:

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5c7 5c7 5c7 5on 5rk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uu 5uu 5uu 5v2 61q 7t8 7ta 7tb 7tc 7td 7tf 7tf 7tf 8pn

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5la 5la 5li 5lk 5lk 5lk 5lk 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61q 61q 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 8pu

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52g 52g 52q 52q 542 542 5i5 5i5 5i5 5i5 5i5 5i7 5i7 5ia 5ia 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 718 718 718 718 718 718 71b 71b 8pk

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5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5mq 5mq 5mq 5mq 5mq 5lf 5lf 5lf 5ll 5ll 5ll 5ll 55s 55s 55s 55s 7ju 7k5 7k5 7n2 8pl

None of which replace either a lost GotP or Nightmare. The Aether salvage, however, gives them up to 4 more Fractals.

Assuming they have 7 GotP left (the amount we know for *certain* after their discard last round), it's probably a safe guess that they'll field 1 Ghostmare, and 2 Ghostals, rather than 1 Ghostmare and 3 Ghostals. I don't see a second Ghostmare happening, unless they have some Nightmares hidden.

In addition, Time is facing 4 other opponents this round:        .

Without thinking too far into it, I'd expect the Ghostmare to be thrown at us, rather than the Ghostal. Time knows we have DimShields, and they know we can salvage more from our win last round. DimShields beat Ghostal, but aren't as effective against Ghostmare.

We also have a chance of seeing some kind of Novabow, but I feel that Ghostmare is more likely. Especially since Aether has used a total of 8 DimShields in the past 2 rounds, 6 of which were lost in a loss, meaning they look vulnerable to Ghostal. Air has both DimShields AND Wings, so they might get the Ghostmare however...

As to Discarding/Salvaging/etc

Discards: .

Salvages: I'd say at least 1 DimShield, in case something happens. It's a shame they didn't pack a Fractal or two, as well.

Event cards: I say hide 0 Relics, and will has already decided not to beckon the Chaos Lord.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. It seems to me that Ghostmare is more likely, but I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about it...

[Helston]

I'm pretty busy from now until the deadline (although I will play my support match if I get a reply from team Air - haven't heard anything so far though so I'll probably need a sub). I have to agree with Belligerence in that a Ghostmare is more likely and say we go for Lightnings/Silences. I'll probably fix up the Vault according to my guessed as to what would be best, but I highly recommend someone with a bit of time check out what aether cards work best vs Ghostmare and Ghostal (although swing as the AI can't play either of those decks to the quality we'd need it at, nor our Frogtal, that wouldn't be an easy task).

In addition to being generally busy, I also won't really be around for the 12 hours before the deadline seeing as it's the opposite time of the day o when it usually is, and I'll be doing work at uni when it passes.

[willng3]

Yeah I'm back home now so the rest of today should be a testing day.  I'm going to start by testing a Frogtal with Silences and Lightnings just to see if its enough to thwart the two decks simultaneously.  AI stupidity is going to make this much harder than it needs to be though.

[willng3]

Okay I'm somewhat sold on a deck right now.

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

About the only match-up that I'm unsure of right now is Ghostal, for the obvious reason that the AI can't play it worth a darn and therefore I can't really see how it'll work.  However, if Time only uses 2 creatures and 1 Fractal in that deck then I'm fairly certain we'll be fine simply because it'll be hard as heck to firstly get the quanta to spam creatures early on and secondly get the cards needed to spam the creatures in the early game which is about the only time they'd have a chance to get the upper hand here.  Even with only 2 Dims they should be drawn to where they'll be able to hold off the Ghost spam.  Furthermore, Silences can be used to deny anti-deckout using Eternity by preventing them from playing the creature needed to prevent deckout, thus giving them nothing to return to their deck.  This would need to happen when Fractal is at the very bottom of their deck though, so I'm finding this tactic unlikely to come in handy.  However, the more I look at this the more I find it incredibly risky to throw Ghostal at a deck that could potentially throw a whole flock of Dims and Silences at them, making the whole stall-breaker combo nearly useless.  Then again I could also see them anticipating us predicting this and still using Ghostal.  Bleh, the prediction cycle sucks.

Against Ghostmare my results are very positive, with 4-1 in official testing and several other wins in practice testing.  Previously I was running a version with 1 extra Dim and found the results to be about 50/50; how removing a single card caused this much of a change is beyond me.  The strategy here is to try and keep your hand at 7 cards so that Nightmare's effect is significantly weakened.  Lightning Ghosts as needed, play Dims only when the enemy is severely limited on .  Losses will generally stem from not drawing a Fractal soon enough as it becomes near impossible to overcome the opponent's damage.  If they have a spare set of Nightmare in their vault (which I don't think is likely) then we might run into more problems.

Not really set on the upgrades at the moment.  Upgraded Pends allows for slightly earlier Fractals to be played occasionally while upgrading Silences makes them far easier to chain with Fractal.

[Helston]

Unfortunately we still only have the 2 relics for this round, the third relic doesn't kick in until next round. EDIT: We do have three relics, thanks Kev; I've fixed up the deck accordingly. The deck I've gone for is will's above, downgrading one life pendulum, and I've chosen 2 mummies, 2 arsenics and 2 dim shields for the salvage. We've got enough death cards (4 mummies, 4 bone walls, 2 arsenics) to be able to make a deck if we want and a couple of extra spiders won't really change that. A couple of extra Dims, on the other hand, could be the difference between Chaos Lord causing us a slight inconvenience, and Chaos Lord decimating our Dim Shield stocks.

On the other hand, if we lose frogs from Chaos Lord, we're pretty much toast as far as our offense goes, so there still is an argument for salvaging the spiders. Also, spiders are significantly better than mummies once upgraded and are perfect for adrenaline if unupgraded, so we might want to salvage 2 of them instead of mummies anyway.

Spoiler for General's Salvage/Discard:

Cards Available	#	Salvaged /Discarded
Bone Pillar	7
Bone Dragon	2
Mummy	2	2
Death Pendulum	7
Flesh Spider	6
Arsenic	2	2
Dimensional Shield	5	2

   
General

by

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

   
         
      
We also need to get in our last three support matches if at all possible, again I can't help with that.

This is the last vault edit I'll be able to make this round, if there's anything else that needs to be changed, it shouldn't be too hard. "Deck Compliance" for changing will's deck and "S/D/C/P/A" for changes to our salvage. If you do edit the deck, make sure it has 9 upgrades, regardless of a "too many upgrades" the Vault may or may not spit out.

[kev]

Unfortunately we still only have the 2 relics for this round, the third relic doesn't kick in until next round.

I was asked to clarify your Relic situation for R6.  You do indeed have 3 Relics.  As shown in the Standings thread, your Support team won 2 Relics and lost 1 a full round ago, which brings your Relic total to 3.  So far this Support Team battle phase you've gained 1 and lost 0, so if the phase ends with no change you'll have 4 Relics while building Round 7 decks.  Event Cards or another Salvager win would obviously change this.

Hope this helps.  Feel free to ask if you have any additional questions.