Round 6 - Main Topic

[ak65ala]

Oh, wow did I read this event card a bit off...

It says: 2 upgrades for every 1 shield taken...

whereas I thought it said: 1 upgrade for every 2 shields taken...

Big difference!  Um, yea! So we can put shields into each of our decks (our two decks, lolol) up to, I'd say 3, and gain 2/4/6 upgrades? Yea, that's worth it.  That means we can have Willng3 have 15 upgrades in his deck for the price of 3 semi-useful/dead cards.  This will make deck building a bit more interesting and fun.

[willng3]

Important announcement regarding the Event Card:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,33693.msg454884#msg454884

[The_Mormegil]

That was expected. I was thinking...

It's pretty likely that Aether is going to Pestal us, as they can modify Pestal to work well against our Monks deck too. Last round we won vs TorB because he wasn't expecting that deck to come back, but now that it has been exposed, it's going to be pretty easy for Higurashi to use a Pestal with 4 Steals and laugh at our Sanctuaries. So I was thinking about a kind of Pestal counter, maybe involving those Discords we have.
The other possibility is, of course, that they run a BoneBolt or DimShield stall against us. BoneBolt in particular is possible as the Fractal Dragon version kills our Firestall too (and Higurashi is smart enough to know we can save it, if we really want to). However, Frogtal is the other deck they are expecting, so I think tweaked Pestal is kind of a safer bet.

On the other hand we have Entropy. Entropy's decks so far are these:

1) Various kinds of denial grabbows.
2) Mono entropy, or (*sigh*) mono entropy with RTs.
3) Pandebonium
4) Light stall
5) Darkness duo
6) Monoentropy Stall
7) Fractal Dragons
8) Wings deck
9) Strange buffbow
10) DBH

I think their Pandeboniums are dead, so I guess we'll either see a denial grabbow (very likely), a monoentropy with RTs again or the Fractal Dragons deck. I guess the rest are less likely to be used against us this time.

If we manage to find a reliable counter to these we're golden. Unfortunately, I think we can't with the current Vault, but maybe (just maybe) this deck is kind of close to a good choice:

by The Mormegil

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4tc 4tc 4tc 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bt 5c9 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5up 5up 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7bu 7bu 7tb 7td 7td 7td 8pt

It has good damage potential, is on the high side of quanta, has some healing and some PC to get rid of pesky shields, doesn't rely on buffs and has a hidden MitoVampire or even MitoDragon combo...

...yeah, it's not that good. :/ I wish we had some more creatures. *goes in a corner to cry*

EDIT: actually, Will could test that with +3 upped pendulums against Aether, too, although I expect it to die horribly against BoneBolt.

[willng3]

Aether's sending a Devtal against us.  Looking at their match-ups during the next round:  No other team seems like a logical choice to send it against because they either could possibly field a Nova rush or have enough Sancs to deter it.  They also have a very good idea based on the decks we used last round and the cards we salvaged what's remaining in our Vault.  I believe at the present moment that we currently have 7 cards that are up in the air from previous Rounds that nobody is sure of what they are.  In saying that, that basically leaves us with two options:  1)  We use Monks and pray that it works 2)  We try and rush them. 

Counters to Monks include anything from more Steals (they only used 2 last Round, but I don't see why they wouldn't have any more hiding somewhere) to bringing more Dims and making a fatter deck.  Also, Lobo (only used 1 last Round) and Lightnings are a big threat.  We managed to defeat Torb's Devtal last Round while he had 2 Steals, so there's a ray of hope here somewhere.

Now, rushing.  I don't think we have the creature base to allow for a rush anymore unfortunately :|  Discord would be awesome here, but we don't have anything to go with it!  But we could attempt to use a deck with Frogs, Lightnings, and Fractals and pray that somehow it manages to work.  They might anticipate this given our salvages last round, but with enough quanta overload and fear of getting blasted in the face by Lightnings, this might slow down their deck enough to allow us to win.  I'll need to test this idea.

As for Entropy...bleh.  It seems logical for them to either use a Sanc stall or something laced with Pandemoniums.  As stupid as it might seem, that Firestall might be our only hope here.

[The_Mormegil]

Actually... if we DON'T use the Firestall against Entropy, we CAN field a full-fledged Discord anti-Pestal counterdeck that should (maybe) work. We don't have anything to go with Discord, per se, but take a look at this:

by The Mormegil

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4vl 4vl 4vl 4vl 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5bs 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c9 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pj

6 Frogs are quite a punch however you put it (EDIT: I just got a 5 turn win vs AI3 ), and Adrenalined Discords should take care of any Fractal they want to use... Also, they are not going to have first or even second turn Devourers out, so we should be able to get that Discord soon enough for it to matter. Additionally, if they pack a ton of Steals to kill our Monks, we have Animates to protect our strategy from misfiring.


Also, Entropy's Pandebonium lost THREE times, including twice in the same round, and they just had a bad round (well, 4-4). I definitely wouldn't rule out a Sanc stall, though.

[willng3]

I had considered a similar build, but what does that leave us to use against Entropy?

[The_Mormegil]

Uhm... No Adrenastave Firestall, no Monks, no Frogtal, no creatures, no offense... Dim Shield + Heals decker? :/

... hey, that might actually be an idea. Mix Lightnings and maybe Thorn in there. Something like this:

by The Mormegil

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5bt 5c2 5c2 5c2 5c3 5c5 5c5 5c5 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 8pu

37 cards to avoid 30 cards + 6 RTs.

Lightnings kill most of Entropy's offense, Dims protect from creatures and Discord alike, even a Grabbow should have some troubles to get around so much CC and 7 shields... and that's without upgrades. We could even go ahead and use some Shields in there. Random Dragon is probably best left out, but keep 37 cards or more.
I don't know, do Dim deckers even work? They seem rather unreliable.

[LifeLockable]

I am loving the looks of that deck haha, I think it would work if the person playing would delay the dims till the last moment and chain for doom because if they rush the deck will probably be 30 cards so possibly stall with heals and lightening untill they have 18 cards left? perhaps add a fractal so you can do a random dragon fractal because it seems a bit heavy late game

[ak65ala]

I love seeing these ideas fly around.  Here is another deck idea.  It would most likely die to pestal, but some kind of an option.  It is a mean stall.  Shields can be changed to lightnings to make some more CC and less stalling capability.  Just an idea. (Willng3's hope to PU dragons might (?) happen?)

by ak65ala

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5bt 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c7 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61r 61r 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pu

[The_Mormegil]

I love seeing these ideas fly around.  Here is another deck idea.  It would most likely die to pestal, but some kind of an option.  It is a mean stall.  Shields can be changed to lightnings to make some more CC and less stalling capability.  Just an idea. (Willng3's hope to PU dragons might (?) happen?)

by The Mormegil

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5bt 5c5 5c5 5c5 5c7 5c7 5c7 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 61r 61r 61r 61r 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 622 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pu

I think PUing the staves is generally the best option. And of course, Fractal Dragons is always nice this War.

That's a mean stall alright, but it seems about EVERY deck we have now relies on those 3 key Flying Weapons. :/ Which is a bit bad.

Perhaps a Light duo without the Adrenastaves combo? With hugeic quanta and upped quanta sources, Frogs and Crusaders for offense and Sanctuaries to have a chance at Pestal?

[willng3]

At this point I'm a bit skeptical about using anything besides a Discord deck against Aether.  I would honestly rather hit them with something unexpected that counters them well than using a deck which they have the opportunity to counter based on making simple changes to decks from the previous Round.  I don't know if I'm going to have the time to do this, but I would like to test and see how each of these decks fares against Devtal before going into the Round.

[The_Mormegil]

Tested Discord deck vs Pestal. Forged this version:

by The Mormegil

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4tc 4tc 4vl 4vl 4vl 4vl 5bs 5bs 5c7 5c7 5c7 5c9 5de 5de 5de 5de 5de 7ac 7ac 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7ae 7bu 7bu 7n2 7n2 7n2 8pj

Shields are actually very useful to reduce damage and healing from vamps. Its 11 quanta sources are scarce vs pestal, but the highest cost card in the whole deck is Adrenaline (and a single Mitosis), most cards cost 3, 2 or 1 quanta. You empty your hand far faster than they can get a Fractal out, and if you manage to play an Adrenalined Discord on third turn (quite possible, although with 3 Animates and 3 Adrenalines it's rather unreliable) you've basically won. Plus, the extra ups work well to get out fast Frogs and keep the pressure. I tested against this deck:

by The Mormegil

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5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 5ut 5ut 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 7ta 7ta 7td 81q 81q 81q 8pt

The biggest problems are the Dim Shields. If they DON'T run Pestal, this deck is pretty weak against them as it's destroyed by Dim Shields and BoneBolt... like the rest of our decks. I just hope they don't go with a MonoAether vs us (which would be the best idea, from our perspective). Some Lightnings would probably hurt a lot too...

I went 10 wins 5 losses, if you count as losses the times the AI failed on the last turns. So it's at least 50-50 but not much more than that. If they go with a full fledged Pestal, no Dims and no Lightnings, it's probably much more than that.