Round 3 decks

[Dragoon]

Probably an amateur comment, but if they bring BBs, wouldn't we want to use phoenixes instead?

No, it's a good question Hob.  Yeah BBs can be annoying.  But just like the antimatters this deck was designed to beat, you just immolate that creature if you have another one in your hand.  Otherwise, wait it out.  Rewinds will actually be worse since we only have a limited number of fire quantum.

The problem with Phoenixes is that they're too slow.  We found that out last round testing it against both water and air decks.  And those elements are slower than earth is.

This is where PvP gets crazy because you have these back and forth mind games.  "Will they play this? or this?  What if they use that card?"  The thing is, we (nor they) can't make a deck that could counter every single possible thing they might do.  So we have to guess what is the most likely route they'll take and try to make a deck against that.  Could we be totally wrong?  Yup.  But so can they.  Let's hope we're better guessers. 

anyway, if I were earth I'd probably use a rush deck with some explosions or an earth/grav mix with momentum/sapph. chargers.

Seeing as we used lots of deckout decks in the last few rounds, a rush deck this round probably has the best chances =) just have to check how fast it really is.

Candle, I put up an Earth intel thread with all their decks plus the decks they could salvage from.  The total at the top aren't quite done yet.  They only used 1 Momentum in the 2 rounds and they could not salvage any.  They could have 5 more possibly.  As for chargers, they couldn't salvage any, but they could've picked them up in the beginning.  However, in both rounds only one person played duo with Gravity.  It makes me think they only packed enough Gravity Pillars for 1 deck.  And if they only have enough for 1 deck, than they probably don't have chargers.  Hmmm . . . that's all guesswork though.

BTW, I've talked to Dema today and gave him some very slight hints that we're gonna play RoL/Hope.

We gotta be careful with these mind games.  If we hint too much then they'll start getting suspicious.  Bluffing, double bluffing . . . they make my head hurt.   

[Dragoon]

Ok, just to get some feedback here.  There's only 4 Entropy members playing this round (they have just a little over 60 Entropy cards by my estimate).  This means I could easily just deck them out.  But, them knowing we've been doing a lot of that, I imagine Zeru will play a Rainbow/Supernova deck with cheap creatures + Deflags/Steals or a deck with Vampires/Lycans + Steal.

Probably, they'll give the person fighting Gravity Purple Dragons and Lightnings/Quints.

Against Aether, they'll send a Vampire/Lycan deck with Steals.

Against Air, they'll send the deck Zeru is not using so either another Entropy/Darkness deck or a Nova/Rainbow deck, but probably the Vamp/Lycan deck since Zeru can use Supernovas.

Does this sound likely?

So based on the cards they have and can salvage I'd guess he's gonna play a deck like one of these two (and the last one bigger if he has the cards):

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4ve 4ve 4ve 4vh 4vh 4vi 4vi 4vl 52j 52q 5bu 5bu 5f6 5f6 5i6 5i6 5og 5on 5up 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u7

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vh 4vh 4vh 4vh 4vh 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vi 4vl 4vl 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5up 5up 5up 7t4 7ta 7td 7td 7td 7td

[Dragoon]

implosion/xdude, since you guys will be testing decks heavily today, here are my thoughts for everyone's decks.  Hope you guys can find decks for everyone.

Hobnob- Add another Miracle if we can afford it.  Otherwise add another Light Pillar.  Right now he has an illegal deck (15 light cards + 16 Air cards).

Helios-  Playing against Darkness with few pillars (27 Pillars and about 6 Devourers after round 2 by my estimates).  They have lots of cheap Darkness creatures still (Parasites and Minor Vampires) plus a few Dragons.  There's a good chance we'll probably just see Nightfall'd Devourers and Minor Vampires plus some Steals, DL, and Dusk Mantle.  But they could still make a Fractal Devourer deck against us.  If they do, I'm not sure there's much we can do.  I'd guess that our Earth-Light deck would have the best chance since we could get rid of all their Aether Pillars and slow down their ability to play Fractals.  So here are my deck ideas (I haven't tested them though.  They could be awful!)

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5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5lh 5lh 5lh 5lh 5lh 5li 5li 5li 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oi 5oi 5oi 5oi 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5onThis against a simple Darkness deck.  Focus Shockwaves on Devourers if he's low on pillars.  Otherwise on Vampires (especially if they go with Adrenaline'd vamps).  I used extra Wind Pillars + Air Mark to overcome Devourers knack of just sucking away the 1 kind of quantum we need.  I think to make this deck we'd need to salvage Wind Pillars and Shockwaves.

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58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58s 58s 58s 58s 593 593 593 593 593 593 594 594 594 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5lg 5lg 5lh 5li 5li 5li 5liI think this deck would have the best chance against Fractal'd Devourers.  EQ their Aether Pillars.  Hopefully we'll have more Titanium Shields then they have Steals.  And then 2 Reflective Shields to switch to near the end before they try to DL us.  You'd have to keep track of a lot though with this deck.  Keep track of maximum damage if they stole your shield.  Keep track of Darkness quantum and how much damage they could do with the DLs in their hand + if they drew another one.

This deck would do pretty good against a simple darkness deck as well I'd think.  If you want more power, feel free to take out 3 Light Pillars and add 2 Dragons and another MS.  But with Parasites, DL, and Dusk Mantle, I'm not sure you could kill them with this deck.

candle- I think that immolation deck could work.  Even if they went completely Aggro, they'd still need to splash Fire just in case of Phase Shields.  That means they can't use Graboids which means they can't play their fastest deck.  Someone should test that deck though against an Earth deck with lots of EQs.  I think we may need to change a Blessing or two to Light Pillars.  But I don't know without some more testing.

xdude/implosion- I still think one of you should go with that Water-Light deck (but maybe a ~40 card version with 6 Ice Lances and 4 Ice Shields since they have Steals).  I think implo should use it since xdude has more options available to him.  What if xdude went with an upped Peggy deck w/ Momentum?  Do you think it'd be fast enough to rush death?  Hmm . . . you'd have to use Wind Pillars because the mark would need to be Gravity.  But then you could use Fog Shields and Shockwaves as well maybe.

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55q 55q 55q 55q 55q 55q 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5l8 5li 5li 5li 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5on 5on 5on 5on 7jr 7jr 7jr 7jr 7jr 7jrMaybe something like this?  You definitely need to test it!  I just threw it together in like half a minute.  But maybe it'd be fast enough to rush Death.  You could also go with Blessings instead of Shockwaves if you want more speed.

dragoon- I have no clue what to use for me.  i've tried every possible thing i could think but the combination of discord, PC/CC, and creature spam is too much for me to handle.  if you guys could find something that'd be awesome because I'm drawing a blank.  Maybe if the decks above work, you can spend more time making my deck.     Btw, I tested a Hope deck with implo yesterday.  But don't give me that deck!  We can't afford to lose that deck.  We need it against Earth in the future.

[Dragoon]

*Sigh* Good try candle.  I'm sure you did your best.  And we had one of the best counters to their deck!     Oh well, don't be too hard on yourself xdude.  Though to be frank, when I saw candle's deck after getting back today, I thought "What the —!  Why!?!  WHY!?!"  I don't know if you remember, but that deck was slow when Hob played it last round.  I don't think it had much chance at all against Earth with all their EQs.  What changed your mind from going with a speed deck?

Anyways, live and learn.  And there are some things we can learn about Earth I think.

I think that immolation deck could work.  Even if they went completely Aggro, they'd still need to splash Fire just in case of Phase Shields.  That means they can't use Graboids which means they can't play their fastest deck.

I was right that they wouldn't use Graboids.  But I guessed wrong about the duo element.  I hadn't considered Devourers but it makes sense.  They were afraid of Phase Shields (deck-out) and Fractal/Hope.  But instead of using Deflags for Phase Shields and RoF for Fractal'd Photons, they tried to keep us from ever playing either with EQs and Devourers.  Without Aether Pillars, both kinds of decks fail.  And with Devourers, even using an Aether mark wouldn't help.  So, even our 1 Hope deck would fail against this deck.  And we still don't know if they have Rain of Fire. 

We've got some work ahead of us for sure.

[xdude]

I was just thinking, next time we could try massive cc.

[Helios]

killfer8 and I had begun our War match; we finished 1 game succesfully despite an initial desync hence turning the score to 1-0 in our favour.

However, it seems that many more desyncs occurred during Round 2, and killfer8 seems to have disappeared without any notice now.

In any event, if he does not return, it seems fair to say that this match is ours.

[Dragoon]

Okay, I'm back!  Let's do a recap of round 3:

candle: Unfortunate lost, but we didn't lose anything too important.  I'd guess that they'll salvage more MS and FWs.

dragoon: Alas, I was right.  He went with the darkness-entropy deck instead of the supernova deck, but we still didn't have an answer to his creature spam (though he didn't have as much CC as I had guessed).  His deck was just too fast, especially against phoenixes.  This is probably the worst loss we could've had in the round because now we're out some of our immolations.  This also means that probably our best deck against earth is now history.     Hope we win some from Fire in the future.

helios: Guessed right again here.  Fortunately we had an answer to his fractals.  Good job helios/xdude!

implosion: I like when people give us freebies. 

xdude: Good thing we gave implosion the water-light deck.    I was wrong to think they didn't have an answer to that deck.  Luck was on our side though.  Nice win xdude.

helios: More freebies!

PS: I was reading my earlier post and realized I may have come across a bit aggressive.  My apologies to xdude if you took it like that.  I don't mean to belittle you or undermine your leadership.  As the General of Light, you can do whatever you want.    I was just trying to express my surprise when I saw the deck.  Hope you understand. 

PSS: Maybe all these smiley faces will make-up for it.