The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: PHARAOH
wins: 18 losses: 8 rank: >500 Rating: -117 age: 2



This one's fraught with loads of opportunities for the AI to misplay, from fractaling the wrong creatures, to timing dims wrong, to using pharaoh/hourglass/eternity in the wrong order, and so on.  Hopefully it provided some entertainment.  I got Fate Egg today, so that should be a really easy one to do something unique with, and I've already got a pretty good idea what I'll do with it.

Also, from this point on, I own every upped card other than nymphs/marks, and all except a few of the unupped shards, so unless my decks use a lot of pillars/pends, they'll be fully upped from now on, unless I deliberately choose not to for some reason (for more points elsewhere, for nymphs, novas, toadfish, etc)

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: FATE EGG
wins: 4 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -127 age: 1



3/4 thumbs up, so at least that part of my plan succeeded.  Of course, the deck sucks, and is heavily luck-dependent besides.  With a good draw it can potentially be really nasty; imagine turn 2 SoR egg into a pair of dragons and twinning it next turn... but then, you might get photon :p

Spun Nova today.  I know exactly what deck I'm going to post, and it won't be popular, and it's not exactly inventive, either.  (hint: he shoots lasers out of his chest...)

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: NOVA
wins: 15 losses: 7 rank: >500 Rating: -121 age: 2



This deck doesn't have a lot of counters (assuming the AI plays right, which is a *huge* assumption!) but there are a few, notably things like shard of sacrifice, bone wall, sundial, reflective shields, and, if the AI doesn't wait for SoW (which we all know it won't), then rewind and a few other CC spells capable of dealing with 20/20 monstrosities.  With several modifications, I've used a deck something like this in league, though with unupped novas and no shards of focus, though I might change that last part.  It does quite well there, and I've won with it and lost to it several times.  In arena, not so much, although it's definitely not the optimal build here, partly due to having to use supernovas, and also because I was just silly with this build :p  I did think it would do a little better than it did, though, but I'm sure the AI snafued with it a lot.  The good news is, if you beat this deck, you probably got some really kickass spins   (another reason I built it the way I did)

Spun Hammer today.  What I'll do with that, I haven't decided.  Flying gavels has been done to death, and another good possibility is cremation rush with earth mark for golems/gavels, but that's been done a lot as well.  I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that can make use of ten gavels, but I'll figure some silly deck out.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: HAMMER
wins: 20 losses: 8 rank: >500 Rating: -114 age: 3



So I was sitting there trying to figure out what to do with hammer, when I realized that I've never seen a monoearth hammer deck before; it's always monogravity or cremation rush or monoother.  So here we go...

Today's card is black hole.  I've used that card a lot, though it's never been my oracle card before.  (according to the search function)  I've done fire/mark BH rush, air/mark BH rush, earth/grav denial, discord/BH (twice), fractal SoF, oraclebow denial (twice) and grav/dark denial.  So now my mission is to find something new to do with it... hmm...

edit: Tested my SoSebow against my arena deck, and I think I have just won asshole of the year...

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: BLACK HOLE
wins: 11 losses: 6 rank: >500 Rating: -142 age: 2



This was an idea I've never seen done before in the arena, but it got very few thumbs up (I think 1 or 2?) due to the extreme annoyance factor; being tickled to death by gravity nymphs sucks like a vacuum.  Assuming a half decent draw, it will win almost every time if it can lock you down, but if even one creature gets through, it will probably lose.  It probably destroyed decks like SPlat, as they can't function without gravity quanta, and with a bit of luck shutting down entropy quanta could probably stomp speedbows most of the time.  It likely lost to decks like immorush and rol/hope or anything with 0-cost creatures.  It might've done fairly well against poison dial type decks, since this deck puts out damage very slowly and the SoSas likely won't ever be worth playing, plus the holes shut down dial draw use pretty effectively.  Given this deck's absolute dependence on locking you down fast and hard, if the player played first, this deck was at a serious disadvantage, so coinflips probably determined a huge number of the wins/losses.  It was at 5-0 the first day, so I was optimistic it might become a success, but it was not to be.

On reflection, some gravity pulls for the SoFs might've been a good choice, but the AI tends to use those as CC unless it's taking a lot of damage/is very low on hp; were a human playing this deck, they'd have helped.  I don't know if they'd have done much for the AI.

Today's card is stone pillar, which gives me quite a bit of freedom in deckbuilding.  My first thought was water mark and tridents :p  I don't think I'll do that, though, but it'll be something comparably unusual.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: STONE PILLAR
wins: 25 losses: 10 rank: >500 Rating: -127 age: 5



So I did end up using some tridents :p  My first thought was warden/SoP, then I figured why not make it a 60 card stall... so I added squids and purify, and by that point poseidon was a natural fit.  This deck got a lot more thumbs up than anything I've done recently, which means it was a success, as that's what I'm going for

Today's card is sanctuary.  I skipped a red nymph deck in there (yay nymphs from oracle!) since with 4 of them now, I can make a red nymph deck whenever I want.  (I did that once with voodoo dolls)  If I'd spun a nymph I didn't have many of, I'd have built a deck around it no matter what.  My first instinct was to go with a SoG/sanc stall.  Maybe I can do something like leaf dragon/mitosis/jade dragon + healing?  That'll mean another fat deck, but whatever

[Holokausti]

Not very surprisingly AI isn't very good with Mitosis. 

Spoiler for Hidden:

Was a very close match in the end, I only won because there were no Miracles in your deck. 

Spoiler for Hidden:

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: SANCTUARY
wins: 1 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -144 age: 0



Well, that was a failure   I'd forgotten that leaf dragon is top creature priority for AI targeting, as Holokausti has reminded me :p  I think that's my first deck to lose at age 0, because I don't remember being in this case where I can't post today's oracle card, as today's card is still sanctuary!  It did get 100% thumbs ups, though!

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: FIREFLY
wins: 11 losses: 8 rank: 814 Rating: -149 age: 2



I didn't think this deck was any more or less creative than most of the rest I've done recently, but the community clearly disagreed; it got 8/11 thumbs ups!  (which is how it survived so long even with a crap W/L ratio :p)  Also, wow at >814 active people in plat... it's gained a lot of people in the last couple months.  The basic idea was draw-spam and play all kinds of cheap dudes and buff them with blitz/shards, hoping to overwhelm the opponent.  Of course, anything sosa-based crushed this deck, but it probably put up a decent fight against most others, win or lose.

I got Silence today.  According to this thread, I got that once before and did a rather interesting SoV-based duo with dark/aether, and it actually did very well.  I have a new idea for this one; it's something I'd thought up for CL, but haven't gotten around to building.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: SILENCE
wins: 2 losses: 0 rank: 206 Rating: 18 age: 0



Poison dial with silence; not much to say about it.  Ordinarily I'd have left it up until the deck either proved itself or dropped out of platinum, but I spun golden nymph (hell yes!) so I'm making a deck based on that, since it's an opportunity I likely won't get for a long time.  No thumbs up on this deck :p

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: GOLDEN NYMPH
wins: 6 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -119 age: 1



They look so pretty... the deck bombed, though :p  3 thumbs up out of 6 wins, which is actually more than I expected to get, given that most people who get golden nymph do something sort of like this, though maybe with rewinds instead of SoG/Mitosis.  At least I get to make use of the graboid I spun today!   However, making a unique deck with graboid is... difficult.  Using the search function, I haven't actually used that as an oracle card before, but I've made a few decks with graboid, either speedbows or earth rush with a bit of time support.  Obviously neither of those is going to count as a unique deck, so I'll probably have to do some thinking.  I might be able to at least flip things around and make it a mostly time deck with earth mark, rather than the other way around.  Beyond that I haven't got any immediately obvious ideas; maybe I can go to a trio and find something that works?

[dragonsdemesne]

190hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: GRABOID
wins: 26 losses: 10 rank: >500 Rating: -134 age: 5



This should have gotten a vertiable crapton of thumbs-ups, but it got I think 8/26.  I mean, have you ever seen anything so ridiculous, especially using graboid?  I'm surprised it managed as many wins as it did, given that most of the good combos in this deck the AI probably doesn't play right :p  It's got GPull with SoF or Voodoo, along with Auburn nymphs for BBs, but I doubt the AI ever did any of that.  Ah well, it had a good run; I can't be faulted if one of the more unique decks I've put out there in awhile couldn't impress you people :p

Today's card is trident.  I just made a deck recently with tridents (on the 17th) but I have another idea for something interesting using it.