The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: STONE DRAGON
wins: 7 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 2

4/7 thumbs up



This deck had an interesting run.  The first day, it went 7-0, and I was quite surprised.  Then it lost a game, so I playtested to see if I could figure out why.  I beat my arena deck because it was completely flooded with life quanta and didn't have enough earth quanta, so I went -3 pend +3 tower, and then it lost 4 more games and dropped out of plat :p  I packed the deck with tons of stall, and used the dragons for damage, if it couldn't win by deckout.  It got a decent thumbs up score, but like several of my recent decks, the sample size is quite small, so it's hard to know for sure.  I don't think I've seen this deck done before, at least not in earth/life form; I've seen earth/light many times.

Today's card is fire buckler.  Monofire and firestall are out, and I just did a maxwell's buckler deck, so I'll need something different.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FIRE SHIELD
wins: 3 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 1

3/3 thumbs up  8) 8)



With the recent maxwell demon/buckler deck I made with phoenix, that deck was obviously on my mind when I built this one, as that's what I would have done had I not just done it.  I realized that gravity actually had a similar synergy with otyughs that I have never seen exploited, so I decided to do that.  Apparently 3/3 of you have never seen that done, either   The deck didn't do very well, but to get all thumbs ups even when it has sosa and sofo is a fairly decent achievement, so this deck was a success, given what I'm trying to do.

Today's card is precognition.  I could wait 40 minutes and spin something else, but I have work in the morning, and I'm just going to build something with that now.  I'm not sure what I can do that's unique with it, but I'll try something, as usual... maybe a shard golem deck?  That might actually work, assuming the AI plays things in the right order... oh wait, it's the AI :p

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: PRECOGNITION
wins: 1 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 1

0/1 thumbs up



It would have been a fairly easy thing to build a winner with precog, if I had gone with a speedbow, or even some sort of time deck or immorush.  I figured instead that I'd take a slight modification of my FG: Serket counter, by adding some rewinds, and see what happened.  Not surprisingly, it didn't do that well; it has no counter to SoSa farmers, as I don't think the AI will rewind its own creatures in the face of SoSa, though I have never tested this.  I probably also had way too much time quanta with a triple mark, but I doubt +20 hp would have given this silly deck much help.  And yes, I know a wind tower would have been better than the mark of air, but it's stylish

Today's card is fire spirit.  I was thinking of a fire/air rush with elite fireflies and sky blitz, but I think I may have done that before.  If I haven't, I'll do that, but if I have, I'll figure something else out.  *heads off to the previous pages of this thread...*

edit: Seems I did exactly that... http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,28528.msg535218/topicseen.html#msg535218  Back to the drawing board...

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FIRE SPIRIT
wins: 7 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -93 age: 3

2/7 thumbs up



To a large degree, I kind of ignored the oracle card in this deck, although there was a loose theme to it.  The theme was basically to make oodles and oodles of fire quanta, and have lots of things to do with the excess every turn.  Red nymphs either kill enemy creatures or pump themselves or the steam machines, and purify (which the AI will pretty much always play on a raged creature if able) will help it rage more often.  Fire lances and fahrenheits obviously benefit from lots of fire quanta, and the spectres and machines will be pumping themselves pretty much every turn.  (also, the deck was hovering in the 490-510 rank range, and so I left it up, but it got no plays in the last two days, so I took it down)

Today's card is pulverizer.  That's a narrow card just because of the forced duo between earth and gravity.  However... if I use shard of readiness and animate weapon, I can ignore gravity and do something totally different... not sure what yet, but that will definitely be the core of the deck.  I've done gravity/earth denial decks a few times before; quicksands, black holes, pulverizer, etc.  Interestingly, they've been fairly well received in the past, getting a decent number of thumbs ups.  In any even, a pulverizer deck without gravity quanta should be unique enough to get thumbs ups... I just have to figure out how to make one that won't completely fail.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: PULVERIZER
wins: 1 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -113 age: 1

0/1 thumbs up (and that person should be ashamed of themselves, both for actually losing to this pile of junk, and for not considering it original! :p)



My red nymphs are getting a workout this week...  Anyway, here's my gravityless pulverizer deck :p  Flying pulvies, with nymphs to pump them and for creature control, and AW/shards for obvious reasons.  (plus shards work on nymphs, too)  Holy flash was more for the rofl factor, but it does synergize with red nymph since you can heal two rage pots worth of damage with it, though whether the AI was aware of this, I don't know.  In the one game I playtested, it never played any holy flashes.

Today's card is lightning.  I think I've done speedbow, monoaether, water/aether SoP (flayers/lightnings off mark), and I remember doing a time/aether duo with anubis that was fairly well-received using lightning when I got anubis as a card.  I also did a giant 60 card rainbow stall with pretty much every bolt spell in the game.  Therefore, all of those possibilities are out.  I'll conjure up some sort of strangeness and see where it takes me... oh yeah, I think I did bonebolt once, too, so that's out.  Maybe frogtal or devtal... though that's not too original.  Something will present itself, I'm sure...

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: LIGHTNING
wins: 37 losses: 10 rank: 91 Rating: 89 age: 7

(forgot to post deck image... oops)
deck contents: (all upped)
5x thunderbolt
6x nymph's tears
3x purify
6x shard of wisdom
15x aether pendulum

16/37 thumbs up

I'm fairly pleased with this deck.  It did better than I thought, and made it the full week.  It might've made it that one more day, but with 52hp, I'm not holding out too much hope, and either way, there's not too much point leaving it up while it's that low; it'll probably lose nearly every game if I leave it around.  It also got more thumbs ups than I thought, as I had been thinking people might hate the immortal aspect of the turquoise nymphs created by the tears, but apparently people didn't mind too much; it got at least an average thumbs up ratio, so that didn't seen to bother most people.  It's very simple in concept; spam aether nymphs, who then quint themselves, and SoW them to get past most shields.  Instantly loses to any reflective shield, since even the thunderbolts are blocked, but those are rarely played, so it probably didn't happen too often.  The purifies were for the ever ubiquitous SoSa farmers, of course, since they'd have trashed this deck otherwise.

Today's card is empathic bond.  I've had that one before, so I'll have to check what I've done in the past, and do something else.  I'm thinking maybe mitosis and something a little unconventional, but we'll see...

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: FERAL BOND
wins: 1 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -115 Age: 1

0/1 thumbs up



A complete and utter failure, no matter how you look at it :p  Goal was stoneskins for oodles of quanta while healing for oodles of hp via bonds/mitosis on cheap creatures.  Mission: unsuccessful.

Today's card is schrodinger's cat.  I don't think I've ever gotten that for my oracle card.  There's a few neat ideas like cat bonewall, but while rarely done, that's hardly innovative.  I'll try to find something that is.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: SCHRODINGER'S CAT
wins: 0 losses: 3 rank: 666 Rating: -120 age: 1



A complete and utter failure once more! :p  Not much to say.  I'll bet the AI didn't play mitosis on the right target (cat) to make cheap mutation fodder; it probably played it on the druids, which would result in pure fail :p

Today's card is turquoise nymph.  Yay nymph!   Of course, as fate would have it, I just did a nymph's tears/SoW deck based on turquoise nymph, so I'll have to look for something more innovative than that... I really wish the AI could play a turquoise nymph/reflective shield/SoW deck correctly... if I ever get about 4 or 5 turquoises, I want to make that deck for pvp :p

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: TURQUOISE NYMPH
wins: 3 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -140 age: 1

0/3 thumbs up



After having done turquoise nymph's tears so recently, I wasn't really sure what to do, so I slapped together a bunch of dims and mindgates, added lots of extra quanta for the gates, and decided to see how that did.  I even threw in the upped aether nymph I had from my n00b beginnings, since I rarely get to use that for anything.  Apparently nobody liked it :p

Today's card is entropy pendulum.  I'll try to find an interesting duo or even trio with that.  If I were going just for wins, I'd probably do a DBH, but I won't be that mean :p

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: ENTROPY PENDULUM
wins: 6 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -128 Age: 2

2/6 thumbs up



My inspiration for this deck was the earth/light stall 'the immortal', but instead of using light for miracles and sancs, I used entropy for purple nymphs, as well as some discord/AW/CP for damage.

Today's card is dragonfly.  I've had that one several times before.  Immorush, chaos wyrms, mitobondflies, BE flies, I've all done before, and I think some others as well, which I'll check via search function.  No idea at all what I'll do yet.  Maybe something funny with light/air like a pegasus dive deck? :p

edit: to actually put the deck image in, which fortunately I had saved on my desktop still

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: DRAGONFLY
wins: 19 losses: 8 rank: >500 Rating: -111 age: 3

9/19 thumbs up



A fun little deck based on an old idea, the pegasus blessing rush.  Originally I'd had an air mark, but when I playtested the deck once, it got no light towers and just damselflies, so it couldn't do anything at all, and I ended up going with just the flies for air quanta.  It didn't do great, but it did get nearly 50% thumbs ups.  I'm hoping the SoSas and sky blitz surprised a few people

Today's card is fire pendulum.  I haven't got any ideas off the top of my head for that one yet, but it should allow for some decent flexibility.  I'll check back on what I've done before to narrow down the possibilities.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FIRE PENDULUM
wins: 15 losses: 7 rank: >500 Rating: -88 age: 3

7/15 thumbs up



A remarkably simple idea that I can't recall seeing before.  Ruby dragon, as I found in my test game, is a creature that the AI will actually cast twin universe on right away, instead of sitting on them for way too long. (think FG: Gemini for example)  There isn't really a lot to say about the deck; it's a one-trick pony, albeit a good trick.  I didn't get a lot of plays with the deck.  Last night, it had the same 15-7 record, but was still around 450th place.  When I got up in the morning, it was still 15-7 and about the same rank again.  When I got home from work just now, it was still 15-7, but in 520th place.

Today's card is toadfish.  I'll check what I may have done with that in the past, and then do something different, as usual.

edit: looks like I've done monowater stall and a life duo with forest spectre the other two times I've had toadfish.  I was thinking maybe a gravity duo for momentum or something...