The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: GRAVITY SHIELD
wins: 3 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -101 age: 1

2/3 thumbs up

Well, that was a flop :p  But I didn't expect much from it at all, especially given the AI's poor play, and this deck would actually take some skill to play right, and even then it's mediocre at best.

Today's card is phase dragon.  I have no idea what to do with that that won't have people thumbing it down, but I'll find something.

edit: Damn, I forgot to take a picture of the deck :p  It was something like this:

5x gravity shield
3x auburn nymph
6x pulverizer
6x animate weapon
whatever pillars/pends

edit: Day 4 of the phase dragon deck: 10/51 thumbs ups, 51-4 record, rank 19.  My best one in awhile in terms of rating, but it hasn't proven very popular.  Still, looking at how the 18th place deck has a 58-4 win record and 1 more rating point, it could be worse :p  I did make a deck that I can't remember ever seeing in the arena before, so I think it's fairly unique, but at the same time I can definitely understand how people would be annoyed at playing against it, even though it's not a monoaether.  It's a duo with light.
edit: 53-4, rank 11.  Will be impossible to calculate thumbs if it breaks top 10.
edit: 69-5, rank 3, day 6.  I don't think I can become the top deck, because its rating is 380, 61-0 record, and I'm at 273 rating, but I'll give it a go anyway.  My deck already has shards of divinity, so it might last a bit longer than usual at low HP.
edit: 71-5, rank 2, day 7.  That's probably the peak it's going to achieve, but I'll let it go until it drops out of plat, unless I get something particularly useful.
edit: 79-7, 1hp deck now, so that's the peak W/L unless it somehow wins at 1hp, which I really doubt, given that the deck is quite slow, though with SoDs it is possible I suppose, just very unlikely given the design.

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: PHASE DRAGON
wins: 79 losses: 16 rank: >500 Rating: -102 Age: 8 (peaked at rank 2, and 79-7; no wins after going to 1hp)

thumbs up: unknown due to achieving top 10, but it earned 1704 electrum.  It was at about 20-25% in the first few days, though.



Can you say stall?  Say it with me now...   I haven't seen this particular deck before in arena, although it seems a fairly obvious design to me.  I figured it should be able to outstall common decks like poison dials (the only test I did was 1 game vs poison dials, and pdials decked out against it) and stall long enough with copious amounts of healing and dimshields for the wise phase dragons to do their thing.  I only used 3 miracles because I didn't want the hand getting clogged, since there are also all those dims that the AI will be holding onto.  I didn't use sundials because of the dragons, but in a creatureless version I'd definitely have packed 6 sundials in this type of deck.

Today's card is Owl's Eye.  I'm not sure what to do that's unique with that yet.  I'll probably have to use animate weapon... after that, I'm not sure.  Maybe maxwell's demons or bone walls or something... or maybe a trio.... hmmm...

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: OWL'S EYE
wins: 0 losses: 2 rank: >500 Rating: -102 Age: 8

0/0 thumbs up (infinity % thumbs ups! yay! :p  I'd like to think this would have earned a lot of thumbs, though)



I thought this was quite an interesting trio, but interesting doesn't mean that it can win games.  Ah, well... lots of synergies but probably lots of AI fails, too, plus the usual quanta fails that inevitably accompany trios.

Today's card is bone pillar.  Lots of flexibility there, and I'll try not to do some boring monodeath thing.

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: BONE PILLAR
wins: 2 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -94Age: 1

thumbs up: 2/2  8)



I tried to work a delicate balance between using cool, underused cards, and not making a deck that sucked.  I apparently succeeded at the first and failed at the second.  At least it got thumbs ups on both the wins!

Today's card is plate armour.  Ugh... so useless :p  I'll try to find something, though...

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: HEAVY ARMOUR
wins: 4 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -92 Age: 1

Thumbs ups: 3/4



Once more, a failure on the effectiveness but a success on the thumbs up.  I figured otyugh and scarab were the most obvious things to do with heavy armour, followed by something like immorush (to keep golems etc alive that first turn) so of course I went a different route.  I figured phase salvager is rather new, and it obviously benefits from heavy armour more than most, so I tried to build around that.  Dims and quicksands were for stalling, while the mindgates did their thing.  Mindgate is sooooo fun...

Today's card is mummy.  That seems a bit of a tough one to be creative with, but I'll make it work!

[dragonsdemesne]

200 hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: MUMMY
wins: 8 losses: 2 rank: 352 Rating: -30 Age: 1

2/8 thumbs up



I thought this was a fun little deck.  It's basically the bonecat thing, only with a few extra little toys.  I don't think it actually has enough entropy quanta to use the demon or BE properly, though, so people probably never got to see those.  I'd have left the deck up longer to see how far it would get, but I spun a golden nymph today, so naturally I want to use the opportunity to build with that many time nymphs, as it is not something I can normally do.

[Marsu]

Not as creative as some of the others, was hoping for a scarab deck with RT/Eternity. :-)
Searching your new avatar on google now btw.
/e: Nevermind, zooming in helped. :p
The old one seemed more epic.

[dragonsdemesne]

I didn't even think of trying the mummy/rewind thing, but I've seen it done quite often in the arena, and I got dead sick of seeing it in CL last season :p  The one I have up now isn't particularly creative, but I wanted to build the deck as a kind of test for league, as the arena deck I built with golden nymph is based on one of my most successful BL decks this season so far, and I wanted to see how it fares in this environment.

For the avatar, it's Mana Drain from M:tG, arguably the best counterspell in the game, with the possible exception of Force of Will.  I figure what I'll do from this point on is to change my avatar to a new card whenever I spin a nymph, which is why I changed it today.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: GOLDEN NYMPH
wins: 8 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -110 age: 1

thumbs ups: 2/8



So... apparently top tier BL decks do not translate well to platinum arena :p  My BL deck was the unupped version of this with -4 nymph -1 pharaoh -3 pillar/pend.  I might mod my BL deck now that I have that second nymph, though...   Also, as was pointed out to me in league play one day, the entire deck is rares!  So it's kind of creative in that respect...  I was tempted to create a deck compilation of rares-only decks and see how many I could make that were still good; maybe I'll do that someday.

Today's card is Titan.  I kinda want to do catatitans but that's so... obvious :p  Maybe I can think of a way to put a twist on it somehow...

edit: to include thumbs up total

[xViperx9091]

So What Kind Of Deck Are you Thinking Using This Deck against like pvp1? ai4? silver?

[kimham8a]

So What Kind Of Deck Are you Thinking Using This Deck against like pvp1? ai4? silver?

These are his arena decks.

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: TITAN
wins: 12 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -74 age: 3

4/12 thumbs ups



Hadn't seen crusader titan in the arena before, and figured it would stomp the rol/sop/hope deck that people said in chat is really popular these days.  It should also beat poison dials as well, which is still one of the strongest decks vs arena right now.  Apparently enough people are using something else (or the 60 card deck gave enough bad draws!) that this isn't the case.  Plat's getting ridiculously full if -74 rating drops you out though :p  Alas...

Today's card is lava golem.  I want to try an immorush based on a discussion I had in chat with another player.  Seems it's doing fairly good lately, according to that person.