The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: LAVA GOLEM
wins: 3 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -94 age: 1

2/3 thumbs up



Well... I guess immorush just doesn't cut it anymore.  That, or I can't build one :p  I did have one back in the day that was a #2 deck, but the game has changed quite a bit with the shards since then.  Immorush used to be -everywhere- in plat, but now it's quite rare, which is probably how it got 2/3 thumbs ups.

Today's card is water pendulum.  Lots of possibilities... I like it   I might either do a monowater rush, or maybe a water/fire bolt deck, or water stall, or who knows... lots of things to do!

[Laxadarap]

Your card was definitely lava destroyer, not Titan

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: WATER PENDULUM
wins: 1 losses: 3 rank: 902 (:p) Rating: -114 age: 0

0/1 thumbs up



Big fat monowater fail!   Fun deck, but no real practicality.  I suspect AI fail with nymph's tears was part of the problem; AI tends not to play more than one on its water towers for whatever stupid reason.  At least I finally got to use desiccation for something!

Due to the quickness with which this deck failed, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to know what the next card is.

edit: Got Ice Bolt, so I'm going to do that water/fire bolt deck I mentioned as a possibility when I got the pendulum.
edit: Ice bolt deck is 76-14 and is at 1hp now... It shouldn't be possible for it to win any games, but we'll see I guess... :p

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: ICE BOLT
wins: 76 losses: 18 (14 before going to 1hp) rank: >500 (:p) Rating: -104 age: 8

29/76 thumbs up!  (though I should admit that -two- of those were actually myself; I ran into my own deck twice this week!  I did lose both times legitimately, i.e. I didn't throw the games, but of course I thumbed them up :p)



This is the deck I almost made when I got water pendulum last time... so it worked out just as well that I was able to do it next.  I'm quite surprised that the deck did so well, and even more surprised that people gave it a lot of thumbs ups.  (36%, not counting my own two thumbs ups)  I had the supreme misfortune in one of my two matches against this deck to go up against it with a voodoo universe deck I was goofing off with... I had no way to win, lol.  Even so, the AI was still stupid enough to bolt my dolls a couple times, so it wasn't an EM loss :p  One of these days I should try making a fire deck with 6 lances, towers, and maybe a few SoB/fahrens, and nothing else, and see how that does.

Today's card is arsenic.  I know I've had that one several times before, so I'll have to review what I did.  The first thing that occurs to me to try is an eclipse/flying arsenic deck, so I'll take a look at my history and see if I've done that.  If not... maybe something really weird like a gravity duo.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: ARSENIC
wins: 19 losses: 7
thumbs ups: 7/19



As I mentioned above, I decided on flying arsenic eclipse to base the deck around.  I figured there would be a lot of spare death quanta, so bloodsuckers seemed a logical choice, plus they're fairly well-costed hitters, particularly with eclipse out.  Pests seemed a good fit as well, to slow the opponent down while arsenic does its work, plus they provide more damage with eclipse as well.  I thought I remembered sneaking a few siphon lifes in here for all the pest quanta, but I must have either forgotten to add them, or cut them for some reason.  I think I might've been worried the healing would conflict with shard of sacrifice, and I was worried the deck couldn't compete without SoSas.

Today's card is momentum.  I've got a neat idea for this one that I don't think has been done before.  It's certainly one I haven't seen before.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: MOMENTUM
wins: 41 losses: 8  rank: 123 Rating: 37 age: 6

20/41 thumbs ups (Nearly half... that's awesome! Didn't realize it was that high until I just calculated it)



Well, I'm surprised that this one got so many thumbs ups, even though I can't recall seeing very many decks like it before.  It managed to get nearly 50% thumbs ups even while using three shards of focus, so that's quite impressive, and I'd consider this deck a resounding success in terms of uniqueness.  It also did quite a bit better than I thought it would, but I suppose that it is an extremely simple deck for the AI to play, as all it has to do are drop dragons, buff them, and wait until it needs to miracle.  Pretty much the only choice it ever needs to make is between buffing a dragon or a shard of focus with overdrive/momentum.

After all that, you might wonder why I'm taking the deck down early, but it's because I spun Blessing, which is an oracle card that I have never used yet, so I figured I could do something new with that.  I'd been thinking something like blessed lobo crusader with TU when I first saw it... I'll try to think of something even more interesting, but I'll go with that or something similar if I can't.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: BLESSING
wins: 9 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -108 age: 1

4/9 thumbs up



Flying blessed TU lobosader!  AI doesn't seem to know that it should bless the weapon first so that it can endow a better weapon onto the crusaders, but it will at least TU the biggest thing on the field.  I added the silences in an attempt to beat SoSa and/or miracle decks; I know the AI will just spam them as soon as it gets them, rather than timing it right, but pure chance should've helped it topdeck silence occasionally when needed.  In the one test game I played, that's exactly what happened; it topdecked a silence and I couldn't play my sosa and I lost as a result with pdials.

Today's card is permafrost shield.  I really don't like making decks around shields like that, because 10 shields is way too many for nearly all of them.  I'll try to find something interesting I can do, but if I can't, I'll throw up a farm.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: ICE SHIELD
wins: 2 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 1

0/2 thumbs up



Yeah... it's pretty bad :p  Patient wardens in an oversized deck to dilute the shields and use a bunch of other fun stuff.  It flopped...

Today's card is druid staff.  Weapons can be tricky to do as well, for the same reason as shields, but at least there are things like animate weapon or crusader for weapons.  Still, that means the deck can't be particularly creative, as everyone will know what to expect...  I'm half tempted to make adrenastaves with shard of sacrifice, just so that someone will laugh their ass off when the AI casts SoSa and the adrenastaves kill it :p  But no... I'll try to make something that can win.  It'll probably be adrenastaves with something or other off the mark to make it a little more interesting...

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: DRUIDIC STAFF
wins: 6 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 1

4/6 thumbs ups



I thought this deck was really cool, and so did a bunch of you   I actually built a very similar deck today and played around with it against lower arena decks and in pvp2, and it's a lot of fun to use.  Sometimes you're playing with quinted adrenastaves stacked with SoW (one SoW gives the adrenaline sweet spot of 8 on a jade staff), sometimes you TU a bunch of unquinted buffed adrenastaves, and sometimes you TU your opponents stuff and buff it.  In the nonarena version I made, I dropped the silences and used 6x staff/AW, a bit more quanta, and some jade shields.  The jade shields also let me pull the trick of quint/SoW on the opponent's creatures.  I excluded this from the arena deck because the AI never makes that move.  I did find with my version that the nymphs were too expensive to really use, so using the appropriate alchemy cards and more quanta would be a better choice.

Today's card is chrysaora.   Great card, and I could easily get a top tier deck with that, but I want to figure out something somewhat creative with it.  I've done the standard sosa physalia a couple times, and I did fractal physalia/SoP one time, too.  I think I'll maybe try to make an interesting trio, like using shard of void or something.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: CHRYSAORA
wins: 56 losses: 12 rank: >500 Rating: -85 age: 6

thumbs up = 15/56



Wow, this really fell hard today.  It was in the top 25 yesterday.  (just barely)  I think it must've lost about six times while I was at work.  I was hoping my attempt at a trio would increase the number of thumbs ups for a hated card like chrysaora, but it didn't seem to have helped; my lower thumbed decks are usually getting about this sort of ratio.

Today's card is bone dragon.  That's another one that lends itself to the hated monodeath SoSa rush, but I will mercifully find something else to do with it.  I want to get #1 with a cool new deck, not the same old crap.  With mummy I did a luciferin/skeleton/hope deck, and I have done a fractal ball lightning/soulcatcher/vulture deck before that is similar to what could be done with bone dragon.  I've also done immosoulcatcher using large fire and death creatures, so that's out.  I've also done darkness duos using eclipse and steal, so that's out.  It's getting harder and harder to find interesting new decks that won't just lose as soon as I post them.  I'll take a look and see what I can find, though.  If nothing else, I'll pick a weird duo or trio choice and just improvise.

(edit: copy/paste fail; I had 200hp, not 0hp :p )

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: BONE DRAGON
wins: 8 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -100 age: 2

thumbs: 2/8



Not knowing what to do with a card like bone dragon that hadn't been done a million times over, I went with this rather unique but subpar deck.  It uses quite a few cards that I normally never use, so it felt to me like it should've gotten a higher thumbs up rating.  I am surprised it won as many games as it did; it looks to me like it would be really bad.

Today's card is reflective shield.  Not a good card to have at all.  I'm not sure if I've done it before, but I'm going to make an entropy/light stall.  (probably have done it before)  Since that isn't particularly unique in and of itself, I will make it a trio, perhaps with earth for stoneskin or something.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: REFLECTIVE SHIELD
wins: 10 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -87 age: 1

thumbs: 3/10



Well, this deck got about nine more wins than I thought it would :p  I'm surprised a trio didn't get more thumbs ups, though.  I guess something about it just pissed too many people off; maybe all the 500hp miracles or something? :p  Also, purple nymph tends to be one of those cards that destroys newbie decks but isn't that good against most stronger decks, so it might've annoyed newer players.

Today's card is fog shield.  How I'm supposed to figure out something to do with another shield, I don't know... why do I keep getting silly oracle cards?  Tomorrow should be a nymph :p  I haven't had a nymph in a long time.  I think the last one I got was a time nymph about two months ago, but I'd have to check.  Ah, well, if I can make a deck with mirror shield, surely I can do it with fog shield?