The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: BONE DRAGON
wins: 59 losses: 16 rank: >500 Rating: -94 age: 8 (highest rank I saw was about 30)

thumbs up: 19/59



I did do a somewhat similar deck to this when I spun light nymph, but it was much heavier on light due to the nymphs and didn't use dragons, so I went with the concept again.  It did far better as a (mostly) mono, as you can see.  Any deck containing 6 elite skeletons and 6 luciferases that makes it the full 8 days is a success in my books.  I had thought about adding shards of sacrifice for some more stalling power, but then I realized that the AI would most likely not play luciferase while SoSa was active, and that would mean no Hope could be played, and that would harm the deck quite badly, turning it into basically a monodeath with 10 dead cards :p  The deck was still winning games on day 7, but it didn't get any on day 8.
 
Today's card is forest spirit.  There's a few things I can do with that.  I remember seeing a neat BL deck by one of my opponents using forest spirit and toadfish in a pendulum novabow (I forget who, and I probably shouldn't say if I remember, as BL is still going) but any of the BL decks I've tried to transfer to the arena so far have bombed :p  I know I've had this card a few times in the past, so I'll also have to check what I've already done.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FOREST SPIRIT
wins: 27 losses: 7 rank: >500 Rating: -95 age: 2

thumbs: 10/27



As I mentioned, I borrowed this idea from a deck one of my BL opponents used against me.  I don't know how much of it was similar to what he had, but his deck was a forest spirit/toadfish psnbow that was really fun to play against because it was quite unique in BL.  I can't remember how much of anything else in the deck was similar to what he had, but it seemed to fit together.  The deck after its first day was 14-0, and I was very surprised, but it seems to have cooled off quite a bit after that.  I think that the 14 game streak was an anomaly, and I don't see it winning against some of today's common arena farmes like fractal RoL/hope SoP, or Poison Dials, or Swallow.  Still, I think it's a cool deck regardless.

Today's card is fractal.  I've had that a few times before, but it's really hard to make a fractal deck that the AI can play.  I saw one a couple days ago in the arena using fractal that I thought was quite innovative, as well as very successful.  I gave it a thumbs up, and I only do that for like 1% of the decks I face.  I'll probably either copy it almost verbatim, or else find something in similar theme.  It was fractal damselflies with SoFr, and only used aether towers for quanta.  Similar decks to that would be things like brimstone eater fractal, or gnome gemfinder fractal.  RoL fractal obviously exists as well, but due to hope that deck is overdone, so I'll be doing one of the others.  I know in the past I've done fractal physalia and fractal ball lightning/death effects, so I'll be checking my history as well.

[TribalTrouble]

Just don't go devtal.... for the love of all farmers out there.

[dragonsdemesne]

Yeah, devtal is boring and unimaginative.  I wouldn't do that unless I made it more interesting... maybe with SoP or something.  The deck I settled on was a modification of the fractal damselfly deck I mentioned seeing in the arena.  I used damselflies, shards of freedom, silences, and then a fire mark and shards of bravery.  I tested against it one game with my rainbow control deck, and I found out something rather interesting; the AI will keep spamming shards of bravery even when I have a sanctuary out and they do nothing.  Oddly enough, that's still actually the best choice in that matchuip, because it gets the shard out of hand so that fractal can give more creatures, but most of the time it's foolish.  It hasn't gotten any plays yet so I don't know how it's going to do.  I beat it rather easily with rainbow control, but I did get sanctuary, permafrost shield, and pulverizer (and blew up all the SoFrs) quite early, which pretty much neutered the entire deck.

[TribalTrouble]

One Protect Artifact? :p

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: FRACTAL
wins: 19 losses: 6 rank: >500 Rating: -78 age: 3

thumbs up: 9/19 (almost half!)



After day 1, this deck was 8-0... I seem to have that happen to me a lot, where a deck starts out with a flawless record on the first day, and then takes a dive.  It's not the hp, since 8hp out of 200 is insignificant in the majority of the games.  Anyway, I took fractal damselfly/SoFr deck I saw in the arena and added silences and shards of bravery.  The shards gave the deck that extra draw power to help ensure the combo works, and the silences help ensure that it is protected long enough to do some good.  There is also the rather handy synergy of giving someone extra cards, and then denying their ability to play them.  The one antisynergy is that while denying the player the ability to play the cards drawn with SoB is good, once their hand is full, future SoBs are much weaker.  Hopefully the deck has won by the time that starts to happen.

Anyway, today's card is mutation.  I think I've had that one a few times before.  Not sure what I'll do yet, but it will definitely be something silly.  Maybe pandebonium with boneyards and mutations, so that the deck will kill stuff and then mutate the resultant skeletons?  Maybe something even cooler?

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: MUTATION
wins: 6 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -80 age: 1

thumbs up: 2/6



I assumed that the AI would mutate brimstone eaters... but I never actually tested this :p  I made the assumption based on the fact that the AI will cremate them for sure, so I figured that would extend to mutation as well, but I have no idea whether it would or not.  Also note the sexy lone tower shield and butterfly effect   I didn't expect too much from this deck; heck, it already did better than I thought it would in terms of wins, though I thought more people would give this a thumbs up.

Today's card is Owl's Eye.  I'm pretty sure I've had that one several times; I'll go back and look at what's been done.  The first thing that comes to mind is a duo with death using bone walls and maybe graveyards. (if I haven't already done that)  Failing that... I'll look for something really odd, maybe pick an element that air rarely duos with, like time or darkness or something.

edit: looks like I've done an air/life SoG stall and a death/entropy/air pandebonium/OE trio, so I'll try one of the oddball duos.  (or trios)

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: OWL'S EYE
wins: 9 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -110 age: 2

thumbs up: 1/9 (ppl should be shot for this crime...)



I've never seen this one done before... and it got 1/9 thumbs up.  Ridiculous.  Ah, well... there's no accounting for taste sometimes :p  It would have been better without the time cards at all, but less stylish.

Today's card is darkness pendulum.  I have a rather weird idea for this one.  I want to somehow mix in pest, shard of patience and trident, and maybe even mitosis/bond or something like that.  A trio or quad has to be worth something...

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: DARK PENDULUM
wins: 6 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -90 age: 1

thumbs up: 0/6 (....)



I guess people -really- hate pests... I've never had too much trouble against them in the arena, but I often play rainbow decks, and pests are less effective against them.  If I'm farming arena, which is rare these days, I'll often use poison dials, and that gets owned by pests.  Even as a quad element deck, it still didn't manage to get any thumbs up...  It's really too bad; there are SO many synergies here... I mean, like everything works so well with everything else; this deck is a work of art! :p  And nobody appreciates art in its own time, I suppose.

Today's card is stone dragon.  There's a few possibilities with that one.  I lost to a stone dragon deck in BL a day or two ago; it was using graboids, stone dragons, and reverse times, and I might borrow that.  Or I might try something else... A monoearth stall is possible, but that's a little dull.  I'll try looking for an interesting duo and put that up.

[TribalTrouble]

the very fact that deck has so many cards interacting with pests caused me to thumbs down when I lost to that once. 2 of the wins were from me though so u can blame me (:

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: STONE DRAGON
wins: 26 losses: 7 rank: >500 Rating: -105 age: 4

thumbs up: 9/26



I haven't seen this deck done before, at least not quite this way.  The high hp of the dragons let the nymphs activate on them twice, and the holy flashes let it happen twice more.   Lots of quicksands and explosions hopefully slowed the player down long enough for this slow deck to get its cards out.  Nymphs provided CC as well later on.

Today's card is flooding.  This will be challenging to get any wins :p  I can probably do almost anything I want and have people thumb it up with that as my oracle card!

[TribalTrouble]

SoP rainbow rush