The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

180hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: PURPLE NYMPH
wins: 35 losses: 10 rank: >500 Rating: -107 age: 6

thumbs up: 14/35



Well, that's a heck of a good thumbs up rating (40%) and I managed to do it with all those discords, too :p  At six days and the best thumbs up ratio I've had in a long time (ignoring decks with like 1-2 wins) I'd say that this was a success in terms of creativity.  I'm not sure how optimally the AI played the deck in some cases; I tested against it with a few things, and found that it beats poison dials fairly handily with discords and silences ruining sosa/dial timing, and did fairly poorly against rainbow stall unless it could spam silences early.  It was fun to play against, so I tested a few different things against it.

Today's card is ice bolt, which I think I've had a few times before.  I am now level 77, so I'll probably be doing all my decks with 185hp and maxing everything else from now on.  I also have a mark of darkness that I won from this weekend's tourney, so I have that to mess around with, too.  Given my distaste for grinding and the fact that I need 95k score to get to the next level, it will probably be quite some time before I'm 78 :p  (it was months and months between 76 and 77)

edit: Apparently I gained level 76 on Nov 12, 2012 (or a few days before that) and I've used ice bolt a few times, but mostly in decks that were fairly weak.  I had one that was 76-18, but of course for some reason the image link to that one is dead :p

[TribalTrouble]

what's with the unupped/upped split of nymphs? o.O

[dragonsdemesne]

what's with the unupped/upped split of nymphs? o.O

The entropy ones are upped because 1) it was the oracle card and 2) I own 10 entropy nymphs, so I've upped 4 of them.  The turquoise ones are one of each because the upped one was my 2nd nymph ever and I upped it before I knew the majority of PvP tourneys were unupped.  My red nymph was spared the same fate because back then it cost 4 to activate the upped fire nymph, and so the upped fire nymp wasn't strictly better like the aether one is.  (still isn't, for that matter) The only upped nymphs I own are entropy nymphs 7 through 10 and that one aether nymph.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: ICE BOLT
wins: 35 losses: 9 rank: >500 Rating: -99 age: 6

Thumbs ups: 15/35



Well, I was very happy with my last deck's thumbs up ratio (14/35) and this was just that slightly bit even better, so I'm quite happy with the performance.  I actually thought this deck was going to suck pretty bad, but it did very well until today.  When I went to work this morning, I think it was 32-4 or 32-5.  The drop from a -32 to a -64 hp penalty seemed to affect the deck quite badly.  I think the reason is because the deck sits there stalling for awhile, bolting whatever needs to die, and then usually rips out a sudden OTK for the win, and losing another 32 hp on day 6 meant that it probably wasn't able to buy enough time for that.

The basic idea when I was planning the deck was just to use all the bolts :p  Since fire lances do more damage than the other two, I built the quanta base around having twice as much fire as the other two; that lent to the logical inclusion of fahrenheits.  After that, I still had some slots, so I used purifies to beat poison.  I don't think this deck had any problems with SoSa-based decks, because it could simply outwait the SoSa chain, as most of the damage comes from spells, and the myriad of bolts should handle most creature-based decks, but there was no healing besides the incidental healing from siphon life.  Then I figured that steals are never a bad thing, so I included a bunch of those, and then to try and balance out water and darkness, I added a couple steam machines.  Looking at the pendulum split, I should have actually had something like +2-3 dark pend -2-3 water pend, since slightly more darkness is actually used, yet I have more water pends.

The biggest weaknesses to the deck were probably immortal creatures, 500hp SS/miracle decks, OTKs, and anybody using reflective/emerald shields.  The deck probably did as well as it did because none of those things are really common plat grinders (as far as I know) and beats some of the more common archetypes, like pdials, splat, and so on.  It probably beats rol/hope as well, even the SoP version, as the steals would be taking those.

Today's card is empathic bond.  I'll look at my history and base my decision on that.  Not sure what I'll do yet...

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: EMPATHIC BOND
wins: 4 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -110 age: 1

thumbs: 1/4



I thought this deck was absolutely hilarious :p  Various mass CC and ball lightning suicide to kill creatures for the bone walls and graveyards, and then bonds to heal with all of the skeletons out.  Then, if the AI plays inundation, you can nuke your own skeletons and get loads of bonewall counters :p  Or, you can use shard of patience and build up ridiculous skeletons or ball lightnings :p  I can't believe it actually won any games, but it's even harder to believe most people didn't thumb it up.  I was fully expecting it to go 0-2 and drop out of platinum.

Today's card is dissipation field.  That'll be a hard one to work with.  Maybe I'll make an unupped 60 card dissipation field stall :p  Actually, I got an idea now...

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 0 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: DISSIPATION SHIELD
wins: 0 losses: 2 rank: >500 Rating: -80 age: 1



It was a pretty stupid idea... :p  I'd like to think somebody would've thumbed it up if it had somehow won.

Today's card is drain life.  People hate pests so I'll try to find a deck that doesn't use those.  It might be tricky to find a deck that both gets thumbs ups and wins with drain life, since people really hate monodark, as the pests and vampires do well against a lot of common arena farmers.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: DRAIN LIFE
wins: 17 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -90 age: 2

6/17 thumbs ups



Hmm... well, I thought I might have had a winner on my hands, as when I went to work it was 12-1 with a decent number of thumbs ups, but it was not to be, it seems.  Basically, my goal here was to make a deck with as much healing as possible, yet still have some decent damage dealing capability.  Hopefully it was an enjoyable deck to face.  I designed something vaguely similar for one of the world championship rounds, but I never had a good opportunity to use it.

Today's card is golden dragon.  I don't think I've actually built a deck around that one before.  I'll try to be clever.  Maybe I'll use my red nymphs with it, or find something else unusual.  I think there's quite a few interesting possibilities with this one.  I actually like the red nymph idea... might stick with that.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: GOLDEN DRAGON
wins: 12 losses: 4 rank: >500 Rating: -95 age: 2

4/12 thumbs up



Well, I did indeed go with the red nymphs.  Light dragons can survive two activations each.  I threw in the brimstone eaters and rays of light as additional attackers/quanta that also let me use cremations so that I could splash purifies (SoSa would eat this deck alive) and a fog.  A few fire lances and fahrenheits were also added, although I'm not sure if there was really all that much extra fire quanta laying around; I kind of doubt it, but I did it anyway.

Today's card was also golden dragon, so I have to wait until tomorrow to put a new deck up.

[TribalTrouble]

I scratched my head at the extreme lack of SoD...

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: HOLY LIGHT
wins: 10 losses: 4 rank: 438 Rating: -61 age: 1

thumbs up: 5/10



Pretty darned good thumbs up ratio on this one, but since I'm going to work soon, and I don't think this will last the day, I'm going to replace it.  I used the fairly nice synergy between red nymphs and steam machines, as well as another nice synergy between red nymph and shard of patience.  The holy flash also works nicely with red nymph, and using brimstone eaters for quanta gives me more things to grow with shard of patience, just as I did with the previous deck.  The queens give me even more red nymphs to play with.  It was 7-1 before I went to bed, but then it took a bunch of losses.

Today's card is butterfly effect.  That's another reason I wanted to take the deck down early; that's a rarely used card, and I'm hoping I can build something clever with it.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: BUTTERFLY EFFECT
wins: 1 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -112 age: 0

1/1 thumbs up



I thought this was a brilliant idea, though I knew it would probably be lucky to last a day.  At least someone agreed with me :p  The scarabs were deliberately unupped so that butterfly effect can be played on them.  I probably shouldn't have used the deja vus, but originally I'd been going to add a lucihope component to the deck, but I ran out of room :p

No new card yet, as the deck is less than 1 day old.
edit: because nobody cares what's on my desktop in the old image (and probably nobody cares about my deck, either, but my desktop even less :p)

[TribalTrouble]

We don't care, but that doesn't mean it matters

That deck is just.... who thought that was a good idea? XD