The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

Actually, I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but Jappert has some good points; the only one I disagree with is the Fahrenheit.  I hardly ever see immorush get enough fire quanta stored up that it helps much; that's why I used Longsword instead, and I only have one of those in my collection so far.  Tiko also has a good point... :p

The dune scorpion deck I put up tonight isn't too original, but it is a bit different from most of the ones I've seen.  The RNG was kind to me and I won my 6th Unstoppable 5 minutes after posting the deck, so I got to add that to the other 5 I already had in there

[dragonsdemesne]

Well, after 6 days, the dune scorpion deck is at 34-4, so it's doing quite well, but it's down to 91hp now, and I got freaking Short Bow as my oracle card today.  I really needed a good one...   Other than an eternity on about day 2 my cards this week from oracle have been pretty lousy, so I've left the deck alone.  It'll be interesting to see how it fares with a -64hp penalty.  If memory serves, the losses were spread out over the week, so it hasn't suffered too much from the hp penalty so far.

[Rember]

What's wrong with Short Bow? It was rank 1 in gold for a while a few days ago.

[Jappert]

Yeah I'd love a shortbow as Oracle card. Get an air mark in there, fly those bows around and add some other rush elements to your liking.
Combined with wings shields and shockwaves it can beat quite a few decks (CCYB is a problem still)

[dragonsdemesne]

I just didn't really think of shortbow being very efficient, since it needs animate weapon to work, which is two cards for a 6 attack creature.  In any event, after going almost all day without a play, the dune scorp deck won 5 games since my last post (no losses) so it seems it can function even with crap hp

[Plantifant]

Yeah I'd love a shortbow as Oracle card. Get an air mark in there, fly those bows around and add some other rush elements to your liking.
Combined with wings shields and shockwaves it can beat quite a few decks (CCYB is a problem still)

That's what I do too
It always gives some pretty good results like 30-2.
With a rank 20

[dragonsdemesne]

155hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: DUNE SCORPION
wins: 42 losses: 6 rank: 87 rating: 114 age: 7

Sadly I didn't get too many plays with this one early on; even at 91 hp it went 8-2 :p  I got Emerald Dragon today, so I think that rather than leave my deck at 27 (!) hp I'll make a deck around that.  Occasionally I've seen dragon/mitosis/SoR decks in arena, so maybe I'll try that?  Or maybe I'll just make a creature deck or... I don't really know yet :p  Anyway, here's the week-old dune scorpion deck:



I've seen lots of duo dune scorp decks based on momentum, and some duos based on chaos power or blessing, but I can't ever remember seeing one quite like this.  Deliberately unupped novas make it easy to cast the powers and momentums on the scorpions, and the triple mark means one should be played on turn 2 every time it was drawn in the opening hand.  No towers at all means novas ARE the towers, and so they are pretty much guaranteed in the opening hand.  I then threw in some cheap 1-cost support cards; 2 explosions, a bolt and shockwave for removal, congeal and a fog for defense, and a nightmare just to mess with you.  I reasoned that the AI will probably play it on its own scorpions, and unless the player has buff cards, a hand full of scorpions is useless even with time quanta.  After the first day I realized that upped poison costs 2  , not 1  , and I took out the 4th copy and put in the blessing instead.  (since there would be more strain on death quanta than the novas could make with 4)  Lucky for me I only own 4 deadly poisons or I probably would have put in 6 and clogged the hand.

Looking at the list, I just noticed it has no weapon, so maybe something cheap would have been good in there.  (longsword, vampire dagger or stiletto, jade staff)  Alternately I could have scrapped the fog and left zero permanent targets, screwing up player explosions/steals and other removal.

Level 68 was also gained this week, so my emerald dragon deck will have more points than this one.
 
Ugh.  Bad news: the emerald dragon deck only got 4 plays all day.  The good news: all 4 were wins.  I tested against the deck about 3 times, and it's way faster than I thought it would be.

[dragonsdemesne]

160hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: EMERALD DRAGON
wins: 10 losses: 2 rank: 263 rating: -23 age: 2

Didn't get too many plays with this one, but it's just as well; there are a lot of counters to it.  *coughGravityShieldcough*  It did better than I thought it would.  I spun Lightning today, so I'm going with that, as it's a good card.



Very basic deck.  The wisdom worked out perfectly, as I didn't have more upgraded Mitoses, and Thorn Carapace vs Spine Carapace isn't strictly worse, as the thorns can kill 1/x creatures, at the cost of taking more damage from the attacks.  Unfortunately, it bends over to stuff like Gravity Shield, Antimatter/Purple Nymph, and probably even most good quanta denial strategies, as long as they are faster than it takes to play the dragon/mitosis/SoR combo.

For Lightning, I'm tempted to go with a supernova weenie deck.  I dislike those because although on a good draw they can do very well, on a bad draw they can't do *anything*.  The AI seems to get better luck with them than I do, though; whenever I build one to use myself, I never draw enough supernovas :p

edit: (sept 18) Lightning bolt deck is at 52-5 after 6 days.  I was debating whether I should keep going or not; the deck still has 126hp, since I started it with 190.  I spun Flooding at the Oracle, so the fat man decided for me; the lightning bolt speedbow will remain up for another day.

[dragonsdemesne]

190hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: THUNDERBOLT
wins: 59 losses: 6 rank: 25 rating: 254 age: 7



I don't have much experience making speedbows, so I looked at a few on the forums, got some ideas, and then changed it up a bit based on my own preferences.  I'm pretty happy with how it did.  4 of the losses came in the first 15-20 games, so I was kinda worried it sucked at first, but it picked up speed later.  I was a bit worried at age 6 that the deck would suck, and I had flooding that day so I had to keep it, but it only got 1 loss.

Today I needed a good card, bad, with only 62hp left, and the oracle favoured me with lava golem again.  I'll see if I can do it better this time! 

edit: yup, this is way better than my last lava golem deck.  I think I've only had two decks so far that had a higher ranking, and those took longer than 2 days to do it.  Too bad I had to do it with such a cheap ass card, but hey, I'll take what I can get.  The deck is slightly unique, however, as I added my own twist to it, but at its core it's just another stupid cremation golem rush.



edit: Need moar plays.  MOAR.


This is the highest I've achieved so far with any deck.  I think my best previously was about 17th-18th; I'd have to scroll up to find which one that was, but probably the minor phoenix stall one.  I'm hoping this one makes it to the top, even if it is with fire.

edit: 57-0 on the lava golem deck now.  Thanks all for the tips the last time I got that card and had a crappy deck; it seems to have helped!  Rank is at 4, so I might actually have a shot at the top with this one

edit: Still rank #4, because some shmo beat my deck... it's 64-1 now :p
edit: Rank #2 now with 75-2 record.  That might get a bit worse; the deck only has 62 hp now.  Rember is pretty far ahead in rating; I dunno if I can take that #1 spot.

[dragonsdemesne]

190hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: LAVA GOLEM
wins: 75 losses: 2 rank: 2 rating: 596 age: 7 (62hp remaining)



Well, it's hard for me to be disappointed with that performance.  One loss came after being I think 60-0, and was on day 6 if I recall; the other came just recently.  I was really hoping to get to the top, and I still might.  I'm going to leave the deck up, but I'm going to tweak it a bit to account for the horrible hp.  I'll leave the deck up as long as possible in order to get a shot at the top spot, but once it's clear I can't get there, whether I've held it for any length of time or not, I think I might make a farm to give back to the community a bit.  I think it's only fair, after being a bit of a dick with a deck like this

Anyway, with regard to some of the card choices, I went with thee basic destroyer/cremation core, as you can see.  I then went with some pump spells (chaos power, unstoppable) and some stalling cards that only cost 1 of their element.  I tested against the deck a few times with my own, and I couldn't even come close to beating it.  The best I managed was one game where I got out a protected gravity shield against a pair of large lava destroyers.  I thought I had it... until it played unstoppable and walked through the shield like it wasn't there.

[pervepic]

I guess that the first loss came against me due to bad draw and gave me more than 600 Electrum. Thanks. But that decks looks good.

[dragonsdemesne]

I guess that the first loss came against me due to bad draw and gave me more than 600 Electrum. Thanks. But that decks looks good.

YOU!  <brings out machete and hacks off pervepic's head>  Deck's at 79-3 now; I'd put in a bunch of SoDs, but it still got a loss, so I put the deck back to the way it was, except that the ball lightnings are now SoDs.  I think #1 is out of reach now for me this time, but I'm going to give it another day to make sure.