The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 2x mark
Oracle Card: SHIELD
wins: 9 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -102 age: 2

5/9 thumbs up (wooo!)



Well, I'm glad this was a success in terms of creativity, if not actual wins.  I heavily borrowed from one of my BL decks this season, which I call "The So(a)Pbox", because it uses SoP and lots of 1 quanta creatures to quickly grow a lethal army.  (I in turn borrowed that deck from one of the higher ranked BL players this season, but I won't give away their deck by naming them)  I tweaked it somewhat for the arena, but the basic concept is the same; play a nova, play your hand, play SoP, wait a few turns, and attack, while hoping that your opponent can't either hard counter the strategy (eternity, gravity shield, dim/wing chain, etc) or outrush it.  I went with 2x mark and max hp this time because the deck barely needs any quanta at all, and I threw in steam machines to make use of the extra water quanta, and the brimstones give extra fire quanta to pump them.  (same with leaf dragon to get the lone pegasus out)

Today's card is chaos seed.  Lots of things to do with that one... I'll try to find a new one!

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: CHAOS SEED
wins: 3 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -100  age: 1

Thumbs up: 1/3



I should have learned after all this time... never EVER trust the AI to play twin universe right.  I thought this deck would've done a bit better than it did, but I'm sure the AI was sitting on its TUs even when it could've played them to win.  I was hoping that when the AI stacked the same creature with chaos power (like it always does) that it would then TU that creature, but I guess even the temptation of an extra nice creature to twin couldn't induce it to play smarter...

Today's card is rustler.  That might be a really tough one to do well with.  I'll try to come up with something interesting...

edit: Wow, I really hit on a success this time   My rustler deck is 7-0 so far (yes, rustler is undefeated!) with 4 thumbs ups

[Odii Odsen]

Just noticed your thread. It it really nice. Like an arena-diary. Cool idea! I will look more often in this thread from today

[dragonsdemesne]

Yeah, it was more intended just for myself as an experiment, so I could track how well or poorly certain deck types did, in order to make more electrum.  After I got a trainer edition and no longer needed electrum, I started just doing decks as creatively as possible, without really caring about their win rate, as long as it was enough to stay active for several days.

[dragonsdemesne]

200hp, 30 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: RUSTLER
wins: 53 losses: 15 rank: >500 Rating: -111  age: 8

21/53 thumbs up



This deck did quite a bit better than I thought it would.  After the first two days I think it was 19-1, with about half thumbs ups.  People seemed to like it as well, judging by the thumbs up totals.  There's quite a few nice little synergies in the deck, from solar shield/rustler to green nymph/quanta creatures to mitosis/0 cost creature, and so on.  It made it the full 8 days, so it was a success for me in terms of raw quality, and it got a pretty good ratio of thumbs ups, so it was a success creatively as well.

Today's card is firefly.  Several possibilities exist for that one... I'll take a look what I've already done.  Ideally I'd like to do some oddball thing involving unupped and upped fireflies and fire/light cards, but that might be really hard to pull off successfully.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FIREFLY
wins: 0 losses: 2 rank: >500 Rating: -80  age: 1

0/0 thumbs up



I'd like to think this would've earned thumbs ups had it managed to win any games, but the deck is way too bloated to be really successful.  Rage Elixir can be used as CC or to turn queens into 9/1 attackers.  Two blessings will counteract the damage done by an elixir.  Other than that, it's got most of the usual FFQ synergies, so nothing needs to be said.  I think the deck probably has way too much air quanta and/or not enough life quanta, but I never bother doing QI numbers for my arena decks since you can't export/import deck codes there; I just eyeball it and hope it works.  Looking at it now, I really should have used damselflies instead of wind towers, to remove some excess quanta and get more damage in, particularly with the shards, but hindsight is 20/20.

Today's card is otyugh.  I've got a rather weird idea I'm going to try for this one, but it might just work if done right.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: OTYUGH
wins: 1 losses: 2 rank: >500 Rating: -75 age: 1

0/1 thumbs up



I tested a game or two against this one, and I thought it was rather fun, and it beat the deck I was using at the time (I think pdials? not sure now) so I thought it might do alright, but it was not to be.  Lots of fun little synergies; red nymphs on SoF and firemasters, and the synergy between otyughs, red nymphs, and fire bucklers.  Ah, well... I was hoping it would do better, particularly as today's card is flooding, and that's going to be really hard to pull off :p  I'll still give it a try, though.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FLOODING
wins: 0 losses: 2 rank: >500 Rating: -80 age: 0

0/0 thumbs up



Well, that was a new record... :p  Deck lasted like an hour.  I didn't expect it to last more than a day, but it managed to defeat even my lowest expectations!  I wish it had won even one game... I would then try to imagine the look on that person's face as they got roflstomped by massive invincible condors while being unable to get past the bone wall mountain.  The unupped boneyards and dry spells were deliberate; I wanted the AI to kill its own skeletons in order to create bigger condors and bone walls.  Other than that, all synergies and card choices should be reasonably obvious, albeit extremely silly.

edit: Just spun oracle, got rustler again :p  I'm not sure if I can come up with yet another clever rustler deck, but I'll try.  If not, I'll put a farm up.

[dragonsdemesne]

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

1/1 thumbs up



I'm not really sure what I was trying to do here, other than to be unpredictable.  I thought I remembered putting shards of gratitude in here, but apparently not... I do know I redid the deck a couple times because I kept running out of space to put everything I wanted, so maybe they got lost in the shuffle somehow.

Today's card is parasite.  Nothing's coming to mind right away... not sure what I'll do, yet.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: PARASITE
wins: 16 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -85 age: 4

2/16 thumbs up



Well.  Of all the decks I've had (besides the ones that die early with few/no wins) this is the worst thumbs up ratio I have -ever- had.  I even tried to use a few nonstandard cards to spice the deck up, like Condor, but it seems that wasn't enough.  Interestingly, when going back through my older decks, I found one the last time I got parasite (which inspired this deck) where I used shards of sacrifice and void, and it got better feedback from what I recall.  Perhaps the idea was new then, but has been done to death now?

Today's card is... amber nymph!  Yes!  Woooooo!  I just had one while my rustler deck was up (the 53-15 one, not the 1-3 one) so I didn't make a deck around it, but this time I definitely will.  This will be an extremely challenging one to find a deck that people don't hate, because amber nymph is such a strong and hated card, particularly in the arena, but I'll see if I can come up with something clever enough to do the trick.  I have one rather interesting idea just now... actually, come to think of it, I've NEVER seen this idea before, so I'm going for it.  Shard of patience/amber nymph... yeah, it's evil :p

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: AMBER NYMPH
wins: 47 losses: 11 rank: >500 Rating: -109 age: 7

16/47 thumbs up



This deck did about as well as I thought it would in terms of win/loss, but I'm surprised it managed to get as high as a 1/3 thumbs up ratio.  I feared people would think it was too similar to 'swallow' or that it was too full of a-hole cards like amber nymph and shard of focus.  I submitted it anyway because I have never seen anyone do shard of patience with amber nymph in the arena before, although that is largely due to the rarity of nymphs; it's quite easy to come up with an innovative arena deck based on a nymph.  I didn't want to fall back on the crutch of a boring DBH (which I've done, and had in the top 10 two or three times) or on (even more than this) denial-based monogravities and the like.  (6x nymph 6x SoF and whatever else, or pest duo, etc)

As for the deck itself, the choices should be fairly obvious.  Octopi and dragon to soak up extra water quanta in the mid-late game, salvagers to protect against EQ and to protect the shards, nymph/SoF for denial, otyugh/octopi for CC.  I didn't put this through QI calculations (I never do for arena decks, since if I don't have a code to copy/paste, I won't do it :p) but I added what I thought were several extra towers to try and make sure a nymph got out quick.  In playtesting, the AI sometimes would play a bunch of other gravity cards after the first nymph (other nymphs, otyughs, shards) instead of activating the first nymph and commencing lockdown against the player, so I added more towers in the hopes that it would have enough to do both, or at least shorten the length of time the AI was stupid :p

Today's card is aether pillar, giving me a good amount of freedom in deck design.  I'm not sure what I'll pick yet.  I'll just start going through the cards and wait until something hits me. (which is what I usually do, unless I have an idea right away)

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: AETHER PILLAR
wins: 0 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -120 age: 0

0/0 thumbs up



Meh, win some, lose some :p  Maybe I'll come up with a better deck tomorrow... it can't really be any worse.