The Dragon's Arena Decks

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: PANDEMONIUM
wins: 4 losses: 3 rank: >500 Rating: -95 age: 1

1/4 thumbs up



My reasoning was pretty much like the last two decks; use shard of patience to buff something or other (in this case, purple nymphs) and stall until they were big enough to win.  I was hoping it would be received as well as the amber nymph deck was, but it obviously wasn't as strong, so it never got the chance.  (and yes, I really do have 5 upped purple nymphs; I have 11 entropy nymphs...)

Today's card is cockatrice.  The first thing I thought of, not surprisingly, given my last 3 decks, was some sort of shard of patience life deck :p  I'll see if I can make it work...

[dragonsdemesne]

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

1/3 thumbs up



More SoP silliness   The quanta denial with the ambers seems to be the way to go, most likely because many of the best plat farming decks don't really use much in the way of creatures, or if they do, they are ones that are hard to deal with under any circumstances. (and much worse with the AI's lack of common sense in most situations) 

Today's card is virus.  I'm not sure what clever and ridiculous and creative deck I can come up with for that, but it'll probably lose within 24 hours   I just can't be bothered to make decks that are actually serious in the arena, anymore.  Only funny ones are allowed!

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: VIRUS
wins: 15 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -95 age: 3

6/15 thumbs up



40% thumbs up is pretty good, so in my mind this was a success.  The deck theme should be fairly obvious; most of the deck centers around giving out poison counters to the opponent's creatures, with the rest being support and/or synergy for said strategy.

Today's card is devonian dragon.  I'm not sure that I've ever had that one for my arena deck before, so I might be able to find something new to do with it.  Here's hoping, at least...

[dawn to dusk]

Sorry for barging in here and suggesting something but I got a Devonian dragon a little while ago and it was one of the best silver decks ive ever had. Basically I went 6 dragons, 6 mitosis, 1 SoR (I only had 1) and the rest pillars with a double mark of life. AI plays it quite well and I was only level 21 or something (I think, although it may have been in bronze). It got a pretty good win/loss ratio for a bronze deck and multiple thumbs up, but could definitely be improved. sorry that this is an actual serious arena deck that you said you probably wouldnt do anymore but its one of the only arena decks that i have made and remember a while later (another is Disquake with nymphs). This is probably a really common deck but i havent seen it in plat tests all that much.
Anyway, you're a great deckbuilder and I am enjoying this thread so keep up the good work ^_^

[dragonsdemesne]

Dawn to dusk, your suggestion, except with more SoRs, is the very first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about what to do with devonian dragon.  However, I've seen it done a few times before, in the arena, and even in league play or pvp1/2 occasionally, though not this season I don't think.  I ended up submitting a slightly crazy time/death duo, using eternities and retroviruses (yes, really) for CC, and then some stall cards (SoSa, bone wall) and some graveyards, and then the eternity also doubles as a way to turn the graveyard skeletons into cool things.  I actually thought about doing something with earthquake or black hole or something like that off the mark, too, but I've done that kind of thing a few times before, and I already know roughly how well such a deck would perform, so I didn't see any point me doing something like that again

I did a thread search and I did have devonian dragon once before, and I made a duo with water using nymph's tears and queens and purify, so that I could make lots of nymphs.  It did very well, but for some bizarre reason it was rated very poorly by the community, even though I thought it was very creative, and hadn't seen anything like it before.

[dragonsdemesne]

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

1/3 thumbs up



This to me seemed like a very fun and creative deck, but I never playtested against it, so I have no idea whether I got the quanta balance right or how the AI performed with it.  I'd hoped for a little more from it, just because I thought it was one of my more interesting creations, but as is usually the case with the more innovative decks, they often fail within the first day.

Today's card is amethyst pillar.  Dunno what I'll do with that, yet.  (well, an entropy deck perhaps...)  Whatever strikes my fancy first, I suppose.

[serprex]

I dare you only use the for Dissipation Shield

I didn't think the AI would RT Skeletons

[dragonsdemesne]

I did a diss shield stall one time when spinning dissipation shield :p  It did terribly.  I did use dissipation shield in the deck I submitted, but that's not the main focus.  It's actually strongly based on the 'yeti' deck that I submitted for the bestiary, if you want to look at that.  And yeah, the AI will RT skeletons; it's actually higher priority than it RTing the human's stuff :p

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: AMETHYST PILLAR
wins: 11 losses: 5 rank: >500 Rating: -98 age: 3

4/11 thumbs up



Well, I wasn't expecting too much from this deck, considering it was based on a low level submission I made to the bestiary, but the thumbs up ratio was fairly nice, so that's always good.  I won't bother recapping my thinking for it; just look under 'yeti' in the bestiary thread in my signature if you care.  The deck actually dropped below 500 yesterday (so technically it lost at age 2) but I was too busy/lazy/didn't want to use the dimshield I got yesterday to build a deck with it.

Today's card is flying weapon.  Hmm..... a few possibilities with that one.  I'll see what I can come up with.  There's one deck I've wanted to do for a long time, and I don't think I've submitted it yet; if not, I'm going to pick it.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: FLYING WEAPON
wins: 18 losses: 6 rank: >500 Rating: -90 age: 3

(forgot to record thumbs up, I think it was about 7)



This one's from a couple days ago, when the forum was down.  I thought it was very clever, and I've always wanted to try and find a way to do shard of patience / crusader in a deck.  I'd been trying to design an unupped deck for BL based on that, but I don't think it's possible to make a decent one with unupped flying weapon. 



The one I have up now is using catapult and is 24-3 with 11 thumbs ups somehow, and is on day 3.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: CATAPULT
wins: 53 losses: 12 rank: >500 Rating: -78 age: 8

19/53 thumbs up



Well... wow, did that perform a lot better than I thought it would, on all levels.  My first thought on getting catapult was that the deck should be large, in order to dilute the problem of having ten of them in the deck.  After that, it seemed obvious that large creatures were in order, so six dragons, titans/AWs, and six shards of focus went into the deck.  Four nymphs for more control in addition to the shards, and one foil chimera, mostly for silliness, but it might've broken past a few bone walls or something on occasion, though with titans that shouldn't have really been necessary.  I also did it in the hopes that maybe the AI got to catapult an extremely fat chimera at some point :p  The deck didn't seem particularly imaginative to me, nor did I think it would survive more than a day or two, but apparently the community felt otherwise.  It got a decent number of thumbs ups, particularly early on, and managed to survive the magic eight days. (1hp left)

Today's card is mindgate, which as some may know, is my favourite card in Elements.  I'll try to build something extra special.  My first thought was a large aether mark rainbow using mindgates and nymphs.  I think I'll probably do something along those lines, with various support cards, like SoR for the nymphs, or various removal/stall cards to get it going.

[dragonsdemesne]

185hp, 60 wisdom, 2x card draw, 3x mark
Oracle Card: MINDGATE
wins: 21 losses: 6 rank: >500 Rating: -90 age: 4

9/21 thumbs up

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Deck import code : [Select]

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(imageshack was down, so I built the deck this way)

This deck was a blast to play against.  I tested it to see how it would do... and then I kept testing against it with other decks, because it was so much fun :p  This should have gotten a lot more thumbs up than it did... ah, well.  I'd totally have given this one a thumbs up, and I'm really stingy with them.

Today's card is dimensional shield.  That's always a tough one, since a lot of people don't like that card.  I'll try to find something interesting, though.

Also, owing to league codes being sent out (but not tourney codes yet) I have a mark of gravity and mark of water to put into decks now as well.  When tourney codes come, I'll pick life and something else; not sure what yet.