(1.24) CC? Why bother?

[Nume]

Yeah I think so. Feral bond vs SoG is basically just to try to increase em rate, though it doesnt always make that much difference so may not be worth the switch (since many times by the time you win you'll be taking more than 8-9 damage per turn anyways so it cant heal you to full). I love aflatoxin though. It has helped against many FGsalready for me. The only ones where FFQ was very useful imo are the ones without creature control, and those are really easy anyways so yeah. Aflatoxin helps against those with creature control, and lets you limit the amount of creatures the opponent can use.

[stinky472]

Destroyers are supposed to be better because by then you'll have a field with a lot of Elite Fireflies generating .

You're right. I tried playing with Graviton Firemaster as a substitute for one of the destroyers, and while it is amusing to fill out a field with firemasters and have enough fire quanta to be use ablaze on each of them every turn (managed to deal over 200 damage to miracle in one turn), it takes 4 extra turns just to get them to do more than what lava destroyer starts out with.

I think I was thinking a bit too results-oriented when I fractalled my lava destroyers and had them get RoFed the next turn when they were at 1 hp. It's a rare case and better to optimize for the common case. The destroyers are much more effective as a finishing move and also to ensure we don't deck out, and they're also better if we draw one early (ex: with quint) to get an earlier victory.

As an alternative idea (always want to experiment a bit), I was thinking of replacing 1 permafrost shield with turtle shield or improved dusk mantle. They would generally be less effective than permafrost (for a start, they don't reduce damage), but they're cheaper to play and probably already pretty decent protection with the shards and antimatter (at least until we can afford to play permafrost). I often find myself frustrated when I lose because I had a permafrost shield in my hand which would have saved me but I just couldn't generate 7 water quantums fast enough. It's kind of difficult to generate the water quanta fast enough to play such an expensive shield. Perhaps dusk mantle would be more appropriate than turtle shield because this deck doesn't use any darkness quanta even though I kind of like the consistent results of turtle shield.

[stinky472]

this is my new FG killing deck, modifed with a rewind, eternity and a photon *after decking out 3 times* and i found that every FG is beatable, except for DM, get out a quinted destroyer and put antimatter on the 2 strongest creatures is the way to go, with a creature that grows eternity rewinds them, iv won 5 times vs hermes/eldiness because of that.

The rewinds are a neat idea. I'm tempted to do the same but I'm a little scared to add more cards to the deck since my chances of winning with this deck often depends on the powerful but kind of slow combination of shards, shield, and antimatter. I want to increase my chances of being able to play those earlier, but it's a difficult balance.

[kobisjeruk]

often times you'll win with 5 cards or less in your deck
maybe its just me but i've never decked out to FGs that uses Miracles
i've fought Fire Queen that spammed bonds (half a dozen before i got my pulvy) and didnt get to see a single golem until 9 cards left and still won on the back of fractalled FFQ
the key against Miracle is you need to force them to use it sooner rather than later while killing off their light towers if you get fractal early
if not, try to plan ahead with your on-board golem and calculate enough damage for fractal before their HP get below 50
i have beaten DG, Rainbow and Miracle by doing it this way, sometimes up to 3 miracles back to back but nothing can stop a 30+ atk golem plus a bunch of fractalled critters (usually golem but it can be anything)

@Nume: i have to disagree with adding bonds here, seems like you tweak the deck similar to what i did - removing the weakest link (FFQ) which ironically work a lot better with bonds and putting aflatoxin in its place
the key importance of playing bonds in a rainbow variant is that usually you have a few sources of creature generators, most notably Boneyard and FFQ
with this deck variant, you only got 2 critters + fractal which often time is used as a last turn alpha strike
putting bonds just so you can achieve EM is not worth it imo especially since you took out the miracle (the usual combo for EM in a rainbow)

permafrost is VVIP in this deck. if it wasnt for the cost, i'd probably find a way to sneak another one into the deck just so i can get it as early as possible (nothing more frustrating than seeing 6 turn after turn while you're getting beaten to death). maybe adding another shield is a good idea but you need 2 perma to ensure you got it when you need it

...thats my 2sen

[stinky472]

permafrost is VVIP in this deck. if it wasnt for the cost, i'd probably find a way to sneak another one into the deck just so i can get it as early as possible (nothing more frustrating than seeing 6 turn after turn while you're getting beaten to death). maybe adding another shield is a good idea but you need 2 perma to ensure you got it when you need it

My thoughts exactly. The permafrost shield is so effective with the shards and antimatter, and it's really the ultimate key to controlling the bleeding when we have no CC. Even though the deck is amazing already, I want to see if we can find a way to ensure that we can play it sooner on average. I tried substituting a dusk mantle for one of those in case we are low on quanta, but it's not nearly as effective (especially for a large number of small creatures) without the 2 damage reduction even with the 50% miss chance. I have to play some more to see, though it did sometimes earn me a little more time to survive to actually play the permafrost shield.

I'm almost tempted to switch to time so that we can sundial our way to get enough quanta for the shield, shards, and antimatter combo, or play upgraded dials with the entropy deck (perhaps without the draw since that miracle can really save us sometimes). If it was time, we could play a turtle shield as a substitute until we can draw the permafrost, and it'd be easier to play hourglasses to distract those gods that like to destroy/steal perms. On the other hand, antimatter would be harder to play this way, and that's also very important, but if I was to choose between faster antimatter + SoGs or faster permafrost + SoGs, the latter seems more generally helpful (antimatter and shards alone cannot save us usually, but permafrost + shards can more consistently even if the antimatters are at the bottom of the deck), and the sundials might earn us enough time to generate the quanta for both and draw the right cards.

[RavingRabbid]

I wonder how this deck can ever work so well. Awesome.

[Avenger]

Even its 30 card variant (couldn't afford a second antimatter), threw out some other duplicates, is good enough to beat various tough t50 decks. It a very nice rainbow, thank you.

[Nume]

Yeah I am thinking you are right about the bonds. I dont think I've lost because of it but it really doesnt add much to EM chances anyways because of the fact that it will only heal for at the very most 10 (if you have both destroyers and a full hand of creatures out from fractal) and with the way the deck is designed, you're likely to be more than 10 hp away from 100 anyways. As far as jade shield vs permafrost, I'm actually still liking that jade shield in there. It doesnt have the freeze ability, but it does still block 2 damage per turn and its indestructible, so its very nice against gods like EP, dream catcher, rainbow, decay, octane, hermes, or any gods with good perm control until you have both a permafrost shield and a PA in hand. The reflect ability is great also against EP, octane, and decay. I could see maybe just running 36 cards with 2 permafrost and a jade, but not sure if thats really necessary or not.

[MrBlonde]

Yeah I am thinking you are right about the bonds. I dont think I've lost because of it but it really doesnt add much to EM chances

I completely disagree with you there. I have 27 wins so far with a bond and 20 are EM's (74.07%). You just have to use it in conjunction with Miracle is all (final turn Miracle and bond heals the 1 HP). This deck goes from having virtually <10% chance of EMing to easily over 70%.

[stinky472]

Have to agree with MrBlonde. At least for me, successful games often have me healing back to 100 hp at the *end* of every round after the shards, so unless my weapon finishes off the fg right after the shard healing, it's generally impossible to get EM unless we do something like antimatter the last creature to attack and he happens to heal you back to full health. Nevertheless, I'm hesistant to include it just because I want to increase the win rate. If anything, I'd like to improve the chances of drawing that permafrost/antimatter/shard combo and being able to play it. Even that remote 2.8% initial chance that I'll draw feral bonds instead of some other card I need is enough to make me wonder if it's worth it (the probability of this unfortunate event happening increases the more cards we draw without drawing bonds). Also is EM that profitable? I generally consider the main source of profit to be the slot wins, so I've never thought too much about the electrum rate with EM when factored against win/loss rate and slot win rate. Even so I'd like to maximize win rate even if it means sacrificing the ability to win with EM. I find it much more psychologically satisfying to win more matches (even if only slightly more) than to win them with EM.

It might be more tempting to add bonds in there if we had more than one FFQ in the deck, since only one means we'll be drawing it after about 13 turns on average, I think [(35-8)/2], which isn't enough time to generate many fireflies to make the healing worthwhile for anything but EM.

[Nume]

I dont use miracle anymore (have PA instead) so yeah for me feral bond makes little sense. If you still use miracle then yes having the feral bond could be useful. Also I agree that the most important part is win rate because of the fact that cards give so much electrum compared to wins so winning more often/faster is generally better than getting EM more while losing slightly more imo.

[MrBlonde]

I dont use miracle anymore (have PA instead) so yeah for me feral bond makes little sense. If you still use miracle then yes having the feral bond could be useful. Also I agree that the most important part is win rate because of the fact that cards give so much electrum compared to wins so winning more often/faster is generally better than getting EM more while losing slightly more imo.

That makes sense. If you don't use Miracle then swapping a shard for a bond doesn't make sense at all. I just prefer EM's and i don't think having a PA over a miracle and Bond over SoG makes farming any faster or slower. And even if it did make it slower by a little bit the EM's should easily equal out in the end.