I've been playing this deck quite a bit lately and introducing new players to it, so I thought I'd give ColorlessGreen's suggestion a go. I'm sure Chapuz can fill his time innovating great new decks ^_^.
Firstly, an introduction. What is firecell, and what is it meant to do? Fire cell is a deck that is used to defeat certain False Gods slowly but reliably by using a lot of stalling tactics followed by a massive combo. It's two main charms are that it is very cheap to build (can be played with no upgrades or rare cards), and that it is very fun to deal 200 (or more damage) in one turn.
Who are the False Gods? They are the ultimate AI you will face in Elements. They have 200 HP, draw extra cards and gain extra quanta. All their cards are upgraded, which makes them very challenging but also means that if you win cards from them, that those cards will also be upgraded. Since upgraded cards sell for over 1000 Electrum, this can provide solid (if unreliable) income of thousands of electrum per hour.
So what is the big combo used to make false gods explode? Firstly, you have to play Aflatoxin on one of their creatures, preferably a small one with 1 or 2 HP. Aflatoxin does 2 damage a turn to the target, and when the target dies (doesn't have to be from the poison), it turns into a Malignant Cell on the False God's side of the board. Every single turn, the Malignant Cell divides and spawns a copy of itself, so first there is 1, then 2, then 4, 8, 16, 23 (at 23 the board is full, and no more creatures can be played on that side). So now there will be a lot of cells trying to kill you. They will be failing thanks to your Dimensional Shields. Eventually, you will have drawn all the cards that you need for the combo (Golden Hourglasses help draw cards. So here is the combo:
- Aflatoxin - you've already used this to make cells
- Vulture - this critter gets +1/+1 every time something dies
- Fractal - cast it on the vulture and you will fill your hand with Vultures (before casting Fractal, you should have no more than 5 cards in hand)
- Play the 4+ Vultures from your hand that Fractal gave you
- Rain of Fire - cast this and kill all those cells on the other side of the board. Then watch as your Vultures grow to 20+ attack each
- Rain of Fire - cast another in case there are pesky creatures still standing that have more than 3 (but less than 6 health)
- Sky Blitz - this will double your Vultures' attack, meaning they will now hit for 40+ each
- Chimera - does your opponent have a massive Bone Wall or some other Shield? Cast Chimera and watch as you attack for more than 200 HP with a single creature
And that's the combo.
Strategy:
- stalling: you stall with Dimensional Shields, while drawing towards your combo with Hourglasses. Generally, only those gods with low levels of permanent control are viable for Firecell, and permanent control will always hit an Hourglass before a shield. Hopefully you can survive long enough to chain all your shields together, and often this means waiting until your health is in the 30-60 HP region. You can weather a few hits, but beware of creatures that deal poison damage as this will continue to hurt you after you play your shields. Generally you want to have another shield in your hand when you play one, or have an Hourglass on the field. If your Time Quanta income is low, don't play additional Hourglasses beyond the first, hold onto them to play later or discard. The same goes for the second Aflatoxin if you are low on Death Quanta. Also, never press spacebar without checking that your shield won't expire!
- malignant cells: the earlier you play Aflatoxin the better, as it gives the cells more time to divide, and once the board is full your opponent cannot play any more creatures which is very useful
- the kill: to win, you need the right cards in hand (or be able to guarantee that you draw them from Hourglasses that turn), you need to have your hand have as few cards as possible, to get the right number of Vultures. You carefully need to look at the number of creatures that you can kill (disregard those that are immortal or have more than 3 or 6 HP (depending on how many Rains of Fire you have). If there is a shield out, you may need to use Chimera.
- picking your targets and skips: this deck only works against about 10-13 of the 29 False Gods (depending on the exact cards used). Lots of gods will destroy your shields, and some, like Morning Glory, have no targets for you to Aflatoxin. Your best bet is to skip any gods that are impossible or very hard to beat. You lose 30 electrum, but that is much better than playing for 5 minutes with a high likelihood of losing anyway. Good targets are Destiny, Elidnis, Ferox, Fire Queen, Gemini, Incarnate, Miracle, Morte, Neptune, Paradox, Serket, Scorpio. Some of these are harder than others. Try all of them at least once and get a feel for what your deck can beat. Note that if you play on Kongregate, the white border hides the gods' names - you have to highlight or double-click the text in the upper right to read it.
The numbers:
- quanta requirements: for the minimum combo, you will need to play 5 Vultures (including the initial one), 1 Fractal, 1 Rain of Fire, and 1 Sky Blitz, for a total cost 15 Death, 10 Aether, 7 Fire, 9 Air. You may also need to play a second Rain of Fire (14 Fire total), extra Vultures from Fractal and Chimera (7 Gravity), as well as playing any last Dimensional Shields or Hourglasses in your hand to free up room for Fractal'd Vultures (you can have up to 8 cards in hand). Aether, Death and sometimes Fire will be your limiting resources in a typical game. If you are approaching the end of the game and seem short on quanta, stop drawing from your Hourglasses, so you have more turns. You will almost always be safe with the Shield chains by this point.
- the damage: the formula for your total damage is:
number of Vultures * (creatures that will be killed * 2 - shield absorption).
Be aware that creatures with Immortality will not be hit by Rain of Fire. You can negate the shield damage by using Chimera. Carefully work out how many Vultures you will have, if you have 5 cards in hand before playing Fractal, you will end with 4 Vultures in hand (5 in total). If you have 5 Vultures, e.g. your hand consists of Fractal, Rain of Fire, Rain of Fire, Sky Dive and Chimera, you will need to kill 20 creatures to guarantee a kill. If you can play 6 Vultures, you will need to kill 17 creatures. If you can only kill 15 creatures and there is a shield out that blocks 2 attack damage and you have no Chimera, you will need to play 8 Vultures.
Tips and tricks:
- discarding: at some point you need to look at your hand and decide if you will have enough room for Fractal'd Vultures. If you don't have the Quanta to drop your last Shields, Aflatoxin and Hourglasses, start keeping your hand full and discarding them every turn. Generally you only need 1 hourglass, 1 Aflatoxin and 3-5 shields.
- removal: sometimes you may need to use a single Rain of Fire to clear out dangerous creatures (Physalia) or if you have no shields, even after you've used Aflatoxin. This is a big risk (especially if you only have one Aflatoxin! I strongly recommend running 2).
- drawing: with 3 hourglasses, you can begin your combo if you have 3 or fewer cards in your library, as long as you have both Fractal and Vulture in your hand. This will let Fractal give you more Vultures.
- 2 turn kills: sometimes you need to risk getting off an early combo, e.g. if you run out of shields. This is only viable against gods that won't suddenly kill you next turn (they may be holding a lot of creatures) or that can remove all your Vultures, or that have Miracle. Keep the deck lists of the various gods handy to know what they are running.
- keep track of your shield usage: sometimes it's really important to know if this is your 5th or your 6th shield!
- tweak the deck, throw in Time/Death Pendulums if you need them, or take pillars out. Add Sanctuary or Sundial or Shard of Sacrifice, or Purify as you see fit.
- Aflatoxin: if you have the Death Quanta and an Aflatoxin, play it on a creature that will die in the first Rain of Fire. The second Rain will kill the Malignant Cell, for an extra +1 for your Vultures.
- against Incarnate and Morte your Chimera can easily get over 400 attack due to the Boneyards.
Upgrades:
- Electrum Hourglasses are by far the most important upgrade, as they allow you to pay 1 Time to draw a card, instead of 2. Rain of Fire is useful to upgrade since it only costs 5, but Fire is generally not your limiting factor. Phase shields costing 5 can save your life, and allow you better Fractal timings. The extra +1 damage from an upgraded Vulture could potentially be useful, but this is unlikely (I have, however dealt 196 damage with no cards in my library, upgraded Vulture would have won that). Once you have upgraded your Towers/Pendulums, your return for your Electrum will be very low.
Win %s:
- you should be winning 35-55% of your matches against non-skip gods (about 1/3rd of them). Once you get some nice upgrades, this will look more like 45-75%. It takes me 4-5 minutes to beat a false god and 5 seconds for a skip, so you can easily do ~10-12 or so false gods an hour, with hopefully at least 5-6 victories. You tend to get a card every other win (although this can vary a lot). I've posted a number of stats on page 8 of this thread.
PvP:
- this deck is quite slow and vulnerable in PvP since many players will run poison or permanent destruction or some other way to get past your shields. You can pull off some satisfying wins (although it will take a long time with the pvp delay) and remember you generally only need to do 100 damage, although it takes a while to gather the quanta. Occasionally you can beat higher level (gold, plat) arena decks that don't include control elements, but generally you want to farm with a faster deck to get more spins per hour.
Remember:
be careful of the order you play your cards in, and
calculate carefully both the damage output and the quanta needed.
Take your time towards the end of the game, if you make a mistake it's probably going to result in a loss
