Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 06:05:19 am
There are 3 quints, so quint one oty, the druid, and either a strong mutant or ffq. There are two protects so put protect on eternity (which should be played mid to late game,unless you really have to do it early) and another one either on towers (against seism) or on hourglass (against the exploding/stealing fg). Be judicious with when/how you use your shields!
The deck is all upped and has many versions, in the top post I'll post 4. Vreely's variant of my "fat" deck (59% win again all gods), Vreely's 36 card version (62% win against all gods), my original "fatty" (55% win against all gods), and original "slim" .
The 40 card deck by Vreely get about 59% success rate against ALL gods.
Games: 181
Win Rate: 0.59
Elemental Mastery Rate: 0.50
Cards Won: 43 (0.24 per game)
Easiest God (min 10 games): Fire Queen (0.96 win rate)
Hardest Gods (min 10 games): Divine Glory, Dark Matter, Hermes (winless)
Gravitron win Rate: 0.32 (See he is beatable!!)
Possibly a better version is the 36 card version although some people don't like it as much.
I completed a 100 game test on my 36 card variant with these results:
Win Rate: 0.62
Normalized Win Rate: 0.61
Detailed Statistics
The idea behind this deck variant is to shrink the size down in order to get some key cards out quicker (Oty's, Feral Bonds, etc.)
Furthermore, in a smaller deck, you can remove some cards that were dead draws previously. For instance, you can safely remove one of the 4 hourglasses and still maintain a good enough ratio to get the draw going. Since the 3rd and 4th hourglass are typically dead cards in your deck, this removes one of the dead cards. Likewise, a 3rd Quint is usually not required, and where we needed 3 in the deck before to get it early enough, a 36 card deck lets you get by with 2, again removing what is often a dead draw.
Finally, fewer cards creates more consistency in your opening draw. This is a good thing, although does not really change much of the statistics on its own. The downside of this deck variant is that its harder to play well. As a player you really need to know the FGs your facing and how their scripts are processed. You have to often play odds in when yous start/stop drawing, when you play your weapons, and when to risk an early creature. Where as the previous variant, you pretty much just blindly draw as many and as fast as you can, this deck requires much more finesse. I will give examples in the FG notes.
This deck did not produce any better results than my 5 Sundial variant, however it seemed better to me. Also, with the addition of a Pulverizer it makes many of the games go much faster, drastically increasing your win rate per hour. So even if it is not statistically any better, I personally like it better even though its harder to play right. I do not recommend it for beginner players. Play a few hundred games with the easier variants first.
Changes:
* Added a Pulverizer. This requires you to juggle weapons intelligently, but really helps against some of the FGs. It makes up for removing the druid as it greatly speeds up the games where the FGs have defense. This was a key addition.
* Removed a Super Nova. They help early, are useless late, and have the danger of choking your opening draw. Still, a little injection of quantum at the right time is worth carrying a single copy.
* Removed a Protect Artifact. Like my 5 Sundial variant, this requires more careful planning, but helps keep the deck trim. Also, with 36 cards, the win rate for Seism should go up over my 40-card 5 Sundial variant.
* Again, replaced the Druid with the Arctic Octopus. It figures into defense, and I liked it in my 40-card 5 Sundial variant, however I do not think the octopus is quite as critical in this version due to the Oty's coming out sooner. Still it saved my butt enough times to warrant inclusion over the druid.
* Removed Improved Steal. See my writeup for the 5 Sundial variant.
* Removed an hourglass. With 36 cards, you can get away with one fewer of these and still get early draws going.
* Removed a Quintessence. You only really need 2, but you need to be smart about how you play them.
Play Notes:
Chaos Lord:
The Pulverizer wrecks his day. Hold onto your Eternity and slow down your draws as soon as the Pulvy hits the table. Taking out his Dissipation shield will end his day really quick. If your Pulvy comes out in time where you won't need to rewind your own cards, then protect it so he does not steal it. If you judge that you are going to need to rewind, then do not play it because you will need your PA for Eternity and he would steal your Pulvy to ruin your day. Like most FGs, he will beat you in an early rush, especially if he gets some nasty early mutations.
Dark Matter & Divine Glory:
Forget about it. You have lost before you started.
Destiny & Paradox:
So long as you don't get rushed, its an easy win. Pulvy Destiny's hourglasses and rewind any of his nasties that he cannot replay. A fireball will win you the game against Paradox. Also against paradox, quint any Oty that is getting beefy so that he does not twin it multiple times and surprise you.
Elidnis:
Without the druid, you need to use the pulvy to destroy his bonds, otherwise you are in for the long-haul. If he does not quint his forest specters, then you might may want to chance an Eternity to rewind them to feed to the Otys. If you are careful, you can play Eternity early to bounce back his guys, then replace it with the Pulvy to take out bonds. You need to be smart and only do this if you can minimize your card drawing.
Ferox, Fire Queen, & Miracle:
Very easy pairing. Every once in awhile, the early rush will take you down, but after that you are in the clear. Fire Queen is a little trickier since you have to save quints in case he gets his eagle eyes going. Once you have an Oty out of 8 defense, and a Pulvy as backup, then they are no longer an issue. You still need to quint an Oty and a Queen however since he has the fireball thing that is annoying.
Gemini:
This one got much easier. Many strategies work, from destroying his gravity, freezing his momemntum guys, bouncing back momentum, sundial to stall, and most of all, picking off his phase shields as they come out. The Pulvy makes this a cake walk after you fight off the usual early phase spider rush.
Gravitron:
This "should" be easier than other variants because it should be easier to get the Immortal Oty out with a Fireball to get him going. My stats do not bear this out. Perhaps I was unlucky, or perhaps the reduced deck size makes the permanents that much more vital and therefore critical from being exploded. I did only have 8 games, but I would expect the 0.17 win rate to go up a bit.
Hermes:
You have a much better chance with him now, but this is one of the trickiest one to play out. Mostly in deciding what to do with the weapons. You have to play the situation and take risks on what to play first, and what to protect. I don't think decking out is an issue so long as you do not have to draw like made through 25 cards. You need pulvy to take out the fire shield, but you also need Eternity to rewind his lava Golems that have grown too big to eat. Once you do get setup with an immortal Oty, then you can just eat them as he serves them up, but before then its a real juggling match.
Incarnate:
Pulvy his boneyards, & freeze stuff to slow him down. This one is easy.
Morte:
The poison can hurt if you don't get your Bonds going in time, and you have to be a bit careful with how you deploy your 2 Quints to dodge the plagues, but this one is winnable. For some reason I only faced him once in 100 games, but I think it would be a high win rate. I am looking to quint an Oty, then either the Queen or the Octopus, depending on the game situation. Destroy Graveyards with your Pulvy, but really you can do fine with switching to Eternity whenever you want.
Obliterator:
Same strategy as always here. If he gets a protected Pulvy out, you're pretty much done. Hopefully you get a pulvy out first and can snap off any that he plays. You have to be smart about when to play Eternity, as you need it to rewind early momentumed basalt dragons. Do not be afraid to play Eternity first, then replace with a Pulvy after a couple rewinds. Its a challenge to get an Oty big enough to be useful, but not impossible. Still a tricky game, and I suspect the win rate will be below 0.50
Octane:
I only played him 3 times, and picked him twice. I was probably lucky, because he seems hard. In both my wins, I had an early Pulvy that basically handed me the win. The other trick is getting 3 snacks with your Oty so you can eat most of the stuff he plays. I quinted an Oty, then the Queen, although I would quint the Octopus early if needed to survive.
Rainbow:
Like usual, this guy continue to be a thorn. Theoretically, the Pulvy will help you out if you get it early enough and keep it around to kill off his hourglasses, but with only 1 protect, you simply need to save it for the Eternity, so its a necessary risk that could cost you the game if/when he steals it. He'll zap all your hourglasses, so use them as you can. A bonewall is your savior because he will target his explosions, and pulverizer destroys on that, leaving your muc more needed bonds and boneyard. Its not impossible to beat him, but as always, you need to get lucky.
Scorpio:
Its a flat out race against him. You need to get your bonds setup to counteract poison. If you can do that before its too late, you'll win. You will quint an Oty for sure, then either an Octopus or the Queen. Do the Queen if you do not have a boneyard up because its critical to get 10 or so creatures out to counteract poison. If you do have a boneyard up, the Octopus is nice to quint so he can stall for you as you generate skeletons.
Seism:
With only 36 cards, the single protect deck should have a slightly higher win rate than the 40-card 5 Sundial variant. My stats here do not bear that out, but it would over time. The Pulvy is nice for picking off his diamond shield, but I often end up using Eternity to rewind his shriekers before they burrow so I can get an Oty out to eat them. Octopus is a huge bonus here.
Deck Import Code:
Here is my original fatty, from original 40 matches I played (discarding graviton, divine glory, and rainbow) I had about 67% win... but with more experience I think a better number would be about 63%.. and about 55% if you count ALL gods (jangoo's version gets about 57%).
win loss em % win % em
Firequeen 5 0 5 100 100
chaos lord 2 2 1 50 25
miracle 4 0 4 100 100
Destiny 2 0 2 100 100
scorpio 1 3 1 25 25
morte 3 1 1 75 25
Elidnis 2 1 0 67 0
Seism 3 2 3 60 60
Hermes 2 3 2 40 40
Obliterator 2 1 0 66 0
Gemini 1 0 1 100 100
Average 27 13 20 67.5 50
here is the deck
Compared to the original deck, it works much better, but some people like the idea of a 35 card deck, so here it is
Post by: Tigerente on January 14, 2010, 09:32:41 am
How do you handle them? I mean as with all small rainbows almost all cards are needed at some time throughout the game. I had several occasions where I had the hand full of important cards against the FG I've been fighting and the only card I could play for 5-6 turns where hourglasses (I tried the 35card version and had about 1 or 2 towers out and no quanta to play anything). Not only did I have a hard time to decide on what to discard I also couldn't benefit from the hourglass as I had a full hand of cards. Situations like this (maybe related to a bad random generator for the shuffle) made me prefer mark of entropy and 6 supernovas.
Post by: YoYoBro on January 14, 2010, 01:45:14 pm
Post by: Tigerente on January 14, 2010, 01:49:53 pm
Well, be careful not to say "this deck is bad" only because you got 3-4 bad draws in a row...I didn't intend to say it's bad. Actually I like it quite a bit. I was merely comparing it to it's 35 cards variant.
Post by: mayajulia on January 14, 2010, 03:21:22 pm
What I did do to the original list was to add 2 Shard of Gratitude and remove 1 Phase Shield. Works great to help keep your head over the water; I often sat and had a bone shield plus phase shield and could not use both; especially the live healing works great in conjunction with shields as you not only don't get more life subtracted but actually added all the while your opponent can't attack profitably.
Post by: YoYoBro on January 14, 2010, 03:31:18 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 04:59:42 pm
About shards.
I would place up to 3 shards into the fatty deck... first shard instead of feral bond, second instead of quint (one of three), third instead of hourglass or phase shield.... I don't own shards, so I can't comment/test this, but if someone can do it and post stats, I would most welcome it!!!
Fat vs Slim
The reason I added 3 sundials is because they are essentially free shields.. since mark is time, you can use it to keep yourself alive for one turn (which will allow you to draw 3-4 cards, hopefully something that might save you).. I DO NOT play sundials just to draw an extra card, since that's a waste of sundial most of the time, I would suggest you HOLD ON to them until the enemy has lots of creatures.
I advocate 4 glasses (even add it as 36th card to the slim version) since by 10th card (7+3 draws, when you are guaranteed to have 3 time quanta unless you played a dial) you have a 70% of getting an hourglass vs a 58% for fat deck and 75% instead of 65% for the slim deck... But the faster you get your first hourglass, the faster your get your second one, and once you have two-three hourglasses, you can win absolutely most games...
Also, with 40 cards there is less chance of eternity getting stuck at the bottom and an extra quint allows you to play creatures faster (since I don't have to wait as long to get a quint) and it allows you a little more flexibility with what you protect (since druid + one oty absolutely have to get quinted almost in all games where enemy has creature control... which is most games)
Again, I want to get hard stats, so please, post your losses/wins/elemental masteries
Post by: Jangoo on January 14, 2010, 05:30:02 pm
Ok, here are some statistics.
Using the attached version of the deck I scored in ...
51 games:
27 wins / 24 Losses
20 of those wins were mastery
11 cards won
CL: 2/3
FQ: 3/1
Gem: 2/0
Grav: 1/6
Her: 4/1
DG: 2/1
Des: 4/1
Eli: 2/0
Inc: -
Mir: -
Mor: 1/0
Rain: 2/4
Scor: 1/3
Seis: 0/3
Fer: 2/1
Obl: 1/0
---
Good enough for me. ;-)
As stated in the FG-thread, this deck absolutely plays on the edge of everything,
be it running low on quantums in the beginning often, be it having to choose which card to discard often, be it trimming enemy damage constantly to survive just another turn without a shield or Mircacle, be it having to keep your reserve about anything all the time.
You have to carefully manage every single card you got and will always have to look wether you can get by without it before you blindly decide to "just throw out that phase shield" or such.
Making use of AI assets is also crucial for this deck, e.g.:
Let Hermes have his fireshield or Rainbow his Eagles Eye. As long as they keep killing your fireflys and skellis your bonewall lives.
Let Destiny do the rewinding for you and use your own time quanta to rewind his guys.
Let FQ build up some 5 FFQs even if you have an Oty out. Survive as long as possible with phase shields or Miracle then RoF + Bonewall some 23 Fireflies ...
I agree with invalmian that 4 Hourglasses are a must for this deck:
Drawing quickly is the decks major strength.
Moreover, Hourglasses are a prime target for explosions so since you will mostly be able to afford them due to mark of time it's no biggie playing them either way. It will just save your FB or Graveyard from certain destruction.
Also, I wouldnt take out any phase shields. They are a major survival asset of this deck and will often give you the time you need to prepare that RoF, Oty, Graveyard -> Bonewall comeback.
Post by: Cambadillac on January 14, 2010, 06:13:42 pm
I added slim deck to the top post.. here are some answers to concerns posted:Your math is wrong for the odds to draw an hourglass by card 10.
About shards.
I would place up to 3 shards into the fatty deck... first shard instead of feral bond, second instead of quint (one of three), third instead of hourglass or phase shield.... I don't own shards, so I can't comment/test this, but if someone can do it and post stats, I would most welcome it!!!
Fat vs Slim
The reason I added 3 sundials is because they are essentially free shields.. since mark is time, you can use it to keep yourself alive for one turn (which will allow you to draw 3-4 cards, hopefully something that might save you).. I DO NOT play sundials just to draw an extra card, since that's a waste of sundial most of the time, I would suggest you HOLD ON to them until the enemy has lots of creatures.
I advocate 4 glasses (even add it as 36th card to the slim version) since by 10th card (7+3 draws, when you are guaranteed to have 3 time quanta unless you played a dial) you have a 70% of getting an hourglass vs a 58% for fat deck and 75% instead of 65% for the slim deck... But the faster you get your first hourglass, the faster your get your second one, and once you have two-three hourglasses, you can win absolutely most games...
Also, with 40 cards there is less chance of eternity getting stuck at the bottom and an extra quint allows you to play creatures faster (since I don't have to wait as long to get a quint) and it allows you a little more flexibility with what you protect (since druid + one oty absolutely have to get quinted almost in all games where enemy has creature control... which is most games)
Again, I want to get hard stats, so please, post your losses/wins/elemental masteries
At card 7 (first turn) there is a 25% chance to have at least 1 hourglass in your hand.
Here is the math:
1 / 40 = .025
hourglass in deck = 4
draws = 7
4 + 7 = 11
11 - 1 = 10 (you must subtract one to save for original card, don't ask why, you just do. You can see why by simplifying the problem to lesser cards.)
.025 * 10 = 25% to have at LEAST 1 hourglass by card 7 (turn 1)
at card 10 (turn 3) the math is:
1 / 40 = .025
hourglass in deck = 4
draws = 10
4 + 10 = 14
14 - 1 = 13
.025 * 13 = 32.5%
To prove the math is right, we can continue to work on....
If there are 4 hourglasses in a 40 card deck, how many draws will it take to get a 100% chance to draw one? The answer is not 36, but 37 draws(think about it for a sec). So using the same math above...
37 + 4 = 41
41 - 1 = 40
.025 * 40 = 100%
Ta da.
Post by: lauritius on January 14, 2010, 06:21:35 pm
I'm considering switching back to my aflatoxin-graveyard experiments. The win percentage was much lower, but it was fast and fun.
Post by: zhen_rogue on January 14, 2010, 07:27:15 pm
I agree with invalmian that 4 Hourglasses are a must for this deck:How do you feel about that 2nd Eternity in your deck?
Drawing quickly is the decks major strength.
Moreover, Hourglasses are a prime target for explosions so since you will mostly be able to afford them due to mark of time it's no biggie playing them either way. It will just save your FB or Graveyard from certain destruction.
Also, I wouldnt take out any phase shields. They are a major survival asset of this deck and will often give you the time you need to prepare that RoF, Oty, Graveyard -> Bonewall comeback.
With 2 Protect Artifacts, do you simply toss one out early and save the other as emergency? Or is it simply to prevent the "last card is Eternity so you lose" scenario?
It seems on paper to be somewhat redundant, and perhaps an alternate card (sundial x2? poseidon? firestorm x2?), or simply going to a 39 card deck could further sharpen your performance.
Post by: Delreich on January 14, 2010, 07:33:31 pm
Your math is wrong for the odds to draw an hourglass by card 10.No, ivalmian's maths is correct. I don't know what your calculations are supposed to be, but here's a tutorial on how to solve this kind of problem:
http://stattrek.com/Lesson2/hypergeometric.aspx (http://stattrek.com/Lesson2/hypergeometric.aspx) (there's a calculator (http://stattrek.com/Tables/Hypergeometric.aspx) as well, for those who just want an answer)
Actually, looking closer, it's not so much a tutorial as it is an explanation of the problem and a formula.
Also, please don't quote entire posts just to reply to a small part of it. Just quote the bit you'll be commenting on and relevant context, if any.
Post by: Jangoo on January 14, 2010, 09:02:45 pm
How do you feel about that 2nd Eternity in your deck?No, that "last card in deck" scenario doesnt worry me at all because the statistics are just fine for me: One game in 35-40 games where Eternity comes last and it doesnt even mean that you HAVE to lose because of it is no reason to clog up a deck I think.
With 2 Protect Artifacts, do you simply toss one out early and save the other as emergency? Or is it simply to prevent the "last card is Eternity so you lose" scenario?
It seems on paper to be somewhat redundant, and perhaps an alternate card (sundial x2? poseidon? firestorm x2?), or simply going to a 39 card deck could further sharpen your performance.
I put in a second Eternity simply because it is an awesome tool that goes waaaay beyond preventing a deckout.
As I suggested in the other thread, I think this deck performs so well because it doesn't even try to be ready for absolutely anything. It doesnt have two RoFs to even be able to counter Graviton, it doesnt have a Pulvy and thus doesnt care about Eagles Eye, enemy shields etc., it doesnt have deflag, a second steal or even PU.
It just stubbornly sticks to the TIME-theme of drawing fast and getting out YOUR setup asap.
And if I do choose to play with mark of time I want to make sure I at least have the most powerful time-card ready when I need it.
Eternity is used for various things here:
- sending back any growers that have grown too large (f.spectres, fireeaters, destroyers etc.)
- sending back any protectors my single oty wont be able to deal with this turn (e.g. shriekers before they burrow, anubis before he immos etc.)
- sending back any creature that has momentum on it to remove it (Gemini-scenario)
- sending back any creature that will drain the AIs quantum supply (make him repay that dragon over and over thus stalling him to play anything else with this elements-quantum)
- sending back any bighitter I mutated (either because he is still too big for Oty or because he turned out to be an element the AI doesnt have)
- sending back anything that would just be too much for my Bonewall
- sending back any creature of mine that got damaged (infected otys, FQs I didnt have quint ready for)
- sending back any mutation on my side that would be much better as the original creature
(Anubis with 2/4 and scavenger? FQ with 3/2 and dive? Fallen Elf with 1/3 and infect? ... hm ...)
That should about cover the most prominent uses of Eternity.
So I am always happy to have one ready somewhat earlier than turn 13 (statistical middle ground) and I dont think any other card could make up for it. :D
Post by: Delreich on January 14, 2010, 09:14:24 pm
(Anubis with 2/4 and scavenger? FQ with 3/2 and dive? Fallen Elf with 1/3 and infect? ... hm ...)None of those will ever actually happen (unless you meant a 7/12 nub, etc), as mutants never have lower stats the their non-mutant forms. Also, I'd say just about any scavenger is useful.
Your point still stands of course, it's just the examples that are a bit flawed. =]
I'm not sure I agree with you about eternity being the most powerful time card though, I think that honour goes to the hourglasses.
Post by: YoYoBro on January 14, 2010, 09:24:18 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 09:26:31 pm
Your math is wrong for the odds to draw an hourglass by card 10.
At card 7 (first turn) there is a 25% chance to have at least 1 hourglass in your hand.
Here is the math:
1 / 40 = .025
hourglass in deck = 4
draws = 7
4 + 7 = 11
11 - 1 = 10 (you must subtract one to save for original card, don't ask why, you just do. You can see why by simplifying the problem to lesser cards.)
.025 * 10 = 25% to have at LEAST 1 hourglass by card 7 (turn 1)
at card 10 (turn 3) the math is:
1 / 40 = .025
hourglass in deck = 4
draws = 10
4 + 10 = 14
14 - 1 = 13
.025 * 13 = 32.5%
To prove the math is right, we can continue to work on....
If there are 4 hourglasses in a 40 card deck, how many draws will it take to get a 100% chance to draw one? The answer is not 36, but 37 draws(think about it for a sec). So using the same math above...
37 + 4 = 41
41 - 1 = 40
.025 * 40 = 100%
Ta da.
32.5% is the probability of getting EXACTLY one hourglass, 70% is the probability of getting AT LEAST one hourglass.. it is equal to P(1hg)+P(2hg)+P(3hg)+P(4hg)... You calculated the first term in the sum, the other 3 terms increase 32.5 to 70% ;)
An easier way to calculate the "AT LEAST" probability is to calculate probability of getting 0 houglasses and then substracting that probability from 1 (which give you the probability of NOT getting 0 hourglasses, that is, getting AT LEAST 1 hourglass)...
I know my stats, I'm a physics grad student ;)
Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 09:45:57 pm
I agree with invalmian that 4 Hourglasses are a must for this deck:How do you feel about that 2nd Eternity in your deck?
Drawing quickly is the decks major strength.
Moreover, Hourglasses are a prime target for explosions so since you will mostly be able to afford them due to mark of time it's no biggie playing them either way. It will just save your FB or Graveyard from certain destruction.
Also, I wouldnt take out any phase shields. They are a major survival asset of this deck and will often give you the time you need to prepare that RoF, Oty, Graveyard -> Bonewall comeback.
With 2 Protect Artifacts, do you simply toss one out early and save the other as emergency? Or is it simply to prevent the "last card is Eternity so you lose" scenario?
It seems on paper to be somewhat redundant, and perhaps an alternate card (sundial x2? poseidon? firestorm x2?), or simply going to a 39 card deck could further sharpen your performance.
The two protect artifacts are there so that (1) When playing Seism, you get a chance to protect your pillars before they become rubble (2) if you fight someone with explodes, you can protect an hourglass or towers (depending on what you have less) and still have one for your eternity
I haven't tested a 2nd eternity (I only own one, and I don't feel like spending a lot of time in trainer), but I don't think it's a good idea.... While we are mark of time, you will have to spend LOTS of time quanta for your 4 glasses, 3 dials, 1 eternity, and perhaps 20 fast draws.... That's 39 time quanta used there... more than double of any other quanta type in my deck... and then you still have to ensure that when you reach your last card, you have about 10 time quanta in reserve so you can safely use your eternity and not deck out... I understand that eternity is great for offensive use, but I am not sure if you can really afford it...
I think if you ABSOLUTELY hate the idea of decking out, get rewind time...
About other weapons... pulvi is the only other choice, but I am AGAINST it since I tested my slim deck with it, and I don't think it was good... Essentially, the Improved Steal is there to take a good enemy weapon and use it until you are ready to play eternity... eagle's eye is a non-issue since all of your core units are quinted... and once you start mass mutation you'll get a critter that has explode, at any rate... enemy eagle's eye will be overwhelmed... enemy shields are non issue since you will start to cause massive damage only once you have many mutants... I have yet to have a mutant army where I didn't have steal/destroy abilities... I think they are very common product of improved mutation...
So essentially, you can get a pulvi but it's only useful in early game, and then it's NOT VERY useful (if you have no heavy hitters, why worry about shields? if your creatures are quinted, why worry about eagle's eye/eternity?)... If anything.. getting your pulvi stolen by, say, chaos lord can screw you badly :P.
Post by: Jangoo on January 14, 2010, 10:16:23 pm
[/quote]
Scavengers are useful depending on the situation. And are you talking of "most powerful time card".. do you mean time only? I mean, both cost and effect cost? Because anubis would be another good candidate..Yes, I was talking about time-cards only. True that Anubis is pretty good too especially when you could actually afford him due to the mark.
I never actually examine the stats closely except for something like "bighitter?"(Anubis with 2/4 and scavenger? FQ with 3/2 and dive? Fallen Elf with 1/3 and infect? ... hm ...)None of those will ever actually happen (unless you meant a 7/12 nub, etc), as mutants never have lower stats the their non-mutant forms. Also, I'd say just about any scavenger is useful.
Your point still stands of course, it's just the examples that are a bit flawed. =]
I'm not sure I agree with you about eternity being the most powerful time card though, I think that honour goes to the hourglasses.
But that would explain why the bighitter-mutants are almost always dragons. ;D
Hourglasses are vital for this deck and the time-scheme alike, agreed.
Still, considering the deck-out prevention solely, Eternity cant be weighed in gold I think.
I suppose this is like trying to evaluate the "most important organ in the human body" ... if the hourglasses are the pumping heart of time, then Eternity certainly is the brain. Anubis would range somewhere in the "right arm" segment for me. ;-)
I haven't tested a 2nd eternity (I only own one, and I don't feel like spending a lot of time in trainer), but I don't think it's a good idea.... While we are mark of time, you will have to spend LOTS of time quanta for your 4 glasses, 3 dials, 1 eternity, and perhaps 20 fast draws.... That's 39 time quanta used there... more than double of any other quanta type in my deck... and then you still have to ensure that when you reach your last card, you have about 10 time quanta in reserve so you can safely use your eternity and not deck out... I understand that eternity is great for offensive use, but I am not sure if you can really afford it...I just discussed this issue with Gemini and he agreed that getting his grav-dragon back all the time and barely being able to afford playing it again and again pretty much awarded me the win. :D
From my experience, you will end up getting one hourglass quite early at most and a second one somewhat later ... actually powering through 3 or 4 of them is maybe needed for one or two turns only.
It is true that there is a little shortage in mid-game mostly, where you have to decide wether to draw below 3 time-quants or use those 3 for an Eternity-move. On the other hand those two choices are kind of on opposite sides of the strategy spectrum:
Drawing even faster bets on getting set up asap, using Eternity bets on stalling the AI and slicing off the most stingy edges of his creature layout thus delaying the desperate need to set up quickly.
Ah yeah, and then there is that "already 7 cards in my hand and no quants to play them"-situation. Here I am always happy to at least rewind some nasty Destroyer or something.
Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 10:21:24 pm
Drawing even faster bets on getting set up asap, using Eternity bets on stalling the AI and slicing off the most stingy edges of his creature layout thus delaying the desperate need to set up quickly.I realize that as well, which is why your modification was added to the top post ;) Once more data is known about my version of the fat setup, we can compare who's is better ;P
Ah yeah, and then there is that "already 7 cards in my hand and no quants to play them"-situation. Here I am always happy to at least rewind some nasty Destroyer or something.
Post by: ivalmian on January 14, 2010, 11:56:49 pm
| god | win | loose | em |
| Fire queen | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Chaos Lord | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| miracle | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| destiny | 1 | 0 | 1 |
This is 6/7 wins with em (1 loss)... i had 3 rainbows and 2 divine glorys which I quit immediately (as I mentioned in the top post, this deck isn't meant to fight those fgs )
Combine with yestrdays 5/6 that's an incredible 11/13 games... although again, I've been very lucky.. I'm sure seism/hermes/graviton would put a dent into these scores
Jangoo, I would seriously encourage you to play with my fat deck in its original setup, I find that the dials (when saved up till enemy starts hitting hard) are invaluable... + the extra quint and glass is amazing..
In almost all of my games it went like this: go down to 10hp .. then otys + sundials + bonewall + RoF = 20+ bone shield... then eventually miracle :P
My chaos lord game had me without glasses for the first ~5 turns... with my first glass stolen the very turn i played it (i then had 2 more come in).. and by the time i had otys out etc, i was facing a huge mutant army (gotta love 2 fate eggs both becoming obsidian dragons on the same turn )...
Post by: Justsoneguy on January 15, 2010, 02:08:46 am
CL: 2/3Wow those are pretty nice stats vs. dg, rain, and hermes -- combined 8-6. I'd be curious if those stand up, maybe I need to alter my deck and stop instant quitting vs them.
FQ: 3/1
Gem: 2/0
Grav: 1/6
Her: 4/1
DG: 2/1
Des: 4/1
Eli: 2/0
Inc: -
Mir: -
Mor: 1/0
Rain: 2/4
Scor: 1/3
Seis: 0/3
Fer: 2/1
Obl: 1/0
Post by: YoYoBro on January 15, 2010, 12:27:55 pm
Post by: Jangoo on January 15, 2010, 02:06:47 pm
Combine with yestrdays 5/6 that's an incredible 11/13 games... although again, I've been very lucky.. I'm sure seism/hermes/graviton would put a dent into these scoresSeism and Graviton are borderline impossible I find, while Hermes seemed to be doing his regular thing and still got boned ... I owed it to the early Eternity though in his case.
Jangoo, I would seriously encourage you to play with my fat deck in its original setup, I find that the dials (when saved up till enemy starts hitting hard) are invaluable... + the extra quint and glass is amazing..
As for the setup: My deck was actually a custom version of your slim deck. :P
I guess I will try and fiddle around with one more sundials and taking out the 2nd Eternity for a couple games.
As for the Tower though: I cant picture the deck without him, ending up with no or just one tower and having to discard for several turns as often as I do.
Wow those are pretty nice stats vs. dg, rain, and hermes -- combined 8-6. I'd be curious if those stand up, maybe I need to alter my deck and stop instant quitting vs them.
This decks looks really good versus hard gods, but I'm surprised you lost to FQ and fer.. bad starting hands?I would never just quit for "grinding-efficiency" reasons. At least take a look at the FGs opening moves and check your own draw before quitting. After all, duking it out with Rainbow is fun even you lose mostly.
YoYo, yes, exactly ... those losses to FQ and Fer were pretty much the downside of my victories against Glory and Rainbow. :-/
The two fights I won against Glory are really not representative at all ... Glory was like running on only one Morning Star for 14 turns, not drawing any Firetowers and so on.
So those stats will certainly not stand in the long run.
Post by: AiBerry on January 15, 2010, 02:35:55 pm
Regarding protect artifact, I save one for eternity and usually try to play it on my Graveyard so I have a way to get creatures out if I lose/sacrifice my FFQ.
Post by: ivalmian on January 15, 2010, 04:57:12 pm
I'm using a variation of an early version of this deck, the main difference being I took out the supernovas in place of more towers and three shards of gratitude (I have 6). For weapons I play eternity and pulverizer, but Ivalmian, I think you have a good point regarding pulverizer. I think I'll take it out and add a steal :)Makes sense, this is why I opted to put in a 3rd quint in the fat version of the deck... since against exploding gods it's important to keep at least one hourglass :P having three protects usually isn't what i need since more gods have creature control than permanent control... Since you have many shards, I would remove the feral bond... as it is now essentially superfulous (really, it's main goal is to allow you to make em victories... )... I am a little bit concerned about removing all of sn's, so I would have at least two, but remove pulvi + feral....
Regarding protect artifact, I save one for eternity and usually try to play it on my Graveyard so I have a way to get creatures out if I lose/sacrifice my FFQ.
Post by: ivalmian on January 15, 2010, 05:20:35 pm
| god | win | loose | em |
| Fire queen | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Chaos Lord | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| miracle | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| destiny | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Scorpio | 1 | 0 | 0 (could have been an em, but i forgot to play miracle before killing) |
| Graviton | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Morte | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Post by: YoYoBro on January 15, 2010, 05:55:26 pm
Gods Wins Losses
Morte 2 0
Hermes 1 1
Elidnis 1 0
DG 0 2
Rainbow 0 1
Seism 1 1
Post by: ivalmian on January 15, 2010, 06:11:16 pm
My stats on 10 games, fat deckIf you drop rainbow and divine glory (which is what I advocate)
Gods Wins Losses
Morte 2 0
Hermes 1 1
Elidnis 1 0
DG 0 2
Rainbow 0 1
Seism 1 1
that's 5 wins in 7 games or 71% win ;) vs 80% i got so far.. that's pretty close :P
Post by: YoYoBro on January 15, 2010, 06:14:40 pm
Post by: cthulhu on January 15, 2010, 06:18:11 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 15, 2010, 06:28:50 pm
Looks good, hopefully I can get my novas upgraded soon so I can try it out.cthulhu, I would upgrade hourglasses, otys, and fallen elf first, then novas :p
Post by: cthulhu on January 15, 2010, 06:33:50 pm
I already have those, that's why I'm upping my novas ;)Looks good, hopefully I can get my novas upgraded soon so I can try it out.cthulhu, I would upgrade hourglasses, otys, and fallen elf first, then novas :p
Post by: ivalmian on January 15, 2010, 10:44:51 pm
70.588% win rate, 50% of games are ems :P
| win loss em % win % em Firequeen 5 0 5 100 100 chaos lord 2 2 1 50 25 miracle 3 0 3 100 100 Destiny 2 0 2 100 100 scorpio 1 2 1 33.33333333 33.33333333 graviton 0 1 0 0 0 morte 3 1 1 75 25 Elidnis 2 1 0 66.66666667 0 Seism 2 1 2 66.66666667 66.66666667 Hermes 2 2 2 50 50 Obliterator 2 0 0 100 0 Average 24 10 17 70.58823529 50 |
Post by: AiBerry on January 16, 2010, 07:06:29 am
I'm debating between removing feral/switching it with a shard. I've been absently using it as bait with gods with permanent destruction to protect shards (not sure if it's targetted before hourglasses, but maybe?). It has helped me overcome Scorpio poisoning, but not sure where else it could be useful.
Oh, the deck's fully upgraded too. :)
Edit: I think I'll leave the feral bond in to help with EM's/permanent sacrifice. I'm loving the addition of sundials, though!
Post by: YoYoBro on January 16, 2010, 12:42:10 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 16, 2010, 06:49:01 pm
Ival, can you post your win/loss % agains DG/rain? Do you keep quitting with them? And are you going to add the new superbeastly fire buckler to your deck now? :)
New fire buckler? I just checked on my old firebuckler (not in deck) and it still said 1 damage to oncoming creature for 4 fire quanta... what has changed?
I always quit against dg/rain, but I would say that of a few early games I played against dg with this deck, I've always lost... I can't imagine winning unless dg gets a horrible start...
Post by: Cisco on January 16, 2010, 09:13:43 pm
BTW quitting against these 2 gods changes your stats cosiderably 70% without those two is closer to 50-maybe 60%
Post by: ivalmian on January 16, 2010, 10:05:12 pm
Fire buckler takes out immo now. DG becomes one of the easiest FG gods now as long as you have one.i see... i might think about including it..
BTW quitting against these 2 gods changes your stats cosiderably 70% without those two is closer to 50-maybe 60%
also, if you include all rainbow and dg as losses then win rate is 60% (70%* 13/15), but I don't think that's fair since you don't spend any time fighting dg/rain so in effect 70% of the games you spend time on you win (which is what matters for farming).
Post by: Jangoo on January 17, 2010, 05:26:03 pm
also, if you include all rainbow and dg as losses then win rate is 60% (70%* 13/15), but I don't think that's fair since you don't spend any time fighting dg/rain so in effect 70% of the games you spend time on you win (which is what matters for farming).Lol, how is that not fair? You spend 30 coins and score-rating on it.
I dont think you can actually make a win-percentage on the basis of only counting in certain gods as long as you will be paired against all of them over time.
Post by: elfreth on January 17, 2010, 10:00:08 pm
Deck preformed at 10% win ratio after 10 games (sorry actual stats were deleted w/ no way to recover them).
I realize it was only 10 games, and we can all have 10 game streaks of unluckiness.
Currently unable to believe it will function 50% or better w/ what appears to be poor draws that are unique to me.
I still like the idea, even from the first incarnation of the slimmed down version. It's just not performing.
Several things HAVE to happen for it to work and, though statistically they should, statistics have a way of not always working out how we'd expect.
Still not convinced the FG's don't tweak our draws as well.
Regards,
elfreth
Post by: zhen_rogue on January 17, 2010, 11:28:42 pm
Another data point:I doubt the FG matchup tweaks your draw/shuffle, but I swear sometimes the 'random' mutation results aren't so random.
Deck preformed at 10% win ratio after 10 games (sorry actual stats were deleted w/ no way to recover them).
I realize it was only 10 games, and we can all have 10 game streaks of unluckiness.
Currently unable to believe it will function 50% or better w/ what appears to be poor draws that are unique to me.
I still like the idea, even from the first incarnation of the slimmed down version. It's just not performing.
Several things HAVE to happen for it to work and, though statistically they should, statistics have a way of not always working out how we'd expect.
Still not convinced the FG's don't tweak our draws as well.
Regards,
elfreth
When Chaos Lord mutates one of his creatures, it becomes a 12/9 Dragon with devour.
When I mutate a creature, it becomes a 0/1 Fate Egg with gravity pull.
Post by: ivalmian on January 18, 2010, 01:11:26 am
Another data point:Um, are you using the fat version of the deck?
Deck preformed at 10% win ratio after 10 games (sorry actual stats were deleted w/ no way to recover them).
I realize it was only 10 games, and we can all have 10 game streaks of unluckiness.
Currently unable to believe it will function 50% or better w/ what appears to be poor draws that are unique to me.
I still like the idea, even from the first incarnation of the slimmed down version. It's just not performing.
Several things HAVE to happen for it to work and, though statistically they should, statistics have a way of not always working out how we'd expect.
Still not convinced the FG's don't tweak our draws as well.
Regards,
elfreth
I mean YoYoBro got 71% games against non rain/dg from what he posted...
Jangoo using a slightly modified (and i think in a not good way) deck got 55% wins against non rain/dg (53% if you count rain/dg) ...
This implies that the deck is >55% and perhaps <70%.... not 10%... I mean, we have combined almost 100 games which average to like 63% :p (again if you average the jangoo's deck + yoyobro + me, and we aren't all lying :P )
I think either you are not playing it right.. or your random number generator is REALLY screwed up...
------------
Also zhen, I think that since a win gives you so much more money, the 30 lost electrum is essentially a non-issue... seriously.. if you win a card every 5 wins and half of your games are em, then in 10 games you make
((5 * 120) + (2 * 40) + (((1 200 * 7) / 10) / 5)) - (30 * 3) = 758 per 10 games played... even if you quit a couple of times, then that's still ~700 coins...
Post by: elfreth on January 18, 2010, 02:51:01 am
Also been saying that I appear to get the worse draws ever. Honestly, there's really nothing I can do if I only see 2 towers in half the deck. Or if I never see a shield before I have 5 life left (course there have been times I've come back from that).
It's not a difficult deck to understand. I just wanted to add another data point for everyone's consideration.
Post by: ivalmian on January 18, 2010, 03:27:40 am
The concept of the deck is pretty straight forward, I think I understand how it's suppose to work. That's why I still like it, the concept at least. I've been saying that the prng's screwy for a while...ya, that's screwy, most games i start with 2-3 towers and a shield or dial :P I mean, with 7 shields/dials, you expect that every 5-6 cards you get a shield or dial :P This implies that you can get almost constant coverage (as long as you save up shield/dials from early game)....
Also been saying that I appear to get the worse draws ever. Honestly, there's really nothing I can do if I only see 2 towers in half the deck. Or if I never see a shield before I have 5 life left (course there have been times I've come back from that).
It's not a difficult deck to understand. I just wanted to add another data point for everyone's consideration.
I wonder, can you try playing this game from a computer other than your usual one?
Post by: Jangoo on January 18, 2010, 02:37:04 pm
I am surprised you are lucky enough to get that many towers in the starting hand invalmian.
If anything, my experience was more like this deck definately lacks quantum supply and I would start with no or just one tower so many times. Also, I would frequently not be able to play my supernovas thus having to discard something.
This is why I also tried another slightly different version:
From the fat deck (as in the original post)
-2 sundials, -1 supernova
+2 qtowers, +1 SoG
So here are the updated statistics:
122 games (played out ALL the gods)
-> first 61 of which were played with the 2 Eternity Version in the original post
-> second 61 of which were played with the slight modification described above*
60 games won
62 games lost
50 games won with mastery
23 cards won
CL 5/5
FQ 10/4
Gem 7/0
Gra 2/10
Her 4/4
DG 3/6
Des 5/3
Eli 4/0
Inc 4/2
Mir 6/4
Mor 1/1
Rai 2/7
Sco 3/6
Sei 2/5
Fer 2/1
Obl 2/4
* I probably should have seperated the statistics for the single gods but was too lazy since the difference between decks is really more like a note. Also, the first deck performed 30/31 in 60 games, so funny enough the trend is exactly the same as with the second deck.
Post by: zhen_rogue on January 18, 2010, 03:23:12 pm
I am surprised you are lucky enough to get that many towers in the starting hand invalmian.This is my exact experience - though when the quantums are available early (e.g. a "good" draw) the deck typically performs well.
If anything, my experience was more like this deck definately lacks quantum supply and I would start with no or just one tower so many times. Also, I would frequently not be able to play my supernovas thus having to discard something.
I think all this deck needs is a very very slight modification or two to improve the quantum generation potential in the first two turns.
Will also try a deck variant with regular novas in leu of supers.
Post by: ivalmian on January 18, 2010, 04:53:16 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 18, 2010, 05:00:38 pm
Post by: Jangoo on January 18, 2010, 07:07:53 pm
Ok... after playing a few more games and landing graviton... i'm gonna say that in my mind graviton is joining the ranks of rain/dg in being not worth the fight :PYeah really, I lost to him 10 times and won only 2 times in 12 games.
That is way worse than my ratio against Rainbow and Glory even.
The problem is that you HAVE to HAVE a RoF + quinted Oty ready early enough so his momentum wont kill you anyways.
Optional would be a quinted Druid and Eternity to stall his creatures down.
Either way, if you are not ready for action by turn 5 something you are done for.
I used to play with an Oty + H.Armor deck that made Graviton really easy.
It's not really profitable to add Armor since the patches anymore ... :-/
Post by: ivalmian on January 18, 2010, 07:28:50 pm
Ok.. some more games, graviton being ignored (with dg/rain)
win loss em % win % em
Firequeen 5 0 5 100 100
chaos lord 2 2 1 50 25
miracle 4 0 4 100 100
Destiny 2 0 2 100 100
scorpio 1 3 1 25 25
morte 3 1 1 75 25
Elidnis 2 1 0 67 0
Seism 3 2 3 60 60
Hermes 2 3 2 40 40
Obliterator 2 1 0 66 0
Gemini 1 0 1 100 100
Average 27 13 20 67.5 50
That'a 40 game result with 67.5% wins, 50% em
Post by: elfreth on January 18, 2010, 10:00:51 pm
I tweaked the deck to add Jangoo's suggestions, just able to get in 10 games during work...
Results:
morte 1 0 (cards=1)
gemini 0 1 (cards=0; never saw hg, one phase shield, game over 5-6 turns)
fire queen 1 0 (cards=0)
elidnis 2 0 (cards=2;jade staff,forest spectre)
rainbow 0 2 (cards=0;2nd game lost due to no protect artifact in 30 cards)
scorpio 0 1 (0qt/sn in draw,0qt turn 2,3,4,5)
seism 0 2 (1qt in draw-protected @ 2nd turn, 14 cards in=no HG/Shield/Wall) near identical for game 2)
Having much better luck now, the added qt's have been helping I believe. You'll notice some of the losses are due to just terrible draws.
40% with 2-3 just lost to bad draws.
One thing I've noticed and curious about, with such a slim deck, what should be our hierarchy of discarding when forced to discard (happens often enough I need to ask).
Post by: Jangoo on January 18, 2010, 11:11:15 pm
Discarding just about always blows majorly with this deck because you basically need every single card. I still dont think that you could establish a set hirarchy since the gods have so different requirements.
I mostly discard Supernovas first unless I already have one Ent-quantum and am pressed for getting those extra two quants next turn to play a Phase Shield e.g.
Against Gemini, Destiny, Incarnate, Morte ... I often discard Quintessence first. (of course gainst those gods and FQ and Miracle PAs go out right away)
Also, if I already have an hourglass out losing one or two doesn't hurt too bad I find.
Post by: mayajulia on January 19, 2010, 04:53:51 pm
By these means I am now constantly at >50% against all gods but Rainbow and Divine Glory. Against the latter I even get to some respectable Numbers (around 40%), as the additions of Shard and Fire Buckler both help very good against DG; especially the latter can nearly all by itself wreak havoc against DG, if drawn early enough. But Fire Buckler sure is against many fast gods like Hermes and Fire Queen a good addition, as it can both easily decimate the numbers of attackers in huge numbers and help acquiring Bone Walls and let Otygh get a faster shot against Firefly Queens and Gravitons own Otyghs and other fat-bottomed creatures.
Post by: ivalmian on January 19, 2010, 05:23:49 pm
My upgraded version of ivalmian's Rainbow Deck you can see below. Basically I took the "fat" version and fattened it even more, by adding a Quantum Tower, one Supernova, Shard of Gratitude and Fire Buckler.I am generally against adding SoG into the deck since most people don't own one (including me, I only have SoD), but may be this works well... My only concern is that you will have further trouble drawing creatures/glasses...
By these means I am now constantly at >50% against all gods but Rainbow and Divine Glory. Against the latter I even get to some respectable Numbers (around 40%), as the additions of Shard and Fire Buckler both help very good against DG; especially the latter can nearly all by itself wreak havoc against DG, if drawn early enough. But Fire Buckler sure is against many fast gods like Hermes and Fire Queen a good addition, as it can both easily decimate the numbers of attackers in huge numbers and help acquiring Bone Walls and let Otygh get a faster shot against Firefly Queens and Gravitons own Otyghs and other fat-bottomed creatures.
Please get some statistics, and may be this is the direction we should move towards!
I've played a few more games with my fat deck (will update stats st some point) and after 50 games I'm at 60% win rate (I had like 4 games lost in a row, now I know how you feel elfreth!!!!)
:p
Post by: Cisco on January 19, 2010, 05:40:21 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 19, 2010, 06:52:36 pm
Actually with some help via Jmizzle I have 4 sog in my deck and am over 60% closer to 70%. Without theme it be hard to win. They won´t get targeted right away. They are simply low on the list of prioritys for the AIi am not saying they are bad, I'm just saying most people don't have that many... also, with this deck you get 60% without SoG, so I agree that adding will probably boost that percentage..
Post by: Alexfrog on January 20, 2010, 06:21:40 am
Post by: ivalmian on January 20, 2010, 06:41:23 am
I really need shards!! People, put um some shard farm t50s!!again, i think for my deck, playing without SoG is just fine :)
Post by: zhen_rogue on January 20, 2010, 03:45:04 pm
So far, the results appear better (for me anyway).
Post by: ivalmian on January 20, 2010, 05:14:39 pm
Right now i'm testing the 'fat' variant, the only change is swapping the 3 sundials for 3 SoGs.Well, I can certainly believe that.. I think SoGs are good rares, not essential for this deck, but they ARE good!
So far, the results appear better (for me anyway).
Post by: Alexfrog on January 20, 2010, 06:57:05 pm
In order to maximize gains per hour, we should prioritize losing fast or winning with a high probability in games that we play out. Ignoring the hard false gods by immediately quitting is beneficial to gains per hour. In fact, I think it makes sense to build the deck in order to maximize win % against the easy/medium difficulty gods, and completely ignore the hard ones. Generally we should beat the easy gods by having enough towers, and getting some card draw (having hourglass), since if we draw extra cards, we will draw into whatever else we need.
Post by: ivalmian on January 20, 2010, 07:15:34 pm
Tested this and I also experienced too few quantum towers. I had success after addign several towers. Its a waste of card to have only a couple towers early on and end up discarding. In my experience the no tower hands are not worth playing, even against easy gods. Sure you can play it out and might win sometimes, but its far better to quit, lose the 30 coins, and try again to get a higher probability chance of winning.This deck wins at least 40- 50% even with no towers in the first 2 turns... seriously...
In order to maximize gains per hour, we should prioritize losing fast or winning with a high probability in games that we play out. Ignoring the hard false gods by immediately quitting is beneficial to gains per hour. In fact, I think it makes sense to build the deck in order to maximize win % against the easy/medium difficulty gods, and completely ignore the hard ones. Generally we should beat the easy gods by having enough towers, and getting some card draw (having hourglass), since if we draw extra cards, we will draw into whatever else we need.
Again, you can replace protects by towers and only play gods with no perm control... But frankly, I would just stick with the way I advertise it, auto quit on graviton, rainbow, divine glory, perhaps, leave against hermes if you don't have a good start, but fight everyone else...
Post by: Alexfrog on January 20, 2010, 11:35:02 pm
If we were entropy mark with 6 supernovas, then we might survive without towers, since after 2 turns you can just play the supernovas - but we arent.
The deck is clearly great, I just feel it gets a higher percentage of winnable draws with a bit more towers.
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 03:23:51 am
I find that it doesnt win that much with no initial towers, when I've tried to play those starts I just end up wasting time and getting killed before I can get going - or being in too big of a hole.ok, i'll think about additional towers... if i make a new (modified) fat deck, are there people willing to get stats on it (i'm not about to run 60 more games :P)? Ofc.. i will do some preliminary testing before I post it... but yeah.. I need someone to do 20-30 games and record how they do against various gods...
If we were entropy mark with 6 supernovas, then we might survive without towers, since after 2 turns you can just play the supernovas - but we arent.
The deck is clearly great, I just feel it gets a higher percentage of winnable draws with a bit more towers.
Post by: elfreth on January 21, 2010, 04:05:05 pm
Course, last few days have been much better!
On a tangential note, are SoG's really difficult to get? I farmed t50 for a month on and off I think and have all the rares I could want. I think the only card I no longer have is the arctic octopus/squid thing. I won one and accidentally sold it when I didn't get a warning msg that it was rare...oh well.
Post by: FrozenFlame on January 21, 2010, 04:48:15 pm
Post by: Jangoo on January 21, 2010, 05:00:00 pm
ok, i'll think about additional towers... if i make a new (modified) fat deck, are there people willing to get stats on it (i'm not about to run 60 more games :P)? Ofc.. i will do some preliminary testing before I post it... but yeah.. I need someone to do 20-30 games and record how they do against various gods...You will find statistics from my games here:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.30.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.30.html) (on the bottom)
As stated in there, I unfortunately didn't seperate the two deck versions statistics for the individual gods, but its at least 61 games with an 11 Tower Version and the other 61 games with a 12 Tower Version. (exact same overall winning ratio)
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 05:18:14 pm
I'll post one (or both, if they both work) when I am done with preliminary testing...
Post by: Alexfrog on January 21, 2010, 07:47:02 pm
I got 3 more shards of gratitude grinidng T50 last night, thankfully.
Not sure what to think of permafrost shield. Its more expensive than phase shield and doesnt stop all the damage. If only it froze them all the time!
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 07:59:38 pm
I look forward to seeing the testing results!yes, but this is an addition, not a replacement. Also, it will be the only card that uses water quanta.. which means that by mid game the shield is free...
I got 3 more shards of gratitude grinidng T50 last night, thankfully.
Not sure what to think of permafrost shield. Its more expensive than phase shield and doesnt stop all the damage. If only it froze them all the time!
Post by: Alexfrog on January 21, 2010, 09:03:37 pm
Whyen do you tend to play out the ice shield?
Generally my progression has been Sundials->Phase Shields->Bonewall, essentially stalling for a while until I can set up a bonewall play with rain of fire/otyugh backup to keep it alive for a long time.
Permafrost shield is probably better when combined with the shards than without them. With the shards its ok to take some damage each turn just not a ton. Permafrost is good at making that happen wihle sticking around indefinitely.
I tried playing without Sundials last night and had a couple losses to Fire Queen and Ferox where I couldnt draw enough defense, that I felt I shouldnt have lost with sundials in there. But maybe I just need to shirnk the deck further and get all my shards upgraded so I can use them.
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 09:40:03 pm
Yes, I like the use of the water quanta in some way.Ok, so the 35 card deck will not have sundials but will rather focus on getting lots of hourglasses quickly... The only reason to use a sundial (i think) is because you didn't draw a shield yet... so in my ideal game I would use (bone wall 1/phase shield 1) -> (phase shield 2/permafrost) -> (if need be bone wall 2).
Whyen do you tend to play out the ice shield?
Generally my progression has been Sundials->Phase Shields->Bonewall, essentially stalling for a while until I can set up a bonewall play with rain of fire/otyugh backup to keep it alive for a long time.
Permafrost shield is probably better when combined with the shards than without them. With the shards its ok to take some damage each turn just not a ton. Permafrost is good at making that happen wihle sticking around indefinitely.
I tried playing without Sundials last night and had a couple losses to Fire Queen and Ferox where I couldnt draw enough defense, that I felt I shouldnt have lost with sundials in there. But maybe I just need to shirnk the deck further and get all my shards upgraded so I can use them.
Power of the permafrost shield is that on average it allows enemy creatures to attack only about half as often as they would otherwise. This means that each create has offence which is
Effective offense = (Original offense -2) / 2
So a 5 offense creature will do about 1.5 damage per turn .. so gods that mass weak creatures will get screwed... also, zans indicated that it will be made that immortal and burrowed creatures will be capable of being frozen.. which makes this shield EXTREMELY powerful against dg and seism. Indeed, it may make beating dg with this deck doable.
For many gods (ferox, seism, destiny, chaos lord, death gods) I think that permafrost would be an exceptionally powerful counter.
Loosing sundials will be VERY bad only against gemini and graviton (due to momenta) but graviton already beats me pretty consistently and gemini, well, we'll see :P
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 11:23:21 pm
But, i did make an EXTRA-fat deck.. I think it may play a bit better than my current fat deck, but I need people to volunteer to test run it and record statistics!!
Some major changes are:
- no more sn.. For this large of a deck, they loose their appeal
- 5 more qt
- One more glass.. I find that this is critical
- Permafrost... I think it is amazingly useful.. seriously, a number of gods just choke on it.. an early permafrost more or less makes a win against scorpio,morte,incarnate, ferox, and ffq... didn't try against dg, but it should work too...
- Purify... while a little bit unrelated to the major theme of the deck, I am just sick and tired of loosing because I have 20 poison.... even though my creatures are dominating
- One more sundial... to make the numbers more round :P
SINCE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING, NO, DON'T PUTT ALL 5 GLASSES ON FIELD, IDEA IS TO PUT 2-3 EARL ON.. OTHERS ARE PROB NOT NECESSARY (but you need 5 in deck so there is high probability of drawing them early)
The idea of this deck is similar to the fat version, although now more than ever it is critical to get an hourglass out.. with an extra hourglass, probability of getting the hourglass is even higher than before, so this should not be a big problem... 9 shielding cards are also nice since the games are now a bit longer.. again, the hope is draw through all 45 cards in about 15-20 turns :P
(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7681/extrafat.jpg)
Post by: clawver937 on January 21, 2010, 11:51:43 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 21, 2010, 11:57:34 pm
The win ratio for this deck(s) is actually MUCH lower. I was skeptical about the win ratios, so I talked to Ivan about the win ratios, and he said he excluded divine glory, rainbow, and graviton. That means the ACTUAL win ratio is MUCH lower. Another thing he mentioned, was the fact that he only played about 60 games. Let's see...that averages out to.....5 games per false god. Misleading results, indeed.um.. 60 games is more stats than most decks have.. and i ask for more... i also explicitly say that ignore those gods.. even in the title i say "almost all"... the winning ratio if you include ALL gods is like 55% (according to compilation of statistics by me, jangoo, and yoyobro )
Post by: clawver937 on January 22, 2010, 12:12:16 am
(30:25). That doesn't seem so good when you have THIS http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1748.0.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1748.0.html)
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 12:16:13 am
60 games is definitely not "more stats than most decks have". The stats ARE forged if you don't include ALL the false gods, and I have no idea how you get 55% from the games he loses against Rainbow, Divine Glory, and Graviton. Let's do this the hard way...his win/loss ratio to false gods is currently 27:13. He loses to Rainbow, Divine Glory, and Graviton about 80% of the time. Let's assume he plays 5 games against them (average number of games played against each false god). He wins three games, and loses twelve games....27+3=30, 13+12=25. New win ratio, is 30:25. Hmmm... seems a LOT lower than that 67.5% he had before.Um..
-hiss
(A) i say i ignore those gods.. so everyone knows
(B) 30/25 is 55% win rate.. which is EXACTLY what i said in my last post..
(C) People, please check a new variant (from previous page) and tell me what you think (stats against gods)
Bah.. you modifier your post..
PuppyChow's deck has almost EXACT same stats, but it uses shards, which some people don't have (like me)...
Post by: Vreely on January 22, 2010, 04:24:22 pm
After testing 50 games, I am starting to think that my shard variant is not even as good as your non-shard variant. More speculation on why later.
I made the following changes to your fat deck:
- Add 3x SoG
- Remove 1 Sundial
- Remove 1 Phase Shield
- Remove 1 Super Nova
- Change Graveyard to non-upped Boneyard
I think removing the SN was the right move. They choke you initial hand when you are waiting for entropy quanta. Still a good card, but I think it runs better 1 SN lighter. Removing both the SD and the Phase Shield may have been a mistake. Most of my deaths are due to getting overwhelmed early, and I think the extra SD would help this.... also help me draw to that first hourglass faster. I think I am OK with taking out the Phase Shield... with your setup, I can usually draw to it by the time I need it, and leaning on it is a huge risk against those explosion oriented gods.
Important!! Keep the FB in. SoGs do not give you life until AFTER the battle. This means that you do not finish with EM nearly as often as the FB since it gives you life DURING the battle. The FB is responsible for a very high percentage of my wins coming with Elemental Mastery.
Granted, I did not play with your original fat deck, but I have followed this thread. Here are differences I am noticing with the SoGs:
- Increased win rate against Scorpio & Morte (SoGs help this a lot to counteract poison)
- Decreased win rate against Ferox, Miracle, and Chaos Lord, and Gemini.... the initial rush is the reason. Another SD would possibly give me that 1 extra turn needed to get that fireball/bonewall up, or whatever.
- Siesm is probably a tiny bit harder due to having 1 less Super Nova, but I doubt this is a big difference
- Rainbow, DG, and Gravitron do not get any easier. I agree with you that its not worth the time.
Here are the statistics. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=3147126446)
Elemental Mastery: 15
Wins: 6
Losses: 29
Win Rate: 0.42
Details are in the link.
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 05:27:44 pm
Ivalmian, I like your deck better than PuppyChows. I played about 10 games with each of your initial decks, (thin and fat), and like the fat version better. Then I decided to modify it a bit and collect some stats with a few shards thrown in.Ok, thanks, did you try my extra fat deck? I have a feeling it MAY be better than the regular fat one :P
After testing 50 games, I am starting to think that my shard variant is not even as good as your non-shard variant. More speculation on why later.
I made the following changes to your fat deck:Note: I left the FB in. It is a mistake to take this out.
- Add 3x SoG
- Remove 1 Sundial
- Remove 1 Phase Shield
- Remove 1 Super Nova
I think removing the SN was the right move. They choke you initial hand when you are waiting for entropy quanta. Still a good card, but I think it runs better 1 SN lighter. Removing both the SD and the Phase Shield may have been a mistake. Most of my deaths are due to getting overwhelmed early, and I think the extra SD would help this.... also help me draw to that first hourglass faster. I think I am OK with taking out the Phase Shield... with your setup, I can usually draw to it by the time I need it, and leaning on it is a huge risk against those explosion oriented gods.
Important!! Keep the FB in. SoGs do not give you life until AFTER the battle. This means that you do not finish with EM nearly as often as the FB since it gives you life DURING the battle. The FB is responsible for a very high percentage of my wins coming with Elemental Mastery.
Granted, I did not play with your original fat deck, but I have followed this thread. Here are differences I am noticing with the SoGs:I will keep playing it and collecting stats for this thread, but the initial results are starting to make it look like your non-SoG deck is better. After I hit 100 games, I may make a minor switch and take out another SN to put back in a Sundial. I think it may be better this way.
- Increased win rate against Scorpio & Morte (SoGs help this a lot to counteract poison)
- Decreased win rate against Ferox, Miracle, and Chaos Lord, and Gemini.... the initial rush is the reason. Another SD would possibly give me that 1 extra turn needed to get that fireball/bonewall up, or whatever.
- Siesm is probably a tiny bit harder due to having 1 less Super Nova, but I doubt this is a big difference
- Rainbow, DG, and Gravitron do not get any easier. I agree with you that its not worth the time.
Here are the statistics. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=3147126446)
Elemental Mastery: 15
Wins: 6
Losses: 29
Win Rate: 0.42
Details are in the link.
I do need more stats though!!
(http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7681/extrafat.jpg)
Post by: Scaredgirl on January 22, 2010, 06:06:53 pm
Post by: Jangoo on January 22, 2010, 06:51:35 pm
@ Vreely:
Very good analysis indeed!
I also had the feeling that SoGs dont help as much as they should.
While they may certainly be invaluable in any pvp, t50 or lvl5-deck, the gods are generally just too brutal and fast to make it up with some puny 15HP healing per turn.
Concerning the supernovas, I also removed one in my second version of the fat-deck and I think it performs better now than having to discard a SN anyways while you gain any quantum-supply but 2 measly entropy-quants.
@Scaredgirl:
Aaaah come on!!!
Quint already got nerfed enough by firewall (and soon permafrost) to impact on it.
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 07:06:43 pm
That looks pretty good to me. Quintessence is definitely the "hip" card at the moment. It's on top of my "needs a nerf" list.haha.. may be 1 quanta more expensive, but definitely not a big nerf! Anyways, I think with the nymphs getting out, there will be a whole new type of fg grinders... although it strongly depends how rare the nymphs will be...
Post by: Vreely on January 22, 2010, 07:36:34 pm
Quote
Ok, thanks, did you try my extra fat deck? I have a feeling it MAY be better than the regular fat one :PNo I did not try it. I will stick with what I have because switching all the time makes it harder to get valid statistics. I'll continue to gather and report on the SoG variant I am using, at least until I hit 100 games. On you extra fat deck, I would be interested in the stats, but I like the looks of the 40 card version better. The bigger the deck, the harder it is to match up quints w/ creatures, the slower it is to get an immortal Oty out, slower to your boneyard, etc. Perhaps my impression will be wrong.
On another note, one other change I made in my SoG variant that I forgot to mention in previous post (will edit it next) is to put a non-upped boneyard instead of the graveyard. Its cheaper & therefore faster, and your deck simply does not rely on skeleton damage. Instead they are there to prevent deck out and also to get improved. Typically, if I survive to the boneyard/oty setup, then the game is mine regardless of skeleton damage.
Thoughts?
Post by: Jangoo on January 22, 2010, 08:25:01 pm
On another note, one other change I made in my SoG variant that I forgot to mention in previous post (will edit it next) is to put a non-upped boneyard instead of the graveyard. Its cheaper & therefore faster, and your deck simply does not rely on skeleton damage. Instead they are there to prevent deck out and also to get improved. Typically, if I survive to the boneyard/oty setup, then the game is mine regardless of skeleton damage.It's a common perception that Boneyards are more useful than Graveyards against FGs.
Thoughts?
Personally, I rarely get to the point that I really dont have enough Death-quants to play my graveyard though. The problem is that the critical death-card is the Bonewall which will cost you 5 quants either way.
Very seldom it happens that I would sure like to play my Yard AND the Wall (mostly shortly before RoFing the oppo setup) but that I am short of 1 or 2 quants. This is the exception to the rule that I eventually manage to get out both of them at ease.
On the other hand, I would claim that Skelli-dmg is heavily underestimated.
Especially with a deck like this where you only have 1 Druid and 1 FFQ your only dmg-source are slowly evolving Firefly-Swarms and turn by turn "possibly crushing" mutants.
Many FGs have either no shield or rely on a shield that blocks only 1 dmg or none. Given that background I sure like to see my mob of say 15 Elite-Skellis pounding in a nice 15-30 dmg per turn while the Druid once again fails to produce anything better than 1/5 momentumed mutants.
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 08:34:08 pm
Ok, I understand, I also like smaller decks, which is why my first attempt at this deck was only 35 cards :P From the 15 games I've recorded so far, I think the extra fatty plays a little bit easier than the 40 card deck.. I find that I very often get 3-4 hourglasses by turn 10 which makes me unstoppable.. Also, I don't htink quinting is a problem since you still have the same number of quints/creatures... and extra shields let you wait a little bit longer... (but not much longer since hourglasses still allow you to go through deck in ~15-20 turns).QuoteOk, thanks, did you try my extra fat deck? I have a feeling it MAY be better than the regular fat one :PNo I did not try it. I will stick with what I have because switching all the time makes it harder to get valid statistics. I'll continue to gather and report on the SoG variant I am using, at least until I hit 100 games. On you extra fat deck, I would be interested in the stats, but I like the looks of the 40 card version better. The bigger the deck, the harder it is to match up quints w/ creatures, the slower it is to get an immortal Oty out, slower to your boneyard, etc. Perhaps my impression will be wrong.
On another note, one other change I made in my SoG variant that I forgot to mention in previous post (will edit it next) is to put a non-upped boneyard instead of the graveyard. Its cheaper & therefore faster, and your deck simply does not rely on skeleton damage. Instead they are there to prevent deck out and also to get improved. Typically, if I survive to the boneyard/oty setup, then the game is mine regardless of skeleton damage.
Thoughts?
Boneyard vs graveyard .. like jangoo I think Boneyard >> Graveyard since in MANY close games the 2/2 skellies is what allows me to win.. True, when I am "crushing" the enemy, graveyards seem better, in fair match ups, they don't...
Post by: Vreely on January 22, 2010, 09:16:17 pm
Are you guys using the Miracle enough to have in the deck? I have to say that in the SoG variant I am still playing, I have only used it twice now in the 60 recorded games. When I lose, I am losing way before I have the 12 light quanta to use it, and when I win, I get the bonewall defense setup such that I do not need to use it. There are a couple critical turns it can buy you for sure, but I am just not hitting it very often.
The other use of course is to play right before the end to get an EM victory. I have used it a couple times in this manner. I am just starting to consider that its not worth having, at least in the SoG variant I am playing. I have not made any decisions yet, but I am thinking of removing it after the 100 game mark in place of either a permafrost shield, another SD, or possibly a Forest Specter (an immortal FS is a great place to put water quanta into). However, I then have a bunch of useless light quanta, and I do so hate to waste ;)
Thoughts?
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 10:01:04 pm
Another line of thought:I think with SoGs miracle might be not as needed (remember though, I want to make a deck that works shardless).. I think in the shardless variety, miracle is CRITICAL against poison gods (often time the healing doesn't start to counter the poison until end-game, although less important with extra fattty deck since there is a purify, and most poison is from early game).. also, miracle allows em victories which would not have happened otherwise (again, with extra healing from SoG, might be irrelevant).... With my extra fatty deck, so far ALMOST ALL of my wins were EMs, and I think at least half of the EMs were because I played a miracle... Anyways, these are my thoughts :p
Are you guys using the Miracle enough to have in the deck? I have to say that in the SoG variant I am still playing, I have only used it twice now in the 60 recorded games. When I lose, I am losing way before I have the 12 light quanta to use it, and when I win, I get the bonewall defense setup such that I do not need to use it. There are a couple critical turns it can buy you for sure, but I am just not hitting it very often.
The other use of course is to play right before the end to get an EM victory. I have used it a couple times in this manner. I am just starting to consider that its not worth having, at least in the SoG variant I am playing. I have not made any decisions yet, but I am thinking of removing it after the 100 game mark in place of either a permafrost shield, another SD, or possibly a Forest Specter (an immortal FS is a great place to put water quanta into). However, I then have a bunch of useless light quanta, and I do so hate to waste ;)
Thoughts?
PS: as I play more and more games with my extra fatty deck, the permafrost starts to look like a very good shield...
Here is a VERY perliminery report:
God Total Wins Losses Em Win % Loss % Em %
Chaos Lord 0 2 0 0 1 0
Miracle 1 0 1 1 0 1
Morte 2 2 2 0.5 0.5 0.5
Seism 1 2 1 0.3 0.6 0.3
Hermes 0 2 0 0 1 0
Incarnate 3 0 3 1 0 1
Fire Queen 1 0 1 1 0 1
gemini 2 0 1 1 0 0.5
Destiny 1 0 1 1 0 1
Ferox 1 0 1 1 0 1
Total 12 8 11 0.6 0.4 0.55
Post by: elfreth on January 22, 2010, 10:08:08 pm
divine glory 0 2
rainbow 0 1
ferox 0 1
incarnate 1 0 (eclipse)
fire queen 1 1
scorpio 1 0
seism 0 1
hermes 0 1 (no idea what I lost too, at 22 life at the beginning of his turn I was suddenly dead)
So, bout par for the course @ 30%. I'll try the original w/o the SoGs but they've been critical every game so far and I've had no QT issues (thank goodness). But to be fair I'll give it 10 w/o the SoGs. Then depending on which performs best, I'll move on toward 50 or more games.
PS. I'm a Permafrost convert now...that thing has been crucial in every win so far!
e
Post by: ivalmian on January 22, 2010, 11:01:54 pm
Here's my 10 games w/ the extra-fat (+4 SoGs):
divine glory 0 2
rainbow 0 1
ferox 0 1
incarnate 1 0 (eclipse)
fire queen 1 1
scorpio 1 0
seism 0 1
hermes 0 1 (no idea what I lost too, at 22 life at the beginning of his turn I was suddenly dead)
So, bout par for the course @ 30%. I'll try the original w/o the SoGs but they've been critical every game so far and I've had no QT issues (thank goodness). But to be fair I'll give it 10 w/o the SoGs. Then depending on which performs best, I'll move on toward 50 or more games.
PS. I'm a Permafrost convert now...that thing has been crucial in every win so far!
e
Extra fat with 4 SoG is i think won't work.. I think 45 cards is as fat as a deck like mine can go.. any fatter and you'll need more creatures, multiple rof, etc...
Post by: ivalmian on January 23, 2010, 06:18:21 am
Total wins: 17
Total losses: 8
Elementary Masteries: 16
Fraction wins: 0.68
Fraction losses: 0.32
Fraction EM: 0.64
Post by: Alexfrog on January 23, 2010, 07:45:21 am
Post by: Vreely on January 23, 2010, 08:02:50 pm
The Summary:
Elemental Mastery: 33 (rate 0.33)
Wins: 8
Losses: 59
Win Rate: 0.41
Follow link above for full stats.
In the 100 games I only lost 1 of them to a deck out due to Eternity being the last card.
I am going to try a slight variant next where I add back in a SD and maybe a Permafrost shield, then convert back the the upped graveyard.
On a side note: Anybody else seeing the newer gods at a lower frequency as I am?
Post by: ivalmian on January 23, 2010, 10:04:20 pm
Here is the updated statistics (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=3147126446) for 100 games on the 40 card SoG variant I am using.Nice vreely, seems 23 of the losses were from DG/rain/graviton... so without them you get 52%...
The Summary:
Elemental Mastery: 33 (rate 0.33)
Wins: 8
Losses: 59
Win Rate: 0.41
Follow link above for full stats.
In the 100 games I only lost 1 of them to a deck out due to Eternity being the last card.
I am going to try a slight variant next where I add back in a SD and maybe a Permafrost shield, then convert back the the upped graveyard.
On a side note: Anybody else seeing the newer gods at a lower frequency as I am?
I would strongly suggest you try the shardless extra fat (or regular fat) deck though, as I think the deck in its current state is not really shard friendly :p
Also, zanz suggested (in chat) that certain gods (like hermes) are more likely to appear than other gods...
Post by: FrozenFlame on January 24, 2010, 01:14:38 am
(no idea what I lost too, at 22 life at the beginning of his turn I was suddenly dead)He used a fireball on you with lots of fire quantum. Happens to me ocasionally. Next time you'll know ;p
Post by: ivalmian on January 24, 2010, 05:24:15 am
which is why it's important to use miracle when fighting hermes whenever you're below 30hp... cause then he can just kill ya..(no idea what I lost too, at 22 life at the beginning of his turn I was suddenly dead)He used a fireball on you with lots of fire quantum. Happens to me ocasionally. Next time you'll know ;p
Post by: Vreely on January 24, 2010, 05:23:38 pm
I would strongly suggest you try the shardless extra fat (or regular fat) deck though, as I think the deck in its current state is not really shard friendly :pI think you are right that a shardless version is better, and now you have the stats to back it up.
Post by: Cynxos on January 24, 2010, 05:30:20 pm
This deck is good but I think the PuppyChow deck is better, it gets control faster. It doesnt spend as much time just stalling and drawing, so the game takes less time to finish. Seems better for coins gained per hour.I have to agree on this, I did try this deck compared to PuppyChow's, and I just got better results with his.
Post by: ivalmian on January 24, 2010, 08:59:04 pm
Post by: ivalmian on January 25, 2010, 04:48:04 pm
Post by: Jangoo on January 25, 2010, 06:18:00 pm
Here are some concluding statistics from my latest version of this deck. (see attachment)
*Note. These are fresh statistics and do not include any of those I posted above.
82 games (played out ALL the gods)
47 games won -> 57,3% overall win-rate
35 games lost
36 games won with mastery -> 76,6% mastery-rate
15 cards won -> 18,3% card win-rate
CL 7/3
FQ 2/2
Gem 1/4
Gra 2/6
Her 1/6
DG 2/1
Des 3/0
Eli 1/0
Inc 4/1
Mir 5/1
Mor 4/2
Rai 2/3
Sco 2/2
Sei 4/2
Fer 4/0
Obl 1/2
Par 1/0
It's funny how luck seemed to strike totally differently this time.
E.g., while winning hands down every time against Gemini in the last series, in this one he killed me quick and nasty most of the time. On the other hand, in this series I got kind of lucky with Seism where he would kill me mostly in the last series.
----
Concerning Divine Glory:
I am not sure if quitting him right away is a good idea with this deck.
I guess it depends if one really wants to take that RL-time-effiency-oriented stance or whether one just wants to play have fun and try ones luck. Either way, this deck is probably as good as it gets agains Glory since setting up asap is the only possible strategy if you dont want to include firewalls in your deck.
A note on the SoGs:
I also find that SoGs aren't really a top-notch investment against the FGs.
They mostly come up with too much dmg in their first turns already and in the very most cases one would better have an extra shield (or QT to pay for one) ready than some puny 10HP healing generated by two SoGs.
However, the AIs incentive for exploding permanents seems to be pretty high for SoGs, so having one or two in the deck to indirectly protect the more valuable permanents such as shields, FBs and graveyards isn't too bad:
weapons > hourglasses > SoGs > shields > anything else , seems to be the basic formula here
PuppyChows deck didn't work too well for me either:
Even though I liked the Perma-shield it still didn't help much getting off the ground against most gods, the main reason being simply that it doesn't include Quints and Protects.
Once adding those cards to the deck, it became too big to live up to its original promise of being fast which could then only be countered by adding more hourglasses again which would then lead to a totally different deck again, that ran short of time-quanta. So I figure, I might as well play this one. ;-)
Post by: ivalmian on January 25, 2010, 07:09:29 pm
Ok guys.Ok.. i think i might adopt this as the standard version of my deck :P
Here are some concluding statistics from my latest version of this deck. (see attachment)
*Note. These are fresh statistics and do not include any of those I posted above.
82 games (played out ALL the gods)
47 games won -> 57,3% overall win-rate
35 games lost
36 games won with mastery -> 76,6% mastery-rate
15 cards won -> 18,3% card win-rate
CL 7/3
FQ 2/2
Gem 1/4
Gra 2/6
Her 1/6
DG 2/1
Des 3/0
Eli 1/0
Inc 4/1
Mir 5/1
Mor 4/2
Rai 2/3
Sco 2/2
Sei 4/2
Fer 4/0
Obl 1/2
Par 1/0
It's funny how luck seemed to strike totally differently this time.
E.g., while winning hands down every time against Gemini in the last series, in this one he killed me quick and nasty most of the time. On the other hand, in this series I got kind of lucky with Seism where he would kill me mostly in the last series.
----
Concerning Divine Glory:
I am not sure if quitting him right away is a good idea with this deck.
I guess it depends if one really wants to take that RL-time-effiency-oriented stance or whether one just wants to play have fun and try ones luck. Either way, this deck is probably as good as it gets agains Glory since setting up asap is the only possible strategy if you dont want to include firewalls in your deck.
A note on the SoGs:
I also find that SoGs aren't really a top-notch investment against the FGs.
They mostly come up with too much dmg in their first turns already and in the very most cases one would better have an extra shield (or QT to pay for one) ready than some puny 10HP healing generated by two SoGs.
However, the AIs incentive for exploding permanents seems to be pretty high for SoGs, so having one or two in the deck to indirectly protect the more valuable permanents such as shields, FBs and graveyards isn't too bad:
weapons > hourglasses > SoGs > shields > anything else , seems to be the basic formula here
PuppyChows deck didn't work too well for me either:
Even though I liked the Perma-shield it still didn't help much getting off the ground against most gods, the main reason being simply that it doesn't include Quints and Protects.
Once adding those cards to the deck, it became too big to live up to its original promise of being fast which could then only be countered by adding more hourglasses again which would then lead to a totally different deck again, that ran short of time-quanta. So I figure, I might as well play this one. ;-)
Perhaps with SoG changed to Permafrost (must not use shards :P)
Post by: Vreely on January 25, 2010, 07:43:01 pm
Post by: Vreely on January 25, 2010, 11:27:27 pm
With an overall win rate of 0.48, here are the detailed statistics. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=2872398504)
Notes:
- Added a 2nd Feral Bond and I thin it helps the deck. After I took out the SoGs, I wanted to replace the life point generation. A 2nd FB means I can draw it earlier, and also, having 2 in play is not a bad thing at all.
- Playing with 4 Sundials now. I think this is key. It really helps me stay alive past the early rushes. They also help me stay alive on Obliterator, Gemini, Elidris, and Gravitron since they stall the momentum creatures until I can kill them. I think it is key to be able to beat Gravitron more, and the SDs allow this. Reason: He is one of the high rate matchups. Skipping Divine Glory is not throwing away nearly as many games as skipping Gravitron.
- Added Aflatoxin. I'll target a skeleton, a firefly, or sometime even my druid. It just helps fill my side of the board with things for the Oty's to eat. They power the FBs much earlier for life, and they also power the bone wall. Once when playing Scorpio, after stealing his permafrost shield, I targeted his Physalis and let his side of the board fill up with things that could not hurt me and were an endless meal supply for my Otys. Primary issue is waiting for the death quanta, but I think I am going to keep it in.
- I did decide to try without the Miracle. So far, I have not missed it, but I may add this back in. I think the 2nd FB with the Aflatoxin does a better job for life generation, and is much more versatile.
Post by: ivalmian on January 27, 2010, 04:43:07 am
I have stats for 50 games currently on a new variant that uses more sundials The deck plays much better I think, and the stats bear it out. Its still not winning at the rate that Jangoo's variant is though, so perhaps I'll switch over to his for 50 games and see how it plays out. I do like the attached version better though.Ok, keep up the good work! I would think that miracle is a must (or nearly so).. and alfatoxin sounds like a pretty good idea... I also tested the permafrost vs no-permaforst and it seems that the no-permafrost version does play a bit better :p
With an overall win rate of 0.48, here are the detailed statistics. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=2872398504)
Notes:I like how it is playing so far, but statistically its not matching up to Jangoo's version.
- Added a 2nd Feral Bond and I thin it helps the deck. After I took out the SoGs, I wanted to replace the life point generation. A 2nd FB means I can draw it earlier, and also, having 2 in play is not a bad thing at all.
- Playing with 4 Sundials now. I think this is key. It really helps me stay alive past the early rushes. They also help me stay alive on Obliterator, Gemini, Elidris, and Gravitron since they stall the momentum creatures until I can kill them. I think it is key to be able to beat Gravitron more, and the SDs allow this. Reason: He is one of the high rate matchups. Skipping Divine Glory is not throwing away nearly as many games as skipping Gravitron.
- Added Aflatoxin. I'll target a skeleton, a firefly, or sometime even my druid. It just helps fill my side of the board with things for the Oty's to eat. They power the FBs much earlier for life, and they also power the bone wall. Once when playing Scorpio, after stealing his permafrost shield, I targeted his Physalis and let his side of the board fill up with things that could not hurt me and were an endless meal supply for my Otys. Primary issue is waiting for the death quanta, but I think I am going to keep it in.
- I did decide to try without the Miracle. So far, I have not missed it, but I may add this back in. I think the 2nd FB with the Aflatoxin does a better job for life generation, and is much more versatile.
PS: Btw.. I just realized my topic passed 100 replies... woohoo!!!
Post by: ivalmian on January 27, 2010, 04:53:59 am
Post by: Jangoo on January 27, 2010, 07:20:00 pm
hm.. i put jangoo's variant into the top post ;DYAAY!
Post by: elfreth on January 27, 2010, 11:57:40 pm
Here's my first 6 games w/ the Jangoo variant...
ivalmian jangoo variant:
destiny 1 0 (em)
hermes 1 0 (em)
divine glory 0 1 (almost....sigh)
miracle 2 0
rainbow 0 1 (20 effing cards w/o an hourglass/oty/phase shield/sundial)
fire queen 1 0 (no qt in draw)
Very promising! Both losses could be considered close. Would've been my first win vs DG. And I'm pretty sure my draw qualified as BAD vs Rainbow.
Post by: ivalmian on January 28, 2010, 12:29:38 am
Haven't had much time to play lately:
Here's my first 6 games w/ the Jangoo variant...
ivalmian jangoo variant:
destiny 1 0 (em)
hermes 1 0 (em)
divine glory 0 1 (almost....sigh)
miracle 2 0
rainbow 0 1 (20 effing cards w/o an hourglass/oty/phase shield/sundial)
fire queen 1 0 (no qt in draw)
Very promising! Both losses could be considered close. Would've been my first win vs DG. And I'm pretty sure my draw qualified as BAD vs Rainbow.
:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
One of my decks works for elfreth ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *the universe collapses*
Post by: elfreth on January 28, 2010, 04:35:17 pm
Chalk it all up to lady luck smiling on me for a few games, I'm sure it will go back to "normal" soon ;)
Post by: ivalmian on January 28, 2010, 04:42:58 pm
Ha hahahaha :D
Chalk it all up to lady luck smiling on me for a few games, I'm sure it will go back to "normal" soon ;)
seriously, keep me updated on how it goes :P
Also.. when I play, I actually replace the SoG with sundial... may be 'tis a better thing :p
Post by: elfreth on January 28, 2010, 09:36:51 pm
ivalmian jangoo variant:
destiny 3 0 (em)
hermes 1 1 (em)(wow, dead in 4 turns)
divine glory 0 1 (almost....sigh)
miracle 2 0
rainbow 1 1 (20 effing cards w/o an hourglass/oty/phase shield)(em)
fire queen 1 0 (no qt in draw)
paradox 1 0 (em&3cards)
scorpio 2 0
chaos lord 1 0 (crazy game, had to force him to deck-out)
80%
I'm afraid to keep playing...I'm due for a "market-correction" ;)
Clearly this is skewed, as I've been fortunate to be presented w/ FG's other than Seism/DG/Graviton. I think there may also be some that I forgot to record. Wins and losses though, so hopefully they're a wash.
I have added a single card though, which was critical to both wins vs. Scorpio. That would be purify. Figured it was more than worth it to have the one water quanta purify and increase the deck to 41 cards than to lose because of 20 poison before you can ever get your own deck goin.
Post by: ivalmian on January 28, 2010, 09:40:42 pm
After 15 games:
ivalmian jangoo variant:
destiny 3 0 (em)
hermes 1 1 (em)(wow, dead in 4 turns)
divine glory 0 1 (almost....sigh)
miracle 2 0
rainbow 1 1 (20 effing cards w/o an hourglass/oty/phase shield)(em)
fire queen 1 0 (no qt in draw)
paradox 1 0 (em&3cards)
scorpio 2 0
chaos lord 1 0 (crazy game, had to force him to deck-out)
80%
I'm afraid to keep playing...I'm due for a "market-correction" ;)
Clearly this is skewed, as I've been fortunate to be presented w/ FG's other than Seism/DG/Graviton. I think there may also be some that I forgot to record. Wins and losses though, so hopefully they're a wash.
I have added a single card though, which was critical to both wins vs. Scorpio. That would be purify. Figured it was more than worth it to have the one water quanta purify and increase the deck to 41 cards than to lose because of 20 poison before you can ever get your own deck goin.
80%... rofl.. I've never had 80% on any deck :p
Post by: ivalmian on January 29, 2010, 08:03:16 pm
Post by: Vreely on January 29, 2010, 08:26:36 pm
I managed a 0.48 win rate, which is pretty good since my 2 most frequent opponents were Gravitron and Rainbow (23 games against these two). All but 6 of the wins were with Elemental Mastery.
Notes:
- The deck is clearly better for me with more sundials and a 2nd FB. I will forever have them in.
- The Aflatoxin was a toy for me, but not worth it. Often I did not have the death quanta to fuel it.
- Only in 1 game would I have needed a miracle to stay alive while also having the light quanta to use it. It also would have had to be in my hand at the time. I do not miss taking this out of the deck.
- The Rainbow deck is about staying alive in the early game. Once you turn the corner, you will win with EM. For that reason I favor the extra SD defense, and extra FB. This combo beats out SoGs easily, and the stats I have prove it (compare to my earlier SoG deck).
- 12 of my losses I attributed to not getting enough towers out quick enough. Because of this I will be removing the Aflatoxin for another tower.
- Other options for that slot are the Arctic Squid, another SD, a Permafrost shield, Antimatter, Purify, SoG, or the Miracle.
I did play 80 games with Jangoo's variant and either I am not as good of a player, or I am a bit more unlucky. I pulled off a 45 percent win rate with it.
Deck shown below. Its really 39+1, where the 1 can be your flavor of the day (permafrost, squid, miracle, SD, Antimatter, SoG, Purify, etc.). Put it in place of one of the QTs shown below.
Post by: Jangoo on January 29, 2010, 08:41:10 pm
Awesome Vreely. Couple questions:
- 10 QTs and 2 SNs are your standard equipment and yielded you a fourth of your losses?
Sure you dont want to use the 11th tower as standard equip then?
- Why unupped sundials? If you even took out the Miracle you could go for upped ones and shoot freely with your time-supply!
Post by: ivalmian on January 29, 2010, 09:04:28 pm
I finally hit 100 games. Here are the updated statistics. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=2872398504)hm.. it seems you're a little quanta starved since you took out both sns and added only 1 qt..
I managed a 0.48 win rate, which is pretty good since my 2 most frequent opponents were Gravitron and Rainbow (23 games against these two). All but 6 of the wins were with Elemental Mastery.
Notes:I like how the deck is playing, and other than the 1 card modification I mentioned above, I am going to keep playing with this variant. I know its not one of Ivalmian's official variants, but the attached deck is my variant of choice. I'll call it the "Vreely Life Variant", due to having another FB, and more defense with the extra SDs. I'll show it here without the Aflatoxin.
- The deck is clearly better for me with more sundials and a 2nd FB. I will forever have them in.
- The Aflatoxin was a toy for me, but not worth it. Often I did not have the death quanta to fuel it.
- Only in 1 game would I have needed a miracle to stay alive while also having the light quanta to use it. It also would have had to be in my hand at the time. I do not miss taking this out of the deck.
- The Rainbow deck is about staying alive in the early game. Once you turn the corner, you will win with EM. For that reason I favor the extra SD defense, and extra FB. This combo beats out SoGs easily, and the stats I have prove it (compare to my earlier SoG deck).
- 12 of my losses I attributed to not getting enough towers out quick enough. Because of this I will be removing the Aflatoxin for another tower.
- Other options for that slot are the Arctic Squid, another SD, a Permafrost shield, Antimatter, Purify, SoG, or the Miracle.
I did play 80 games with Jangoo's variant and either I am not as good of a player, or I am a bit more unlucky. I pulled off a 45 percent win rate with it.
Deck shown below. Its really 39+1, where the 1 can be your flavor of the day (permafrost, squid, miracle, SD, Antimatter, SoG, Purify, etc.). Put it in place of one of the QTs shown below.
Post by: Vreely on January 29, 2010, 09:45:09 pm
- 10 QTs and 2 SNs are your standard equipment and yielded you a fourth of your losses?To your first point. You're right. Only reason I waited is so I could get 100 games of pure statistics without the extra QT. Its not as bad as it looks because the SDs are non-cards as they replace themselves mostly. So think 10 QTs and 2 SNs for a 36 card deck. Having said that, its clearly the better play to use the 11th QT, and I am carrying forward stats with this setup after 100 games.
Sure you dont want to use the 11th tower as standard equip then?
- Why unupped sundials? If you even took out the Miracle you could go for upped ones and shoot freely with your time-supply!
On the SDs. Are you finding yourself able to draw (thereby replacing the card)? un-upped it is 1 time + 1 light to replace itself and stall for a turn. With a time mark, that seems easier to me than waiting for 2 light. As it is, I have to wait for the 1 light sometimes. To be fair, I have not tried it. Does it work better for you upped? Perhaps I will experiment.
Edit: After a handful of games (12) with upped SDs, you're right. Especially without the need to save for Miracle, they are performing better. It allows me more hourglass card draws early, and even if I do not have 2 light to replace it, it means another card draw with the time I would have used to put it out. I like it. Thank you for the suggestion through a question ;)
Post by: Jangoo on January 29, 2010, 10:23:22 pm
On the SDs. Are you finding yourself able to draw (thereby replacing the card)? un-upped it is 1 time + 1 light to replace itself and stall for a turn. With a time mark, that seems easier to me than waiting for 2 light. As it is, I have to wait for the 1 light sometimes. To be fair, I have not tried it. Does it work better for you upped? Perhaps I will experiment.Well yes, getting a measly two light quanta really isnt a big deal.
It's actually the lowest quanta demand you will ever have with this deck, having to pay at least 3 quants for anything else in the deck (except steal).
With the Miracle out of the equation you wont even have to worry about cutting you short on anything when using them up.
Also, if you have to play a SD that early that you dont even have those 2 light quants it is probably going to be a crappy discarding action anyways, hence wasting the card.
On the other hand, even with time mark, time is under a lot of pressure here.
I will always find myself having to decide whether to play the second hourglass or rather draw just one card by turn 6-8 for example.
I would hate to be forced to spend that one time quant on a sundial when e.g. rewinding a 10/6 fireeater would also be an option. ;-)
Post by: elfreth on January 29, 2010, 11:13:07 pm
destiny 3 0 (em)
hermes 1 1 (em)(wow, dead in 4 turns)
divine glory 0 3 (almost....sigh)
miracle 2 0
rainbow 1 2 (20 effing cards w/o an hourglass/oty/phase shield)(em)
fire queen 2 0 (no qt in draw)
paradox 2 1 (em&3cards)(loss=never saw a QT in 5 turns)
scorpio 2 0
chaos lord 1 1 (crazy game, had to force him to deck-out)
incarnate 1 0 (em)
gemini 2 1 (no defense drawn)
obliterator 0 1 (pulverizer on turn one, never got to put down any quanta)
dark matter 0 1 (one QT for first 6 turns)
seism 2 0 (wow, thought he was impossible)
ferox 0 1 (*&%@, only saw one wall in 30 cards-very close)
incarnate 1 0
The correction did come, no longer at 80% ;)
However, I'm still pleased w/ the way things are going, sitting at 62.5%
Could've easily gone differently in a few very close games.
Had one of the greatest draws I've ever seen vs Seism in my 2nd win....he never had a chance. Those are fun sometimes, though the hard fought challenges are fun too. It's the 4-turn losses never getting to see a qt that's frustrating :D
Post by: ghy on January 31, 2010, 03:18:11 pm
(http://flodes.free.fr/elements/RD40.jpg)
Stats
(http://flodes.free.fr/elements/statsRD40.jpg)
Resum
- Quantum Tower 10 is too little. I did 42 games with 0 or 1 pillars at the beginning.
- 42% of won (that's 10% better than my first 100 games)
- I'm still lucky earnings card because I'm almost at 43%.
Post by: ivalmian on January 31, 2010, 06:48:16 pm
Ivalmian's deck with 3 changesThanks for the stats.
(http://flodes.free.fr/elements/RD40.jpg)
Stats
(http://flodes.free.fr/elements/statsRD40.jpg)
Resum
- Quantum Tower 10 is too little. I did 42 games with 0 or 1 pillars at the beginning.
- 42% of won (that's 10% better than my first 100 games)
- I'm still lucky earnings card because I'm almost at 43%.
I agree 10qt may be a little too little, which is why you should try the jangoo's 12qt variant (currently posted as the first deck in the top post, among other places)... If you don't have SoG, I would replace it with a sundial... Good luck grinding!
Post by: Vreely on February 02, 2010, 03:53:58 pm
From my previous deck, I upped the sundial's, and added a QT in place of the Aflatoxin. The deck is amazingly better.
Win Rate: 0.59 !!!
Elemental Mastery: 0.49
11 more wins out of 100 than my previous rev. Granted, this is only 100 games, but it sure feels right. Here are some other notes from this play through:
- Its impossible to quantify for sure, but of the 11 extra wins, I am going to say 7 of them came from upping the sundials. This is huge. Especially without Miracle, the white quanta is just not critical. Even though I did have quite a few more draws where I could not replace the SD, its so critical to save the early game time quanta to generate more draws, get a 2nd hourglass out, or start rewinding with the Eternity a turn earlier. Thank you Jangoo for pressing this. You are unequivically right about this.
- 4 of the extra wins I attributed to adding the extra QT. It does help generate better earlier draws. The ratio throughout all 100 games felt much better.
- A note on Gravitron: With this rev, do not give up on him! He is one of the most seen FGs, so do not throw in the towel. I am winning 4 out of 11 against him (36%) due to the increased SDs. You still have to get lucky to beat him, but its not freakish luck on the order of Divine Glory. There are 3 ways this deck can deal with him. First, the Fireball + Immortal Oty. Second, stealing the grav shield, then druid down the first couple Oty snacks. Third, rewind his momentum guys and slow him down. None of these 3 things is all that spectacular, but with the card draw mechanism of the deck, it is possible to hit on one or 2 of them early enough to get the life flowing.
- Improved Miracle: There were 3 games out of this set of 100 where I had the quanta and could have saved my life IF I had a Miracle in hand. 2 of these 3, a purify would have also done the trick. In all cases it is impossible to say whether it would have netted a future win. Since the window for needing this card is in the first 20 draws, it means that only 1.5% of the time this card is useful to this deck, and even at that I still could have lost. I am not saying this is a bad card, but I am saying that this deck does not need it.
- Hermes is my bane. I feel like I should be able to beat him, but out of 200 games so far, I don't have a single win. With his 12 explosions, he is a much worse opponent for me. I have yet to even be close.
- It still grates at me that the last 1 or 2 hourglasses are usually dead draws. However, I do not think the deck can afford to lose one. Its just too critical to get one out consistently early.
- Out of 200 games now, I have only had 2 deck outs due to Eternity being the final card. This is not surprising since 1 in 40 draws have it as the last card, half those games are losses before the end, of the other half, only some of them need to draw to the end. If that 1% or less bothers you so much, then add a rewind, but you sacrifice part of the power of this deck... the efficiency.
59% over 100 games. Who would have known upped SDs would make that much of a difference. Jangoo is a genius ;)
Post by: ivalmian on February 02, 2010, 05:00:04 pm
Another update:heh, nice, I'm still a little bit surprised that you can live well without the improved miracle (and get the high number of EMs), but perhaps that's how it's meant to be... i'll try to play with your variant and perhaps I will supplant jangoo's version with your in the top post :p
From my previous deck, I upped the sundial's, and added a QT in place of the Aflatoxin. The deck is amazingly better.
Win Rate: 0.59 !!!
Elemental Mastery: 0.49
11 more wins out of 100 than my previous rev. Granted, this is only 100 games, but it sure feels right. Here are some other notes from this play through:Here are the detailed stats. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=2872398504) I did not reset the stats after my aflatoxin/non-upped SD variant, so the accurate stats need to subtract out 100 games (48 wins / 52 losses).
- Its impossible to quantify for sure, but of the 11 extra wins, I am going to say 7 of them came from upping the sundials. This is huge. Especially without Miracle, the white quanta is just not critical. Even though I did have quite a few more draws where I could not replace the SD, its so critical to save the early game time quanta to generate more draws, get a 2nd hourglass out, or start rewinding with the Eternity a turn earlier. Thank you Jangoo for pressing this. You are unequivically right about this.
- 4 of the extra wins I attributed to adding the extra QT. It does help generate better earlier draws. The ratio throughout all 100 games felt much better.
- A note on Gravitron: With this rev, do not give up on him! He is one of the most seen FGs, so do not throw in the towel. I am winning 4 out of 11 against him (36%) due to the increased SDs. You still have to get lucky to beat him, but its not freakish luck on the order of Divine Glory. There are 3 ways this deck can deal with him. First, the Fireball + Immortal Oty. Second, stealing the grav shield, then druid down the first couple Oty snacks. Third, rewind his momentum guys and slow him down. None of these 3 things is all that spectacular, but with the card draw mechanism of the deck, it is possible to hit on one or 2 of them early enough to get the life flowing.
- Improved Miracle: There were 3 games out of this set of 100 where I had the quanta and could have saved my life IF I had a Miracle in hand. 2 of these 3, a purify would have also done the trick. In all cases it is impossible to say whether it would have netted a future win. Since the window for needing this card is in the first 20 draws, it means that only 1.5% of the time this card is useful to this deck, and even at that I still could have lost. I am not saying this is a bad card, but I am saying that this deck does not need it.
- Hermes is my bane. I feel like I should be able to beat him, but out of 200 games so far, I don't have a single win. With his 12 explosions, he is a much worse opponent for me. I have yet to even be close.
- It still grates at me that the last 1 or 2 hourglasses are usually dead draws. However, I do not think the deck can afford to lose one. Its just too critical to get one out consistently early.
- Out of 200 games now, I have only had 2 deck outs due to Eternity being the final card. This is not surprising since 1 in 40 draws have it as the last card, half those games are losses before the end, of the other half, only some of them need to draw to the end. If that 1% or less bothers you so much, then add a rewind, but you sacrifice part of the power of this deck... the efficiency.
59% over 100 games. Who would have known upped SDs would make that much of a difference. Jangoo is a genius ;)
I certainly like that you don't use SoGs :p
Post by: Vreely on February 02, 2010, 05:09:54 pm
heh, nice, I'm still a little bit surprised that you can live well without the improved miracle (and get the high number of EMs), but perhaps that's how it's meant to be... i'll try to play with your variant and perhaps I will supplant jangoo's version with your in the top post :pElemental Mastery does not need the Miracle. If you survive the early game and get your defense setup, the double FB will get you back to 100 life. Against Fire Queen or Elidnis I often steal a 3rd FB. Sometimes, I have played a late game SD to actually block my own attack to give another turn to get up to the 100.
I certainly like that you don't use SoGs :p
No question, I probably could have got a couple more EM victories with the Miracle, but only a couple. The price being a card held in hand possibly blocking a draw I need to stay alive early.
Post by: ivalmian on February 02, 2010, 05:25:36 pm
heh, nice, I'm still a little bit surprised that you can live well without the improved miracle (and get the high number of EMs), but perhaps that's how it's meant to be... i'll try to play with your variant and perhaps I will supplant jangoo's version with your in the top post :pElemental Mastery does not need the Miracle. If you survive the early game and get your defense setup, the double FB will get you back to 100 life. Against Fire Queen or Elidnis I often steal a 3rd FB. Sometimes, I have played a late game SD to actually block my own attack to give another turn to get up to the 100.
I certainly like that you don't use SoGs :p
No question, I probably could have got a couple more EM victories with the Miracle, but only a couple. The price being a card held in hand possibly blocking a draw I need to stay alive early.
yeah.. absolutely, 4 SDs and 2FBs might be all that is needed. I really looked at FBs as a way to get EM when coupled to Miracle.. but 2 FB could work as well.. esp if you have 4SDs... freeing up the light quanta also makes it absolutely obvious that SDs need to get upped.... Thanks for all the testing Vreely!
Post by: Jangoo on February 02, 2010, 05:48:13 pm
heh, nice, I'm still a little bit surprised that you can live well without the improved miracle (and get the high number of EMs), but perhaps that's how it's meant to be... i'll try to play with your variant and perhaps I will supplant jangoo's version with your in the top post :pLet's not get carried away here. :D
I am actually playing with no miracle, 2 FBs and 3 SDs at the moment.
While against Scorpio, Morte (and sometimes any other god) I sure lack the complete refresh of the Miracle in early-midgame it generally seems to work just as fine and provides a little more security for the unlikely event that one FB gets destroyed or stolen.
However, adding in those extra SDs seems to be mandatory because you wont have anything else to buy you those 2-6 extra turns an early Miracle buys you, the reward being to be able to draw freely with those sundials cause you dont need the light-quanta.
On the con side, I sometimes painfully feel the lack of life-quants and the second FB strains this even more, causing plenty of situations where I have to choose between the FB and a mutation/ another firefly.
My personal summary: Either way is good.
Post by: xdude on February 02, 2010, 05:50:11 pm
Quote
My personal summary: Either way is good.The summary is really short :))
Post by: ivalmian on February 02, 2010, 07:12:58 pm
heh, nice, I'm still a little bit surprised that you can live well without the improved miracle (and get the high number of EMs), but perhaps that's how it's meant to be... i'll try to play with your variant and perhaps I will supplant jangoo's version with your in the top post :pLet's not get carried away here. :D
I am actually playing with no miracle, 2 FBs and 3 SDs at the moment.
While against Scorpio, Morte (and sometimes any other god) I sure lack the complete refresh of the Miracle in early-midgame it generally seems to work just as fine and provides a little more security for the unlikely event that one FB gets destroyed or stolen.
However, adding in those extra SDs seems to be mandatory because you wont have anything else to buy you those 2-6 extra turns an early Miracle buys you, the reward being to be able to draw freely with those sundials cause you dont need the light-quanta.
On the con side, I sometimes painfully feel the lack of life-quants and the second FB strains this even more, causing plenty of situations where I have to choose between the FB and a mutation/ another firefly.
My personal summary: Either way is good.
Hehehe :p Yes.. the jangoo dominance of the top post may be ending :P
on a serious note.. I want post the strongest variant on the top post, and I realize that 59% and 57% is pretty close. I think I'm going to play vreely's variant, and if I "feel" I like it... then that's good :P
Frankly, I was thinking of adding second FB for a while now, but taking out miracle was always very scary to me. Seeing some stats backing up taking out the miracle is quite reassuring :p
Post by: Thargoid on February 04, 2010, 07:56:57 pm
I can see the advantage of being able to get Eternity out earlier if so desired, however, between high Time quanta costs in the early game and the lack of urgency, I find waiting for the one Protect Artifact in my deck to turn up is usually ok. I'm curious to know why you guys thought 2 was better?
Post by: Tea is good on February 04, 2010, 08:32:54 pm
Post by: ivalmian on February 06, 2010, 03:21:26 am
What's the rationale behind 2 x Enchant Artifact? I use 1 myself to guarantee that Eternity sticks when needed and it's also great against Seism. However, it's a dead card against quite a few FGs and sometimes situational even against those that do use permanent control. For example, I might hold off on playing eternity because I want to steal the FG's weapon first.
I can see the advantage of being able to get Eternity out earlier if so desired, however, between high Time quanta costs in the early game and the lack of urgency, I find waiting for the one Protect Artifact in my deck to turn up is usually ok. I'm curious to know why you guys thought 2 was better?
Again gods that don't have perm control you'll win MOST games anyways. The two protect are for SEISM (in which it's the pillars that need to be protected ASAP), and then protect hourglass from Obliderator, Chaos Lord, Hermes, and Rainbow. So essentially, with gods that I am troubled with I need protects.. which I have...
I see the pros with these decks, but the smaller the deck is, the more thinking you have to put into actually playing the game. With a larger deck, you have more tries, one mistake with a 30 card deck could lead to your demise. (losing). I unlike most people, like to stay safe with a larger deck.
The deck is 40 cards, not 30... and yes, this deck must be played without making mistakes, however it gives you about 60% return against all gods, which is more than any large deck atm..
BTW,, here is the deck i'm running right now.. I think this is very much what vreely ran for his 59% stats (i am not keeping stats atm)... vreely, please correct if this is not what you're running.
(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4606/currentdeck.jpg)
Post by: Jangoo on February 06, 2010, 02:27:44 pm
I actually started making friends with the sundials again.
They are still reasonably powerful and I can really feel the extra breathing room ... as opposed to always being on the wire because you will have to draw that darn 2nd phase shield next turn or else face death.
PS:
Do-over for the older version, since images got deleted:
(http://www.abload.de/img/rainbow_40bee0x.jpg) (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=rainbow_40bee0x.jpg)
Post by: ivalmian on February 06, 2010, 06:43:20 pm
yup.. the improved miracle really turned out to be quite useless :P (Surprisingly so) while making my dials upped removed the whole "should i draw a card in hopes of phase shield or put a sundial" conversation...
Thats the version I am using right now too Ivalmian, except: +1 SoG, -1SD.
I actually started making friends with the sundials again.
They are still reasonably powerful and I can really feel the extra breathing room ... as opposed to always being on the wire because you will have to draw that darn 2nd phase shield next turn or else face death.
*ivalmian's elite otyugh eats jangoo's puffer fish! Muahahaha.....*
Post by: Vreely on February 07, 2010, 02:23:58 am
BTW,, here is the deck i'm running right now.. I think this is very much what vreely ran for his 59% stats (i am not keeping stats atm)... vreely, please correct if this is not what you're running.Yep, thats exactly right. I finished with 181 games before things flipped to 1.19. I think that gives enough games to have valid stats, and here is the final update for 1.18 stats.
(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4606/currentdeck.jpg)
Games: 181
Win Rate: 0.59
Elemental Mastery Rate: 0.50
Cards Won: 43 (0.24 per game)
Easiest God (min 10 games): Fire Queen (0.96 win rate)
Hardest Gods (min 10 games): Divine Glory, Dark Matter, Hermes (winless)
Gravitron win Rate: 0.32 (See he is beatable!!)
Notes:
I still had a few of games where I needed some earlier QTs. I am not sure if its worth dropping a SD for another QT. I doubt it. However, it may benefit from just adding a QT and making it a 41 card deck. I am hesitant to go over 40 though, cuz the picture is nice and square right now ;)
Post by: ivalmian on February 07, 2010, 02:57:56 am
haha... same here! Top post updated!BTW,, here is the deck i'm running right now.. I think this is very much what vreely ran for his 59% stats (i am not keeping stats atm)... vreely, please correct if this is not what you're running.Yep, thats exactly right. I finished with 181 games before things flipped to 1.19. I think that gives enough games to have valid stats, and here is the final update for 1.18 stats.
(http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4606/currentdeck.jpg)
Games: 181
Win Rate: 0.59
Elemental Mastery Rate: 0.50
Cards Won: 43 (0.24 per game)
Easiest God (min 10 games): Fire Queen (0.96 win rate)
Hardest Gods (min 10 games): Divine Glory, Dark Matter, Hermes (winless)
Gravitron win Rate: 0.32 (See he is beatable!!)
Notes:
I still had a few of games where I needed some earlier QTs. I am not sure if its worth dropping a SD for another QT. I doubt it. However, it may benefit from just adding a QT and making it a 41 card deck. I am hesitant to go over 40 though, cuz the picture is nice and square right now ;)
WOOHOOO.. finally beat rainbow... sheesh.. i think this breaks by 10 game loosing streak to him :P
Post by: Vreely on February 08, 2010, 09:48:02 pm
However, even without relevant stats yet, I am already not liking it as much. I already lost to a Fire Queen rush, and that NEVER happened in the 4 SD version(s) I tested throughout 281 games (24 FQ games). We'll see. Maybe it was just freakish bad luck. I'll carry out a 100 game test with the prediction that it will land between 56% - 59%.
Post by: ivalmian on February 08, 2010, 09:50:02 pm
So just for the heck of it, I am going to run 100 games with a 12 QT / 3 SD version of the deck. I am not expecting any difference that is outside of a normal margin of statistical error.heh.. good luck! i too don't think it would change stats too much :p
However, even without relevant stats yet, I am already not liking it as much. I already lost to a Fire Queen rush, and that NEVER happened in the 4 SD version(s) I tested throughout 281 games (24 FQ games). We'll see. Maybe it was just freakish bad luck. I'll carry out a 100 game test with the prediction that it will land between 56% - 59%.
Edit: hm.. someone just dekarmaed me >:( what have i ever done :P
Post by: Vreely on February 08, 2010, 10:46:55 pm
Post by: ivalmian on February 09, 2010, 04:49:44 pm
Bah! I just lost to another FQ rush. That is 2 now in 6 FQ games. Maybe that 4th SD is much more critical than I originally thought.well, 2 game doesn't make or break stats.. i think in my original fat deck i had lik 3 sundials, and i beat firequeen 5 out of 5 games with EM... I think you might be having some bad luck... where I find the extra sundial is VERY needy is gemini and seism however...
Post by: CelestrialDreamer on February 10, 2010, 03:16:14 am
2. Scorpio Lose (1)
3. Divine Glory Lose by one round (3)
4. Incarnate EM (2)
5. Morte being EMed (1)
6. Chaos Lord Lose (2)
7. Seism Lose (3)
8. Seism Lose (0)
9. Incarnate Win (2)
10. Destiny Lose (1)
11. Chaos Lord EM (2)
12. Chaos Lord EM (2)
====================
tried this deck with the thought that my rainbow is not a nice one
and the results are shown above (tower draw in first round)
the winning rate is a bit low for me, perhaps thats becoz i am a newbie
a few points wud be
-11Towers are not enough, i got 1/3 matches with 1 or 0. And i cant draw towers when i needed them
-Drawing 1/0 towers is bad, cant draw hourglass in first 5 ronuds is worse, if both take place then u r dead, this game require lots of luck, afterall. (thats why i got EMed by morte ><)
-A funny scenario is that Chaos Lord put up dissipating field and u already used improved steal, then u will need to use IMPROVE until u get a mutant with destroy... If your druid is dead/mutated, then u have to wait for him to deck out... So be sure to make your druid immortal when facing CL
-Steal is definitely not enough, maybe replace it with pulvy?
this deck has many advantages, however
-very good speed when u got an hourglass early
-getting permanent Oty is very easy
-upped sundials are great and u can use hourglass like crazy in early game
edit: Simple mathemagic with tower draws in first round
For 11towers in 40cards, assume all cards are drawn randomly in first round (which should be)
Probability of getting no tower = 0.0837
Probability of getting exactly 1 tower =0.2803
Probability of 0/1 towers = 0.364, thats 364 games in 1000 games
correct me if i am wrong
Post by: ivalmian on February 10, 2010, 05:41:12 am
edit: Simple mathemagic with tower draws in first roundYour math is wrong.. :)
For 11towers in 40cards, assume all cards are drawn randomly in first round (which should be)
Probability of getting no tower = 0.0837
Probability of getting exactly 1 tower =0.2803
Probability of 0/1 towers = 0.364, thats 364 games in 1000 games
correct me if i am wrong
For 7 cards (starting hand) probability of getting 0 towers is 0.0403... for first turn (8 cards) it's 0.0216
So after your first draw you have only 2% chance of not having towers... which is ok :P
Probability of getting one tower in first 7 cards is 0.0720015...
Post by: CelestrialDreamer on February 10, 2010, 05:53:00 am
P(no tower with 7 card) = 29x28x27x26x25x24x23/40/39/38/37/36/35/34=0.0837
Post by: Delreich on February 10, 2010, 05:55:31 am
Errm, no. CelestrialDreamer's maths is spot on. With 8 cards drawn it's 5.58% chance of no towers.edit: Simple mathemagic with tower draws in first roundYour math is wrong.. :)
For 11towers in 40cards, assume all cards are drawn randomly in first round (which should be)
Probability of getting no tower = 0.0837
Probability of getting exactly 1 tower =0.2803
Probability of 0/1 towers = 0.364, thats 364 games in 1000 games
correct me if i am wrong
For 7 cards (starting hand) probability of getting 0 towers is 0.0403... for first turn (8 cards) it's 0.0216
So after your first draw you have only 2% chance of not having towers... which is ok :P
Probability of getting one tower in first 7 cards is 0.0720015...
Post by: Jumbalumba on February 10, 2010, 06:00:20 am
P(0 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.0837...
P(1 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.280...
P(2 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.350...
P(3 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.2102...
P(4 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.06467756...
P(5 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.010...
P(6 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.0007...
P(7 towers in first 7 cards) = 0.0000177...
Post by: Vreely on February 10, 2010, 04:12:12 pm
I have played many many games with it now, and can safely say that it does recover well from lack of early towers. That being said, it still does feel a bit light, which is why I am now testing the 12 QT/3 SD variant. After 55 games so far, it is not working better for me even though I get towers earlier. The reduced early game defense is too much of a cost for the increased tower ratio.
Post by: ivalmian on February 10, 2010, 05:36:35 pm
Huh? we got 29 non-tower and 11 tower, a total of 40cardssorry, I guess i calculated for 12 towers in 41 cards by accident :P (this is what i am trying now)
P(no tower with 7 card) = 29x28x27x26x25x24x23/40/39/38/37/36/35/34=0.0837
but yes, vreely's point is also quite accurate, the deck plays WELL with one tower in starting hand. With 0... it's a little hard.. but still you get may be 40% wins :P
Post by: ivalmian on February 12, 2010, 09:19:13 pm
Post by: Vreely on February 12, 2010, 10:11:43 pm
Statistically over 100 games, it did not even come close, clocking in at a win rate of 0.47. Here are the detailed stats. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=3028838437)
Conclusion:
If you do not use the Improved Miracle, you had better play with at least 4 Sundials. I died to many more early rushes than I did with my 4 SD version. I was quite surprised to see how important it is when the Miracle is not in the deck.
Post by: ivalmian on February 12, 2010, 10:49:23 pm
I completed my 100 game test with only 3 Sundials. It is my version from the first post minus a SD with a 12th QT added. I'm not even going to show it here because it is much, much worse.ok.. i've been trying a 41 card version with 12 qt and I don't think THAT gave an improvement either... the 4sd no miracle version seems to be by far the best...
Statistically over 100 games, it did not even come close, clocking in at a win rate of 0.47. Here are the detailed stats. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=3028838437)
Conclusion:
If you do not use the Improved Miracle, you had better play with at least 4 Sundials. I died to many more early rushes than I did with my 4 SD version. I was quite surprised to see how important it is when the Miracle is not in the deck.
Post by: Clathius on February 16, 2010, 11:48:56 pm
I'd test it out but my deck is only half upgraded.
Post by: ivalmian on February 17, 2010, 04:59:34 pm
What ever came from the tests with permafrost shield? What about replacing one sundial with a permafrost?my original 40 card deck with permafrost instead of one of the sundials didn't get much improvement since the high cost of permafrost made it unplayable till mid-game by which time I already have good shielding... I think the sundials are critical as they are what allows your to GET to mid game :)
I'd test it out but my deck is only half upgraded.
Something I'm very interested in is how my deck works half-upgraded.. if you could post your deck and play some test games (and post stats) I'd greatly appreciate it. I think as long as you have upped hourglasses, otys, and druid you might do OK :)
Post by: Vreely on February 17, 2010, 05:52:56 pm
Sundial's are critical. If you read back, I tested a 3 SD variant and it was bad. Logically, following that, I am now trying a 5 SD variant, and it seems to be better even than the 4 SD one on the top post. I will post results when I get enough games to have enough of a statistical sample, but the early feeling is good (only 65 games at the time of this posting).
To those of you who played this game before the SDs were "nerfed", you are darn lucky. I consider this card critical to the rainbow deck even now. I can only imagine what it was like when it protected for 2 turns and gave 2 draws.
Post by: Clathius on February 18, 2010, 12:12:17 am
Hopefully the deck is attached. It is similar to SG unupgraded deck but I removed 2 dials for 2 quants. I also completely dropped enchant artifact because I can't beat Sesim (spelled right?) anyway. Please remember it is a work in progress and changes daily through upgrades. I started 1 week ago and already have 19 upgrades...not too bad, eh? :))
I highly doubt it would work as your version. I'm running 15 pillar/towers and I still have very serious troubles with quantum early. Particularly with :gravity. Nearly every game I am sitting there begging for that 5th :gravity round after round. Then when I finally play my Oty I sit there for 2-3 rounds waiting for :gravity just to use him once. I swear the Devs are nerfing rainbow decks by making :gravity not appear.... Anyway, this deck just simply fails if I only get 0-1 towers on the initial draw.
In fact, I highly regret upgrading my towers. I wished I had upgraded all the cards in the deck that result in a reduced casting cost and perhaps added a Supernova. I just won a card so now I can upgrade 1 more...I think its going to be a Supernova and replace 1 Pillar with that.
I think I am going to consider a 5th Dial as well but I have no idea what to remove. Vreely, what did you remove to add your dial?
Post by: Jangoo on February 18, 2010, 12:34:39 pm
To those of you who played this game before the SDs were "nerfed", you are darn lucky. I consider this card critical to the rainbow deck even now. I can only imagine what it was like when it protected for 2 turns and gave 2 draws.Lol, yes you are right.
A typical answer from those who played back then would be something like:
"There have always been changes to the game and there always will be. If you keep throwing down cards like a total idiot you will never make it to the top, so really you are just too stupid to play the game. Posts like yours have been flooding my nice forum forever now and I am asking you to either shut up and play or to get the f*** out of here."
(random Pro-gamer in response to a whine-post about the sundial nerf and how easy it was to get rich back in the days)
However, the sundial doesn't neccessarily have to be as essential for any deck as it seems for this deck. When trying Puppys deck for example it didn't seem to help as much for me. Here, it really just destroyed the whole supernova-based speed aspect and caused crappy draws.
I was playing ivals deck with 3 sundials recently and that seemed to be just fine because having those phase shields already is quite comfy. 5 SDs sounds a bit overstressed no?
Post by: Vreely on February 18, 2010, 05:03:37 pm
Win Rate: 0.63
Normalized Win Rate: (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2237.msg31191#msg31191) 0.65
Detailed Statistics (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=694112412)
First disclaimer: This is not just a 5 SD variant. I tried 2 other things alongside it. More below.
Second disclaimer: I believe I was lucky on Seism win rate. I cannot imagine it will hold up to 45% against him.
General Note:
You have to tailor to your play style. As I play this game more, I am finding this to be true. For instance, Puppy Chow's deck has an unbelievable win rate for him of 69% or something, but when I played a couple hundred games with it, I was not even close. I was not even over 50%.
Key Point:
The most important thing about beating False Gods is staying alive.
You cannot outrace them, you cannot outdraw them. Its not about having massive damage, its about staying alive in the early game. If you can do this, you will win. This is not necessarily the "fastest" way to win, but it is certainly the best way to an increased win percentage. With this as my primary principal, I modified the deck to be even more defensive to put my theory to the test.
Base deck is my 4 SD version that is on the lead post.
Change #1: Replace Improved Steal with a 5th Sundial.
This makes it the 5 SD variant, but at a cost. Here is how I was using steal:
Chaos Lord: Dissipation field in the late game to speed up his demise.
Destiny: Hourglass or an Eternity
Elidnis & Ferox: Feral Bond
Fire Queen: Eagle's Eye, or Feral Bond
Gemini: Phase Shield
Gravitron: Grav Shield
Hermes: Fire Buckler (only when I either was forced to, or did not have my shield setup)
Incarnate & Morte: Graveyard
Miracle: Emerald Tower
Obliterator: Pulvy (when he doesn't protect it right away)
Rainbow: Hourglass
Scorpio: Permafrost (only when I did not have my own setup)
Seism: Diamond Shield or Pulvy
If not listed, I didn't use it. Of all these uses the only critical ones are to block Obliterator, get the Grav Shield, or slow down Rainbow's draw. Everything else is surely useful, but I viewed as not required to win. So yes, giving up Improved Steal does hurt a bit, but it is not a deck critical card.
On the 5th Sundial, I did find it to be useful. Again, I have the light quanta to use, and every turn of delayed attack is another turn I have to setup the Bone Wall engine. Furthermore, they help me get Elemental Mastery in the late game if I need a few more turns with the Bonds.
Change #2: Replace Fallen Druid with the Arctic Octopus.
Sticking with the theme of defense, this fits the bill. It also gives something to do with all the wasted water quanta. I found the Octopus extremely useful. It holds momentum guys from Gemini, Gravitron, and Obliterator. It also generally will help save your butt while you are slowly getting your firefly damage going.
Giving up the Fallen Druid hurts for sure. I decided to take it out so I did not have to spread my quints too thin. Generally, 1 for an Oty, 1 for the Queen, and 1 for the Octopus. The druid helps get powerful creatures, but it did not help keep me alive. So I made the tough choice to remove it. This made a few matchups take an extra 5 minutes to complete (Chaos Lord, Elidnis, Miracle, etc). This choice also cost me a couple wins against Elidnis. He gets 6 immortal guys out, 6 bonds, and a Jade shield, and its nearly impossible to crack through with just fireflies and a big Oty.
Change #3: Replace a Protect Artifact with a Quantum Tower.
The reason I did this is because I still think 11 QTs and 2 SNs is a bit too thin. The deck does recover well from being short early towers, but I could trace back a handful of losses directly to having too little early game quanta. Increasing the ratio to 12 QTs seems like a better fit. Its hard to say if this change helped the deck or not. It certainly helped get better quantum generation for the first 10 turns, and it felt right, however taking out the PA will directly impact your win percentage against Seism. I feel I was lucky to get a 45% win rate against him with only 1 PA.
Extra Notes:
- The extra SDs clearly helped me against Gravitron, Gemini, and Obliterator. Halting those momentum guys was huge.
- I found the Octupus to be very useful. I was happy with this being in the deck, as it often was used in the close games that matter for increasing win percentage.
- The deck is slower. It takes forever to crack through Elidnis & Miracle's jade shield. Similarly you are in for a long wait against Chaos Lord as you slowly reduce his dissipation shield.
- I think the deck would be better if I could fit a Pulvy in there somehow. The problem is that it would also require an Animate Weapon so you can make room for the Eternity. The draw through on the deck is so quick that I rarely would get the required turns with it to destroy FBs, shields, graveyards, hourglasses, etc. Its first on my wishlist to fit in somehow.
Here are the detailed stats. (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=694112412)
Post by: Silkenfist on February 18, 2010, 05:59:08 pm
Post by: Clathius on February 18, 2010, 06:22:34 pm
Vreely:
Have you considered running with just 2 Quintessence and then put the Druid back in? Puppy in his thread makes the argument that you can run with just 2 if you are careful about who you use it on depending on the FG you are facing.
Post by: ivalmian on February 18, 2010, 07:23:03 pm
You have removed all permanent control from the deck? That's brave... but I really think there should be at least one card (Steal, Pulverizer, Druid) that can deal with a permanent. Even if it doesn't affect your win rate that much, it will allow you to win matches much quicker and create greater revenue.i think you can remove steal but removing druid will at LEAST slow you down so much that you won't be able to win enough.. You may try a 41 card deck with dunsial added on top of the 40 card deck... changing steal to octopus might work.. although I dislike the idea...
Post by: Vreely on February 18, 2010, 07:54:27 pm
Vreely:I actually tried about 30 games with only 2 quints. The primary problem is that this is a 40 card deck, Puppy's is less. It is simply too crucial to match a quint and an Oty as soon as possible, and removing a quint tended to create the match too late for when I needed it.
Have you considered running with just 2 Quintessence and then put the Druid back in? Puppy in his thread makes the argument that you can run with just 2 if you are careful about who you use it on depending on the FG you are facing.
You have removed all permanent control from the deck? That's brave... but I really think there should be at least one card (Steal, Pulverizer, Druid) that can deal with a permanent. Even if it doesn't affect your win rate that much, it will allow you to win matches much quicker and create greater revenue.Also speaking to Ivalmian's point although not quoted: Yes. I alluded to this. The deck is much slower without the druid. However, I was going for win rate, not win rate per hour, which is harder to measure. I would concede the point that this deck likely wins less cash per hour as the previous version.
I think if I can fit a pulvy w/ animate into the deck it would speed it up greatly. I'm going to try that next, although I have to play around a bit to figure out how to fit it in without getting it too big.
Post by: ivalmian on February 18, 2010, 07:57:55 pm
hm.. you should try 5sd with 41 cards.. (it would take me like 2 weeks to do 100 games :) i just don't have the time :( )Vreely:I actually tried about 30 games with only 2 quints. The primary problem is that this is a 40 card deck, Puppy's is less. It is simply too crucial to match a quint and an Oty as soon as possible, and removing a quint tended to create the match too late for when I needed it.
Have you considered running with just 2 Quintessence and then put the Druid back in? Puppy in his thread makes the argument that you can run with just 2 if you are careful about who you use it on depending on the FG you are facing.You have removed all permanent control from the deck? That's brave... but I really think there should be at least one card (Steal, Pulverizer, Druid) that can deal with a permanent. Even if it doesn't affect your win rate that much, it will allow you to win matches much quicker and create greater revenue.Yes. I alluded to this. The deck is much slower without the druid. However, I was going for win rate, not win rate per hour, which is harder to measure. I would concede the point that this deck likely wins less cash per hour as the previous version.
Post by: CelestrialDreamer on February 19, 2010, 09:18:12 am
i did 32 games in 2 days with Vreely's deck
i used unupgraded boneyard and replaced 1 PA with ImprovedSteal
my win rate was EXACTLY 50%, counting all Gods(i.e. 16/32)
yup, i did not run away from DG and Rainbow
i guess the rate is low compared with u guys since i am newb around here
-i lost all 1-pillar game except one, but those were against the hardest gods, so i cant say if 1-pillar hurts a lot or not.
-overall the result is satisfactory for me, but i have to test for more
Post by: Irkalia on February 19, 2010, 11:11:36 am
Post by: MrBlonde on February 19, 2010, 11:38:57 am
Was 21-12 (60.6%) with it today although not against the toughest lineup i've faced. Small sample size but i just like the feel to this deck better. Some of the games i won i feel i would have lost with my other deck due to the Arctic Octopus allowing extra creature control. Hermes and Obliterator are pretty much insta-losses though without a steal. Once either gets a fire shield or pulvy up you really have no chance. Oddly enough just like Vreely i've done better against Seism although i now only have 1 protect.
Time-wise i think it's about the same although i have had two games drag out pretty long against FQ and Seism due to me winning games i usually would have lost. FQ i started off with no towers in the first 4 turns and against Seism i didn't get my protect til i had 11 cards left and had to battle it out with 3 towers + limited quanta and would have decked out if not for him rewinding my creatures for 4-5 turns on my last turn. Those two games turned out to be much longer then usual for me. Beyond that i haven't found it any quicker or slower.
Chaos Lord (2-1)
Dark Matter (1-2)
Destiny (2-0)
Elidnis (1-0)
Ferox (1-0)
Fire Queen (2-1)
Hermes (0-2)
Incarnate (2-0)
Miracle (4-0)
Morte (2-2)
Obliterator (0-1)
Paradox (1-0)
Rainbow (0-1)
Scorpio (0-2)
Seism (3-0)
Post by: Jangoo on February 19, 2010, 11:54:02 am
Vreely, just get that freakin 12th Tower in there already!
My version of the deck is running on 12 Towers eversince and the liberty this grants in quanta and modding is great.
5 sundials you say? Now if that's the case why dont you finally add the 12th Tower AND a fifth hourglass which will complete the buffer-cards. Embedding that extra Squid and Pulvy thus making it a 44 something deck wont be the problem then.
As for Pulvy: Normally you wouldn't bother to make it fly. You would just Play Pulvy first and keep Eternity until the very end.
Squid + Druid: Have you considered using the Elf instead of th Duid? It is kind of a middle ground between those two. I couldn't stand the fact to have Miracles blessed drags, Hermes' 17/11 Destroyer or even Geminis TUed fleet of 9/30 drags on the other side and not be able to do anything about it ...
Post by: Vreely on February 19, 2010, 03:09:29 pm
For those keeping stats - could you record the average time it takes you to beat the fg too? It's a little extra work I know, but only takes a few seconds and I think it'd be useful in developing faster rainbows.That would be impossible for me. I play most of my games at work, but rarely do I play a continuous game start to stop without getting interrupted. As you state, the most important stat is cash per hour, but unless you play with a chess clock in front of you, its impossible to do in my situation.
Post by: Vreely on February 19, 2010, 03:26:16 pm
Vreely, just get that freakin 12th Tower in there already!On the 12th tower. I agree. I am not sure what you are suggesting. Adding it into my original deck? This last posted deck has 12 QTs in it (see Change #3 in the notes), and every deck I have tried since that one has had 12 QTs.
My version of the deck is running on 12 Towers eversince and the liberty this grants in quanta and modding is great.
5 sundials you say? Now if that's the case why dont you finally add the 12th Tower AND a fifth hourglass which will complete the buffer-cards. Embedding that extra Squid and Pulvy thus making it a 44 something deck wont be the problem then.
As for Pulvy: Normally you wouldn't bother to make it fly. You would just Play Pulvy first and keep Eternity until the very end.
Squid + Druid: Have you considered using the Elf instead of th Duid? It is kind of a middle ground between those two. I couldn't stand the fact to have Miracles blessed drags, Hermes' 17/11 Destroyer or even Geminis TUed fleet of 9/30 drags on the other side and not be able to do anything about it ...
On the Pulvy. So I have not tested 100 games with it, but I have tried some without flying it. The problem is that I use Ivalmian's aggressive draw technique, and with that, in about a third the games at least I am getting the Pulvy only between 1 & 3 turns before I have to play the Eternity. For now, it remains on my 'would be nice to have" list, but I have not yet had a good deck build that feels right while using it.
On expanding over 40 cards: Every time I try this in short experiments I recognize one common thing. I lose consistency. Its harder to get that Fire Storm when you need it against Incarnate or FQ, its harder to get the FB going against Scorpio to counter poison, etc. Ivalmian suggested that once you pass the 40 card mark, one really needs to consider adding another copy of some of these key cards. I agree with him Then you need more shields so they come at the right time, and everything snowballs. I really would actually like to lower the card count to 38 or 39 for this very reason, but its difficult to do and keep the ratios right.
I may try MrBlonde's suggestion and add the druid back in to make it a 41 card deck. It certainly would speed up some of the longer games.
Post by: Clathius on February 19, 2010, 04:30:22 pm
The thing about the druid I don't like is that it is really dangerous to use it offensively. You are taking quite the gamble because the new creature could be too big for your Oty to eat and end up with a nasty mutation that shuts you down. After being burned one too many times, I no longer use the druid offensively unless I have an eternity to back me up. So if the point of the Druid is to speed up the game via mutated skeletons or fireflies, why not just cut out the middle man and add a creature with growth? lava golem or forest spirit?
On the flip side, if you use the elf, 50% of the time you get a 5/5 mutation which is an improvement from a 2/2 skeleton and can be used offensively with far more reliability.
Post by: MrBlonde on February 19, 2010, 06:30:06 pm
Post by: Vreely on February 19, 2010, 06:32:38 pm
Post by: MrBlonde on February 22, 2010, 09:11:24 am
I did run across a little bad luck decking out four times (eternity last card) vs. Chaos Lord, FQ, Incarnate and Miracle in games i would have won. This comes out to decking out 6.67% of the time in those 60 games i could have won with my 41 card deck. I should only deck out 2.44% of the time so i lost 2.5 games there. So on a normal curve with this sample size i should win 58.5% of the time.
Not having 2 protect artifacts seems very helpful. Although it hurts a little bit against Seism i truly don't miss having the extra one in my deck. Too often it would just be a dead card. I was 5-6 vs Seism though with just 1 protect and i would take that every 100 games (i did lose my last 4 in a row vs Seism because my protect ended up being near the bottom of the deck). Not having a steal is really the card i miss. It definitely slows me down vs Chaos Lord (not being able to steal his Dis Shield), and makes Obliterator, Divine Glory and Hermes virtually impossible if any of them play Pulvy, Fire Towers or Fire Shield. Also not being able to steal the Grav Shield from Graviton makes that matchup a little more difficult as well.
But heck what am i complaining about? Running at 56-58% over 100 is pretty darn good for me. Thanks guys for continually posting your builds and helping out.
Chaos Lord (5-1)
Dark Matter (1-5)
Destiny (4-0)
Divine Glory (0-2)
Elidnis (6-0)
Ferox (1-1)
Fire Queen (9-4)
Gemini (1-0)
Graviton (0-3)
Hermes (1-5)
Incarnate (4-1)
Miracle (9-1)
Morte (3-3)
Obliterator (0-3)
Paradox (5-0)
Rainbow (0-5)
Scorpio (2-4)
Seism (5-6)
Post by: Laxaria on February 22, 2010, 12:51:38 pm
Post by: Vreely on February 22, 2010, 03:16:40 pm
Post by: pervepic on February 22, 2010, 05:52:18 pm
Post by: Andran on February 24, 2010, 09:37:47 pm
Here is a bigger version of the rainbow that has considerable similarities with the Ivalmians deck.I am playing something similar. I suggest removing the Miracle. Miracle and upgraded sundials don't work well together.
Post by: ivalmian on February 25, 2010, 10:06:36 pm
Here is a bigger version of the rainbow that has considerable similarities with the Ivalmians deck. Well, some patience is needed to play with this one, since battles tend to be quite long and epic :). I have beaten all gods (except this very new, gaz-god) with this one, but unfortunetely haven't made statistics. Actually steal me be replaced by pulverizer (especially because of this gaz-god), but other components of this deck are in their proper place, in my opinion.(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/m7Gbd48105/rainbow_thumb.jpg) (http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/view/m7Gbd48105/rainbow)hm.. not sure about that alfatoxin...
anyways, vreely, are your stats for 5SD version holding up? It goes a little bit against me to remove druid and steal but perhaps you are right...
Post by: MrBlonde on February 25, 2010, 11:45:09 pm
My most marked improvement with this build is vs. Seism (10-11) and Scorpio (8-14). Before my totals were Seism (16-35) and Scorpio (8-46).
Post by: ivalmian on February 25, 2010, 11:47:24 pm
With the druid included with Vreely's build, i am currently 117-98 (54.42%) . I will admit i am not one of the better players but in retrospect i was running at about 46-48% with Ivalmian's builds over the last 250-300 games or so (Ivalmian's worked better for me then Jangoo's and PuppyChows builds). So take that for what it's worth. I too am interested to see if Vreely's stats have held up.Seism I do well against even with the 4SD version (current first deck in the first post) but scorpio is definetly a problem..
My most marked improvement with this build is vs. Seism (10-11) and Scorpio (8-14). Before my totals were Seism (16-35) and Scorpio (8-46).
Edit: I added the deck insert code to the top post..
Post by: MrBlonde on February 26, 2010, 12:41:34 am
Post by: Clathius on February 26, 2010, 02:58:06 pm
Now that I have this deck fully upgraded and I can compare its performance, I am really having trouble with this deck.
Now, it's not the deck but the way it draws. My single most common opening draw is 1 tower which is inconsistent with predicted towers in the opening draw. The next most common is 4 towers. Right now, nearly every other game I am discarding on the second turn.
I have been playing card games long enough to know not to read into these things too easily. Based on the way the deck plays (i.e. clumping of like cards), I am starting starting to no longer believe the deck is fully randomized but that clumping is occurring. My success is directly linked to the amount of towers in my opening draw.
Post by: ivalmian on February 26, 2010, 04:43:52 pm
Now that I have this deck fully upgraded and I can compare its performance, I am really having trouble with this deck.Haha.. don't loose hope, I asked zanz and he said draws ARE fully randomized... the thing is, random doesn't mean "not clumped" as you might be having a low probability but random bad clumping :P
Now, it's not the deck but the way it draws. My single most common opening draw is 1 tower which is inconsistent with predicted towers in the opening draw. The next most common is 4 towers. Right now, nearly every other game I am discarding on the second turn.
I have been playing card games long enough to know not to read into these things too easily. Based on the way the deck plays (i.e. clumping of like cards), I am starting starting to no longer believe the deck is fully randomized but that clumping is occurring. My success is directly linked to the amount of towers in my opening draw.
Anyways, if you're trying the 4SD version, try the 5 sd one, if you're trying the 5sd, try 4 sd. I've frankly been playing 4 sd and it works like a charm... I might switch to try the 5 sd one but frankly I've been playing less than one game a day lately so that's not nearly enough for me to test 5sd version :)
Post by: Vreely on February 26, 2010, 07:53:47 pm
anyways, vreely, are your stats for 5SD version holding up? It goes a little bit against me to remove druid and steal but perhaps you are right...I have not collected anymore stats than my original 100 games on the 5SD version. I do think that adding the 41st card in the form of a Druid as MrBlonde suggests is a good thing. It may change the ratios a bit and probably make the winning percentage a bit lower, but the games you do win will be quicker and you'll take in more money per hour played.
As I am forever tinkering, I am now testing a 36 card version of this deck to try an improve the odds of getting Oty and FB out earlier, as well as making the draws more consistent. I"ll post again with details when I hit 100 games with it. I am currently at 65 games and it seems to be working well. Maybe not any better than the 40 card version, but comparable enough, and more consistent.
Post by: Vreely on March 01, 2010, 11:48:52 pm
Win Rate: 0.62
Normalized Win Rate: (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2237.msg31191#msg31191) 0.61
Detailed Statistics (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=829739640)
The idea behind this deck variant is to shrink the size down in order to get some key cards out quicker (Oty's, Feral Bonds, etc.)
Furthermore, in a smaller deck, you can remove some cards that were dead draws previously. For instance, you can safely remove one of the 4 hourglasses and still maintain a good enough ratio to get the draw going. Since the 3rd and 4th hourglass are typically dead cards in your deck, this removes one of the dead cards. Likewise, a 3rd Quint is usually not required, and where we needed 3 in the deck before to get it early enough, a 36 card deck lets you get by with 2, again removing what is often a dead draw.
Finally, fewer cards creates more consistency in your opening draw. This is a good thing, although does not really change much of the statistics on its own. The downside of this deck variant is that its harder to play well. As a player you really need to know the FGs your facing and how their scripts are processed. You have to often play odds in when yous start/stop drawing, when you play your weapons, and when to risk an early creature. Where as the previous variant, you pretty much just blindly draw as many and as fast as you can, this deck requires much more finesse. I will give examples in the FG notes.
This deck did not produce any better results than my 5 Sundial variant (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290), however it seemed better to me. Also, with the addition of a Pulverizer it makes many of the games go much faster, drastically increasing your win rate per hour. So even if it is not statistically any better, I personally like it better even though its harder to play right. I do not recommend it for beginner players. Play a few hundred games with the easier variants first.
Changes:
- Added a Pulverizer. This requires you to juggle weapons intelligently, but really helps against some of the FGs. It makes up for removing the druid as it greatly speeds up the games where the FGs have defense. This was a key addition.
- Removed a Super Nova. They help early, are useless late, and have the danger of choking your opening draw. Still, a little injection of quantum at the right time is worth carrying a single copy.
- Removed a Protect Artifact. Like my 5 Sundial variant (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290), this requires more careful planning, but helps keep the deck trim. Also, with 36 cards, the win rate for Seism should go up over my 40-card 5 Sundial variant (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290).
- Again, replaced the Druid with the Arctic Octopus. It figures into defense, and I liked it in my 40-card 5 Sundial variant (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290), however I do not think the octopus is quite as critical in this version due to the Oty's coming out sooner. Still it saved my butt enough times to warrant inclusion over the druid.
- Removed Improved Steal. See my writeup for the 5 Sundial variant. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290)
- Removed an hourglass. With 36 cards, you can get away with one fewer of these and still get early draws going.
- Removed a Quintessence. You only really need 2, but you need to be smart about how you play them.
Chaos Lord:
The Pulverizer wrecks his day. Hold onto your Eternity and slow down your draws as soon as the Pulvy hits the table. Taking out his Dissipation shield will end his day really quick. If your Pulvy comes out in time where you won't need to rewind your own cards, then protect it so he does not steal it. If you judge that you are going to need to rewind, then do not play it because you will need your PA for Eternity and he would steal your Pulvy to ruin your day. Like most FGs, he will beat you in an early rush, especially if he gets some nasty early mutations.
Dark Matter & Divine Glory:
Forget about it. You have lost before you started.
Destiny & Paradox:
So long as you don't get rushed, its an easy win. Pulvy Destiny's hourglasses and rewind any of his nasties that he cannot replay. A fireball will win you the game against Paradox. Also against paradox, quint any Oty that is getting beefy so that he does not twin it multiple times and surprise you.
Elidnis:
Without the druid, you need to use the pulvy to destroy his bonds, otherwise you are in for the long-haul. If he does not quint his forest specters, then you might may want to chance an Eternity to rewind them to feed to the Otys. If you are careful, you can play Eternity early to bounce back his guys, then replace it with the Pulvy to take out bonds. You need to be smart and only do this if you can minimize your card drawing.
Ferox, Fire Queen, & Miracle:
Very easy pairing. Every once in awhile, the early rush will take you down, but after that you are in the clear. Fire Queen is a little trickier since you have to save quints in case he gets his eagle eyes going. Once you have an Oty out of 8 defense, and a Pulvy as backup, then they are no longer an issue. You still need to quint an Oty and a Queen however since he has the fireball thing that is annoying.
Gemini:
This one got much easier. Many strategies work, from destroying his gravity, freezing his momemntum guys, bouncing back momentum, sundial to stall, and most of all, picking off his phase shields as they come out. The Pulvy makes this a cake walk after you fight off the usual early phase spider rush.
Gravitron:
This "should" be easier than other variants because it should be easier to get the Immortal Oty out with a Fireball to get him going. My stats do not bear this out. Perhaps I was unlucky, or perhaps the reduced deck size makes the permanents that much more vital and therefore critical from being exploded. I did only have 8 games, but I would expect the 0.17 win rate to go up a bit.
Hermes:
You have a much better chance with him now, but this is one of the trickiest one to play out. Mostly in deciding what to do with the weapons. You have to play the situation and take risks on what to play first, and what to protect. I don't think decking out is an issue so long as you do not have to draw like made through 25 cards. You need pulvy to take out the fire shield, but you also need Eternity to rewind his lava Golems that have grown too big to eat. Once you do get setup with an immortal Oty, then you can just eat them as he serves them up, but before then its a real juggling match.
Incarnate:
Pulvy his boneyards, & freeze stuff to slow him down. This one is easy.
Morte:
The poison can hurt if you don't get your Bonds going in time, and you have to be a bit careful with how you deploy your 2 Quints to dodge the plagues, but this one is winnable. For some reason I only faced him once in 100 games, but I think it would be a high win rate. I am looking to quint an Oty, then either the Queen or the Octopus, depending on the game situation. Destroy Graveyards with your Pulvy, but really you can do fine with switching to Eternity whenever you want.
Obliterator:
Same strategy as always here. If he gets a protected Pulvy out, you're pretty much done. Hopefully you get a pulvy out first and can snap off any that he plays. You have to be smart about when to play Eternity, as you need it to rewind early momentumed basalt dragons. Do not be afraid to play Eternity first, then replace with a Pulvy after a couple rewinds. Its a challenge to get an Oty big enough to be useful, but not impossible. Still a tricky game, and I suspect the win rate will be below 0.50
Octane:
I only played him 3 times, and picked him twice. I was probably lucky, because he seems hard. In both my wins, I had an early Pulvy that basically handed me the win. The other trick is getting 3 snacks with your Oty so you can eat most of the stuff he plays. I quinted an Oty, then the Queen, although I would quint the Octopus early if needed to survive.
Rainbow:
Like usual, this guy continue to be a thorn. Theoretically, the Pulvy will help you out if you get it early enough and keep it around to kill off his hourglasses, but with only 1 protect, you simply need to save it for the Eternity, so its a necessary risk that could cost you the game if/when he steals it. He'll zap all your hourglasses, so use them as you can. A bonewall is your savior because he will target his explosions, and pulverizer destroys on that, leaving your muc more needed bonds and boneyard. Its not impossible to beat him, but as always, you need to get lucky.
Scorpio:
Its a flat out race against him. You need to get your bonds setup to counteract poison. If you can do that before its too late, you'll win. You will quint an Oty for sure, then either an Octopus or the Queen. Do the Queen if you do not have a boneyard up because its critical to get 10 or so creatures out to counteract poison. If you do have a boneyard up, the Octopus is nice to quint so he can stall for you as you generate skeletons.
Seism:
With only 36 cards, the single protect deck should have a slightly higher win rate than the 40-card 5 Sundial variant (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg31290#msg31290). My stats here do not bear that out, but it would over time. The Pulvy is nice for picking off his diamond shield, but I often end up using Eternity to rewind his shriekers before they burrow so I can get an Oty out to eat them. Octopus is a huge bonus here.
Deck Import Code:
Code: [Select]
6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u3 717 71b 71b 74b 74b 77f 77i 7am 7am 7do 7gr 7n3 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q8 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 80d 80d 80h 80h
Post by: Astaroth on March 02, 2010, 12:29:36 am
1. Without Fallen Druid, do games tend go slower? I would imagine it would against FG's with decent shields (shields that completely stop Elite Skeletons). I know that's why Pulvy is there, but what if they destroyed Pulvy or threw out the shield AFTER you've bumped Pulvy off for a protected Eternity? Permafrost shields especially come to mind here.
2. Why the upgraded Sundials, and do you think unupped Sundials would work just as effectively in this deck? Does that one extra time quantum really matter, or is it just your preference? They way I see it, at least unupped SD's get you a free draw for half of the Light cost, and that can really help out in the first few turns.
Post by: Vreely on March 02, 2010, 01:33:47 am
Very nice post, Vreely. Here's my questions though.The short answer is yes, if not played well, the lack of a druid does slow down the games. If played well, it DOES slow down the games a little bit, but not as bad as you would expect. In practice, the only FG you feel the slowdown is Miracle. It takes longer to burn through his Miracles when he has a Jade Shield out and you are hitting with Fireflies and a big Oty. To mitigate this, use your Pulvy to hit light towers over and over again so maybe you can deny him from being able to play a Miracle chain. Admittedly this does not work all the time.
1. Without Fallen Druid, do games tend go slower? I would imagine it would against FG's with decent shields (shields that completely stop Elite Skeletons). I know that's why Pulvy is there, but what if they destroyed Pulvy or threw out the shield AFTER you've bumped Pulvy off for a protected Eternity? Permafrost shields especially come to mind here.
On most other FGs you just need to be careful and not overdraw, thereby never really needing Eternity. In this case, use the protect on the Pulvy. Examples include Fire Queen, Chaos Lord, Scorpio, and Seism (unless he protects a diamond shield).
You site Permafrost. The only FG with it is Scorpio. If you have the engine up to keep you alive, then keep the Pulvy out to nail his shield and you'll kill him before you would need to rewind. Typically in this game I am playing Eternity early (if draw allows) to help stall his Physalia poison, or lock-down a Uthalid that would be annoying for my unprotected Oty. I then replace it with Puvy when I have control. You didn't mention the Seism/Obliterator Diamond shield. If he protects it, this becomes a long haul game that is much more slow without the druid.
Of course, there are the games where the Pulvy is drawn in the last 5 cards or so making it useless. This is where the druid would help out. Overall, it does create some slower games, but its not as bad as you would think.
One final reason I took the Druid out is the scarcity of life quantum. Playing with a Druid, 2 Bonds, and a Queen, with the need to use them as quick as possible, I was frequently running out of life quantum. Taking the Druid out solves this issue also, although its only a side-benefit.
For those still concerned, you can take the Octopus out and put a Druid back in. I think you will lose more, but maybe you will win more per hour. Its hard to measure this, but I suspect you are going to end up better with the Octopus and some slower games. You also can just try adding the druid as a 37th card, but I caution you on this. It may not seem like much but it does reduce a whole lot of key ratios that make the deck effective. Again, I suspect you would lose more overall, but its possible that you would win more per hour.
2. Why the upgraded Sundials, and do you think unupped Sundials would work just as effectively in this deck? Does that one extra time quantum really matter, or is it just your preference? They way I see it, at least unupped SD's get you a free draw for half of the Light cost, and that can really help out in the first few turns.Not many people have followed this thread from the beginning, but we did have a discussion about this about 5 or 6 pages back I think. I used to play without upped sundials but Jangoo convinced me to try them upped. Upping them single-handedly raised my win percentage about 5-7 percent. The reason is simply that the early game time quantum is very precious, and well worth the occasional need to skip the card draw. If you insist on using a Miracle, I would consider using them un-upped, but I am now a firm believer that they are in fact better when upped. All I can say is, if you don't believe me, try it. Those early game extra card draws via the hourglass, or the ability to rewind a turn or 2 earlier is more critical than you realize.
Post by: Astaroth on March 02, 2010, 02:08:13 am
- Pulvy. I can already see that this thing is one of the most crucial cards (against quite a few FG's) in this deck since Steals aren't present. In 5 or 6 of my games, I had terrible luck and drew it VERY late. It could have easily saved me some games, while others, not so much. One game that comes to mind is one against Elidnis. Those Bonds healed him just enough to survive, and he slowly tore down my Bone Wall with ridiculously strong Forest Spirits and Phase Dragons. Pulvy was my last card that game...
- Arctic Octopus. I never really got to use him much, so I can't judge him. However, in one game with Fire Queen, he REALLY helped by freezing the queens while Oty ate the other ones. Without it, I would've lost that game.
- Unupped Sundials. I see how upped SD's are better now. There were a few games where I could've used Hourglasses, but my SD's kept eating up the time quantum. I might up a few and give them a try.
- Morte. I fought him twice, and Pulvy never came out in time in both of them. Morte can really rush, and if you start eating his creatures with Oty, you can end up hurting yourself if he has multiple Graveyards. I think this matchup relies solely on an early Pulvy, or him playing few Graveyards.
Post by: MrBlonde on March 03, 2010, 10:06:06 am
Currently 18-18 with the deck and am actually quite happy with the results. I have had a pretty bad distribution of FG's so far, 21 of the matchups were against hard FG's, Rainbow(5) Scorpio(4) Divine Glory (3) Graviton (2) Hermes (2) Octane (2) Seism (2) Dark Matter (1) and only 6 against "easy" FG's (Miracle, FQ, Destiny, Gemini, Incarnate). With the 5 SD variant i would have fared a little worse and would have probably gone 15-21if not worse. I won a game a piece against Hermes, Graviton, and Octane solely due to the Pulverizer. It also probably made the difference in a Scorpio victory as well as i was hanging on a thread and ended up destroying two perma's in the match.
As Asteroth posted Morte is not a very easy FG (actually never really has been for me, i consider him an average matchup, i win 51% of the time vs him). Went 2-3 vs him but for some reason he just seemed harder with this variant. Those 2 victories i had to scratch and claw til the end. You really do need to play a bit tighter with this deck but maybe i just need to work with it a bit more.
This deck does feel a bit better to play. My starting hands are better and i like the perm control. Also being able to beat Octane and Obliterator is nice rather then having them as virtual auto-losses. Like the deck and will use it for a couple 100 matches at least.
Post by: Clathius on March 03, 2010, 03:35:50 pm
I have been trying Vreely's 36 card variant. My initial impressions are:
-it has better initial draws as well it should since it is smaller yet has the same towers.
-I absolutely feel the drop to 3 hourglasses. As a percentage of the deck, they went down. These decks need to draw to work. I find if I don't get an early hourglass the game is likely going to be a loss.
-The addition of the pulv is nice but I keep finding myself in a situation early game where I have played the pulv and could use it, or save the quanta in order to play the Oty in my hand.
Post by: Astaroth on March 03, 2010, 05:16:00 pm
I tried using Vreely's new deck without the druid but after playing a couple extremely long games against Chaos Lord (late late pulvy) and Miracle i couldn't help it... i had to put it back in to make it a 37 card deck. Although it might lose more with the Druid i need it in to keep my sanity.You jinxed me. After I read this, I had an extremely long game with Miracle. She decked out if that tells you anything... ???
I'm still using this deck, and the Arctic Octopus absolutely makes a difference. Miracle had 5 dragons in play, so it stalled four of them for me while Oty built up the Bone Wall. Druid probably would've lost it for me.
This is the most consistant deck I've used to fight the FG's.
Post by: MrBlonde on March 03, 2010, 06:45:34 pm
Sorry for jinxing you Asteroth. :D The one long game i had against Chaos Lord was ridiculous. I could see how certain games against Chaos Lord would be impossible to win without the Druid. If you're Pulvy gets destroyed you may never get enough dmg going to cut through the Dis Shield late game. And if your FQ dies or your graveyard gets stolen... good luck. I had my graveyard stolen that game and that really ruined my day.
Post by: ivalmian on March 03, 2010, 10:35:03 pm
I agree the arctic octopus has had the biggest impact to my deck. For the last 250+ games or so with the Octopus it has made certain FG's much much easier. I am 18-1 vs miracle since i put the Octopus in and the one loss was a deckout. Prior to that i was winning 71% of my matchups vs miracle. Also i've been 17-17 vs Scorpio which is probably an even bigger improvement because up to that point i was 6-39 (13.3%). All of my stats used are variants of Ivalmians/Puppychow and maybe a few others smattered in for a few games.that's why druid is I think a must.. even as an additional card... it makes things faster, allows you to win games you would have lost otherwise, and I don't think it make you loose often..
Sorry for jinxing you Asteroth. :D The one long game i had against Chaos Lord was ridiculous. I could see how certain games against Chaos Lord would be impossible to win without the Druid. If you're Pulvy gets destroyed you may never get enough dmg going to cut through the Dis Shield late game. And if your FQ dies or your graveyard gets stolen... good luck. I had my graveyard stolen that game and that really ruined my day.
Post by: Vreely on March 04, 2010, 12:20:13 am
Every once in awhile I am getting pulled into a long game, but not so much that it makes it a terrible grind. I did get pulled into a long Chaos Lord game as MrBlonde descirbed, and that sux, I also have hit a long Seism game or 2. However, overall, my play rate with the Pulverizer is averaging only slightly slower than the druid decks I've played before. I don't have a clock on this, its just a "feel" after playing hundreds of games with both.
I also think you guys are underestimating the price you pay for adding the druid as the 37th card. This is evidenced in the fact that I am playing 0.60 win rate over 126 games now while you are quite a bit under that. I am not that much of a better player than you.
Examine the ratios:
For example, the Hourglass ratio in the 40-card version is 0.10, in the 36 card version I am already lowering this quite a bit down to 0.08. In a 37 card deck, this ratio goes down incrementally. Not a huge amount, but if you take into account your QT ratio diminishing, your Oty/Quint ratio, your FB ratio, and your PA ratio (for Seism) you start to feel the effects more than you think and it translates into a small increase in losses.
Now the price I pay is a slow game occasionally, but I tell you, with the Pulvy, it is not a common occurrence. If you just eject out of any game that will be a long haul and turn it into a loss, then your speed will match the speed with a druid AND you'll still have a better percentage.
Another problem with adding a druid is that the 36 card deck you only have 2 quints. If your in a CL game for example, you have to quint an oty, then I almost always have to quint a queen so I can generate flies to feed my life via the bonds. There isn't a quint left for the druid, and so it will get mutated. Even if I don't have to quint the queen, then I am often having to protect the octopus in a desperation ploy to keep me alive past his early large mutates.
If you really do need a druid, I understand. I am genuinely interested to see how MrBlonde's stats bear out over a goodly amount of games. Again, its a preference for sure, but hardly a requirement.
Post by: MrBlonde on March 04, 2010, 02:16:42 pm
Bad FG's - 46.5% vs 56.5% (43 matchups)
(Dark Matter, Divine Glory, Graviton, Hermes, Obliterator, Octane, Rainbow, Scorpio, Seism)
Good FG's - 36.5% vs 19.7% (15 matchups)
(Destiny, Elidnis, FQ, Gemini, Incarnate, Miracle, Paradox)
Neutral FG's - 16.0% vs 23.6% (18 matchups)
(Chaos Lord, Ferox, Morte)
Anyhow i am currently at an unimpressive 35-41 (46.05%) over those 76 games. But checking the ratios of your 126 games bear out that i've had a bad run of matchups since your ratios matchup with my 1000 games (47-39-14, so actually you've run slightly better then my norm). I hope all my ratio stuff makes sense. Basically on a normal curve i would have had 13-14 additional "easy" FG matchups which would have certainly upped my winrate to a decent level.
I do think i need to move Scorpio and Seism into neutral FG territory though(40-65% wins) since they are no longer that difficult. I know you consider Ferox an easy FG as well but i can't seem to win over 65% vs him. I always seem to get outrushed in too many games to get a consistant 70% winrate vs him.
I must say that though my percentage isn't very good, considering my matchups, i'm still pretty pleased with the deck. I'm winning against all the easy FG's (14-1) and have a decent record so far against some hard FG's Octane (2-3), Graviton (2-3). I also will setup the elements statistics link (just been lazy and for some reason on my laptop the elements site has given me trouble with setting up stuff). Anyhow i will just keep grinding away.
Edit: Okay i added the statistics... what a pain. don't input 76 games when you're tired.. i had to redo 4 times. Anyhow also ignore the percentage, it says 49% but that's incorrect. Also for some reason the time section is blank for me so the cards that aren't listed are 4 SD's, 3 Electrum Hourglasses and Eternity.
http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=1491316809
Post by: Vreely on March 04, 2010, 03:46:03 pm
You certainly could be right Vreely. The only way i guess i'm really gonna be able to find out which is better is to grind out a bunch of games with both (probably 200 a piece). I would hate to use only 100 games because i am getting a bad ratio currently in matchups.I agree with you there. One would think 100 games is a good sample size, but really its not because the ratio of matchups can be drastically different. I think we start to get a better idea once at least 10 games from each FG have been completed, then the normalized win rate (as displayed) will probably be a bit more meaningful for how the deck will perform in the long run. To get 10 games from each, it will probably take 300 games or so. I do plan on sticking with this variant now, so perhaps I'll actually get there. I'll continue to play the 36 card druid-less deck, and you continue with the 36 card + druid. I think over time we'll get a good comparison. It will be interesting.
I am also going to start loosely keeping track of how many games I run into that are grind games, defined as such:
- If I have to crack through Chaos Lord's Dissipation shield. (this is the worst)
- If I have to overcome either Seism or Obliteratlor's Diamond shield in such a way that I am rewinding more than 5 times.
- If I have to deck out any FG.
- If I have to overcome Elidnis' jade shield/mass FB (when I cannot destroy enough FBs).
Post by: Astaroth on March 04, 2010, 06:15:33 pm
And I don't see how you guys have wins against Octane. I've NEVER beat him, and I'm using the same deck as Vreely. Maybe you have to get the perfect opening hand... or an early Pulvy, which I never get. On the other hand, I beat Dark Matter twice yesterday thanks to early Otys and tons of towers.
I might try the added Druid version, because I have had a few games from yesterday go awry due to not having enough "firepower." One game, Elidnis used five or six Twin Universes on a weak Forest Spirit right before I was about to win. This healed him a ton with Feral Bonds, and instantly took down a small bonewall (Phase Dragons and other Immortal creatures had been slowly tearing it down). My point is that I had that game won, but the shield and bonds were too much.
Post by: Vreely on March 04, 2010, 07:17:13 pm
And I don't see how you guys have wins against Octane. I've NEVER beat him, and I'm using the same deck as Vreely. Maybe you have to get the perfect opening hand... or an early Pulvy, which I never get.In my wins, it was because I had a Pulvy early enough. Not opening hand, but within the first 6 turns or so. Its pretty much required for a chance I think. My losses were because I didn't get the Pulvy in time ;)
Post by: MrBlonde on March 04, 2010, 10:09:30 pm
It's weird that Mr. Blonde brought up that he has fought quite a few of the hardest FGs, because I have too. The past two or three days have been nothing but Obliterator, Divine Glory, Octane, and Graviton. I honestly thought that maybe the odds of getting these had been changed a bit after yesterday... :oIn my post i actually had a portion that i deleted detailing that ever since Octane has been introduced the ratios for Chaos Lord, Scorpio and Miracles had all been changed for the worse and was wondering if the randomizer had been changed. BUT then i looked at Vreely's stats and when they bore out basically my exact same ratios i have run over the 1000 games prior i just figured it was bad luck.
And I don't see how you guys have wins against Octane. I've NEVER beat him, and I'm using the same deck as Vreely. Maybe you have to get the perfect opening hand... or an early Pulvy, which I never get. On the other hand, I beat Dark Matter twice yesterday thanks to early Otys and tons of towers.Like Vreely responded you have to get your Pulvy up rather early and hope that he doesn't get too many gases out. But at least with this version you have a chance to beat him. Considering Vreely and I are 4-7 vs him so far i think you've just been unlucky.
I might try the added Druid version, because I have had a few games from yesterday go awry due to not having enough "firepower." One game, Elidnis used five or six Twin Universes on a weak Forest Spirit right before I was about to win. This healed him a ton with Feral Bonds, and instantly took down a small bonewall (Phase Dragons and other Immortal creatures had been slowly tearing it down). My point is that I had that game won, but the shield and bonds were too much.I could also see that same problem with Gemini occasionally without a druid. If you don't get an early pulvy and he's allowed to get enough gravity to make dragons and manages to TU a bunch of them (and pray they aren't momentumed) i could see trouble since you can't mutate them down. Even with an arctic your shields will fall if he TU's a dragon 5 times and has 2-3 immortals.
Vreely: I think 2-3 minutes on average for miracle is probably right. Nothing can be helped there but it's just a minor exchange for this build. Chaos Lord is the big problem though. What makes Chaos Lord difficult is that he has steals so if you don't get your Pulvy early and protect it i am leery to play it. I'm not sure if Discord is a higher priority then Pulvy so i pretty much won't play it unless i absolutely have to unprotected because if that gets stolen forget about the game. Because of this i think Chaos Lord is the weakest link of the FG's concerning increased time. That dis shield can be a total pain.
I will also use a normalized win rate because i should get to 10 games per FG as well. Though it seems that Elidinis and Paradox are evading me. The last 224 games i have seen them 6 and 8 games respectively (which hurts since recently i've been 14-2 and 15-0 vs both of them). And then i look at Vreely and his 5 vs elidinis and 12 against paradox in 133 games and go >:( >:( >:(
Edit: Also something else to add to show that statistics can really be helped with small sample sizes. I no doubt believe PuppyChow's deck works and works well but his current 65.6% winrate is not a completely accurate gauge. His ratios are at 43/42/15 (Bad/Good/Neutral) where the norm is around 46.5/36.5/16 and 14% of his bad FG matchups are against Scorpio which should be in a neutral. So if i adjust the ratios by making Seism and Scorpio neutral...
Norm - 29.5/36.5/33
PuppyChow - 23/42/35 - 118 games
Vreely - 31/41/28 - 133 games
MrBlonde - 37/20/43 - 76 games
So actually over the long haul i expect the percentages for both PuppyChow and Vreely to fall a little bit as the matchup ratio evens out.
Post by: Vreely on March 04, 2010, 11:20:05 pm
Chaos Lord is the big problem though. What makes Chaos Lord difficult is that he has steals so if you don't get your Pulvy early and protect it i am leery to play it. I'm not sure if Discord is a higher priority then Pulvy so i pretty much won't play it unless i absolutely have to unprotected because if that gets stolen forget about the game. Because of this i think Chaos Lord is the weakest link of the FG's concerning increased time. That dis shield can be a total pain.I agree with you completely that Chaos Lord is a weak link of my build. However, I am learning to deal with him. You do not need an early Pulvy, but you do need it protected. Once you get it protected, the game is quickly yours. If you get it late (only 4 cards left or so), then typically your board is already setup full of fireflies and skeletons and you have a massive bone wall protecting you. Then play the Pulvy, protect it, and next turn knock down his shield and hit him for 80 damage or so. 2 more turns of this and he's dead.
So I draw aggressively until I get the Pulvy + PA in hand. At this point, if I have at least 18 or so left in the draw deck & the Eternity in hand I will actually play an Eternity unprotected first and try to use it to bounce a few of his beefy mutations that he cannot recast, or one that he burned all his chaos powers on. Eventually the Eternity either is stolen, or I no longer need it, then I'll replace it with the Pulvy to rip down his dis shields. I ignore Discord. I rarely makes it through my shield except in the early game sometimes. If the Pulvy is in hand, but I cannot find the protect yet AND my board is setup with a bunch of firepower, then I will take a chance and play it unprotected. Typically he has burned all his steals by now. He can draw one of course, but so far I have gotten lucky. Usually I only need it around for a 3 turns of destroying the dis shield.
Where the long game comes in is when the Pulvy is in the final 2 cards. Draw it on 2 & play it, use it on 1 then I am forced to play the Eternity w/ protect and snuggle in for 20 rounds of dis shield protection (assuming he replaces it). If you get the Pulvy on the 3rd to last card, I am typically OK. Draw on 3 & play w/ PA, use it on 2 & nail him, use it on 1 and nail him, use it on 0 and finish him.
Pulvy will be in the final 2 cards only 1 out of every 18 games against him, and in that 1 game you have a 20% chance to lose to him before you even notice its buried (die to an early rush). This means you only have a 4.4% chance of hitting the hell game with CL on each matchup against CL. This is bearable.
Take the calculation with a grain of salt, because there are many variables. For instance, there is an extraneous case where you draw both your graveyard & queen in the final 10 cards so you cannot setup the board to kill him in 3 turns. In this case you need the Pulvy a turn earlier, and my calculation does not include it. Then to throw another wrench into it, he typically mutates my secondary Oty & my Octopus; sometimes into a very useful base creature that is subsequently rewound for me to play again and reap the benefits. Sometimes he doesn't have 3 dis shields in hand. Sometimes I have to use a quint on an octopus to keep me alive early... you get the point. Math can only take one so far in a complex game such as this.
All of this adds up to: Its not as bad as you think. Yes, I have been caught in a lockdown game with him (2 at the most), but 1 or 2 games out of 133 total games played is not going to ruin my day.
Now... you want to talk about Elidnis? I think that is actually my weakest link. I have no answer for a later game Pulvy and a bunch of bonds and immortal creatures that slowly tear down my bone wall while he remains virtually untouchable behind a jade shield and 40 points of healing each turn. So far in the 5 games I have caught against Elidnis, only 1 had a late Pulvy, and in that one I was lucky that he never drew a jade shield before I took him out.
Post by: Astaroth on March 05, 2010, 12:05:08 am
Ah, glad to see it was only bad luck.It's weird that Mr. Blonde brought up that he has fought quite a few of the hardest FGs, because I have too. The past two or three days have been nothing but Obliterator, Divine Glory, Octane, and Graviton. I honestly thought that maybe the odds of getting these had been changed a bit after yesterday... :oIn my post i actually had a portion that i deleted detailing that ever since Octane has been introduced the ratios for Chaos Lord, Scorpio and Miracles had all been changed for the worse and was wondering if the randomizer had been changed. BUT then i looked at Vreely's stats and when they bore out basically my exact same ratios i have run over the 1000 games prior i just figured it was bad luck.
Again, bad luck. Believe me, there are plenty of games where Pulvy is in the bottom half of my deck...And I don't see how you guys have wins against Octane. I've NEVER beat him, and I'm using the same deck as Vreely. Maybe you have to get the perfect opening hand... or an early Pulvy, which I never get. On the other hand, I beat Dark Matter twice yesterday thanks to early Otys and tons of towers.Like Vreely responded you have to get your Pulvy up rather early and hope that he doesn't get too many gases out. But at least with this version you have a chance to beat him. Considering Vreely and I are 4-7 vs him so far i think you've just been unlucky.
I agree with you completely that Chaos Lord is a weak link of my build. However, I am learning to deal with him. You do not need an early Pulvy, but you do need it protected. Once you get it protected, the game is quickly yours. If you get it late (only 4 cards left or so), then typically your board is already setup full of fireflies and skeletons and you have a massive bone wall protecting you. Then play the Pulvy, protect it, and next turn knock down his shield and hit him for 80 damage or so. 2 more turns of this and he's dead.I tend to forget about his Steals from time to time, and he WILL steal that Pulvy. When he does, it's not pretty. Feral Bonds? Forget them. Hourglasses? Nope. Sundials? Yeah right. He'll destroy them all. Earlier, he slowly took down a Bone Wall with my stolen Pulvy and a few creatures. It's a rather annoying fight if he takes it...
I actually performed pretty well against Chaos Lord with other decks, mainly because they have Steal. Plus, a druid can create a creature with Destroy or Steal abilities.
Now... you want to talk about Elidnis? I think that is actually my weakest link. I have no answer for a later game Pulvy and a bunch of bonds and immortal creatures that slowly tear down my bone wall while he remains virtually untouchable behind a jade shield and 40 points of healing each turn. So far in the 5 games I have caught against Elidnis, only 1 had a late Pulvy, and in that one I was lucky that he never drew a jade shield before I took him out.With Elidnis, you HAVE to take those Aether towers out, or you will probably lose. Then, you focus on his bonds. This way, he can't summon the dragons, he can't quint the other creatures, and he can't duplicate anything a thousand times in one turn. But like you said, a late Pulvy here can be really bad. This matchup is much easier in other decks I've used that have had Permafrost Shield.
Post by: MrBlonde on March 05, 2010, 12:45:20 am
Elidnis..... i didn't even think about how tough he would be especially with a jade shield out.
Astaroth: Yeah you really gotta remember what FG's have what and even how many of each he has. Although i am using better builds then before just knowing your FG's back and forth improves your winrate significantly. Like Vreely mentions you have to protect your Pulvy vs Chaos Lord unless you are pretty sure he doesn't have any more steals or absolutely have to play it.
Concerning Elidnis you don't really need a permafrost either. My last 16 games i've been 14-2 vs him without a permafrost or a pulvy. The Druid will probably be the difference maker in this matchup costing a few wins here and there without him.
So the verdict so far is as follows without a druid.
-Chaos Lord and Elidinis the winrate will suffer a little bit due to late Pulvy's
-Miracle, slower by a few minutes
With the Druid
-TU abilities by Gemini, Paradox, and Elidnis aren't as troublesome.
-Miracle and Chaos Lord should be a little bit faster on average.
-Winrate may be less with other FG's due to the extra card and ratio/quanta issues.
Post by: Astaroth on March 05, 2010, 02:11:06 pm
Good post Vreely and thanks for fleshing out your Chaos Lord strategy. Now that you've explained it a bit it doesn't seem as bad now. Knowing that i can throw my Pulvy out with 3-4 cards left seems manageable and those long games should be kept to a minimum. Just need to stay focused during those times (i sometimes go on autopilot and usually do multiple things while playing elements, probably one of my favorite things about this game.. that i can multitask and play).I kept that first paragraph quoted up there because I do the same thing. I multitask and play. Sometimes I come back 30-40 minutes later, and this was mainly what I was referring to about Chaos Lord. I know he has Steal, but I'll come back completely absent-minded and play an unprotected Pulvy. ???
Elidnis..... i didn't even think about how tough he would be especially with a jade shield out.
Astaroth: Yeah you really gotta remember what FG's have what and even how many of each he has. Although i am using better builds then before just knowing your FG's back and forth improves your winrate significantly. Like Vreely mentions you have to protect your Pulvy vs Chaos Lord unless you are pretty sure he doesn't have any more steals or absolutely have to play it.
Post by: PuppyChow on March 05, 2010, 09:48:50 pm
Post by: MrBlonde on March 06, 2010, 11:12:44 am
Even when i play the easy FG's right now i'm losing. In what i thought would finally be an easy win after playing obliterater twice, Rainbow, Seism, and Divine Glory twice, i play Gemini...
End of the 4th round Gemini has out 2 Phase Recluses both momentumed, an Immortal, and a Dragon. I have out... 1 tower. Dead in round 6th. Same thing with Paradox earlier, ended up dead round 7 or 8 with him having out 5 14/14 ray of lights and a few deja vu's. Honestly can't remember if i've ever run through a streak this badly. Today i also lost to Destiny, Paradox, Gemini again and Elidinis twice. All games that are pretty much automatic wins for me. Prior to today including this build I was 58-5 against those 4 FG's. And i managed to go 1-6 against them today. What... the... &$*(#....
Soooo... with that said. I'm really not sure what to think. Vreely may be correct that adding the druid may be messing up the balance of the deck but honestly am not sure. I am certainly getting more bad draws right now and am not getting the cards i need fast enough. I don't know if not having the 5th sundial is making that difference or having that 1 additional card or i'm just plain going through a bad bad run. Seism and Morte are also beating me up pretty badly right now.
Anyways I am currently 69-81 (46%) and 49.21% normalized. Ugh. I think i'll restart up after the weekend (cool off) and try the build without the druid and see if i can see a significant difference. Only thing good i can say right now is that i've won a lot of cards at least in my wins. 34 in 69 wins is a really high rate.
http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=1491316809
Post by: Vreely on March 06, 2010, 03:10:10 pm
Looking at your 150 game stats, part of it certainly is bad luck. Look at your top 4 opponents (Scorpio, Morte, Seism, Rainbow) compared to me pulling Fire Queen 19 times (just keeps coming up). Also, you have too small a sample size against some of the easier ones. You can easily get 2 more Ferox wins, 2 more Elidnis wins, 2 more Paradox wins, and your normalized rate will go up about 5 or 6 points probably. Paradox certainly should normalize at 85-90% or even higher. Ferox you should be able to land 70% at least.
I hate to say it, but the other part of it probably does have to do with watering down the ratios by adding the 37th card. You will get more screwed on the no-tower draws, and when you do get them you have less chance of recovery. It is scary how many of my games come down to a final draw where I need to get 1 or 2 specific cards to stay alive, or I have 1 final chance to generate that 5th Aether quanta, or any number of other examples like this. In your deck, there is 1 more chance that it is not that life saving card, or that you did not get a tower out early enough to get that 5th Aether quanta. You almost never need a druid as a critical card to stay alive... you could have had a SD instead, or a Super Nova to allow you to cast a shield, etc.
Yet another possible factor is in play style. I did a poor job of expounding on strategy for each FG, and as I said in the initial writeup, this is a very difficult deck to play well. And example would be the CL strategy I put in a later post. If you were not holding your Pulvy and playing with a PA, I could easily see how your win rate would be lower. Perhaps there are other small little nuances in play that I have picked up on. It comes down to knowing the FGs behavior down to the smallest detail. This deck does live on the edge and I do have to leverage very small factoids I have picked up. For instance, on Gemini, some may now know that keeping his massive dragons frozen will prevent him from duplicating them (not because he can't, because his script won't). Then if you protect your big Oty and keep your second Oty at 3 power, then he will burn all his Twin Universe's on one of your fireflies (power 4), which are very easy to deal with, especially if you are holding the firestorm waiting for it.
Finally, even over 150 games, I still think my normalized win rate is a bit inflated. In no possible way should I be pulling 62% with Seism. I don't know what unholy pact I made to have pulled my single PA in my first 14 cards in 6 out of 13 games. Then in another 2 games where I didn't get the PA until card 25 or so Seism just happened to not have a quicksand? I fully admit that my win rate on Seism should be closer to 0.40 rather than the 0.62 it shows now. Also, I have only faced Morte 3 times in 150 games. I picked up 2 out of 3 against him, but over 10 games or so I would guess it will be more like 40-50%.
Post by: Astaroth on March 06, 2010, 04:55:03 pm
Post by: Rahlious on March 06, 2010, 05:20:58 pm
Okay guess i'm gonna rant and rage a little bit now so if you don't want to hear me whine maybe you should pass on this post. It's been a very difficult tough go lately and i just want to throw my laptop. Just finished 150 games and i have to say... I AM NOT HAPPY. What makes me more frustrated is that i'm not sure if i can blame it on the build, bad luck, or just a mass of bad FG's.LOL, same thing happened to me yesturday.
http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=1491316809
I usually do pretty well with Vreely's decks, but when I tried the 36 card deck yesturday things went pretty bad (32% win rate). Got mostly hard FGs and when I finally got some easy ones, I got horrible draws. Just goes to show how much luck can play in this game. Some of it might have been due to the deck and or my lack of ability to use it properly, but I think it was just pure bad luck. Maybe the deck is Jinxed... JK
I do have a little feedback on the deck. Several times I found myself waiting around for that first Quint to show up. Maybe swapping out a Phase Shield for a Quint might be better?
Post by: MrBlonde on March 06, 2010, 06:22:14 pm
Ouch!
Looking at your 150 game stats, part of it certainly is bad luck. Look at your top 4 opponents (Scorpio, Morte, Seism, Rainbow) compared to me pulling Fire Queen 19 times (just keeps coming up). Also, you have too small a sample size against some of the easier ones. You can easily get 2 more Ferox wins, 2 more Elidnis wins, 2 more Paradox wins, and your normalized rate will go up about 5 or 6 points probably. Paradox certainly should normalize at 85-90% or even higher. Ferox you should be able to land 70% at least.
I was going to post that my normalized should go up but then that sounded like sour grapes. Although i guess i was whining anyways... Also 11 games against Divine Glory really sucks.
Yet another possible factor is in play style. I did a poor job of expounding on strategy for each FG, and as I said in the initial writeup, this is a very difficult deck to play well. And example would be the CL strategy I put in a later post. If you were not holding your Pulvy and playing with a PA, I could easily see how your win rate would be lower.I do make mistakes but one i make sure i don't make is to ever play CL unprotected unless i have to. My losses against him seem to be because of my standard way of losing to him. I do love to read about strategy's though and i keep up PuppyChow's excellent writeup in a different tab and frequent yours for tips and reminders as well. Chaos Lord is one of the few that i've been able to handle better along with Octane and Graviton.
Perhaps there are other small little nuances in play that I have picked up on. It comes down to knowing the FGs behavior down to the smallest detail. This deck does live on the edge and I do have to leverage very small factoids I have picked up. For instance, on Gemini, some may now know that keeping his massive dragons frozen will prevent him from duplicating them (not because he can't, because his script won't).It is interesting you would say that Vreely because on multiple times i have had Gemini duplicate his frozen dragons. It is always late game when he does do this though. If he does do it when the dragon is frozen it's when he has 5-6 TU's and i believe it's when they are momentumed as well. This has happened to me twice when i did not have my druid out to mutate them down to size. It's not too big of a deal though since they will all still be frozen but it is in the script to duplicate them, at some point anyhow.
Finally, even over 150 games, I still think my normalized win rate is a bit inflated. In no possible way should I be pulling 62% with Seism. I don't know what unholy pact I made to have pulled my single PA in my first 14 cards in 6 out of 13 games. Then in another 2 games where I didn't get the PA until card 25 or so Seism just happened to not have a quicksand? I fully admit that my win rate on Seism should be closer to 0.40 rather than the 0.62 it shows now. Also, I have only faced Morte 3 times in 150 games. I picked up 2 out of 3 against him, but over 10 games or so I would guess it will be more like 40-50%.Well this does make me feel a little better. Perhaps i really am just getting a bit unlucky. I've pulled my PA twice in my first 10 cards and the one time i had it protected my first turn he had 3 shriekers and a basalt dragon by turn 3 and threw out another one on turn 4. I think elements hates me right now. I am by no means blaming it all on bad luck and matchups though. I am leaning towards your theory on the extra card making that minute hard to quantify difference. It's just really tough to seperate out which is which. Yesterday it just seemed that everything was working against me. Anyways i'll restart again later and hopefully things will even out.
Post by: Vreely on March 07, 2010, 03:59:34 am
I do have a little feedback on the deck. Several times I found myself waiting around for that first Quint to show up. Maybe swapping out a Phase Shield for a Quint might be better?You could be right about this. If you're willing to test it out over a good number of games, I would be curious. I have certainly had losses to FQ because I had to wait too long for a quint while he was threatening me with an eagles eye. It is something that is a weak point (only 2 quints). I'm just not sure if having only 1 phase shield is worse since getting to your defense is key. Willing to give it a shot?
Post by: ivalmian on March 07, 2010, 11:04:29 pm
100,000th view! FTW!well.. 10k.. not quite 100k yet :P
actually, looking at what happens in this thread is one of the few things I still do related to elements (and checking the oracle... so i get my nymphs in case I ever decide to play again)
BTW, what are the current stats (and card set) for the best version? I guess I better put it into the top post...
Post by: Vreely on March 08, 2010, 01:15:48 am
BTW, what are the current stats (and card set) for the best version? I guess I better put it into the top post...My current favorite deck is the one I posted here. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg35534#msg35534) Although I may split it out into a brand new deck post rather than a variation of your deck since it is fundamentally different (uses Octopus, doesn't use Steal or druid). I'll leave it up to you, either an official variant of yours, or I can make a new topic.
Post by: ivalmian on March 08, 2010, 06:23:54 am
i will add it tomorrow... unless you want to make a new post.BTW, what are the current stats (and card set) for the best version? I guess I better put it into the top post...My current favorite deck is the one I posted here. (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2156.msg35534#msg35534) Although I may split it out into a brand new deck post rather than a variation of your deck since it is fundamentally different (uses Octopus, doesn't use Steal or druid). I'll leave it up to you, either an official variant of yours, or I can make a new topic.
Post by: Clathius on March 08, 2010, 02:28:00 pm
From a statistical standpoint, at some point you are going to have to consider that you the player has improved and that some deck improvements are really player improvements.
-I personally prefer the 40 card version. I found the 36 card version too variable. I spent some time thinking about the win condition - that is, at what point have you secured a win? I used to think it was getting the walls up. Now I believe it to be once you have the card draw engine going. In essence, the entire deck is 1 giant combo. You need the vast majority of the deck at your disposal in order to win. The way this is accomplished is by getting out the hourglasses. A second or third turn Hourglass is a strong predictor of you winning that game. Once you have 2 hourglasses in play, unless the FG has zerged you bad, you will probably win. It only takes 2-3 turns of drawing 3 cards per turn that the deck just comes together. So that being said, the 40 card version with 4 hour glasses has a higher chance of drawing an early hour glass and also a higher chance of getting 2 hourglasses out.
This observation is likely why so many people were having bad luck with the 36 card version. The deck is very feast or famine. If you get an early hourglass with the 36 version you are golden, but the chances of you getting that early hourglass are lower.
Post by: Vreely on March 08, 2010, 03:08:52 pm
From a statistical standpoint, at some point you are going to have to consider that you the player has improved and that some deck improvements are really player improvements.It is a good point, and you are right that I have could have simply just gotten better at playing, although its impossible to measure.
-I personally prefer the 40 card version. I found the 36 card version too variable. I spent some time thinking about the win condition - that is, at what point have you secured a win? I used to think it was getting the walls up. Now I believe it to be once you have the card draw engine going. In essence, the entire deck is 1 giant combo. You need the vast majority of the deck at your disposal in order to win. The way this is accomplished is by getting out the hourglasses. A second or third turn Hourglass is a strong predictor of you winning that game. Once you have 2 hourglasses in play, unless the FG has zerged you bad, you will probably win. It only takes 2-3 turns of drawing 3 cards per turn that the deck just comes together. So that being said, the 40 card version with 4 hour glasses has a higher chance of drawing an early hour glass and also a higher chance of getting 2 hourglasses out.While I do not agree completely that the key of the deck is the getting the draw engine going, you are right about earlier hourglasses always being one of the keys to victory. The draw engine feeds the key of the deck, which is getting both the defensive cards to keep you alive and the quantum to use them. While having an early hourglass is indeed better, there is an opportunity cost of an extra dead hourglass draw after the first two. To me, I like the "feel" of the 36 card version better, but as you point out in your first sentence, it likely just comes down to a preference. If there is a "better" version of the deck, the difference is very marginal. After all, this whole experiment in deck building is NOT about finding the perfect deck, instead it IS about finding the perfect deck for you.
Post by: ivalmian on March 08, 2010, 05:25:25 pm
Post by: Vreely on March 08, 2010, 07:17:04 pm
Win Rate: 0.60
Normalized Rate: 0.59
Detailed Statistics (http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=829739640)
Note: In the last 120 games I only played Hermes a single time, and it was a win. The average for Hermes at 200 games is 0.60 which skews the results. A more expected average for Hermes is around 0.40, and I would expect it to converge towards that if I could get more games against him. Based on this skew, I am guessing the actual normalized win rate for this deck will be 58% if it faces an equal amount of all FGs.
I also only played Morte one time in the past 100 games, but I lost this game to him bringing my average to 0.40, which I am guessing is close to where it should be over a large amount of games.
I have faced 13 out of 19 of the gods at least 8 times. Only 9 of 19 have I faced 10 times. For some reason I keep getting Fire Queen pairings (25 games out of 200 at 76%). In other words, 200 games is still not enough to remove relevant statistical skewing, but I am getting closer. At this rate it will take me 400 games just to get 10 matches against Hermes.
Post by: Astaroth on March 08, 2010, 08:42:04 pm
Post by: MrBlonde on March 09, 2010, 12:46:41 am
I have faced 13 out of 19 of the gods at least 8 times. Only 9 of 19 have I faced 10 times. For some reason I keep getting Fire Queen pairings (25 games out of 200 at 76%). In other words, 200 games is still not enough to remove relevant statistical skewing, but I am getting closer. At this rate it will take me 400 games just to get 10 matches against Hermes.I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. Getting 10 games from each FG will probably take at least 400 games for me as well (i've played 195). I have Paradox, Elidinis, and Dark Matter at 4 games and Incarnate and Ferox at 6. Ironically as soon as i changed up decks (needed a break) in 13 games i saw Incarnate 3 times. Figures.
Anyhow one thing i do know for sure in adding the Druid. It will definitely make a difference in your Divine Glory percentage. Having that extra damage and mutations in your lineup is pretty much essential in getting through her Miracles before she eats up your shields. Also the deck being 1 card longer helps. Of course this is pretty much an irrelevant improvement since IMO it really isn't worth it. Its probably better to just auto-quit against her.
Post by: Rahlious on March 09, 2010, 01:57:06 am
Yeah, I'll let you know if I give it another go and replace 1 steal with 1 Quint.Okay guess i'm gonna rant and rage a little bit now so if you don't want to hear me whine maybe you should pass on this post. It's been a very difficult tough go lately and i just want to throw my laptop. Just finished 150 games and i have to say... I AM NOT HAPPY. What makes me more frustrated is that i'm not sure if i can blame it on the build, bad luck, or just a mass of bad FG's.LOL, same thing happened to me yesturday.
http://elementsstatistics.comxa.com/getstatistics.php?dv=1491316809
I usually do pretty well with Vreely's decks, but when I tried the 36 card deck yesturday things went pretty bad (32% win rate). Got mostly hard FGs and when I finally got some easy ones, I got horrible draws. Just goes to show how much luck can play in this game. Some of it might have been due to the deck and or my lack of ability to use it properly, but I think it was just pure bad luck. Maybe the deck is Jinxed... JK
I do have a little feedback on the deck. Several times I found myself waiting around for that first Quint to show up. Maybe swapping out a Phase Shield for a Quint might be better?
Problem with this game is the high amount of RNG (randomness) and it would take hundreds of games to get a result with high confidence. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a game of slots vs a game of skill.
Post by: Vreely on March 16, 2010, 01:20:30 pm
Edit: Nevermind. Hope was rebalanced, as it should have been. The upgrade now blocks 1 less damage, and costs 3 more light to cast. Not so easy just to throw into an existing rainbow deck now.
Post by: Vreely on March 16, 2010, 07:38:25 pm
Here is what I came up with:
- Game 126 - start tracking
- 141 - Seism early PA diamond shield (4 rewinds)
- 159 - Elidnis. early pulvy killed EBs, early oty got big, very late queen to contend with jade shield (8 rewinds)
- 173 - Chaos Lord. He destroyed my graveyard early & Pulv was very last card. 2nd Oty mutated to poison ability. Poison killed him about the time I cracked the dis shield (15 rewinds)
- 218 - Obliterator. Protected Diamond shield + Protected Pulvy made this one take forever. Had to keep his Pulvy busy on my bone wall to keep FBs in play. (6 rewinds)
- 221 - Seism. Mid-game PA Diamond shield (3 rewinds)
- 231 - Seism. Very last card was my Pulvy so could not destroy the shield. (5 rewinds)
- 250 - Final game tracked (rolled over to 1.20)
Post by: Muellje on March 24, 2010, 12:14:45 pm
This is the version I use.
(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/img/m7Gbd54812/THX_Vreely.jpg) (http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/de/)
I started playing this deck with uped pillars, a druid, only 2 upped hourglasses and 2 novas, but no pulvy and miracle. The rest of the deck was unupgraded. i used 2 novas instead of the hourglasses, so the deck was at 38 cards without the pulvy and miracle, which I added later.
It was a little tough in the beginning... But I got lucky, when winning a game and sometimes won 2 cards, once I won 3.
Now I am finally at the point, where I can save electrum and dont have to sell the cards I win, and its all thanks to this deck :-*
Even though I lost more games in the beginning, than I won, I netted enough quantum through card and EM wins (miracle helps here!), to make the deck stronger and stronger.
I upgraded the otyughs first,then 2 more hourglasses, then the queen, the bone wall and graveyard and the ether cards. I upgraded the PAs, the sundials and eternity last.
Maybe my post will encourage some people to use this deck as a kick off into "wealth", as I did.
Thanks again,
cheers Muellje.
Post by: Muellje on March 28, 2010, 07:29:38 pm
Still playable, but not as good as before. I dont like it >:(
Post by: Damokles on March 28, 2010, 10:07:45 pm
Im thinking about switching to a slim entropy deck and get rid of the hourglasses, what do you think?
Post by: Laxaria on March 29, 2010, 11:59:22 am
Code: [Select]
6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 717 71b 74b 74b 77i 7am 7am 7do 7n3 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q5 7q8 7t9 80d 80d 80d 80h 80h 80hThis deck above was built specifically after the 1.21 change. I took out all the sundials to prevent them from ruining bad draws, while added in the supernovas to further boost my Quanta gain.
The lack of dials make it more prone to early rushes, but if you can draw the right cards fast enough, combined with auto-mulligan to stop 0-tower hands, it might work a bit better, but I haven't tried it. If you can get 2 Entropy Quanta fast, it would help a lot. Perhaps a fatter version for those without SoGs.
I haven't had any statistics, except for a win against Chaos Lord and Seism, so feel free to try it. I don't know how good it is, but I hope I can get the ball rolling.
Post by: dlantz on September 02, 2011, 09:47:22 pm
My win percentage isn't great since there's so many different gods I have no answer for, but against playable gods it generates a pretty decent win rate. (Since I just quit the ones I can't beat as soon as I see them, at least it's fairly quick farming). Anyone with more experience that can help me tweak this to be more competitive?
Post by: Jangoo on September 03, 2011, 01:16:53 pm
Anyone with more experience that can help me tweak this to be more competitive?Yes: Go to THIS THREAD (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25609.0.html) and pick an up to date, competitive deck.
Closest to this is any CCYB-variant since they are also rainbow decks. Then again, its not really close anyways.
Ivalmians deck was very good back in the days (especially the variant I made for it *cough) but nowadays it's just
too slow to keep up with the real reapers.