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6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 717 71b 71b 74b 74b 77f 77i 7am 7ba 7ba 7do 7gp 7ng 7q5 7q5 7q8 7q9 7q9 7q9 7t9 80h 80h 8pjI know it's not an option for most, but i wanted to post up a small review of the Air Nymph, as a replacement for the Firefly Queen in an FG slaying rainbow.
I was fortunate enough to score one of these in the first week of the oracle, so i've had some time to play with this variation. The very short review is: totally sweet dude!
So, what are you losing exactly by dropping the firefly queen?
No renewable creature source if your boneyard gets popped.[/li]
No edible creatures against Divine Glory at all.[/li][/list] Firefly queen comes out earlier than the Nymph, and her ability is more accessible in the early game in general (you're not likely to be able to afford 3 air quanta per turn very soon after paying 9 to bring out the nymph).[/li][/list] The FFQ is far more durable without the quint.[/li][/list]
And what are we gaining with the Air Nymph?
Renewable full board damage. A properly fueled air nymph combined with a bone wall is nearly unbeatable.[/li]
She's heavy hitting and ignores most shields. The only counter to Unstable Gas is a Mirror or Jade shield. Both of which are pretty bad at blocking your druidic army, and only used by DG and Miracle, the former is hardly worth playing, the latter is a joke.[/li][/list] The air nymph uses only air quanta, so deploying and fueling her doesn't interfere with anything else you have going on. You're free to mutate and run an empathy without gumming up the deck. (the small fire quanta use has never come up)[/li][/list] In an ideal situation, the air nymph deals 5 times as much damage per turn as a FFQ. You can win matches very quickly, rather than having to rely on a mutated army that takes several turns to build up. [/li][/list]
You have a harder time with DG, a god i don't really care to play against anyways, even when my deck is designed to fight him. She's less useful against miracle, but you can often steal an air tower from miracle and blow her up before miracle even puts a jade shield in play. You'll still win even if your air nymph is a dead card.
Against rainbow, oblit, octane, and hermes, you have a very nice permanent destruction sink, in addition to your bonewalls. Against morte and incarnate, you can throw down a bone wall and go crazy, allowing him to build up massive charges on his bone wall, because you don't need to punch through it to win, skellingtons are a non-issue.
The FG decks that just pump out creatures (ferox, incarnate, paradox, elidnis, grativon, destiny, chaos lord, FFQ, scorpio) are simply destroyed by an early quinted Air Nymph, add a bonewall, and you have a full match locking combo.
Not needing to get around most shields (and in a tight rainbow you can't pack more than a steal or two, and a pulv) speeds up your matches a very notable amount. There are occasions where the Air Nymph can provide a level of match control that the FFQ cannot (and definitely not by herself), but mostly she adds punch to the deck, and speeds up your matches, sometimes by *dozens* of rounds.
