Lately, I've been playing around with some random deck ideas.
Some of them failed, even though they were fun to play with.
And some of them surprised me.
I stumbled upon this deck when I wanted to combine a pillarless rush with flying creatures.
Obviously, various mono-Air decks jumped to mind, but those are done aplenty.
So I decided to splice Air with a nova rush.
Original Deck:
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 7af 7af 7af 7af 7af 7dm 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7hi 7hi 7k0 7mu 7n1 7n1 7n9 7nq 7nq 8poSpoiler for Original Deck:
Spoiler for original deck introduction:
This deck surprised me: even though it wasn't a rush anymore, it was still fairly fast and consistant.
But above all: it was fun to play with; a change of pace from regular rushes, poison dials, control bows and what-not.
Against AI3, I've lost once because of a bad draw with no creatures or bravery in the first few draws, though I haven't played too many games there - maybe between 30 and 40 - and the situation itself is pretty rare.
Against bronze, I won 44 games out of 50, and got 6 special spins.
Silver was less successful. but I still managed to win 21 out of 30 played matches with 2 spins. I recognize that I was lucky here, and also with my couple of victories on gold and platinum.
I haven't tried this in PVP yet, since I don't think it will do too well there.
If you don't care too much about winning and stats, you might want to give this deck a try.
Spoiler for Strategy:
Nova is the only zero cost card here, so you should have no problems drawing one in the opening hand. Two are prefered, of course, but not required per say.
Play your creatures and patience ASAP, and don't be afraid to draw like crazy through bravery - you'll want to draw through your deck and play as quickly as possible. Don't play novas if you don't need the quanta.
Play your mirror shield as early as possible against spell damage decks. In that case, don't use photosynthesis, unless you have no shield in hand and are holding a bunch of leaf dragons.
Keep your two shards of freedom in your hand until you decide to make your attack.
If you must, use lightning storms to remove a threat, like a shard of foccus, for example.
Hold your one explosion to clear a shield before your attack, or to remove a severe and immediate threat.
Wait for the right time to remove your patience, and then play freedom, dive (if possible) and sky blitz (12 total air quanta required).
Go for a OTK or TTK.
Spoiler for Alternative cards suggestions:
This deck is pretty tight in it's quanta usage in a lot of games, so you might want to add an extra nova - swap out a leaf dragon.
If you have trouble keeping patience on your side of the field, maybe you could add a protect artifact - swap out a leaf dragon or the mirror shield.
Steal a threat instead of exploding it, though you're more likely to play an explosion with the fire mark, especially against denial decks.
The leaf dragons can be replaced by it's unupped counter-part.
Probably, this also applies to the Air cards.
Remove one leaf dragon and/or the mirror shield to add your preferred control cards (like the above mentioned steal, or some lightning, fire lance, reverse time or quicksand) as long as they don't conflict with the heavily used or critical elements in the deck (like ice lance). Or maybe you want an extra shard of freedom.
If you don't like bravery because of it's double-edged nature, you could swap them for precognitions and switch to time mark. Using sundials is probably not a good idea here: Upped, they will mess up your starting hand, and unupped, you rely too much on novas power (whether you rely on time or light mark).
It is now a few days after my original post, and I received some feedback.
Some of it was really helpful, especially the comments of Tiltias and Calindu.
I decided to update my deck, based on his suggestions.
Version 2:
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 7af 7af 7af 7dm 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7ee 7hi 7hi 7hi 7n9 7n9 7nq 7nq 7q1 7q1 8poThis version of the deck is quite a bit faster than the original one.
Playing with this version in the arena generally gave me more consistent wins then before.
Strategy and card change suggestion are roughly the same as the original version.
Play your novas, creatures and patience ASAP.
Save the one explosion for a severe threat, or to remove a shield just before you attack.
Remove your patience when your creatures are strong enough.
Play your freedom and sky blitz (10 Air quanta in total) and go for a OTK, if you can.
Spoiler for card change suggestions:
- If you have trouble keeping patience on your side of the field, maybe you could add a protect artifact.
- Steal a threat instead of exploding it, though you're more likely to play an explosion with the fire mark, especially against denial decks.
- The leaf dragons can be replaced by it's unupped counter-part.
- Probably, this also applies to the Air cards.
- Add a mirror shield to protect against spell damage decks.
- Remove one one or two creatures to add your preferred control cards (like the above mentioned steal, or some lightning, lightning storm, fire lance or quicksand) as long as they don't conflict with the heavily used or critical elements in the deck (like ice lance or reverse time). Or maybe you want an extra shard of freedom.
- If you don't like bravery because of it's double-edged nature, you could swap them for precognitions and switch to time mark. Using sundials is probably not a good idea here: Upped, they will mess up your starting hand, and unupped, you rely too much on novas power (whether you rely on time or light mark).
That's about it. I'm still having a lot of fun with this deck, and that was the point of this concept: Fun.
It still wins consistently enough to not frustrate me, which has been the case with a lot of other decks, while still being pretty fast most of the time.
I personally alternate between
Gravitybow and this deck when I feel like grinding in the arena.
I might even go as far as to rename the deck title to an arena farmer.
I will need some stats though. I only played a quick 25 games against bronze with 24 victories, so far.
Is anybody willing to help out here?
I doubt this deck can gain much more speed with this strategy, though I hope you can prove me wrong in the comments below, and can figure out a way to improve this deck farther.
I'd love to see this deck becoming even stronger.
Have fun!
