Shak'ars Revenge (FG-Voodoo)

[Nume]

(http://imageplay.net/)
89 damage per TU ~8 turns in ftw!

[Essence]

This is what I've been testing since someone mentioned Precogs:

Code: [Select]

6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 74d 74d 77l 77l 77l 77l 77l 77l 7qb 7qb 7qb 7tg 7tg 80b 80b 80b 80b 80b
Pendulums work much better than Aether towers IMO (props to $$$)

Care to explain this?  It seems to me like you're losing out on a good amount of vital quanta.

[Krahhl]

Not as much as you may think, thanks to the mark. It just adds stability: you don't lose because you never drew a single aether tower.

[Nume]

I really prefer the pendelum method as well. It would probably take you longer to get to say 24 aether with the pendulum method if you needed 4 TUs, but that should almost never be the case. 12 comes very quickly and 18 doesnt take too long either so not having enough aether is almost never the cause of a loss in my experience. Having the aether mark helps a ton in getting early aether, which can lead to even faster games.

[Jangoo]

Care to explain this?  It seems to me like you're losing out on a good amount of vital quanta.

This has been boggling my mind too ...


Here is a quantum-table for the original deck versions with 7 Towers/Pendulums and no Precogs.

This is assuming your 1,86 tow./pend. in your 8-card opening hand are 2 tow./pend.
"2-3" is a value close to 2.5 - in this table pessimistically rounded down to 2.
The two values in brackets show quanta after casting the available supernovas for comparison.



I don't know ... looks to me like pendulums just blow almost 50% of the quantum-production on nothing. 

The red values show whenever you are ready to cast an additional TU. Here the tower-based deck can
go at it about 2 turns earlier and is actually ready to cast all 6 of them by turn12!
So I would say the tower-deck is at a clear advantage when it comes to speed in quantum generation.


Now I can still imagine some advantages of pendulums ... none of which I have actually tested yet.
Please keep sharing your experiences guys:

- Krahhls "stability": Bad luck with tower-draw
Drawing only one aether tower in the starting hand can usually be made up for by drawing them later
but if not your screwed indeed.
With pendulums, even if you draw only one forever, it will be enough to cast your supernovas and even though
you might struggle, you should be ready for at least 2 TUs eventually.

- Shak'ar wins fast but not that fast:
Being ready to cast 4 TUs+ fast is great but overdoing it. Since you will usually have to wait until turn9+ to get
enough BBs, the grav.pull etc. anyways pendulums are just fine here:
By then you will have 18 quanta to get your 3 TUs going.

- Seism and other Permcontroling gods
Take my pendulums and make me laugh.
Then again, the tower deck seems to do fine against them too. Maybe though it's the little edge that counts here.

- Decay, DarkMatter
Enough Pendulums may keep you the option to play your supernovas when you need them.
As soon as Decay fractals and DarkMatter gets a nymph you are probably done either way, right?

- $$$mans Antimatter
Make actual use of those 50% of your quanta and stay afloat with 1-2 AMs.
 
- Pendulums are en vogue.


Here are some advantages of aether-towers, all of which I have actually tested and all of
which are more or less subsumed under:

- TU is a great card! (aka guerilla tactics)
One scenario of a "bad draw" is getting like 4 TUs early on. Now if that is paired with your decent standard
2 towers you just got yourself some options other than only playing plan A.
With towers you can actually afford to use 1 or even 2 TUs for something other than your doll to get an early
game advantage.
I have copied kick-ass Lavadestroyers, Forestspectres, Lightdragons, Druids, Mutants ... anything that shaves
off an extra 15-30 dmg (depending on survivability).
Also keep in mind that you will often have an extra grav.pull hanging around: Your freshly cloned Lavadestroyer
just killed your one worry if you can make it long enough for your doll cast ...

- ChaosLord
Your only chance is to play this as a TU + stall deck ... good thing you have the quanta to do it.

- Take one out
Didn't take stats on it yet but even only 6 towers seem to do reasonably well. Instead you could use ...
whatever you like ... a small shield or an Antimatter for example. 
 
- It feels good to have those quanta ready in time.

[kobisjeruk]

pendulums are only viable if you actually have other use for that excess other than fueling Supernova
like antimatter, BE, pandemonium

[Malduk]

What Nume said. You'll have 12 before you get cards for combo anyway, and 18 is usually what you need to win, and usually even mark is enough to get those 6 extra quanta.
(On a side note, Decay is also not a hard god AT ALL, as long as he gets Eclipse fast enough. You can put combo down on turn one, even if you only have 1 BB, and place BBs as you get them/Novas. Novas generate enough distraction to preserve quanta for those 2-3 TUs needed to kill).

I've been also testing Beefs version that has one Pendulum less, and it also works like a charm. Its a tiny bit slower, but a bit more reliable too.
Overall, I dont lose often for not having aether quanta but having TU in my hand. I was also skeptical before I upgraded those pendulums, but try it out.

[Krahhl]

This biggest advantage of pendulums is probably the stability combined with that you'll almost always have enough quanta for TU anyway. Better to barely have enough quanta with most draws than to have more than enough with a lot of draws and not enough with some draws. Adding antimatter could help too and use up the extra entropy.

You make a good point about aether towers allowing you to use more TUs than you need though. I haven't tested it myself, but it seems it wouldn't be often that you have extra quanta, TUs, and need to TU an opponent's creature to decide the game. It's still there as a possibility though. I guess it kind of comes down to antimatter vs twin universe.

[Malduk]

Btw, you dont really NEED to find ways to spend surplus quanta. Goal is to setup the Doll and have TUs to kill FG. I'd rather have that combo drawn and used faster, than draw a card just to spend my quanta. Indeed, AM could be handy sometimes if drawn at all, but it will also be useless sometimes (Octane, Glory, Decay, and borderline useless against Osiris, Dream Catcher, Fire Queen, did I miss someone?). Saying that, I didnt test AM at all, but the only gods I wish to have it against are those with heavy hitting creatures with momentum.


EDIT: A pretty picture. "I fail" award goes to this screenshot (check cards left, FG didnt play a single creature). Obliterator = Pro

[Jangoo]

This biggest advantage of pendulums is probably the stability combined with that you'll almost always have enough quanta for TU anyway. Better to barely have enough quanta with most draws than to have more than enough with a lot of draws and not enough with some draws. Adding antimatter could help too and use up the extra entropy.

The thing is that in my experience the "not enough with some draws"-scenario pretty much never happens.
As seen in the quanta-table, the tower-deck generates so much aether that even a problematic game will only
drop you down to "barely enough". And I am talking Rainbow blowing up all 3 of your lucky starting towers in turn1
or even Seism taking care of them because you forgot its him. (lol, yeah, that happens to me quite a bit: I will
throw out those two ot three towers at once and gone they are ..."goddamnit! I forgot it's that miserable son of a ..."  )

You make a good point about aether towers allowing you to use more TUs than you need though. I haven't tested it myself, but it seems it wouldn't be often that you have extra quanta, TUs, and need to TU an opponent's creature to decide the game. It's still there as a possibility though. I guess it kind of comes down to antimatter vs twin universe.

Well, extra quanta happens very often while TUs are a matter of averaging "good" and "bad" draws:
You end up with -lets say- 4 of them by turn 5 just as often as you will hold 4 BBs, 4-5 towers, 3 supernovas, 2 dolls or 2 grav.pulls by then.
Naturally, having too much of one thing will always imply being kinda short on something else and each scenario is
 equally likely to happen.  ... which opens a whole range of guerilla tactics for those bad-draw scenarios. 

Concerning using more TUs than needed, I am pretty thrilled about this. Eversince I handed the guerilla strategy
guide to Shak'ar, the win rate has gone up notably. It's also a lot of fun having some more options to compensate
for odd draws on your or even the FGs side ... it reduces the somewhat dull "slot-maschine" effect Essence was
talking about by introducing some actual skill or strategy. 
That having said, popping that darn first Hermes-Destroyer with TU and an extra grav.pull and consequently either
dealing some dmg or drawing all those lances away from me has pretty much become my standard move when the draw permits it.

Here is another funky guerilla scenario I have sometimes:

The FGs damage is suddenly at 32 and you are bound to do something or die (26 HPs left).
Unfortunately, you only hold 2 measly BBs so far. Casting the doll now means the doll dies next turn if you
don't draw another BB right away. Your clogged hand holds: 3 TUs, 2 grav.pull, 2 BBs, 1 doll.
Looks like its Guerilla-time!
turn1 -> You spit in the face of the FG by casting doll + 2 BBs + 1TU, then you grav.pull doll1
turn2 -> (draw: no BB, sorry) your doll1 has 28HP left, you leave it to die and suck up that dmg
turn3 -> (draw: whatever) the god ramped up his dmg to 38, doll1 has bit the grass and dealt a total of 54dmg
to the god, you grav.pull doll2
turn4 -> (draw: BB, finally!) doll2 has 22HPs left, +BB = 42HPs
turn5 -> (draw: whatever) doll2 has 4HPs left, you TU it twice and kill the god: 76x2= 152+ 54doll1 = 206!

What you just did is converting a single TU into 60 life-saving HPs (doll1) to keep you afloat a couple more turns.
That gave you a chance to finally draw that damn 3rd BB over 3 turns.
If you had just stuck to your standard plan, you would have hit "quit" at turn2 because normally, TUing a doll
for low dmg is inacceptable: You just need to hit that magical 67dmg (2 TUs) or 50dmg (3 TUs) with your
doll alive to do it. This is especially the case if you don't have the aether-quanta to just "blow" a TU on this move.
The more standard version of this guerilla-move I use quite often is TUing a half-assed damaged doll (e.g.~45HP)
to preserve my doll while I hope for more BBs.


EDIT: Lol Malduk, Nice one! I guess that falls under "catching Obliterator naked in the shower".
You really do experience quite a variety of FG performances with this deck. 

[Nume]

I dont know about the table, but I do know from experience when playing with towers that I had multiple occasions where I couldnt get enough aether for TU's due to not drawing a lot and/or early perm destruction (Eternal phoenix, hermes, and rainbow are especially guilty of this). I have had almost no times with pendulums when I didnt have the aether to cast tu's when I was ready to use them. For me, the experience counts for more than any table showing what I "should" get .

Edit: I just wanted to add, the other advantage of pendelums imo is that you can actually get away with using only 5 in the deck, which lets you keep 5 snova, 5 TU, 3 voodoo, 3 grav pull, 6 BB, and still have 3 precogs. If yoiu tried a deck with entropy mark and just 5 aether towers, you'd have tons of issues facing any kind of permanent control. You need 2 aether towers up to beat the production of the pendelum deck even with no pendelums out.

[Essence]

You need 2 aether towers up to beat the production of the pendelum deck even with no pendelums out.

Explain.