Veens Vicious Viotech/ VVV (upgraded FG Killer, for score and electrum, 95% EM)

[gumbeh]

Yeah, that little run got me my last QT. Deck's official nao.

So far in my testing, turn speed (on MY turn) is pretty phenomenal. This isn't one of those decks where you have to make a lot of tough decisions turn by turn. Auto use all your permanents, don't use the combo cards until it's combo time or you're in doodoo and need to try for a 2-turn KO before the FG gets too much more powerful. Mostly you just blaze through your deck with hourglasses until combo time. Sometimes shield choice takes a smidge of thought, but not much.

OTOH waiting for the "fast" AI to think about his clogged hand and field full of cells adds a big chunk of time for many turns in a row.

________________________________

Testing journal days 1 and 2.

• When I lost, I came extremely close to killing both scorpio and obliterator. In both cases, pulvy would have let me live one turn longer, or more death quanta would have gotten me enough condors. On the other hand, vamp dagger has kept me alive many times so I'm not necessarily in favor of removing it. A dash of PC to handle the occasional Arsenic, Pulverizer, or Titan would be a nice convenience, though. Could even help with the occasional Unstable Gas when you're not able to find your Jade Shield quickly enough.
• EM'd gemini despite several careless mistakes during the match. Some other decks, like LA, are not very forgiving.
• Osiris is a punk. Catapults slam you just like unstable gasses do, EXCEPT catapult goes right through your jade shield. LAME. Another place where some PC might change the outcome.
• Decay was interesting. I couldn’t find my jade shield and got drained down to 15 hp. Rather than let him drain me, I threw out an early condor-fractal-RoF-chimera (no sky blitz avail yet) to soak his siphon lifes. It worked!
• Octane is interestingish – can’t really use your Afla until you get jade shield, otherwise your cells just get exploded by gas.
• Hypothetically with Akebono, you’d like to afla his overdrived creatures so they die faster and AM stable non-driven creatures and maybe already-high-damage overdriven creatures. Realistically with Akebono, he will turn you into paste long before you have any degree of control over the match.
• Eternal phoenix is very fun if you manage to get several key defenses out onto the field FAST. It's a short, quick, exciting race - if you throw up enough defense/healing early, you can reach obvious win conditions as early as turn 4.
• Chaos Lord is a tough matchup and you'll have to rush through your deck to kill him before he gets too many awesome mutations. As always, it's tough to make antimatter stick. Sometimes it's worth your while to AM a creature with extremely high stats and hope it gets mutated into something small enough for RoF to kill - sometimes it's worth it just so you stop taking 20 damage/turn from one creature. If you need the healing, though, creatures with scavenger or growth will keep an AM. Either way, make sure to slow down at the end if you don't have enough death quanta yet – maxwell's demons will gladly kill your chimera if you miscalculate.
• You can often win with just Condor-Fractal-RoF, depending on whom you're facing. You need Sky Blitz for miracle-users and chimera for certain shields. If you if you already were forced to use your Heal to stay alive, a fast win with a partial combo is better than spending time attaining a perfect combo, because EM is almost impossible without heal.
• On that note, don't hoard your heal and AMs too greedily. (I learned this during my short preliminary testing run.) You might survive this round, but if you cut it too close, the FG can surprise you in the next round. A possible EM or a sweet AM on the perfect buffed creature is not worth potentially missing your chance to execute the combo.
• I haven't lost yet, but I feel like Decay's going to get me one of these times around. If you play your sanctuary early, it will get stolen. If you DON'T play your sanctuary early, decay might become too powerful in one way or another. If you PA a sanctuary, you have to hope for a jade shield because the permafrost will probably be stolen. And what happens when PA and jade shield are both on the bottom of the deck? On that day, I think Decay will get revenge on me, but I think PA+permafrost OR jade shield is enough to claim a victory. Sanctuaries are very nice to have but not quite as important as a shield.

Overall feel: doesn't handle swarmy rushes as well as CCYB, handles them better than most others. The jade shield takes the sting out of several FGs that give other decks a rough time - if you can find it. Very satisfying "boom" sound when the chimera attacks. Often gives you the great feeling of an underdog victory - many turns in a row where the FG hammers on you while you play every card you can to survive, then, WAPOW! No one expects the condor blitzquisition!
Having lots of fun.

[gumbeh]

deck	Veen's Vicious Viotech
players	Gumbeh

version	1.283		win-rate	47%
$ track ?	enabled		win-rate (n)	n.a.
games	100		Score/h	505
win-loss-(EM)	47-53-(29)		Score/h (n)	n.a.
time (h:m:s)	06:41:38		FGei[c]* (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,14626.0.html)	3275
min/game	04:01		FGei[cn]* (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,14626.0.html)	n.a.

      Statmasta™4000                                                                *assumed card-spin/win: 35%
      

score/h	FGei(c)	Statmasta™4000	wins	losses	skips	EM/Wins
-1077    793    200    954    740    -7200    -571    1394    262    418    567    805    -1271    -549       -768    1363    451    -13    1034    957    1358    217    330    437    1305    -713    635    916    338	-1077    4002    2912    4609    4077    -7200    -571    6108    2586    3168    3165    4436    -1271    -549       -768    5974    2918    949    5340    4845    5955    2178    3216    2860    5721    -713    3712    4460    3293	Akebono Chaos Lord Dark Matter Decay Destiny Divine Glory Dream Catcher Elidnis Eternal Phoenix Ferox Fire Queen Gemini Graviton Hecate Hermes Incarnate Jezebel Lionheart Miracle Morte Neptune Obliterator Octane Osiris Paradox Rainbow Scorpio Seism Serket	3    1    3    1             2    2    2    1    2                2    2    1    5    3    2    2    2    3    1        4    2    1	4         3         1      1     1         4     3         2     1     3     3         2     3     1     2         5     3     2         4     3     1     1		1      1      2      1                  2      1      1            2                        2      1            2      3      2      2            1      1            2      2

Did 100 games with the Viotech. Pretty profitable run overall.

I do not think that Jezebel is an auto-skip. She simply requires different tactics. In my losses against her, I was playing normal VVV, i.e., I was saving up for The Big Combo at the end. However, Jezebel and Lionheart can both be beaten by deckout! It's very tough to do with Lionheart. But it's not tough with Jezebel! Here's the tactic I fleshed out:

• Give her all your electrum hourglasses. This isn't tough to do, because she prioritizes them. Just make sure not to play other permanents until you have an hourglass to cover them. If you save your early SoD draw, for example, and then play it in the same turn with an EH, she will steal the EH. Try not to let her waste Steal on your SoDs and shields! You need those to survive until deckout!
• Use Rain of Fire to dispel Cloak! You only have 1 rain of fire, so you need to make it count. When you have 2 or more CC cards (AM, Afla) saved up, burn away that Cloak and choose your CC targets carefully. Some nymphs have solid attack damage, and nymphs with LS on them are nice AM targets. Jezebel will use Liquid Shadow to neuter Malignant Cells, so try to get 2 Cells to pop from 2 Aflas in the same turn, or kill the darkness nymph with the Afla.
• In general, use the RoF trick earlier if you're taking a beating, later if you haven't drawn much CC yet. If you wait TOO long, a turquoise nymph will quint up most of Jezebel's creatures. I have only done this twice so I'm not sure of the perfect timing yet.
• You can sneak in an AM or an Afla before Cloak goes up or in between Cloaks, but they're a bit more effective when used in concert. A lucky Nymph's Tear which becomes an or nymph can suddenly neutralize your CC.
• Condor can be used to soak a Siphon Life if Jezebel's hand gets too full. Fractal condors or nymphs can soak up more, but Jezebel doesn't have many SLs anyways. Don't pin too much hope on fractal nymphs, her array of nymphs will generally nullify any single type you can nab.

Lionheart is much harder and still an auto-skip. When he's down to 5 cards, he will Reverse Time any Antimatter'd creatures or Malignant Cells you've left on his field. It's easier to deck him out if you do not use those cards. If you have to use a couple to survive (likely, due to Lionheart's strong damage), try to nullify them when your Permafrost and other permanents have you feeling safe. In other words, try to undo your AMs with other AMs or Aflatoxin.

He quints too many creatures to be defeated the "normal" way. Far as I can tell, he'll often beat you with raw damage even when you try to deck him out, and your own CC can screw you at the end causing Lionheart to deck YOU out. I pulled it off once, don't recommend it in general, but I'm curious as to whether anyone manages to find a way to defeat him consistently with VVV.

On a completely unrelated note, the attached screenshot shows one of the more entertaining victories I had. Chaos Nuts mutated up an Endow creature, used Endow on my stiletto, and won the game for me. Even with less aggressive Hourglass usage and zero condors, that one little Endowed fella woulda slowly killed his master!

[Veen]

Hey Gumbeh!

You are totally right about Jezebel and that is a very good strat. I also apply that strategy to decay sometimes. Let him steal my hourglasses and towers and make him deck himself out. I enchant my frost shield. Though I find it hard to accomplish, there are many things that can go wrong...

I have yet to find a good strat on Lionheart, because it seems that he uses different tactics. Decking him out is almost impossible with the damage he can generate. An early aflatoxin helps, but the turtle shield and the fact that he has rewind makes this very hard.

Maybe, but thats just an idea, you could try and get cells on your side of the field. Turtle shield doesnt absorb damage and the fact that he will rewind (make sure your defense is setup first) will prevent you from decking out. Just an idea.

[gumbeh]

Yeah, Decay is interesting and always different based on your draws. PA Sanc + Jade Shield is awesome if you get lucky enough to swing it, but PA Permafrost + trying to hand off your other perms instead of Sanc does the trick, too. I haven't lost to him yet, but I always feel like I might, especially if he gets an early Eclipse and I haven't drawn a shield yet.

Interesting idea for Lionheart. I gotta try it!

For Jezebel, I've only had 2 games wherein I tried the deckout strat. I enchanted her Quantum Towers and allowed her to steal whatever she wanted. Both times resulted in a win. When you prevent her from making GOOD nymphs by enchanting her land stack, her damage is pretty pathetic IIRC. Jade Shield is definitely good enough, and shieldless is ok, too, as long as you throw your RoF + CCs onto her stuff.

That all depends on draw order, though... with exactly 1 PA, 1 Permafrost, and 1 Jade, you get a different game every time you encounter an FG who is neither an autowin nor an autoloss. I've been thinking about running the numbers with +1 Permafrost (and no other changes), because for most gods, that is the crucial shield to play. And with 2, you can afford to risk one and PA the other when you can. So far the most efficient version of CCYB has 2 Pfrosts and 1 PA... maybe irrelevant to VVV, maybe food for thought.

What do you think? Have you tried adding another Permafrost to the deck? My single victory against Lionheart relied on that Permafrost, IIRC.

[Veen]

My original version of this deck had 2 permafrosts, but after some testing I have found that 1 Jade shield and 1 permafrost are superior. One of the reasons is that aflatoxin is also a way to decrease the chance of your opponent doing mass damage. In CCYB there isnt. Until now Ive never been outdamaged on my jade shield wishing I had a permafrost. So I would say it isnt needed.

Against Lionheart I have fought him a lot of times trying to get a strategy on him, but never succeeded. Ive had permafrost up, but there isnt really a way to do enough damage to him. I think I won when I drew my dagger early and managed to get like 80 damage on him before I fractaled some condors.

[Colossus]

Now that was an interesting game to say the least. Thank you for the deck, Veen, it's been more fun for me then any other FG deck so far and hey, I finally got it to beat EP!

[Jenkar]

Will test fully upped.
I'd like a god per god strategy, though 

[BluePriest]

The thing I like abot this deck is that it breaks the conventional rainbow fg wisdom of MUST HAVE PULVY/ETERNITY!

[gumbeh]

The thing I like abot this deck is that it breaks the conventional rainbow fg wisdom of MUST HAVE PULVY/ETERNITY!

I'd counter that you don't always need Stiletto, and that sometimes Pulvy would help. You can generally manage, though. This deck is very solid as-is. Made me a lot of money.

( +1 Permafrost ) or ( +1 Pulverizer -1 Vamp Stil ) are changes that might produce an interesting, different spread of results, however. Jade shield turns certain gods into a cakewalk if you can draw it, and this deck draws very fast, so there probably isn't an equally-competitive version of the deck with ( -1 Jade ) in it. Probably.

[Jenkar]

My favorite part still is the "badabum" effect of a 288 chimera. <3

[(...)]

Very funny deck, i love to kill the AI in one hit Also the EM's are always good.

[Toxx]

Seem like a deck to be fun to use because I love aflatoxin but I dont think I FG hunt with it. I might add some tweaks to it. Nice work though