Best AI3 Farming Deck on the cheap?

[Dragoon]

I'm working on a simple walkthrough to help beginners go from starter deck to false god killing deck.  I want to create a fast AI3 farming deck.  Three main stipulations to this deck: no rares; you have to be able to build it with your starter deck + money from the first few quests; it has to win quickly and consistently against AI3.  Like I said, this is if you're starting from scratch and don't have any rares and don't have a ton of money to blow.  Ideally, you should be able to create this deck by the time you get the quest for 150 score.  The first several quests give you a combined 135 electrum coins.

This is what I came up with:
14 Stone Pillars
2 Titanium Shields
6 Graboids
2 Shriekers
6 Reverse Times
Mark: Time

Start with the Time deck and sell everything except Reverse Times and then buy all the Earth cards.  You can get everything except that second Shrieker with just your starter deck.

Any ideas to improve this?  Is there a better deck for quick AI3 farming on the cheap?

[Scaredgirl]

I'm working on a simple walkthrough to help beginners go from starter deck to false god killing deck.  I want to create a fast AI3 farming deck.  Three main stipulations to this deck: no rares; you have to be able to build it with your starter deck + money from the first few quests; it has to win quickly and consistently against AI3.  Like I said, this is if you're starting from scratch and don't have any rares and don't have a ton of money to blow.  Ideally, you should be able to create this deck by the time you get the quest for 150 score.  The first several quests give you a combined 135 electrum coins.

This is what I came up with:
14 Stone Pillars
2 Titanium Shields
6 Graboids
2 Shriekers
6 Reverse Times
Mark: Time

Start with the Time deck and sell everything except Reverse Times and then buy all the Earth cards.  You can get everything except that second Shrieker with just your starter deck.

Any ideas to improve this?  Is there a better deck for quick AI3 farming on the cheap?

Lol, I like it how you say in the title that this deck is the best, then in the end you ask if there are better ones.

And yes, there are much better ones.

[Dragoon]

I'm working on a simple walkthrough to help beginners go from starter deck to false god killing deck.  I want to create a fast AI3 farming deck.  Three main stipulations to this deck: no rares; you have to be able to build it with your starter deck + money from the first few quests; it has to win quickly and consistently against AI3.  Like I said, this is if you're starting from scratch and don't have any rares and don't have a ton of money to blow.  Ideally, you should be able to create this deck by the time you get the quest for 150 score.  The first several quests give you a combined 135 electrum coins.

This is what I came up with:
14 Stone Pillars
2 Titanium Shields
6 Graboids
2 Shriekers
6 Reverse Times
Mark: Time

Start with the Time deck and sell everything except Reverse Times and then buy all the Earth cards.  You can get everything except that second Shrieker with just your starter deck.

Any ideas to improve this?  Is there a better deck for quick AI3 farming on the cheap?

Lol, I like it how you say in the title that this deck is the best, then in the end you ask if there are better ones.

And yes, there are much better ones.

Ha!  I didn't mean for the title to come across like that.  I suppose it should be a question to clarify that I'm asking rather than stating the sentence.  I'll add a question mark to the end of it.  I considered a straight fire deck which is also pretty fast, but in my limited testing it seems this earth/time deck comes out faster.  Would you care to enlighten us to these better decks?  I'm open to ideas.  That's why i posted it on the forum before sticking it on the wiki.

[Cisco]

well I would say it comes down to what you like better. For me anything under 100% mastery  is a bad deck in ai3. I have no specific deck for l3 havn´t played it in at least a month.

[Dragoon]

well I would say it comes down to what you like better. For me anything under 100% mastery  is a bad deck in ai3. I have no specific deck for l3 havn´t played it in at least a month.

Yeah, I suppose it depends on whether you think it's better to win as many games as fast as possible, or to take longer and get your masteries.  Honestly, I have no idea which will net you more money faster.  I suppose a Vampire deck or FFQ deck with Empathic Bonds would work well for masteries.  Maybe even a denial deck like Dark/Earth would work too if you get a good start.  As for speed decks, mono-fire seems like the popular choice.  Mono-aether is another popular one.

[Scaredgirl]

I'm working on a simple walkthrough to help beginners go from starter deck to false god killing deck.  I want to create a fast AI3 farming deck.  Three main stipulations to this deck: no rares; you have to be able to build it with your starter deck + money from the first few quests; it has to win quickly and consistently against AI3.  Like I said, this is if you're starting from scratch and don't have any rares and don't have a ton of money to blow.  Ideally, you should be able to create this deck by the time you get the quest for 150 score.  The first several quests give you a combined 135 electrum coins.

This is what I came up with:
14 Stone Pillars
2 Titanium Shields
6 Graboids
2 Shriekers
6 Reverse Times
Mark: Time

Start with the Time deck and sell everything except Reverse Times and then buy all the Earth cards.  You can get everything except that second Shrieker with just your starter deck.

Any ideas to improve this?  Is there a better deck for quick AI3 farming on the cheap?

Lol, I like it how you say in the title that this deck is the best, then in the end you ask if there are better ones.

And yes, there are much better ones.

Ha!  I didn't mean for the title to come across like that.  I suppose it should be a question to clarify that I'm asking rather than stating the sentence.  I'll add a question mark to the end of it.  I considered a straight fire deck which is also pretty fast, but in my limited testing it seems this earth/time deck comes out faster.  Would you care to enlighten us to these better decks?  I'm open to ideas.  That's why i posted it on the forum before sticking it on the wiki.

Lol, you didn't have to change it. I didn't have a problem with it, I just thought it was funny.

If you want to do an earth deck, this is pretty good and close to what you suggested: http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,539.0.html , although I would drop that Antlion and take another Pillar or something.

When grinding level 3 I have these rules:

1. Do NOT take any defensive cards
If you have all damage, you will win faster. Do NOT take any defensive cards because you don't need them. If you take even ONE defensive card, I will come and kick your ass! Elemental mastery doesn't give you much more cash so it's not worth while to try to get it (if you try, matches will last much longer) With non-upgraded deck, sometimes you might lose but that's not a big deal.

2. Take only 30 cards total

3. Try to find the optimal amount of Pillars.
Many people take way too many Pillars, and that makes grinding slower. Take less and less Pillars until you find that perfect amount.


There are some tips, I sure there are others too but I need to go get some sleep.

[Dragoon]

Thanks for the tips and link SG.

He has a pretty sweet deck.  I wonder which would do better unupgraded?  With the mono-fire you'd have to throw in Lava Golems and an Earth Mark to go up against the Graboids and Shriekers. 6 Dragons plus Bolts and even Fahrenheit would have a hard time keeping up with the sheer number of Shriekers you can throw at the AI imo.

With perfect draws, you could win in 6 turns for both Fire and Earth decks unupgraded.  But on average, probably more like 8 or 9 turns if you don't lose anybody.

The fire deck costs more because of all of those dragons, but it's not too unreasonable.  But you'll have to farm a little extra to get your AI3 farming deck.  So I'm going with an Earth deck which works just as well.

18 stone pillars
6 graboids
6 shriekers

[EmilyMoby]

I tried the earth deck/mark of time the other day against AI3 completely unupgraded. (Well, I put a pulverizer in there instead of the sword, but I didn't have any gravity quanta to pulverize anything with. I used it instead of the sword since I already had it on hand.) It worked really well. I won every match save one where the AI got a ton of poison damage out really fast AND I had a bad draw. It was also a pretty fast deck. It's faster with towers, of course, but it seemed to do fine with pillars and unupgraded shriekers/graboids.

[Dragoon]

Here are my results after 20 games.

90% win rate (18 out of 20)
6.9 turns to win (14 out of the 20 games finished in 7 turns)
48 seconds to win (average of 7 winning games)
I won about 230 coins and 11 cards (worth 407)
Score is 266.

Main weakness to this deck is an Owl's Eye, Maxwell Demon, or Dusk Mantle in turns 2 or 3.  With any of those, they have a good chance of stopping you dead in your tracks.

[Differ]

If you really want to know, it's far better to get a bunch of masteries when you're low level. The reasons everyone wants to simply win really fast are (a) they are getting rares and don't care about money or (b) they are delusional and cannot do basic estimations.

[Scaredgirl]

If you really want to know, it's far better to get a bunch of masteries when you're low level. The reasons everyone wants to simply win really fast are (a) they are getting rares and don't care about money or (b) they are delusional and cannot do basic estimations.

That is 100% incorrect.

Elemental mastery grinding decks..

1. are SLOW
2. don't even get elemental mastery every time
3. slow = Less matches = less card spinning = less money from selling cards

Please show me this elemental mastery deck that makes money faster than mono fire. That's right.. there isn't any.

[Dragoon]

Yeah, I think SG is right.  Faster wins is better than elementary mastery.  You can play close to 3 games in the same amount of time as the other deck.  At 14-16 coins a game, which is pretty common to get, you're breaking even with elemental mastery decks.  And then, on top of that, you get more cards to sell.  IMO, Monofire and earth/time will make more money than the vampire or ffq+eb elemental mastery decks.