Pharaoh | Pharaoh

[xdude]

[Xinef]

Nice... I've been waiting for it since I heard of a 'scarab generator coming soon' and it proves to be quite good. In fact cheap to put into play... though probably not early if you rely on eternity rather than rewinds. Tough guy, so even if damaged, poisoned or lobotomized you can save him with eternity (if is plenty, that is). I guess will make a wonderful synergy with anubis in time/rainbows, but gotta try it

And I guess it could even be useful to counter immortal creatures - take a bone wall, generate scarabs and eat them with other scarabs, while producing skeletons Could work well in / / (no need for FFQ)

[HowFlyy]

i can see it now. 10 immortalized scarbs being fed by the paraoh.

[coinich]

I heard of a Scarab generator rumors since before I registered at the old forums.  Nice to see them fulfilled.

[Xinef]

And we should expect some new false gods soon... how about a god ? He could be called Tutenchamon, or maybe Immortal King (good name due to anubis+pharaoh combo if he adds somehow), or maybe Eternal King (due tu eternity being his weapon of choice) ?

[MrSexington]

Are pharaohs going to be available from the Bazaar?

They way it looks like this page makes it looks like it comes strictly from the Mummy (like the Ash & Phoenix).
http://www.elementsthegame.com/development.html

[Vreely]

I put this in MrSexington's deck post, but will repeat it here as I am interested in discussion.
Just from a game balance point of view, if one is building a deck based on Pharaoh, then one is interested in generating a bunch of Scarabs.  The problem is, no matter how you do it, a Pharaoh based deck will never be as fast as a Fractal Scarab build.   It kind of neutralizes the whole point of the engine if you can do it faster with the Fractal card.

I guess if you want to do a Scarab deck without using Aether, then the Pharaoh is your man.   Or maybe if you just want to throw in Scarab generation on the side, its much less card intensive to do so with the Pharaoh.

Thoughts?

[blu]

Pharaoh will only be a rare card in slots. So don't build your decks on trainer around them need to build around mummy/rewind tell you can get luck sloting out Pharaoh. (The words of zanz not blu.)

[Xinef]

If that's true, it would be great
The possibility to have it as a standalone card makes decks without possible and the high cost of 9 won't be a big problem either, because you would need to play and use an eternity anyway, or if you prefer rewind you still need that one more card.

As for the comparison of fractal and pharaoh... right now seems to have a great synergy with though also has, so I see both options as valid. The mummy+eternity combo might be slower, so less suited to AI3/AI5 grinding, but might prove better against FG in stall decks... though it needs testing, and it might be a little too early to compare these cards as both might be changed before they appear in the real game.

Also the scarab+fractal deck has one weakness... if your opponent ties to stall (plays no creatures, a permafrost/jade shield/diamond shield) and a bunch of SoGs then plays some immortal creatures you are screwed...
and that stalling strategy is approximately what I planned at first with pharaoh (I still have to try it more in trainer though)

[MrSexington]

I put this in MrSexington's deck post, but will repeat it here as I am interested in discussion.
Just from a game balance point of view, if one is building a deck based on Pharaoh, then one is interested in generating a bunch of Scarabs.  The problem is, no matter how you do it, a Pharaoh based deck will never be as fast as a Fractal Scarab build.   It kind of neutralizes the whole point of the engine if you can do it faster with the Fractal card.

I guess if you want to do a Scarab deck without using Aether, then the Pharaoh is your man.   Or maybe if you just want to throw in Scarab generation on the side, its much less card intensive to do so with the Pharaoh.

Thoughts?

Agreed.

I think Pharaohs should only be available through Mummies.  Also, Pharaohs should produced 2 Scarabs for every activation.

Note: That might seem overpowered, but that's still a lot of trouble to get it to activate correctly.  Also, it wouldn't replace FFQs in rainbow decks because of the dependence on Time quanta for card drawing.

[Vreely]

Ok, so assume you only get Pharoah's through a Mummy.  This means to me there is even less reason to run scarabs this way.  Its much faster to fractal the scarab as your engine.  How in the world can a Mummy->Pharaoh->Scrarab gerneration engine compete with me emptying my hand of Scarabs and then Fractal it to play 8 more?

Seems to me the fractal will win every time when matched against the slow Pharoah engine.

[Xinef]

I think Pharaohs should only be available through Mummies.  Also, Pharaohs should produced 2 Scarabs for every activation.

Note: That might seem overpowered, but that's still a lot of trouble to get it to activate correctly.  Also, it wouldn't replace FFQs in rainbow decks because of the dependence on Time quanta for card drawing.

I'd say they should be available separately, because else mono-time would have no access to them. And I guess mono-time (mark of gravity) might want to use them in tournaments etc. where decks are required to be mono. And mono-time is not very powerful anyway, maybe except stalling.

As for rainbows, pharaoh is clearly a card for endgame, so I don't see problem with time quanta. In endgame hourglasses are in fact less needed than in early game, and at least time-mark/no-nova/average-sized rainbows have around 4-5 per turn in late game.