Pharaoh | Pharaoh

[MrSexington]

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.

Plague?

(I think they both require a lot of trio-quanta and are both handicapped in their own ways.)

[Xinef]

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.

Plague?

(I think they both require a lot of trio-quanta and are both handicapped in their own ways.)

Once again, if against a scarab+fractal deck I play no creatures but stall with a good shield (lol, even gravity shield would work wonders).
And then I play a quinted anubis, and one turn later a mummy, rewind it and quint pharaoh, then each turn I play and quint a scarab. What would you do?
And clearly scarab+fractal works only as a duo/trio. Mummy/Pharaoh works as a rainbow (or trio).

As for plague, it is not really that good, as you can rewind scarabs to remove poison.

[MrSexington]

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.

Plague?

(I think they both require a lot of trio-quanta and are both handicapped in their own ways.)

Once again, if against a scarab+fractal deck I play no creatures but stall with a good shield (lol, even gravity shield would work wonders).
And then I play a quinted anubis, and one turn later a mummy, rewind it and quint pharaoh, then each turn I play and quint a scarab. What would you do?
And clearly scarab+fractal works only as a duo/trio. Mummy/Pharaoh works as a rainbow (or trio).

As for plague, it is not really that good, as you can rewind scarabs to remove poison.

Aflatoxin?

(My point is that they both are handcuffed by two different sets of quanta and open up two different sets of deck building possibilities.  If you're saying that one set is superior to the other, I say you never know what other cards may come out in the future.)

[Xinef]

I don't know how aflatoxin could do anything against decks with rewinds, devours etc, unless you mean a quinted malignant cell to produce food for your scarabs, which I find not really useful as you can produce new scarabs as food (more expensive, but easier to build an effective deck around it).

Though a gravity shield would still work wonders against scarabs, unless you take momentum or some permanent control, but I guess momentum would be more reliable as gravity shield could be PAd.

And I am not saying pharaohs are better than fractal. I just say they are both good, probably fractal faster, but pharaoh better in stall decks. And if these two duel, I guess pharaoh could win, at least the deck I am testing right now against what I guess a scarab+fractal deck would look like.

[MrSexington]

Also, for the record, I'm against anything that would make another card completely useless.  Making Pharaoh available for deck building completely negates all purpose of Mummy.  Use my suggestion or make up an alteration of your own, but why even make the Mummy card?

One is rare and one is common?

I've said this before, but rarity only has its place with other TCGs that you pay real money for.  I understand rarity in those games because it's all about money and it's the rarities that drive their markets.  I'm a cheerleader against this idea because Elements is free.  Elements doesn't have to follow the same trappings that other card games do.  Some cards will be better than others, but don't introduce new cards that are completely neutered.

[Xinef]

Mummy costs 3 Pharaoh costs 9
This is clearly enough for a mummy to see a lot of use. I would use a mummy in a rainbow and a Pharaoh in a duo deck... in a trio deck probably mummy.

Also has now a great synergy with (bonewall + scarab + aflatoxin for example), so a mummy seems very reasonable.

If you still think a pharaoh as a standalone card is enough for mummy to be thrown away, increase the cost of pharaoh. But only if mummy indeed proves to be less useful, but I guess it is not the case.

[MrSexington]

Mummy costs 3 Pharaoh costs 9
This is clearly enough for a mummy to see a lot of use. I would use a mummy in a rainbow and a Pharaoh in a duo deck... in a trio deck probably mummy.

Also has now a great synergy with (bonewall + scarab + aflatoxin for example), so a mummy seems very reasonable.

If you still think a pharaoh as a standalone card is enough for mummy to be thrown away, increase the cost of pharaoh.

The point is to increase the Pharaoh's competitiveness with Fractal, not reduce it.  You not only have to worry about neutering Mummy, but also Pharaoh.

If you want Pharaoh available to all then a better solution would be to change Mummy.

[Xinef]

Maybe mummy should have two abilities? It has a passive one, so maybe add some active one... I guess some kind of curse would work (eg. curse 1 - target creature gets -1/0 (permanently) and cannot use abilities for one turn )
Something not too strong, but enough to make mummies a bit more useful in mono-death and other uses than making it a pharaoh. (Though I've seen voices, that it is a good damage dealer in itself )

Anyway this is a deck I've been trying right now... I almost won against Octane... I lost because I had no creatures to rewind (I made a mistake thinking I could rewind mummy for 3 3 each turn, lol   when I realized it does not give me any card back when rewinded it was too late).
Anyway this deck should work against some false gods, but clearly might need some improvement.
(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/) :timemark

[Vreely]

The point is to increase the Pharaoh's competitiveness with Fractal, not reduce it.

I agree completely.  I am just not sure how to do it.  I like your suggestion about having Pharaoh generate 2 scarabs.   To illustrate my point in the overpowered fractal card, here is a deck I slapped together in the trainer.  Its not even balanced properly, yet in my first game out of the gate it generated a 7 turn kill in t50 against a fire rush deck.    Since its not balanced, I am certain it is inconsistent and could be improved to generate the 7 turn kill more frequently.

I am NOT actually saying that fractal scrab rush is too powerful (A single diamond shield ends your day).  What I am saying is that its much more powerful than using a mummy or even a pharaoh directly.  If you are going to introduce a new card, there needs to be a good reason to use it.  The reason to use Pharoah is to generate Scarabs, however since there is a much better way to do it, then why ever use the Pharaoh?

The deck:   Mark of    (so you can use devour if you need it)
(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/)

After Turn 5:
(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/)

And then after turn 7:
(http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/)

Game was over after hitting done.  A 7 turn kill.

[Glitch]

In the pictures you took, you were never attacked, and your scarabs never ate anything. 

[Xinef]

t50 decks are often either fast kills or stalls

Anyway scarab+fractal is not more powerful or better as you claim, it is only faster (or at least needs to be fast, while pharaoh works well in slow decks)
I agree though that scarab+fractal might be overpowered... needs some testing to make sure...
Still the problem with scarab+fractal deck is that it needs a lot of aether cards (a number of pillars and a number of fractals), pharaoh requires less cards to work, so you can include some other cards.

[Glitch]

Upon thinking about the card, I now fear the false god with death mark, this card, and flying eternities.  It would have plenty of late game death cards, momentum to buff the scarabs, and just plain ol' too many scarabs.  It's frightening.