Round 2 Strategy

[10 men]

Current ideas I think are:
Against Water and Light: Aether, those usually don't have a lot of shield evasion, and Fractal work well for breaking stalls.
Against Fire: We're suspecting a stall from them, our stall breaker fromlast round (DiscoTime) might work here again.

[dragonsdemesne]

Gravity: What about using Ghostmare here?  They seem to be fond of Flying Titan Catapults, and the other type of deck I'd expect is something charger-based.  If we use nightmare, we should be able to beat fractal charger if they go with that; their hand will be clogged up.  If they use catapult titans, we have steals for the catapults, plus the hand clogging will possibly force them into discarding cards they need while they set up the catapult combo.  In either case, Eternity seems like a good card.  They might do something like adrenaline charger, blessed charger/oty, etc, too, and eternity is solid for those.

Something along the lines of this: (upgrades to be determined, ghosts or steals look good to me)

by dragonsdemesne

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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rm 5ro 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5up 5up 5up 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 8pt

Entropy: This one's going to be tough... I'd like to use a novabow because it's pretty much guaranteed they're playing 24 discords in the vault; at least that's what I'd do on their team.  Graboid seems like a solid choice for a creature to use, and if I'm against entropy I'll have 6 upgrades instead of 3, so how about this:

by dragonsdemesne

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4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5c1 5og 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rs 5rs 5t2 5t2 5t2 61q 71a 77g 77g 7dm 7q0 7ri 8pm

I'd prefer to play it with 1x nightmare, but we'll need those in the ghostmare.  I definitely think this needs testing; I'd like to try it against the decks they used last round, as I'm expecting something somewhat similar.  Bripod suggested an upped blessing; I might try that in place of something, too.

[inthisroom]

Entropy: This one's going to be tough... I'd like to use a novabow because it's pretty much guaranteed they're playing 24 discords in the vault; at least that's what I'd do on their team.  Graboid seems like a solid choice for a creature to use, and if I'm against entropy I'll have 6 upgrades instead of 3, so how about this:

by inthisroom

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4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5c1 5og 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rs 5rs 5t2 5t2 5t2 61q 71a 77g 77g 7dm 7q0 7ri 8pm

I'd prefer to play it with 1x nightmare, but we'll need those in the ghostmare.  I definitely think this needs testing; I'd like to try it against the decks they used last round, as I'm expecting something somewhat similar.  Bripod suggested an upped blessing; I might try that in place of something, too.

Sorry DD, when I loaded it to test it, I noticed it was most likely an illegal deck, there are only 13 time cards in it.

[bripod]

Here's another chart showing our opponents and the other matches they will be playing this Round.



maybe this can be of some help...

[dragonsdemesne]

Sorry DD, when I loaded it to test it, I noticed it was most likely an illegal deck, there are only 13 time cards in it.

Dammit!  It was legal when I had two Anubis, and then I changed my mind about them right before I posted, because I thought they'd be too hard to get into play with the opponent probably using Discord.

Back to the drawing board...

[TheManuz]

I tested against (thanks to ffun)
We tested

by TheManuz

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55q 55q 55q 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ro 5ro 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 5rt 74a 74a 74a 8pl

but we realized it cannot overdamage the firestall (the one posted in Possible Enemy Decks thread (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,32004.msg432731#msg432731))

Then we tried this one:

by TheManuz

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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ro 5ro 5rs 5rs 5rs 5rs 5rs 5s4 5t2 5t2 5t2 7q0 7q5 7ri 8pl

this deck seems to have a chance, but a perfect hand of ffun beat me anyway! We have to test a little more.

[dragonsdemesne]

So I was talking in IRC chat, and I was asking if anyone had golden nymphs.  Valuka mentioned that he had two of them, so I was thinking that we could have him play this deck against Life: (since we'd been thinking Wings would dominate Life anyway)

by dragonsdemesne

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5s4 5s4 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rs 5ro 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 8pr

With the nymphs, keeping the wings chain up against life would be a lot easier, and there's lots of heavy hitters in the deck.  Two Eternity will help keep away any emerald dragons or nonlife flyers that they might be using.  There's 14 pillar/pend because the cards are all fairly quanta-expensive in this deck.  For the upgrades, anything other than eternity/nymph makes sense.  Upgraded GotPs get +2 attack for only +1 cost, upped pillars/pends get all that expensive junk out faster, upped wings are easier to play and chain, and an upped dragon has 13 attack.

edit: put the actual nymph code in the deck instead of substitute relics so that we don't accidentally submit an illegal deck because of stupid relics :p

edit#2: changed devonian dragon to pharaoh, in case they use bone wall.  this is a reasonable possibility because they used poison and arsenic in round 1 and might have a strong death component in the vault.

[dragonsdemesne]

For entropy, here's a modified version of the illegal deck I posted previously:

by dragonsdemesne

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4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 5og 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rn 5rs 5rs 5t2 5t2 5t2 71a 77g 77g 7dm 7q0 7ri 8pm

-1 lightning +1 reverse time
-1 forest spirit +1 anubis

I think it might be a good idea if 10 men played this deck vs entropy, because I think they will be our hardest opponent, and the extra upgrades would make a big difference in this deck.  If he disagrees, then since I have 6 ups (which is what I designed it with above) I should use it.

reasons for deck choices:
-novas vs discord is always good (though if they use black hole, this is bad)
-reverse times vs graboids is good, and I think they will probably play a novabow or grabbow, because they can make these decks easier than anyone else due to nova being in-element for them (it's what I'd likely do were I on their team)
-1x upped tower/pend each because they might use earthquakes or black holes, and this will help against both, plus with the lower pillar/pend count due to novas, it might be important to have that extra quanta
-pharaohs because they are phat at 8hp and can breed scarabs; could make the difference in long games.  In *very* long games, the scarabs can start devouring, too, but I doubt this will happen in practice
-anubis: also phat at 8hp, can quint something if needed
-I used ups on the graboids; pharaohs would also be a good choice, since the scarabs would be better, and if 10 men played this deck, I'd probably up either more graboids or the pharaohs

[dragonsdemesne]

Bripod suggested this for the Air duel:

by dragonsdemesne

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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rn 5rn 5rn 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 61q 61q 61q 61q 80i 80i 80i 8pu

I really like the anubis idea, because it lets us quint stuff, and I think they will be using owl's eye against us, because I would if I were them, and I've been trying to find a way to beat owl's eye, and I think bripod has hit upon it.  I don't think the deck needs 3 fractals; 2 should be sufficient, and we might want to find a way to fit in reverse time/eternity/dimshields, but we can work that out.  Air was really fond of the dragons last round, and lightning cannot kill air dragon.

For water, me and bripod were thinking about a GotP/Fractal deck.  I think one good deck for them to use against us would be something like that water/light permafrost sanc stall they used, and gotp/fractal could have a chance there.  We could also use lightnings and dimshields.  We have an assload of aether cards in the vault, so even though we suggested using Aether vs Air, we can do it vs Water, too.

For light, an idea I had was to use pharaohs with gravity mark.  For some reason, my gut is warning me about rol/fractal/hope, although that might be hard to pull off for them unless a general or lieutenant uses it.  Anyway, whether they did that or not, pharaohs would spam scarabs, which could devour RoLs if that was their strategy.  It would also let us devour other stuff obviously, given a bit of time, and another possibility I see for them is some sort of stall, like with sancs and stuff, and scarab spam would hopefully outdamage that healing.

[bripod]

Bripod suggested this for the Air duel:

by bripod

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5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rm 5rn 5rn 5rn 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 61q 61q 61q 61q 80i 80i 80i 8pu

Oh, god please erase this deck from your memory... it's a f'ing brick... unbelievably slow... I'm sorry, I was sober when I thought of it... I'm much better now... carry on...

[bripod]

Oh yeah, Val and Manuz were testing a mod of Val's Grabbow w/EQ vs FireStall earlier... looked promising... something like:

by bripod

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590 590 590 590 590 590 593 593 593 593 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5ro 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 8pm

Quanta deprivation seemed to slow FS down quite a bit...

I'm not sure if I have the correct code... tried to remember it from his post...

[bripod]

ITR threw a few Air decks up against me and we came up with my mod for his Exploding Times (ET Phone Home) and it worked pretty good vs Wings and had a chance vs others... not completely sold on it as a "perfect" deck but it does have a chance...

by bripod

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ro 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

I'm warry about using all the Fire cards we have in vault but they are in the top position... could help from them getting so far ahead... I dunno I need feedback guys...