: Death's been a fan of the stalls, like bonebolt or pandebonium, but they've also used some quick rush decks. They get their lieutenant in this duel, but we get our general, so there are some possibilities open to both sides that might not be normally. I definitely think we need to be prepared for either bone wall or dimensional shield.
: I had a look at the decks Light used in round 3. I think that I need to be prepared for stalls, both firestall and big creatures, as well as crusader-based decks. Finding a deck that can beat both a stall and the creature decks might be tricky. I'm a fan of the novabow as a good general-purpose deck, and I'd love to play one here; I think with reverse times for creatures and explosions for fireshields/sancs, I could succeed against any of those.
: Grabbow, devtal, bonebolt, and fractal phoenix / charger were used last round. I'd be pretty happy about discord against all of those except grabbow, and even there it's decent. A novabow or else a time/entropy duo seems like a good bet to me.
: A huge joke in the first two rounds, gravity came back like a boss in round 3, jumping from 11th to 4th place in a single round of 6-0. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but they clearly changed something major and it worked in a big way. Except for one of their novabows, every single deck had 3 upped chargers, and I wouldn't be surprised to see those again. They clobbered us with Pulverizer and Earthquake last round, so I am against any permanents-based deck like stalls here. Most of their decks were pure rushing, though they did have one discord/black hole deck. Looking at what strategies they used last time, I really think that Discord would tear them a new one, more so than aether, so if we have to choose, I'd use discord here. I had built a novabow with entropy mark for discords (I think I used it vs entropy in round 2) and I think something similar here would be effective.
: Last round, water seemed to focus a lot on slower, creature-based decks with lots of CC like lightning or squids. We beat their only noncreature deck 3-0, with time/aether stall vs a bolt-based fire/water duo. I'd like to see some hard CC in this one for squids and things like that. (unless we build a deck that doesn't care about such things) Lightnings seem a good choice, for one. I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but... Discord. They've got an awful lot of duos; I don't remember seeing many novas at all from them, and I think this is a good choice for us.
: We have to face their general with one of our soldiers here, and entropy is a great team, so this match will be really hard. There is of course the dreaded novabow, and they've also had monoentropy, entropy/darkness duo, an entropy/light stall I was pretty surprised to see (but it worked) We beat them with dune scorps vs pandebonium last time, but I'm not sure how that would fare in most other matchups. With 9 upgrades they could make one mean nova rush. Something in my gut tells me to expect some sort of stall, though, like that monoentropy diss shield thing or their sanc/miracle stall; I don't know why, except that if I were them, I'd pick it because it might be unexpected.
: Last round's decks included devtal, dark/death, duo, novabow, and parallel vampiric dragons. Life gain and devourers have been a problem for us in past rounds, so if they're smart, they'll incorporate that. If we're smart, we'll counter that. A Novabow with good creature removal (reverse times for dragons, bolts for vampires/devourers or unupped dragons) seems like a good bet.
Dammit, it seems we need like 50 novas for the decks I just recommended... maybe the time/entropy for aether, so we still get discord? I dunno... think about it, discuss, and improve. I'll try to be on lots.
