Round 6: Strategy

[bripod]

DS Lite

by bripod

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4t4 4t4 55q 55q 55q 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rt 5rt 5rt 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 7q0 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q6 7q8 7q8 8pl

Water has played Purify but only in Rnds 1,3,4 and they lost all of those decks (played 2,3,2 respectively)

and their other match this round is Death...

Higher % for poison than Us.

1 fairly big downside of this deck is that we have to give up salvaging 2RT's for 2 Momentums... that's why I stripped 3 RT's out of this deck. (but if nobody wants them I'll gladly put them back in!)

It does very well vs last Rounds Water decks

It is possible that they will try to freeze out Eternity instead of Scorps...

[dragonsdemesne]

Just to give an idea, Water's vault has for sure the following cards:

(from their one winning deck in round 5)
3x ice bolt 2x toadfish 15x water pend 4x parallel universe 3x dim shield 3x ice dragon

(from their winning decks in round 4 that were not used in round 5)
2x gravity shield 2x titan 2x catapult 2x flying weapon 2x shockwave 2x fog 2x owl's eye

That adds to 44 cards, and there are 18 cards they can salvage, but all the possible water salvages are copies of stuff already listed above, and of the nonwater cards, I don't think they'll use them, but even if they do, dune scorps should beat them.  I'm expecting them to use the water/aether deck against us and catatitans against death, or at least that's what I'd do in their shoes.  As long as they don't use purify we'd be fine, but there could still be some hiding in their vault.  They might not expect dune scorps from us because we lost with that deck last round, and death is a strong candidate for poison, obviously, so if they do have purifies they might use them over there.  They might split them between us as well... tough call. 

I think that dune scorps would beat any purifyless deck that water can make at this point.

[dragonsdemesne]

Here's a deck that would fit into our vault really well atm:

by dragonsdemesne

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4t4 4t4 4t4 4t4 5f6 5f6 5f6 5rg 5rg 5rg 5rg 5ru 5ru 5ru 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7ds 7q0 7qe 7qe 7ri 7ri 7ri 8po

If anyone can find a deck their opponent might play that would lose to this, you get it!

Considering what  has, I imagine they'll play:

- 1  deck similar to Rd5
- 1  deck similar to Rd5
- 1  deck with leftover cards, salvages from lost decks (EE, Azure Dragon, Dragonfly etc.) and from our time deck (RT and Eternity)

If they have the cards left in their vault, they might try to rebuild their nymph deck by salvaging nymph, quint and immo from their lost deck and other 9 cards from the bow they defeated, but I'm not sure if it's very likely. If they do make it, I thinks it's more likely they'll play it against rather than throw a bow against us.

To the testing:
(snip)...
Right now I'm testing Exploding Times:

by dragonsdemesne

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

I have to test it a bit more, but I'm liking results so far (6-2 vs darkness and 7-0 vs entropy), so I might settle down with this (if I get more consistent results against and if it's not needed in another duel).

Based on this, I think ffun should get Exploding Times.  One short sword minimum so he can play 5x minor phoenix is a great idea.  I'm not convinced that the other swords for ups will help, but one sword would definitely help.  The others are debatable, but it does make sense, particularly against the dark duo where steals are available.

[dragonsdemesne]

Idea summary so far for tonight:

vs Air: Exploding Times seems to be a very good idea here, according to ffun's testing, and we can make it even better with short swords
vs Darkness: not sure, valuka was working on this though
vs Death: Wings might work here (my idea)  Someone else (not sure who) suggested time/light stall
vs Earth: not really sure yet, maybe novabow?
vs Entropy: also not sure, maybe time/wings duo?  But discord is probably faster than wings... (ITR's comment)
vs Fire: Ghostal looks great.  It's proven to pwn firestall, and it looks good against immorush, too.
vs Light: ITR's still working on this.  Time/entropy did not work at all.
vs Water: If we salvage to allow Bripod to build the Dune scorp deck a few posts back, that is doing very well against their water/aether winner last round.  The other deck I think they can make is catatitans, but if I were them, I'd use that against Death

Other decks available: Ghostmare (sort of), Time/entropy discord and/or pande, Time/gravity (charger salvage, grav shield, pharaoh, BH?), 2x novabows

[inthisroom]

So after 10's suggestion, I tried this Poison Bow

by inthisroom

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4t4 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52o 52q 52q 5rg 5rg 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 718 718 718 718 718 8pk

It went
RoL/Hope 6-4
Fractal Angels 7-5 (played more than ten because I got the hang of it quite late)

It's the first deck I've tested that CAN beat both of these decks, but it beats none of them flatly, it's a real struggle vs both decks in trainer already so a big nailbiter is to be expected no matter what they'll use.

If we were sure they won't use RoL/Hope vs us, it would make it easier as Gravity shield stops all of their creatures except for RoLs, but this one seems the most promising so far, we do however only have 6 Poison cards in our vault, so if our duo is needed for the (?) match up, we can't make another poison deck.

[ffun]

DD, I'll do a bit of testing with that deck, but at 1st glance I'm not sure it will work out. After testing a bit more vs. , I've seen Exploding Times was highly dependent of drawing the Eternities early/mid game to win vs. the air/entropy deck, so if you take those out, I don't think it will have much chance! I'll test it anyway and post results.

Edit: after a short try, as expected, 10men's deck went 1-4 vs. air/entropy (once a Maxwell demon is out or it starts AM your ghots, it's over) and 7-1 vs. air/darkness. If we expect the same deck from last round, it seems like a good choice, otherwise it won't do.

In an extended playtest with the original exploding times (w/ Eternity and RT), my record ended up being 13-11 vs. Air/Entropy (definitely varies a lot depending on draw, some games are very easy, others are impossible) and 13-4 vs. Air/Darkness (although results were pretty close, so take that with a grain of salt).

That pretty much confirms that the deck works very well vs. the darkness duo, so if we consider they'll take it against us again, no need to waste Eternities and RT, and I can take 10men's version of exploding times. Beware that we'll loose against their other deck though.

==========

Edit2: I also tried to come up with a monoair rush using the event card:

by ffun

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4t4 4t4 4t4 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 7ms 7mt 7mt 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mu 7mv 7mv 7mv 7mv 7oe 7oe 8pr

The only deck that could possibly stop that would be poison dial, but I'm not sure they'll have enough cards to build that.

And my last take on what they could use, if they kept their light cards from Rd 4

by ffun

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5ll 5ll 5ll 5ll 5lm 5lm 5lm 5oi 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 7k2 7k2 7mv 7mv 7n5 7n5 7n5 7oe 7oe 8pq

Poison won't do in this case, and exploding would also have a hard time, unless it gets some perfect draws.

[10 men]

Some quick explanations for playing strategy:
Our deck against Light is primarily a deckouter, but if they play a rush or something with PC it can also use the normal Ghostal plan. RoL hope and Light's DimShield stall are easily decked as they are too slow.

Manuz' deck is a near-suicide, sorry. ;( You can still win if he picks the right deck for us, ie something without Poison and Flying creatures. You have a couple random creatures that were left in vault to kill him or a dune scorpion to rewind with Eternity to deck him out if the former doesn't work.

[TheManuz]

Some quick explanations for playing strategy:
Our deck against Light is primarily a deckouter, but if they play a rush or something with PC it can also use the normal Ghostal plan. RoL hope and Light's DimShield stall are easily decked as they are too slow.

Manuz' deck is a near-suicide, sorry. ;( You can still win if he picks the right deck for us, ie something without Poison and Flying creatures. You have a couple random creatures that were left in vault to kill him or a dune scorpion to rewind with Eternity to deck him out if the former doesn't work.

Actually, if the deck was a little more thick (like 35/40 cards) with a little more nova + scorpion + momentum i would won that!
No regrets, anyway, i understand the vault is suffering!