Round 7: Strategy

[ffun]

Of course it depends on whether we'll change any of our matches, but let's start considering which are the best decks for this round and if there are any particular match up we should try to switch.

Quoting DD's post on the other thread:

Possible decks next round: (haven't counted yet to see if all 7 are possible at once)
Time/light stall
Ghostal
Ghostmare (with extra steal/less nightmares due to vault)
Time/death
Exploding Times
Time/entropy discords
novabow

Iffy decks that are theoretically possible but would probably suck:
time/gravity with black holes/pharaohs
monotime

Considering our R6 savage, we could be able to field 2 Ghostals or 2 Exploding Times (though mind we're pretty short on Eternities and HGs as well, which are also needed in the Light Stall).

[valuka]

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Tested this vs  :airs remaining decks:

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vs  deck has i went 5-0
The harder was the 2nd that is 10-4 but the Ai was dumb sometimes.
The other deck was i thinked vs  is  stall, testing this tomorrow

* I forget in my workplace tested bp's last round version without ups and ssword, that work much better. But i want to try out without novas, there will be usefull in other deck.

[inthisroom]

Here's the usual prep for the match:

Last round's winning decks:

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They salvaged from these:

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592 592 593 593 593 593 594 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f6 5f7 5f7 5fb 5fb 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 77c 78q 78q 8po

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They fielded only two decks last round and won with both, I also had a look at their Round 5 results, but they won only one match there and this seems to have been without salvage due to the event card.

I think they can build:

Ghostmare
Mono
with poison

[ffun]

Death winning decks:

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by ffun

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Considering their salvages, they can also rebuild one of their loosing decks to a very good extent, since they can salvage dim shields, lightinings and fractals:

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Finally, they can also build a air duo and play wings.

I think their most likely choices is either a death/aether deck (a modded bonebolt) or a death/darkness rush (with steals and vamp dagger). Wings is a final option as well.

First tried exploding times, but it won't do well against either of these decks. Then I tried a modified ghostmare:

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It won well against the bonebolt with dim shields (8-2), but did only ok vs. blonde's death/darkness (4-4). I'll test it a bit more later vs the other bonebolt.

Meh, uneven results vs the other decks - so it seems only a hard counter to one of their decks. Might scratch this idea.
2-4 vs. darkness duo w/o BW
3-3 vs. the other bonebolt

I'll test ghostal next.

[inthisroom]

As can build three decks imo, Ghostmare, some Mono with maybe Nightmare and a Poison duo, I thought our "Minimare" seemed a good choice, as they always seem to use Dusk Shied and Dagger, I compensated for the 2 lonely Nightmares with steals, the number of pendulums (penduli???) is there because unupped steals are expensive and upping the HG's and a GotP instead of Steal seemed better to me and also to counter the possibility that they NM creatures in our hand.

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As their Poison duo seemed the biggest threat so far, I started testing vs it and I went 9-1 in trainer

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Then I tested it vs their Ghostmare from last round (you never know), it was a bit more difficult, only 6-4, even vs AI.

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[dragonsdemesne]

For my match vs UW General Tstar, I was thinking that Exploding Times might be a good choice.  He's going to have EQ; I can use my +3 ups on some pend/pillar, and he'll have discord; for both of those I can also just use an extra couple pillar/pends.  He will probably salvage wings, and phoenixes fly, plus I'll have deflags.

For the death match, I was thinking that our time/poison deck might actually work alright.  Poison gets around all of their shields, and they have dimshields, bonewalls, skull shields, and wings if they salvage them from our suicide deck, which I'd expect them to do.

[dragonsdemesne]

Okay, this sucked some serious dick to make, but I came up with seven decks that we can field at the same time.  They're just rough versions, and probably don't have proper pillar/pend balance, QI, or whatever tweaks based on matchups, but we can actually build all seven of them, so we don't have to suicide, unless we decide to do so for strategic reasons.  Even if the deck has a low chance to win, like Manuz's wings deck last round, at least it has a chance, and if it loses, it loses mostly stuff we'd have converted to suicide with anyway.

As these decks stand, 32 cards have to be converted into pillars/pends (didn't count the exact split for each) which is extremely painful but doable.  I'd start with 1x dimshield, some fractals, the 6 black holes, 2x blessing, 1x dune scorp, at least 1x sanc, some phoenixes (but no more than 4 converted; need 6 for ET deck), 1-2 arsenic, 1-2 titanium shield, and at least 1 lycan.  We'll have to convert even more, but that's a start.

GHOSTAL (x2; two identical ones can be built.  Substitute creatures include Anubis and Fate Egg; anubis works in time/aether, and fate egg is a cheap and possibly quite effective fractal target)

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TIME/LIGHT stall: (I had to ditch most of the RTs and an hourglass here to make things fit.  If I didn't take an HG here, it would've had to come from ghostal or the 2nd one from ghostmare; I removed one from ITR's ghostmare that he tested as well, for the same reason; we had only 8.)

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EXPLODING TIMES: (instead of ghosts, it's running dragons, pharaohs, and more phoenix, and I'm a little nervous it's too quanta light.  It also probably doesn't need that many eternity/RTs, and some might be used elsewhere)

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GHOSTMARE: (I took away one hourglass and made it a pharaoh, it is otherwise identical to the one ITR tested)

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POISON DIAL: (I *really* want someone to use this deck, because we have so few creatures in vault that we need to use stuff like this and ghostals.  Removed short sword and added fog and unupped poisons, otherwise the same as the one bripod beat water with last round)

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TIME/EARTH DUO: (BBs for CC, because we can't spare RTs in a deck like this.  pharaohs instead of ghosts, and all pends because the deck is basically earth, and pharoahs will make use of the crapton of time quanta the deck will make.  Might be worth using a 3rd pharaoh instead of the shield.  Without more time cards this deck might kinda suck, but the time/entropy discord/RT I felt was too weak, since the RTs were needed elsewhere, and we couldn't spare the gotps for midrange attackers; the damage would've been from discords, abominations, and dragons of both elements, which is too slow IMO)

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[dragonsdemesne]

Slight problem...

[22:17] <bjessee> Looking at it now.  You know that we can only convert 24 pillars/pends, right?
[22:17] <dragonsdemesne> wut

So either we have to shortchange all our decks by about a pillar, or suicide something anyway.

[ffun]

I've tested the poison dial vs death and results were not very good.

4-6 vs. bonebolt (BW nullifies the arsenic, while fractal recluses come really fast, not giving you much time before needing to chain dials, so to win you need to get lucky and be able to deal lots of poison early before the shields or draw lots of deadly poison/poison)
5-5 vs. death/darkness w/ BW (both BW and steal for the arsenics really hinder the dgm potencial for the deck)
5-5 vs. death/darkness w/o BW:

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Again, stealing the early arsenics is really bad for the deck, and upped vamp daggers are a pain

[dragonsdemesne]

Okay, with those results I don't think poison dial is viable against team death.  I'd still like to use it against somebody, because it uses mostly cards that aren't being used elsewhere, and it runs on very few pillar/pend.  If we don't use poison dial against anyone, we'll be even more squeezed for pillars/pends, and be strapped for creatures as well.

If we rearrange the decks around, time/death and time/entropy decks are also possible, but I figured those would be weaker.  Time/entropy probably needs loads of RTs for the discords, and I didn't think we could spare them, and time/death's bone walls are expensive, so I figured those two decks were not as good.

Based on the # of pillar/pend we can get, we have to make a suicide deck it seems, which is unfortunate; we'll have to look at that as well.

[ffun]

Using val's version of poisondial with BWs, I went 2-6 vs both versions of death/darkness, 6-2 vs the Bonebolt with dim shields and 7-1 vs the regular Bonebolt. So that version works quite well vs death/aether but fails vs death/darkness.

I'm not sure if it's the best choice vs death due to this 50-50 result. For the poison dial, I think valuka had good results for it vs team , so maybe we should use it there?


Update: testing Ghostal vs death, I think it's virtually impossible to loose vs. their bonebolt variants (with our without dimshields), except in the case of horrible bad luck (I went 6-0). The problem is again vs. death/darkness. It's pretty easy vs. the AI (4-1 and 4-1), since it chooses to steal the wrong stuff (HGs or Eternities instead of Dim Shields). Vs a real person, he'll choose to steal the shields at the right time to deal the maximum dmg... but even then I think it's possible to win, but not as easy and it's a very close match up. So far I think it's the best choice vs. death. I would rather have less shields in the deck and more pillars/pendulums, but I understand we are using 6 due to our overall lack of pillars. :/

[inthisroom]

Well, as after all these changes Kirchj33 seems to eventually be my opponent, I tested our Ghostal vs some of their decks.

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Tested vs their 3 winning decks from round 6
As expected, it did pretty well vs the CC-less deck they used against us last round, 5-0 in trainer.

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5-0 vs CCCombobreaker's Grabbow from round 6

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4sa 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 590 590 590 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f6 5ro 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5uk 7th 7th 7th 8ps

If they show up with their Pulverizer deck, it's going to be a lot of fun... for them. 1-4 in trainer.

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Tested vs other decks they might use
5-1 vs bogtro's losing deck from last round, but the results don't really reflect reality, it would have been a very different matter vs a real player.

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Don't really think a lot more testing of Ghostal is necessary, it comes down to that, if they have PC, they will most likely win, if they don't, we will.
As should initially expect to play vs , here are the two decks played last round, so we can get an idea, what might throw at them.
winning deck

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losing deck

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55o 55o 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 576 5oi 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5ol 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 745 745 745 745 745 745 8pr