This is a message I got from Gl1tch a little while ago concerning thoughts about deck & vault building.
Alright, as the metagame stands, there are two different mind sets.
War 2, and War 3.
War 2, the last war, was dominated by Discord. Discord was countered by rainbow rushes, which were beaten by firestalls. That was the Rock/Paper/Scissor effect.
War 3, Sanctuary was added. Not only did it completely OP firestall, but it shut down discord. Everyone playing with war 2 strategy will be using discords, rainbows, and firestalls, everyone playing with war 3 strategy will be using sanctuary stalls. Regardless of the teams strategy, Sanctuary stalls are going to be everywhere.
They can't be quanta controlled, the healing is tough to pass, and all they have to do is wait for the kill condition. Water, Light, Fire, Death, and Darkness can all pull it off. Aether and life can run mean stalls too. We need a hard counter to stall decks, and we need lots of them. Permanent control, especially steal, is a must-have. And we'll need our own version of the stall. GotP+Nightmare is our hard counter to the sanctuary stall. It steals sanctuaries, deals lots of damage that's impervious to control, and they have to discard /something/. We hit them hard, while they run out of options. Our sanctuary stall is dune scorps. One hit seals their fate, and endowed eternities stall them hard until GG. Plus, we can't deck out. We have a huge advantage when it comes to stalling. Anubis will probably be vital too.
That isn't to say discord will be useless. Discord still dominates every non-sanctuary duo, and having a deck that utilizes them is a good pick.
On another new card note, Crudaders will completely UP air this war. They provide a new duo to get multiple weapons, and allow the use of sanctuary and miracle and the like. Expect them in weapon stalls. Reverse time is going to give us a huge advantage this war, but permanent control is pretty important.
On a less meta-game scale, here are some vault tips:
1. Pendulums, pendulums, pendulums. An off element pillar can only fit in 1/12 of the decks we play. Time pendulums work in ever day, including mono. The secret to avoiding suicide is pendulums. You can /never/ have too many of them, either. Conversion allows you to get them back, so they make great early-on discards. If we lose, drop some, we can get more later, and we don't lose any of our options. Plus, a pendulum means any salvage is useful. We can't bring a duo with all 12 elements now, but later, with enough pendulums, there;s no reason we can't. Time pillars are a maybe. Bring some, but not a whole lot.
2. You don't have enough time cards. A lot of people think they have enough of their home element, but they undervalue those cards because they have backups. You will probably salvage the good off-element cards. No one is going to give you time cards to salvage.
3. Loosen up. Stiff cards are cards that can only be used in one deck, like leaf dragon. You want flexibility in your decks, not necessarily power. A deck with multiple win conditions is a deck with multiple wins. Most of time's creatures are stiff. Anubis, while extremely useful versus stalls, needs aether. Dune scorpions, while devastating, needs an attack buff. Unupped, our only option there is blessing. Deja Vu isn't that great an attacker either. Dragons + GotP are our only "flexible" hitters. We'll probably be duoing into off-element creatures, and we can get more of those from salvage. Pendulums help there. Two soft counters > One hard counter, because one in hand is worth two in the bush.
4. The golden ratio. There's a ratio between cards-in-deck and card-option that really helps deck building. Normally you'll bring a 30 card deck, but it's nice not to need to bring the same 30 every time. Having 35-40 cards for each deck option is lovely, but unfortunately, when the deck loses, you're suddenly sitting on 5-10 dead cards. Sideboards are great, but they can't be too big, and they need to overlap to add more flexibility. The golden ratio between side-cards and main-cards is vital.
5. The panicbow. The only deck that every card fits into is a rainbow, so all teams need to have one. No matter what shit we salvage, it /can/ go into a rainbow. Timebows would be lovely, but PSN bows are also an option time has that other elements don't. Packing 6 novas is not a bad call, even if we don't have a deck to stick them in right off the bat. Deja Vu + Mutants + Discord is a strong contender for the panic bow. Mutants /can/ beat anything, discord can slow the opponent down long enough for it to work, and if they steal the discord, oh well. It only gives us more rainbow quanta.
That's what I can think of right now, I'll help with vault building once our forum section is built.
