Weekly Tournament - May 18th - Speedbuilding - Unupgraded

[Acsabi44]

Acsabi44 2
dragonsdemesne 0

GGs.

first game: there is a charm in stealing a pillar then stealing it back only to get it stolen again.
second game: I'm sorry fo ryour horrible start.

Yay for the mark! And the 15GPs! Also, yay I won each game 2-0!

The decks I used in all games except the final:

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 8po

nothing extraordinary, I saw this deck a lot.

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5on 5on 5on 5on 8po

I also saw some trident decks so I thought I should make it more resilient to pillar hate.

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vk 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 8pj

This won me the most games. The more "interesting" decks like trident variations and fractal spiders took a lot more time to set up. By the time they were in the game, I had maybe 2 dragons on board.

For the finals I cracked open two fresh decks:

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 5uo 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5up 5uv 5uv 5uv 8pt

I held this one back exactly for the finals. I thought It will be an UG deck I'm facing.

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 61o 61r 61r 61r 61r 61u 61u 61u 61u 8pu

Since in game 1 dragon used a "fresh" deck he never used before, I thought I would do the same for round2. I never planned on using this one before that game in R1. 4 lobos because you really need to get rid of maxwell demons when playing this deck.

[Asinickle]

Asinickle 2 - 0 Treebeard Xiii

[dragonsdemesne]

Well, this meta was a little bizarre.  I noticed a few things right off that led to the decks I chose

1) Air was stacked :p 
2) There was very little CC, and it was mostly in air. (see #1) Maxwells was the only other really good CC, and with dragons likely dominating, it was a great card.  I worried that air CC would own it too much, though, and that proved to be the case when my opponents used maxwells.  I saw that hope decks were possible, but thunderstorm would own them, so I didn't bother.  (pande and lobo probably would've too, but I didn't expect to face either of those, and I didn't ever see them)
3) Aether gave PU and fractal, as well as spiders, so PU dragons and spider fractal were possible, though again, spider fractal loses to thunderstorm, which I expcted to be popular.
4) Cloak was useless due to air having two area spells.  (tstorm/UG)  Pande would've beat it, too, but again, I didn't expect any pande.
5) No shields or healing to speak of, just dusk/hope and luciferin.  (this last point made me really nervous, as I like playing defensively)

Therefore, the first deck I built was an air/aether duo.  I chose dragons and PU since they were hard to deal with, plus I then had access to thunderstorm and shockwave.  I saw a couple people do a similar entropy/aether deck, only using maxwells instead of air CC, but it had the problem that it died to air CC, so I think this deck was superior.  (mrpaper used entropy/aether PU dragons with maxwells in all 3 games we played)

PU dragon with CC (1-1)

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4sr 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 61r 61r 61r 61r 8pu

round 2 game 2 vs blacksmith LOSS (1 pillar draw and 2 turns of 100% dusk hax, ~1 turn off win depending on dusk, he had 19hp and I had 3 dragons; could've won if I'd won coin toss)
round 3 game 3 vs mrpaper WIN (vs entropy/aether duo, as mentioned above)

Again, as air was stacked, the other deck that seemed obvious was unstable gases.  I added several dragons to help with the rushing, and packed CC to try and take care of opposing dragons.  With gases and tstorms, I hoped to be able to wipe away any maxwells, as well as take care of the first PU dragon pair I saw, and by and large that's exactly what I did, and it slowed opponents enough for me to win.

Dragon/gas/tstorm rush (3-1)

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4sr 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 8po

round 1 game 1 vs kakerlake WIN vs PU dragon with CC (he got no dragon, I had low quanta count but all 6 gas in top half)
round 2 game 1 vs blacksmith WIN vs entropy/air duo (both had low quanta, I drew pillars first)
round 3 game 2 vs mrpaper WIN vs entropy/aether duo (lucky dragon topdeck on final turn saved me)
round 4 game 2 vs acsabi LOSS vs entropy/aether duo (1 pillar draw)

The game with kakerlake I had a 1 pillar draw (techinically, a 1 mark draw, as it was the standalone mark) but I managed to win anyway because I got all the gases in the first 16 cards.  I also sat on a couple dragons when Kakerlake clearly had no dragons of his own, as he had enough quanta to play them, but didn't.  I surmised he had a bunch of PUs, so I played gases instead of dragons.  (I didn't have the quanta to do both anyway, so it was the obvious choice)  It reminded me of the famous Richard Garfield vs Jon Finkel MTG game, where Finkel doesn't play his Icy Manipulator when Garfield is manascrewed, so that he has to discard instead of giving him a target for his Shatter :p

Spidertal seemed like a fairly obvious idea as well, but I was worried about how it would do against thunderstorm.  My worry turned out to be justified, as I went against the hard counter of firefly hope/thunderstorm.  Tstorm wiped my first army, and by the time I got a second one, a 3 strength hope was up, and I died to dragons and flies.  If my opponent had been unlucky enough to miss drawing hope or tstorm, I could've had a chance, but the matchup was absolutely terrible.  I also drew all 6 fractals in the top half of my deck.

Spidertal (0-1)

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4su 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61p 620 620 620 620 620 620 622 622 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pu

-round 1 game 2 vs kakerlane LOSS vs monoair hope (all fractal in top half)

I dropped a lone spark in there in case I had to fractal a spark on the last turn.  I never drew the spark so it didn't make any difference.  I didn't bother with lobo because there was virtually nothing worth using lobo on.  The only target I expected to face that lobo would've helped on was maxwell's, and spidertal should've beaten that anyway.

The other card I spotted that might've been an unsung hero was trident.  I was expecting all monos and duos, so trident seemed good on paper.  The problem was there wasn't much support in water.  I built the deck anyway, and went 1-1 with it.

Suddenly, trident. (1-1)

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i6 5i6 5i6 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pm

I did have a bit of bad luck with this deck; both games I had 5-6 pillars in opening hand but no pendulums for the trident, and in one of them, I didn't even have a trident to start.  The one with mrpaper I never got any of my dragons, so my damage output was... low :p

-round 2 game 3 vs blacksmith WIN vs UG/tstorm (I had bad draw, he got 5 gas top half but i got 4th dragon on lucky topdeck to win, I would've lost otherwise)
-round 3 game 1 vs mrpaper LOSS vs entropy/aether duo, I drew no dragons all game.  His pillar/pend split, along with a standalone entropy mark, made it difficult to EQ everything

The other deck I spotted was one majofa used against me in the world championship.  I altered it slightly to fit the rules of this tourney, and behold!...

Parasite dolls

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5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5un 5un 5un 5un 5un 5un 5uo 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 5v0 606 606 606 606 8pk

I worried this would be too slow, so I didn't take this deck seriously.  I only busted it out in the finals when I didn't care anymore.  Acsabi feels that I would've won had I drawn a dusk, but I never did.  I did steal his dusk when he got it very lategame (I would not have played it at all if I were him because of that) but I think it only blocked one attack in two turns anyway, and didn't even change his TTW.

-round 4 game 1 vs acsabi44 LOSS to entropy/dark (dragons, gargoyles, steals)

The last deck I built, while waiting for my matches, was this one.  I only used it once, but it won.  I gave it lots of steals, expecting unstable gas to be a popular deck, and lots of maxwells, expecting dragons to be popular.  It really didn't need to be 40 cards, but shrinking it to 30 would make no real difference anyway, assuming the same card ratios were kept.

The Missing Werewolf

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4sj 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 5uo 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 8pt

round 1 game 3 vs kakerlake WIN vs dark/air trio with earth pends for gargoyles, both had low quanta count (I stole some of his quanta because I drew steals galore, always keeping one in case he got a dusk, but he never did)

None of the decks really stood out to me as meta-dominating, and other than air, no one element really stood out to me as being overpowered.  I've already got an air mark, though, so I'll take one of the others I don't have.  It'll be either water or darkness, as the others I don't have were illegal in this tourney.  I thought about taking a life mark, for the SoG tourney that I missed out on a mark due to losing to psiontal with 4 emerald shields in the bottom of my deck, but that didn't seem right :p

I definitely got lucky in two of the games (one with kakerlake and one with mrpaper) where I topdecked dragons to win it for me, when no other card would have done, and when I would have lost the next turn.  I also lost two games solely due to losing the cointoss, and lost with the gas deck in the finals with a 1 pillar draw, and lost with the trident deck when I had no dragons.  (i.e. mrpaper probably should have won game 2 and lost game 1, but it was the other way around due to RNG)

[Marsu]

The moment when the winners decks are exactly yours, and you got beaten 0-2 in the very first round... ._.
(Even that Entropy/Darkness is an exact copy :x)

[dragonsdemesne]

Yeah, that's happened to me a lot lately, too :p  Drives you nuts, doesn't it? 

[DANIEELA]

Fractal Spider 3W 1L

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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 620 620 620 620 620 620 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pu

UG Dragons 1L

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5oh 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5on 5on 5on 8po

Entropy+Light 1W 1L

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vo 4vo 4vo 5le 5le 5le 8pq

Entropy 1L

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vk 4vk 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 8pj

with this deck i had 2 awfull mutations.
with maxwell out and 2 photons vs me,i expected luciferin-hope,
and to prevent that and possible mutate to creature with paradox attack/hp,and eat it afther,i mutated photon dragonflies ,(cant explain further-i mixed up all-tournament lasted 5h) to 4/13 and then to 9/9.Bad Luck.


last three decks are from yee,i had similar,but not so good balanced
wasnt much lucky with them,but thanks for decks anyway.

[Acsabi44]

Except you mutated my dragonfly not my photon. But yea, you got a 4/13 then a 9/9 out of it.

[treebeard xiii]

for this tourney i had seven decks but will only post 4 here my three reliable decks and my favourite unusual deck.

fractal air

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5od 5od 5od 5od 5od 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 622 622 622 8pu

I used this three times all tourney first two games it won, last one i fail drew and lost

monoentro

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vp 4vp 4vp 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 8pj

this one i used once and won

monowater

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5id 5id 5id 5id 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pm

i used this three times first two it won, third time i fail drew and lost

gas machine

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5ii 5ii 5ii 5ii 5ii 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5oh 5oh 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 8po

this one was a bit more gimmicky i used it once and lost and i owe some credit to marsu for the idea as he used the original idea in bth

[rob77dp]

rob77dp's decks used this tournament (eliminated 2nd Round, having a 1st Round Bye):

Tri-gon Crawlers: 0W-1L

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pm

Came out of the gate against mrpaper with this one.  Damage output was too low, also paper played first and squeaked out a win.

Tri-gon: 1W-1L

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i6 5i6 5i6 5ic 5ic 5ic 5ic 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pm

MOAR DAMAGEZ!  It worked first time I used it - by half a turn.  Then in game 3 paper played first and got enough damage down/quanta out to win by half-a-turn.

Spoiler for Other decks I built but did not get to use...:

PUgons Entropy

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4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 8pu

PUgons Air

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5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 61r 8pu

UG

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oh 5oh 5oh 5oh 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 5on 8po

Dark w/Earth Mark

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5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uo 5uo 5uo 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5up 5uv 5uv 5uv 5uv 5uv 5uv 8pm

[yee]

Fractal Spider 3W 1L

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61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 61o 620 620 620 620 620 620 622 622 622 622 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 63a 8pu

UG Dragons 1L

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5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5of 5oh 5oh 5oh 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5om 5on 5on 5on 8po

Entropy+Light 1W 1L

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vo 4vo 4vo 5le 5le 5le 8pq

Entropy 1L

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4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vd 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vf 4vk 4vk 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 8pj

with this deck i had 2 awfull mutations.
with maxwell out and 2 photons vs me,i expected luciferin-hope,
and to prevent that and possible mutate to creature with paradox attack/hp,and eat it afther,i mutated photon dragonflies ,(cant explain further-i mixed up all-tournament lasted 5h) to 4/13 and then to 9/9.Bad Luck.


last three decks are from yee,i had similar,but not so good balanced
wasnt much lucky with them,but thanks for decks anyway.

Thanks for using my decks

My other 2 decks I made for this tourny

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5i6 5ic 5ic 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5id 5ih 5ih 5jm 5jm 8pm

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vc 4vd 4vd 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vk 4vo 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 8pj

The last one is too random and I made it just for fun.

[Acsabi44]

to anyone who is interested, this is how I approached the meta (similar to dragonsdemesne's):
(I'm sure the approach is not perfect, but hey, it was a speedbuild)

1. Chrysaora, I like that card. Any chance for a speedopison? nah, lets move on.
2. UG I like. Any other good air cards? check. Any PC to worry about? Steal. At this point I knew that an Air dragon- UG deck will be good all around. UGs generally and dragons if the opponent packs steal. I knew that no deck will play steal AND a fire mark in the same deck (no synergies at all) so I wont't be killed by my own UGs. The dragons are vulnerable only to mutation and maxwell, so I should pack some shockvawes for maxwell. If I'm afraid of Trident then I should play the dragonflies version.
3. Lets make a darnkess duo to counter other UG decks. I should play entropy as the second color to shut down dragons (yes, as you guessed it, with maxwell demon, and to a lesser extent Mutation). With that deck I'll be able to counter every heavy hitter of the cardpool.
4. A monoentropy looks good, particularly since most players will play maxwell demons, probably in a duo, and in a maxwell war the first one wins, and you can pack the most and play them the fastest in a monoentropy (Yes, this may sound silly, but the primary reason I made a monoentropy was solely to win a maxwell war. And it paid off.). I can complement the hitter section with dragons, and I can add Mutations to round out the deck. I shouldn't forget to spilt the pillars bc of Trident. Also, I can play an unusually high amount of pillars since there is not much else from entropy to play.
5. I usually make a PUdragons if I can. I choose entropy as the dragon of choice since it hits bigger than the other two. I also added an unusual amount of lobos since a maxwell really shuts this deck down, and I didnt want to dilute the deck with maxwells of my own or Mutation.
6. I decided to avoid playing a trident deck since there is not much else you can play from water.
7. I usually stay away from quirky decks like UG-Steam trio with fire mark, air duo with pegasus and such. They sound cool but rarely work. (well, I mean they work but don't win.)
8. In the last moments I noticed a possible rolhope deck so I made one which I never got to use (not that I wanted to).

I knew a problem CC will be tstorm, I lamented using them (since it kills photon, dragonfly and maxwell) but in the end I decided that focused CC (as in shockvawe) would be more effective for my decks.

I think the card that defined this tournament was maxwell demon (with UG being a close second)
You had to use it, you had to guess if the opponent uses it, you had to build your deck with it in mind. You had to optimize your deck space and quanta to either feature it or be able to kill it. Almost every decision I made revolved around the maxwell.

[TribalTrouble]

Interesting. I like seeing how you think through these tournaments Acsabi. Maybe you should add a section to the tourny preparation guide you made for when you are speedbuilding.