{Fire Final Battle} Napalm 5 - kevkev 4

[Dragoon]

Another female master (or mistress or whatever you ppl wanna call us) in our midst! XD

GG to both of you, and gratz napalm!

Mistress is the technical title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title) counterpart to Master.

Congratz to napalm.  I look forward to seeing your decks.

Good try kevkev.  Nice videos and nice decks.  There's some interesting new ones.  And you're right, your draw in game 2 was weird.  The deck seemed like a great counter to napalm's.  But not drawing any Explosions or Mirror Shields hurt badly.

[kev]

Rest of the vids (for battles 7 and 8) are up. 

Game 5 - You not using your precog before placing your first LG. I'm sure you would have held the LG back if you had. Unfortunately that one mistake looks like it caused that loss.

Lol.  I'm a time noob.  I considered playing the precog first but I thought "there's nothing I can draw that would prevent me from playing the lava."  Of course, precog has another effect which should impact one's play...  I remarked in chat after that match that I'd misplayed my hand but playing the lava turn one wasn't even what I'd meant.  I think I should've chained silences a turn earlier.  If I'd done that and hung onto the original lava, I'd still be Master. 

Good feedback and I'm glad people enjoyed the vids.  My thanks to Dragoon1140 for pointing me towards the software.  For those who are interested google CamStudio.  It was totally free and surprisingly easy to use.

[Corrum]

Congrats Napalm!

Corrum

[Dragoon]

You guys want to share your thoughts leading up to the battle (bans, deck choice, etc.)?

[~Napalm]

Bans:

First off, I should mention that kev and I both preferred the old rules, so we decided to stick with them. This is important because it allowed us to ban a card in element.

Fire Bolt | Fire Lance ~ I picked this one because I knew kev likes to stall. Preventing him from doing such would, in theory, put him out of his comfort zone and possibly cause mistakes.

Shard | Shard of Gratitude ~ This was my 2nd choice for obvious reasons.

Steal | Improved Steal ~ This ban had a dual purpose. 1: It kept him from stealing Fahrenheits, which I had planned to use many times. (4/9 decks had 3 of them) 2: Discourage the use of Liquid Shadow, the perfect counter to my favorite creature, the Phoenix.

Bonewall | Bonewall ~ This could pwn any chance I have of rushing. Period. With all the CC Fire has, I'd be screwed if I didn't take a stall, which I don't like doing

Dimensional Shield | Phase Shield ~ Ah... this was kinda a last minute ban. Between Phase Shields and Quint, Aether can go a long way when teamed with Fire.

Earthquake | Quicksand ~ I just hate this card, lol. That and if I went with a lot of stalls to counter rushes, EQ would hurt bad.

Decks:

To be entirely honest, I didn't put much time into preparing. I had 1 deck set in stone, the stall that I used twice. The rest were either made up on the spot or a variation of a deck I may have used/tested before. Not that I didn't think this would be hard, or that kevkev was a pushover. I just prefer the thrill of coming up with what to do next on the spot, it's more fun That, and some funky stuff can come out of it

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[TimerClock14]

gratz napalm

[DrunkDestroyer]

kevkev, I'm going to go ahead and say great work with the documenting. Now, I was shocked when I got into chat, and plastiqe told me the final battle had went on and happened just before I got there! It's a shame, because otherwise it would have been great to watch.
The above sentence may not make sense, but great work anyway kev. I don't know how much effort it took to do all this, but it makes a difference to people spectating like me. You were one of the masters I respected more (even though I don't think I have ever properly talked to you).
Napalm, congratulations. You won, and you definetely earned it. But the real challenge will be holding onto it, after none of the previous masters have managed to 

[TheIdioticIdiot]

kevkev, I'm going to go ahead and say great work with the documenting. Now, I was shocked when I got into chat, and plastiqe told me the final battle had went on and happened just before I got there! It's a shame, because otherwise it would have been great to watch.
The above sentence may not make sense, but great work anyway kev. I don't know how much effort it took to do all this, but it makes a difference to people spectating like me. You were one of the masters I respected more (even though I don't think I have ever properly talked to you).
Napalm, congratulations. You won, and you definetely earned it. But the real challenge will be holding onto it, after none of the previous masters have managed to 

kevkev posted videos on youtube, all 9 matches
in his view, even better than spectating

[kev]

You guys want to share your thoughts leading up to the battle (bans, deck choice, etc.)?

• Immo - I wanted to avoid getting AI3 rushed as I did in some Masters Tourney matches.
• SoG - Firestall; generally makes most decks better
• Dimshield - It's nice not to have to pack extra deflags to deal with the possibility.  Under the rules we used it was also possible for Napalm to ban all PC had she wanted to.
• Bonewall - A problem card for Fire.  Immo feeds it, our CC feeds it, our creatures have low hps which feeds it, and our PC is ineffective.
• EQ - If I'd planned a strategy according to firebolt rather than immo being banned, I wouldn't have banned EQ.  But even if I'd had that knowledge it would've been unethical of me to use it imo.  EQ partners well with lava golem.  And I'm kinda of the opinion that devs and discord are less effective in upped matches, but EQ is actually more effective in upped matches.
• nova - I wrestled with which Entropy card to ban.  I ultimately decided that a duo with AM didn't scare me much given the decks I thought I'd use, and nova would totally eliminate rainbow decks, which I thought was a good idea at the time.

As far as deck choices go, I had about 40 in a spreadsheet, but some of those were rendered obsolete by bans and others just weren’t very good.  I wanted to narrow them down to nineish and test some more, but there’s not enough hours for elements in a day.

• Had it planned ahead of time.  I thought I’d see a creature and ragepot based deck.
• I’d planned to switch to v2 and flat out rush her, but in the moment it felt like a bolt deck was coming.  So I switched to a deck with reflectors and deflags for FH, which ended up being the right move.
• I just felt like playing this.  7hp creatures are win.
• I felt like either CC or a bolt deck was coming so I modded a second reflector into my flying MG deck.  Big whiff there.
• I just felt like playing this.  Silence is also a partial hedge against a lance deck, and I’ve got my damage calculator fired up so I’m prepared to start chaining Silence.
• I waffled with a couple ideas until Napalm says in chat she is doing something new that probably won’t work.  I guess she’s building a duo with unusual creatures and might be light on CC, so I pull out v2.
• More of the same as the previous deck.  Plus I have difficulty letting go of an idea I think should work and doesn’t, so I used the same deck as six.
• By this point I realize Napalm had never once used RoF or Fire Shield, so I reasoned Fractix was a good choice, and I don’t bother to take deflags.  I ****ing hate Fractix.
• I considered pretty much every deck I’d created for the last game.  Ultimately I decided quinted rubies with lightning was well balanced.

[Boingo]

Congrats to the new Mistress!
Congrats to the old Master!

Thanks to both of you for an epic final (9 matches!) and double thanks for the videos.  Truly enjoyable to watch it all unfold.

[Higurashi]

Finally gotten the time to watch those vids, and it was very rewarding. So much better than spectate. Thanks for that, kev.
Feels good to have another Mistress that plays as whimsically as I do. ^_^