13th Trials - Challenger's Entrance

[serprex]

TIME TO ENTER THE TRIALS
PHASE 1 DONE



Please make sure you've read the Rules very carefully. Also, here are the Phase 1 Rules for information on Phase 1 tasks.

To join these Trials, post in this thread a single post containing the following information:

Spoiler for Phase 1:

-Name of Task
-Evidence of completion

Spoiler for War Bonus:

-Evidence of participation/WMing last war
-If you were a General, and were in the same War team as the element you are trialing for, evidence of your General-ship

Spoiler for Loyalty Bonus:

-Tell us how many times you have participated in Trials for this element before
-Give us evidence of your participation in each of those trials

You can find more information on the Phase 1 tasks in the Phase 1 Rules.

Note: In the event more there are more than four challengers for one element, priority will be given first to players with the higher Phase 1 scores and second to a combination of score/post count.

Challengers:

Master TheonlyrealBeef of is IN.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

If someone wants the Darkness Master title, I guess they'll just have to beat me. That's all there is to it.

Spoiler for Phase 1:

Task 1: Deckbuilding

Spoiler for task:

Identify a deck that is most successful against yourself, or otherwise gives your element the most difficulty playing against, and build a counter. Show how this deck would counter your chosen trouble-deck, and explain why it is better than other options you considered.

DBH Grabow

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4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vl 4vl 4vl 590 590 590 590 5f6 5f6 5og 6ve 6ve 6ve 6ve 74f 74f 74f 7ae 8pm

Assuming a 50% in-element restriction in a semi-upgraded environment. This is not the exact build that bothers me, but I cannot seem to find it anywhere, so this will have to do... More importantly, the versatility in builds is one of the reasons why slight advantages may be negated just by swapping a few cards (like more CC).
Here are analyses on my popular decks vs this deck.
I have used the Xenosim on Firefox for a rough guesstimate of the win rate along with a single test game to get a feel for the accuracy of the result. This is by no means a precise means to determine win rate, but I could barely even be pressured for more during war when it mattered, let alone for a lonesome phase 1 task in trials... sorry.

Spoiler for analysis vs Mono Darkness:

Mono Darknessby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4st 4st 4st 4st 4st 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5uo 5up 5up 5v1 606 606 606 606 7tb 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 8pt

Simulator gives this deck a 58% chance to win. It is above average, but by no means a counter. In settings like war, this deck is far too valuable to risk on such a flimsy advantage. Without a good quanta start, a game is likely to already be lost.

Spoiler for analysis vs Devtal:

Devtalby TheonlyrealBeef

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4su 4su 4su 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 606 606 606 606 606 606 622 622 622 622 622 7ta 7td 7td 7td 7um 7um 7um 7um 8pu

Simulator gives this deck an abysmal 9% win rate. Well, I guess this is the main deck DBH Grabow is trying to counter, after all. During my test game, RNG demanded my victory by giving me a lot of early quanta generation including two Aether quanta generators, barely allowing me to squeeze in a Fractal in time. But you cannot reliably play Fractal at all.

Spoiler for analysis vs Ghostmare:

Ghostmareby TheonlyrealBeef

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4ss 4ss 4ss 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5s4 5up 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 606 606 7tb 7tb 7tb 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 8ps

Simulator gives this deck a 61% win rate. This is better than imagined, probably due to a combination of 3 Vaggers in Ghostmare and only 3 Discords in the DBH Grabow. Just Vagger and RT are really powerful, even without enough access to quanta for Ghosts.

Spoiler for analysis vs RoL Hope:

RoL Hopeby TheonlyrealBeef

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5lk 5lk 5lk 5ls 5ls 5up 5up 5up 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 622 622 622 622 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 7jp 8pu

This deck requires additional off-element upgrades compared to the others, I have compensated for this by reducing the total upgrades, but it is still noteworthy as a restriction since early wars seldom allowed this many (off-element) upgrades.

Even then, the deck only has a 36% chance to win in simulator. The defenses are just not fast enough to overcome DBH Grabow. I did win my test game through a combination of RNG and stupid ai burrowing Shriekers. If not for the latter, I would have lost.

Spoiler for analysis vs Sopa Devs/Vamps:

Sopa Devs/Vampsby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4st 4st 4st 5uk 5uk 5uk 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut 5ut 5v0 5v1 7hi 7hi 7hi 7hi 7t4 7t8 7tb 7tb 8pp

Simulator gives this deck like a 15% chance. The troll effect of Devs is negated, while Discord before SoPa can ruin your chances of playing one for some time. I faced a 7TTL in my test game, the Discord came before I could even play my first Dev. It did not scramble enough Darkness quanta away to outright deny me from playing it, but slowing down an already slow deck is plenty.

Spoiler for analysis vs Grabow:

Grabowby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 590 590 590 590 590 5uk 5up 5v1 5v1 606 606 61q 61q 7t4 7t8 7tb 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 7um 8pm

Simulator gives this like a 47% win rate. You are throwing a Grabow at a Grabow, what did you expect? I somehow barely won my game despite 2 BHs giving me a really hard time. Discord scrambling me an Aether quanta early to add to Nova for an early Lightning changed everything.

Spoiler for analysis vs Siphonary:

Siphonaryby TheonlyrealBeef

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5lg 5li 5li 5li 5li 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5m6 5m6 5uo 5uo 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 7q9 7q9 7q9 7q9 7t8 7tb 7tb 7tb 8pq

Simulator gives this like a 64% win rate. This is supposed to be the counter and all, but... all you get is that measly win rate? It should usually suffice, but one has to go for Sancts over SoDivs. The test game was a real nailbiter with no early Dusk and 2 Deflags showing up, but using them on Sancts instead of saving for Dusk or Sundial made them a waste, allowing me to sneak in a win. AI tends to be stupid with Sundial too, however, so I think the win rate as it stands is pretty accurate.

Spoiler for analysis vs Void Dials:

Void Dialsby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4st 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5t2 5up 5up 5us 5vi 5vi 5vi 5vi 7q5 7q5 7t8 7t8 7tb 7tb 7u2 7u2 8pt

Last war's classic only gets a 32% win rate in simulator. Honestly, this is higher than I would have thought. But obviously not enough. Lost my test game, getting BH-ed twice.

Spoiler for analysis vs DA Stall:

DA Stallby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4st 4st 4st 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5up 5up 606 606 606 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 622 622 7t4 7t8 7t8 7tb 7tb 7tc 7tc 7tc 8pu

48% win rate in simulator. It's not bad, just not good either. The Darkness/Aether stall was never built with denial in mind. I could kill every creature that showed up in my test game, but still nearly got decked out by getting Fog trolled after wasting the only Steal I drew on QP to mitigate Discord.

So then how do we go about countering this? Having Lightnings to zap Shriekers seems essential. Novas or QPs to mitigate Discord seems good, and having at least 3 Vaggers appears to be a no-brainer. Honestly, modding the Darkness/Aether stall seems like the best bet, so let's try this out:

Spoiler for Cheeky stall:

Cheeky stallby TheonlyrealBeef

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4sa 4sa 4sa 5og 5og 5rp 5rp 5rp 5rp 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 6qq 7tb 7tb 7tb 7tc 7tc 7tc 7tc 8pu

AI is a fool that draws cards with Sundials to deck itself out, so that cannot be relied upon. It's also really cheeky in that it relies on the opponent to not field a bigger deck... surely there are better alternatives?

Meh. So how about a denial resilient domin instead?

Spoiler for Gargbow:

Gargbowby TheonlyrealBeef

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4st 4st 4st 4st 4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 5og 5og 5rk 5rk 5uk 5uk 5uk 606 606 61q 61q 7ae 7tb 7tb 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 7tf 8pt

Sims give it like a 58% chance to win. But for a counter, that's not good enough. At least an improvement to Grabow, I guess.

Then, how about... *tries dozens of weird decks in futility*
Well, to my own surprise, I guess a slight mod of Ghostmare is actually the best option:

Spoiler for Ghostmare:

Ghostmareby TheonlyrealBeef

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4ss 4ss 4ss 4ss 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5ru 5up 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 606 606 7tb 7tb 7tb 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 8ps

With just Nymph swapped to another Mark for a 65% win rate. I tried a few variants on this, but none seemed to make a significantly positive impact.

So we come to the anticlimactic answer that Ghostmare with some extra quanta is the best option, despite me never wanting to send Ghostmare against Discord.

-Name of Task: I hate brawl^2
-Evidence of completion: soon^tm

Spoiler for War Bonus:

-Evidence of participation/WMing last war: The nice big war win trophy.
-If you were a General, and were in the same War team as the element you are trialing for, evidence of your General-ship: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/war/war-12-rosters/ Darkness general

Spoiler for Loyalty Bonus:

-Tell us how many times you have participated in Trials for this element before: 4 times.
-Give us evidence of your participation in each of those trials: the 4 icons of winning trials

[MyNameIsJoey]

EDIT : so um. I had misread rules. I'm not going to do 2x i hate brawl and instead going to do some other tasks.

hi
war no
loyalty plenty
2x i hate brawl, though i dont really hate brawl
and ill do another task. gimme some time.

task 1

Spoiler for Hidden:

I decided to pick an off-element match. Ideas to attempt to counter certain strategies can come much easier than in an in-element match where mindgate comes a lot into the mix of actually having a great strategy (outside of bans)

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/trial-battle-archive/(trials-8-challengers)-(darkness)-ji412jo-3-1-vangelios-(fire)/
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/trial-battle-archive/(trials-8-challengers)-(darkness)-ji412jo-3-0-hainkarga-(fire)/

Serprex said I could explain a whole matchup rather than a single deck. In trials 8 I had to face 2 opponents from Fire, and thought I'd explain my thought process.
First of all, I banned fire bolt. Not because firebolt is necessary overpowered, but because it opens a full area of stall decks. Then, i banned Fractal, because it opened for stallbreaking options in the form of fractix.If I recall correctly I also banned UG in both matches. Fire is a much better rushing element than darkness is. But who says I have to rush?

My idea was to counter their rush decks with either domins or stalls. Why make it complicated when it can be simple?

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5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 606 7gp 7t4 7t4 7t4 7tb 7tb 7tf 7tf 7tf 7um 8pp

Played against

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4so 4so 4so 4so 4so 4so 5f0 5f0 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fk 5op 5op 5pu 5pu 7e4 7n0 7n0 7n0 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 8po

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5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f2 5f6 5f6 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 7dg 7dg 7di 7di 7dn 7dn 7dn 7f2 7f2 8po

Ofcourse I know that using CC will not fare well into phoenixes, and my opponents knew too. That's why I used Freeze, which will not kill the phoenix but rather just stall them until I win. You might see there's a recurring theme with my next deck.

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594 594 594 594 594 594 59c 59c 59c 59c 59c 59c 5uk 5uk 5uk 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 77c 7t4 7t4 7tb 7tb 7um 7um 8pm

Played against

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5f0 5f2 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 61r 61r 61r 624 624 624 624 624 624 7dg 7dg 7di 7di 7di 7dl 7f2 7f2 8pu

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5f6 5f6 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5gi 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5ig 5ig 5ig 5io 7dn 7dn 7f2 7f2 7f2 7f2 7gp 7h2 7h2 7h2 8pp

Used nymphs instead of the normal BB because it is reuseable, and i figured the nymphs have enough HP to not be killed by a CC. It lost the game against Vangelios's freeze, and honestly, i dont remember how it won against hainkarga's silence deck. In hindsight this might not have been the best deck, but it follows the idea of stopping rushes, while dealing decent damage itself. I'm not sure what I thought about the stone skins back then, let's be honest it's been a long while since those matchups. Probably a stall option since i was not expecting stallbreaking when i banned fractal and UG

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5li 5li 5li 5li 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5lm 5uo 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 5us 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 7t8 7tb 7tb 7um 7um 7um 7um 8pq

Against

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5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rk 5rr 7dg 7dg 7dg 7dg 7di 7di 7di 8ps

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4so 4so 4so 4so 4so 4so 5f0 5f0 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fc 5fk 5op 5op 5pu 5pu 7e4 7n0 7n0 7n0 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 8po

Good ol' siphonary. With enough cards to deck out in case i needed early siphons ont heir creatures in a rush, and they couldn't stall back due to the firebolt ban. I honestly did not think of a deck they could play to counter this, fractal and UG also being banned. I guess vange's Sky blitz deck was an idea. Darkness has so many good cards that it honestly is difficult to ban out. But banning out ther whole stalling aspect definitely was helpful for me.

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5ul 5ul 5ul 606 606 606 606 606 606 606 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61q 61t 61t 61t 61t 7tb 7tb 7td 7td 7td 7um 7um 7um 7um 80d 8pu

What better way to stop them from rushing than spamming dim shields like a nub?

task 2

Spoiler for Hidden:

Imagine a real life sport, such as Soccer (or Football). Now, take all lights off. Each player has got a torch with them, but are unallowed to move while the light is on. Either you could go shockcannon style say, im better than everyone i dont need no light to win. You could have each player try to turn on the light, observe quickly the situation, turn it back off and play from there. Or maybe have one Shotcaller with the light on who tells his teammates what to do. Either way brings a lot of strategy to what was already a difficult sport. This would be insanely difficult, but then again, so is beating .

task 3

Spoiler for Hidden:

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/trial-battle-archive/darkness-theonlyrealbeef-3-0-ji412jo/msg247656/#msg247656
let's use deck tags to make those visible

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4st 5f8 5f8 5f8 5f8 5f8 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5uk 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 5um 606 7t4 7t4 7t7 7t7 7t9 7t9 7tf 7tf 7um 7um

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5um 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5us 5us 5us 606 606 606 606 606 606 622 622 622 622 622 7t6 7t6 7td 7td 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um 7um

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4st 5uk 5uk 5uk 5uk 5ul 5ul 5ul 5ul 5um 5um 5um 5up 5up 5up 606 606 606 606 606 7js 7js 7js 7js 7js 7js 7td 7td 7td 7td

That matchup is from the first time torb and I faced against each other. Trials #3. This was after war 2 where torb had done war under Kael Hate's Darkness team, and I had gotten through the Underworld tournament and joined the UW team, who had such potential but fell flat. Back then, I really was such a noob, I was all talk, and here was my first shot at proving my worth ( which by the way, I failed miserably).  So this is not me explaining this matchup from my perspective, but from Torb's (who, by the way, has also improved dramatically since this day.)

Pestal being such a strong deck back then (It still is today, but it was much more prevalent back then in my opinion), trying to counter it was important. That is what immolation=devs into RoF is supposed to do. This was before the fire nerf back in the day, immolation used to give 7 fire quanta. Honestly, this deck is pretty terrible, and i wonder how it won against my eqdevs. Knowing me back then, I probably blamed RNG ( because I used to blame RNG for nearly every loss). This deck was used by a professional, I do not recommend it for kids at home.

Pestal being such a strong deck back then... well it also had to be used. Torb based most of his strategy around this deck, and it worked wonders.

Holy flash. That card exists. In my mind it is just bad game balance, and such a card should never exist. And as such, I thought that nobody would use it, out of principle. I was so naive. But to be honest, by the way I was, it was probably easy for torb to figure out I was so naive, and even if he struck out on that point, holy flash is still a strong CC card against darkness. I used a deck that was heavily countered by CC.

But let it be known, TheonlyrealBeef, I do not intend to make those mistakes again. Here's to giving it my all, and remembering this match that was 10 trials ago. While I do not think we've ever faced each other in finals, I think it is undeniable that we are the 2 who have fought for the longest. May these trials be enjoyable for the both of us, and may the best win.