5th Trials - Phase 3 - Community Vote

[kev]

Phase 3 - Community Vote

Phase ends when above poll expires.

It's time to vote for your favorite Master candidate!  Every community member has one vote. You can change your vote at any time as long as there is still time on the clock.

Vote based on who you think would make the best Master of that element. Do not vote based on who is the best player or who you know personally. Try to pick someone who you think would help the community the most.  Feel free to ask the candidates difficult questions to help you make your decision.

For reference, here are the 5th Trials Standings (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,35936.0.html) and Phase 1 Submission (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,35922.0.html) threads.

[Kuroaitou]

Congratulations to Team Death for winning War #4! ^_^

Q: "That said, if you were in Team Death, what was your team’s strongest point that led you to the final victory against Light? (Especially considering their immense deck variety and veteran players) If you weren’t on the team, do you think one deck archetype, battle, or card had led the team to a prosperous advantage? Most importantly, how do you feel about your Death banner not being placed up yet despite War ending several months ago? XD”

[RavingRabbid]

Would you associate Romeo and Juliet to ?


Death won War #4. Do you feel like this happened by chance or that with the game balanced as it is now Death could win many more wars?


At this point, I feel like I should ask you to post a related song.

[Calindu]

Congratulations to Team Death!

Q:"Do you think some event cards made team death to win or simply the decks archetypes were complex and good enough?"

[willng3]

To the Element who has proved themselves worthy of winning War and is also my elemental opposite...I have a question.

Q:  Death's victory in War symbolizes it being one of the most powerful Elements in PvP.  Meanwhile, Life is still labeled as one of the most inferior and least popular of Elements despite the two being Elemental opposites.  What do you think is the leading cause between the gap between the two Elements?  In other words:  What do you think Life lacks that Death does not?  Try to list as many flaws as you can using specific cards, Elemental themes, etc. to better support your points.

[ralouf]

I'm French and I've been introduced in elements by a friend who told me that as an MtG fan I'll like it. And I became totally addicted. I tried all the pvp event I could do, with various result, I always started beeing rank1 in all league I played and then fell in the classement. Actually my best record was in Budokan, when I first started using death for real. I lost after an epic bvattle in semi final vs RR but I learnt ton of things about death in this event. And I started loving death. I then had some good performance in few event (even won a tourny Yay !). Now I'm currently a big fan of death decks and use them everywhere, as a proof I'm totally a death player : all my opponent in league used purify in their deck when they played with me .

I'm currently looking forward having a more important place in the community because I wanna imply myself even more. I'm online as soon as I can, which mean almost every days and lot of hours

Ask me any questions you can have about me !

Score : 1010764
electrum : 1146286
I have a trainer edition : all cards upped*6 and 24 pillar/pend
Posts : 2359
I'm a member since one year today

Gonna try to answer your questions (I'll edit this post if some other question comes) :

Strongest point of the team ? Activity first of all. We had lot of memver who were really active in deckbuilding and discussingabout deck choice. I mean we didn't put deck 30 mins before the deadline and hope they will works. We had a lot reflection and modification about each match-up, each salvage/discard. I think that led us to the final win. but I guess your question concern more the final match. Light had an awesome team for sure, a lot of available archetype (RoL/hope, angel rush with deflag, any fractal/dim deck..). So we all suggested decks but they all had some weaknesses. What we finally did is to mix all of the deck : poison + fractal dragon or recluse + 6 dims to make a deck able to beat anything, to stop a rush, to deck out a 35 cards deck, to break a stall with fractal dragon, to kill rol hope with poison and plague. Moreover jippy was an amazing Vault manager which allows us to end with no vault error at all.

TL;DR : lot of participation from every members, lot of thinking about deckbuilding, and having good idea and sometimes mindgating allowed us to win this war.

AND I WANNA SEE OUR BEATIFUL DEATH BANNER OMG ! the forum will be very nice with it
1) No. They are just the proof that love and madness are very close feeling. For me death isn't something desesperate and sad like in this moovie. Death is STRONG. I mean Romeo and juliette die while they love each other, Dying isn't at all whet they both wished I guess. In my opinion death isn't welcomed in this moovie. For me what represent death the best are knights or samourai who fight and are ready to give their life to protect someone. They will spread death in their enemies rank and die with honnor. Romeo & Ju is just a love story, which en badly, nt related for me. This stuff is more related to entropy, seeing how much this is chaotic, or fire for the passion and the violence.

   2) I think We may have had some luck but that's not what led us to the win. Mainly wo things led us to the win of this war :
      -> an awesomely dedicated team, who put constant effort for the team, had a lot of deck ideas, lot of discussion about deck, trying to mindgate.. All the member were active a lot and that the main thing that made us win.
      -> is REALLY powerfull. I mean okay death haven't PC but why do we need to break a shield when we can simply kill the guy hidding behing a shield with poison. For me the we won because death is really powerfull in mono and also have very strong duo (aether, this awesome darkness domin deck, air, entropy, earth..), and not bad rainbow deck too (I don't think that deathbow are the best though). Death made us win this war because it owns a lot of different threats, and the opponent dunno what they should expect (for example they bring tons of purify and a shield to block arsenic and we play a fractal dragon or a deckout deck). Varuety of type of attack is win, death can have very powerfull rush, semi-rush, control, stall, deckout deck.. and they all need different cards to be countered : impossible to build an hard counter vs team death !
      -> can't help having some chill while I listen this : deadly song !  (

) , seems like the death is coming in person to take you brrr
Good question again : If you read the answer I made to RR you can see that I think that the awesome variety of threats death have allowed us to win : you don't really know what to expect when you face death : a rush ? a stall ? something that kill with poison only ? a deck out ? this put our opponent in trouble and gives more chance to our deadly team to win.
But you're right talking about event card. Actually I don't really recall which round (7 or 8) we had to choose an event card and one of them allowed us to convert any card in a death card. Actually this came exactly when we were beeing low on poison. we really were needing some more poison to build deck like the one who allowed us to win the final match. I guess that this card was very helpfull for every team but I think that we really took the best of it.
Again a very interesting question. For me life isn't weak, it just have some useless cards and thus lack some cards. I mean who will use, in a competitive match cards like emerald shield ? except some very rare exception were it can help I think this card will never be used.
As you suggested I'll explain here why death is used to have better result than life :
firstly, let's talk about unupped cards :

Rushing : mummy is pretty better than cockatrice, but frog is better than recluse, dragon are equivalent, adrenaline and also the scorpion gives a very good advantage.
advantage :

Slowing opponent : death have 1 excellent shield : The bone wall. No PC can destroy it and if any creature die it will even grow, also skull shield can totally stop your opponent (specially good vs fire) if you have some luck. life has almost nothing, thorn carapace doesn't slow the damage at all even if it can kill creature after few turns. Emerald shield only reduce one damage -> almost useless. Same for heal that can barely give you a turn vs a rush deck. life have interesting healing cards : bond. My issue is that bond is REALLY effective when you have TON of creature..  nothing weird here ? if you have ton of creature you should have already won. This reduce a lot the interest of the card. Thorn carapace become usefull if you manage to survive thanks to healing, but that's pretty hard.
big advantage :

Dealing with shield : yeah.. life can't do ANYTHING vs shield except playing scorpion, the issue is  .. death have poison that can kill anyone with no heal/purify.
big advantage :

weapon : except with flying weapon this staff can't do a lot of thing.. his damage are pretty ridiculous and the more the game goes, the less he is usefull. Arsenic is an awesome weapon : it can kill an ennemy by itself. just put him on play and wait : your damage will grow every turns.. this weapon is by far my favourite for this reason : it can win you a game alone. they're very fews cards who can do that.
big advantage :

for upped card my opinion doesn't change about the weapon, nor with how to deal with shield.

About rushing : upped death have a 6/3 for 3, but life has a 5/3 for 2. I think that's even better. life dragon is pretty better with 9 HP it's very hard to kill while death dragon is very similar to the unupped. cockatrice is just better than mummy with the same cost but 2 more HP.
advantage : life.

Slowing opponent : Jade shield can be played if you're expecting unupped arsenic, stopping 2 damage can also allow you to win some race but his cost is pretty FU**ING HIGH !! 7 quanta REALLY ??? that's way too much, my opinion about the upped carapace is the same : maybe with one DR you can survive long enough to kill some creature with this shield but hey 7 quantas are way too much.. death doesn't get a big boost with upped shield but the -2 cost for BW really help still.
advantage :
About some other cards we can find in those elements :
Mitosis have a very good potential but is pretty slow and doesn't allow you to hit through shield and make you even more weaker vs CC. I still think that they are lot of interesting things to do with that. rustler and forest spirit are very good card, but not in a mono deck though.
Plague is a pretty good card but they are tons of better option as CC and the outcome is that this card isn't played alot, but is far from beeing bad. virus is pretty useless except for cremation, aflatoxin is useless in war and deathstalker won't be used except in a particular match. skeleton totally suxx.condor and graveyard are pretty useless too.
Talking about the nymph though the life's one is a very good card whereas the deah's one is awfull and is IMO the worste nymph in the game. Still nymph are rarely used in war.

TL;DR :

Rushing	Slowing opponent	dealing with shield	weapons

Death is better almost in every category, hence the better performance.

That's what I think about mono, I hope I didn't missed anything. Let's discuss about duo or more, I don't think they are very good synergy in a life/death duo.

: for life you can try something with druid but that's helly random.. for death though you have a very good synergy between maxwell/cat and bone wall. also there is a very good synergy between the chaos created by pandemonium and this bone wall.

: for life you can use momentum or charger to pass through shield, death have titan wall; flying titan decks are very good but you need something to slow your opponent to win, bone wall for example is perfect, also a rush with recluse + charger will kill any deck who's trying to use shield.

: good with both thanks to stone skin, it gives enough time to poison to kill and also gives some times to carapace to kill all creature.. Also good with skull shield + PA vs a fire deck.

: mitophoenix is the best option that come in mind for life, also using a life rush with deflag is a good idea. for death any deck with bone wall combined with the CC power of fire can make very good stall deck.

: here life may have a point thanks to the forest spirit, this little growing creature is very powerfull and lot of life/water decks are very dangerous thanks to him. for death you can play squid to stall enough to kill you opponent with poison.

: for life I'm pretty disapoint about something : rustler is amazing : life/light duo with him are really good deck but it's very underused. Also sanctuary can gives enough time to carapace to be effective. Death can build very good stall deck with sanctuary and miracle

: life hasn't particular synergy, except one of his best deck : adrenastaves. for death the recluse open lot of very powerfull possibility with wings.

: no synergy for both

: life can splash for steal as a solution against annoying steal. Death can also do that and moreover death can use eclipse to give a big bonus to all death creature (and even make deathstalker usefull !).

: All elements have good synergy with aether but life and death are amongst the best with aether : both have PU dragon, life have frogtal and also cocktal that are very powerfull deck and adrenalined recluse. for death they are obv mummytal or fracluse (yes i can create deck name) but also all the boneolt variation and some other deck with dim shield + poison. Death can make A LOT of different decks with aether and aether was our best friend in war

For the rainbows decks i Think that both are pretty weak, only frog and recluse upped are very good in a graboid deck, even if arsenic can fit like poison. I think that Rainbow deck are better with death card but that's just my opinion.

TL;DR :

Elements :
Advantage :		None	None		None			None

As you can see death have too many advantage, and thus perform better than life :


I know I can be pretty silly but I don't remember doing that ^^ though I posted a rainbow with only 14 death cards (here it is (if the section are opened) (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,33975.msg459154#msg459154))

 I partially answered to this in other spoiler but I won't mind you if you hadn't read it already ^^ For me our comeback is due to many things : First of all it wasn't a big comeback, due to our constant implication we never had a dramatic round and thus we always managed to  keep lot of danderous of varied deck.
Then I don't feel like we were really lucky with the pairing, nor in a game. I think that skills had a lot of importance too, not personnal skills I mean but our skills as a team : everyone put many efforts in this event and i think this is the main thing that led us to the win. Finally I have to say that some event card really helped us  : The first one is this one who allowed us to convert any card in a death card, at this time we were lacking poison in our vault, and poison is the key of many decks (pandebonium, bonebolt, the deck which won the final..). Moreover the fact that war had to end in round 10 was also an advantage. In round 10 we had lot of deck available, which allowed us to bring an efficient deck in each match. Moreover I think that in this particular environnement (50% in element, 9 upped cards) death is the best elements to have (flesh recluse and improved poison are 2 of the most worthy cards to uppgrade in the game). I think that all thoses things allowed us to win, I really appreciated our team also, lot of effort everyone made is the main reason of our win IMO.

If another team should have win the war.. hmmm.. time made an AMAZING start but was almost absent in the lasts round. For me the team that scared me the most is entropy. MatrimKK is a usine when it comes to deckbuilding, he made some very powerfull and very surprising deck and all those DBH bow were really tough to beat. Team earth had also a very solid team but I don't think they had the same raw power and ability to surprise entropy had.
 Thanks, I'm trying to help the community as much as I can :
I sometimes lurks in pvp to find players who need help, I give them advice and tell them that the forum is awesome. I try to help every player that post a deck in the forum, as much as I can at least.
Also I'm trying to get a more important place here : I sent an application to be areana moderator, and then for feedback manager but council/SG chosed other people, and I understand their choice because we have lot of very good members here.
Then I try to use my "skills" in pvp/pve to help the community, the way I use the most for that is posting decks I built and found very usefull to farm (Tha gold league killer is a good example, and seems really appreciated). I'm very happy to see that 2 of my decks had >5 votes for the deck of the year.
I also try to hep as amny player as I can in chat.
I sometimes make pvp farms for player who really need specific rare, for a good reason (don't kill me Jenkar !)
Finally I also tried to make some cards to improve weaker elements (like givind PC to life for example) or just to make the game better.
Actually I try to help as many players as I can.
I think that's all, but I may add some other things I they come to my mind.

deck used :

by ralouf1

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

710 710 710 710 710 710 710 711 711 711 713 713 713 713 713 713 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 7t8 7t9 7t9 7t9 7ta 7tb 7th 8pt

This deck is very stable and can beat a large variety of decks so I built this.

before my last win : (http://imgur.com/DPkIF)

after : (http://imgur.com/F0Jyk)I wanted to to this with an house-made deck so I come back with this :

by ralouf1

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

710 710 710 710 710 710 710 711 711 711 711 713 713 713 713 713 713 71a 71a 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 7n8 7n8 7n8 7n8 7n8 7n8 8pr

and the results are here :
(http://imgur.com/47QTX)
(http://imgur.com/vNbKw)


 Thanks for asking a question
I have the idea that poison is a very strong mechanic for death. I think death will loose a lot of power without this. The main reason that lead me to that idea is that without poison death will be going to have way at all to deal with annoying shield. Poison allow us to have a lot of way to kill our opponent (pure rush, fractal, poison, stall etc..) while witout poison all the deck like bonebolt/pandebonium/earth stall and a lot more can't even exist. I don't think can something can remplace arsenic, this weapon is kinda unique.. maybe a weapon that gain +1 attack for each creature who died can fit, but then death will need something to deal with shield.

I don't know if we could have won this war without poison.. Poison allowed us to win lot of game and forced our opponent to play purify or heal in their because they were fearing poison. Still I'm not saying that poison was the biggest thing that led us to the win but I think it was a strong factor.

Also I don't think that purify is the only viable counter to poison : poison is good because it slowly kill your opponent and you can't stop it like you can kill a creature but if you look at it closer you'll notice that it deal just a few damage every turn, specially with unupped poison your opponent rarely loose more than 10HP a turn. Which mean that some sanctuary/bond/vampire can easily outheal the poison. Maybe fire should have something to remove poison but at the cost of some HP (like curing a poisonned wound with fire : that's painfull).

 I agree with this I always used a lot of death cards in every pvp event when I could do so.
I don't think that we can see a card or a mechanic that'll change the fact that death is strong simply because there isn't only one way to counter a death deck. As I told they are a lot of worthy strategy when you play a deck based on death so it's very hard to counter it. Though I think that annoying cards like healing pod (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,11788.0.html) can be very annoying for death. Also death have some weakness that weren't exploited a lot but you'll have to find them by yourself ;p But anyway death have many strong deck so I don't think there is a way to totally stop a death player.
I think that death can and will perform well in War#5 specially with a good master and good team like we had for the last war.

 

tried something REALLY original ^^

by ralouf1

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6ts 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 6u6 6u6 6u6 716 716 716 716 716 716 7dm 7dm 7qb 7qb 7qb 7t9 80b 8pj

Went 5/0 vs AI3 ^^.

Hmm if I had any power as master of death it'd be to control the age of every one : beeing able to make someone younger or older  at my will. I think that totally represent the power of death

I hope all my answers are clear, if they aren't don't hesitate to ask for clarification.

[jippy99]

Lots of questions here, I'll get started as soon as I can.  All answers will be edited into this post.

Congratulations to Team Death for winning War #4! ^_^

Q: "That said, if you were in Team Death, what was your team’s strongest point that led you to the final victory against Light? (Especially considering their immense deck variety and veteran players) If you weren’t on the team, do you think one deck archetype, battle, or card had led the team to a prosperous advantage? Most importantly, how do you feel about your Death banner not being placed up yet despite War ending several months ago? XD”

I feel that our strongest point was that we set ourselves up with a great foundation, both with the players we had and the decisions we made.  Our team was very dedicated and we all put in hours of work at a time to make that last match and win possible.  I can't really pinpoint one specific moment because this effort was constantly there and constantly shown the entire war.  I also feel like our decisions that we made early on with our vault were crucial down the stretch and our original preparations turned out to be very helpful.  I remember back in deckbuilding for the vault we came up with 10 or so decks that would be our main decks with other side cards and extras added in.  I feel like these early idea really set the stage for our great decks that came out at the end. 
I feel like the veteran players don't make that much of a difference when the amount of effort that our team put in is up against it.  Veterans or not, the amount of effort put in by our team would have been enough to make any team prosper.
I do feel very strongly about the Death banner not being placed yet.  War ended while SG was still here (judging by the time her last post and the time that the final battle result topic had been posted) which gives no excuse for the fact that the banner has not been put up yet.  Also, judging by the time I was personally given my icon award for winning war, it was within a few hours of the final match being complete.  This as well leaves no reason for the banner not to be up.  This banner is one of our rewards for winning war, I personally think it should be a top priority for it to be there.  At this rate at which we are going now, next war could be over by the time that banner goes up.

Would you associate Romeo and Juliet to ?

Death won War #4. Do you feel like this happened by chance or that with the game balanced as it is now Death could win many more wars?

At this point, I feel like I should ask you to post a related song.

1. No, I don't feel like that story should be associated with Death.  If you were to associate it with an element I would associate it with Entropy.  The story ends in much confusion and chaos, which is exactly what Entropy is about.  The madness of love drives the chaotic force in this story.  While death is present in the story, I do not feel that is the main element that can be associated with it.  I also think that could be said about love in real life.  Love is much more like Entropy than we realize.  It can be spontaneous and happen randomly and often, or never happen at all.

2. I feel as if Death has always been a contender to win a war but the team just hasn't functioned well enough to win a war.  This war I feel like we functioned perfectly together and we had people who could do their jobs very effectively while still contributing to other aspects of the team.  I don't feel it was either a chance thing or that it happened because the game was balanced, I feel that we were just the best team and we worked the hardest and were the most skilled.  I do feel that Death can win future wars.  The numerous effective decks Death can make, both with synergies to other elements and in its own element, are just as strong if not stronger than any other element, and if the team is as committed as we were this war, they can surely be victorious.

3. I don't know music very well so I'll get back to you on this one.

Congratulations to Team Death!

Q:"Do you think some event cards made team death to win or simply the decks archetypes were complex and good enough?"

I think that it was mainly the deck archetypes and our team's skill level and determination that allowed us to win, but that isn't to say that the event cards greatly helped us on our way.  For example, the Round 4 Event Card (Reinforcements) allowed us to replenish some of our lost cards (I don't remember which cards they were and I couldn't find them in our secret section) and even allowed us to bring back certain decks, but those decks were gone for a reason.  While those cards aided us for a short while, our main decks were definitely the main reason why we won.  For example, our skeleton build for our Darkness Domin deck might have been the best deck I've ever seen.  We took that skeleton and made 5 or 6 effective decks for different situations, showing how adaptive our decks were.  We also had numerous other decks and numerous versions of those decks to surprise and defeat our opponents.  I believe we had 2 different versions of our Death-Earth stall and countless different Fractalcluse decks.  I feel that we designed our decks very well and used the cards that we had left in our vault in the best ways that we could.  We stuck with our more effective decks while modifying the less effective ones. to help them win.

To the Element who has proved themselves worthy of winning War and is also my elemental opposite...I have a question.

Q:  Death's victory in War symbolizes it being one of the most powerful Elements in PvP.  Meanwhile, Life is still labeled as one of the most inferior and least popular of Elements despite the two being Elemental opposites.  What do you think is the leading cause between the gap between the two Elements?  In other words:  What do you think Life lacks that Death does not?  Try to list as many flaws as you can using specific cards, Elemental themes, etc. to better support your points.

I think Life lacks the ability to create decks off of synergies between its own cards and cards from other elements.  Sure, Life can make a Light duo utilizing Rustlers or use Fractal on its cheap but effective creatures such as Horned Frog, but I don't think that can match any element's CC and Bone Wall or Flesh Spiders and Wings.  Life doesn't have that many strong synergies, and although it has a very strong mono, it cannot function well in an event such as War where you need to build decks with other elements.  Our go-to deck in my opinion was Darkness Domin, which utilized the synergy between Eclipse and Death creatures while also combining some of Darkness's other good features with a Death rush.  Also, Life has very little way to deal with shields.  It has only one card that can deal damage via poison and get past shields that way (Forest Scorpion) but that is not popular and is shut down by most shields.  Life also has no PC or mid-ranged attacker to deal with shields as well.  Titanium Shield blocks both Forest Scorpion and Rustler and Forest Spirit's base damage, leaves Horned Frog dealing only 1 damage and Cockatrice dealing only 2.  Also, Life's decks aren't that can adapt depending on their situations.  For example, a Death stall can outlast many other stalls and beat them through Arsenics and Poison.  However, Life rushes have trouble adapting to stalls.  Their creatures are somewhat weak and easy targets for CC, mass CC can easily stop a rush, and the combination of shields and healing is tough for Life decks to overcome.  In addition, although Life's two main attackers might deal the same amount of damage for less quanta, Death is much more effective in the long run.  Life's two main attackers are Cockatrice (3:life 4|4) and Horned Frog (2:life 3|3) and Death's two main attackers are Mummy (4:death 5|3) and Flesh Spider (3:Death 3|3).  Life has the slight advantage here, but after that is where Life is lacking.  Life and Death neither have a base creature with more than 1 attack other than dragons but Death has other means of attacking.  Poison deals 2 poison damage every turn for 1 quanta.  Life's only match for that is Forest Scorpion (2:life 1|2 add 1 poison counter for every hit) which can be easily stopped by shields or CC.  Death's weapon, Arsenic (2:death 2 damage add 1 poison counter for every hit) also deals more damage overtime than Life's weapon, Drudic Staff (2:life 2 damage heal 5 hp every turn).  Death's growth creature vulture (3:death 0|1 gain 1|1 for every death) is more effective with in-element cards than Life's growth creature Forest Spirit (2:life 1|1 1:water gain 2|2), which requires quanta from another element.  Another big thing that Life lacks that severely hurts its stalling ability is any form of CC.  Although CC is basically the opposite of Life, its absence allows creatures to run free against Life decks.  Even some form of soft CC would improve Life greatly.

jippy99
You got beat by the other two challengers. If you made it to the final battle, would MrBlonde complete the sweep? Also, you said it was a real team effort, but that's not how it looked on my end. (I've got a chance to look at the Death secret section after War.) What were YOUR biggest contributions? Please be specific.

Both of my matches against the other challengers were 3-2 and although this does sound a bit weak and not worthy of a master I did get unlucky.  There were opportunities in those matches that didn't turn out good for me that I had no control over.  At one point while playing a pande deck against Malignant, my pandes had gotten 2 Lobos, 2 RTs, 1 TU, 1 Ice Bolt with a Freeze, and a Lightning that killed my lone creature.  Take it as you will, but I find that unlucky.  It wasn't all luck as I did make a mistake or two.  Against ralouf in game 5 I predicted that he would take Death rush but was not confident enough to take Pandebonium.  I ended up taking my own Death rush and I lost.  The next day I went back and tested my Pandebonium deck against ralouf's Death rush and my Pandebonium won easily.  I feel that I have learned from these mistakes and they have made me a better player.  I feel confident that I will not make the same mistakes again and this will help prepare me for a situation like that in the final battle if I do make it there.
Definitely my biggest contribution to the team was my work in the vault.  We had 0 penalties due to vault problems and I corrected numerous errors in decks that I found while working in the vault.  While I did not do this alone and I did have some help, I handled most of the load and spent countless nights before the end of deckbuilding phases adding, changing, and finalizing all of the decks, salvages, discards, and conversions that we had.  Blonde has stated a few times that he has never had a cleaner vault in all of his wars and was very pleased that he didn't have to touch it.  I also feel that I made big contributions during vault building.  I was always on to decide on which cards and which decks would be added and made helped build and test many of the decks that went into our vault.

To those members of Team Death: Congrats for winning war! That said, there were teams that had large early advantages (Earth/Time/Entropy) over you guys. Do you feel that your coming back to win was a result of luck, skill, event cards, or any combination of those? If you had to choose 1 team that you would have chosen to win war, other than yourself, who would it be?

I think our comeback was a combination of all those things you said plus our determination as a team. We did have our fair share of luck, for we won some matches that we outmatched and probably should have lost and the event cards helped us along the way.  But our skill and determination definitely was a big part of our surge.  We had lots of thought go into our deck choices the last few rounds and our skill and knowledge of our element and its strengths and weaknesses really allowed us to come back and win the war.
If I had to choose another team to win the war, I would have chosen team Time.  Right off the bat before Round 1 even started I almost disregarded them.  I thought that they would be a team of noobies, constantly making bad mistakes and not making the best decks.  I was very surprised with their fast start and continued to doubt their success, saying that it was just a lucky round.  As the war progressed and they kept winning, I felt that they had proven that they were one of the best teams and probably the team to beat.  They were a bunch of no names and the team was bought for 7 cards, yet they proved that hard work and unknown skill can be just as powerful as the big name veterans.  Also, they came from an element that had not had success previously in War and was considered a weak element.

Jippy: While I may be wrong, what I know of you is that, while you are an awesome person in this community as a whole, you seem to lack in the PvP part. How do you plan on getting over that?

I feel that my PvP ability isn't as good as it used to be, whether it be because I just lost my touch or I don't play the game as often as a used to.  But, what I feel I lack in skill I make up in experience.  I've been here for a long time and have participated in many PvP events, all of which I have taken something out of to better understand the PvP aspect of the game and to make myself a better PvP.  Take my run in Light Trials 3.  That was an awful experience in which I failed miserably, going 0-3 in the battle phase.  What I took out of that is I need to prepare more and get to know my element instead of making weak attempts at functioning decks and not exploiting the weaknesses of my element.  I definitely used that gained experience here by preparing a large deck list of my possible decks and looking for which decks would work best against certain other decks I was going to face instead of which decks might work in a neutral, unrestricted setting.

As being in the trial where the winner of war will have a dominating upped card advantage, how do you feel about the current trial reward to the top placings of war? Do you think there should be a reward for war besides the banner+awards? If you had to pick another reward for war other than trial points, what would it be?

Although the physical reward doesn't seem like that much, I think that we also indirectly receive a lot of recognition.  Most people will know more about the winning war team than the losing ones, so we get recognized that way.  Also, since this is the biggest PvP event on the forums, it does give a sense of superiority to know that you and your team were better than every other element and have beaten everyone else.  I think trials points for players on the winning war team should also be given.  They put in just as much work, why shouldn't they get a small reward?  I also think that giving trials points as a reward for war isn't the best reward we can give.  Not all masters and players from the winning team will go on to participate in trials (as it so happens, 6/8 members of team Death are participating in trials).  I feel that I agree with ralouf that a single mark or nymph of their element as well as a small electrum prize should be given to each member of the winning war team.  Also, instead of getting the icon right away, maybe the winners could get a forum title until the next war at which point the title would disappear and they would receive the icon.  As it is right now, I feel that we do get enough of a reward for war.

My challenge to all competitors: Build me a deck (at least 50% death) that can get a Silver spin, oh and for added creativity, no Bonewalls, Poisons, or Mummies allowed. Good luck and have fun!

Apparently missing a few upped cards really hurts you.  Off to chargers.

by jippy99

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

52g 52g 542 542 542 542 542 542 542 710 710 710 710 711 711 713 713 713 713 713 713 71a 72i 745 745 745 745 745 74a 74a 8pl

Took me long enough and quite a few losses on the last game, but I finished.
Win 4:

Win 5:
With my extra time I might set out to do this with another deck.

If death death had no poison and there was no poison mechanic in the game what would you replace arsenic and poison with and how do you think this would effect death. Also do you think that poison was one of the big reasons death won the latest war. finally do you think that its fair for there to be only one element and only one card that counters poison what others element's do you think should be able to stop poison as well. (it cannot be an element that already has a card that causes poison)

I do think Poison is a big part of what makes Death such a good rush element and great at stalling too.  However, I do feel that Death could get on without it.  In place of Poison I would either put another CC spell or a new creature that has something to do with the number of skeletons on the field.  Something like a creature with 3 base attack and it gains 1|1 for each skeleton in play.  As for replacing Arsenic, I would replace it with a weapon that does higher damage and inflicts 1 random enemy creature with 1 poison damage per turn.
Poison was one of our big cards this past war, but I don't think it was our biggest.  Mummy was really the staple in almost every deck and it helped us so much throughout the war.  We saved as many Mummies as we could, and when we had the event card that allowed us to convert cards to any Death card we seized that opportunity to add some late-round mummies to our vault, which turned out to be important.  In a close second, Flesh Recluse (upped, not unupped) was the main card in a few of our key decks such as Darkness Domin and most of our Aether Stalls.
I do feel that having only one card that counters poison isn't enough and that the poison mechanic, both on the offensive and defensive side, should be expanded.  I think that the scorpion additions were the best group of cards added other than pendulums since I've been here.  I really like the poison mechanic and spreading it to other elements is a very good idea.  If we were to add more cards that counter poison, I think that Life and Light would be the two candidates to receive the cards.  To me those elements see very anti-Death and adding a counter to poison would make them more anti-Death.  Also, I don't think it would be a bad idea to add a card that switches regular poison over to neurotoxin.  I think that is a good mechanic and branch of the poison mechanic that should be spread on.

Death is currently one of the strongest element in both unupped/upped PvP environment, which is displayed by the outstanding performance in War 4. Do you think Death can continue its superior status until War 5? If not, what kind of mechanic/card combination/decks do you think will change this?

I definitely think that Death can reign supreme again in War 5.  What reason is there for it not to?  No new cards have been added, no new amazing non-Death decks were created last war that Death couldn't counter, and Death had multiple breakout decks that could surely be used in the next War.  If the next team Death puts the effort and creativity in that last team Death did, I would not be surprised at all to see a repeat winner.

Create a deck based on skeleton which doesn't use immolation or reverse time.

I chose possibly the slowest deck ever.

by jippy99

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

710 710 710 710 710 710 714 714 716 716 716 716 716 716 717 717 719 719 719 719 71a 71a 71c 71c 71c 71c 71c 71c 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 72i 7ak 7ak 7am 7am 7am 7am 7am 7am 8pn

Pictures coming in a bit.

Say that you became a master of Death in real life, and got to choose a ''power''. What would it be?

The ability to choose an infinite amount of powers!   But in all seriousness, I would choose the ability to animate dead creatures and immortality.  To me, being able to create an army of undead and not being affected by death are very cool and important abilities of being a master of Death.  Those are very Death-related, and if I had to choose one non-Death related I would probably choose flight.

[majofa]

The following questions/comments will be sharp and pointed. They may hurt your feelings, but they are meant to help me and the community see how you handled adversity and tough questions. So, don't take too much offense to it, I'm gonna be grilling everyone. Also, I don't hate any of you, it's just my RL interviewing being used for the community vote.

MrBlonde
What percent of the work did you do in this last War?
Malignant
I've never heard your name mentioned without the word lazy. Have you changed?
jippy99
You got beat by the other two challengers. If you made it to the final battle, would MrBlonde complete the sweep? Also, you said it was a real team effort, but that's not how it looked on my end. (I've got a chance to look at the Death secret section after War.) What were YOUR biggest contributions? Please be specific.
ralouf1
Is it true that you submitted a deck for War that had less than 10 Death cards in it?

[MrBlonde]

All questions will be answered in this post. Keep them coming =) I also will not be reading any of my other competitors answers until all questions have been completed and answered.

Q: "That said, if you were in Team Death, what was your team’s strongest point that led you to the final victory against Light? (Especially considering their immense deck variety and veteran players) If you weren’t on the team, do you think one deck archetype, battle, or card had led the team to a prosperous advantage? Most importantly, how do you feel about your Death banner not being placed up yet despite War ending several months ago? XD”

The strongest point that led us to the final victory against Light likely was the ability of being able to narrow down most of their decks and to build off of that. With the tourney structure it did make winning the whole thing, "easier" then if we had it in previous wars. More luck played a factor in this. The one battle that led us to a prosperous advantage was actually losing our final battle before the tourny started. This allowed us to not have to field 2 decks which allowed us to salvage all our cards.

Your most important question actually does not have much meaning to me (i say that with the greatest respect to you as a person). It was a great accomplishment but for me if its not displayed on the forum it's okay with me. If it was feasible for it to have been changed it would have and i certainly wouldn't quibble considering in the whole scheme of Elements i don't do a whole lot (besides be here) to contribute. And now since jijo asked when i would change my avatar i decided to put VRT's art to use. 

Would you associate Romeo and Juliet to ?

Death won War #4. Do you feel like this happened by chance or that with the game balanced as it is now Death could win many more wars?

At this point, I feel like I should ask you to post a related song.

No, i wouldn't associate Romeo and Juliet to . I associate it more with a great love and unfortunate circumstances then death.

Good question. I feel that Death is not one of the strongest element is this format. But as us veterans know the best element does not always win as RNG/Luck plays a factor. Death has been consistantly one of the better Elements though and by no means do i feel we couldn't win more.

I'm a big AFI fan so i'll go with "Death of Season"

Q:"Do you think some event cards made team death to win or simply the decks archetypes were complex and good enough?"

I believe our deck archetypes were certainly complex and good enough (although IMO complex doesn't mean better). With that said the event cards certainly helped us more then hurt us as it got late in the event.

Q:  Death's victory in War symbolizes it being one of the most powerful Elements in PvP.  Meanwhile, Life is still labeled as one of the most inferior and least popular of Elements despite the two being Elemental opposites.  What do you think is the leading cause between the gap between the two Elements?  In other words:  What do you think Life lacks that Death does not?  Try to list as many flaws as you can using specific cards, Elemental themes, etc. to better support your points.

I am definitely a big believer that Life is one of the weaker elements when it comes to the war format. I know Life finished 3rd in War 2 but that had more to do with Entropy and Fire being so dominant and they could have just as easily finished on the bottom. Basically 3rd-11th in that war was really the same thing IMO (in no way am i trying to demean the placement). Death finished war I in 4th and that was not deserved either.

I think one of Death's biggest assets compared to Life is the metagame. Poison and Bonewall allows us to be a stalling Element if we so choose along with us being a great rushing element which makes us tougher to prepare for. Death is one of the poorer elements when it comes to CC but Life is definitely the worst with Light. Our CC poor as it may be does have synergy with our bonewall (and upped actually isn't that bad). Both of us need to go off element to get PC but we have a great workaround vs shields in poison. Yes you have scorpions but they aren't workarounds against shields and unupped are easily negated. The fire nerf also indirectly nerfed one of your better decks (firebolt). The biggest difference i see is that death has more "options" and can better use certain decks because of a larger arsenal. Your frogtal is a little better then our reclutal but we also stall better so it allows our decks to be more effective.

Good question though and i might come back to edit this when i have thought about it more.

The following questions/comments will be sharp and pointed. They may hurt your feelings, but they are meant to help me and the community see how you handled adversity and tough questions. So, don't take too much offense to it, I'm gonna be grilling everyone. Also, I don't hate any of you, it's just my RL interviewing being used for the community vote.

I feel that these questions should be more personal IMO. I have answered every question in every trial, silly, personal, or otherwise. I would prefer sharp and pointed over silly and pointless although i can be quite silly and pointless at times as well.  Anyhow no offense taken and grill away.

MrBlonde
What percent of the work did you do in this last War?

Well this actually is an easy question that will likely become long winded. I have never hidden the fact that this last War my participation was very minimal... for parts of it. Now percent of work well thats a bit different. Really depends on how we determine exactly what work is. If we take everything that War encompasses i did my fair share. I spent a good amount of time on auction (less then last War though because of the awesome spreadsheets that were created this war although i did create a spreadsheet again this War). Also i highly doubt anyone spent nearly as much time on propaganda as i have and have won 1st twice in a row and 2nd (or was it third) in 3 propagandas. So when it came down to prep work prior to the start of War i did a good deal. I also helped create decks (pre-start) and did all the little administrative things at the beginning.

Now when it came to deck building and vault management after the start of War. Well that was all my team. But in all honesty it really wasn't my fault. Its really because my team was so active and plainly awesome. I was on every night at deadline to fix the vault and decks if needed but my team was there and had everything completed. The team put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this victory and did a wonderful job (obviously) and honestly made me quite superfluous. I basically had the envious job of being the overseer who didn't have to do much but in the end, ended up with the credit. Your brother Jaymanfu definitely was such a huge part of Death's victory and was our MVP. Every single person in our team though did their part and were integral in our success.

Now actually i would like to answer another question and i will pretend you are asking this as i'm sure this is a question you would like answered.

"During the War you mentioned to me that this was likely your last War and you would be retiring. Have you changed your mind and why should i vote for you with you if you are halfway out the door?"

Good question Majofa and i'd be happy to answer that. At the time i was contemplating this i was pretty sure i was going to retire mainly because i felt that i was not doing enough during War and was not spending the necessary time. So i felt i was failing as a Master. I did not want to represent my element poorly. But after talking to Ralouf and others (who by the way hold me in way to high esteem) i have had a change of heart. He made me realize that i'm not necessarily failing if i don't do all the work. I have not been needed to be subbed for my entire Elements career (except maybe once but i think i was on vacation out of town for a few days, can't remember) and have always made sure that if the work needs to be done, it will get done. I may not be one of the most active Masters but i am dependable and consistant. As long as i am Master, the element of Death does not have to worry about me disappearing or rage quitting mid way through any event.

MrBlonde: Malignant currently reigns supreme as the top death challenger. Would you be happy to see Malignant being the person to dethrone you, as happy as you could be when/if you lose your title?
Other questions may be edited into this one.

i don't think i would be happy if anyone dethroned me.  I absolutely love Malignant to "death" and i have spent more time pvping with him then probably anyone. As far as being a Master i think he would put the work in. He has always been available and was quiz moderator for a while. If i had to guess though i think Ralouf and Jippy would definitely be more active when it comes to leading war though.

As being in the trial where the winner of war will have a dominating upped card advantage, how do you feel about the current trial reward to the top placings of war? Do you think there should be a reward for war besides the banner+awards? If you had to pick another reward for war other than trial points, what would it be?

I think the current trial rewards should actually have a greater distribution. As of now 6 masters don't get any points for participating in War and 3 of them get 1 point. Also i would like to see any General who leads a team through the whole War get points towards that elements trials if they try out for it. I love ralouf's idea and marks/nymphs would be great as an additional reward. If i could pick another reward instead of trial points i would love it to be a mark.

To those members of Team Death: Congrats for winning war! That said, there were teams that had large early advantages (Earth/Time/Entropy) over you guys. Do you feel that your coming back to win was a result of luck, skill, event cards, or any combination of those? If you had to choose 1 team that you would have chosen to win war, other than yourself, who would it be?

Definitely a combination of those. The tourney at the end certainly made this a free for all which fortunately fell our way. If i had to choose one other team to win the war i would have to go with my counterpart Life.

Death! i love this element
MrBlonde: You are the longest ever-lasting master so far. What do you think has led you to this? How much time do you think you can keep it?

A lot of luck. Honestly should have lost in Trials 3. Also i have always ended up with the popular vote which helps in my upped cards and have never had a card disadvantage. How long doi think i can keep this title? Honestly no idea. I never feel that i'm the favorite when it comes to PvP skills and am just waiting for the rug to be pulled out. I must say though the way things have come about though the element of Death does seem to favor me.

My challenge to all competitors: Build me a deck (at least 50% death) that can get a Silver spin, oh and for added creativity, no Bonewalls, Poisons, or Mummies allowed. Good luck and have fun!

Apparently my reading comprehension skills are down. Now that i realize i have to win 5 in a row i had to make another deck. Grinding a bunch of silver myself i knew i had to find a way to bypass shields and i wanted to still use stalkers (original deck was CP stalker/recluse) i swapped the CP's for unstoppables. After one game though i realized i needed a little more time for the poisons to take effect, so what card allows me to do that oh so well? You guessed it, so here's my death version of Splat that went so nicely at 5-0.

by MrBlonde

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

6rt 6rt 6rt 6rt 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 713 713 713 713 713 71a 71a 71e 71e 71e 71e 71e 74a 74a 74a 74a 74a 8pl

If death had no poison and there was no poison mechanic in the game what would you replace arsenic and poison with and how do you think this would effect death. Also do you think that poison was one of the big reasons death won the latest war. finally do you think that its fair for there to be only one element and only one card that counters poison what others element's do you think should be able to stop poison as well. (it cannot be an element that already has a card that causes poison)

If death did not have the poison mechanic frankly it would be one of the weakest elements IMO as we have no PC and our CC is not very good. What makes Death good (in war setting) is the threat of poisons and concurrently enhances the strength of decks that do not use poison. Without that threat it would be easy to counter death and working around shields would be extremely difficult. It would also take away decks such as Pandabonium as it does not work unupped without poison. No doubt poison was one of the reasons death won the latest War. If i had to replace poison and arsenic it would have to be something along the lines of a corruption card (reduces shields armor and reduces weapons attack) and perhaps a weaken card on creatures. We would need something thematic and powerful to replace poison.

I actually don't think it is unfair that only one element can counter poison. Poison works very slowly and in no way have i seen is it overpowered in any sense. Thematically-wise, life and light would make sense to be able to counter poison. But life has a card that causes poison and light honestly does not need anymore healing buffs. I also think time thematically could work with "reversing" poison effects but dune scorpions takes this element out as well. All the other elements just don't fit with countering poison. Maybe darkness as poison could strengthen them but honestly with their quanta denial and innate healing with vampires and drain life along with H4X shield it would be a buff that is not needed.

Death is currently one of the strongest element in both unupped/upped PvP environment, which is displayed by the outstanding performance in War 4. Do you think Death can continue its superior status until War 5? If not, what kind of mechanic/card combination/decks do you think will change this?

I feel that Death is certainly one of the stronger elements and certainly can continue doing well (i wouldn't say we are in superior status though, a lot of things fell into place last War). In War I we finished 4th, War II we were a frontrunner to win it with fire and entropy until a catastrophic round sending us to 11th, War III we finished 5th (i'm sure we could have finished higher but i was trying to win it all), and our 1st place finish in War IV shows that we certainly are one of the "stronger" and consistent elements in the war setting. I've also finished 2nd and 1st in the last two Masters Tourney (although RNG was certainly kind to me) so i feel that unupped and upped Death is in a good place when it comes to relative strength compared to the other Elements. So to answer your question, i definitely feel that Death does not need any improvements to continue its success. Also if we are allowed to add our shard to PvP that makes us much stronger as well.

Create a deck based on skeleton which doesn't use immolation or reverse time.

Well i was going to go with a Schrodinger's Cat deck but then decided that seemed a bit too obvious. So i decided to go with a deck i played with a while ago and went mono-death. Hopefully you don't mind that it's fully upped and based around Elite Skeleton. All those nasty little shields really mess up those 1 attack creatures. Anyhow i decided to test it via AI3 in the trainer and voila worked fairly well as you can see by the record. And as you can see by the screenie it is definitely based on skeletons  .

by MrBlonde

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 710 712 712 712 712 712 712 716 716 716 716 716 716 717 717 717 717 71a 71a 71b 71b 8pk

Say that you became a master of Death in real life, and got to choose a ''power''. What would it be?

The "power" i would choose would be the curse of "Eternal Youth" and "Immortality" as the Master of Death.

[MrBlonde]

Definitely my biggest contribution to the team was my work in the vault.  We had 0 penalties due to vault problems and I corrected numerous errors in decks that I found while working in the vault.  While I did not do this alone and I did have some help, I handled most of the load and spent countless nights before the end of deckbuilding phases adding, changing, and finalizing all of the decks, salvages, discards, and conversions that we had.  Blonde has stated a few times that he has never had a cleaner vault in all of his wars and was very pleased that he didn't have to touch it.  I also feel that I made big contributions during vault building.  I was always on to decide on which cards and which decks would be added and made helped build and test many of the decks that went into our vault.[/spoiler]

QFT.

Decided to read Majofa's answers.

[ralouf]

If needed I can say that what jippy's saying is totally true, He just made an amazing job with our vault, we never had any trouble or any issue with the deadline, everything was done in time. Jippy also helped for the deckbuilding with clever idea and suggestion.

And as Blondey already said it very well : he made all the auction + a very fun and well made comic for propaganda which allows us to win this btw. Moreover he was always present with us. Hed helped us for everything we have to do.
No he didn't built all the deck himself and played/won all our games. But that's not his job. That'sthe job of all the team and all the team did the job. I loved doing this war with him as a general, and with all the team and even if we had ended last I'd have done it again anytime.

[Onizuka]

MrBlonde: Malignant currently reigns supreme as the top death challenger. Would you be happy to see Malignant being the person to dethrone you, as happy as you could be when/if you lose your title?
Other questions may be edited into this one.