Introduction:Hi, some of you (all of you) may know me as shockcannon. As you may have guessed, I was the lucky individual to have received this note from this beloved friend from the future. I was moved by the note and even more so by the deck code, but if we’re going to be honest, this deck sucks. Maybe it gets a 50% win rate against AI 3, but FGs are going to rip this thing to shreds. So while this deck may be my first encounter with my
element’s counter-type and an inspiration for my
combos, the deck I will be showing off today is slightly more up to today’s standards. I based this deck off of the unique combo of using fractal in an aether rush deck coupled with rewinds to cripple the opponent and give you the edge you need. So without further ado,
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 808 809 80d 80e 80g 80g 80g 80i 80i 80i 80l 80l 81q 81q 8psThe deck here is obviously skewed in favor of aether due to the deck this was inspired by, but the
adds a critical component to your average aether/fractal rush deck. Rewind enable the deck to get a massive rush advantage by slowing down the opponent’s card draw and acting as a creature control. This card can single handedly win games by entirely negating spell buff cards like blessing or chaos power, removing high quanta cost, high damage cards like dragons from the playing field, or slowing down the card draw for decks that rely upon multi-card combos.
Next up are the creatures. This deck features 3 phase recluses, 2 psions, and 1 ball lightning. Phase recluses are going to be the deck’s primary source of damage, and are useful if the opponent runs spell shields. On the other hand, psions get through all non-spell shields and have more bulk to survive t-storms or RoF. I am running fewer psions in this deck because phase recluses are faster for rushing and the goal is to win before you encounter major creature control. Lastly, ball lightning offers a way to add up to 45 extra burst damage to a turn, surprising the opponent in ways like this:
I struggled greatly to find the right number of fractals to run in this deck, but I find 3 to be the silver lining. Enough to ensure you get 1 at a reasonable time most games but not too many that aren’t stuck with 3 fractals in your hand and no creatures or quanta. I originally had nothing else, but slowly decided to add in a copy of electrocutor and phase shield. Lobotomize has great synergy with reverse time and shuts down a lot of ability decks like chrysaora, butterfly cats, vampire, or growth decks. It can also remove momentum to allow phase shield to do its work, which can come in clutch against another rush deck.
Considerations:I spent tens of games trying to refine the number of aether towers, fractals, and creatures. Depending on the situation, I don’t actually think this deck is fully optimized. However, it is adaptable to several situations and on average I think this deck competes strongly with other aether fractal decks. I am not sure I needed 6 reverse times, but it is the heart and soul of this deck and its inspiration. Finally, I made a second deck that replaces the reverse times with precognitions to create a “fast” version of the deck that focuses on the rushing and gets rid of any sort of control the deck attempts to have. I used this deck in my testing against FGs and platinum arena to compare to the original.
More considerations:I based this deck around rewind and fractal and as a result several possible cards had to be cut out. Immortals and dragons do not mix well with fractal. As for time creatures, the only viable fractal target is really scarab. Scarab is more prone to be countered though and I personally don’t like having to run a lot of pendulums and trying to manage having enough time and aether quanta. Silence was an option for control, but rewind does almost the same thing but better. As I mentioned earlier, the specific numbers of each card in the deck were fine tuned to my own personal liking. If I ran into too many situations where I ran out of quanta I adjusted the pillar count or lowered the creature/fractal count until it was where I liked it. I could run more or even less phase shield, but I managed to find 1 slot for it in a deck that I want to keep at 30 cards for rushing. Finally, other spells cards to consider were precognition (which I did make a version of), quintessence, and lightning. Quintessence helps with phase recluse’s weakness but it’s a slow card that doesn’t get enough value in a rush deck. Lightning is a great card but it has anti-synergy with rewind, and takes up a valuable slot that would be more fit for something like electrocutor, especially if running a low count of lightning.
Results:I used this deck to play 20 games in a row (regardless of what happened) against AI3, AI4, FG, and Platinum arena. For FG and Platinum arena I played 10 games each using this deck and the “fast” precognition version. For Platinum arena, I only counted games where the opponent had 100hp or more.
AI3: 18-2
AI4: 14-6
FG normal deck: 3-7 (beat lionheart, chaos lord, and fire queen)
FG sped up: 3-7 (beat fire queen, hecate, and rainbow)
Plat normal deck: 7-3
Plat sped up: 5-5
A couple screenshots for your amusement: 
