Queens Adrenaline Army of Hope

[lionon]

This is a level 3 farmer and arena bronze/silver farmer with high chances on elemental mastery.

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I thought it is an obvious standard firefly queen deck, but my search couldn't find any deck with a firefly queen and adrenaline, so I post it. The main game "feature" is uses is a firefly on adrenaline puts out 4 light quantes per turn while doing decent amount of damage.

Strategy: play firefly queens and rustlers, make fireflies, put the flies on adrenaline, play hope when available, get soon a crazy abundance of life quanta used to heal to finish with elemental mastery. Safe the heals to play them all in the finishing move for mastery or in case of a tough round play them earlier to survive and get a simple non-mastery win.

Strengths:
* Once the deck starts of with fireflies on adrenaline and rustlers to turn it into more life it really shines well to elemental mastery.
* May hide behind a hugh wall of hope as well.
* Cheap non-upped.

Neutral: Can survive a bit of CC, since the queen is tough and reproduce killed flies, but not too much.

Weaknesses: I played this deck a lot, so issues I faced:
* Scarabs and otyughs can eat flies for breakfast with little chance of counter creature control, the eagle eye might help but doesnt always. In that case I just put out the queens and put them on adrenaline. Works sometime, but not always, so it can lose against the lvl 3 gravity and the time/rainbow deck.
* Fireshield is a hugh danger, but a queen can still put out substantial damage with firefly spawn until she gets downed by the shield.
* As with any deck I tested, a horrible handout can kill it, sometimes it gets only 1 pendulum, other times it get only pendulums and one real card, followed by nothing but pendulums. Both means you lose. I suppose this is just an issue with the game at large, a smaller deck would reduce the chance, but happened with 30 cards decks to me as well.
* Semi-Weakness, As with any non-rainbow deck, quanta denial in the beginning can make an issue to get the queen up together with a firefly on adrenaline. Discord can remove quantas of the needed element and devourers can eat stuff away (for example recently I faced a devourer/earthquake deck in arena that made me impossible to play any queen ever) to good side, once there are 2 fireflies on adrenaline, enough quanta is comming in those loses dont mean anything anymore.
* It is slower than mono-life-rush deck, which it loses against.

Discussion: I just recently added empathy back, against lvl 3 they are quite useless for the health the gain for their cost and can be left away for that purpose, however in the arena I often faced aether decks with this boring phase shields drawing a game I ought to win many many rounds long. In that case empathy easily gets back to 100 health for early losses. Might be worth considering putting a second eagle eye in, or a druid staff, but i dont have that. Since life quanta soon get plenty once the queen/adrenaline/rustler combo sets off, i thought about putting in more air towers instead of pendulums. However, often they turned out to just delay the startup phase when life quante is still needed. Also light quanta can be plenty, however putting in any more light cards other than hope made their show off too late and meaningless for most games. If the other side is using a similar hope / light build, this deck more often than not wins by deckout.

One major con: this deck does not work upped as the elite firefly produces fire. Also it seems to have few cards in common with the more popular upped FG farmers, like electrum hourglasses which I'd rather upgrade first, so it doesn't allow one well to upvalue one card after the other until one can switch to a reliable and fun FG farmer.

Currently I farm silver leage with it, turns out quite fine, sometimes get special draws, or quite often in bronze

[bossitron]

calling this a rush deck is not really correct since ffq decks are usually very slow. also you should probably replace most of the heals with empathic bond. i would also put more hopes in.

also do you have any shards of freedom?

[omegareaper7]

Not a rush, to big for its needed combo. You want firefly queens asap, and 40+ cards is to many for that.

[lionon]

calling this a rush deck is not really correct since ffq decks are usually very slow. also you should probably replace most of the heals with empathic bond. i would also put more hopes in.

also do you have any shards of freedom?

Ok renamed. Empathic Bond only starts to pay off when there are lots of creatures, in many games this deck is a little faster for them to pay off, since the firefly adrenaline puting out 12 damage each, so the heals. Also in some tough rounds the heals can carry one alive until the queens start working. Further Empahtic Bond has this stupid feature of applying heals after the damage is done, so unless the opponent cant do any damage at all, no elemental mastery. Heals? Easy mastery when on the winning side.

Disagree about more hopes, once one pops up all following are useless. Also its a while into the game unitl the hope would be playable anyway, so often enough one of the 2 showed up by them. Eventually they are not crucial. The deck can stay alive by counter-healing. So hope is nice to get for elemental mastery or for long drawn out rounds, but not a game breaker when not.

Shard of freedom is an excellent idea! I'll put those in I have. Do their effects stack?

[lionon]

Not a rush, to big for its needed combo. You want firefly queens asap, and 40+ cards is to many for that.

I don't know really what I should leave away. The deck was often smaller with less pendulums. With 38% Tower/Pendlums it has a more than the average, but in my experience this is more important having enough quanta for the queens to start out, than having more queens, so bit by bit I increased it now to 16 of 42. I also had less Rustlers, but I put more in, since I had too many rounds going with, oh please now another rustler please. Albeit they are not required to work for the deck, they are very nice. Especially with the AI its nice to put them out first so it uses up its one shot CCs one them first so the queens are safe.

Owls Eye can be left out. It showing up is very unreliable.

[omegareaper7]

Not a rush, to big for its needed combo. You want firefly queens asap, and 40+ cards is to many for that.

I don't know really what I should leave away. The deck was often smaller with less pendulums. With 38% Tower/Pendlums it has a more than the average, but in my experience this is more important having enough quanta for the queens to start out, than having more queens, so bit by bit I increased it now to 16 of 42. I also had less Rustlers, but I put more in, since I had too many rounds going with, oh please now another rustler please. Albeit they are not required to work for the deck, they are very nice. Especially with the AI its nice to put them out first so it uses up its one shot CCs one them first so the queens are safe.

Owls Eye can be left out. It showing up is very unreliable.

Rustlers aren't needed with life mark and air pendulums. You don't need heals, they won't do nearly as much as bonds after a couple turns. Adrenaline doesn't help the deck really, you want to live, not kill fast. Dropping all of that, the deck is slimmer and just needs to be filled in with a few more bonds, another owls eye or shockwaves/thunderstorm.

[lionon]

Yes, I played today with your comments in mind and think you're right.

Here is an improved version, I put in another hope, and replaced a few heals with bonds, removed a rustler and the owls eye. I think its better. Shard of freedom would be nice, albeit I got some shards, none of those yet.

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Anyway, If i remove the adrenaline and rustlers it looses the main idea of somehow misuse the fact that a firefly on adrenaline produces 4 light quanta. It is going to a standard firequeen deck like its all over the place and doesn't deserve a mention

Okay lets play a few rounds of firecell against false gods instead.

[Chapuz]

@Lionon:

You are missing a big point in here. FFQ decks's strongest point is the defense, no it's attack. This is wht these are with 30 card and 6 Queens, to ensure the biggest amount of Fireflies ASAP to fuel the Hopes. In later-game the opponent will eventually die because of the damage from the Fireflies. Adrenalines will hurt more than help you, as you will get more  later but your Hope will be set up later, being more prone to get rushed.

I  other words:
1- 30 cards with 6 FFQs. No Adrenalines and 3 Hopes.
2- If you use    pilars and    mark pack 4 Rustlers and base your healing only in about 5 Emphatic Bonds and/or Sanctuaries
3- If you use    mark and    pendulums, your FFQ will indeed be placed slower. Use some Heals to stall until you have some defense. The advantage of this build is that you aren't so damaged by CC on your fragile Rustlers.

[omegareaper7]

Yes, I played today with your comments in mind and think you're right.

Here is an improved version, I put in another hope, and replaced a few heals with bonds, removed a rustler and the owls eye. I think its better. Shard of freedom would be nice, albeit I got some shards, none of those yet.

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Anyway, If i remove the adrenaline and rustlers it looses the main idea of somehow misuse the fact that a firefly on adrenaline produces 4 light quanta. It is going to a standard firequeen deck like its all over the place and doesn't deserve a mention

Okay lets play a few rounds of firecell against false gods instead.

Your missing the point a bit. If you want to have a consistent deck, which combo decks NEED TO BE, then you want minimal cards.

Queen decks greatest asset is there defense, not offense, which has been mentioned. You don't need heals, you don't need adrenaline. And though some may like it, you don't need rustlers at all either. 

Life mark with air pendulums > air mark with life pendulums. You are much more likely to get an early fire fly queen with air pendulums and maybe a few pillars in.

[lionon]

@Lionon:

You are missing a big point in here. FFQ decks's strongest point is the defense, no it's attack. This is wht these are with 30 card and 6 Queens, to ensure the biggest amount of Fireflies ASAP to fuel the Hopes. In later-game the opponent will eventually die because of the damage from the Fireflies. Adrenalines will hurt more than help you, as you will get more  later but your Hope will be set up later, being more prone to get rushed.

I  other words:
1- 30 cards with 6 FFQs. No Adrenalines and 3 Hopes.
2- If you use    pilars and    mark pack 4 Rustlers and base your healing only in about 5 Emphatic Bonds and/or Sanctuaries
3- If you use    mark and    pendulums, your FFQ will indeed be placed slower. Use some Heals to stall until you have some defense. The advantage of this build is that you aren't so damaged by CC on your fragile Rustlers.

Well thank you!

I tried both alternatives a bit. I may be stubborn at this, but to my impression the adrenaline deck seems to get a bit better off in bronze -- despite all theoretical issues you explained very well. But okay, nothing maybe as much skewed as pseudo impression-"statistics" without pen&paper. While with these variants there are more queens appearing sooner, it also allows less improvising in some situations the queen deck fails, like putting adrenaline on queens. Eventually they all lose against the same decks with nasty CC or shields, or mono life rush and all win against the rest. I suppose a FFQ deck just goes that far anyway. Right now I switched to a mono darkness set, simply also due to boredom, I played FFQ way to lot now.

[lionon]

Your missing the point a bit. If you want to have a consistent deck, which combo decks NEED TO BE, then you want minimal cards.

Queen decks greatest asset is there defense, not offense, which has been mentioned. You don't need heals, you don't need adrenaline. And though some may like it, you don't need rustlers at all either. 

Life mark with air pendulums > air mark with life pendulums. You are much more likely to get an early fire fly queen with air pendulums and maybe a few pillars in.

Thanks, but you're 100%ly repeating all points Chapuz brought already up just a post before.