Voices of the Fallen - eliminated teams discuss what went wrong

[Zeru]

Now that you mention it, I do remember me and a few others in chat joking about how you just picked players that did good at a single tournament.

Thanks for making me remember that. 

I picked one player, who did not won a single tournament. And I owe him the War. He managed to force the chaos of our Vault into his bidding and we could focus on optimizing our strategy each and every round.

For example, if every team were to get 24 cards for free during the 6th round, would you call it a bonus or not?

Of course not. If we knew about those cards, I would put them in my planes 6 rounds before the situation. That would be my initial strategy. It could of course change over those 5 rounds, but It doesn't change the fact that you made your strategy with the assumption that you get 24 cards in round 6.

By elimination, any team that wants to have healing should take SoG, as it's cheap and useful, and you don't need to devote much of your deck to benefit from it.

Shards were eliminated from the start for at least three reasons:
1) They are upgraded, so only Masters would benefit from them.
2) That was supposed to be a battle between Elements, and Shards did not fit the theme.
3) It was supposed to attract new players, who did not have that many rares.

[ak65ala]

- black hole - not very good in duo environment. It gets powerful combined with discords, but again, it's a strategy for only a few teams. If there is any reason to take it, it's to defend yourself from . And even that is questionable, since they will expect it.

Yea.... (quick run! he know's how to think like one of us.  Soon he might BECOME one of us!!)

[Zeru]

Yea.... (quick run! he know's how to think like one of us.  Soon he might BECOME one of us!!)

Nothing new discovered here. I know how to think like everybody I know. And don't think you can use this against me. I can predict that as well

[jippy99]

Yea.... (quick run! he know's how to think like one of us.  Soon he might BECOME one of us!!)

Nothing new discovered here. I know how to think like everybody I know. And don't think you can use this against me. I can predict that as well

We still got a few tricks up our sleeves, so dont count us out yet.  In fact, dont count us out every unless we have -30 cards.

[5pla5h]

Since I am writing so much today and this might be the final round, I might as well write on-topic. I will not say, what went wrong, I will say what went well. From the very beginning.

War auction:
     This is a new rule which I was opposed from the very beginning and will probably dislike it to the very end of it's existence. I could not chose freely, who I could work with, unless I put my team at a huge disadvantage from the very start. I found it frustrating and hard, but I wanted to win the war, so I started building my team. I knew that spending over 50 cards would be very bad, my plan was spend less than 40. I needed great players, who did not yet reach high enough fame in the community.
     First obvious method was to join weekly tournaments and play as best as possible. I was hoping to find cultural, skilled and intelligent person, who would be superior to me in terms of deckbuilding. I had great luck to find a person who met my high standards. The tournament rules did not correlate with my play-style at all. I build a pathetic deck thinking that everybody had similar problems. However, my opponent did not have any problems at all. When I used some sort of scrap deck, he played an elegant life-rush and outclassed me as terribly as it was possible. That is how I met Sir Valimont. Back then I had little idea just how crucial he would be for my team. I was merely satisfied at finding a great player, who would not cost a fortune on the auction. He accepted my invitation and my active search has ended.
     The next step was to test my options. I wrote an open invitation to everybody in my signature. More than 7 players replied. I could not be happier. That meant I could have a motivated team by simply accepting most of the applications. With optimism I awaited the beginning of the auction.
     The auction started. I gave the players a lot of time to finish their applications. I wanted to see as many options as possible before wasting my precious cards.
I was the last person to start bidding. The first place to look was the palace. For of the people there I had only 2 rivals. That meant lower competition. It was also a sign of confidence and will to join my team. What a let-down. Only 3 players wanted to join my team. The fist person was Amilir. This was an obvious choice. He was my only rival at the Trials. I had an advantage over him, and yet he managed to get the duel down to 4-4 leaving me with 3 hp in the final round. Only a ridiculous fog block separated us from being in the opposite places. However, the most important reason was something else. He used Entropy in a totally different way than me. When we played, we used totally different decks and all of his creations were extremely well made. I knew that he was a key player and strategist from the very start. Next person was Glitch. I was not naive. His declaration to follow Entropy was nothing more than a must. I knew that he would not enjoy my team and he preferred Life instead. So I did not even look at his page. Next person was Kurohami. Oddly similar to Glitch with his preferences. This time, I did not see a reason not to bid on him. Next I saw xKelevra. I can't really say much here. He had a full library, and nobody seemed to be interested in him. That was a chance I could not ignore. Lastly, the slaves. My priority was to bid on the players, who were interested in my team. The bidding was very nervous as you would not know, what other Generals were thinking. In the end I ended up with my team. Two players sadly were excluded as I won 9 players. ScaredGirl made another rule. We were to find a Rookie. After seeing the requirements I could not believe my eyes. Where was I supposed to find users with such low stats? What's worse. How was I supposed to know that they were motivated to fight with me for months in the hardest pvp event, when they barely started the game?
"Oh dear, another lottery". Being completely clueless about this situation, I decided to ignore the problem. I sent a mass pm to my 8-man team (or 17-man if you count 10-men differently ) and started organizing our ways of communication. In the process, I randomly entered chat. Jmdt asked if I needed a Rookie, and met me with Nyma. It appeared that Kevkev did not want her, so she was looking for a different team. Having no better options, I agreed to talk with her. That was non-mistakenly the best decision in the entire war. Never, ever.. even in the most optimistic scenario I would assume that I could find such a talent. I knew I found something rare, but in my limited view I could not estimate just how important would she be for the team. Later on it would be discovered that we would be one of the most active, creative, intelligent, cheerful, and interesting person in the team. And thus.. Team Entropy was created.
     

i didnt reply your siggy, didnt beat you a single time in tourney, and didnt put entropy among my favorite elements, and still dont even have 6 discords yet :O
yet you were the first to bid on me
i feel touched thanks zeru

[mrpaper]

Now that you mention it, I do remember me and a few others in chat joking about how you just picked players that did good at a single tournament.

Well Zeru didn't pick only winners of tourney.. he bid on me dragoon, but then again, aether wanted me most.. since we are teamie, it's up to you to judge if I was worth the monstruous bid aether paid for me (3!)

[hainkarga]

For team:uw, the worst thing happened to us was round 5. Our opponents came onto us with some of their strongest decks just because they saw us as a black box which can be confirmed looking at other teams forums (can't help thinking they used strongest decks just because they didn't want to lose against team:uw specifically :p). But the reality was the other way around; among all teams, it was only team:uw who had to decide on their final decks before knowing their opponents due to the vault size and vault declaration deadline (zero chance to build any single counter deck even if we knew whole vault of every team). So we were in fact facing a pitch black box. Adding up the relative inexperience of us and facing counter decks on round5, we started with 3-5.

From the beginning, we faced overdose of lieutenants & generals. After round 5, surely some other teams also faced generals & lieutenants due to player-count shrink, but for us, this was the case from the beginning of our War till the end. Facing the team generals & lieutenants with hugest sized vaults (fire namely). Finally facing the strongest possible matchup in round 9, nailed the coffin.

We had our mistakes in deckbuilding but also had a lot of bad luck in matchups. Rng during the matches didn't help either. But hey, at the end of the day we are above half of the teams. As once a great forum troll said: "lol u mad ?" : )))

[jippy99]

For team:uw, the worst thing happened to us was round 5. Our opponents came onto us with some of their strongest decks just because they saw us as a black box which can be confirmed looking at other teams forums (can't help thinking they used strongest decks just because they didn't want to lose against team:uw specifically :p). But the reality was the other way around; among all teams, it was only team:uw who had to decide on their final decks before knowing their opponents due to the vault size and vault declaration deadline (zero chance to build any single counter deck even if we knew whole vault of every team). So we were in fact facing a pitch black box. Adding up the relative inexperience of us and facing counter decks on round5, we started with 3-5.

From the beginning, we faced overdose of lieutenants & generals. After round 5, surely some other teams also faced generals & lieutenants due to player-count shrink, but for us, this was the case from the beginning of our War till the end. Facing the team generals & lieutenants with hugest sized vaults (fire namely). Finally facing the strongest possible matchup in round 9, nailed the coffin.

We had our mistakes in deckbuilding but also had a lot of bad luck in matchups. Rng during the matches didn't help either. But hey, at the end of the day we are above half of the teams. As once a great forum troll said: "lol u mad ?" : )))

I completely agree with the RNG screwing, both in the match and with matchups.  Speaking for myself, I had to face 2 generals.  I was lucky not to get screwed by RNG in the games, unlike ji and ak, who both lost because of it.
From the beginning, we were playing blindly, with no idea what to do or what to expect.  We couldnt build any counters for the fear of not facing the deck that it countered, any stalls with a 3 card limit, or any real effective rushes.  The only options we had were rainbows and duo, which was what we came out with.  In the end, I think it was the 3-5 in the 5th round that killed us.  Even with a 4-4 start, we would most likely still be around.

[Boingo]

Team Aether is out.  For me, Elements has never been as fun, as challenging and as frustrating all at the same time.  We had as many as 11 members at one time or another.  We also were the only team to have an important card nerfed mid-War, though that doubtfully played much of a role in our demise.  The wheels really came off the round of Thanksgiving as we had much difficulty building/testing decks due to inactivity/no internet accessibility--consequently, after our best showing (6-3) we had our worst showing (3-6.)

Many of the things I'd do differently if given the chance:
1. Have the team spend more time building strong decks to populate the vault.
2. Build next-round decks first, then decide salvage/discard.  Not the other way around. 

For Team Aether's of the future, a few suggestions:
1.  Pack plenty of CC from other elements because you won't get much from salvage later on.  I guess other teams think every aether deck plays immortals/phase dragons or something.
2.  Plan a rainbow deck from the beginning.  Duos can be predictable, and predictability is death, so don't be afraid to try unconventional duos/trios (see Flying Eternity-rd 4, Fractal flayers-rd 2, blessed spiders-rd 1.)
3.  Find a way to use Discords efficiently in an aether deck.
4.  Be prepared to sacrifice 1 match for the sake of the rest as opposed to watering down the good decks to make a crappy deck.  (See round 5.)
5.  Fractal is nice, but PU is often better.
6.  There is no substitute for PvP deck-testing.  But use alternate accounts when possible as spectate-spies abound.

[tyranim]

i dont know how i would have done in the matches, but definitely my inactivity put a damper on our overall performance. im not entirely sure yet, but i think we got penalties because of it. i appologize for that if we did, i dont have an excuse, but the reason is the fact that my grades sucked monkey b***s, so i got grounded (even though im an adult...*hides in corner from shame*)

[10 men]

2.  Plan a rainbow deck from the beginning.

!!!
It's kinda sad to say this but every team that didn't have at least one Nova-Graboids deck in their Vault did something wrong.
Here's a quick tutorial on how to make one:
- 6 Novas
- 6 Graboids
- 3 more cheap utility rainbow cards that make most sense against your opponent (usually CC, Deflags, Fog Shield or Purify)
- 15 cards from your own Element that don't suck too much...

[GG]

2.  Plan a rainbow deck from the beginning.

!!!
It's kinda sad to say this but every team that didn't have at least one Nova-Graboids deck in their Vault did something wrong.
Here's a quick tutorial on how to make one:
- 6 Novas
- 6 Graboids
- 3 more cheap utility rainbow cards that make most sense against your opponent (usually CC, Deflags, Fog Shield or Purify)
- 15 cards from your own Element that don't suck too much...

yea. I was facepalming so many times after I made my team's vault. fml.