Round 4 - Main Topic

[RulacMage11]

Aether: Fire Splash for deflags sounds solid. Toadmare could work, but I don't think it stands as much of a chance as Firesplash.

Air: Toadmare or Aether Splash with Lightnings and Silence sounds solid. Ddevans thoughts summed up why Toadmare is a good option

Life: Swallow. Swallow will stand a great chance against any of the decks they could possibly send our way.

Light: AM/Flooding stands a good chance here.

Gravy: They have been running so many DBH decks - Sanc Splash? Can't think of much here :/

[Espithel]

I really question if are going to use dims against us; they're dealing against time and light this round, elements far more deserving of dimspam than us. I would predict them trying to counteract a poison-based strategy. Monowater NT with a deflag splash, or something faster than that, would be my choice.

AM Flooding should work well against ... I don't know, though. To be honest, the only thing that light could send against us that flooding would be of any merit would be RoL/Hope unless they want to try some crazy rustler antics. I just can't see them sending either against us. Why not just a 45 card AM stall for light? I seriously question flooding's merit.

... Hm. Swallow is a solid choice, but I'm worried it could be too slow. If they're playing a stall, though... With SoPa on our side, I'd expect it to be an aggressive stall (Entropy/Life or Fire/Life) if they are going to try and stall us out. I can't think of a better idea, either, though.

Air and Gravy's the issue though... I don't have opinions on them. I would probably field NTLA* against gravity with... pdials or silence/lightning against air.



* Do you want to do the ultimate curveball? Use NTLA, Which is quite literally 9 entropy pends, 9 darkness pends, 6 water pillars/pends and 6 NT. It works as both quanta denial, creature control and both a stall and stallbreaker. But a single CC and it's dead faster than you can say chipotle. Obviously, you need the tinkerer to do this, and it's probably needing more mods than you can throw the sun at, but god damn it this deck should be used once.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Summary of Discussion so far.

Aether: Deflag Splash. Solid option and has the most votes. Not used Steam machines yet and I think this is a good place for it, and we can add nymphs too Espithel

Life: Swallow again has the most votes.

Air: SoPs will be taken up by swallow, so that's out. PDials or Toadmare. I think the fact fire countered us with purify, we should use Dragon(Toad)mare. BUT i still think we should salvage/discard as if we were using PDials and Grabbow, because I think they really should be both available in later rounds. That PDials is excellent, and Grabbow is grabbow.

Light: 45 Card AM Flooding Stall has it. Espi, in a large AM stall, having flooding in the deck can only be a bonus. We can always make it sideboard and remove the flooding if it's not applicable.

Gravity: NTLA is not a good option on this because as a trio it's easilly disrupted, but we can bear it in mind as an oddball choice later in war when we are running low on support cards
I think the most votes has Light Domin. With our miracles, sanc and Glories I think this is a solid option.


OR if we shuffled things around a bit, we could use AM Flooding against Life (imo more solid than Light) Which frees up SoP for SoPFlayer/Silence for Air, meaning we'd use Serpentine against Light.

I'll get on with building prototypes of these deck options.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

WORK IN PROGRESS, and all decks should be scrutinised for possible modifications.

Spoiler for Aether:

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5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ii 5ii 5io 5io 5io 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 7gk 7gk 7gk 7gr 7gr 7h2 7h2 7h2 7h2 7i6 7i6 7i6 8po

Gone simpler with more Upped Steamies cause they take 3 bolts not 2. More I think about it more I like the matchup, as even against RoL hope steamies should work fine. Could even drop 2 squids for +1 Pillar +1 Queen or Deflag.

Spoiler for Life:

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55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 55k 56i 56i 56i 576 576 576 576 576 576 5ig 5ig 5ig 5j2 5j2 5j2 5j2 74b 74b 74b 74b 7gr 7gr 7gr 8pp

Extra Squids help for more SoP fodder, and mitigate the fact we only have 4 Otys. In testing this has plenty of creatures and plenty of quanta, really happy with this tinkerer build. A non tinkerer build is possible, but is harder to balance, and involves a little bit of nymph spam.

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i9 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ig 5ig 5ih 5ih 5ih 5ih 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 7gp 7gp 7gp 8pj

If we went AM Flooding, this is an excellent build as a Lt.

Spoiler for Air:

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ie 5ie 5ie 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5up 5up 5up 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v1 5v2 5v2 7gt 7gt 7gt 7gt 7gt 7tb 7tb 8pt

Quite like Sideboard here, giving a bit more flexibility with cloaks, steals or possibly taking out 1 dragon 1 steal and 1 pend if that makes more sense. Should aim to go down to 30 cards after game 1 however. THIS DECK NEEDS ATTENTION - shields? squids? Dry Spells? many options.

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5if 5if 5if 5if 5if 5j2 5j2 5j2 5j2 5jm 5jm 5jm 61q 61q 624 624 624 7gr 7gr 7gr 7gr 80a 80a 80a 8pu

Basic build, probably -Discard.

Spoiler for Light:

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i7 5i9 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ia 5ig 5ig 5ih 5ih 5ih 5ih 5io 5io 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 6u7 7gp 7gp 7gp 8pj

45 cards + queens to try to deckout a deckout. I sort of prefer the 40 Card version for draw chance, which is why I'd prefer to use this Vs life.

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595 595 595 595 595 595 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 7gm 7gm 7gs 7gs 7gs 7gt 7gt 8pm

I's possible Light will have some sweet salvage for us (Sancs plz) so i'd be tempted by +salvage. if not, +2 upgrades.

Spoiler for Gravity:

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5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5lh 5lh 7h0 7k2 7k2 7k2 7k6 7k6 7k6 8pq

Tinkerer Variant also possible. Quite like this if they go DBH, but Oty would be a sad sight. Upped dragons are the only thing we have that can get through both gravy shield and Oty, but I think we need them elsewhere. I'd say once we finalise other decks, any aditional dragons should go in here.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

I will be out watching a footy match tonight, but will be back 2 hours before the deadline to discuss tweaking / final selection of decks with dd, and anyone else who is online.

Great work this week, nice to have everyone give very detailed ideas, and all have been valid

[ddevans96]

Essentially, it feels like we have two branches:

AM/Flooding against Light, which means Swallow against Life, which means Toadmare against Air.
AM/Flooding against Life, which means Serpentine against Light, which allows SoP Flayers against Air.

A few changes to your decks I'd like to suggest:

Deflag splash should have 3x congeal and not 2x squid. That makes all the creatures in the deck have resistance to one bolt. Tweak upgrades and quanta to match.

40-card AM flooding should have 3 tears as a handcuff. I also question whether 6 purify is needed - I'd go -2 purify, +1 tears, +1 quanta (it looks just a little low to me). The 45 card version would work better with 6 purifies, but it also looks like the unwieldier deck, so I'd prefer the lower branch above.

Your toadmare looks good as a sideboard build. The SoP Flayers, though, feels very low on quanta.

That deck against Gravity really needs dragons, which is another reason I'd rather use the lower branch. We're also not using Dials anywhere, so if we're already using Light in that deck, we should consider them.

[RulacMage11]

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AM Flooding should work well against ... I don't know, though. To be honest, the only thing that light could send against us that flooding would be of any merit would be RoL/Hope unless they want to try some crazy rustler antics. I just can't see them sending either against us. Why not just a 45 card AM stall for light? I seriously question flooding's merit.
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I don't believe Flooding works on RoLs as they're airborne, no? Tis the only reason I wouldn't throw AM/Flooding at them, otherwise, It'd be a great RoL/Hope counter.

[ddevans96]

I don't believe Flooding works on RoLs as they're airborne, no? Tis the only reason I wouldn't throw AM/Flooding at them, otherwise, It'd be a great RoL/Hope counter.

Flooding ignores airborne.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Immortals are unaffected by flooding, everything else apart from Water and 'Other' (Malignat Cells) are.

[ddevans96]

Friendly reminder to pull decks from vault, especially this round as jcj and I made a lot of tweaks last minute.