Elements. Fantasy cards game

Well, I just switched to the mono Fire strategy... and won a Fahrenheit. So I'm sticking with it :D

It DOES have a very high win consistency. Simply because there is no "mana control" in the game apart from the weapon that destroys pillars. When you play the AI it often sits with a full hand of cards cuz it has no idea what to play when you have zero creatures out.

It's pretty boring to play however. And, it will not win you money or a top 50 place, as it's basically waiting for the opponent to nearly kill you, then play all the firebolts you have and hope it works...

Actually maybe the AI is bugged...

I just whacked an Aether deck to death with Fahrenheit, the AI just sat there and discarded cards from its full hand... Elemental victory... AI doesn't know how to deal with creatureless decks I guess.

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Originally Posted by Elecid

Anyone disagree?

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The reflective shield and the emerald shield were both designed to deal with this very problem. It's pretty simple to use an emerald shield in a firelfly deck. The only problem with both of these cards is that they are both easily destroyed by a deflagration. Zanzarino should make both of these cards immune to deflagration(not steal though), and therefore they would better suit their purpose.

On second thought - those shields should not be completely immune to deflagration, but perhaps only immune for two turns - they would essentially become the dimensional shield against a mono-fire deck.

I am glad that nova was nerfed, it was too strong.

Currently using an aether/time deck with my quite new account and on 82 wins and 7 losses so far. It has good defence as I have 3 dimensional shields and 2 lightnings and VERY good offence because I can pump out devonian/phase dragons and then use 2-4 parallel universe on them.

Loving the game so far, totally addicted :D

Also looking forward to updates, can't wait until we get proper pvp =)

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Originally Posted by -Samura-

so is all about if he can get you before 10 turns! (well 10 turns is like the the faster that deck can be ..) .. and i think there is some speedy decks that can kill before that

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Minor detail: The fire deck is dumping rain of fire, fire shields, and single target firebolts on any speedy deck all the time. That means that as you get out the creatures you need for your combos, immortality, whatever -- it's just killing them. And that gives it the time it needs to roll over you (Fahrenheit would be out softening you up in the meantime)

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Originally Posted by -Samura-

cool, wait.. i'm confused.. is a weapon .. why the momentum?.. something to do with the dimensional shield..?

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The damage reduction/chance to miss shields impact weapons (Contrary to their description) so momentum will influence the weapon.

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Originally Posted by Levethix

The reflective shield and the emerald shield were both designed to deal with this very problem. It's pretty simple to use an emerald shield in a firelfly deck. The only problem with both of these cards is that they are both easily destroyed by a deflagration. Zanzarino should make both of these cards immune to deflagration(not steal though), and therefore they would better suit their purpose.

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Hard counters (A card that totally kills an opposing deck is a hard counter) are almost always bad ideas -- they'll only be worthwhile if the metagame is revolving around that deck, and that indicates a serious balance issue. So ideally they're never worthwhile because you won't have one deck be so supreme, and if they are worthwhile it means you need to be looking elsewhere for the fix.

I agree that if they're to have any use they should be immune to deflagration (But not Steal, like you said) but I'd prefer to just see super specialized counters like that gone and more versatile options put in instead.

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Originally Posted by Bianary

Sorry for the double post, but this is a new issue:

Mutation seems to be buggy. I used it on a Virus, and it turned into a 5/0 Spark with the ability Deja Vu. Fair enough. So I used the Deja Vu ability (Immediately, I assume that's intended as the creature had been in play) and it created a 6/4 Spark with Momentum. That was not the expected result.

Edit3: I also just had a Photon get mutated into an 11/8 Azure Dragon with Deja Vu, and when I activated that ability it duplicated into a 13/11 Azure Dragon with Infection. So the deja vu clone ability seems really, really buggy with mutation.

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Mutation is a card that (if I remember it right) "Mutates the target creature into an abomination, unless it dies or becomes something wierd"

The "wierd" aspect may be that effects, such as Deja Vu are also semi-mutations. Or it could be a bug.

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Originally Posted by Pilchard123

Mutation is a card that (if I remember it right) "Mutates the target creature into an abomination, unless it dies or becomes something wierd"

The "wierd" aspect may be that effects, such as Deja Vu are also semi-mutations. Or it could be a bug.

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zanzarino did reply to my post and said it was intentional. I still find it a bit too chaotic for my tastes, but it is interesting.

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Originally Posted by Bianary

zanzarino did reply to my post and said it was intentional. I still find it a bit too chaotic for my tastes, but it is interesting.

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Well chaotic is what entropy is supposed to be about after all.

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Originally Posted by Levethix

The reflective shield and the emerald shield were both designed to deal with this very problem. It's pretty simple to use an emerald shield in a firelfly deck. The only problem with both of these cards is that they are both easily destroyed by a deflagration. Zanzarino should make both of these cards immune to deflagration(not steal though), and therefore they would better suit their purpose.

On second thought - those shields should not be completely immune to deflagration, but perhaps only immune for two turns - they would essentially become the dimensional shield against a mono-fire deck.

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In my opinion, Emerald shield (and reflective shield) are both terrible cards that need revision. They only really counter 2 cards in the whole game, unless I forgot one. If anyone put it in their decks, there are very few situations in which they would be useful, and their deck would not be competitive compared to more focused decks.

As for your suggestions: No shield should ever be completely immune to deflagration, as that would destroy the main reason for the deflagration's existence. That is just bad design. Putting those shields on a timer is also silly, and doesn't solve the problem. What WOULD solve the problem is to have the shield nullify the next two spells played by any player.

On a more general note (relating to my point in an earlier post), there are decks which cannot win against other decktypes. This is true, but it should not be true. It's natural to have elements or decks that are at an advantage, but to have decks that simply have no chance--that's a problem. If you force every element to use creatures to win, you will solve the mono-red imbalance issue. To do that, you must modify its creatureless win condition. Make the dmg increase faster on fire bolt, but introduce a dmg cap. Do the same to Farenheit (cap dmg at 10).

To fix the aether balance issue, i'd suggest making dimensional shield simply cut damage in half, rounded down, and last for four turns. That will neuter pure stall decks.

Finally, in a 30-card deck, allowing for 6 of each card is too many. It allows for and encourages combo decks which have magic-bullet solutions against them, but more importantly, since there are so many elements, it makes some elements (like light) only playable as a splash color because there simply aren't the cards light needs to win in its card base, but it has a few nice cards. On the other hand, the only thing that Aether or Fire need to win are its own cards. May I suggest going down to 5, or even 4, once each element has at least one or two more cards? This should prevent decks from abusing those few cards that allow them to win (parallel universe, fire bolt, devourer, nova, chrysaora, lycanthrope) to the exclusion of any other strategies, and should help decks such as light, which doesn't have that sort of built-in combo jank, but has an all-around solid card base (except for photon which is only good in conjunction with another color).

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Originally Posted by -Manwe-

Well, I just switched to the mono Fire strategy... and won a Fahrenheit. So I'm sticking with it :D

It DOES have a very high win consistency. Simply because there is no "mana control" in the game apart from the weapon that destroys pillars. When you play the AI it often sits with a full hand of cards cuz it has no idea what to play when you have zero creatures out.

It's pretty boring to play however. And, it will not win you money or a top 50 place, as it's basically waiting for the opponent to nearly kill you, then play all the firebolts you have and hope it works...

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Seems like you're playing it right. It has such a high win consistency (and so does mono aether) because there is little to no possibility of not getting the cards you need, because both decks start slowly and use stall. There is no such thing as a bad hand. Faster decks are vulnerable to stall tactics AND the occasional bad hand. Against player decks, i've won about 90% of games with that deck, and I have lost once to the computer on the highest difficulty. (about 40 games so far) I lost when I accidentally clicked on two rain of fires when there were no creatures out, mistaking it for fire shield. The computer threw out 2 firefly queens, a few divers, and I was toast.

The AI is not at fault for keeping all those cards in hand. The cards are simply not relevant because your creatures cannot be frozen, infected, destroyed, etc... like i said, about 50% of your opponent's hand may as well be discarded.

There IS plenty of mana control, but darkness/fire have it all. Even a deck with 3 deflagrations, 6 steals, 6 devourers, 3 dragons, and 12 mana would have a difficult time beating that fire deck because it has 16 lands, and will pretty reliably eliminate your 9 creatures. I'd hate to play that game.

So I just won two Fahrenheit in three spins. Might be time to try a new deck.

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Originally Posted by Cooder

So I just won two Fahrenheit in three spins. Might be time to try a new deck.

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Lucky. =(

I want a Fahrenheit to try out a mono-fire deck but I have terrible luck.

I think you guys are overstating the power of fire decks. You're playing against AI's and not people plus once the true PvP comes out we'll be able to see what really is most effective. Fire doesn't need to have firebolt or fahrenheit capped at this time because in reality its a slower deck that can very well be vulnerable to faster decks and aether decks. Anyways if fire was such an effective strategy at this point you would see many more people in the top 50 running it. Thats not the case and in fact I've been playing against a variety of decks since nova's been weakened.

In regards to your aether being overbalanced if you were to do what you mentioned to the dimensional shields you would effectively ruin(or nerf as some call it) the all aether strategy because its cards are so expensive in the first place. You need to be able to stall with the dimensional shields in order to have enough time to get all the quanta needed to summon a dragon and use parallel universe a couple of times. Aether is a slower strategy so you have to be able to slow down your opponent somehow plus the price of the dimensional sield has been raised as well. I personally have 17 pillars in my deck to make sure I can get enough pillars in the beginning(I'm sure you can guess the rest of my cards yourself :P).

As for a smaller card limit I'd be in support of it because it would provide more variety to the game because players wouldn't be able to focus on a single strategy as much. They'd have to be able to go in several different directions. Another idea might be to bring the minimum deck number up to 40 so that people would have to have a larger deck and maybe even duel type their deck so that they can have the variety to fill the 40 cards up. Maybe even both could be put to use. In an old card game called Yugioh I used to play the card minimum was 40 and you could only have up to three copies of a card in your deck and even less for the cards that were more powerful(granted there were a lot more cards in that game than this one.) Putting either of these two rules in effect would make players have to branch out in their strategies and further differentiate startegies within the game.

I have three fahrenheis so far, but I don't really want to mess with my deck yet(especially since I just recently broke into the Top 50 again). if there was an option to save deck combos then I'd seriously consider trying out other decks combinations, but for now I'll just leave my deck as is.

yeah...having two Fahrenheit (or two owl's eyes for that matter) wasn't enought to make me change again. I'm still running 16 aether pillers, 6 parallel universe, 4 demesional shields, and 4 phase dragons.

I have 17 pillars 6 each of dragons, dimensional shield, and parrallel universe personally right now. It works well for me except in certain situations.

I am happy with my aether/time deck, but it's getting quite boring now. I have enough electrum coins to make a new deck, but I don't know which ones work well. Any suggestions?

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Originally Posted by -Manwe-

Well, I just switched to the mono Fire strategy... and won a Fahrenheit. So I'm sticking with it :D

It DOES have a very high win consistency. Simply because there is no "mana control" in the game apart from the weapon that destroys pillars. When you play the AI it often sits with a full hand of cards cuz it has no idea what to play when you have zero creatures out.

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Deflagration and Steal work well as "mana control" as well. Devourer is a good quantum control card too.

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Originally Posted by Levethix

I haven't gotten the update yet. (I think its because my name got changed)

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I had to clear my browser cache so new version would be loaded. (firefox)

Hm, what's causing Ziter to have his score submitted multiple times? It seems to be happening constantly still.

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Originally Posted by icecue7

Dark/Fire control could handle a mono-Fire deck pretty well, since it relies on limiting your opponents amount of quantums. Firebolts wouldn't be as effective.

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I've played against a few those player fire/dark decks operated by the computer... albeit not at peak efficiency. Those little burrowing guys that steal mana are not actually a problem. As long as I'm gaining net mana, I let them stay. Sometimes they accidentally get taken out by a rain of fire though.

And if the opponent is wasting resources by stealing or destroying my mana with actions... so much the better for the fire shields and Farenheits.

I just recently bent Congeal's fire/dark deck over a chair, and that was with it destroying 2 of my mana early, having 2 burrowed mana-stealers and getting 2 black dragons out. Honestly, the only play mistake the comp made was destroying my mana early rather than saving it for Farenheit or the shield. I was sitting on 3 fire bolts though, so who knows. Won with 76 life left.


I may, however, have underestimated the ability of dive decks to deal with mono-fire. If I get farenheit out, it's toast, but the sheer swarm the deck can muster will deal damage faster than fire shield and rain of fire can deal with the threats, especially if they draw into blessing and put it on a wyrm or an angel. Again, mono-fire still has the advantage, but I recently lost a game to one of those divers.

When I start my web browser, first time of the day (PC off over-night) I can navigate to the elementsthegame.com main page and load/play Elements, but if at any point I close that window/tab, I am un-able to re-load/play Elements until a shut-down and overnight.

I tried a re-boot of both the web browser and my PC - no luck. Also tried clearing cache/cookies on my browser - no dice there either. But three times now shutting down then next day loading the page has worked. Why? How can I fix it?

Thanks for the help (sorry for breaking the flow of the "real" Elements related posts)!


--Rob

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Originally Posted by Elecid

I just recently bent Congeal's fire/dark deck over a chair, and that was with it destroying 2 of my mana early, having 2 burrowed mana-stealers and getting 2 black dragons out. Honestly, the only play mistake the comp made was destroying my mana early rather than saving it for Farenheit or the shield. I was sitting on 3 fire bolts though, so who knows. Won with 76 life left.

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Tehehe, that is my deck. But I'm started to wonder if I just got lucky the times I've played against mono-Fire decks. I've usually been able to keep their quantum supply very low, or gaining very little, so it might just be luck of the draw that let me beat them the few times I've played (for example, I haven't come across one that got to use Rain of Fire). Of course, there's also the fact that it's a computer playing the deck.
Anyways, I still need to work on my deck a bit :[, or I may just scrap it.

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Originally Posted by Cooder

I made a mutation deck after the change today (quantum pillers, novas, photons, lycans, mutation) and it has been prity good. Only lost a few and those were mostly due to other side phase shifts.

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I also just made a mutation deck (and an account on the forums, hay guise!). It's awesome and even more fun than the rustler/queen deck, to be honest.

You should all try it out :D
Although it isn't competitive enough to beat level 4 decks : anything that abuses freezes/shields.

2-3x Quantum pillar (for using effects given by mutated creatures)
8-9x Amethist pillar
3x Maxwell Demon
3x Purple Dragon
1x Dissipation shield
6x Mutation
6x Spark

I usually just throw down a spark and mutate it, it's starting to give me more and more creatures with 10+ attack at the second turn of every game (I always start with at least 1 pillar)

The downsides to this deck are no anti-spell and that when you parallel-universe an irregular mutated creature, it gets more attack, more defense and usually a better effect.
Although it seems to me that mutating an irregular mutated creature raises its chances of being a better irregular mutated creature.

I have played with this for so many games now that I'll post my favourite mutation results right now :)

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Originally Posted by Bianary

The damage reduction/chance to miss shields impact weapons (Contrary to their description) so momentum will influence the weapon.

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And it will also still have Momentum if the owner casts Flying Weapon on it to turn it into a creature. Not a huge noteworthy thing, but it is worth remembering. :)

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Originally Posted by Slayd CraVen

The downsides to this deck are no anti-spell and that when you parallel-universe an irregular mutated creature, it gets more attack, more defense and usually a better effect.

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When you parallel-universe a mutated creature, the stats change? anyone can verify this?
and how is this a downside? :P Anywho, time to look at the new changes, sounds like fun

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Originally Posted by icecue7

Hm, what's causing Ziter to have his score submitted multiple times? It seems to be happening constantly still.

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to be honest, im still not sure myself - -

the only thing that i can come up was that i played this game with many different computer. im not sure if this was really the cause of it ><

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Originally Posted by Disaru

When you parallel-universe a mutated creature, the stats change? anyone can verify this?
and how is this a downside? :P Anywho, time to look at the new changes, sounds like fun

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I mean that with all the aether decks and parallel universe spam, when you finally get a monster out that luckily wasn't an abomination, they get to clone it. The original cloned monster's stats don't change but the one they have's stats change, and their effect does too, usually to their advantage.

-Edit-
The deck is also weak to billions of reverse times :P

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Originally Posted by Disaru

When you parallel-universe a mutated creature, the stats change? anyone can verify this?
and how is this a downside? :P Anywho, time to look at the new changes, sounds like fun

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Yes I can confirm this disaru. Whenever you parrallel universe a mutated creature it always seems to become a stronger version of that creature, or at least it has in my experience.

Speed changes everything. A Mono Fire deck can now reliably put down a Fire Shield before a Nova enemy brings out the Lycans, Chrysaoras and Fireflys... or at the very least, draw a Rain of Fire or two. Mono Fire pretty much whups Nova-summoned creatures now. Spell reflection would work about as well as Dimensional Shield, that is, not at all... the Fire player would just hold a Deflagration until he's ready to unleash the game-ending Bolt barrage. Since there's no way to drain a lot of mana, and there's no way to block a Deflagration-FireBolt to the face, there is currently no way to "block" Mono Fire's combo other than winning before I can draw enough pillars. Thus I expect it would be a very strong deck even in real PVP. However it is a very boring deck to play (even with Fahrenheit) compared to my old Nova deck.

Right now I see a lot of Otyugh/Graboid decks (Time mark + Gravity pillars) that use Plate Armor. I guess Otyughs are viable again, now that you can't reliably splash Lightning or Reverse Time. Otyughs are lots of fun to play around with.

Water/Life with Mark of Air is an interesting slow deck that I've seen starting to gain ground, with Forest Spirit and the Firefly combo. Dunno how viable it is, however, since it is very dependent on drawing the right pillars.

Death and Darkness - I see top 50 players using these but I always seem to beat them. Both are splash colors to me. Poison Death is probably the strongest deck in this group.

Pure Aether is annoying as hell and powerful just like the last version. But seriously, Parallel Universe, Dragon, DimShield and pillars - what a boring deck to play.

Finally Aether/Time (usually Time Mark + Aether pillars) is probably the strongest all-around deck in the current environment; it was 2nd behind Nova in the last version.

Once Miracle comes out, lots of decks will probably switch to Mark of Light just to play an end-of-game Miracle. Having to include more pillars, and thus losing more often, will be more than made up for by having nearly every win be 60 coins.

Manwe I have to disagree. Time aether is a pretty good deck(I used to use it before I went all aether), but its not as good as an all aether deck. And I still think you're overstating the power of the mono fire decks. because it still takes awhile to get enough quantums out to finish someone with a couple of firebolts. Plus you'd have to use your firebolts and rain of fires to kill my dragons which would effectively slow yo down further. I think that most combos if played right by a real person would stan at leats a decent chance if not a pretty good one in a true PvP match.

Oh and zanzarino i was thinking that adding a meebo chatroom to the site would be very goood(it can be embedded directly onto the site without the need of signing up for anything although people can create an account to access the chatroom directly).
Also we could make a quick, easy, and free board on invisionfree.com(I could help) so that instead of just one topic we could have several different topics so that people can talk about just one thing in a thread.

I finally got my first victory against samura with his time/dark deck lol. I did have to draw 13 of my pillars before I drew my first dragon lol. You only had 4 cards left by the time I won.

I like the chat widget idea instead of the google comment thing.

Having a dedicated board is a good idea also, but I kind of like the way people are joining flashkit to discuss the game, it gives the opportunity for other flash developers and people that do not know about elements to find out about the game, while a dedicated board would be a secluded corner on the web.

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Originally Posted by -Manwe-

Pure Aether is annoying as hell and powerful just like the last version. But seriously, Parallel Universe, Dragon, DimShield and pillars - what a boring deck to play.

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I am rocking a twist on the pure aether atm, switched to mark of light and threw in a bunch of holy light and a few blessings, it can now counter poison decks easily

one thing I think we can all say is that the PvP AI needs some basic tweaking

it played my graboid deck like a schoolgirl on crack, actually, it plays lots of decks poorly that just need a bit of extra logic, wasting spells etc.

Also, I had no problems beating a pure fire deck repeatedly using blue/white dive monsters + blessings, just too fast unless so you either waste your flamebolts or you save them and die either way

Ohhh so thats what this place is haha. I never knew that before. Zanzarino I already have an account on meebo so if you want I could make the room then post the code on here so that you can put it onto the site.

Ooook, I added everything: a meebo chat and a google comments and questions widget, I am not sure I'll keep both of them there, I'll see if and how much people like/use them

alright I'll refresh the site as soon as i get this match done and I'll see you in the chat room hopefully zanzarino

I have a new idea that I believe would help bring a lot more balance, as well as make the game more fun by adding more combos (or being able to play current ones more easily).

My new idea consists of particular organizations or factions of elementals that have banned together to further elemental knowledge in particular groups of elements. The factions would work as follows:

Faction of Nature

Light
Life
Air
Fire

Faction of Physics

Time
Aether
Gravity
Earth

Faction of Destruction

Entropy
Darkness
Water
Death

Each faction would have access to special pillars that would give 4 quantums, one of each element the faction is researching. Upon buying a membership and agreeing to a doctrine, the member would receive six special pillars. When an elemental leaves a faction they lose access to these pillars. Anyone that is not part of a faction is considered to be part of the Underground. Since even the Faction of Destruction doesn't appreciate self harm, Nova would be banned by any faction, but would still be able to be used by any Underground deck. Immolation would also only be able to be used in an underground deck, but I haven't come up with a good reason for why the Faction of Destruction would ban it. So if you're part of a faction, you get special pillars that work for four elements. If you're part of the underground you get access to cards that help with all elements.

Each faction would have a special ability that each member would be able to gain after they reach a certain rank in the organization. Even higher ranks would allow the ability to become even more powerful. The Faction of Physics would have the ability Intellect, which Zanzarino said would make the mark more powerful giving two quantums instead of one. The Faction of Nature would receive a pet. The Faction of Destruction would have an ability called Resurrection that after four creatures are killed on both sides of the field, 2 quantums of each Destruction element could be spent to resurrect the parts of the four different dead creatures into a random alive creature. The Underground would receive an ability called Shady Dealings which would allow the player to choose the top card or second to top card to draw at the beginning of each turn. The prices at the bazaar and other things like metamorphosis, would also be cheaper since the elemental would have access to the black market.

The upgrade cards option could be used when specializing further into a particular element. I haven't really put much thought into single element specialization yet. It might be just a little too much.

So anyway, these are my ideas - please tell me what you think, particularly Zanzarino. I do realize that they are preliminary ideas and aren't perfect by any stretch.

They seem like good ideas, but they just seem too drastic of changes for me personally.

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Originally Posted by Slayd CraVen

I also just made a mutation deck

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Cool, I espescially liked the repeatable steal.

I've had some pretty good results with a time nova deck. 6 hourglasses, 6 novas and about 40 cards. The hourglasses make it possible to get the novas out fast enough for it to be effective. I'm itching to see how it would fare against another real person though.

It's made for some interesting strategies. like using the eternity weapon to reverse time my own creatures to avoid the effect of the procrastination sheild. They get put in a time bubble, use eternity to return them to the deck then hourglass to bring them back out again. Expensive but it worked when I had a surplus of quanta and not many creatures left. And using reverse time on myself to stay in a match and not run out of cards.

Which makes me think of another question. Does anybody know what happens if you do a reverse time on one of those mutated supercreatures. Does it keep the bonuses or just return to the unimproved version of the creature?