Elements. Fantasy cards game

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Originally Posted by kethaq

I think you would have to really try it out practically to see if it worked. My general feeling thoug is they are sltill to expensive and slow to be viable. A couple of defrags would stymie most of the weapons and the Morning Star would just cost too much. I did try a strategy with several of the rares and flying weapon in the beta version. The problem I found was two cards to get a decent weapon out and flying was too expensive (in cards).

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You'd start with Reverse Time to slow the enemy's draws down to give you time to get the lockdown in place with Eternity. If they didn't start with a defrag, you'd hugely reduce their chances of getting one -- and if they did land it, you'd just replace the lost Eternity with another and continue putting their creatures back.

Same goes for the energy denial strategy, except you'd just block them from getting anything out in the first place.

Perfect? No. But it would have pretty good chances if the rest of the deck was built to work with it.

Plus some of the immortality setups may be a bit too good, I'm rather hoping something will be done about the strategy. Nova also is a bit too good - as evidenced by the huge number of viable decks that have no pillars at all and just fuel their cards by Novas.

Of course If you did manage to find a rare there would be ways to expliot the spinner to get more copies of it. buy putting only that weapon in a deck and then using another account to play PvP until you fought the deck with only the rare weapon in it. but I would say that that would be cheating, certainly in spirit if not by the letter of the rules.

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Originally Posted by kethaq

Hope this helps. It's all about getting the right balance of cards not necessarily the strongest. The cards in my deck have a average cost under 40 and there are no pillars so the cheapest card I have is the dagger at 24. I win close to 90% of the time in PvP. The only decks that give me trouble are ones similar to mine and the time/etenity decks if they can get enough reverse times and dimensioal sheilds.

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Oh you mean like my deck hehe. Yea I've found that the nova decks are actually the easiest for me to beat because of the way my deck is set up. I reverse time you or lightning you so that your creature is gone and I use one of many dimensional shields to wait it out while I use golden hourglass to get my dragons and parallel universes out.

On another note...
http://i312.photobucket.com/albums/l..._Webb/ouch.jpg
That would have hurt A LOT if it weren't for my dimensional shields.

it's a hard balance to make. the pillarless deck does seem to be the strongest right now. It's what I use. It's a quick start but a linear progresion while pillar decks grow exponentially. If I don't get a nova out in the first few rounds I pretty much lose to anyone with a decent strategy. That's what makes the game interesting though.

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Originally Posted by DarkGate

Oh you mean like my deck hehe. Yea I've found that the nova decks are actually the easiest for me to beat because of the way my deck is set up. I reverse time you or lightning you so that your creature is gone and I use one of many dimensional shields to wait it out while I use golden hourglass to get my dragons and parallel universes out.

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See this is where we need true PvP to see which of the strategies would actually work best because The AI doesn't always exploit the decks to the best of thier ability.

Are you in the top 50? I would like to try my deck against yours.

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Originally Posted by kethaq

Of course If you did manage to find a rare there would be ways to expliot the spinner to get more coppies of it. buy putting only that weapon in a deck and then using another account to play PvP until you fought the deck with only the rare weapon in it. but I would say that that would be cheating, certainly in spirit if not by the letter of the rules.

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You could even just build a deck and then play until you fought yourself, it would just come down to flipping a coin to see who won...decent odds for duplicating the weapon.

You can fight yourself, I have a screenshot of it...

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Originally Posted by Bianary

You could even just build a deck and then play until you fought yourself, it would just come down to flipping a coin to see who won...decent odds for duplicating the weapon.

You can fight yourself, I have a screenshot of it...

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Yeah I thought about that too but you might knock yourself out of the top 50 by losing all those other matches. I'n not sure how that works though. I played on the beta and when I lost a lot and resubmitted a lower score It kept my (old) higher score on the high score list.

incidentally I have a 2-1 record against myself.

Not quite in the top 50, my experimenting until I got to this deck cost me quite a few losses because I'm almost always trying to get a better deck. The only decks I personally have trouble with are the firefly/queen/rustler combos and occasionally the poisons if I don't get a decent draw to keep the chrysaora's from using their abilities. I think the aether rare(can't remember what its called) would be a very effective weapon because it allows you to remove the ability of a creature. Since a lot of decks are dependent on creature abilties this could prove a very nice defensive strategy.

OK, I just won the owl's eye (and I use mark of Air). I put it in my deck just to experiment. I lost my first match pretty devastatingly because It was stolen which is another serious drawback to using really powerful cards. I think It would have been a close match without the cursed owl's eye.

For the same five light quanta I could have played a firefly queen and the freeze card that I took out to put the owls eye in.

I've taken it out of my deck and I won't put it back in unless I significantly change my strategy.

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Originally Posted by DarkGate

Not quite in the top 50, my experimenting until I got to this deck cost me quite a few losses because I'm almost always trying to get a better deck. The only decks I personally have trouble with are the firefly/queen/rustler combos and occasionally the poisons if I don't get a decent draw to keep the chrysaora's from using their abilities. I think the aether rare(can't remember what its called) would be a very effective weapon because it allows you to remove the ability of a creature. Since a lot of decks are dependent on creature abilties this could prove a very nice defensive strategy.

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Yes I fought a deck with the lobotomizer in it and it slowed me down a bit but I still won.

I use a nova deck with mark of air and the firefly rusler combo is one of my chief offences. which is why I chose mark of air.

Throw a purify in your deck and it makes the poison decks significantly easier to beat and I think there are enough of them around to make it worthwhile especially if you are playing a time deck and can afford to have more than 30 cards. Even with 30 cards I keep 1 purify. (and a few poison cards)

I think the Aether time combo is pretty strong. I had some success with a deck like that witha mark of time but cards weighted to the Aether side. Too many hourglasses and you risk running out of cards.

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Originally Posted by DarkGate

The only decks I personally have trouble with are the firefly/queen/rustler combos and occasionally the poisons

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Let me know how you do against my deck if you come up against it. I'm quite happy with it. I'm tempted to post it but I don't want to completely give away my strategy. I've put a lot of thought into getting just the right balance. I'm still tweaking it a bit too depending on what I see in the majority of the other decks. But it's not all that expensive. 1135 electrum when I add averything up.

A significant difference to how I play compared to the AI is I will hold off on my defrags if I am pling someone who I suspect or know has multiple dimensional sheilds. it becomes a interesting guessing game then. Do I hold off until I can go for the one shot kill or take a chance earlier and hope the opponent can't get another sheild up.

Iv'e had a couple of wins where I get the guy close to dying but couldn't keep his shield down so I had to wait for my poison to slowly take off those last few hp.

yea but to put in a purify I would have to put a nova in there and two cards for a deck that I can still do well against as long as I either get a good fast draw or some reverse times and/or lightnings it just feels that it might slow me down because every card in my deck has a purpose even though I have quite a bit larger deck than many others

Actually I've gone up against your deck before and beat it pretty easily (granted I had a good draw to really just keep you at bay until I got what I wanted out). Really when i go against you and samura both I tend to do very well against your style of decks. Some decks just tend to have a deck that they do very well against and some that they do bad against. Thats the beauty of this game, there's almost always a counter strategy to every strategy.

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Originally Posted by DarkGate

yea but to put in a purify I would have to put a nova in there and two cards for a deck that I can still do well against as long as I either get a good fast draw or some reverse times and/or lightnings it just feels that it might slow me down because every card in my deck has a purpose even though I have quite a bit larger deck than many others

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Yeah, nevermind it was probably not the best suggestion I was thinking from the point of view of my deck where I always have a few of every type of quanta available.

welp all in all basically its all based on strategy and experience, this game is close enough to the game magic the gathering that i can take my experience from that and just build decks off my real cards, like my elf/rat decks in magic just keep building numbers with my death/dark deck on elements

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Originally Posted by canis_lupus

welp all in all basically its all based on strategy and experience, this game is close enough to the game magic the gathering that i can take my experience from that and just build decks off my real cards, like my elf/rat decks in magic just keep building numbers with my death/dark deck on elements

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Hehe, I'll take three of my dragons vs 30 of your skeletons any day. I personally think that the boneyard vulture nightfall combo is pretty ineffective because it akes too much time for what it does compared to the other strategies on here. I could easily summon a devonian and two parallel universes before you got of enough of your mob to do any real damage with it and by the time you did I'd at least have one of my dimensional shields in my hand ready to use.

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Originally Posted by DarkGate

Hehe, I'll take three of my dragons vs 30 of your skeletons any day. I personally think that the boneyard vulture nightfall combo is pretty ineffective because it akes too much time for what it does compared to the other strategies on here. I could easily summon a devonian and two parallel universes before you got of enough of your mob to do any real damage with it and by the time you did I'd at least have one of my dimensional shields in my hand ready to use.

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like i said its all experience, and i can easily take out all 3 of your dragons with lighting

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Originally Posted by canis_lupus

like i said its all experience, and i can easily take out all 3 of your dragons with lighting

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And your all skeletons could be taken out easily as well with Plague or Rain of Fire, or just rendered useless with a shield that prevents 1 damage.

I agree with DarkGate. The combo's with Boneyard are too slow compared to other strategies and can be easily countered. In a real PvP match, I don't think it would do very well but against computers? I suppose it could.

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Originally Posted by icecue7

And your all skeletons could be taken out easily as well with Plague or Rain of Fire, or just rendered useless with a shield that prevents 1 damage.

I agree with DarkGate. The combo's with Boneyard are too slow compared to other strategies and can be easily countered. In a real PvP match, I don't think it would do very well but against computers? I suppose it could.

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You can try Nightfall, with 30 Skeletons that's another 30 damage :P But I agree, I never liked the boneyard combo.

I've been experimenting with multiple hybrid decks, but I've settled with an all-Aether deck. The nova deck's effectiveness depends on if you can get a nova first turn (decent chances with 30 cards), but even then an early otyugh would kill most monsters in a nova deck. I tried Aether/fire, Aether/life, Aether/time, and Aether/entropy, and I don't like the wait for 2 types of pillars. But I'll keep experimenting...

I'll usually at least get 1 of each pillar in the beginning and a golden hourglass so that allows me to get a lot of pillars quickly so I can summon a dragon and use my combos with it. Other strategies may work better but out of the ones I've gone through time/aether is my favorite because it allows me to have a larger deck as well

I won a Mark of Fire :P you should probably take that out of the spinners, it's such a waste of a spon lol

Edit: or turn it into a rare weapon :P that's another viable option haha

:O! I don't think it's a waste! I love rare things like that!

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Originally Posted by Disaru

You can try Nightfall, with 30 Skeletons that's another 30 damage :P But I agree, I never liked the boneyard combo.

I've been experimenting with multiple hybrid decks, but I've settled with an all-Aether deck. The nova deck's effectiveness depends on if you can get a nova first turn (decent chances with 30 cards), but even then an early otyugh would kill most monsters in a nova deck. I tried Aether/fire, Aether/life, Aether/time, and Aether/entropy, and I don't like the wait for 2 types of pillars. But I'll keep experimenting...

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Aether? You too? Yay! Me too!
I've tried Aether/Darkness, Aether/Time and Aether/Entropy, but had the same problem with the dual elemental decks. For now I've settled on an Aether deck with some Novas and other support cards. It's working alright, but I can't seem to get the pillar to other card ratio right.

Just wondering, are there any cards that have an effect that happens on both your turn and the opponents turn? like poison or something

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Originally Posted by Disaru

Just wondering, are there any cards that have an effect that happens on both your turn and the opponents turn? like poison or something

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Not that I'm aware of. Poison happens at the end of the turn of the person who's infected.

Here's a feature request: Allow us to challenge specific player's decks. You can remove the card feature from this (Leave the electrum cost/reward if you want -- it's not hard to farm Elder elementals if all you want is electrum anyway, and you get card spins then too) to prevent abuse.

What you'd do is enter the player's name and then it would pit you against their deck. This would let you easily test your deck for effectiveness when in the hands of the AI (Or how it'll do against your friend's deck -- obviously limited to the AI using it, but still neat to see sometimes)

amsthax has two accounts in the top 20

And I agree with Bianary on his request feature because it would be nice to challenge a specific person's deck to see how well you would do against that person.

Found a bug.

You click Parallel Universe, and then spacebar, you can select to copy any new monsters the AI puts out on that following turn (e.g. no monsters to copy atm, do this bug, copy a monster, use their effect next turn). I think this might work for Lightning too.

I'm getting pretty fed up with the forced discard mechanism when you prefer to pass than play a possible card but don't count your hand every turn so have to throw one out.
The rule that running out of cards kills you is also an irrelevant tumor; you don't need to draw a card every turn to continue having moves available or to win.
Seems more like a programming accident than deliberate game design.

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Originally Posted by notStaying

I'm getting pretty fed up with the forced discard mechanism when you prefer to pass than play a possible card but don't count your hand every turn so have to throw one out.
The rule that running out of cards kills you is also an irrelevant tumor; you don't need to draw a card every turn to continue having moves available or to win.
Seems more like a programming accident than deliberate game design.

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I don't agree with that. I'm pretty sure that's how every major TCG works as well.

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Originally Posted by icecue7

I don't agree with that. I'm pretty sure that's how every major TCG works as well.

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Yeah, being unable to draw = loss is very standard.

If you're using a deck that draws cards specially, part of the risk is you might run out and thus lose.

I do agree that the forced discard when you would rather change your mind and play could use tweaking, hopefully that's a coming feature (Going back to notStaying's initial point)

hi,

bug - I've just played with the account testtest (password - 12341234) to see the Quests feature .. when I was winning the lvl 1 it said I lose instead ... which was very odd (EDIT: hmm ... maybe I just run out of cards..><)

@notStaying - agree with icecue7 and Bianary, it is deliberate - running out of cards = loosing - is very common .. the only game i can remember that you have an optional discard is vtes - you don't loose the game but the rule of drawing a card is very different - you draw for your hand stay with a constant number of cards (if you play 3 cards in a turn you'll have to draw 3 ... hmm ... maybe a card that allowing to do that kind of "draw when you play" could be fun ?...)

Mark - ahh... well .. I think I've tried all with my mark - Death ... and I'm thinking on changing (metamophosis) .... any ideas ? ... like.. what is the most funny Mark?

Well if you want the mark that is the least used compared to everything else then you want earth, if you want one that just looks funny then...gravity I guess.

hmm... I think Time or Entropy are the funniest ... a good deck of Earth can be awesome .. I think I'll try everyones ... one by one ... :)

I just started trying a Time-Aether deck because I wanted to try out the eternity weapon. It's fairly effective but wow it's slow to play compared to the nova deck.

Does anyone know how the spinner probabilities work? Are each of the cards of different types equally likely to come up or is it weighted by the number of cards of a particular type in the deck?

indeed.. Time-Aether is a very cool super-control deck

hmm.. i just spot a bug ..

bug - Armagio with Immortality from Anubis wasn't untargatable by my Freeze (Armagio just come to play and wasn't with his Gravity Pull ability) .. here is the screenshot:

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7807/armagiobug.png

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Originally Posted by kethaq

Does anyone know how the spinner probabilities work? Are each of the cards of different types equally likely to come up or is it weighted by the number of cards of a particular type in the deck?

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I think each slot have the Probability of the fraction:

P = #Copies/#NoPillarsCards

where:
#Copies = number of copies of that particular card on the deck
#NoPillarsCards = number of no pillar cards in the deck

to get all 3 slots with the same card I guess is P^3 (= P*P*P)

a 30 card deck with 8 pillar and 1 rare card, we'll have:
(1/22)^3 = 0,0001 in 1 ... which is 0,01 % of getting the rare card ...
a 30 card deck with 8 pillar and 6 copies of the desired card we'll have:
(6/22)^3 = 0,02 in 1 .. which is 2% of getting the card

hmm... maybe there is some normalization that I'm not seeing here ... zanzarino told us that is about 5%:

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Originally Posted by zanzarino

Winning a card with the spinning wheel has about a 5% winning chance for a level 1 elemental, but the percentage greatly increases for highly specialized decks, up to 100% for a deck that has 24 pillars and 6 copies of just 1 type of "non-pillar" card.

e.g.
24 pillars and 6 fire bolts.
Defeating that deck will give you 3 fire bolts... ALL the times.

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.. so I guess I'm missing something...

I actually used to do time-aether before I switched to full aether(yes I caved and switched...again). With full aether now the only decks that seem to be giving me trouble are the poison nova decks. They get pretty annoying and seems to be one of the more popular builds right now because its probably one of the most effective compared to the others because there's only one card that can really stop it and they can just freeze your creatures cheaply or reverse time themif you try to take them out before they cn poison you enough.

I'm thinking that Zanzarino probably took into account that people would have more than 8 pillars and oput that into his calculatios or at least thats my best guess

Here is my attempt to break Nova.

Mark of Entropy
6 Nova
6 Lycanthrope (Entropy, Darkness)
2 Momentum (Gravity)
2 Foresti Spirit (Life, Water)
2 Deflagration (Fire)
2 Chrysora (Water, Death)
2 Blessing (Light)
2 Firefly (Air)
2 Reverse Time (Time)
2 Devourer (Darkness, Earth)
2 Lightning (Aether)

I have been working on getting 6 of each card including rares this could take awhile.