Elements - The Card Game

[gryeyes]

You can utilize any card of any mana type with no repercussions. You wont even suffer from the drawback of mana generation with a properly balanced deck and with how rainbow generators work. Its infinitely more versatile and allows you to use any good rare card you come across. Thats not to say its "unbeatable" but with the limited card effects being heavily restricted to mana type its an enormous advantage against any other deck. The draw cards being mana lite and restricted to Time/white increases this advantage to absurd levels.

I beat fully upgraded pvp opponents with ratings into the thousands on a regular basis for this reason alone. I have one upgraded card.

[sidereal]

Im not really into TCG's how do other games limit the advantage of rainbow decks? Not have rainbow mana generators or gimp their output?

Most games don't allow you to carry mana over from turn to turn.  Elements lets it accumulate, which means that you can play pretty much any card if you can wait a few turns to let your novas and other generators run.

[gryeyes]

Ahhh that makes complete sense, thanks for the reply.

[Mosesandstick]

High end elements play is a long-term game. There are too many denials and OP shields for it to be anything else. Oh yeah, miracle. Lol.

In any long term card game there is pretty much only two ways to win: card advantage or combos. (Or completely OP denial cards). Excluding poison, the game practically acts as a rush to draw cards, stall and overwhelm your opponent. There are very few denials that can overwhelm the 'stalling' cards, maybe some of the higher end weapons, which are hard to obtain. Any nova deck can be the quickest out of the gate and give you a card advantage, which in turn lends you both power and flexibilty.

This game is unbalanced. Poison is rediculous, but one card (cleanse) can ruin a whole deck. Your draw of hand is also pretty damn important, which is why card-drawing decks are popular; it negates the luck element.

[Draegan]

I don't see how the rainbow deck is good for anything other than beating the AI.  I beat it regularly in pvp and vs the top50 decks with a mono deck.  Its good for god grinding because of the massive defenses it has, thats all.

Yeah.  PVP decks are much harder to beat reliably.  Rainbow is easy for god farming and that's about it.

[Hoax]

Rainbow deck is awful, I was playing Gravity/Time Scarabs w/ 30 cards and I never played a Rainbow deck in pvp that could beat me by anything else but spamming the white heal 100 spell and waiting for me to run out of cards.  I even pvp'd some with upgraded quant generation or super weap/shields.

I've switched to fire but the grind versus AI while I get at least 4 of each fire card and figure out what kind of strat I want to use is probably going to burn me out before I ever get to 500 points.

[gryeyes]

Give a name and lets duel?

[Hoax]

I just reset my account and I'm sorta stuck without a decent deck atm.  Fire's decent cards are all 100+ each and its sac for one of each mana lends itself to a dual color + a splash or abilities of 1-2 more colors deck which means fairly expensive to get all the cards.

I did manage to burn down a well built queen deck though because I run 6 of the destroy a permanent and I just land fucked him.  I've been thinking of doing a land destruction deck and seeing how viable that is but its going to take some  time to build.  Fire/Earth/Dark and splash novas but I'm not sure what I should use for the kill.

[Samwise]

The rare gravity weapon with the Destroy power seems like the way to go if you can get it.

[gryeyes]

The awesome secondary abilities of the rare weapons is another huge draw to using a rainbow deck. Especially since you cant trade or purchase them outright. I really need a couple the lamest of lame "Miracle" cards.

There is a pretty heavy random element to rainbow decks that should be negated with upgraded Nova's and quants.

[Threash]

I don't like novas, unless you get them early they are fairly useless.  I started doing better when i replaced them with more quantum pillars.

[Righ]

I started with a fire deck and bought my way into something approximating the false god farming deck. It's very powerful - I regularly finish with full health because of Empathic Bond. Having Fallen Elf (4 entropy to play it, 1 life to use the mutation power) out with a boneyard is great - every turn you get to mutate a 1/1 skeleton - sometimes you kill it, sometimes you turn it into something incredible, most often you turn it into a 5/5 abomination. Deliberately prevent any creatures from doing damage (including your own) with sundials while you dig for Empathic Bond cards and give them a chance to fully heal you, then let a tidal wave of creatures wipe out the other player in a couple of moves. Doubles the maximum income, so 40 coins for the easy to beat elder decks.

It's a bit annoying in PvP - you start out playing people, they get an idea of what's coming and they time out and let the computer finish. In fact PvP is just annoying anyway - far too many people seem to take chess-like amounts of time to make a move.

[Musashi]

I think it's just that the server/internet whatever is slow as fuck.  I've never gotten a fast turn around when it's the other guy's turn.  It's always about the same amount of time in between moves. 

[gryeyes]

Im sure lag plays a role but its very fashionable to wait fucking forever as a passive aggressive strategy.

[Righ]

Yep. I had a guy who played every single round in the last seconds. Waiting 60 seconds for somebody to play one pillar is somewhat boring. However, after a few rounds I noticed that you can send messages to the other player, then it wasn't quite so boring. After a few provocative messages, I got the other player to quit playing altogether. So there's that.

[Musashi]

Technically there's nothing passive about Righ's Aggressive Strategy.

[Samwise]

Heh, Parallel Universe and Mind Flayers are a great way to negate the cheese advantage of top 50 decks with all upgraded creatures.  I just beat the shit out of a queen deck by cloning and lobotomizing each queen as it came out.     And I've found the elite otyugh/armor decks are much easier to deal with when you can keep the otyughs from eating.

[Hoax]

I'm just not even sure how to play it at this point.  Its frustrating to pvp because someone who has been grinding upgrades is at such a stupid advantage.  OTOH the false god games are boring and seem to call for a boring pve deck and the top50 games are too easy and don't seem to offer much reward.

[sidereal]

The best way to play is to close your browser, crack open a Dr Pepper, and watch MASH reruns.

[Musashi]

Frank Burns eats worms.

[Von Douchemore]

This game almost made me reinstall MTG online, fucker.

[Samwise]

I'm ashamed to admit that I'm still playing it.  Collecting those rare cards is addicting.   

[Von Douchemore]

Is there any other solid deck to farm false gods that isn't rainbow?

[ezrast]

Fuck, I'd forgotten this existed until I clicked this subforum.

I think mono-aether is supposed to be able to beat false gods. I've tried to make a mono-entropy stall deck in the trainer but no luck yet.

[Ghambit]

I just started this ditty last night.  Not a bad game at all.  I'm running a lobotomized mono-aether deck.  Deck sucks against poison and steals, but poison and steal are pretty much the most OP things in the game.

I really hate the grind right now though.  There's really nothing going on once you're doing your 1500 gold quest... you're not powerful enough to play against elder gods and many PvP matches you'll lose as well... so you're stuck grinding elders unless you catch the lucky newb in the pvp.

In the end, it's all about the rares and upgrades... and elder gods are the way to do that.  My focus will probably be this and the occasional pvp until I can build something better... but man, it takes long.