Thematic "Decks"

Spectal Aven is sad.

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No one likes him anyway.

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I guess I am thinking more like A-10s and less like mosquitos.

It’s possible to jam any 3 boards with flyers and call it good, but the one that feels most like a “deck” to me is Present/Balance/Anarchy even though it may together include a fewer number of flyers than whatever combination of boards would result in the greatest total amount that could be teched in.

Playing To Win wise, I prefer to make the flavor fit the deck rather than the other way around.

I like Fire more than Anarchy as a complement to Balance. Lobbers are really awesome with Balance Tech 2: they give your Mimics haste, they’re excellent recipients of feather runes from Faerie Dragon, and they can exhaust to destroy a tech building in conjunction with one of your fliers. Even without the synergies, they’re great at tech 1, and between Lobbers, Basilisks, and Argonauts your tech 1 game should be pretty robust. Ember Sparks is also great, because you can use it to ping a tech building or a feather rune recipient while also killing an additional patroller.

FWIW I played [Demonology]/Fire/Balance in RACE 3 and CAWS and it was pretty good.

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So, Void Star and Nebula are “mosquitoes” now? :wink:

…But this is the Thematic Decks topic. It’s not about Playing to Win, it’s about decks that fit a theme. Currently, I wouldn’t say your codex fits the theme of “Air Force,” since it has 3 units with flying (one of which is Tech III in a different spec from the others) and one that mimics flying. If you’re going to have an air force, it needs to be substantial. Swapping Present out for Future is all that’s needed to make it really fit the theme, and you still have access to the Mimic synergy (it’s even more reliable if you build a Tech Lab, since you’ll have more flying units available).

Does having Future make the codex better? Maybe not, but this isn’t about having the best codex.

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I doubt the deck I came up with will be winning any tournaments either.

I would say the Spectral Aven and slightly less the gargoyle are pretty small and weak maybe like mosquitos. Void Star and Hive less so.

In any event, I guess I should sit out of fun deck threads. I am just incapable of selecting 3 boards that have numerically the most flyers and calling it a deck. That seems to be the consensus requirement.

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Balance, Demonology, Bashing.

I call it “be sure to get full value off Final Smash!”

If your opponent stops playing Tech 0 things to destroy, play TerrasQ to give them a token.
If they aren’t playing Tech 2 units, play a Dothram Horselord. They will either gain control of it, or you are probably winning pretty quickly.
No way to give them a Tech 1, though.

Bonus: you have Moment’s Peace to stall until you can set the whole thing up.

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[Anarchy], Anarchy, Anarchy because screw the rules, they hold us back.

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cheap.dec [Peace]/Past/Blood

The idea is Cadets, Gliders, Crashbarrows, maybe Shimmer Rays, and Slow-Time Generator. Preemptively pinch pennies, then cause a recession!
I actually got it to work against @NikoBolas! Granted, he was playing with an experiment, too, and went a little too hard into Jaina, who does not like it when gliders crash on her for some reason. I have no idea how well this would do against a more tried-and-true strat like MoLaC or PPA or any monocolor. But it was a lot of fun, and involved a lot of thinking!

ArgagargGargGarGarg Growth/Demonology/Strength
“Win” condition: play Argagarg Garg, Garus Rook, and Gargoyle

ArgagargGargGarg’leGorgOrGloor [Demonology]/Disease/Growth
“Win” condition: play Argagarg Garg, Gargoyle, Gorgon, and Orpal Gloor

EDIT: Some how I forgot:
ArgagargGargArgArgoGargoGeig! [Present]/Demonology/Growth
“Win” condition: play Argagarg Garg, Fading Argonaut, Argonaut, Gargoyle, and Max Geiger

And one more:
Unbreak Dancing [Present]/Demonology/Finesse
Play Mox ASAP (and Battle Suits when convenient), tech in Gargoyle and Two Step, then move up to Immortals and Hyperions for Tech II.
Two Step+Mox+Gargoyle means you’ve got a big Mox as long as River’s around. (Use other Tech 0 units to try to keep River alive.) When you’re ready, the Gargoyle can break a tech building all on his own. Ideally you want to eventually have 2x Two Stepped Immortals if you haven’t won before that.
I got this one to work, too!

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Yeah, you did. grumble grumble

How about: Deal with the Devil or, alternate title, Make It Look Like An Accident [Law]/Demonology/Necromancy

The idea is to take advantage of the fact that the Insurance Agent doesn’t care HOW the insured unit dies. Sign off on policies for your units, then ensure their deaths with Sacrifice the Weak/Doom Grasp/Vandy’s maxband ability, preferably after they attack something first. You get the cost and card back, something suffers on the other team.

Achievement: Maxband Vandy and play 2 Insurance Agents to insure BOTH Doomed units. Heads I win, tails you lose…

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Summoners: [Feral]/Present/Anarchy:
Unparalleled ability to cheat stuff into play! Greatest hits include the theoretical tech-free tech II (Cala Maxband->Predator Tiger->Temporal Distortion->Warp Gate Disciple, impractical IRL, but it’s possible), Feral Strike, and Sanitorium. Bonus points if you use Geiger maxband or Temporal Distortion on a Sanitorium summon to get something permanent. Bonus bonus points if you swing with an immortal, distort it for something else, then bring it back with Sanitorium and swing again (Ephemeral? no problem!). In my one game with it so far, this seems to actually be a decent deck, as well.

Edit: Necro obviously has honorable mention here, thanks to Garth Maxband (hardly counts since you have to meet all the tech requirements), Skeletal Lord (Can play anything, even Tech III, but only from hand and only if you have 5 skeletons), and Blackhand Resurrector (violates hero cooldown + free max level). I like the deck as I have it, though. It’s still thematic, and I think it synergizes better, although Resurrector is an excellent Sanitorium play.

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so an Ephemeral Immortal doesn’t actually die, but just gets exhausted?

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Right. Technically it would remain ephemeral, though, so not much good as a patroller, since it gets exhausted at the end of every turn.

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What’s a patroller?

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A miserable little pile of hit points.

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I did not expect the SotN reference in response. Well played, sir. Well played.

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Mech Factory
[Past/Future]/Discipline
The idea is to play two copies of Training Grounds and then bring out Vir tap to maband him and get a mech then Origin Story him and bring him out again and tap the other Training Grounds. Repeat each turn and crush your opponents with your Mech army.

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u wot mate

Bomber, this isn’t a serious thread.

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