Metamorphosis, Dark Pact
Sickness, Hooded Executioner
Hooded Executioner, Dark Pact
Main:
Deteriorate KotC (7)
Mid Vandy, she smacks KotC, Haunt trades to finish him (5)
Max Vandy, doom Imp and Tinkerer (3)
Hero’s Hall (1)
Worker (0)
Workers
Skeletal Archery, Summon Skeletons, Poisonblade Rogue, Jandra, The Negator
Patrol as below
Discard 2 draw 4
Tech 2 cards before my next turn
Board Info:
Buildings:
Base HP: 18
Tech1 HP: 5
Hero’s Hall HP: 4
In Patrol:
Squad Leader:
Elite:
Scavenger:
Technician: Thieving Imp (4/4)
Lookout:
In Play:
Vandy (4/5 lvl 5)
Economy Info:
Cards:
Hand: 4
Deck: 0
Disc: 7
Gold:
Gold: 0
Workers: 9
End of Turn Hand
Dark Pact
Sacrifice the Weak
Hooded Executioner
Graveyard
End of Turn Discard
My Thoughts
Hmm, well I have managed to put the card count really low, but I spose we’ll see if R&D got teched and pulled. Setting up Meta, next turn we’ll probably tech up as well, not sure if Demon or Disease will be better though
Nice RnD draw, but yeah didn’t advance the board crazy much. I can deal with it teching up. Nullc + Suits would get Orpal killed sadly, could drop Jav also, but want to worker… I spose I would rather keep Orpal, so we’ll do that.
Dark Pact
Deteriorate
Death and Decay
Abomination
Metamorphosis
End of Turn Discard
My Thoughts
Oooof! Good timing on that Meta, well I think I will DP and just try to get done what I can off that.
…
So since there’s no float, hoodie killing Glaxx is a great trade, and Gorgon stops KotC nicely (lest there is battle suits). Okay, we can manage this!
And so it ends. I screwed up that patrol, forgot i didnt have the spare gold, or I woulda swapped those 2 positions, but even if I hadn’t, my draw was terrible. What I needed in hand was almost completely different from what I actually got. I tried to use Prynn midband to screw with you, but that is very much not even close to a detriment to black, with vandy and garth available.
I thought maybe I could get plasmo to put you on the back foot and you shrugged it off like no biggie. I thought blue v black was hard but… woo boy.
I think its time we swap colors. Im out of ideas :shrug:
This matchup is hard for purple against a strong black player, because black can easily adapt a counter strategy to your strong early game plans as purple. Getting to a tech 2 strat is essential, because only there do you actually have an advantage
Grind out value until tech 2, and then use Purple’s insane tech 2’s to demolish opponent. -> Black can both out grind (Graveyard + imp / Dark pact), or can maintain pressure (again thanks to dark pack) while keeping your tech 2 down to destroy your base.
Give up early board presence to gain tempo/control later (Plasmo + Forecast units, normally into tech 2 Past/R&D) -> Giving black this much board presence normally leads to a broken tech 1, and without a tech 1 you quickly get swarmed and killed.
Push Tempo (Nullcraft, Fargo, Stewardess) and use space to develop threats (tech 2/ Double Time) -> Black can push tempo harder and since we need Glax over Argo, we cant both defend + attack at tech 1.
To counter this, you generally need to mix and match strategies, and try and catch your opponent off guard (either that, or just push for tech 2 and get lucky with the redraw). Early heros are generally a trap for purple (they’re weak combat stats, only geiger has an aggressive level set, and black’s hero are terrifying with levels, and we just can’t protect them). We want to force a tech 2 battle (blacks is weaker at the tech 2 stage, and neither of us has great tech 3 that we are going to push for, so the game will typically end here.)
Some thoughts over the past few games:
Game 6, P1 Black, P2 Purple.
T1/2 - Not sure about the T1 Tinker, I think it gets punished too hard by any Aggressive black hand (most of them), but we get away with it here. early Geiger thanks to the weak black start is fine. Would probs tech both Knights, we really want to hit one T3, and draw 3 off TR T3/T4 when we draw it (and either tinkerer gets us Plasmo T3, or they stw, and dont have a board we want to punish).
T3 - FF on imp is so bad for card value, not sure its worth here (black has so many low gold plays that trading cards for gold here is questionable, esp since we’re not jumping straight to Hyperions for a refill). Killing the imp with plasmo and orpal with nullcraft + geiger gives us a better board which gives us better options next turn. Tech wise we know we’re reshuffling the turn after thanks to TR, so getting tech 2 options in now is probs better. Drawing 5 is nice, but we’re often going to be gold starved to make use of most of them, even with double KotC and double Seer.
T4 - Black is using that card advantage here to dump threats on board. We’re not setting up a long term threat here, which means its probably not going to get online in time. We really need to get tech 2 online this turn. With a (larger) plasmo + nullcraft, we could probs afford to drop neo + build tech 2 here, ready for next turn. As it is we just dont have enough board to really do that (nor really to keep presure up.
T5 - Strong R&D turn, but we no longer have geiger, so this momentum has just run out (probs 3 turns before we can threaten R&D again, and the game is likely decided before that point). We also dont have a tech 2 and we have little presure, so black can take the turn off and develop theirs…
T6 - Interested on your thoughts here, why not take the oppertunity for tech 2? I know we only have a single tech 2 card in our deck before this turn (and we’re not getting a reshuffle for 2 more), but 8 gold in prynn is just so bad for board presence against black. Either that or Prynn KotC, TR, Glaxx gives a lot more board.
T7/8 - I think you highlighted what went wrong here yourself. Also draws my mind into the fact that this is still manageable at this point with Battlesuits in play. Not sure without going back through where we can fit it in (Maybe t4 instead of neo? hard to say) battlesuits makes breakpoints much easier to hit, but I do think it was not in easy to play hands this game, which was unlucky.
Overall very nice purple play unfortunately Frozenstorm is very good at black, which is what makes this matchup so difficult. If you want any thing clearing up/want more reasons into why I think anything feel free to @me or pm me.
The main difference i see between purple and black here is that Black doesnt ever play something and go “if they have x, im gonna be in a bad spot” while basically anything purple does, I am thinking this about black for multiple different cards.
I do think you highlighted some things I did wrong with purple, and I agree, and I think you can find things like that in several of the games in this thread. But the laternative’s seemed like they would be rapidly punished.
Thanks very much @Shadow_Night_Black! This is awesome stuff (I think I should probably link it from the resources thread, since as you said this seems a tough matchup for Purple).
@zhavier I’ll take a couple games here armed w/ that perspective and let’s see what we can find out!
Yeah, until you get to tech 2, you just don’t have threats that worry them. While black makes things difficult from the get go, and can quickly create game winning boards/threats (often while staying ahead in cards annoyingly).
For strong player in both colours, I think its probably a 7-3 matchup in favour of black for that exact reason. With a Perfect purple player vs a strong black, I think it maybe for 5 - 5 (with purple being able to effective read every tech/game plan black is going for, but not knowing cards in hand etc, which is basically impossible levels of play).
@FrozenStorm dont worry about linking it, I’ll copy the relevant parts into my guide to purple (which I’ll get around to finishing at some point I swear)
The guide is up already (after all it has value even half completed) - link is here: Temporal Mastery (Mono purple primer) - Google Docs comments on any of it are very much welcome. There was a thread around here somewhere for it, but no idea where it go to.
Patrol as below
Base HP: 20
Squad Leader: Thieving Imp (2/2+armor)
Elite: Orpal (1+1/3 lvl 1)
Scavenger:
Technician:
Lookout:
Base HP: 20
unfortunately Frozenstorm is very good at black, which is what makes this matchup so difficult. If you want any thing clearing up/want more reasons into why I think anything feel free to 