The peaceful balance of YOU NO PLAY CODEX

FSG costs 3, but you have it costing 4 in T5 and 2 in T6. So actually you need to further float the gold until T6.

I think the mono blue lockdown plan performs better than this on average?

-doesnt pay multicolor penalty

  • Law things like jail + censorship council are more conducive to the lockdown plan than moments peace
    ā€”1g for a tech lab late in the game is not as bad as an extra gold on turn 2.
    ā€” jail + censorship stay out of your deck and make it easier to draw the free speeches
    ā€” jail + censorship donā€™t require 2 heroes in play, so you donā€™t have to pay for heroesā€™ hall
  • probably better to wipe the board with judgement day rather than stall it with moments peace. Less opportunity for you to make a mistake or for them to make some cool play. Though there is an emotional high from living dangerously so I bet the tension ramps up when they have 10 guys on the board and thatā€™s fun.
  • Bigby is a better lockdown hero than midori even considering moments peace. Stash at topband, extra cards, Judgement Day, even the midband is useful sometimes.
  • doesnā€™t get rekt by Newsman on 2

On phone so sorry for formatting.

[quote=ā€œSotek, post:14, topic:741ā€]
A turn 7-9 win condition that follows multiple turns of soft lock might be moderately concerning, unlike the other examples - if you can drop momentā€™s peace and/or free speech repeatedly starting around turns 3-4, that can interfere pretty heavily with attempts to disrupt you.[/quote]Hmm. Assuming they summon a hero for that, and their draws line up so they can start casting one of them every turn starting from turn 3 or 4ā€¦ assuming their draws line up, theyā€™re still either not playing other cards and so falling behind on state, or going card-negative, in which case their draws will stop lining up. And all it takes is one turn of draws not lining up to start falling apart.

And then you have to muster the gold to go to tech 2 and play the garrisons without breaking the lock. And since it looks like heā€™s going Free Speech first, straight-up unit aggro should probably apply enough pressure to force him to drop it, or prevent him from establishing it in the first place. Since heā€™s dedicating his tech to 2x FSG, 2x Momentā€™s Peace, 2x OEC, and 2x Free Speech, that doesnā€™t leave him a lot of room to tech in card-efficient bodies to hold off a tech 1 pressure play.

tl;dr - If you are able to get 2x Garrison in play, it doesnā€™t matter what your payload is, youā€™re going to win against 90% of everything.

Repeated Momentā€™s Speech is one thing you can do, but you could also play a good Tech III, or any one of a dozen Ultimate spells, and win that way.

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This one is off by a bit. For starts, you have access to 9 worker gold on T5 only as P2. Also yes, you donā€™t Momentā€™s peace on turn 6-7 unless you really really have to. Itā€™s too much of a strain on economy to maintain them both that early.

Lobbers are valid, but Hotter Fire can be Naturalized and Firehouse AoW sniped. Also keep in mind, if you commit to Hotter Fire and Firehouse you have no units and you get wtfpwned by Peace machine.

Killing Garrison is pointless, it will get replayed next turn. It will force control player to go down to 4 cards hand for a turn, and thatā€™s about it.
Plague Lord isā€¦ not as fast? Since all the diseased units get traded immediately. Two Plague Lords may be devastating, but at this point you rely on playing two Tech 3s and surviving a couple turns after that as they slowly melt Onimaruā€™s base. Iā€™m not sure Art of War is slower than that.

Free Speech was techā€™d on turn 6. Double FSG + Cadet spam caused a reshuffle and I drew almost all my cards that turn.

Jail is ā€œsoftā€, and sacrifices board presence. Censorship is also soft, and also sacrifices presence (and requires a tech lab).
Judgement day does nothing vs. Tech 3.
Its not a complete lock is what Iā€™m saying.

Newsman on 2 sounds amazing. How did I not think about that. Well, worldā€™s saved I guess :slight_smile:

Itā€™s usually something like 2 Cadets, 1 Spectral Hound and 1 Tiny Basilisk. Occasionaly a Gemscout if I feel Iā€™m exerting enough pressure or I want a flying blocker. On T4 itā€™s double FSG if things go well, or more presence tools if things are scetchy and I canā€™t get away with Tech 2. I donā€™t typically tech Free Speech before Tech 2, unless Iā€™m facing Metamorphosis / FDS rush or something.
Final deck prob looks like
2x OEC
1x Spectral
1x Tiny B
1x Gemscout
1x Free Speech
2x FSG
1x Art of War
1x Momentā€™s Peace
1x Newsman
1x Aven
1x Arrest
Plus maybe some niche reactionary things like Boot Camps, Elite Training, Naturalize, more fodder for FSG, etc.

A lot of you seem to think that Iā€™m beelining towards establishing the lock ASAP, despite whatever my opponent is doing. That is not the case by a long shot. The beauty (or ugliness) of this setup is that you are teching good, strong, flexible cards at any given point of the game. You are playing for board pressure without any strong commitments up until you forego Tech 3 for Art of War, which is turn 8. The strategy does not demand any sacrifices from you, unlike many other similarly ā€œbrokenā€ things.

However, it gets prevented by Turn 6 Newsman 2 and strong enough patrol zone :slight_smile:

Not really. The Peace machine requires a lot of units, and if youā€™re teching in Momentā€™s Peace and Free Speech, you arenā€™t going to have enough units to make a difference (plus Firehouse is a great answer for it anyway, and any turn Oni spends not hitting the base a) doesnā€™t happen until around turn 10? and b) just gives more time for Lobbers / the other Hotter Fire / Firehouse to do their work)

Okay, so youā€™re only teching one each of FS and MP. Which means that youā€™re not establishing any kind of lock at all until you get the double FSG down and are redrawing your entire deck each turn. And getting double FSG is pretty much a win condition for a variety of payloads. Your payload just kills them slower and more painfully than a payload that consists of cheap hasty damage, for instance.

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Enough with the theory, lets see this deck in action! Any PbF matches where this setup has been pulled off? Anyone (@Metalize?) want to play me with it so I can see how it feels to play against?

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Iā€™d like to see it in action. Perhaps you could play by forum one of the regulars on here. I suspect that while in theory it could work, in practice it would be a lot more difficult to execute as something unexpected would happen.

I still get some messages on this from time to time, albeit I rarely visit the forums :slight_smile:
Anyway, Iā€™m not a big fan of PbF as I mentioned before, but I did test the strategy a bit more before moving on to different things. Gosh, the number of times I got stomped into pulp by Drakk before getting a handle on how to play against him with this deck.

In short, you (and a couple of other posters here) are right - itā€™s hard to pull off. The plan is very late-game and basically substitutes for Tech 3. You may very well lose the game during turns 5-7 to some bonkers. Unexpected things happen all the time!

While the [Peace] Truth Balance are fairly robust, they have a couple of key weaknesses - like lacking a cheap fighter hero for one (think Vandy, Calamandra, Grave). Thereā€™s also a lack of Haste and similar instantaneous effects, so you have to always always be one step ahead of your opponent and think aheadā€¦ Which sounds pretty fair, if you can do that, you deserve a win :smiley:

In short, the only really bad thing about the deck (from the POV of Codex game design) is lame duck syndrome - the ultimate stalling, which can last for several turns before match ends. But, given the circumstances, I believe itā€™s alright, no big deal.

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