best strategies?

[Andrewsmile]

I really believe that makeup artist is a bad card if you want to climb the arena ladder, and I'll give a few reasons why:
1. Overly reliant on draw order- if your MUA is on the bottom of the deck, you just lose full stop. Incredibly rare to win a round when its on the bottom, so if this happens in the final you have no chance in my experience. You need to have multiples for this reason, which leads to reason 2-
2. Overly reliant on draft luck- you need at least 2 MUAs and at least 2 movie stars (second one can potentially be replaced with a necromancer) to win the game in my experience. Movie stars are truly essential, I don't think its possible to win without them in a MUA deck unless you get really lucky
3. It only has 1 win condition- you need to have more "gas in the tank" than your opponent, since 1 power cards fundamentally can't "2 for 1" your opponents cards- meaning that they can only 1-shot your opponents cards as a best case, but will never take more than 1 of your opponents cards to capture the flag from. This is really important, and why the movie stars are essential because if the opponent has more cards than you you will lose so you need to simulate having more cards by introducing recursion like movie stars and necromancers- which brings us back to problem 1.
4. It needs you to play bad cards to be good- there are a few cards, namely makeup artist and blacksmith, that are only good if you are running bad cards in your deck. Newcomers are really bad cards, and in fact are the worst card in the game in a vacuum- 1 power with no upside. They are only passable in the first few rounds because you have 3 of them but in the later rounds you really want to cut them for better cards- but you can't if you are running makeup artist. Once you are in that shell it is very hard to break out of it if you don't draw what you need. Yes we've all had games where a perfect MUA deck smashes us and wins the final, but there are more games where the MUA deck fizzles and doesnt make the final since it didn't get what it needed or draw well.
I never (and I mean never) take makeup artist and my winrate has much improved since

[DoctorFianchetto]

Only one of your points (2) is a true flaw.

(2) It is overly reliant on draft luck, and that certainly is the biggest flaw with the MUA/MS startegy. However I do think an MUA deck can win without Movie Stars. I've done it before. Stack up on Ghosts, Jesters, Butlers, and some higher power cards. It's not the most reliable way but it's hardly like you're screwed if you find MUAs but not MSs. Also UFOs make it possible to recover important A cards you may have missed in the earlier rounds.

(1) I'm not convinced that type of deck is overly reliant in draw order more than most other decks.

(3) Fundamentally all decks are about having more "gas in the tank" than your opponent, there's just different ways to achieve it. The deck is capable of "2 for 1"ing with Ghosts, and you're not limited to low power cards either. 2+MUA, 2+MS, 3Newcomers can be complemented by almost anything. Ghosts and Necromancers are ideal, but any high power card does the trick. Clairvoyant is particularly useful but even a base 5 card like Horse is handy, especially if you can find two copies.

(4) I don't really understand this point. Newcomer is a bad card by itself, yes, but the point of MUAs and MSs especially is to specifically power up Newcomer, so you have three copies of a beefed up card. You can easily go through an entire game without getting three copies of any card, so it's not a bad thing.

Yes we've all had games where a perfect MUA deck smashes us and wins the final, but there are more games where the MUA deck fizzles and doesnt make the final since it didn't get what it needed or draw well.

Not in my experience - MUA decks almost always make the final and more often than not win. But this is purely anecdotal from both of us

[Andrewsmile]

(1) I'm not convinced that type of deck is overly reliant in draw order more than most other decks.
...
(4) I don't really understand this point. Newcomer is a bad card by itself, yes, but the point of MUAs and MSs especially is to specifically power up Newcomer, so you have three copies of a beefed up card. You can easily go through an entire game without getting three copies of any card, so it's not a bad thing.

The answer to both of these is related- playing a card that powers up bad cards is suboptimal because if you don't draw your power-up card early your deck is just full of garbage, hence the heavier reliance in draw order than most other decks. I'll compare it to vendor decks, drawing your vendors last is much less of a death sentence than drawing makeup artists last because the rest of the cards in your deck can be pretty good on their own. If someone slams a villain or just a vanilla 7 power card in match 7 or the final before you draw a makeup artist you'll draw a third of your deck just to defeat a single card and probably lose.

I guess I just want to reiterate that my points are not about winning, they are about gaining arena rank. Like you said, its certainly possible to win without movie stars and its possible to 2 for 1 with ghosts, but the lack of consistency the deck provides is why I think its a bad deck to try and run if you want to gain arena rank. But yeah, purely anecdotal!

[gabegolfer]

Is it just me, or in the past few weeks there are far less mascots being played?

Andrewsmile and Fletcheese, do you think the B-Deck animal bulldoze strategy is underrated? Especially with a Vampire or Vacuum Cleaner?