Rank 1 Challengers! Guide

[Fletcheese]

I love this game and have been playing it like crazy this season on BGA. I hit #1 on Arena last night and have been working on condensing my thoughts on the game into a Tierlist and Guide which I am sharing now:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13QV ... sp=sharing

Let me know what you think

[Andrewsmile]

Rank 2 challengers guide In all seriousness, Im super glad you made this and I actually had a similar concept about half done and you've saved me a lot of work No one had even broken 1700 for the first half of the season so I figured I was safe, I'm looking forward to the competition the rest of the season

You're clearly a great player, and I agree with everything in your strategy guide, it's just the tierlist I disagree on a bit. I'm going to look at a few of your replays and see how you draft around a few cards, specifically MUA which I have been pretty vocal about being a bad card in the forums but you rate highly. I know how hard it is to climb so for you to get up to 1740 using it I may be underrating it. I never take that card, even when it is a duplicate on turn 1 and I've never ended up regretting it- it lacks consistency, it is super obvious when it will be in the final and is very easy to play around, and is inflexible in deckbuilding. I also think vacuum cleaner is good, but I'm biased because I think sailor is the best card in the game and almost all of my decks have a sailor or a clairvoyant (when I can find it) so vacuum tends to be pretty good because it is more consistent. Related to this, I'd like to comment on "Keep in mind that these effects are only actually useful if you run a lot of singles which you generally do not want to do" -sometimes you have no choice but to run singles, and running 9 uniques and clearing them out with vacuum/butler is the same as running 6 uniques with 3 duplicates. In a game where you don't find many duplicates, vacuum cleaner is even better than prince in my opinion.

Finally, I'd like to tack on a few tips of my own on a topic I don't think is addressed in the forums and only gets 2 sentences in your guide: How deckbuilding changes for each set that is removed, because for me it is quite variable.

Outer space: No red means no UFO- you will have no chances to get duplicates of your A cards once you leave the A deck, and sailor also becomes even better than normal as it and UFO are the only cards that let you see your whole deck guaranteed while still getting 7 uniques. I will go into B deck on turn 3 if I have either 1 pair or 1 sailor. Additionally, stable boy becomes terrible because band and UFO are out of B so the only 3 power cards you will be able to find are A deck cards and cowboy (blacksmith and dog are bad cards in my opinion and I really caution against them). Additionally, you don't need to worry about hologram in the final so you can be greedier in your deckbuilding.

Haunted house: no butlers/vacuums, no necromancers, no ghosts. Duplicates become very important without the backup option of picking up butlers and vacuums, and my trade secret is that I 99% of the time go into C deck turn 6 and reroll for hologram. Hologram becomes the best card in the game by a wide margin when you are certain your opponent can't clear the card and I almost always win the lobby when I find one, and always when I find 2+. It is so good here in all situations- either your opponent has a lot of duplicates, and is running 6 cards so a hologram can bench them out before they even see their duplicates, or your opponent is running 7 cards with few duplicates so hologram benches them even earlier. Yes, sometimes hologram gives them a duplicate, but thats incredibly rare. The chance for that is (total B deck cards remaining that would be a duplicate/total B deck cards remaining) which is typically 15% or less.

Film studio: this one doesnt affect me as much as I never run MUA, but its important to consider that decks will typically be tall in this format so finding bigger cards rather than utility cards is typically good. Cook becomes much better, and there are no heroines so you typically absolutely need to win round 6 and 7 and should be playing that way from the beginning.

Shipwreck: no sailors purple is the weakest set so there isnt too much affected, no sailors means I typically go B deck on turn 3 and reroll for UFO or clairvoyant.

Funfair: This set being out affects gameplay very little, these are typically the games where I go for stable boy the most since yellow has no 3s

Castle: Set B&C castle cards are bad so this one affects gameplay even less than funfair, any strategy except stable boy will work fine


Let me know your thoughts

[Fletcheese]

Haha yea you took that back fast I will have to work some more to maintain rank. Just took a tough 4th playing a Make-Up Star deck. I think I misdrafted R7, but opponent had a monster Teenager deck that I'm not sure I could have beat and I had no way of knowing it was near auto-lose to dig for fan generation. That's how it goes sometimes.

I definitely see where you're coming from on MUA. Movie Star especially is very inconsistent. I wonder if playing just the MUAs and Newcomers is better as long as you can find a Clairvoyant. To clarify, I will only pick MUA in R1 or if I'm offered it as a pair in R2. I never pick it as a one-of after R1 since it's so crucial to have multiples and is usually a wasted pick at that point. It's also entirely possible that most opponents I play against are not properly counter-drafting MUA going into the late game. Having a high power card early in the match can often wreck the deck.

I'm always fearful of picking into bench management decks because they feel so much less consistent, but in reality maybe they're not. Might be something I need to run some numbers on. If your deck isn't coming together properly, Vacuum Cleaner can be your "shoot the moon" opportunity with a deck high in singles, but that's generally all I see it as currently.

Your points on giving more consideration to which set is removed are well taken. Honestly I had not given it that level of thought and those are great tips that I will start thinking about during games You did forget to mention that with Outer space out, Stable Boy still has Necromancer support so it's not entirely unplayable. But obviously UFO is one of the better cards to pair it with.

I definitely need to get better at understanding when to dig for C-fan generation to salvage less ELO loss. It's hard to give up on winning and just hoping for 2nd/3rd especially when you haven't seen your opponents' decks for 3 rounds and you're not sure how good of a shot you have at beating them.

[Andrewsmile]

I'm always fearful of picking into bench management decks because they feel so much less consistent, but in reality maybe they're not. Might be something I need to run some numbers on. If your deck isn't coming together properly, Vacuum Cleaner can be your "shoot the moon" opportunity with a deck high in singles, but that's generally all I see it as currently.
...
I definitely need to get better at understanding when to dig for C-fan generation to salvage less ELO loss. It's hard to give up on winning and just hoping for 2nd/3rd especially when you haven't seen your opponents' decks for 3 rounds and you're not sure how good of a shot you have at beating them.

I think most of the skill expression in this game is "playing to your outs" and making tough decisions like that in games that aren't going your way- I go for fan generation if I havent won any rounds going into turn 6- If I can hit a heroine and win both round 6&7, I can often make the final. Even swindling a 3rd place instead of a fourth place is valuable. I will also take fan generation turn 7 if I have ~17 or so fans if I can tell that getting to 20 will get me to the final even if I lose. You have to be dialed into the lobby and able to predict how many fans people have- typically adding all of their trophies together is a good ranking system for how far ahead people are. For example: going into round 7, one player has won every round (total trophies 1+2+...6 = 21), one player has won rounds 1&4 (5 total trophies), one player has won round 2&5 (7) and you have won round 3&6 (9) but are playing the leader in round 7 and they have a deck you are pretty sure you can't beat (maybe you saw in round 4 that they have 4 vendors and a clairvoyant). You see double illusionist in the first hand- this would make your deck very strong, but if you lose you won't go to the final because someone will come out of the other match with either 12 or 14 trophies vs your 9. In this situation, I would roll to find fan bus/ heroine. If I find one of each, 5 fans is equivalent to about 3 or 4 trophies putting my total at 12-13. Now if the player with 5 total trophies wins, I will still likely have more fans than him and go to the final. Even if I lose, thats a lot of arena score I just salvaged and is safer than taking a fight I will probably lose round 7. Thats just one example but gives insight into how I think about fan generation, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt but I think in the long run it has greatly helped me climb

Your points on giving more consideration to which set is removed are well taken. Honestly I had not given it that level of thought and those are great tips that I will start thinking about during games You did forget to mention that with Outer space out, Stable Boy still has Necromancer support so it's not entirely unplayable. But obviously UFO is one of the better cards to pair it with.

I don't think necromancer is enough without UFO because you need UFO to find duplicates or extra 3 power deck A cards. Since going into A deck turn 4 is really bad, you only have 6 chances to get stable boys, 3 power cards, and sailors (which you DEFINITELY need at least one of and probably 2 to make stable boy consistent when UFO is out. Unless you find duplicate cowboys/necromancers the odds of you finding 2 stable boys, 2 sailors, and a pair of pigs for example is just really really bad even if you find necromancer so I've found it is much better to avoid stable boy altogether when red is out especially because stable boys have competition most games so better to let someone else fall into the trap and stomp them in the late game when they inevitably have to start cutting 3s for better B deck and C deck cards, therefore completely hollowing out the core of their deck. Just from anecdotal experience You will make back, 4th places are killer lol it takes like 3 wins just to make it back