I just noticed however i was muted the entire frigging VoD, which is a sign of my exhaustion i think. That was... a run. That was a very very much a defect run. 3 energy run, so oooof. Probably not helped by wiping out to the heart a couple of times prior to that. (Still, i'm more regularly MAKING it to the heart, so hey).
Got a sweet first shop Clockwork Souvenir from the first shop, and the rest of the run was very much shaped around that.
With a 3 energy demon form/runic pyramid deck. Goddamn i wish i'd been recording this one, but i was watching Joinrbs stream instead so hey.
Sweet, sweet run though. Started off with immolate from a rare, and used that to explode act 1. Took astrolabe over Black Star & Eternal Feather, rewarding me with Demon Form+, Blood for Blood+ and something else i do not remember. And this was after getting Reaper, Red Skull, Offering all back in act 1.
Act 2 was bloody, but getting a duplicator on Offering, Nilry's and Corruption out of it let me slaughter another set of elites. Upgraded Armaments to go with my Offering which turned out to be prescient given finding Runic Pyramid over i think... Mark of Pain and something else that was awful for act 2 boss rewards. Took Dark Embrace to go with my corruption/offerings, which also turned out to be a biiig pay off
Act 3 was a lot of I Really Want Mummified Hand Or Bottled Tornado. Which well, i got neither in act 3. I did get Clockwork Souvenir & Bronze Scales (Bought just for the heart, blocking that Vuln is soooo sweet). Amusing moment: Well, there's a shop after this mind bloom, but we've got runic pyramid and no exhaust or blue candle. Let's take a boss fight. Que: Old Coin.
Elites were bloody, but mostly safe, though a jaw worm horde nearly ended the run.... and then i got a store with Strange Spoon in it. Ahahaha, that was so amazing in this run. Corruption exhausts cards? No it doesn't! Nilrys find Impervious? Just put it back ontop of my deck with a headbutt.
I like that i had full hp going into time eater, took 101 damage, and came out of it at full hp again. Totally proof that putting bandage up into my deck was worth it.
Also managed to have the heart doing 0x15 on turn 8, thanks to strange spoon/disarm/headbutt shenanigans, so that was great. Oh, and act 4 let me buy a bottled Tornado. I bottled demon form, and i'm honestly ??? if that was the right choice. Like Demon form was one of the stronk things we were doing, but so was Corruption/Strange Spoon. Real coin flip. I guess the massive amounts of hp gain/damage ramp that Demon Form+ gave me is a solid argument for bottling it though (it def would have been the right bottle had we found it like, early act 2 or something.)
Damn that was fun.
Right, now all of you need to catch up. Come on! I believe in yoooou.
Edit: Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit!
Not just 50 heart kills now. I'm now at 52, with a 3-0 alternating streak! Holy shit. That's a new personal record - i've only managed 2-0 before.
...also i still wanst recording, because i was watching Star Trek Discovery (i'm a penguin corpse of culture, you understand). apparently i play a lot better when i'm relaxed... how werid.
Anyway, this deck was some glorious bullshit. There was nothing super degenerate in it, it was just... the game lined up to give it value and card draw and removal (It even kindly got rid of our Infinite blades+ after it had done it's duty). That footwork? that was bought on the last shop and i think was relevant once in the heart fight. Never even used wraith form against the heart, it died on turn 7 due to having over 200 poison ticking on it. Velvet choker was never a problem.
Like literally, deck went and bought preserved insect, used that to bowl over act 1 elites, found corpse explosion late act 1, got wraith from the act 1 boss, bowled over 4 act 2 elites (1 was even perfect), got pocket watch at the end of act 2, crushed collector, got Ring of the Serpent, Got Ice cream for evne more value, bowled over super repto, picked up a panic button which saw use once, perfected giant head... it was crazy and beautiful. I think the a3 bosses were actually harder than the elites and heart - i dropped to 11 hp by the end of them, and walked out of the heart at 42 hp.
Bloody hell. And all that glorious poison stuff was mostly found in act 2 and the catalysts were in act 3! Act 1 was just beating things up with mah fists, an infinite blades, and later on a skewer+ and Endless Agony+
Sorry to triple post, but i'll be going live in a moment or two.
Alas, the 4-0 alternating dream was brought short last night - Book of Stabbing ate a defect run. Wasnt too surprising, but the deck was doing pretty well - it just didnt have the defences, and the play of trying to find toxic egg apparitions before i hit elites didn't line up, so welp.
(Side note, i'm impressed that my silent run above was a sub 35 minute heart kill, that's crazy)
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Unsurprising update: I won.
Sadly I didn't perfect the spear/shield or the heart, despite finishing both fights on full health. That aside, I had two Ghost In A Jar's going into the heart fight, and my opening hand had Nightmare and Wraith Form+ so I figured "Sure, that seems safe." I had 8 stacks of intangible left when the fight ended, and still had more Wraith forms in my deck. :P
I don't think there's a lot to say here. I got preserved insect as a starter common relic, had good paths to fight elites in act 1, so gambled on being able to pull off those fights. It was pretty much all continuously falling into place from there. Perfected the first 3 bosses and numerous elites. I smirked at Reptomancer's "4000 damage turn 2" as I played a Wraith Form. ;P Orange Pellets was absurdly unnecessary, but nice all the same. And the final score is unquestionably my highest. Silent just makes me not want to play the other classes (in the good way).
@Auralynx@ArcticLancer Massive props to you both! Going back live again - hopefully be updating this post with yet more wins - scored one already on silent today, so that's a 2 streak silent so far!
Edit:
I uh...
what.
Wat.
What the fuck even huh what.
i just beat the heart as ironclad with a deck that had firebreathing in it. Yes. Firebreathing. That card. You know, the one that's contender for WORST CARD IN THE GAME. Oh, and not just firebreathing: Madness. Yes. Firebreathing Madness.
In fact, the core of the deck ended up being Infinite 0 cost Reapers, because... that's... a sensible.. thing..to..do...? I wish i'd been recording, but alas. I think i only figured out i could do this/only got the pieces to enable this at the time eater (Ice Cream was the last missing piece, and came from Double Orb Walkers on floor 48)
Full disclosure - this was a seeded run where i wiped out late act 2, went 'This seed is weird, i want to try again because this is weird and interesting" and... It went crazy places as a result. So not an entirely legit result, but sufficiently weird/interesting enoguh to be worthy of respect i think.
Like, i went into the Time Eater at 47 hp, took 78 damage, and came out at 85 hp. Took 79 in Donu Deca, came out at 85 again. Took 129 in the spear and shield fight, came out at 81. Took 104 hp in the Corrupt Heart fight, came out at 85/85. WHAT THE FUCK.
It was such a freaking weird deck. It was kind of a perfected strike deck? But not? It abused the beep out of Dual Wield, for shennagins like Dual Wield Flash of Steel with rage up, or similar. And eventually it was just pruning itself down to 0 cost Reapers/Madnesses and spamming them infinitely, generating block and hp in crazy amounts.
You arent reading the buff bar wrong by the by - that is 3 copies of fire breathing. It was shocking how often firebreathing actually was relevant - If there was ever a deck for it, this was the deck. What a bizzare and cobbled together deck.
On more sensible, standard things, here's a vod and a decklist for a winning Silent deck. Very similar to @ArcticLancer deck above, though mine was more "Slowly grind things down under poison" + All the Appartions, as opposed to Toxic Bite Boogallo. I actually skipped a catalyst+ for a card remove, which i think was a mistake? I mean, i still won, but i literally would have lost the same turn as i won if poison hadn't ticked for a 100. Hard to say - Strikes were so insanely awful. Totally cool thing though is this is a run where you get to see how powerful Runic Dodecahedron can be when you make it work - i managed to keep it active through a chunk of act 3, 2 boss fights, the elite and into the heart fight a decent bit.
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Now back to Silent at a mere Ascension 12, I guess.
Fun details about that run: I thought I'd died twice after hitting End Turn, first when Static Discharge killed Deca on the first hit before its second would've killed me, and once when I'd forgotten I'd snuck a Buffer in somehow against the Time Eater and could only block 2/3 swings.
I haven't posted in awhile, but I have been making progress on climbing the tower.
Finally have gotten to A12 on Ironclad and Silent, and at A11 with Defect.
@Ethea Great work =D Post your decks too! It's always fun to see
And you all know what time it is!
Edit: Sometimes i'm an undead penguin. Sometimes though? Sometimes i am a robot with style
0-Focus Echopanache Defect deck that took the heart to turn 17, mainly because it could. Perfect awoken one, multiple other shenanigans. And no, Data disk does not count - it was only bought in the act 4 store, and was only semi-relevant. I almost think i should have bought Dolly's Mirror instead, and got a fifth apparition.
Did you know that on turn 17/18 the heart will point a 72x15 attack at you? No? You do now! For the record, this is 1080 damage, which is 81 damage more than it's possible to have block. The heart, the heart be angry.
Really fun run. VoD and decklist below:
Definitely a good example of how to make weirder, alternate approaches than the obvious work - In this case using Echo form to just sew a bunch of strange and disparate elements into a much, much stronger whole. (The fact that the game allows such strange and weird strategies to work is a huge part of why i love it so much)
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Cleared A12 and A13 today with Silent. 13 involved a number of reloads on Donu & Deca because I ground my way through to that with little-to-no idea how to play a Wraith Form deck; having seen @The Zombie Penguin play that some I was pretty sure it could beat Donu & Deca and able to eventually muddle my way through.
... my Silent execution is really, really bad, folks. Really bad.
Cleared A12 and A13 today with Silent. 13 involved a number of reloads on Donu & Deca because I ground my way through to that with little-to-no idea how to play a Wraith Form deck; having seen @The Zombie Penguin play that some I was pretty sure it could beat Donu & Deca and able to eventually muddle my way through.
... my Silent execution is really, really bad, folks. Really bad.
More seriously: What gave you trouble with the execution, what was making it hard for you? (This is def where seeing the deck list would help as well to identify strength and weakness of your deck)
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
So basically I think the main difference between the A12 and A13 decks is how badly they needed to hit Wraith Form. The A12 one had it as pretty much a bonus; the A13 one was using it constantly to stay alive, and took a long time to stabilize apart from that because even with Wraith Form I was resting constantly. That was partly due to finding the Footwork and Noxious Fumes a lot later, where the A12 version had them from really early on.
Ascension 12:
Other notes: Membership card did work for this deck, surprisingly enough. Picked up a bunch of useful stuff like Anchor and Funnel for cheap. You'll note that these had the same boss; Donu and Deca are a lot easier when your relics strip their artifacts in round 1, which was probably the hard part of the other win. Both kills are off Corpse Explosion, so you know what happened there.
Ascension 13:
I think this one hit every go-to-full hp event but the Wheel, burning a blue at the Spirits and jumping into the Maw, even. I just couldn't keep my life on me - Frozen Egg is a lot less help if you don't start finding powers until the halfway point of Act 2. It did get to live the dream on the Knight, at least: Nightmare into Bullet Time for quad Wraith Form made that literally the only easy fight in the run. It also ended up carrying a Regret about that long so I could bag a bunch of expensive cards rather than remove it; took a lot of the oomph out of the Helix when I was losing the buff to the Candle half the time.
I can't really explain the deck, it just sorta tried to either get electrodynamics online ASAP, or play lots of cards and use Fission to play even more.
So, looking at this deck, i'm really not surpsied you had to reload a lot! (Note: Not trying to be abrasive/insulting here - you won! that's genuinely awesome! This is more meant to be general commentary on why the deck was struggling).
The big thing i note looking at this deck is 3 fold:
One: No fourth energy.
Two: NO card draw.
Three: Poor offences.
Defensively, the deck's in solid shape! You've got both Nightmare/Wraith form, and you have Paper Krane - though i think an upgrade on neturalize would have gone a long way with that.
The problem is to deploy that combo, you need to draw it. You have multiple curses and madness (Which, yes, can do something, but with 3 energy and only a well laid plans to hold it, it's going to be hard to make it worth while), as well as a ton of junk attacks (Flying knee, All Out attack, unupgraded Sucker punch, strikes) that simply are not contributing anything.
And when you do draw the combo, you're going to have trouble leveraging it due to 3 energy - Which also haunts your offences! Main offences here are obviously Noxious fumes (Which with no card draw, you have trouble deploying - a 39 card deck means you possibly dont see Noxious fumes until turn 8. WHich is painful! You do have Expertise, but that's something that works a lot better with cheap cards or lots of discard).
Your boss relics also play into this - they're very defensive choices, and they dont really add power to the deck in any meaninful way. They mostly just keep you safe, and... that's not really that helpful. There's times and places where you need to be safe,
So stuff this deck could have used: Snecko Skull would have gone a long way. Envenom could have worked, and given an alternate avenue to getting poison down and accelerating the clock. snecko eye would have snapped the game in half for you by itself, looking at that deck. I think not taking madness and pruning away more strikes if you could, as well as those curses, would have helped a lot too.
The biggest thing I hate about the game is not having a 4th source of energy. It seems to make a huge difference in the success and failure of a run. Obviously you can win runs with 3 energy, but it's a lot less consistent.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
The thing about the fourth energy is it's the simplest, easiest way to increase a deck's output. Add in that it's only reliably sourced from boss fights, and it creates this odd effect where there's often a noticible spike in your decks power post the first/second boss. All that's happened is you've gotten better at making your deck output what it was already doing well, but it FEELS a lot more signfianct.
totally unnecessary, but all the other ways to increase output are a lot more intricate/werid (Like Concentrate/Unceasing top, Nunchaku in a Shiv spam deck, Corrupton, etc)
On that note, going live. Actually, i am live, but i was playing feather. now i'm playing StS. Come and join
Ugh. Had a run where whirlwind and chemical-X popped up in the same shop super early but I couldn't afford both. My first relic that run was 1/2 price on shops.
Also I found out you can play Double Tap -> Headbutt every turn after you first play it.
Yeah, the relic options in that A13 run were basically a selection of things you'd rather not have.
@Auralynx If you're interested, i could stream doing that seed at some point, as a a compare and contrast sort of thing?
On that note, 56th win! Pretty generic Wraith form deck here. The x2 Caltrops+ was a combination of "let's fuck up hexaghost" and me meming, though watching the heart loose 150 hp to each multi attack was satisfying.
Deck made great use of Nunchaku - 3 free attacks at the start of every fight will do that, weridly enough. Didnt super make great use of Pen Nib, but there wasnt any need to either. I think i skipped an apoth somehow at some point, which was sort of a mistake. I believe my reasoning was something to do with card draw issues?
Sadly didn't record this one either. I seem to win a lot more when i'm not recording - i wonder if it's just stress from having to explain on stream that degrades my play?
Commentating as you play definitely worsens play, in my experience.
Yeah, it's hard to say. I think it does drag me down, but on the other hand ,thinking about things is good? Though i feel like i do a lot better when i'm just in the zone, not actively thinking about things.
So, normally i'm posting wins here, but i thought i'd do something different today.
Here's every deck that's reached act 3 and lost since my last win, with a brief "Why it failed". Several of these were VERY powerful, and just went wrong - I figure it might be a breath of fresh air to see that even a good player iwth good decks can get their ass kicked twenty five ways form sunday.
Power Deck. Awoken One. (Needed ways to scale that werent CA+Heatsinks with Mummified Hand)
Drew badly vs Reptomancer, had shoddy defenses.
Corruption/Strange Spoon. Needed a (bottled?) Evolve+, couldnt deal with status flooding.
Damage was too slow to deal with Giant head, no well laid plans to hold Wraith form.
Needless to say, today was Fun TM for slay the spire.
(And that's just the act 3+ losses. We're not going to talk about the Snecko/Dead Branchclad that died to Bronze Auto. Alas corruption, we never found thee)
As a suggestion, you can always stream offline with OBS using the "start recording" button under the "start streaming" button. It would allow you to record your gameplay as though you were streaming, just without actually streaming. This was you can play in a stress-free environment, and upload edited clips and highlights to Twitch or YouTube.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
As a suggestion, you can always stream offline with OBS using the "start recording" button under the "start streaming" button. It would allow you to record your gameplay as though you were streaming, just without actually streaming. This was you can play in a stress-free environment, and upload edited clips and highlights to Twitch or YouTube.
Hmm, it's a thought. Honestly though, i think i'm better to figure out how to set things up so OBS will record my game auido and my voice, but not any music or similar i've got playing. I'm oft at my most relaxed when i've got music going or similar, or i'm watching something while i play. (Who just binged all of Kamen Rider Ex Aid again? This penguin).
I'll figure it out! the needing to explain why i'm doing crazy shit is fun =D Thanks though!
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited April 2019
Zombie:
We already discussed the you-analyzing-things issue a bit, but my suspicion on what it does to your quality of play is make it over-conservative.
I play a lot of Sentinels of the Multiverse, mostly with a core group of 3 other people who have a real good idea what they're doing also. Sentinels, for the unfamiliar, involves picking a character and canned deck for co-op play versus bosses, with additional wrinkles introduced by a separate environment deck. Different variants of the same character use the same core deck, which is loosely analogous to relics.
Last weekend I was on a version of Fanatic I don't usually play; Fanatic is at core a bruiser with some mildly complicated control cards and other tricky interactions (Dover is now totally unsurprised that I play her, I imagine). I was able to spot some new tricks (admittedly particular to that version) I hadn't seen before in part because I could focus entirely on my own play for long stretches. We had a couple of less-Sentinels-fluent people at the table, as well, who were having some issues retaining basic-to-their characters stuff, and playing easier scenarios because of it; I was in a position not to be the explainer for them on this occasion.
When you're focused on explaining how Mr. Fixer's Jack Handle works, you miss finding subtler interactions and simplify your own play. Your start-from-near-zero explanation style when streaming - which is probably really helpful to people learning the game - diverts brainpower from really fine-tuning and executing tricky stuff.
As for the seed, I honestly didn't realize just how thick that deck had gotten. You're welcome to try it, but be aware that the Paper Krane was bought during Act 2 as an ultimately-helpful Hail Mary play; building around it is probably not a good idea.
Auralynx on
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mysticjuicer[he/him] I'm a muscle wizardand I cast P U N C HRegistered Userregular
Ultimately, while commentary may prevent perfect play, it makes for better streaming, so... *shrugs* I know which of those I'm more interested in when I tune in to a streamer, and it's not perfect play. :biggrin:
Ultimately, while commentary may prevent perfect play, it makes for better streaming, so... *shrugs* I know which of those I'm more interested in when I tune in to a streamer, and it's not perfect play. :biggrin:
Yeah, my aim was to highlight the tradeoff, not bag on the idea of commentary, if that didn't come across clearly.
Yeah I generally don't watch streams with no commentary or comms. Unless it's like a really high level technical SC2 or HotS streamer, but those are both pretty rare now...
Getting Jaw Worm as one of the early "easy" fights is just rude.
But only for the silent.
Because it's the worst class.
Whatever
We all know Ironclad is the worst. Sure, maybe it's easier to brute-force your way through early floors, but actually winning is another matter. Silent and Defect are just another tier, since you can often go Poison or Powers for ez wins.
Getting Jaw Worm as one of the early "easy" fights is just rude.
But only for the silent.
Because it's the worst class.
Whatever
We all know Ironclad is the worst. Sure, maybe it's easier to brute-force your way through early floors, but actually winning is another matter. Silent and Defect are just another tier, since you can often go Poison or Powers for ez wins.
Ironclad has a cowboy hat courtesy of modders. What's Silent got?
Posts
50 frigging a20 heart kills.
I just noticed however i was muted the entire frigging VoD, which is a sign of my exhaustion i think. That was... a run. That was a very very much a defect run. 3 energy run, so oooof. Probably not helped by wiping out to the heart a couple of times prior to that. (Still, i'm more regularly MAKING it to the heart, so hey).
Got a sweet first shop Clockwork Souvenir from the first shop, and the rest of the run was very much shaped around that.
So yeah. That's a win! That's 50 heart wins.
...Time to aim for a 100.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
With a 3 energy demon form/runic pyramid deck. Goddamn i wish i'd been recording this one, but i was watching Joinrbs stream instead so hey.
Sweet, sweet run though. Started off with immolate from a rare, and used that to explode act 1. Took astrolabe over Black Star & Eternal Feather, rewarding me with Demon Form+, Blood for Blood+ and something else i do not remember. And this was after getting Reaper, Red Skull, Offering all back in act 1.
Act 2 was bloody, but getting a duplicator on Offering, Nilry's and Corruption out of it let me slaughter another set of elites. Upgraded Armaments to go with my Offering which turned out to be prescient given finding Runic Pyramid over i think... Mark of Pain and something else that was awful for act 2 boss rewards. Took Dark Embrace to go with my corruption/offerings, which also turned out to be a biiig pay off
Act 3 was a lot of I Really Want Mummified Hand Or Bottled Tornado. Which well, i got neither in act 3. I did get Clockwork Souvenir & Bronze Scales (Bought just for the heart, blocking that Vuln is soooo sweet). Amusing moment: Well, there's a shop after this mind bloom, but we've got runic pyramid and no exhaust or blue candle. Let's take a boss fight. Que: Old Coin.
Elites were bloody, but mostly safe, though a jaw worm horde nearly ended the run.... and then i got a store with Strange Spoon in it. Ahahaha, that was so amazing in this run. Corruption exhausts cards? No it doesn't! Nilrys find Impervious? Just put it back ontop of my deck with a headbutt.
I like that i had full hp going into time eater, took 101 damage, and came out of it at full hp again. Totally proof that putting bandage up into my deck was worth it.
Also managed to have the heart doing 0x15 on turn 8, thanks to strange spoon/disarm/headbutt shenanigans, so that was great. Oh, and act 4 let me buy a bottled Tornado. I bottled demon form, and i'm honestly ??? if that was the right choice. Like Demon form was one of the stronk things we were doing, but so was Corruption/Strange Spoon. Real coin flip. I guess the massive amounts of hp gain/damage ramp that Demon Form+ gave me is a solid argument for bottling it though (it def would have been the right bottle had we found it like, early act 2 or something.)
Damn that was fun.
Right, now all of you need to catch up. Come on! I believe in yoooou.
Edit: Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit!
Not just 50 heart kills now. I'm now at 52, with a 3-0 alternating streak! Holy shit. That's a new personal record - i've only managed 2-0 before.
...also i still wanst recording, because i was watching Star Trek Discovery (i'm a penguin corpse of culture, you understand). apparently i play a lot better when i'm relaxed... how werid.
Anyway, this deck was some glorious bullshit. There was nothing super degenerate in it, it was just... the game lined up to give it value and card draw and removal (It even kindly got rid of our Infinite blades+ after it had done it's duty). That footwork? that was bought on the last shop and i think was relevant once in the heart fight. Never even used wraith form against the heart, it died on turn 7 due to having over 200 poison ticking on it. Velvet choker was never a problem.
Like literally, deck went and bought preserved insect, used that to bowl over act 1 elites, found corpse explosion late act 1, got wraith from the act 1 boss, bowled over 4 act 2 elites (1 was even perfect), got pocket watch at the end of act 2, crushed collector, got Ring of the Serpent, Got Ice cream for evne more value, bowled over super repto, picked up a panic button which saw use once, perfected giant head... it was crazy and beautiful. I think the a3 bosses were actually harder than the elites and heart - i dropped to 11 hp by the end of them, and walked out of the heart at 42 hp.
Bloody hell. And all that glorious poison stuff was mostly found in act 2 and the catalysts were in act 3! Act 1 was just beating things up with mah fists, an infinite blades, and later on a skewer+ and Endless Agony+
So, uh, 4-0 now? (That's probably not happening)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Alas, the 4-0 alternating dream was brought short last night - Book of Stabbing ate a defect run. Wasnt too surprising, but the deck was doing pretty well - it just didnt have the defences, and the play of trying to find toxic egg apparitions before i hit elites didn't line up, so welp.
(Side note, i'm impressed that my silent run above was a sub 35 minute heart kill, that's crazy)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
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I don't think there's a lot to say here. I got preserved insect as a starter common relic, had good paths to fight elites in act 1, so gambled on being able to pull off those fights. It was pretty much all continuously falling into place from there. Perfected the first 3 bosses and numerous elites. I smirked at Reptomancer's "4000 damage turn 2" as I played a Wraith Form. ;P Orange Pellets was absurdly unnecessary, but nice all the same. And the final score is unquestionably my highest. Silent just makes me not want to play the other classes (in the good way).
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I won't make you wait, though. This is how it turned out:
Edit:
I uh...
what.
Wat.
What the fuck even huh what.
i just beat the heart as ironclad with a deck that had firebreathing in it. Yes. Firebreathing. That card. You know, the one that's contender for WORST CARD IN THE GAME. Oh, and not just firebreathing: Madness. Yes. Firebreathing Madness.
In fact, the core of the deck ended up being Infinite 0 cost Reapers, because... that's... a sensible.. thing..to..do...? I wish i'd been recording, but alas. I think i only figured out i could do this/only got the pieces to enable this at the time eater (Ice Cream was the last missing piece, and came from Double Orb Walkers on floor 48)
Full disclosure - this was a seeded run where i wiped out late act 2, went 'This seed is weird, i want to try again because this is weird and interesting" and... It went crazy places as a result. So not an entirely legit result, but sufficiently weird/interesting enoguh to be worthy of respect i think.
Like, i went into the Time Eater at 47 hp, took 78 damage, and came out at 85 hp. Took 79 in Donu Deca, came out at 85 again. Took 129 in the spear and shield fight, came out at 81. Took 104 hp in the Corrupt Heart fight, came out at 85/85. WHAT THE FUCK.
It was such a freaking weird deck. It was kind of a perfected strike deck? But not? It abused the beep out of Dual Wield, for shennagins like Dual Wield Flash of Steel with rage up, or similar. And eventually it was just pruning itself down to 0 cost Reapers/Madnesses and spamming them infinitely, generating block and hp in crazy amounts.
You arent reading the buff bar wrong by the by - that is 3 copies of fire breathing. It was shocking how often firebreathing actually was relevant - If there was ever a deck for it, this was the deck. What a bizzare and cobbled together deck.
On more sensible, standard things, here's a vod and a decklist for a winning Silent deck. Very similar to @ArcticLancer deck above, though mine was more "Slowly grind things down under poison" + All the Appartions, as opposed to Toxic Bite Boogallo. I actually skipped a catalyst+ for a card remove, which i think was a mistake? I mean, i still won, but i literally would have lost the same turn as i won if poison hadn't ticked for a 100. Hard to say - Strikes were so insanely awful. Totally cool thing though is this is a run where you get to see how powerful Runic Dodecahedron can be when you make it work - i managed to keep it active through a chunk of act 3, 2 boss fights, the elite and into the heart fight a decent bit.
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Fun details about that run: I thought I'd died twice after hitting End Turn, first when Static Discharge killed Deca on the first hit before its second would've killed me, and once when I'd forgotten I'd snuck a Buffer in somehow against the Time Eater and could only block 2/3 swings.
Finally have gotten to A12 on Ironclad and Silent, and at A11 with Defect.
@Ethea Great work =D Post your decks too! It's always fun to see
And you all know what time it is!
Edit: Sometimes i'm an undead penguin. Sometimes though? Sometimes i am a robot with style
0-Focus Echopanache Defect deck that took the heart to turn 17, mainly because it could. Perfect awoken one, multiple other shenanigans. And no, Data disk does not count - it was only bought in the act 4 store, and was only semi-relevant. I almost think i should have bought Dolly's Mirror instead, and got a fifth apparition.
Did you know that on turn 17/18 the heart will point a 72x15 attack at you? No? You do now! For the record, this is 1080 damage, which is 81 damage more than it's possible to have block. The heart, the heart be angry.
Really fun run. VoD and decklist below:
Definitely a good example of how to make weirder, alternate approaches than the obvious work - In this case using Echo form to just sew a bunch of strange and disparate elements into a much, much stronger whole. (The fact that the game allows such strange and weird strategies to work is a huge part of why i love it so much)
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... my Silent execution is really, really bad, folks. Really bad.
@Auralynx ooooh! Post the decklists! Dooo eeet!
More seriously: What gave you trouble with the execution, what was making it hard for you? (This is def where seeing the deck list would help as well to identify strength and weakness of your deck)
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Ascension 12:
Other notes: Membership card did work for this deck, surprisingly enough. Picked up a bunch of useful stuff like Anchor and Funnel for cheap. You'll note that these had the same boss; Donu and Deca are a lot easier when your relics strip their artifacts in round 1, which was probably the hard part of the other win. Both kills are off Corpse Explosion, so you know what happened there.
Ascension 13:
I think this one hit every go-to-full hp event but the Wheel, burning a blue at the Spirits and jumping into the Maw, even. I just couldn't keep my life on me - Frozen Egg is a lot less help if you don't start finding powers until the halfway point of Act 2. It did get to live the dream on the Knight, at least: Nightmare into Bullet Time for quad Wraith Form made that literally the only easy fight in the run. It also ended up carrying a Regret about that long so I could bag a bunch of expensive cards rather than remove it; took a lot of the oomph out of the Helix when I was losing the buff to the Candle half the time.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I’m not always confident I will!
That’s the issue!
I can't really explain the deck, it just sorta tried to either get electrodynamics online ASAP, or play lots of cards and use Fission to play even more.
Searing blow came from a metamorphosis, so I'm not crazy for having it in my deck.
(Bought metamorphosis in a snecko eye deck...because I am crazy)
Torii is fucking brutal against the heart. Would not have had a chance in hell of winning without it.
So, looking at this deck, i'm really not surpsied you had to reload a lot! (Note: Not trying to be abrasive/insulting here - you won! that's genuinely awesome! This is more meant to be general commentary on why the deck was struggling).
The big thing i note looking at this deck is 3 fold:
One: No fourth energy.
Two: NO card draw.
Three: Poor offences.
Defensively, the deck's in solid shape! You've got both Nightmare/Wraith form, and you have Paper Krane - though i think an upgrade on neturalize would have gone a long way with that.
The problem is to deploy that combo, you need to draw it. You have multiple curses and madness (Which, yes, can do something, but with 3 energy and only a well laid plans to hold it, it's going to be hard to make it worth while), as well as a ton of junk attacks (Flying knee, All Out attack, unupgraded Sucker punch, strikes) that simply are not contributing anything.
And when you do draw the combo, you're going to have trouble leveraging it due to 3 energy - Which also haunts your offences! Main offences here are obviously Noxious fumes (Which with no card draw, you have trouble deploying - a 39 card deck means you possibly dont see Noxious fumes until turn 8. WHich is painful! You do have Expertise, but that's something that works a lot better with cheap cards or lots of discard).
Your boss relics also play into this - they're very defensive choices, and they dont really add power to the deck in any meaninful way. They mostly just keep you safe, and... that's not really that helpful. There's times and places where you need to be safe,
So stuff this deck could have used: Snecko Skull would have gone a long way. Envenom could have worked, and given an alternate avenue to getting poison down and accelerating the clock. snecko eye would have snapped the game in half for you by itself, looking at that deck. I think not taking madness and pruning away more strikes if you could, as well as those curses, would have helped a lot too.
Hope that all makes sense and is useful!
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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totally unnecessary, but all the other ways to increase output are a lot more intricate/werid (Like Concentrate/Unceasing top, Nunchaku in a Shiv spam deck, Corrupton, etc)
On that note, going live. Actually, i am live, but i was playing feather. now i'm playing StS. Come and join
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Also I found out you can play Double Tap -> Headbutt every turn after you first play it.
@Auralynx If you're interested, i could stream doing that seed at some point, as a a compare and contrast sort of thing?
On that note, 56th win! Pretty generic Wraith form deck here. The x2 Caltrops+ was a combination of "let's fuck up hexaghost" and me meming, though watching the heart loose 150 hp to each multi attack was satisfying.
Sadly didn't record this one either. I seem to win a lot more when i'm not recording - i wonder if it's just stress from having to explain on stream that degrades my play?
Time to find out, because im going live again.
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Yeah, it's hard to say. I think it does drag me down, but on the other hand ,thinking about things is good? Though i feel like i do a lot better when i'm just in the zone, not actively thinking about things.
So, normally i'm posting wins here, but i thought i'd do something different today.
Here's every deck that's reached act 3 and lost since my last win, with a brief "Why it failed". Several of these were VERY powerful, and just went wrong - I figure it might be a breath of fresh air to see that even a good player iwth good decks can get their ass kicked twenty five ways form sunday.
Power Deck. Awoken One. (Needed ways to scale that werent CA+Heatsinks with Mummified Hand)
Drew badly vs Reptomancer, had shoddy defenses.
Corruption/Strange Spoon. Needed a (bottled?) Evolve+, couldnt deal with status flooding.
Damage was too slow to deal with Giant head, no well laid plans to hold Wraith form.
Needless to say, today was Fun TM for slay the spire.
(And that's just the act 3+ losses. We're not going to talk about the Snecko/Dead Branchclad that died to Bronze Auto. Alas corruption, we never found thee)
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Hmm, it's a thought. Honestly though, i think i'm better to figure out how to set things up so OBS will record my game auido and my voice, but not any music or similar i've got playing. I'm oft at my most relaxed when i've got music going or similar, or i'm watching something while i play. (Who just binged all of Kamen Rider Ex Aid again? This penguin).
I'll figure it out! the needing to explain why i'm doing crazy shit is fun =D Thanks though!
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We already discussed the you-analyzing-things issue a bit, but my suspicion on what it does to your quality of play is make it over-conservative.
I play a lot of Sentinels of the Multiverse, mostly with a core group of 3 other people who have a real good idea what they're doing also. Sentinels, for the unfamiliar, involves picking a character and canned deck for co-op play versus bosses, with additional wrinkles introduced by a separate environment deck. Different variants of the same character use the same core deck, which is loosely analogous to relics.
Last weekend I was on a version of Fanatic I don't usually play; Fanatic is at core a bruiser with some mildly complicated control cards and other tricky interactions (Dover is now totally unsurprised that I play her, I imagine). I was able to spot some new tricks (admittedly particular to that version) I hadn't seen before in part because I could focus entirely on my own play for long stretches. We had a couple of less-Sentinels-fluent people at the table, as well, who were having some issues retaining basic-to-their characters stuff, and playing easier scenarios because of it; I was in a position not to be the explainer for them on this occasion.
When you're focused on explaining how Mr. Fixer's Jack Handle works, you miss finding subtler interactions and simplify your own play. Your start-from-near-zero explanation style when streaming - which is probably really helpful to people learning the game - diverts brainpower from really fine-tuning and executing tricky stuff.
As for the seed, I honestly didn't realize just how thick that deck had gotten. You're welcome to try it, but be aware that the Paper Krane was bought during Act 2 as an ultimately-helpful Hail Mary play; building around it is probably not a good idea.
Yeah, my aim was to highlight the tradeoff, not bag on the idea of commentary, if that didn't come across clearly.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Getting Jaw Worm as one of the early "easy" fights is just rude.
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But only for the silent.
Because it's the worst class.
Whatever
We all know Ironclad is the worst. Sure, maybe it's easier to brute-force your way through early floors, but actually winning is another matter. Silent and Defect are just another tier, since you can often go Poison or Powers for ez wins.
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Ironclad has a cowboy hat courtesy of modders. What's Silent got?
Best class, QED.
.... And can get a cowboy hat
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