Ancient Dragons Prototype 3

Test Build 3

Similar to Jibril, Ancient Dragons have been around for a long time,
and are like embodiment of violence.

At least he's kinda cute.

So in the end I ended up using Babysaurus again. Why? The problem is, Babysaurus only have 2 other Babyrex. The issue with Babyrex is common with Baby Ptrro and Babysaurus, which are you won't really feel the need to use their abilities in most your games.
competitors, with one being Babyrex which requires you to play Tyrannolegend, and the other being the G3 searcher. Tyrannolegend is lackluster most of the time, but that's not the main issue with using

Then why Babysaurus over other starters? The reason is that Babysaurus serves as a safety net in fetching a Tyrannobite if you can't get one. As powerful as Tyrannoquake is, he's really reliant on his gool 'ol pal Tyrannobite. Without Trannobite, Tyrannoquake becomes an inferior Cormac that can't even just eat anything to gain the crit and loses out on 5k power. Once Tyrannoquake gets Tyrannobite to aid him though, he instantly becomes one of the scariest and most pressuring bosses an opponent can face.

What a waste of good art :(

Magma Armor is dropped because of how situational he is. His winning image is you push your opponent Tyrannoquake first, I found that I don't really ever reach the point where I need to use Magma Armor to secure the kill because Tyrannoquake being 36k with 2 crit is alreay so hard to handle that you usually kill your opponent on the spot from 3 or 4 damage, and cases where they're at 5 are rare enough that it warrants the dismiss of Magma Armor. Volcatops is also a better backup vanguard than Magma Armor due to it not only having Tyrannoquake's 2nd ability, but also that his 1st effect can also wreck some havoc if you are forced to sit on Volcatops (eg. +5000 to your boosters, then swing Tyrannobite @ interceptor unboosted, swing with Volcatpos and eat Tyrannobite, you are essentially swinging for 9>21>21>21 even without a 2nd eater.)
to 5 damage, and the use his ability to make 1 extra attack for each CB and soul you have. Problem is, he's the worst first ride you can have, and is completely useless until you reach the point that your opponent is at 5. And if you successfully ride

Hurry! Kill the Lao-Shan Lung!

I also cut back on Night Armor because the guy's too slow and now that I only have 4 copies of Legion boss left in the deck. Requiring a VG in Legion really hurts him way too much in effectiveness, and even when you are in Legion his use is still somewhat limited and acts just like another Dinocrowd most of the time.

Lastly, I popped in another ~~Lao-Shan Lung~~ QW to make it a 2/2 PG/QW split even though it has the risk all QWs have in
decks that eats a lot of CBs. There are 2 reasons for this: 1.) It significantly helps out performing Legion because AD often have trouble accumulating enough drop zone in an affordable manner to legion ASAP due to having absolutely no way to make up on the loss of cards, and 2.) Ancient Dragons really lacks an advantage engine, and being to guard large attacks with 1 card helps out the deck a lot.

I still don't consider the deck completely in stable mode due to the extremely heavy reliance on Tyrannobite as a win condition throughout the entire game span, from early to late. Seeing no Tyrannobite is so devastating to the deck that it's pretty much a death sentence.

Ancient Dragons Prototype 2

Test Build 2

Similar to Jibril, Ancient Dragons have been around for a long time,
and are like embodiment of violence.

For all decks labeled as:
stable - working as intended.
test - still under tuning and some things may or may not work as intended.

*Note: Working as intended != finished build, it just means deck functions as planned and is overall consistent

FVG:
Baby Ptero *1

Trigger: (8 crit/4 draw/4 heal)
Ancient Dragon, Ornithhealer (Heal) *4
Ancient Dragon, Titanocargo (Draw) *4
Ancient Dragon, Dinodile (Critical) *4
Ancient Dragon Fire Priestess (Critical) *4

Grade 1: (*14)
Ancient Dragon, Paraswall *3
Ancient Dragon, Rock Mine *1
Ancient Dragon, Iguanogorg *4
Ancient Dragon, Gattlingaro *4
Ancient Dragon, Gioconda *2

Grade 2: (*11)
Ancient Dragon, Dinocrowd *4
Ancient Dragon, Night Armor *3
Ancient Dragon, Tyrannobite *4

Grade 3: (*8)
Ancient Dragon, Magma Armor *2
Ancient Dragon, Volcatops *2
Ancient Dragon, Tyrannoquake *4

Why is this Prototype 2 and not 1? Because I already went through the prototype 1 stage lol.

So this build in a sense, is to mimic what Silver Thorns does best, by abusing the early game. Unlike Silver Thorns, Ancient Dragons have less direct advantage and can run low in resources and not be able to recover from it if you're not careful (no Venus for ADs, guys), and Ancient Dragons, while having as much early game power and rush potential as Silver Thorns, have a slightly heavier cost in doing so (CB1 for 2 additional attacks is impossible), less flexibility (all the on-attack eating-abilities requires an attack on the Vanguard), higher risk (you're paying your CBs before you know if they'd let it through and hit a damage trigger), as well as worse attack quality (Silver Thorns typically CB1 for 1 additional full column attack, where as Ancient Dragons gets an additional 9k attack). Unlike Silver Thorns, Ancient Dragon players also need to be careful about the situation where your opponent leaves no 9k or lower RGs in their front row, because in those cases Tyrannobite cannot grant an additional attack alone.

He's MVP.
He solves world hunger on Cray.

While Ancient Dragons have a bunch of short comings compared to Silver Thorns in the early game department, that doesn't mean Ancient Dragon's early game is strictly worse. Unlike Silver Thorns, all it takes is 1 Tyrannobite to fire it off multiple times in the same turn (Zelma cannot be used until the next turn once it leaves the soul, but Tyrannobite can be eaten multiple times as long as you have enough CBs and eating/call-over skills), and unlike Silver Thorns, while we are required to attack the vanguard to trigger the on-attack eating skills, hitting is not required and so we are the ones deciding if I get to attack multiple times, not my opponent. Another thing unlike Silver Thorns is, rather than requiring a total of 2~3 copies of Ana/Maricica to get the chain-attacks going, Ancient Dragons can also achieve additional attacks by only having 1 eater if you happen to get multiple copies of Tyrannobite (or other self-revivers), by attacking with both Tyrannobites first, eating one of the Tyrannobites, and then reviving the Tyrannobite on top of the other one to perform a pseudo-restand on both of them.

Run away, little girl! Run away...

Ancient Dragons also have a much stronger mid and late game as well as finishing power due to Tyrannoquake being a beast that either burns through hands early and fast, or puts your opponent into their
danger-zone very quickly for your small-but-multi-attacks to actually become life-threatening assaults. Tyrannoquake going for over 30k by default with little effort and threatens with 2-crit as long as you can eat a persona is very, very powerful. That kind of attack generally only costs you CB1 to do each turn, but is very unsustainable to guard against, and even Quintet Walls have trouble guaranteeing guarding the attack by itself. QWs average out to be ~25k shield, which is a 2-pass on-average
if your Tyrannoquake is only boosted by a FVG. In cases where you hit the lower end of the average (which isn't entirely rare; QWs resulting in 20k shield is fairly common as well), or when Tyrannoquake is boosted by a legit 6 or 7k booster, QWs are only worth 1-pass. This kind of attack is not something you'd want to have to guard against every single turn, especially when it also has a 2-crit to punish you for letting it through.

Volcatops servers as a backup vanguard should you fail to ride Tyrannoquake due to it having the same eating effect as Tyrannoquake (without even requiting a LB4). Magma Armor, while powerful as a finisher when your opponent is sitting on 5 damage, is very underwhelming to ride first as he has no built-in eating ability. Magma Armor is your finisher if your opponent is sitting on 5 damage and refuses to die, although he does have the risk factor in him that if you still didn't finish them off, you'd be completely exhausted of resources.

And why 4 Draws? I usually prefer crits and stands, but in this deck's case, I still feel the deck needs that occasional raw card count to do its thing due to the lack of advantage. There will be times where you just need the raw card count for PGs or just for eating/boosting purposes. I still much prefer 12 crits (and 12 crits with Tyrannoquake is super scary), so I'd be likely to juggle with that and adjusting the deck overall to a form that can just run 12 crits and eat faces.

So overall, I'm liking the new Ancient Dragons quite a lot. They have a top class early game, a top class mid game, a competitive late game, good finishing power, and are great as a budget deck (the most expensive card in the deck is like $5, which is Geoconda. Tyrannoquake are going for like 150 yen per, and Volcatops are like 30 yen per, meaning a full playset of G3s costs under $7, and PGs are like 120 yen with QWs being 50 yen, meaning a full playset of both costs under $7). They also have the fun, dynamic, and engaging play style that requires the pilot to steer and make plays and reward good plays without feeling tedious. I also see potential for more wombo combos, which I'll certainly enjoy exploring.

froliz's unspeakable vanguard-like thing

8/27/2014