Optimizing XMb1Pb's Lernaean Hydra deck

[Hunter Hogan]

XMb1Pb has posted a good Lernaean Hydra deck on the Fansite. I have not gone through all of the decks, but this one is different than the other top decks. I just finished 1000 damage in a Lernaean Hydra raid, and I used this deck for this first 500 of the damage. I think it can be improved, and if you want to help work on it, this thread is for that purpose. 

In the comments to the deck, XMb1Pb writes, "The low win rate is due to the fact that when Raksha is not available the simulator plays heracles, which is a severe mistake. If you just play longshot instead of Raksha and then heracles, then the win rate is actually almost perfect." Simulator says win rate is 90.53% and 21.21 ANP (but those numbers are low for the reason that XMb1Pb stated).

He is correct, I only lost one game and it was because of a crazy strike then flurry or something on the second or third card or something. 

Places for improvement:

1. The deck does not kill fast enough, so you don't always get 25 points. I'd guess that ANP is no more than 23, but probably closer to 22.3.
2. You only have five turns to kill the enemy after you play the last card to get the speed bonus, so more cards can buy you more time. But more cards also increases the variability and more cards might break the very nice cohesiveness of the deck. The Commander has Strike 2, but this deck handles it very elegantly with Refresh, Intercept, and Evade.
3. The Commander also has Protect All 1, so the value of Noxious Den's Enfeeble All 1 is obvious. I feel like Acropolis might be better, however. (Crap. I was hoping to make this a short post because I have other stuff to do.) Ideal Noxious Den: Play Den, then Longshot, then Heracles, on the next turn, Den and Heracles are activated, but Longshot is not, so Heracles has Attack 5, Swipe, and Burst 1 and the enemy Assault cards might have Enfeeble 1, too. Bad Noxious Den: later in the game, the Rally activates on Longshot instead of Razgoth. Acropolis cannot duplicate the "Ideal Noxious Den" situation because of Wait 4, but it fixes the second situation, which is possibly more important because it means you kill the Commander faster and can get 25 points. Or if the real point of Noxious Den is so that Heracles will clear the board, why not just use Rally Flag or Mobile Base because they will only activate Heracles? 
4. If you try to add Assault cards, you must realize how perfectly balanced the four Assault cards are: Refresh, Evade, Intercept, AntiAir, Swipe, Flurry, and Cleanse Xeno are all awesome. The best part, however, is that you can usually put the four cards in the perfect order and they are a nearly impenetrable wall. The genius of this deck is how perfectly these four cards fit together and I have never seen anyone use this exact combination, so it's very impressive to me.
5. Action cards might be a good addition.
6. Iron Maiden often improves decks.
7. Throwing a Wasteland Skimmer on the end can often be good for ANP.
8. The deck can win nearly 100%, the problem is that it doesn't regularly kill within five turns of the last card.

If there is a way to tweak this deck to correct the relatively-low ANP, then it would be an awesome deck.

Finally, I have no idea how many people have both Heracles and Longshot, so I might be one of the few people in the group who even cares about this deck. I guess, if you don't have them, you could still view this as a chance to improve your deck-construction skills.

[Alexander Volokh]

Hi,

I am very glad that you have liked my deck. Frankly speaking I myself did not think about all these little details, because when I have got heracles I was already close finishing Hydra. However, I am a little bit surprised about you not getting 25 damage often enough. Basically, I had the impression that one would only fail to do that if 

a) one can not place a refresh unit(neither raksha nor longshot) on the 2nd turn and the whole game goes out of control - you still can win but most probably not fast enough. The probability of not getting neither of both out of 5 cards is really low though.

b) razogoth does not get neither rally nor flurry.If he gets rallied and is able to attack twice then it can basically one hit the hydra. Ofc you will usually not get that lucky, but since you have several turns the chances that he will not proc at all or nox dens will always skip him are quite low as well.

c) there are some fantastic situations when the enemy will strike 2 razogoth twice despite the evade, when you have to play longshot 1st instead of raksha.

All in all, not that probable situations.

Of course any deck can be improved, to my mind the most necessary things are:

1. Adding yet another good refresh unit, so the probability that you can not place anything on the 2nd turn decreases (plus you get more turns to do 25 dmg)

2. Increasing the probability of rallying razogoth. E.g. by using rally all as you have proposed (however, acropolis has 4 turns activation, so you can not play it in the 1st turn or your heracles will have to wait 1 turn without rally(and there will be no enfeeble as well), so one would have to check whether that can be fatal in some situations). Or by somehow rallying bloodthirsty, but if this card comes in early, then it might derange your strategy.

[Maik50]

From what I've read, your deck is looking good and effective against pesky hydra
However, who am I to judge if I have not raided hydra at all (so damn hard because absence of Comsats >.<) and I don't even have Heracles and/or Longshot

Nevertheless, I wonder what Kilgore would do here...

[Hunter Hogan]

Wow, I wrote this post that long ago? It doesn't seem like almost two months. This post was written well before Awakening was released or before we saw what the cards with be. Enclave Warp Gate might be the card this deck is looking for because it is not an Assault card, so you can keep your core four Assault card together, but it make Assault cards, so you can deal more damage.

[Hunter Hogan]

zomg, I need to drink coffee before I post. I know that my typos don't bother anyone else as much as they bother me, but I should still save the post in my files, then proofread when I am awake. On the other hand, I still haven't finished my coffee and I am still posting. Oh well, failed again.