Post 1% and 5% Finishes Here

[Aszyre]

Take a screenshot of your cards and (if you like) write a short report on how you performed, why you lost the matches you did and what cards might have improved your deck.

Assuming people actually post here, this topic should be a great boon to posterity. A database of top-performing decks is a killer reference for deck building.

[Aszyre]

This is a 5% finish in a 24h Purity tournament. It was submitted by a guildie from Aksala.

[Hunter Hogan]

Very interesting. One of the few times Deacon was probably useful. It I am identifying the cards correctly, Deacon was one of only two Siege cards. Was this deck successful because of?

1. Lots of Flying
2. Two Abominable Horror
3. Heirophant's Supply 2
4. Meat shields
5. Fast AntiAir

The lone structure is interesting to me. Did it help that much or did it just die a lot? On the other hand, I am not sure what else I would put in the 10th slot. Maybe the Righteous Wait-1, Attack 3, Protect card? Congrats to your guildmate, this deck has potential, but it is a sophisticated deck and winning with it would take skill. Good job!

Side topic

I like this thread and images can work, but card lists would make things much easier, which is why I posted the question Can you program a tool to export card lists from sealed tournaments?

[Warp the Sculptor]

http://imgur.com/a/Snse0 

Both decks were 5% in gold sealed. 

1st deck: I had 6 commanders to choose from, but picked Natasha due to the good raider rally synergy of the cards I got. Duncan would obviously have been better, and probably Atlas as well. The most trouble I had were against Atlas and Duncan decks with similar card pools, which also ended up placing in the top 1% or 5%. Surprisingly, Malorts posed no trouble, since I did have Tiamat and the 2 righteous cards to play early on. Orca is very key in this tourney for taking down Draconian Queens, Tiamats, and Nimbuses. With Duncan/Atlas or a good action card, this could have been 1%, I was very close, at maybe 2%. 

2nd deck: I expected a top 25% or 10% finish with it, but had quite a bit of luck not facing a lot of Atlases or Malorts, which I did lose against when I face them, except one Atlas deck without many other good cards. A lot of flying also gave me trouble for lack of antiair. Main strategy here is to get Vigil and Chronos out and protecting them from dying early with the action cards. Malort did trick a few opponents into playing anti-BT cards. Again, Atlas/Duncan might have given me top 1%, but this deck is not as good as the first, so perhaps I would have also needed an EMP in place of one of my other actions.

[darn42]

I could not leave this unposted. I got, imo, the most dominant pull possible in a blight tourny...

http://i.imgur.com/ygBw9.jpg 

The only losses were complete luck on the opponents part. My rally going to the single bad target or flying or something like that. Anyways, it is the most fun I've had with a deck ever. Unfortunately, this is yet another 1st place blight tourny that I will not get apollo from...

[darn42]

Not sure how to edit but there is now a 1% in this tourny :D I spoke too soon.

[oienoien]

http://imgur.com/V9ysu 

Top 5% this current 24hr gold tourney. It seems like 24hr tourneys are a bit tougher than 2hr tourneys. After looking at the cards, I thought this was easy 5% for sure, but I was actually bottom 50% for a while because I kept facing other top 1% and 5% worthy decks and had a few bad draws and flying was not in my favor. Took a break, got better luck, and was able to make it to top 5%. Biggest weakness was against other Atlases and going first with RNG not working in my favor. Also lost to Duncans and Malorts with good rally synergy and at least 2 of (Omega, Tiamat, EMP, Irradiation, Airstrike, Pandemic, Missile Silo, Pelican, Nimbus, or Apex). Lack of siege and being sieged was a weakness.

[Hunter Hogan]

This deck is shocking to me. I never would have made this deck, and I never would have guessed it could have done so well. There are at least two big things I would have done differently, and based on your performance and my experience, I think my choices would have been inferior. First, if you don't mind, please tell me about Rally Flag. I generally hate Structures in Gold Sealed (Enclave is different), and I especially hate low Health Structures, and I try hard to avoid only playing one Structure. I am amazed that Rally Flag was useful, so there must be something I do not understand here. Do you hold it until the turn before you need it? Do you expect it to die immediately, so that you basically think of it as an Action card with Wait 1? Seriously, I need to understand how to view this differently.

Second, it looks like you have Cyclone, but you picked Havenship instead. I basically ignore Havenship: am I under-valuing this card? Tell me about this decision. 

Third, you said that Orca was key. I can't think of a time when I ever thought Orca was key. Even with all of that Strike, you still needed AntiAir to seal the deal?

Congrats on this win: I don't think I could have done better than top 10%!

[Hunter Hogan]

Ok, that Blight deck is ah-mazing. Congrats on Apollo!

To edit: click on the down arrow in the upper-right corner of the post.

[Hunter Hogan]

You know something about Structures that I don't know. You played Asylum but you only had one Bloodthirsty card. I don't even know what to ask. I am so confused that I cannot think of an intelligent question. It seems that I have a lot to learn about Structures in Gold Sealed. 

[oienoien]

Hi Hunter,

I think structures are the best cards to play on the first turn, better than 0 drops if you don't have a rally commander. If I play Missile Silo at all, I usually play it early and if the opponent has not siege, it pretty much seals the deal. As for the Asylum/Rally Flag, I do think of them as delayed action cards. Often times I'd drop them even when going against Duncan, because I know it will guarantee that I can take out a critical card the next turn. I wouldn't suggest putting them in your deck though unless you have 0 or 1 drop assaults. 

Why didn't you think the Natasha deck could make 5%? It had Tiamat, Omega, and great Raider rally synergy. Rallying Grunt/Omega to 4 attack in only 1 turn is incredibly powerful in gold sealed. Most cards played simply can't take that much damage. Orca is a bit squishy, but really it's not much worse than Indebted Veteran, Dominated Hatchlings, or Quad Walker. With the lack of anti-air and great raider rally in this deck, it works well taking out dangerous cards like Apex, Nimbus, Draconian Queen, and Chronos when played at the right moment. I find Havenship a great card to play first, since it has counter. Once match, I was incredibly luck; it was able to jam Apex and take it out single handedly. Maybe Cyclone would have been good too; I just didn't try it.

For the other deck, I actually had both Annelid Masses and Selfless Soldier in the deck at first, but I kept on losing because my cards were too squishy. It was annoying when I kept on drawing Annelids when they played high power/high health cards. So I replaced them with Marauder and Sawblade. Several times, Asylum saved me from loses because it protected Atlas long enough for Missile Silo to activate. Chimara was actually the biggest weakness in that deck. If it had been Neocyte Guard, I would have had a much easier time. And without Righteous Synergy, I would have preferred Dominated Hatchling or maybe even Quad Walker over Indebted Veteran in this deck.

[oienoien]

Not sure how to edit posts. But now that I look back, it might have been good to put Tempest somewhere in that Atlas deck, since most of the cards had too low health, and it would have helped against other strike heavy decks. The Jam Raider could have saved me from some Pelicans too. Oh well.

[Aszyre]

That's the change I would have made. I would have used Tempest instead of Marauder.

[oienoien]

http://imgur.com/KSkqW 

5% yet again. This gold sealed that just ended. Forgot to take screen cap during the tourney, since I was still fighting until the last second. The image is a reconstruction using my owned cards. Placed #4 out of 352. I was just a battle or 2 away from beating 3rd place, but ran out of time. I faced the other top 6 participants multiple times and we traded points back and forth. Surprisingly, #1 was not an Atlas deck. He had Marlort, but I think also 2 Sabres, and a Tiamat, Omega, Airstrike, or EMP (don't remember exactly). I was able to beat him 2 out of 3 times. The other top 6 were all Atlas decks with cards most people consider to be better than mine. They had at least 2 of (Tiamat, Omega, Sabre, and EMP), but they also had Vigil, Knight, Dominated Hatchlings, etc.

Aegis was tricky to play, but when he worked, he prevented Omega and Sabre from dying, which was how I defeated some of the other top players. Decided to go with a 9 card deck, because all the other cards I received where unplayable.

[oienoien]

I'm also convinced that entering sealed without keeping the cards gives you better cards. It's was just earlier this week when I got my first Atlas, but since then, I've gotten Atlas 3 times in sealed tourneys, and Omega twice. Last time, Atlas was shiny and this time; Omega was shiny. When I played for keeps before, I always get complete crap.

[oienoien]

Yet another 5% with an inferior deck.  http://imgur.com/yhH6M

I swear when I opened the packs, it looked like it should barely make 25%. I had a lot of luck with card order and barely squeezed into 5%. There were 2 matches that I could have won, but played extremely stupidly. Opponent dropped Rabid Corruptor first move, and I dropped Tempest rather than Arc Trooper thinking that I was surging a def deck. Another time, I dropped Airstrike stupidly. But aside from that, luck was very much in my favor. At first, I had Tempest in place of Tremor Wyrm, but after losing twice to Tremor Wyrm decks, I realized his value. And as soon as I put him in the deck, he became the reason that I defeated the ranked #1 deck, which was basically a standard gold Atlas deck. I must say Ryoko is superior to Atlas in Enclave/Gold mix. Ryoko always heals the right targets and saves you from being outflanked. Atlas just ends up having its strike constantly reversed by heal. Speculus was the MVP in quite a few matches. Mimic Imperial was actually superior to Median's mimic, because it was able to mimic Tiamat without fail and completely destroy the opponent's deck. With the presence of Ryoko, Malgoth and Dominated Hatchlings were almost impossible to kill. What this deck greatly lacked was siege and anti-air. Ranked 2 was very tough to beat; I think I lost at least once and won once. It had Ryoko and 2 Tesla Cannons. The only reason I won was using Airstrike on Aegis when it was dropped first against Glaive. Luckily, after that I was able to play Malgoth, which survived against a few hits, allowing me to outflank to take down the cannons. Draconian Queens also gave me plenty of trouble. Cannon walker would have been great to have when not facing Ryoko. Aquabat or some decent flying unit would have been nice as well.

[Hunter Hogan]

Interesting. Tremor Wyrm in Enclave/Gold mix. That makes sense but I have never tried it because it is such a bad card in pure Enclave. Congrats, again!

[oienoien]

Thanks! It was good that I did not encounter any Medians, but Mirror Walls were tricky to play against.

[oienoien]

http://imgur.com/p70sV 

Yet another 5%...  After my last 5% win, my global rating went up to 1312 (24th place). Then I had a bad streak with only top 25% and bottom 50% finishes, making my rating go down to under 1100 (over 1000th place). This time my luck came back and I was able to place 3rd out of 250. It was very close, top 5 places kept on trading places until the last minute. I was 2nd early on and nobody else was close until only 30 minutes were left. Then when there was only 10 minutes left, 2 people passed the original 1st place, forcing me to play again, which I luckily won. Then, the very last minute, after the last update, one person passed me, so I was 3rd. Apollo still evades me. :(

Other than Tiamat and Death from Above, this deck had no particularly awesome cards. But the balance and synergy was awesome. I had meatshields when I want them, Anti-Air when I want them, and Siege when I want them. The Anti-Air/flying and raider rally synergy allowed me to one-shot Nimbus, Draconian Queen, Phoenix, etc. Power generator was actually very useful here, saving some of my cards for an extra turn and the rally 1 was nice. I almost considered using Hydra, Ajax, or Ryoko, but I'm glad that I went with Duncan and Bazooka Marine instead.

[Hunter Hogan]

I earned top 5%, but that was because real life got in the way of earning top 1%. (Hell, I could have earned 1300 points with this deck.) I was only able to play for the first 90 minutes and the last 2.5 hours of the tournament. During the last 2.5 hours, the damned computer would not give me enough matches, so I wasn't able to increase my score enough. (Kong forum crap, boring don't bother with it. YouTube playlist of some of my trouble getting matches; also boring and stupid, so no need to view it.)

Thank you!

First, I have to thank summoncamel, Aszyre, Louis Fairhead, oienoien, and all of TnT. This was the first time I successfully built a Homeworld Fear deck, and I could not have done it without the sealed guides. The Homeworld guide is awesome and without it, I would have built the wrong deck. For example, I am confident that I would have tried to add more cards to the deck; I really struggled to not add Heli-Duster, but because I read the guide, and the guide explained the advantages of a small deck, I was able to limit my deck to 8 cards. The Homeworld guide came after the Gold Sealed Guide, and I learned a lot from that guide, too. Again, I strongly prefer 10-card decks, but the in Gold sealed thread, we talked about using less than 10 cards, and it helped me to believe that small decks can be strong. 

Writing a guide is a lot of work, and even replying with useful ideas takes effort: to summoncamel and Aszyre thank you for hard work of making the guides. To everyone that replied to the guides, thank you. To everyone that replied to this thread, especially oienoien, thank you for sharing your knowledge. If you guys and girls had not shared your information with TnT, then I would not have been able to make it into the top 5%, and, even more important, the tournament would not have as been as fun. Thanks for making the game more fun! 

The deck:

Available cards

Commanders, no Structure, no Action

Assault cards: two Zephyr Funnel, two Medivac, if not in deck, then only one of everything else (so that is why I put Zephyr Funnel in the deck for the picture only)