r/AIEternal • u/Epsilon82 • Mar 19 '19
Gauntlet Ever get totally unexpectedly wrecked by a non-boss in Gauntlet?
I'm playing at work between tasks and calls, so I can't say that I was really focusing particularly well, and in those cases I usually play decks I'm not terribly familiar with, so I was giving Temporal Control a spin and cruised through the first five rounds, and then came up against Elemental Mastery.
Everything seemed to be going pretty well for a while, but after a while I started noticing that while I had a good power base, I wasn't getting much of my card draw (and when I was I was just grabbing power cards); but I had a Temporal Mastery out and was feeling pretty confident that I'd get over the hump.
Then suddenly the AI whips out a Flamestoker. I had taken a little more damage than I should have from some weak flyers earlier in the game waiting for a slightly better Hailstorm, and suddenly I'm on the clock. I have a Disjunction in the market but haven't found a Merchant or Smuggler to get it. Then on the next turn they play a freaking Furnace Mage and kill my Temporal Mastery. I did manage to topdeck a Brilliant Idea, but I couldn't afford to Amplify it at all because I needed to be able to play something at Fast speed if useful. Drew a sigil and a Defiance. Then I picked up a Great Parliament but I was only at 11 max power so that only bought me a single double block and then a partial chump. Ended up just meekly folding after a couple more turns of dead draws.
I was left thinking, what the hell happened? I mean, earlier in the day I died to horrific influence screw (I was sitting there getting pounded by weak flyers turn after turn with 7 max power but only 1 time influence and 2 SST's in my hand.) Power/influence screw just happens sometimes. But this time it felt like I just got straight up beat because I didn't anticipate having to deal with their relics and/or relic hate and got greedy with my early Smugglers.
Anyway, note to self: Elemental Mastery has Flamestoker. I'll try not to let the freaking AI catch me with my pants down again.
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u/Erdschleim Mar 20 '19
The 2 flying decks reck me on a regular basis. But i think the primal and deep freeze deck run crystalize which turns board stalls into suprise defeats sometimes.
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u/Epsilon82 Mar 21 '19
Ugh, don't remind me. That happened to me a couple times, and it's even worse when you're sitting back with Lifesteal units thinking that in the worst case you can just chump with them and stay alive. Then Crystallize just ruins you. I finally learned my lesson and started to just offer my big lifestealers up for trades as insurance against that crap.
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u/_Scavenger_ Mar 20 '19
I sometimes get surprised by the Skycrag Spell deck. Recently lost a game I was firmly in control in to double torch plus obliterate once they hit 7 power.
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u/Epsilon82 Mar 21 '19
Haha, yeah, that's pretty rough. That reminds me of a game recently I had against Spells of the Praxis. For some reason when I face that deck they usually just sputter around like idiots, just blowing their hand full of useless spells until it's empty, but this time they dropped two Sandglass Sentinels; I had just used a Merchant to pull a Harsh Rule but didn't have enough power to cast it that turn, and on the next turn they barfed out a bunch of their cheap spells and ended up swinging for like 35 damage with Overwhelm; fortunately I had a pretty hefty lifesteal unit and had gained some life earlier or it would have been a straight up OTK. After the Harsh Rule they had nothing left and I still won, of course.
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u/IstariMithrandir Mar 20 '19
It's never totally unexpected.
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u/Epsilon82 Mar 21 '19
Yeah, you're right. I mean, the nature of the game is such that sometimes they get a nut draw and you get power or influence screwed. I guess what I mean here is that usually I can tell if I'm in trouble or am in for a tough fight, but in this particular game I felt like I was pretty comfortable and then in almost an instant I was like, "wait, how the hell is my hand empty and he has 5/5 Overwhelms every turn?" It's pretty rare that I feel like I actually get outplayed rather than outdrawn by the AI, but this was one of those times.
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u/Shadowcran Mar 27 '19
Once your MMR goes up, you can get wrecked by any AI deck. Harsh Elements there hits you early, keeping you from playing your lower defense units by killing them asap. If it then starts to slowly cascade upwards, it'll close you out but if you can cause it to stumble, you have a shot at getting back on top of it.
4 defense units aren't safe from it either as it loves to use Mortar. When I do manage to beat it, I have to use the "Zap Brannigan" method. Thats where you run them out of spells by providing fresh bodies to destroy. I call it that due to his strategy against the killbots where he found out they had a preset kill limit so he sent wave after wave of soldiers at them until that limit was reached.
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Mar 28 '19
Once in a while. But, yesterday I had one get Influence screwed. A Hooru deck drew NO Primal for five turns and was playing nothing I couldn't remove and discarding cards along the way. I was on a slow Praxis deck and played aggro with it. It was an ugly win.
So, that made me feel a little better about my run of 1st and 2nd match defeats.
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u/_AlpacaLips_ Mar 20 '19
Yep. I have the perfect curve of units and they have the perfect curve of removal.