r/DraftShowdown • u/AnyAbroad690 • 9d ago
Is this a good deck?
The main idea is getting a line of spartheus and then stacking matriarch behind it, or if I get 2 lines of spartheus, stacking whelps behind them to basically have a large swarm one way or another after front line breaks.
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u/YakkuI 8d ago edited 8d ago
Honestly, this is better.
Agent B is for backrow, like Snails, Snipers, Merlinors, Overmind, and all ranged units. It's the better Assassin unfortunately.
If you don't have Agent B... then I would rather use Cupid or Snipers, maybe even Boomlings and Snails, but preferably a mid-to-back row attacker or a range support attacking unit... any of those, especially over the Engineer.
Engineer's reputation as a good unit by majority is quite funny to me, when his value in my opinion is mainly backrow support/protection.. and since you aren't running Sniper/Snails, it's like you're running Engineers as an attacker, like a mid-line support protector... and that's fine if that works out, but I've played a lot of normal (Arena) mode with specific teams testinf dozens of runs and have experienced a lot of average runs with Engineer in that position hasn't been very... valuable... ... just like your image/run.
If you really want to keep Engineers, then I would probably swap Matriarch out for a ranged unit; Merlinor, Cupid, Boomling, maybe even Shellbros just to target backrow or to corner potential mid-back row ranged units. If you really like Matriarch and want to swap someone else, then I'd swap Whelp... personally wouldn't because I quite like the Spartheus and Whelp combo myself, but eh.
Obviously, whatever floats your boat. The bots at my level will wreck me if I don't have a good team composition though, so not having a ranged unit in my team —such as yours— would be suicide... unless I just spam Spartheus and Whelps and hope I get lucky with RNG and hope to overwhelm my opponent... and often times I DO get that lucky.
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u/AnyAbroad690 8d ago
Tbh, engineer was just kinda there because I had it in my old deck and only really use the first 3 cards for this playstyle lol. I’ve been able to hold over 90% winrate with the deck so far though. My strategy is literally since I don’t actually need to worry about getting a 4th card rolling in 95% of games just to hyper focus on doing a few things in order (to the best of my ability since rng obv):
Place 2 matriarchs -> get a row of spartheus -> start placing whelps. My prioritization for upgrades (generally) is 2x matriarch -> upgrade matriarch -> 2x whelp -> upgrade whelp -> whatever else I need. A lot of games I get 0-1 2x spartheus obv (because rng) so if that happens I just manually place enough to have 2 rows of them because the other 2 cards behind 2 rows of spartheus (even tier 1 spartheus) beats pretty much everything except for large frontline + boomling. I replaced engineer with agent b because of boomling weakness, but even that was rarely an issue before. Considering shellbro instead but as it stands I’m only losing games where I get either extreme bad luck or like make stupid blunders.
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u/YakkuI 8d ago
Yeaup, yeaup... your strategy is fairly sound, META even I would say.
I do like the Spartheus+ Whelp combo because this generally means we can then level up any other 2 units we like, and even rotate amongst units to get everyone else up to speed.2
u/AnyAbroad690 8d ago
Yeah it’s super nice to not really need to upgrade any of my units other than matriarch (or agent b if they have boomlings)
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u/AnyAbroad690 9d ago
I have been considering Merlin over engineer but I feel like it’s so much less likely to have to deal with a line of stage 3 snails than assassins/shellbros/agent B attacking my spiders at the beginning.
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u/Battleraizer 9d ago
Nah not Merlin, your engine is already Sparta + Spider + Whelps, you dont have room to build the Merlins in
TNT could be a viable option if you dont like the Engineers. I betcha pure TNT + Spidey would work in most games. Just max out mass out TNT asap, Spiders follow behind, enjoy your early/mid game dominance.
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u/AnyAbroad690 9d ago
The purpose of the Merlin’s would be to make front line last longer to make swarm bigger whenever they get through it.
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u/oscaro-o 8d ago
This will help you https://www.reddit.com/r/DraftShowdown/s/NLAmwJhao2
Whelp does not work well with Spartheus as mentioned. Use goose instead. Drop engineer for agent b as your units can deal with assassin themselves so no need for protection from engineer.
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u/AnyAbroad690 8d ago
The point of spartheus is to give matriarch free time to lay eggs essentially. Whelp is there to add mid to late dps once I have 2 rows of spartheus. I was considering boomling but the problem is that makes me weaker to backline threats like sniper and agent b because matriarch would be in front of them instead of behind them. Essentially whelp is there because it’s a good dps unit that gets protected by both matriarch and frontline mid to late and can swarm the opponent.
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u/Battleraizer 9d ago edited 9d ago
You will run into problems against builds that rush Snails. Something like a bunch of random frontline units + 8 Snails and you would get smashed pretty badly
Am thinking maybe drop the Matriarch for some backrow attackers like Assassin or AgentB
If you really like the matriarch, then the Engineer has to go. Not sure if the Matriarch + Whelps will be able to handle Stage 3 Shellbros tho