QSTORM Deck Brew (previously Kagestorm)

[paulmuaddib]

Hello everyone, I recently got back into Duelyst after being away for about 2 years. It seems like my favorite decks have rotated out of favor (Twilight Fox and Burn). I saw the infinite combo deck that centered around Meditate and built it before giving Meditate a closer read (I thought it said including, not excluding).
Anyway I wanted to build a deck that’s for fun, not that competitive. I took the shell of the aforementioned deck to make this. The goal is to have a boardstate with a Four Winds/Bloodrage Mask, Storm Kage and Second-sword Saguri out all at the same time and cast any damage spell.
If they’ve got lots of minions you can wipe the board and come out on top with the damage from Four/Bloodrage. Alternative finishers are Firestorm Mantra from the Plumes or Spiral Technique and face damage from your beefy 7 drops.

Any suggestions to improve the deck, make it more consistent or actually competitive past Silver division are welcome.
It’s fun but not viable to play if you want to climb the ladder.

[mrmana3]

Is the main purpose of the deck focused on the Four Winds or Mask OTK?

If so, those Araras Prophets are important. But instead of Second Sword Sarugi and Storm Kage, consider meditate.

You can play the plumes from araras prophet then cast meditate to make more. By using the Qorllama, your deck will consist of almost nothing but plumes that you can chain to victory.

A strategy like this probably uses fewer spells too, so Qorllama leaves you with nothing but combo pieces.

[paulmuaddib]

@mrmana3
Yeah you’re right. I had tried it out a while yesterday but needing to have two 7 drops out, one surviving the turn, a damage spell and a four winds/mask out while the enemy has enough minions to damage to death is too fragile.
I tried revamping it and I have this for now. I’m unsure of how to deal with those big vanilla creatures like the 10/10 golems. My only answers seem to be ghost lynx or sinister silhouette.
Anyway, what you want to do with this is stall the game while you search for the prophet and aethermaster. Ideally you’ll want to copy athermaster with mirrorrim so that it’s easier to search through your deck.
You’ll need to keep in mind that if you cast 10 spells that don’t do damage in a row, you’ll need to damage an enemy before you can do it again, and that every time you draw a card in your deck without any cards, you lose 2 health (idk if its lose or take damage). After the Q’orrhlma’a, there could be a few dead draws supposing you have only 1 plume in hand. the meditates, other Q’orrhlma’as and if you draw the Vortex too early. I’d advise keeping your “draw card at end of turn” spells that you get off of the BBS, so if you go off on a turn with spare mana, you can get another plume.
Also advise using the speedhack script.

[mrmana3]

This variant is much nicer. Now there are no clunky Spiral Techniques or 7 mana minions when Qorllama thins the deck.

I will say Chakri Avatar could be replaced with something else since you’ll only play spells for your combo. Azure Herald is a great cheap substitute that helps you last long enough to carry out your game plan.

Also, have you considered adding one copy of Ornate Hiogi? Once you have only plumes and meditates, you can play them all at once since each time you play a free spelll, you draw another free spell.

Perhaps sub out a mirrorim. I understand wanting to have more replace synergy, but it will be harder to find Qorllama. And once you play it, you’ll lose your copies anyway.

[elahn]

I am almost tempted to throw in one or two Heaven’s Eclipse, since you have so few spells. Just adds that much more chance at drawing everything you need. @ the main post deck.

[paulmuaddib]

@elahn
Yeah I thought about it for that one; I guess it could work for the 11 mana spell. If you’ve played enough to get it to 7 you could play Heaven’s Eclipse and summon a 7 drop on the same turn.

@mrmana3
Well the way I think about it, the avatar is there for backup in case you wiff on the combo turn. It would need to stay alive for 3 turns but it’s not insufficient backup. It’s probably very likely to draw a Qorllama or Meditate if you don’t have the Mantra in hand. Azure Herald is probably something good to keep in mind, along with Azure Horn Shaman (2 drops die quite often to low health).
The Ornate Hiogi is something I considered but keep in mind your maximum hand size. Supposing you only have a plume in hand, after casting 5 plumes you’ll start discarding a card for each plume, making it fairly likely to discard the Mantra. It’s also one more turn of setup.
In the current deck your ideal play is Prophet (1 plume), Aethermaster (3 plumes), Celebrant & Prophet (7 plumes), Qorrhimaa (11 plumes), (15 plumes) cast, hit face for the 10 spell limit and do Mantra for 32. Whereas there’s a chance that after you cast the Ornate Hiogi your opponent will hit you 3 times or cast a Rust Crawler.

I’ll have to do some statistics to see what the optimal way to cast certain creatures. Like the Replicant, I don’t know if its better to cast all 3 of them or only 2 and replace the last one.

[nh3maser]

A while back there was a thread on Songhai memes that included someone’s take on this style of Q’orrhlma’a combo. I’m not a fan of the version that depends on Plumes, because it feels inconsistent for several reasons: while it’s usually possible to find Q’orrhlma’a by the time you need it, it’s much dicier to have to find a specific 2-drop (Prophet) very early on in the game; once you’ve started to combo it’s catastrophically bad to hit any card besides another Plume or Mantra as it instantly ends your chain; and even if you do end with Mantra, you need to have it come late enough that it’s lethal but early enough that you don’t run afoul of the 10 spells clause. If any of these points fail, you’ve already lost the game.

I would suggest instead something like this:

The amount of setup is comparable, but instead of having to find combo pieces extremely early you just need to locate Mr. Q by the 6 mana turn (although it’s nice if you locate the Rokadoptera earlier), and once you start going of you’re very unlikely to whiff. It’s still a meme deck, but a little more consistent.

[neme6ix]

Wait.
Kagestorm deck brew without Storm Kage?
Am I dreaming right now?

[paulmuaddib]

@neme6ix You’re right, I have changed the title accordingly. Feel free to talk about decks centered around Storm Kage though; I’d suggest a Second-sword and Mantra in any deck he goes in.

@nh3maser Thanks! I wasn’t playing during that time, so I was unaware of those threads. It’s true that the plume strategy is very fragile. You need to not only have at least 2 specific minions out at the same time for many turns, but also to, like you said, have very specific draws during the combo itself.

[paulmuaddib]

@nh3maser I made some edits to your list, here’s a replay of it in action https://play.duelyst.com/replay?replayId=-LgGlo45XgzU9I-8n2I2 and the deck is here

I think I might put in 3 dreamgazers (which isn’t something I’ve seen in any of these lists) and bump up the Herald to 3. The dreamgazers do the same thing that the replicant does, thins the deck so that you’re more likely to draw something useful. My version uses loreweaver, which has the possibility of making more meditates, assuming you have 2 free action bar slots.

[paulmuaddib]

I have refined the previous list with this current deck and the following analysis.

Changes made
-removed Araras Prophet
While the incidental lifegain was nice, I once had a game where I had no meditates in hand, had to win that turn or lose, and after casting the rok I draw a plume. A deck which can reliably screw itself over isn’t good design. If you’re going for the Mantra win, this won’t matter, but since this deck doesn’t run Mantra, it’s not a good fit for the deck.

-Removed Loreweaver
While testing, Loreweaver was either a fun t4, t5 play, where if you drew a meditate, it was great but if not it was nothing but removal bait. If you got it after casting Q, you’d just have another turn for your opponent to get an answer.

-Changed General to Stormblossom
The BBS can really help this deck’s consistency out on later turns. Being able to cast up to 3 spells if you’re at the 9 mana mark, you can get around those dead draws.

-Removed the Cryptographer
While that might have been good in Reva to get heartseekers for early board control, for Shidai it’s underwhelming, there’s better minions to add in.

-Removed Healing Mystic
It seemed underwhelming to me, maybe something like azure horn mystic. I noticed on some turns I could get 3-4 minions out one turn, azure could make them more threatening. Azure didn’t make the cut but don’t discount it if you build your own version of this deck.

-Removed Primus Fist
He might make for 4 power removal at most in the early turns and 8 if you kept him in hand before playing Q; he didn’t seem that powerful to me. I found that 2 drops which slowed the board down worked better since they have staying power. Blocking the enemy with Sinister Silhouettes appeared to be more effective to me. I could be wrong though.

Added in Dreamgazer
While these do damage you, they remove themselves from your deck, making it more consistent. Having an Aethermaster and 2 of these in your opening hand feels great, since every draw and replace after that is that more likely to be what you want. You might feel that having the deck deal 6 damage to you would require more healing, and maybe you’re right. Feel free to cut something that you feel is underwhelming to add the Healing Mystics back in.
Note: if you have a Replicant in hand, cast it before replacing the Dreamgazer. If you have it and Q in hand, cast Q first and then replace the Dreamgazer.

Added Carcynus
I feel that the big body on this crab is great for protecting yourself. Slowing down your opponent because they spend much of their early game resources on this 2 drop is a plus for you. Not as good late game. This is a pet card of mine after seeing it, so feel free to cut it.

Added Celebrant
Being able to get your Q out even one turn early could decide the game against a very aggressive deck. I didn’t get a chance to play it while testing the ladder though.

Added Sinister Silhouette
This slows down decks which focus on making a singular big scary creature. Also blocking an enemy from getting close to you is great. The ability seems really good, but it’s not obvious that it dies to frenzy and counterattacks.

P.S.
I hope that I can do a statistical analysis how impactful the deck manipulation minions are. I.e. what weight does a turn 1 Dreamgazer have on the deck vs t1 aethermaster or replicant. Aethermaster is defiantly good, but it never actually makes the deck smaller, so how good is the extra replacement versus pulling an extra card out of the deck?

[nh3maser]

Nice writeup! I think most of these changes are attributable to playstyle preference. Reva’s Heartseekers and minions like Fist and Mystic let you take a more reactive role in removing your opponent’s threats (I’ve experimented with Tusk Boar before for even more immediate answers). You seem to prefer playing a keepaway game, for which Shidai and high-toughness bodyblockers are better suited. Rock Pulverizer would be another good fit for your approach, although I’m not sure what you would cut for it.

As for the Prophets: it’s true that there are corner cases in which the Plumes can interrupt the combo, but I like them because they give extra draws with Hiogi - two Plumes in the deck makes the combo guaranteed once you’ve started. However, having more than two is actively bad since it opens you up to overdrawing, so you need to carefully manage the Prophet in order to kill it off in time.

[paulmuaddib]

@nh3maser Yes I suppose that is the playstile I do, not attack with my general if avoidable and not attacking with my own minions if I can avoid it.

As for the Prophets: it’s true that there are corner cases in which the Plumes can interrupt the combo, but I like them because they give extra draws with Hiogi - two Plumes in the deck makes the combo guaranteed once you’ve started. However, having more than two is actively bad since it opens you up to overdrawing, so you need to carefully manage the Prophet in order to kill it off in time.

I did some analysis on just the first draw after having the spear and hogi out and just the Boulder Hurl in hand, while having just 2 Q’s and 3 meditates left in the deck. Supposing you want to win before your opponent plays a Magesworn, you’ll need to attempt to go off on that turn. Keep in mind that after you cast the Boulder Hurl, you can’t cast a plume immediately after, otherwise you lose.

3 meditates
2 Q’s

cast hurl and there’s a 3:5 (60%) chance of drawing a meditate and a 3:4 (75%) chance of replacing into one if you draw a Q. The percentage to not get a Meditate after casting hurl in this situation is 10%

3 meditates
2 plumes
2 Qs

cast hurl and there’s a 3:7 (42.86%) chance of drawing a meditate and a 1:2 (50%) chance of replacing into a meditate. The percentage to not get a Meditate after casting hurl in this situation is 29%.

Keep in mind that this is the probability of the first draw after casting hurl. While the 29% auto lose in this situation will keep me from running the prophets fork now, I would gladly change it if it turns out that the win percentage of the other deck is smaller.

[paulmuaddib]

I took your suggestion and tried a few different runs with Rock Pulverizer and it did slow some decks down for a turn or 2. I opted for a Wood-wen in the end, removing the Alchemist. I also had a list that I didn’t playtest very much that removed a maw for the Azure Horn Shaman. The reason I put in Wood-wen is that it goes amazingly with Sinister Silhouette, and in a pinch I can give a less optimal minion provoke. Most of them have okay health. If they don’t draw their removal, that combination can lock down a sizable portion of the board. I’m surprised I haven’t seen those two in more non-Vetruvian decks. You’ll want to be careful against Magmar, since they have frenzy minions with rush and spells, so if they can reach the Wood-wen, the Silhouette dies too.

Anyway here’s the current list. I don’t think there’s anything people can really do to change the deck beyond this point, besides swap out the non-essential minions to fit your playstyle. Past this post I’ll try doing statistical analysis of the deck.

[paulmuaddib]

I’m sure someone has done statistical analysis like this before but it could be adapted to any deck, not just this one. Although since this is a combo deck and we’re looking for specific cards to be in our hands, it might not apply as strongly to other decks.
So out of a deck of 40 cards, the opening hand has 5 cards. The chances of at least one specific card which has 3 copies in the deck in that hand is 1 - 33c5/40c5 (34%). So we have to work a little hard to get Mr Q, which is the centerpiece to making the deck work. Now if we replace 2 cards, there’s a probability of 1 - 32c2/35c2 (17%) of getting it.
For cards of which there are only 1 copy, we get a probability of 1 - 39c5/40c5 (12.5%) for opening hand and 1 - 34c2/35c2 (6%) to replace into a specific one, such as Rok.
Now these chances look slim, but we’ll take a look at how Aethermaster, Replicant and Dreamgazer can individually make the deck more consistent.

Aethermaster-
Each time you replace a card, you have a Y/X chance of getting a specific card you’re looking for, where Y is the number of that card in the deck and X is the number of cards left in the deck. Aethermaster lets you do it twice, essentially making your turns count for double replacements. Note that while the effect does stack, if you replace twice, kill your existing Aethermaster as a last resort and then play another one, you’ll only get 2 replaces in the turn. Doing the math, having 1 Aethermaster out makes your chances for a card (YX-Y^2)/X^2, so a turn 1 Aethermaster makes it a (Y/X)^(1+# of Aethermasters) chance to replace into Q on just that turn (17%). Better than only 8.5% for the singular replacement.

Dreamgazer
These are great minions to have in your action bar for after you cast Q. But if you don’t already have him in hand, how helpful are they really to replace? Well they decrease the deck size by 1, so they’re similar to drawing a card. A turn 1 Dreamgazer replacement will make the draw for turn 8.8% likely to get Q vs 8.5%. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but it’s one of only 2 ways to thin the deck besides Q. Each card removed from the deck adds 0.03% to draw or replace into a card with 3 copies in the deck or 0.01% with a singleton card.

Replicant
A single replicant will remove 2 of them from the deck if you can cast them, making replacing after casting both, 0.06% or 0.02% more likely to draw Q or a Rok. These are useless to cast after casting Q, so replace them before that if you’re casting Q that turn.

This means that the correct play between a Replicant and an Aethermaster is always the Aethermaster; even if it’s out for only a single turn it’s provided more advantage, (8.5% or higher), than the Replicant ever could. Of course, 2 - 3 bodies on the board might save you from something, so don’t discount that part. Dreamgazers aren’t ever actually cast, so you’ll almost always be able to use their advantage.

[mothergreen]

Thanks for your enthusiasm towards the deck. Really enjoy reading this thread. Not sure if it matters for your analysis, but, while its true a deck has 40 cards, you actually just draw out of 39 of them. 1 card is the general. So that might be increasing chances a little? Also, have you thought about adding Hideatsu or Wanderer to the list? This would reduce the decksize by another card, and maybe make it more consistent. But it also could clog your hand.

[paulmuaddib]

Oh you’re right. That should increase the chances by a little bit; I’ll post updated changes later.

[paulmuaddib]

@mothergreen Those trial cards would be great if they stayed removed until you completed the trial; however reading from https://duelyst.gamepedia.com/Trial_and_Destiny

At the start of your match, your Trial and Destiny card will be removed from your deck. It will be added to your Action Bar after the mulligan phase. This will be the sixth card in your Action Bar (it does not take up a slot from your opening hand).
These cards can never be replaced and you cannot play them until you’ve completed the Trial.
If they were replaceable, then perhaps I would add them. Does anyone know if you can have 2 different cards of Mythron rarity in the deck?

If there can only be one, it doesn’t seem to change the stats that much:
35.3% vs 34.5% for opening hand, 17.7% vs 17.2% for mulligan and 9.1% for replacement/draw on first turn vs 8.8%. Like you mentioned, the problem is that this doesn’t allow for certain cards like replicants to both be played on a turn unless you can get something else out of your hand. So certain situations can’t be played without the risk of throwing away one of your combo pieces. I don’t know if having to actively avoid situations, like playing 2 replicants in a row, is worth the advantages this gives in removing a card from the deck during mulligan phase. Anyway with one of these, the probability of drawing Q by the draw phase is 56% versus the 55.2% by not including one of those cards. So it’s only a 0.8% increase because it’s never in the deck but that’s more than the replicants pull.
I actually pulled the Wanderer, so I might test it out.

The updates stats are
1 - (36c5)/(39c5) or 35% for opening hand, and 1 - (31c2)/(34c2) or 17% for a card with 3 copies.
1 - (38c5)/(39c5) or 13% opening hand and 1 - (33c2)/(34c2) or 6% for a card with 1 copy.
Replacement turn 1 gives 8.8% chance so Aethermaster turn 1 is still 16.8% but is ahead the 16.4% of the previous calculation.
Replicants and Dreamgazers still give the same percentage increases, but the chances are bumped up from their previous track.

Doing a tree of this, the probability of getting a Q by the draw of turn 1 without any help from Aethermaster and crew is 55.2%.

[mothergreen]

Unfortunately, you can only play one Mythron card per deck.

[excogitator]

It’ll be a cold day in hell when I turn my 0% win rate Kage meme into a playable deck!