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I finally pulled off a barricade/entrench deck with ironclad, which is my worst character by far. 33 hours on ironclad and this was my 3rd win with him
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 02:04 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 15:12 |
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WarpedLichen posted:I think my problem with alpha is that the 50 damage a turn is actually not enough damage for a lot of the harder fights. yea the one time i had a deck that felt perfect for it, i had a ton of draw/filtering and was able to quickly get it online in every fight. then i got to the a2 boss and realized that not only did i need to assemble the combo, i'd need to survive for 6+ more turns afterwards
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 02:09 |
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MJeff posted:
I've been ditching the watcher's starter relic a lot. Sometimes I drop the silent's relic, but I never drop the ironclad or defect's relics. Watcher's 1 mana/fight is easily beaten by most boss relics, a good chunk will give you 1 mana/turn. And most of the others provide more than 1 mana worth of value. Silent's 2 cards/fight is pretty good, so you're hoping to hit a smaller pool of relics to get one that provides more value. Ironclad's relic is bonkers. 40+ hp/act easily translates into extra campfire upgrades or relics from elite fights. Defect's relic provides a lot of value in the early game. In act 1 it does a lot of work, but by act 3 it's not helping very much. If the swap could be delayed by an act or two, I'd be more willing to do it. jetz0r fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 27, 2020 |
# ? Jan 27, 2020 02:24 |
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jetz0r posted:I've been ditching the watcher's starter relic a lot. Sometimes I drop the silent's relic, but I never drop the ironclad or defect's relics. I'll often ditch the Cracked Core because you can always prioritise getting a source of Lightning from card rewards. You also get Data Disc or the relic that gives Plasma sometimes, upon which your run gets kind of silly. fadam posted:I played like six hours of Dominion with my gf this weekend and got th he itch to actually dig into this. Who would you guys recommend I watch to learn the ropes? I keep getting owned on ascension 2 world 2 Nobody answered this, but there's three top answers. If you want everything explained in excessive detail, go for Jorbs. If you want casual explanation and a lot of niche build runs, Baalorlord is your man. And if you're a weeb, there's Celerity (who is still a good player, mind you).
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 03:09 |
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Jedit posted:I'll often ditch the Cracked Core because you can always prioritise getting a source of Lightning from card rewards. You also get Data Disc or the relic that gives Plasma sometimes, upon which your run gets kind of silly. Cheers lad
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 03:19 |
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Straight White Shark posted:Having an energy relic means you can play an extra defend every single round, or duck entire rounds' worth of attacks by playing more damage to end the fight faster. That saves way more HP in the long run than Black Blood ever will. For Ironclad, I think you can roughly sort the boss relics into tiers. StS is basically Edge-Cases: The Game, but this is how I would generally rank them: Tier 1 - Always pick these if available
Tier 2 - Always pick unless Tier 1 available
Tier 3 - Good in most situations
Tier 4 - Good in some situations
Tier 5 - Never pick
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:30 |
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good list except runic dome is actually the best relic in the game
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:35 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:41 |
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Flurry of blows just saved my rear end against the heart as I forgot it was in my deck. loving awesome card.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:43 |
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snecko eye is actually S-tier (it stands for Snecko)
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:43 |
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Snecko Eye is the best ironclad relic by an insane margin. He's got a ton of incredibly powerful 2-3 cost cards for defense and offense that become broken when you're playing a bunch of them per turn for 0 or 1. Your tier list also seems to be significantly underrating ectoplasm/sozu/fusion hammer/coffee dripper, which are all good energy relics.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:49 |
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jetz0r posted:Watcher's 1 mana/fight is easily beaten by most boss relics, a good chunk will give you 1 mana/turn. And most of the others provide more than 1 mana worth of value. People rag on the Watcher's starting relic, but I have a really hard time giving it up. Having a 4th energy for one crucial turn is typically all you really need in act 1, and most of the energy relics have serious long term downsides--and those are generally the better options. Sozu is the only boss relic I'd be happy swapping for, which is pretty poor odds. I'm only taking the boss relic if the other options are particularly crummy.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:54 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:For Ironclad, I think you can roughly sort the boss relics into tiers. StS is basically Edge-Cases: The Game, but this is how I would generally rank them: I feel pretty comfortable in disagreeing with almost all of these.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 04:58 |
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Runic dome is definitely frozen eye tier of “this relic may be good but I am far too lazy to ever use it.”
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:05 |
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Straight White Shark posted:People rag on the Watcher's starting relic, but I have a really hard time giving it up. Having a 4th energy for one crucial turn is typically all you really need in act 1, and most of the energy relics have serious long term downsides--and those are generally the better options. Sozu is the only boss relic I'd be happy swapping for, which is pretty poor odds. I'm only taking the boss relic if the other options are particularly crummy. a good energy relic lets you gun for more elites, and the reward for that is going to easily outweigh the downside of a cursed key or ectoplasm or whatever.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:06 |
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I rolled a black star on a recent run and that's another super busted thing to get on floor zero. spent the first floor farming elites and healing up at camps and the next two acts were a cakewalk
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:09 |
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Microcline posted:Snecko Eye is the best ironclad relic by an insane margin. He's got a ton of incredibly powerful 2-3 cost cards for defense and offense that become broken when you're playing a bunch of them per turn for 0 or 1. Your tier list also seems to be significantly underrating ectoplasm/sozu/fusion hammer/coffee dripper, which are all good energy relics. Coffee Dripper is definitely a "good in some situations" energy relic since you just can't take it if you don't have some other form of sustain and that pool is pretty limited. I guess Ironclad's base relic could be enough on the lower ascensions.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:18 |
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Ironclad isn't my best class. I only have like 5 ascension 20 heart kills as Ironclad, so I don't really feel like I'm an expert on the class at all. But there are a few things I still feel pretty confident are wrong with that Ironclad boss relic tier list. Mark of Pain is usually bad. It adds 2 curses to your deck. Curses are pretty bad. Only take if you have really good ways of mitigating it, like a bottled Evolve or something. Or, of course, if you are absolutely desperate for a fourth energy. Snecko Eye is bonkers insane stupid ridiculous OP crazy-go-nuts GOOD on Ironclad. 90%+ of the time, Snecko is a slam pick for Ironclad. Ironclad has a lot of 2 cost attacks that will be 25% cheaper on average. Plus Snecko Eye is already good on all the classes because drawing 40% more cards per turn is really strong. Philosopher's Stone is fine until late in the game, but then it runs into a lot of trouble. The heart has an attack where you get hit 15 times. If the fight goes 3 rotations, that's 45 extra damage! Awakened One, Time Eater, Donu & Deca, Nemesis, and the Act IV right elite (Spire Spear) all frequently use multi attacks, so Stone makes Act III and IV really tough. If I beat Act II and I have excellent defensive resources, I'm cool with it. Otherwise, I'm scared of it.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:24 |
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Microcline posted:Snecko Eye is the best ironclad relic by an insane margin. He's got a ton of incredibly powerful 2-3 cost cards for defense and offense that become broken when you're playing a bunch of them per turn for 0 or 1. Your tier list also seems to be significantly underrating ectoplasm/sozu/fusion hammer/coffee dripper, which are all good energy relics. He's got five 3+ cost cards and only two of the five actually benefit from Snecko: Corruption's effect is negated entirely by Snecko and can become two-cost. Blood for blood is negated entirely by Snecko Barricade can become two-cost and there is no stacking benefit so it only gets the discount once per fight. That leaves Demon Form (and yes this is a good use case for snecko) and bludgeon as the only 3+ that benefit. On the flip-side: twin-strike, pummel, sword boomerang, and double-tap, which all scale with ironclad's strength gains, become worse under snecko. As I said, there's loads of edge-cases for any relic but I just don't see where in Ironclad's card library these consistent snecko value gains are coming from.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:24 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:As I said, there's loads of edge-cases for any relic but I just don't see where in Ironclad's card library these consistent snecko value gains are coming from. you take the good expensive cards that you mentioned and avoid things that cost 0-1 energy. congrats you now have consistent snecko value gains Call Your Grandma posted:On the flip-side: twin-strike, pummel, sword boomerang, and double-tap, which all scale with ironclad's strength gains, become worse under snecko. These actually get better in a deck that can play a demon form for one energy. little munchkin fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Jan 27, 2020 |
# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:27 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:He's got five 3+ cost cards and only two of the five actually benefit from Snecko: Unless your deck is only 1 and 0 cost cards, your deck will probably benefit from Snecko a ton. You're really underestimating how good it is. Drawing two extra a turn is a lot.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:30 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:He's got five 3+ cost cards and only two of the five actually benefit from Snecko: It draws you two cards a turn.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:31 |
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little munchkin posted:a good energy relic lets you gun for more elites, and the reward for that is going to easily outweigh the downside of a cursed key or ectoplasm or whatever. I'm really not passing up many elites as Watcher, so at most we're talking about squeezing in 1-2 extra elites over the course of the game. That's kind of a tough sell compared to starting with a free relic/gold + whatever you can buy with all the gold that you earn throughout the entire game. Cursed Key is easier to get value from but it still means you either have to give up chests (offsetting whatever you'd gain from extra elites) or plan your routing around finding shops (which often prevents you from maximizing elites.) Having the extra energy does mean you're less reliant on the Act 1 boss relic drop, but the flip side is that you're extra hosed if you gave up your miracle for something lovely.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:35 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:He's got five 3+ cost cards and only two of the five actually benefit from Snecko: You're underestimating the value of the card draw. Here's an example of how powerful that can be: Get a Limit Break. Upgrade it. Play it 40% more often because you draw 40% more cards. Twin Strike and Sword Boomerang (and Heavy Blade) are all now MUCH better. Imagine you go into a boss fight with a 21 card deck that has a Limit Break+ and a Headbutt. Half the time you will draw Headbutt in the right order, so it increases your Limit Break+ play rate by 50%, so you play it about 3 times on average after drawing through your deck twice. Without Snecko, that will take you 9 turns (42 cards/5 cards drawn = 8.4 turns). With Snecko, it will take you 6 turns (42/7 = 6). That seriously increases your chances of ending fights before they can get out of hand. It can easily make the difference that lets you kill Automaton before Hyperbeam instead of after. You flat out win scaling races that you otherwise would have lost. A couple other points: Corruption is NOT mitigated by Snecko. Corruption is made BETTER by Snecko. All the skills will still cost zero, but now you can draw up to 2 more of them at the start of your turn. You're also focusing on 3 cost cards. 2 cost cards are made 25% cheaper on average. 25% is a lot in a game that's balanced this well. And you draw up two more of them! That really can't be emphasized enough.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:52 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:He's got five 3+ cost cards and only two of the five actually benefit from Snecko: So you talk about Corruption and Barricade becoming 2 costs, but what that actually means is that Snecko eye upgrades them for free. And then you can spend those campfires upgrading other cards. Which is good. Blood for Blood is "negated by Snecko" but Snecko also drops its cost immediately rather than after you take damage. And by focusing on 3+ cards you're ignoring all of Ironclad's 2 cost cards, like Bash, Uppercut, Flame Barrier, Clothesline and Impervious. Which are all good cards, that you want to take anyways. And they become real good cards when they cost 1 or 0. Oh yeah, and it draws you two cards every turn. It's a bag of prep but for literally every turn of the fight. And Bag of Prep is a really good relic when it draws you 2 cards once.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:54 |
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Join us in our Snecko love cult. We have snake orgies on Thursday nights.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 05:55 |
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I learned to love Snecko with the defect, so I will try it more with ironclad and see how wrong I've been I suppose.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 06:02 |
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Straight White Shark posted:I'm really not passing up many elites as Watcher, so at most we're talking about squeezing in 1-2 extra elites over the course of the game. That's kind of a tough sell compared to starting with a free relic/gold + whatever you can buy with all the gold that you earn throughout the entire game. Cursed Key is easier to get value from but it still means you either have to give up chests (offsetting whatever you'd gain from extra elites) or plan your routing around finding shops (which often prevents you from maximizing elites.) Squeezing in a couple extra elites early on is actually a huge deal, and you'll also get more value out of camps and ? blocks because you'll lose significantly less hp in hallway fights. The early game is all about trying to snowball as hard as possible and an energy relic lets you play super greedy in act one. I agree that rolling a bad relic ruins your run though. I dislike taking that option for that reason, it's super swingy and takes away a lot of your agency. In terms of maximizing your win % or whatever though, it's probably correct for watcher to swap their starting relic most of the time.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 06:09 |
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Call Your Grandma posted:I learned to love Snecko with the defect, so I will try it more with ironclad and see how wrong I've been I suppose. I generally don't find Snecko very fun to play despite/because of its strength but I have an easier time enjoying it with Ironclad than other classes.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 06:09 |
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little munchkin posted:' I'm not talking about 1-2 elites per act, I mean 1-2 extra elites per game. Which are more likely to occur in the second half of the game than anywhere else because I'm heavily prioritizing them early on. Honestly if I pass any up in Act 1 it's probably less because I can't handle them and more because I'm prioritizing a shop over them, but I'm feeling more and more like I'm placing too much emphasis on early shops anyhow.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 06:21 |
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MJeff posted:Couple more questions I absolutely recommend having some fun playing Perfected Strikes decks in lower Ascensions where you can get away with it (and remember that there are other cards besides the default that have "strike" in their name while you're at it) but yeah at higher difficulties it's just too narrow of an archetype. Nothing wrong with playing it now while it works though!
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 07:04 |
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Although for what it’s worth the perfected strike deck is definitely good enough at least until A15, so it’s not like it’s totally unviable or anything.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 07:39 |
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I think my favorite Ironclad deck I've played was a Strike deck that had Fire Breathing and a bunch of Perfected and Wild Strikes in it. Fire Breathing is probably my favorite power, so it was mildly surprising to find out that it apparently used to be the worst card in the game?
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:01 |
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Nice, it seems like there's a bug and if you buy Orrery from the shop it assumes you're done with the shop interface. I had like 900 gold just rotting instead of doing something, grrrr.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:08 |
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I think it's a mistake to look at cards like perfected strike (or shivs for that matter) as something you specifically build around. It's something you take when you need it and happen to have enough strike cards to support it. There have been plenty of times perfected strike has been a necessary pick up for me, even in A20. It's fine.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:09 |
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I’m about mid act2(base difficulty) with a largely perfected strike based deck right now on ironclad. I’ve got the relic that provides 6 armor if you don’t have any at the end of your turn which seems awesome on ironclad. I wish I could pair it up with one of the other passive armor cards but it seems like that doesn’t really jive with a deck full of strikes. I’ve got a few armor generating cards but I’m finding myself having troubles mitigating enough damage especially on act 2 elites. With this sort of setup I find myself mostly resting at every fire, is that pretty common? I suppose the general idea is to pump out enough damage where taking a lot of attacks isn’t very common.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:18 |
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Arivia posted:Nice, it seems like there's a bug and if you buy Orrery from the shop it assumes you're done with the shop interface. I had like 900 gold just rotting instead of doing something, grrrr. Until you go to the next room, you should be able to go back into the previous reward screen or shop. Unless it is a bug, and not just the same as going back into a shop after clicking done.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:22 |
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Tetramin posted:I’m about mid act2(base difficulty) with a largely perfected strike based deck right now on ironclad. I’ve got the relic that provides 6 armor if you don’t have any at the end of your turn which seems awesome on ironclad. I wish I could pair it up with one of the other passive armor cards but it seems like that doesn’t really jive with a deck full of strikes. I’ve got a few armor generating cards but I’m finding myself having troubles mitigating enough damage especially on act 2 elites. Orichalcum is pretty awesome on everyone. Having good offense also doesn't mean you should neglect your defense. Every deck needs block/some other form of sustain. Andrast fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Jan 27, 2020 |
# ? Jan 27, 2020 08:26 |
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Tetramin posted:With this sort of setup I find myself mostly resting at every fire, is that pretty common? I suppose the general idea is to pump out enough damage where taking a lot of attacks isn’t very common. If it works for you with this deck then it works, and there are certain decks (with Apothesis+ or the special event relic that upgrades a card in your hand every turn, or Lessons Learned with Watcher) that can reliably plan on resting at more campfires than usual and not fall too far behind. As a general rule, though, upgrades can be pretty valuable and you probably want to be upgrading more than you are resting most of the time.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 09:25 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 15:12 |
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wow Mark build for Watcher is stupid powerful. I wound up with 5 Pressure Points in my deck and that plus a little bit of scry was enough to completely run the game.
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# ? Jan 27, 2020 09:44 |