Overview[]
The FFQ deck is fast and reliable with plenty of healing, making it perfect for grinding Elders. On average the deck has a >60% winrate with 11-12 rounds per game against Elders. I reccomend also getting "Hope" and "Druid Staff", with the amount of light generating creatures you have, this will make you nearly untouchable. Also, do NOT upgrade the firefly queens, once upgraded they will generate elite fireflies, elite fireflies do NOT generate light, instead they generate fire.
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Primary Card Combo[]
This strategy uses a 3 card combo:
Firefly (produced by the Firefly Queen)
How to Use the Combo[]
If you start with a Wind Pillar and Emerald Pillar you will have 6 Air quanta and 3 Life quanta by the 3rd turn. Now you can start the combo:
- Play a Firefly Queen (costs 6 Air quanta). End your turn.
- Produce a Firefly by activating the Firefly Queen's ability (costs 2 life quanta).
- Play a Rustler (costs 1 Life quanta).
- End your turn. Each Firefly will produce one Light Quanta.
- Use the Rustler's Photosynthesis ability to turn each Light quanta into 2 Life quanta.
- Now you have plenty of Life quanta to make more Fireflies or play Rustlers or Empathic Bonds from your hand.
Strategic Tips[]
Protect your Rustlers by keeping them in your hand until you produce a Firefly. Rather than play all your Rustlers at once, keep at least one in your hand. A plague, a thunderstorm or a pandemonium will wipe out all your Rustlers at once and destroy your strategy.
Upgrade your Rustlers first to give them a health buffer against thunderstorms, devourers, and plagues. Do not upgrade the Firefly Queens or you will ruin the combo.
Play your Empathic Bond after you have several creatures in play. It acts as your shield by replenishing health and increases your coin payoff. Often in late game you will have at least 10 creatures and 2 Empatic Bonds in play, healing 20-50 HP per turn.
Using the FFQ Deck for Grinding Elders[]
The standard FFQ deck offers a >75% winrate for grinding the Level 3 Elders. Upgraded the deck has a >85% winrate. Since there are no control cards or shields the deck is very fast. On average, games are 11-12 rounds long. (Averaged over >200 games against elders.)
The FFQ deck has reliable starting hands. With only 5 types of cards equally distributed, there is a very good chance you will have at least one of each card type early on. You can usually develop a combo by turn 3-4 and get 2 Queens and an Empathic Bond by turns 5-6. By turn 9-10 you will have at least 10 creatures and 2 Empathic Bonds in play and be ready for a long game.
Initially the Elders with creature control will be the most dangerous for you. Thunderstorms and plagues will wipe out all your Rustlers and bring your Life quanta generation to a halt. Devourers will eat your Rustlers, Fireflies, and then finally your Firefly Queens. Upgrading your Rustlers will greatly increase your winning percentage.
Once upgraded, only Elders with permanent control and shielding/healing will be a major threat. They can draw you into a long game and take out your Empathic Bonds.
The deck produces a high frequency of 100hp wins, which makes the deck great for farming electrum coins. Some variations of the deck use Heal to use on the turn before attacking for lethal damage to ensure an Elemental Mastery.
Alternative Techniques[]
If you replace your Emerald Pillars with Novas and Rustlers, you can slip in a few low-cost spells like deflag or steal, sacrificing the mob build speed but upping your survivability against decks like Mono-Aether. You play the Nova and the Rustler together, so that the next turn you can have two Life quanta - enough to start the progression. This is a hybrid of the orthodox and pillarless strategies, slowing your opponent but still allowing you to predictably get your main strategy going.
In general, the decks below are too slow to have a chance against Top 50 decks or Fake Gods.
Also adding a Hope can increase surviveability aginst other mob speed decks
Adding a miracle card can help with achieving elemental master. Just use it on your last attack and assuming you have empathic bond in play your health will be topped off to 100 from the first creature to move.
I added a spines card to add a little defense, and clear out annoying things like scarabs and otyughs.
Deck Lists
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- - Air Mark
- 9 Wind Towers
- 7 Emerald Towers
- 6 Firefly Queens
- 3-4 Feral Bonds
- 2-3 Heals
- 2 Rustlers
- 2 Eagle's Eyes
- - Life Mark
-6 Emerald Pillars
-12 wind pillars
-6 emphatic bond
-6 firefly queen
-1 owl eye
-1 fog shield/jade shield - -several Rustlers
Weaknesses[]
I've found this deck can be rendered useless by an enemy creature with lobotomise. In the first round, an opponent drew Mind Flayer, and before I could use Firefly Queen once, it's power was stripped.Fire shield can really do some damage to this deck too. Also look out for Maxwel's Dragon. It can destroy your fireflies.
Ice shield, while it doesn't stop the deck completely, it can slow it down a lot, especially if it freezes a queen
Edit from R: Fire shield cost 6 fire quanta, therefore you have to change the mark to fire or you hope for a 6x nova draw first hand. Besides it might hinders the deck by too much, if you only have a couple fire shield it doesn't pops up frequent enough to save you, and if you put too many, you just made the deck thick and sloppy. Besides, the fire shield is only good against the water-aether elder, so I don't see why we need it so badly. I would say go on with the deck, if you meet water-aether, back luck and hope computer draws a bad deck. You can get the electrum back by playing more games. Rather than making all your games slowed, it is better to lose one and quickly win another 5 games.
Edit from a random guy: He said if the opponent had a fire shield, not that it would help if you had one
Anon says: A lot of shields and weapons would pose a threat to this deck, actually. Most notably anything that will put your creatures out of action or kill them- fire shield, lobotomiser, skull shield etc.
Edit from a player just getting back into the game recently: Try adding a couple Sky Blitz for an unexpected kill if you have only enough attack to take down half of their HP. Since Firefly Queen, Firefly, and even Golden Dragon if you use him are flying creatures, it works perfectly.