Have run both versions, and quest version is still the most consistent. However, your version will be the better one in the case of a more aggro oriented meta, which we seem to be straying away from (for now).
It does seem a bit strange, doesn’t it? I have won exodia matches where they milled my win condition and I simply bought an extra turn with 6 sorc apprentices on the board to attack.
this deck is fine, 54% winrate (53-45). When i start with Arcanologist most people think i am secret Tempo mage so they trade into my minions wich is a big advantage.
I swapped -2 Acolyte for +2 Coldlight Oracle, so the opponent can’t overdraw me.
It is important to figure out when to freeze. Against super aggressive decks maybe turn 5 freeze+doomsayer but against control i would keep my freeze as long as possible (usually turn 9-10).
it makes fun cuz until turn 5-7 they have no idea that it is an exodia mage.
Very inefficient deck. Here is the comparison of this deck based on Leyline vs Quest:
In both decks you need to assemble Antonidas + 4 cards (2xmolten, 2xapprentice) vs (2xSimalacrum +apprentice + Leyline). So this is somewhat equal
In Quest deck order of getting those cards does not matter, in Leyline it does – you need to first get both Simalacrums and Apprentice and play it AND only then you can play Leyline – otherwise it won’t work. So quest wins here
When you get some of the cards burned from quest deck you can still win – 3x apprentice + Antonidas + 3x fireball in extra turn can give you 27dmg – hell lot + extra cards can sometimes help you out. In Leyline if any of combo cards is burned you are dead. So plus for Quest deck
When in extra turn with your apprentices down – you can still use draw cards to help you out. With Leyline deck if you do not have all pieces collected after your last ice block – you are dead. Quest deck wins here
I’d say this deck either is weak or it needs a lot of tweaking. Because in current state it depends too much from PERFECT draw order. Only advantage of it in perfect conditions it can be faster than Quest deck – normally drawing all pieces of quest combo + playing 6 random spells takes longer. All in all I would assume that Quest deck can perform better than this one
So I played quest mage like crazy last season and was excited to see this one. I played a few casual games and one game in ranked just now. Win rate is about 45-50%. Some things I noticed.
Pros compared to traditional quest exodia
-a lot of stalls with inclusion of cone of cold and medivh’s valet. you can put down some minions and valet’s battlecry does help with removals.
-two ice barrier = extra health.
-people are not sure what you’re doing. There’s no queue signalling that it’s exodia (only first week it will be effective).
-very rapid draws. no need to worry about hands limit when you’re stuck with two cabalist and coldlight oracles. hands are almost always consumable with this deck.
-traditional exodia’s cabalist magic sometimes can be hit or miss (ex: getting pyroblast or glacier mysteries when you just needed that one magic or getting another ice block when you have one equipped). this deck relies 0% on RNGs other than draws.
cons
-as you mentioned, everything needs to be very carefully calculated and one single mistake you’re dead. There are five mandatory cards that’s needed for win condition and losing or not getting any one of them is 100% loss. no comeback like traditional exodia with power of RNG god and time warp where you can still hit face or bittertide hydra. so I noticed that whereas exodia mage I finished a game sometimes way before fatigue and this deck almost always I have to draw everything.
-timing very important to trigger simulacrum and leyline. ideal turn is simulacrum->simulacrum->leyline.
also interested to see if we can make it stronger or more stable somehow.
more pro
one more pro of this deck I guess is as you don’t rely on time warp, you don’t need to worry about fatigue happening on 1 health which you need to be care with in traditional exodia.
more con
in traditional mirror match, you mostly win if you trigger exodia obliterate first but there are moments where you can get extra iceblock from glyph, tome or babbling book but will never happen in this deck.
More things noticed – Leyline deck handles Hunter slightly better than Quest deck due to extra DMG from hand. But in general both decks sucks here a lot. So this is a major obstacle for getting this deck to legend.
Leyline is too vulnerable to cards like Dirty Rat and cards generated by Lich King.
More people tech for secrets now to counter Mage, Rogue, Paladin and Hunter – which makes both decks Quest and Leyline exposed.
Lack of Primordial Glyph in Leyline makes it harder to adapt to the situation. Maybe this could be swapped with Valet.
I would also propose to play 2x Leyline and at least one Cabalist Tome. With 2x Leyline you are able to change this perfect sequence. You can reduce the cost of one apprentice when you are ready, Leyline can act as a normal minion – useful to protect and you can reduce the cost of spells from Cabalist Tome…
You can make the questless version more consistent. The deck list posted above have 6 cards that is mandatory for the combo with no redundancies. This means 6/30 or 20% of all games you’ll have to draw your whole deck to hit your combo which is extremely bad. And that is what you’re saying about drawing a lot before getting all the combo pieces. I would replace the following to make it more consistent:
Remove
– 2 x Valets
– 2 x Cone of cold
– 1 x Ice barrier
Add
+ 1 x Leyline Manipulator
+ 1 x Apprentice
+ 1 x Zola the Gorgon
+ 2 x Primordial Glyph (you can get more options of card draw, freeze or ice blocks)
i personally like the leyline build. some pros ive seen compared to exodia is both the lack of rng and the flexibility. Remember this deck is still in the alpha state and it can get a huge rebuild.
i just like the versatility this deck can get. I also dont think the same as everybody normally does that this is weaker to dirty rat compared to exodia. in this deck you run 3 minions that are dirty ratable while you run more other minions. Of course you can get a bad 60/40 ish but i still think that this deck is less dirty ratable than exodia.
but ive tested a lot of different defensive styles of this and ive managed to bump my winrate against aggro up to 45%. And against control to 65%. so im kinda liking it
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Have run both versions, and quest version is still the most consistent. However, your version will be the better one in the case of a more aggro oriented meta, which we seem to be straying away from (for now).
Hahahahaha… ha… ha… *cries*
It does seem a bit strange, doesn’t it? I have won exodia matches where they milled my win condition and I simply bought an extra turn with 6 sorc apprentices on the board to attack.
this deck is fine, 54% winrate (53-45). When i start with Arcanologist most people think i am secret Tempo mage so they trade into my minions wich is a big advantage.
I swapped -2 Acolyte for +2 Coldlight Oracle, so the opponent can’t overdraw me.
It is important to figure out when to freeze. Against super aggressive decks maybe turn 5 freeze+doomsayer but against control i would keep my freeze as long as possible (usually turn 9-10).
it makes fun cuz until turn 5-7 they have no idea that it is an exodia mage.
quest?
Not needed as you got Leyline Manipulator.
You use Simalacrum x 2 on Sorcerer’s Apprentice and reduce their cost to 0 using Leyline Manipulator.
Then you play them in the following order:
Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2), Sorcerers Apprentice (0), Sorcerer’s Apprentice (0), Antonidas (7), Molten Reflection (1) = for a total of 10 mana.
And then you got infinite Fireballs.
Very inefficient deck. Here is the comparison of this deck based on Leyline vs Quest:
In both decks you need to assemble Antonidas + 4 cards (2xmolten, 2xapprentice) vs (2xSimalacrum +apprentice + Leyline). So this is somewhat equal
In Quest deck order of getting those cards does not matter, in Leyline it does – you need to first get both Simalacrums and Apprentice and play it AND only then you can play Leyline – otherwise it won’t work. So quest wins here
When you get some of the cards burned from quest deck you can still win – 3x apprentice + Antonidas + 3x fireball in extra turn can give you 27dmg – hell lot + extra cards can sometimes help you out. In Leyline if any of combo cards is burned you are dead. So plus for Quest deck
When in extra turn with your apprentices down – you can still use draw cards to help you out. With Leyline deck if you do not have all pieces collected after your last ice block – you are dead. Quest deck wins here
I’d say this deck either is weak or it needs a lot of tweaking. Because in current state it depends too much from PERFECT draw order. Only advantage of it in perfect conditions it can be faster than Quest deck – normally drawing all pieces of quest combo + playing 6 random spells takes longer. All in all I would assume that Quest deck can perform better than this one
So I played quest mage like crazy last season and was excited to see this one. I played a few casual games and one game in ranked just now. Win rate is about 45-50%. Some things I noticed.
Pros compared to traditional quest exodia
-a lot of stalls with inclusion of cone of cold and medivh’s valet. you can put down some minions and valet’s battlecry does help with removals.
-two ice barrier = extra health.
-people are not sure what you’re doing. There’s no queue signalling that it’s exodia (only first week it will be effective).
-very rapid draws. no need to worry about hands limit when you’re stuck with two cabalist and coldlight oracles. hands are almost always consumable with this deck.
-traditional exodia’s cabalist magic sometimes can be hit or miss (ex: getting pyroblast or glacier mysteries when you just needed that one magic or getting another ice block when you have one equipped). this deck relies 0% on RNGs other than draws.
cons
-as you mentioned, everything needs to be very carefully calculated and one single mistake you’re dead. There are five mandatory cards that’s needed for win condition and losing or not getting any one of them is 100% loss. no comeback like traditional exodia with power of RNG god and time warp where you can still hit face or bittertide hydra. so I noticed that whereas exodia mage I finished a game sometimes way before fatigue and this deck almost always I have to draw everything.
-timing very important to trigger simulacrum and leyline. ideal turn is simulacrum->simulacrum->leyline.
also interested to see if we can make it stronger or more stable somehow.
more pro
one more pro of this deck I guess is as you don’t rely on time warp, you don’t need to worry about fatigue happening on 1 health which you need to be care with in traditional exodia.
more con
in traditional mirror match, you mostly win if you trigger exodia obliterate first but there are moments where you can get extra iceblock from glyph, tome or babbling book but will never happen in this deck.
More things noticed – Leyline deck handles Hunter slightly better than Quest deck due to extra DMG from hand. But in general both decks sucks here a lot. So this is a major obstacle for getting this deck to legend.
Leyline is too vulnerable to cards like Dirty Rat and cards generated by Lich King.
More people tech for secrets now to counter Mage, Rogue, Paladin and Hunter – which makes both decks Quest and Leyline exposed.
Lack of Primordial Glyph in Leyline makes it harder to adapt to the situation. Maybe this could be swapped with Valet.
I would also propose to play 2x Leyline and at least one Cabalist Tome. With 2x Leyline you are able to change this perfect sequence. You can reduce the cost of one apprentice when you are ready, Leyline can act as a normal minion – useful to protect and you can reduce the cost of spells from Cabalist Tome…
I guess this needs a huge rebuild…
You can make the questless version more consistent. The deck list posted above have 6 cards that is mandatory for the combo with no redundancies. This means 6/30 or 20% of all games you’ll have to draw your whole deck to hit your combo which is extremely bad. And that is what you’re saying about drawing a lot before getting all the combo pieces. I would replace the following to make it more consistent:
Remove
– 2 x Valets
– 2 x Cone of cold
– 1 x Ice barrier
Add
+ 1 x Leyline Manipulator
+ 1 x Apprentice
+ 1 x Zola the Gorgon
+ 2 x Primordial Glyph (you can get more options of card draw, freeze or ice blocks)
i personally like the leyline build. some pros ive seen compared to exodia is both the lack of rng and the flexibility. Remember this deck is still in the alpha state and it can get a huge rebuild.
i just like the versatility this deck can get. I also dont think the same as everybody normally does that this is weaker to dirty rat compared to exodia. in this deck you run 3 minions that are dirty ratable while you run more other minions. Of course you can get a bad 60/40 ish but i still think that this deck is less dirty ratable than exodia.
but ive tested a lot of different defensive styles of this and ive managed to bump my winrate against aggro up to 45%. And against control to 65%. so im kinda liking it
while exodia runs more minions that are dirty ratable if you count in the rng spell generators.