Critique my play!

[psylensse]

well, since no one's replied yet i'll take a stab at this. natural born killers is a file that i really don't have a good feel for, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

I'll start with a summary since my post is long-ish, and in case you don't read the whole thing:
Not really sure what a good general philosophy of Natural Born Killers is. I would assume play hellsmoke and Priestess sooner than later, then Igina. Lay off the grims (NO unnecessary Pure Terror; I'm gonna be watching for that next replay you post :p), except maybe Death's Embrace which seems to be working well for you. Pay attention to synergy with your SS's. Your opponent completely neglects this synergy with his own SS's and makes a lot of poor plays by not setting up a better synergy (which is key to refess) when his SS's had his back. This happens to you also on the warning knife turn, since the Angry Mob had you covered already.

Acolyte (or folrart shield knight) + Safiria is a standard refess open. I think if you drop Lebeau turn 2 you really put him in a tight spot since he WILL kill the acolyte. It's nice to go before Safiria can perform her engage skill. So for example: Lebeau does 40 damage - if saf attacks, the close skill will kill acolyte. Or, if she rests and acolyte rests, he'll get HP + 11 or 12. Next turn he heals for 20. Lebeau kills him anyway. going the first option means you'll lose lebeau each turn, but refess gets uncomfortable without its tank in front. plus you'll lock down his sp with him reviving acolyte all the time. if you play shade after lebeau you should be in good shape to play level 3's for awhile and most likely you'll sap one of his sp in the process. Or if you play Mindsoldier turn 3 I think he'd have a lot of problems too. actually I think I'm preferring Mindsoldier right now to keep the pressure on.
opponent doesn't need to be playing priest of the holy word so soon. boy combat priest should also not be making a cameo. wisp + Captain makes more sense. Wisp will allow the acolyte to stay alive for, like, one extra turn. but he needs his lvl three's out first. Paladin wouldn't be a bad choice to follow Captain, to try and get lucky against Hellsmoke, and also to kill everyone else and provide more tankiness. Priest can come out later. Opponent's SS's aren't too shabby; the engage mechanics should give him the time he needs to establish a field. Unfortunately he doesn't take full advantage of how much time his SS's allow him to set up a cohesive field.
Once again Death's Embrace is well timed to remove his tank. Good stuff. I'm becoming more of a fan of this maneuver every time I see you play it!
Dual-Wielding Soldier is far too squishy for him to be fielding right now, and he's not using that skill of hers any time soon. As a result, Pure Terror is pure unnecessary. You seem to like that card, but there really aren't that many instances in Crest where it needs to be played. I would play Priestess of Madness first. Then play Igina.
Opponent does NOT need to be playing Blessing, although by this point it's a lost cause. He needs to establish a field again. Refess is all about synergy, of which there isn't much going on here.
Why warning knife?? Your SS is already going to handle Safiria; crest mindsoldier and smoke would have easily done the rest. Waste of a grim and also an opportunity to play a unit.
Keep posting!!

[Malarious]

Three games today (Yeah I kind of jumped in and out). No replays but two of them were NPCs.

I decided to try to adjust my play against the single player arena for a few and I picked random people because I have no idea if the levels actually mean much. But I went against one (wont name him in case other people pick them randomly too) and it was looking like a starmander, a refess file focusing on getting SP. Needless to say I was enjoying my shades and domina actually hitting. The issue with this is I could see it was coming, so I did shade > heavy shield > shade > igina. Then got everything else in place, I was sitting with alot of SP because I was not losing things too readily and seemed to have alot coming in. Needless to say I did say starmander, so salamanders hurt. I kept putting units down to try to give Igina a higher chance to live, and even with the fire tornados, brutal mammoth, and such I managed to outlast the deck (Primarily because when Igina ran out I was still hitting and star dragon actually lost his condition for his counter). It was brutal was educational.

Another NPC was using a gowen rush, that one just kind of fell apart, I used deaths embrace when I saw a field was about to clear and he never recovered, all 3 cards went to the cemetary, he had no field and 1 turn of ress brought my whole field back.

Last game was against a player, another Lawtia. Here was the break downs I can remember:
Mine His
1 > Shade Shade BACKLASH
2 > Hellsmoke Revenant
3 > Shade Shade BACKLASH
4 > LeBeau I forget.

Anyway I went for a strong field presence and even though his revenant could two shot my hellsmoke and hit first, I got a priest of madness out, and returned hellsmoke endlessly anytime he got closed. Lebeau, mindsoldier, and halberd made it pretty hard for him to progress. He tried Dalos but between warning knife on mindsoldier, multiple close skills hitting him, and me continually bringing back hellsmoke he couldnt do much. I could see some flaws where I did things wrong, and sometimes I play a grim assuming an action that doesnt happen (Sometimes people just let the card die instead of revive it so the target is pretty worthless at that point). Oh I almost forgot! Wednesday I jumped on for a few and caught Gon in the training arena! So we discussed the change I had made and some of the basic things to keep in mind. Very informative.

Replay(s) tommorrow!

[psylensse]

Great to hear you're training! Gon and a lot of other players in there can definitely provide some pointers that will dramatically improve your play, and fast. if you haven't read Gon's various guides for beginners, look at the bottom of one of his posts and click on the links there for some great advice. like the shade Undead shade open; standard stuff, and effective. Priestess of Madness is good stuff too as your Hellsmoke both tanks and buffs your units. sounds like you're improving!!

[Malarious]

Ok I forgot to swap out Dalos, I would rather have the direct damage as rarely do I have two units closed when he plays. I think he has ever worked once, even against the NPC so I intended to change it. This one was close and as soon as I saw kurina and alraune I knew it was a gowen rush. Alraune should have been later in my opinion but everytime I was about to play a grim I thought, will I get this back indirectly, or do I want a unit to hold the field? So all my grims are alot later than usual. I made a mistake on the knife, I misread the open effect of his card, so I tried to make a juicier target (it worked).

https://alteil-login.gamepotusa.com/auditorium/index.php?id=1933378&code=4d331140c854c6a04f66ea441612f4d6

As usual, thanks for all input

PS. While I was wrong on the knife it ended up being put to use if you think about it! And the shade at the end has a reason if you can spot it (and me taking a dice roll into account )

[GonFreeces31]

Yeah I think you did great. Only a few minor gripes. Like I think you played the second shade way too late.

[psylensse]

i thought you applied the pressure quite well; you definitely match gowen punch for punch throughout the beginning phase, which is crucial.
Turn 9: okay. Pure Terror; I'm still against this card, maybe on a matter of principle. It's some mad amount of overkill frankly, and I think every time I've seen you play it you would have been better off setting a card. Let's suppose you played the Heavy Doll this turn instead of Pure Terror. Let's assume his SS goes off and he still kills the Mindsoldier. Your SS goes off; engage the Samurai, or the Axe man; it doesn't matter. Either way hellsmoke is going to take damage, but it won't kill him. Next turn play Igina.
I think towards the end there's some concerns about fire tornado, no? Looking better and better; see you in Folrart soon!

[Malarious]

Yeah I was going to look into another shade turn 3 but I did not want to give alraune alot of build up time, specially as I would have hellsmoke against a free reviver. Based on that I went for field presence with mindsoldier. Which I think I am glad for or the swarm would probably have overrun me at that point. Also I am rewatching it, on turn 5 I used mindsoldiers 1 sp attack, I was hoping it would hit alraune as hellsmoke and halberd could beat the axe wielder, but at least it hit the axewielder instead of the salamander.



As to changing my SS out:

• What I dont have that has been noted before: Gafc, Garfath,
• Scylla actually was really appealing, engage random, choice damage. Can stop 2 attackers at once
• I dont have gafc, so I cant use that, any similar soul skill characters? That -1 next turn could be brutal and is 100% to hit unlike domina (though she can be useful).
• Revenant has been noted before and the damage isnt much but the agility thing does help. (Clears pixies though)
• Chiruru has come up for a one turn try to clear, but you want it later on I think to make sure you can capitalize on it, because early most plays are shades.
• Singer of friendship could be devastating, especially against pixies, undead, and maybe EN files.
• I am thinking if there is a damage + 1sp card I might swap that in for the first SS. Faster control to make up for the shade and I still get some SP off of it. Which I think those SP tend to be used within a couple turns, but not sure, I seem to often get a fair bit of free SP.
• Also have pixie greatsword (with lebeau or mindsoldier that could be pretty nasty) if a field clear is needed beyond the base units. Good with deaths embrace to stop revives if nothing else.

At the moment I think I prefer Scylla, but will check in later! Will get a replay at the time too!

[GonFreeces31]

Scylla is amazing SS. Can put in the 2, 3, or 4 slot... or all 3!!! Also, Belphagor SS is the same thing.

[psylensse]

Other soul skill SP -1 types I think are all fairly rare cards:
4* War Incarnate / Inside: (this turn rival sp -1; start of next turn -1)
3* Six-armed man / Alvein: (this turn rival sp -2; start of next turn -1. this will cost YOU 1 sp however to perform)
3* Command Unit / Violet X2: (return 2 cards from your cemetary; rival gets sp -2)

if this is your style then keep an eye out for those guys. As for the SS's, don't forget Assassin, and similar removal type cards. As the 11/11 training tips state, Invisible Druid SS works great if you play Soul Bind to pinpoint which unit you want returned. There are various types of these cards out there which require some practice but can be quite disruptive. I think a lot of files benefit from having an Assassin SS, frankly. It allows you to remove key units on your opponent's battlefield, allows you to deal with otherwise problematic units, and also when you assassinate high level units that's sp your opponent isn't getting back, the way he usually would when things die.

Anyway posting replays is great, but also start watching matches in Folrart, especially the better players. Does anyone know of any players running Natural Born Killer-type decks in Folrart that Mal could watch? Also keep an eye out for tricks you might want to employ, as well as new ways to build decks and modify them. eventually you'll get a little tired of playing the same file over and over, and it'll be nice to look for ideas to change it up abit.

[psylensse]

just stumbled on this today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKL0qz5T ... re=related

Basically Worthing did a few video replays and put them on youtube with commentary. really insightful stuff. don't know how many other people do stuff like this but it's awesome. Even though the files you're seeing are cards you probably don't have, just listening to the train of thoughts is really good.