Since my opponent is in a far-off time zone, I’ll get the ball rolling.
My opponent’s team is basically:
Two na’vi and their lion/goat/snake pet walk into a bar. They ask the bartender for the house special. He rummages around behind the bar, and thumps down a pitcher with something viscous that glows a sickly green. It begins to grow, and smells… unappetising.
Strenghts: relatively fast initially
Weaknesses: cats have low stamina (life and armor)
My set is team Giant Hug (to death).
In a nutshell, my team is faster than his (Green Seer charges up in just 2 turns, or just one once the combo’s rolling). Even if he lands an attack, the only unit that can target is the Rakshanin, but it takes 4 turns to charge up between attacks. The slime stops the chimera from getting any green, so it takes forever to charge up on red alone. The slime also has a strong chance of misfiring since it only creates 5 green gems, meaning if I get to play right after it, I’ll have a lock from that point on. In any case, since I can lock the opponent out of the game entirely, nothing will have a chance of charging up much. The Boar Rider takes out the Rakshanin in just 2 hits, which means there’s no chance for the lock to stall. From that point on, the Green Slime is easy pickings, and then suddenly my opponent has no way to generate enough mana quickly to come back into the game. Also, the only unit he had that could actually pick a specific target will be dead, so he won’t be able to finish off any troops he’s managed to weaken, as his attacks go to the healthiest unit. The kitties will be coughing up hairballs in no time, and trying to find a better career in their next lives.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with my combo lock, here’s the explanation again:
I’m playing one of the three strongest teams in the game, ever. It’s a control deck. In most matches, after about turn 3, your turn never ends. Here’s how it works:
Turn 1: purple match. With the Banner of the Old Gods (purple/purple), you get 2 bonus purple. The Giant Spider’s Magic link adds one more, so you get a total of 6 purple charging the Green Seer.
Turn 2: purple match (again). Green Seer is now charged up, and the overflow has gone to charge the Boar Rider.
Turn 3: turn gems of any colour but purple to green. This means in almost every case that you get an extra turn from a 4 or 5 match. In many cases, you get more than one set of green, and you charge up the Giant Spider. The overflow charges up the Boar Rider. Next, the Giant Spider turns all gems of a chosen colour (anything but green) to purple. In general, you’ll charge up your Green Seer and get an extra turn. The overflow charges up the Boar Rider. If you ever get mana surge, this goes even faster.
By this point, you’ve got a loop going. You constantly manipulate the board to keep getting extra turns, charge up the Giant Spider, Green Seer and Boar Rider. When you get bored (no pun intended), you swing with the Boar and get an extra turn. After going through the loop a few times, all of the opponent’s troops are entangled by the Green Seer. And with all these sets of 4 and 5, your Hydra (with Huge) is insanely large, while your Giant Spider (with Big) is getting bigger too.
If you ever stall and don’t get a set of 4 or 5, and the opponent gets a turn, they:
a) match up skulls, but are entangled and nothing happens
b) match up skulls, are not entangled, but the Hydra is huge. And when it takes skull damage, each of the opponent’s troops takes 3 damage
c) match some green or purple gems, and it’s your turn again.
This combo completely locks out the opponent, who almost never gets to play. It’s extremely quick to get started, and does not depend on skull damage as the Boar Rider gets rid of pesky Stoneskin / Thorns opponents without blinking.
If things get really bad through a run of terrible luck,
a) the Hydra does ridiculous damage as the life lost is calculated based on its maximum life (and it’s been getting Huge for a while now)
b) if the Hydra somehow dies, the Giant Spider creates a Spider Swarm meat shield. Then you can keep wailing away with the Boar Rider until the opponent is good and dead!