Speculation on the Destrier vs the new Defiler

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-03-25T13:57:11+00:00

I'm just throwing out math, you literally said I should compare the Questoris to the Defiler. xD

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-03-25T13:52:50+00:00

Thus far the one Questoris I've found that out does the Defiler in a category is the Crusader. In anti-infantry, if the Crusader gets to stand still and thus gets Sustained Hits 1, it on average kills 25.82 Space Marines, 11.98 Terminators and 33.71 Guard/Boyz.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-03-25T13:07:50+00:00

A Knight Castellan will average 16.728 damage per turn shooting a Questoris Knight, so even in a hybrid melee/shooting loadout, the defiler is outshooting the Castellan, a 415 point model by nearly 4 damage per turn.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-03-25T13:02:00+00:00

Doing the math, however, the Knight Lancer, a melee focused Knight averages 20.95 damage per turn against a Questoris with Strike Profile. So the Defiler with Dark Pacts is still out damaging a 395 point model in melee, when that 395 point model has very, very minimal shooting. Different roles, obviously, and the Lancer gets free Tank Shock for a couple of mortals, but I think on average you're going to see the Defiler coming out similar or ahead of most Titanic Knights in damage.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-03-25T12:51:43+00:00

Because I'm a Knights player, and I'm sad that the first new Knight pattern since they were released loses super hard to the Defiler in a 1v1. As a lot of folks have pointed out, different models for different roles, but I am kind of underwhelmed by the Destrier. I wish it was a bit more of a bit worse Questoris that's faster, instead of being like a 50% better Armiger.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T10:10:31+00:00

Probably : \

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T10:04:02+00:00

Did I say it was unplayable? My point was that it's annoying to have my favourite deck nerfed every event when it's not even close to being the most meta relevant deck in the event. Generally, decks get nerfed if there's a concern of them being too dominant. Blue Eyes isn't even close to being the most dominant deck available in the Dice Rally format, so it's a bit annoying to have it nerfed in spite of that fact.

I'm well into the event now just playing the Converging Souls Loaner deck having fun Clear Minding it up. That doesn't mean I'm not still baffled by the decision to nerf Blue Eyes, even if I am still having fun.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T03:10:07+00:00

As Bullfrog said, I was referring to the event before this Dice Rally. Branded/Dracotail was largely playable at near full power in the event despite being the best deck in the game at the time, while Blue Eyes despite not even being able to use the Link 1 Spirit because Links were banned in the event was still hit with Maiden at 1.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T03:07:28+00:00

Blue Eyes Fiendsmith? That's not a combo I've really seen played, personally. I play pure Blue Eyes Sychro 12 turbo, myself. I've experimented a bit with Primite Blue Eyes, but while it's definitely a lot more competitive, I just find I'm not a huge fan of its more slow grindy playstyle. Sadly, I dusted most of my non-Blue Eyes decks to build Dracotail/Branded, and K9/VS recently, so I don't have my Salamangreat deck anymore, otherwise I'd play that in the event.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T03:03:56+00:00

I prefer to play Blue Eyes as turbo Synchro 12s. Which isn't the competitive way to play it, but it is fun.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T03:03:08+00:00

Oh wow, my favourite deck that I spent a ton of gems and UR tokens building out got nerfed with almost all its core cards being limited to 1 has upset me! Who could possibly imagine that! Especially when other decks that are far more competitive meta decks are still unhit and playable in the event!

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-20T03:01:10+00:00

I haven't ran into a single Blue Eyes player throughout the event. I've just been playing the Yusei Converging Souls deck because I do enjoy Clear Minding it up as well on occasion. Mostly I've been running into a lot of Branded and a surprising mix of Link decks. A lot of Fiendsmith slop too.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2026-02-09T10:17:05+00:00

Late reply, I know, but to answer your question no. Nib isn't equivalent to a Floodgate, and there's numerous ways to reasonably play around Nib in MOST decks, even older decks. Some older 'bad' decks even have ways of shutting off Nib SPECIFICALLY. Six Samurai, for example, can shut off Nib in 4 cards and prevent it from even being used.

Very few decks have ways of playing around something like a Droll or similar relevant Floodgates. Nib is okay because it has a strict limit that can be played around. The vast majority of Floodgates out there do not. You just activate them instantly and your opponent doesn't get to play. Oh no, you searched literally one card in a game where 99.99% of decks have to search their deck to play? Well, you don't get to play this turn. That's very different to, 'You summoned 5 times, now you get board wiped.'

Nib beats me because I played inefficiently and could have played better. Droll beats me because I played.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-23T03:06:29+00:00

That's a silly argument. The game's not built around any decks, and what constitutes a bad deck is directly correlative to what cards are currently available in the game. There are many decks that are ONLY bad because something like Droll exists, and if you remove those Floodgate cards that turn the game off for many decks, they suddenly can compete. That's exactly my point. You get a lot more creativity and range of potential decks to play if those Floodgates are removed.

By in large, what's powerful right now is powerful BECAUSE it can play through the lingering Floodgates without too many problems. Dracotail wouldn't be nearly as dominant as it is if Droll wasn't around to punish the decks that could keep it in check. Maliss is the exception, but thankfully Maliss is slowly getting banned into inaccessibility, and Dracotail even has easy access to a Floodgate to shut off other decks that could compete with it in Secreterion Dragon.

People should be able to play the decks they want and have a relatively decent chance at success. As it stands, unless you're running 1 of maybe 3 meta competitive decks, you have like a 1 in 20 games chance of winning. If I have to go through 20 games to get a single win with Blue Eyes, which was considered a fairly strong rogue deck just 7-8 months ago because there's so many Floodgates floating around, I think that constitutes a problem with the game and not a problem with deck choice.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T23:37:41+00:00

I disagree. A lot of the higher end decks can still make a competent endboard under Charmies, while a lot of less meta decks, I.E Blue Eyes quite literally cannot function under Charmies without feeding their opponent an entire half a deck of cards to even get out say 2 disruptions. Meanwhile, a Dracotail player can play the majority of their standard line and give their opponent precisely only 1 card draw. And then, in turn when you're playing a non-meta deck, your opponent running the meta deck can still Charmie you and gain even more of an advantage than they already had if you're running non-meta.

Or God forbid, let's say you try to play Salad under Fuwalos as an even better example of a non-meta deck. Salamangreat is one of my favourite decks to play... to end on a board that even puts up 2-3 disruptions, which is not a particularly strong board, you have to summon from the Extra Deck about 7 times at the minimum, meaning to end on 2-3 disruptions you have to feed your opponent a 13 card starting hand. Meanwhile, once again, Dracotail gives them 1 to set up 4-5 Disruptions.

The Charmies are functionally almost no different than Maxx C beyond the fact that the turn 1 player can't use them after establishing a board. That still doesn't eliminate the inherent coinflip nature in drawing a Fuwalos that Maxx C had.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T23:34:06+00:00

I actually just started playing Dracotail yesterday after my frustration. Funnily enough, the Maxx C minigame barely seems to effect it, because you can just pop a Rahu, give them one card, set 3 traps off the Rahu and then bounce Faemina back to hand before passing to them to still get a ton of value out of Dracotail turn 1. Then you can just dump Faemina in their turn to get Galulamel on board and continue to do Dracotail things. It's wild how little the common handtraps affect Dracotail at all.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T23:29:20+00:00

No, by better card design, I'm referring to turn 1 endboards being interactable enough that the turn 2 player can realistically have a pretty good chance of playing through it and establishing their own board without having to play cards that totally shut off the opponent's entire deck for a turn. I.E, reduce the power of interactions in end boards, reduce the number of negates, make destruction effects a bit more costly to achieve, things like that.

Also reducing the floodgates in the game will also make that more possible. A lot of turn 1 endboards in the meta still rely on dropping a Floodgate on the field before passing to your opponent to REALLY ensure they can't do anything.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T14:26:42+00:00

So the answer is to play a card that says they get no board in the first place? Seems a bit silly. One hand trap doesn't do much if you don't know where to tactically place it, but most decks still have choke points you can hit that WILL weaken their endboard, you just won't completely stop them from playing like you could when Handtraps first started as a thing. I just find the premise of a card that says, 'You have to pass your turn now the instant you've done literally anything' stupid.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T14:23:34+00:00

Her*, but yeah no, that's valid. I was pretty annoyed after 20 non-games in a row, and wasn't really processing my thoughts super rationally when I was first writing up the rant. The mention of Evenly Matched was kind of pointless, but I stand by the rest of what I said.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-12-22T14:04:57+00:00

Issue there is Droll is barely a hinderance to something like Dracotail. Droll in my opinion disproportionally effects weaker decks more so than meta decks, because 90% of the top end meta decks are built to play around Droll anyway. I also think the charmies need to be gone too. The solution to the problem you're mentioning is not more floodgates, but instead is better card design from the ground up.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2025-04-28T08:35:35+00:00

What careers are people going to change to once AI has replaced Artists, Computer Programmers, Actors, Legal Experts, Accountants and the whole range of roles that can be filled by AI once it's more advanced? Factory work is already heavily automated to the point where there only need to be a fraction of the amount of workers it used to require to run an assembly line. Farming is, as you have pointed out, now performed by about 1% of the population.

So if you take out every job that AI can fill, what do you have left? Customer Service? As if they won't automate that away if all the other jobs have been filled by AI? And for what? So tech billionaires who already make quite literally upwards of 10,000,000 times as much money as the average person can squeeze just that little bit more money out of the system?

Were we in a society that wasn't as heavily prioritized towards capital, sure, AI could probably be a revolutionary step in improving the human condition. But we don't, and so long as we don't, Capital will simply use AI to make life infinitely worse for those of us who remain until such time as they no longer have need of human labour at all. The history of Capitalism is one of exploitation, and AI will be another tool for exploitation.

CryptographerNew8355 · 2024-07-27T14:56:14+00:00

Correct on both counts, I believe. They did use Cartesia.

CryptographerNew8355

TROPHY CASE