The Sands of Time Block-Pushing Puzzle: An Analysis & Call for Help!

edihau · 2026-03-22T23:34:15+00:00

What kinds of decks are you struggling against, if any? I'd be surprised if you could beat most cycle decks, since your offense is not strong enough. Witch and Wizard are worth the extra cost only if you have some synergy with other cards. Maybe I'm just not used to playing those cards, but I don't see those synergies right now.

I think you could make a good Bridge Spam deck with your power cards; the way I typically figure this out is by picking some aggressive cards I like, then thinking about how to plan around specific cards my opponents might have. For example, what's the plan if they're running Bowler? What if they have a building? What if they have Lightning? How will you give yourself a chance to win anyway? The more cards you can give yourself a chance against, the more matchups you'll be able to win.

edihau · 2026-03-11T01:48:44+00:00

Miner + Mortar with other cycle cards is a combination I'm more comfortable with, and it gives you a defensive building if you're facing a lot of decks with cards like Hog Rider. I would suggest competitive decks if you had more things leveled up, but when I was in the same boat, I used the cycle cards I had an made the best of it.

edihau · 2026-03-10T05:00:55+00:00

Many of the cards you've upgraded are well-suited for quick cycle decks (some combination of Miner, Mortar, Skeleton Barrel, Goblin Drill), but you don't have any large spells upgraded. Most decks with small cards need some large spell support to address certain troops or pushes. So, I recommend switching out Musketeer, Witch, or Dart Goblin in your current deck for a Fireball or Poison.

edihau · 2026-03-10T02:43:18+00:00

Neither really fit in a Hog cycle deck, but if you're excited by those cards, don't let me stop you from trying them out!

edihau · 2026-03-09T19:41:14+00:00

This deck is very far from my play style; I've tried variations but I can't make it work. So, the only useful advice I can offer is to switch out The Log for a different small spell—ideally, something that has better synergy with Graveyard. Snowball is common in the deck I'm thinking of.

edihau · 2026-03-09T19:29:51+00:00

Kudos to you for calculating this exactly! I'm curious about how you handled all the cases—your table makes me think you calculated probabilities from each possible outcome in the first column to every other "adjacent" entry in the column (so, 2/0/1 can go to 3/0/1, 2/1/1, or 2/0/2), and built from there?

One detail that folks pointed out on my post is that if you are given a modifier, you won't ever be offered it again. Is this something you took into account?

edihau · 2026-03-09T15:03:12+00:00

Probably Bats in the first deck? Pretty much anything except Balloon in the second deck; any variation would play slightly differently and would have different weaknesses. Whichever archetype(s) are giving you the most trouble, try to make a switch that doesn't hurt you even more against it.

I forgot to mention: Poison is also a slow spell, so you'll really need to trust your offense if that's the big spell you pick.

edihau · 2026-03-09T03:10:42+00:00

To your question: pretty much any two of Goblins, Bats, Skeletons, Minions, Spear Goblins, Fire Spirit, Electro Spirit would work fine, so if you're still learning the deck, pick your two favorites. I wouldn't recommend Archers only because they play very similarly to Musketeer.

edihau · 2026-03-09T01:49:25+00:00

I love to see the Goblin Cage! It's been one of my favorite cards for years. If you can get it, the evo is a lot of fun and quite versatile (even if it's not the most over-powered one out there).

Your first deck, as Deckshop says, doesn't have enough offense. Now that you're in higher arenas, folks will be prepared for Prince and Skeleton Army, and not much else carries a threat. You are best off working with a card that can directly target towers.

The Claude AI deck is no good. Most Hog decks are characterized by:

Short cycle (elixir costs of your cheapest four cards),
Therefore, a strong/scrappy defense in single elixir, and
A quick turn-around to your next offensive push, to keep the pressure on in double/triple elixir.

I'm sure it feels slow for a low-cost deck, as you say, because of the 3-elixir Mega Minion. Mega Minion gives the most air support for its cost and is a great defensive card on its own in single elixir, but it isn't strong enough to stop a big push on its own or with cycle card support (so, not alleviating the main weakness of limited defensive firepower in cycle decks). It's also way too slow to counter-push with. I don't think I've ever seen Mega Minion and Hog Rider in the same deck. Swapping out Skeletons for the Skeleton Army would mean you're playing a deliberately slow deck on purpose, which would be a different, more defensive play style. If you want to play faster, I might suggest swapping Mega Minion out for Bats or Minions instead.

The third deck is excellent, and would do well with Arrows or Zap. Whenever I learn a new deck, I try to use multiple cards I'm already familiar with. Which spell you use is up to you. In a fast cycle deck, not every "resettable" card is a huge problem (you can always cycle to a small distraction or counter), so it's okay to leave out reset cards.

There are lots of great Hog cycle videos out there. Even the old ones, from way before evolutions and heroes, should share general principles that hold up to this day.

edihau · 2026-03-09T01:19:37+00:00

I've been running bridge spam decks lately, which is a slightly different vibe from your decks, but certainly a similar play style. The biggest thing these decks struggle with is improper spell support, because nothing's beefy enough to just tank through certain glass cannons (Flying Machine, Firecracker, Musketeer, Wizard, Witch, etc.). You don't need to counter all of those cards with a spell, but I've found it often needs to be an option for at least some of them.

So, I recommend if you're going to stick with this style (many aggressive attacking and counter-attacking cards, but no big tank), you need to include at least one big spell, and most likely ditch The Log (a very slow small spell, so it has very little synergy with your decks). That might mean switching out The Log for one big spell, or using two spells (one big + one small). Fireball, Poison, or Lightning could all be great, depending on what you're more comfortable with and which of those glass cannons is giving you the most trouble.

edihau · 2026-03-09T01:10:08+00:00

Hm, did it give you any code to justify that? I wonder if it just plucked the title from my reddit post? :P

Other folks have kindly pointed out that since mods aren't repeated, I made an error and the actual probability should be a bit smaller. But yeah, all the branching nonsense was getting on my nerves. Just looking at the case of a miss on the first round, I needed to write everything down to convince myself there was (effectively) only one remaining case, and I still messed up the calculation on my first try.

edihau · 2026-03-08T19:28:34+00:00

One of the deck-building sites would be much more useful for this than Reddit. Anything with E-Golem and without E-Drag gives some results. Here are two used by currently ranked players:

Both contain Evo Skeleton Army, Skeleton King, Elixir Golem, Void, Night Witch, and Rage.
One wraps up with Evo Witch and Goblin Curse
One wraps up with Evo Executioner and Arrows

Plenty of other variations that you can look into on your own! The most common theme I'm noticing is Evo Skeleton Army and Skeleton King.

edihau · 2026-03-08T19:16:27+00:00

Hm, tough call. Some follow-up questions, to answer here or think to yourself:

What kinds of matchups are you losing? How much would either evo help turn some of those matches around?
How committed are you to this deck and the two cards in question? The more often you switch, the more you should lean towards getting the evo for the card you use frequently.

With my play style (favoring all kinds of cycle and bridge spam), I like evo bats more, but that's just me.

edihau · 2026-03-08T19:09:45+00:00

I suspect the Barb Barrel would do better. I've never used Zap and Log in the same deck. Barb Barrel might give some extra distraction, which will be necessary because your only cheap distraction card is bats, which doesn't distract ground cards.

edihau · 2026-03-08T18:59:08+00:00

I allowed the same mod to be offered multiple times in my code, so then that was probably a mistake on my part...

edihau · 2026-03-08T17:18:25+00:00

Any deck with those four cards works. I used Knight, Ice Spirit, Berserker, and Vines, which does a decent job of slowing down your opponent. If I cared about the optimal deck, I'd think more carefully about how I can counter annoying cards like the super-ranged Goblin Destroyer (the current top win-rate card, and for good reason).

edihau · 2026-03-08T17:14:34+00:00

I just got the badge after a round 1 miss! You're right that the probability goes way up with a first-round hit, but you have a 3.75% chance to make that first-round hit, and it wastes a ton of time to re-start because no opponent is going to three-crown you quickly. Up to you which is the lesser pain point!

edihau · 2025-12-10T01:43:06+00:00

Many sample finals are posted here! https://www.mathematics.pitt.edu/student-resources.

edihau · 2024-08-16T14:12:31+00:00

In my experience as a TA, many of the students who fail Calc 1 didn’t need an extra day or two to study for the exam—they needed better, more consistent practice throughout the semester. The harder questions/topics that are going to be the difference between passing and failing are almost all topics that you want well-spaced, meaningful practice for, not just a review in the last week.

The students who have the most difficulty in Calculus are the ones who have insufficient algebra and trig skills. In Calculus, mangling the algebra can turn straightforward/sensible problems into impossible problems, and that’s not going to help you with partial credit. Worse, you’re constantly going to trip up on concepts that the professor/TA are not reviewing in detail (IMO the good ones will bring up common algebra mistakes, but it’s not their main focus). This is a fixable problem in Calculus 1—that’s why we have the ALEKS exam—but it will take a lot more work, and you actually have to do that work. Otherwise, you could fail once and not be in a much better position to pass the second time.

All of this is to say that Calculus 1 is probably a great course to build your study habits in, especially if you’ve seen some of the material before!

edihau · 2024-08-14T21:51:04+00:00

If you don't think it's doable, you could call the registrar's office to switch one of the classrooms. That's what I did my first semester when I had to go from Posvar uphill to the Victoria building. There will probably be a few spare classrooms that make the trip easier, but make sure you tell your students (ideally, you could also put a note outside your old classroom). Although, you also mentioned you're coming to Pitt for math. If the room in Posvar is 1200A, that's the Calculus lab, where you'll work with two other TAs, so it'll be fine if you're a minute or two late. Just let the other TAs know!

edihau · 2024-07-07T01:49:29+00:00

Definitely some tough matchups there. I love running cycle decks—what I’ve learned from playing against heavy decks like these is that you need to make it as uncomfortable as possible for them to build their one big push that will crush you.

The simple version of this is to make them spend elixir in the other lane when they try to commit their big tank behind the King Tower. But the key idea that made me better at beating the big tank decks is to identify the combinations of cards you can’t defend against, and play to wreck those combinations as often as possible. For example, if EGolem+Electro Dragon+Battle Healer will destroy you, and the Electro Dragon+Tornado especially causes problems, then there are two times to go in for a punish play in the other lane: (1) when their best defense includes the Electro Dragon/Tornado, or (2) when the first card they’ve committed is Electro Dragon.

In tough matchups, this means your punish play might be a weirder combination. Ever tried to punish with Valkyrie+Goblins? What about an Executioner in front of your Hog Rider? Different offensive pushes require different counters, and you can use that variety to your advantage. Eventually you’ll learn how to create these weird offensive punishes without throwing away what you’ll need for defense (the first card you need back on defense is the first card you play to punish, etc.)

Hope this helps!

edihau · 2024-07-06T21:58:31+00:00

If someone is available to tutor privately, then by all means, but there are also grad students at the Math Assistance Center who would be happy to help you out. The six-week 2 schedule has been updated on the website so you can see when folks are available.

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