Welcome back to this third installment of this series, first of all I want to apologize for being so late on this article (since it should have been posted on Monday) but I was caught up with some personal issues and couldn't do it earlier. Second of all, I do not understand why (while on the front page) when I clicked on my blogs it redirected to some Magic: The Gathering blogs.

I hope that this one doesn't get redirected to pokemon

This week's topic is Curve, how is it played, how it affects the different builds, how can you tech against it, and how can you beat a curve player and a curve deck.

In the first article I described curve as I see it:

Curve: This type of deck, and also strategy, is the most simple of all, since it bases on this statement "the longer it gets, the bigger the guy", you play a character according to the turn you are on, trying to overwhelm your opponent not by number, but by strength. This type of play is the best suited for anyone starting to play (and I truly believe that all of us vs. system players started with a curve deck) since it really doesn't require that much thinking as a rush or off curve strategy may need.

A curve deck can be played in a Mono-affiliation deck or in a Team-up deck (those that play multiple teams and do not use some kind of team-up aren't curve decks, no matter how fitting to the description they are, they aren't curve decks, they are off curve strategy decks, and I will not explain them here, but they will surely have their time when that topic gets the attention).

To give you one example of what a Mono-affiliation curve deck looks like:

Hulk and the Warbound: (yes..I know, I suck at deck names)

Characters:

4x Mastermind Excello, Amadeus Cho

4x Rick Jones, Monster's best friend

4x Miek, The unhived

4x Hiroim, The Shamed

4x Achangel, Champion

4x Hulk, Green Scar

4x Hulk, Gladiator

1x Hulk, The Green King

Plot twists:

4x Hulk Smash!

4x Righteous Anger

4x Warbound to the end    

4x Trouble with Dinosaurs

3x Bloodsport

2x Lay down with dogs

2x Hulk Red

2x the Strongest one there is

Locations:

3x The great Arena

3x Imperial Dreadnaught     

As you can see, the deck tries to keep up with the turn, and (since it is supposed to win on turn 6) it doesn't carry any 7 drops or higher. 

Every curve deck has an optimal curve, and that is why almost every deck has maximized the character needed but leaves some space to a contingency character to face some other builds. For example, in a secret society deck, the main character for the turn 2 is Dr. Sivana, Mad Scientist, so they max him out by adding all 4 copies of him into the deck, but they also use Deadshot, Floyd Lawton in case they need to get rid of an annoying 3 drop character, like Invisible Woman, First lady of the Fantastic Four.

As you can see, a mono affiliation curve deck just adds some pumps and stuff that helps that certain affiliation, while a team-up deck uses either generic cards or some team stamped cards, but they need to use team-ups in order for the deck to work, and that takes some space.

Thunderbolts/Crime Lords Team-Up (I was going to name this deck with a way to evil pun..and by evil I mean it sucked)

Characters:

4x Speed Demon, Whizzer

4x Blizzard, Frosty Friend

4x Beetle Mach, Discharged

3x Viper, Madame Hydra- Hydra

1x Yelena Belova Black Widow, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.- Hydra

4x Radioactive Man, Containment Suit

2x James Barnes Winter Soldier, Communist puppet- RAID

4x Scientist Supreme, Monica Rappaccini- A.I.M.

3x Kingpin, War Profiteer-Hydra

4x Red Skull, Johann Schmidt - Hydra

2x Baron Strucker, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker-Hydra

1x Red Skull, Master of Creation

1x Venom, Brain-Eater

Plot Twists:

4x Unregistered Combatants

4x Hail Hydra!, Team-Up

4x Enemy of the State

4x Mobilize 

3x Code White

2x Death of the Dream

2x The Wrong Stuff, Team-Up

As you can see, every team-up deck tries to take advantage of the synergies between teams, or the advantage that some teams give in the power of some cards.

Now that I have given some examples of curve decks, it is time to learn how do the curve play style affects every player.

First of all, we all started as curve players, and I believe no one here is the exception, so what I may say next may be a step that most of us have passed through and went over it to become better players.

A curve player can be identified by the amount of characters they tend to pack in every deck, usually from 28 to 36, the number depends on the needs of every deck, but as I said before, they try to maximize the number of characters needed for the ideal curve.

They too, are very conservative with their characters, since a lot of this decks depend on, either one character, or the synergy between 2 or more characters.

While playing curve, every point on every character is crucial, and thus must be used to its maximum, even if the character has low stats, the effect it has compensate its low stats.

As for the personality of a curve player, its pretty much the same as every player, they try to take advantage of every single thing they can, and they are really careless and easygoing. If you would like to unstabilize a curve player the best way would be to stay completely serious while playing, if they can't joke they feel kinda dissapointed and thus will make, eventually, a mistake that will cost them the game.

Curve decks, are, however, easily played, and thus taking advantage of a mistake is harder, probably leaving things to luck, or the poor memory of an opponent (it happens).

How to beat a curve deck: 

In every game, the most crucial characters are the 3 drop, and the 4 drop, if you have missed completely on these 2 turns you will know what I am talking about, so if you manage to get rid of those drops, while keeping at least 1 of yours, you are by now in a great position to win the game.

If the deck bases around in a single character, you just need to take care of that character, so packing a couple of finishing moves, or death traps, or even quick kill can help you more than what you expect.

Since the curve deck has big characters, they would always try to do a lot of damage, and the most easy way to do this is with breakthrough, so pack a couple of Burn rubbers and you are good to go.

While these tips may not win you the game per se, they would leave you in a good position, and therefore you just need to keep playing the game flawlessly.

Thanks for reading this third part, and tune again next week (on monday I hope) to read about the Conservative play style.

YGO Daedalus-Liberi Fatali. 

Tags: Vs System Curve

Related to: Vs System

Bookmark: