40enWed, 18 Jul 2012 22:04:33 GMTWed, 18 Jul 2012 22:04:33 GMTFreaks/Piranas is a fun little combo, because you can have pill manip on top of pill manip. If your opponent reads your opener wrong, it might mean they're out of the game right away. It's easy to confound your opponent when 3 out of your 4 cards all have pill manip on them.]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:22:22 GMTWed, 18 Jul 2012 18:36:55 GMT
And for that matter, are there any notable applications of Piranas in duo these days? I used to toy around with Pira/GHEIST a bit for some sweet lockdown opportunities, but right now that type of strategy does not seem all that appealing. Any 8/x makes a joke out of these tiny all-stoppers. And "real" decks (i.e. the above-mentioned Sentinel) got 8 power for days.
Piranas/Skillz seems somewhat decent to me, though. Can't think of exact list just yet, have to look into the newer cards. Has anyone had any succes with this combo?]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:26:22 GMTHawkins, Scubb, Katan, and even Dalhia means that it can be pretty safe for a well-rounded deck to just ignore them. A Piranas player has to take a big risk in deciding whether their opponent is going to bother defending against a pill manip card or not. And on top of that, the lack of DR does hurt them.

They're still not exactly a weak clan, but they don't seem nearly as threatening as they used to be.]]>Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:28:02 GMTPiranas has less to do with ulrich's ban than with the meta shifting against them. It seems like every clan has a good ability SOA nowadays, new "copy opponent bonus" abilities are quite damaging to SOB clans, and popular clans pirana used to pwn (like AS and GHEIST) are getting less popular now, while the clans Piranas have trouble dealing with like Sentinel and Jungo have become more dominant.

Also, since the weakening of the SOA clans, elo has been trending toward more and more powerful abilities in general, I think.]]>Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:22:28 GMTElo player here, but clearly, they seem less popular regardless of how viable they are. You don't encounter them as often as "back in the day"
]]>Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:46:39 GMTSelma, Raeth, Hawkins, Taljion, Ector, Puff, Baba and Tyd is a good deck.]]>Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:07:11 GMTPiranas fan (that flavor, oh my), so my natural intent is to always try and force Piranas decks where I can. Now, I haven't been around for a while and well... things seem to have changed quite a bit.

Is it just me, or mono-Pira is pretty dead right now in ELO? Without Ulrich around the clan has no DR, and sticking a random Spiaghi or something of that nature doesn't quite solve the problem cuz it really hurts your Support mechanics. And if you don't play Support cards why even go mono in the first place?
Deckbuilding in general seems to have evolved drastically (no surprise here), and there are a lot more cards which just overwhelm you with sheer power, making someone like Scubb or Katan look pretty meh. Even Tula, which I always had a soft spot in my heart for, seems to stumble much more often than I'd like to see. SOA-type effects (and now also that Copy opp. Bonus thing) render half of Piranas useless, and there seem to be a ton nowadays.
Back in my day (lol feels weird to say that) I would be pretty happy with Piranas on a week like this, with no GHEIST/Montana bans whatsoever, but now even those seem to kick my arse. The only matchup that feels reasonably safe still is Rescue, but that's an obvious one.

Any thoughts?
I can see coming a number of comments like "ubad, learn to play", and you know what, that might very well be the case. But still, any tips on where mono-Pira belongs right now are very appreciated.]]>