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Wizbits Elemenstor Battle Strategy

Also See: Wizbits Elemenstor Battle, Wizbits Elemenstor Battle Rules.

Excerpted from the 2002 edition Strategy Guide

General Strategies

The Water Element specializes in card manipulation. Drawing cards, stacking decks, discarding your opponent's cards, and playing with cards that have been discarded are all most easily accomplished by the Water element. A well played Water element deck can often draw its entire deck, discard it all, and then put it back into play, usually for much less cost than playing the cards individually.

The Fire Element specializes in blowing things up. More specifically, Fire can get rid of pretty much anything in play at any time. It's really quite funny. Fire also is rather good against Furniliar cards (though it's got nothing on Carry). A well played Fire deck won't let any card stay in play for more than a turn before blowing it up.

The Air Element specializes in screwing things up, making the game more complicated, and generally getting your opponent pissed off at you. It is best at manipulating Main Points and gametext, often changing it entirely, and randomness. A well-played Air deck will never lose a battle, due to swinging around Main Points until they beat the other guys.

The Earth Element is the best defensive deck. With by far the greatest Main Points, especially Special Check Numbers, Earth cards are often viewed as "Stubborn". They also prevent the opponent from doing what they want to, usually by abilities that prevent everything from doing anything. A well played Earth deck can allow less than ten total cards to be played an entire game.

The Life Element is best about their characters. They play big, mean animals and people, focusing very little on anything that isnt a character. A well played Life deck usually outnumbers their opponent by an order of magnitude in sheer number of characters.

The Death Element is just badass.

The Stream Element kind of sucks. They have pretty good furniliar characters and the best non-element cards, but seriously, non-Elements are pretty crappy usually. A well-played Stream deck can usually win if it's played against a scrub, though.

The Carry Element specializes in removing things from play without blowing them up. It can get rid of most any non-element immediately, even better than Fire, and with other stuff it's pretty good too.

Basic Terminology

Banjoing: Using an UnRare card in such sheer numbers as to overwhelm the opponent, ocassionally playing so many copies of a single UnRare card that the play table can no longer hold them. Named after the Banjo of StromGaaaard (Card), the first UnRare issued.

Bunk Rush: Starting the Felthar card as your Main Character, this strategy focuses on a large number of card drawing abilities and cards and uses Felthar's cost reduction of Furniliars to play as many 1-cost Furniliars as possible for free. Only viable in Extrapolated Format due to the lack of cheap Furniliars in all other formats, this deck can consistently play upwards of 20 Furniliars by the third turn, attacking with all of them at once and overwhelming the opponent.

Deck Thief: A similar strategy to Musical Chairs revolving around cards that steal and/or destroy the opposing player’s cards. This is a favorite among Tournament Gangs; the leader will seed the tournament with pathetic underlings whose job it is to ruin the decks of anyone who poses a threat. Even if the demoralized opponent manages a win, they will be lacking their strongest cards when they face the leader. This strategy became less feasible after the cauldron of smoldering embers was removed from tournament play.

Lady Ambivilia: A (hopefully) female player who uses tight, cleavage-enhancing tops in order to distract her opponent. Given the demographics of tournament Elemenstor Battle players, female players could use this strategy to all but ensure victory. To this day, official tournament regulations specify that all female participants must wear XXL or larger turtleneck sweaters.

Leaning Tower: A pillar built to consist almost entirely of sub-pillars extending sideways from the main pillar. Often used in conjunction with cards with abilities that can prevent the opponent from engaging more than one sub-pillar at a time, for example the William the Straight character card which only allows pillars to be resolved directly downwards.

Memorizer: A term used to denote players so knowledgeable that they know many or all of the cards from memory. Some organize tournaments where they play the game using flash cards with the names of the CCG cards on them. The best memorizers often play the game by just staring at each other for hours, playing the game in their heads until one of them wins.

Mooning: Stacking a deck with as many Moon Shimmer cards as possible in order to demoralize the opponent. Although completely useless as a viable strategy for winning, "mooning" can have a devastating psychological effect on a player being told that, in effect, they're not worth beating.

Mountaineering: Building a deck with several mountain themed cards. A popular strategy used mostly due to the fact that most mountain cards have both the Heavy and the Tall attribute. The only other reason that it is used is because of the powers of the Mt Wang (Card).

Musical Chairs: Using a number of cheap Furniliar cards (most popularly the Double Common Three-Legged Chair Card combined with cards that cause swaps or exchanges with your opponent's cards, forcing your opponent to give up valuable characters in exchange for your crappy furniture. Often used as a Bunk Rush variant.

Plunger: A formation of cards used to plunge the opponent's pillars, like a plunger. The Wall of Stone (Card) is popularly credited as introducing the plunger strategy.

Pseudopus: A strategy built to imitate in part the behavior of the Super-Mega-DoubleUltra Rare Gangster Octopus (Card) after it was banned.

Pseudopussy: A player who's almost enough of annoying, whiny sissy that you want to call him a pussy, but has just enough redeeming qualities that you still hang out with him occassionally when you have nothing better to do, even though you usually end up regretting it and having to make up an excuse to get away from him.

Strangler: A card or combination of cards used to prevent the opponent from acquiring any secession points.

Tower of Babel: An attempt to salvage a losing game by creating a pillar of cards so large and complicated that it cannot possibly be resolved without confusion among different interpretations of its inevitably conflicting effects, forcing the game to be called off.

Twiddling: Continually forcing shifts between Element and Non-Element play phases, usually in order to rack up secession points from cards with the Inverse Phase Shift Plus attribute.

Unexpected Throat Punch: A quite literal attack of offensive superiority and surprise. Wielding this attack can not only win the round, but also a second deck of cards if you are quick before your opponent can recover.

Common Decks

• Bladeslinger's Song-Blast of Airth-Cap of Refreshment combo
• Full Chest Slam
• Will o' the Wargoose Deck