Putting Opponents To B.E.D In Meltdown

**Cyph3rX83** · 10-28-2012, 02:11 AM

Meltdown Strategy By Cyph3r
Hello out there everyone. Just yesterday meltdown was added to the newest version of Shadow Era and if your like me, and really love limited formats in the TCG world then this article should help ya when playing your meltdown matches. I want it to be known that IM NOT AN EXPERT, and still looking for my first meltdown match win but the following is to help new players who have never played any limited style games in the past. Hope you all like and lets start the discussion.*

1.What is Meltdown? Meltdown is a limited format which allows you to build a min of 30 card decks and you have no restrictions, the cards you use to build your deck are from the 4 packs of cards you get after paying the small price of just 200gold. Heroes you use also come from these same packs so you'll really won't know what you'll use vs. what you want to use.

Basic Strategies:
1. I learned limited play the old fashioned/aka "the hard way" back first playing magic way back in 8-9th edition, paying my 15-20 dollar entry fee and getting crushed cause I really didn't know what I was doing, but I did know one thing after that. It was that it was the most fun I've had playing TCG's, and I wanted to get better at it. So after annoying the top players at my local hobby/card shop's and asked how they build their decks. The following is what I've been told and what I've read on the Internet over the years and figure that this at the very least will be a solid starting point and give you a fair understanding on how to build competitive meltdown decks.

The easiest way to build in my opinion is from a short,simple theory I seen online in the past called the B.E.D theory. Each letter stands for a specific item you should be looking for when building your meltdown deck, and each stand for the following;

1. "B"- Stands for Bombs. Bombs refers to allies that are really good and are really hard to either deal with and or kill. A couple of examples of bombs are Sandworms,Brutal Minotaur

's, Erika Shadowhunter

's etc. In most limited games, Allies are really your Main win condition and will send the majority of your damage and building around burn/Mill or control will be much harder since your working with a "limited" card pool.

2. "E"- Stands for Evade. Now in shadow era evade is much harder to come by for 2 reasons really, 1 there isn't any allies that have flying that can fly over allies/hero's to send damage like you can in magic, 1 allies that have "Evade" like qualities would be allies with Stealth, and even protector's like Skullborn/Stormcaller can work like an evade type card since it can protect your allies from being attacked and targeted, keeping them open to Wreck havoc to you're opponent.

3. "D"- Stands for destruction. Item/Weapon destruction will be crucial. If you weren't lucky enough to get a Tome or ill Gotten gains, and you're opponent did pull 1 of those, having item destruction could mean the difference winning or losing. Also if any opponent has Armor and it's Spelleater Bands

and you have a fireball or other burn spells in hand you'll want to have options to not have things like that cost you a match or two.

In a nut shell I hope this gives you a better understanding what players think about when playing in limited formats. Sure there are difference of opinions and preference of play varies but just think you're deck building through and try to think of things you're opponent will have trouble with, but also try keeping in mind what weakness are in your decks and try to keep them from getting exposed in a match and end up losing that match. So Good Luck, Have Fun and happy Meltdowning to you and everyone out there LOL!!!
AA1 Cyph3rX83

**Little Gnome** · 10-28-2012, 11:54 PM

Nice article man!

**Chuck Testa** · 10-29-2012, 12:00 AM

I sent my opponent to bed and left a bear there for her

Nice article. I'm sticking with Quick Match for now though. Not enough gold for Meltdown.

**psychobabble** · 10-29-2012, 02:56 AM

I'm more familiar with BREAK (bombs, removal, evasion, abilities - ie non vanilla creatures, krap) but I'm not sure either of those general MTG principles have much application to meltdown. I've played a bunch of meltdown in the past few days (rated #30, yay!), and you just don't need to make the same kind of tough build decisions in meltdown as you do in MTG sealed or, especially, draft. The meltdown sealed pools are more of a struggle to find 30 playable cards, than an MTG sealed pool where you have real decisions to make as to which and how many colours you choose, and then what you maindeck and what you sideboard in. I could outline a pretty solid specific strategy for meltdown pools, but I might wait until after the first week jackpot to see if I'm going to keep playing it in the future anyway. I think people are starting to figure the format out a bit more though, I've played a couple of people who have gone to the next level and meta-ed against the initial strategy that worked well. It's quite a unique format, though, those MTG principles aren't really relevant. I'm not sure that it's particularly deep though, and it's certainly VERY random - some pools are just massively more powerful than others.

**TheSt4lker** · 10-29-2012, 05:55 AM

In theory this sounds great. Put in the bombs and evade allies = strong winning deck. The problem is the reality of meltdown. In most games you are getting 12 allies max, so if you want to win you just have to put in all the allies you have. Even if you get more than 12 you are almost always putting in all allies (with a few possible exceptions like spark, and potentially hell stead) anyway, since extra allies means less of other useful cards like ally control or weapons. Just my two cents.

**Cyph3rX83** · 10-29-2012, 01:01 PM

I wasn't trying to say that there's a secret formula in deck building for meltdown or just a certain way to build, I wanted an article that could help new players to limited and give them a basic understanding in what to look, and what might be good and what to avoid. Each time your going to have a completely different deck then the last but if you have an understanding how the format is played can go a long way for players to get the most out of their meltdown gaming

**TheSt4lker** · 10-29-2012, 01:20 PM

I understand. But if you are going to try figure out which allies to put it, and which to leave out, you're going to waste your three minutes. With a couple of exceptions in terms of allies, and a couple of exceptions depending on your cards (e.g. you can make a weapon deck), you're just going to put in all your allies...