Crack open a cold one, because Praxis says "It's Miller Time!"

[Anson Darkeblade]

Hello Elemental fans! Have a seat and grab a drink, because this is a long post. I'm working on a Praxis deck, having culled all the info I could from the forum here (from other Elemental heroes too), and hit the lab to put this together. Love to hear some thoughts/input/hatred/comments/Pee-Wee Herman impressions/critiques etc., so I'll put it out to the community at large:

Hero:
Praxis

Allies: 16
4x Harbinger of the Lost
4x Brimstone Devourer
4x Falseblood Cultist
4x Reactorary

Abilities/Artifacts: 25
4x Mind Control
2x Eternal Renewal
4x Shadow Font
3x Bad Santa
2x Infinity Core
4x Reverberate
4x All Hope Is Lost
2x Loom of Fate

Weapons: 3
3x Darkforged Knife

Total: 45 cards

Ideally, play goes like this (if I list more than one card, I list them in preferred order)
T1:
-AHIL: Puts AHIL on the bottom of your deck, and lets you draw a replacement
-Loom: Sets up your future draw to start running your opponent out of cards

T2:
-Harbinger: Start getting board presence, plus discard. If you're lucky, you'll "lose" a Reactorary or Brimstone for either a free ally or direct damage (especially useful vs opponent's T2 drop)
-Infinity Core: Set up your life gain and recursion for the rest of the game
-AHIL: same as T1
-Loom/Loom ability: Same as T1, and/or draw a card

T3:
-Reactorary or Brimstone: if you have no board presence or are outnumbered
-Harbinger: same as T2
-IC/AHIL/Loom: Same as before

T4: (when it starts relying on what's in your hand)
-Darkforged Knife: Gotta get that discard rolling! It's tempting, but DO NOT use your ability yet! Attack if it means you'll take an ally out though
-Falseblood Cultist: If you have a discard ally in your hand, discard for the draw. Purely based on how the match is going and what you're holding whether it's Brimstone or Reactorary. Every match's situation will be different, use your best judgement
-All previous "setups" and their abilities: If you haven't gotten them yet, this will be more difficult than usual
-DO NOT use a Harbinger T4 unless you're really hurting for allies.

T5:
-Reverberate: When you discard from your deck, your opponent loses 2 extra cards.
Burn your ability now, attack with the knife, and your opponent will be down 9 cards (unless he's got stuff that procs on discard too... then you're kinda boned)
-MAKE SURE that at least your IC is in place at this point. You're gonna be losing allies like crazy and you need to be able to recycle.
-Keep holding Harbingers if you have them

T6 and on:
-Shadow Font: Keep spamming your ability, and when you do, attack with D.Knife
-try to keep Reverberate up so that when you use your ability or summon Harbinger (never on the same turn since the effect doesn't double up) your opponent loses an extra 2 cards
-Focus on recycling Brimstones with your IC for the direct damage from discard, trying to keep allies under control
-try to keep one Eternal Renewal in hand if things really go tits up or you're facing a massive deck
-Bad Santas should be used to help empty your opponent's deck, or if you end up with a shit hand or are running low on cards

The Ender:
Ideally, you and your opponent will deck out at almost the same time, except you'll have a few cards left: the AHILs that you stacked at the bottom of the deck. With two minimum as the last 2 cards in your deck (make sure you DO NOT draw them both) you can cast one, do 5 damage, draw a card (which will be the next AHIL), and repeat the process until your opponent is dead. 8 resource kills a 40-life warrior.

Sacrificing:
-You can ideally function at 8 resource, sacrifice to 9 if you need to MC something and use a 4CC card
-You can safely sac a Knife if you have a spare in hand, really you'll only get a few whacks with them anyway.
-Allies can be sacrificed in this order: Falseblood, Reactorary, Brimstone. You should try to keep at least 2 of each to recycle, but scenarios may necessitate otherwise.
-Losing one Reverberate won't break you.
-Similarly, you can sac a Harbinger if you MUST
-One Loom can be sac'd if you already have one on the board or in hand
-Once you have 2 AHILs stacked at the bottom of your deck, you can sac one or two if you don't need to fish for any other cards in the deck
-You can sac one each of Mind Control, BS, and Shadow Font if you have to

Changes:
-Considering dropping Falsebloods to 3 just to make other allies have better odds in discards
-Considering dropping one Knife, and one or two MCs for the same reason
-This deck needs better heal. Considering upping IC to 3, or maybe using Soul Reaper in a pinch

If you're still with me after all that, you deserve a cookie. I hope by explaining my thought process it gives a better insight into my intentions with the deck, and as a mainly Banebow user, I think I'd exploited the Elemental cards appropriately. Let me know what y'all think! Thanks!

[Shadows R Us]

Good write up.

Where's my cookie?

[Anson Darkeblade]

Check your temporary internet files?

[NewINIMoon]

Check your temporary internet files?

Didn't find one (hahaha)

[tman507]

Seems good. No Living Armor though? Would be another nice option to be able to discard your Devourers or Reactoraries, plus get a 4/4 ally in quickly.

[Anson Darkeblade]

Seems good. No Living Armor though? Would be another nice option to be able to discard your Devourers or Reactoraries, plus get a 4/4 ally in quickly.

I originally had 3 copies in, but I felt like 6 resource slowed me down a bit too much mid-game. Endgame it might have its place though now that I think about it. Maybe it's a viable 2 of?

[tman507]

I originally had 3 copies in, but I felt like 6 resource slowed me down a bit too much mid-game. Endgame it might have its place though now that I think about it. Maybe it's a viable 2 of?

Good point. Although I think it does work well as a 2 of for the end game. Surprising your opponent with a Living Armor discarding a Devourer for the win is great

[Kylt]

Having AHiL and other unilateral discard engine seems contradictive. Win con with AHiL is that you have 2 cards left in your deck which are AHiL, and opponent has 0 card in his deck. You then loop AHiL for 6 times for 6 res, dealing 30 damage in 1 turn. So you want to thin your deck while doing the same to your opponent.

If you are not going to win with AHiL, then you should totally exclude it to raise the odd of discarding brimstone and reactorary.

[Anson Darkeblade]

If you are not going to win with AHiL, then you should totally exclude it to raise the odd of discarding brimstone and reactorary.

After messing around with this deck for a while tonight, that's exactly the conclusion I came to. WAY more consistent like this. Great minds, amirite?

[chamthabo]

I don't know if you notice this, and maybe I'm wrong, but All Hope Is Lost and Infinity Core can't go along well together. AHiL's main strategy is making sure you have sufficient amount of them at the bottom of your deck and not discard them too much. Infinity Core messes that up because it shuffles your ally back into your deck. From my experience with FFM and Resurection, shuffling any card into your deck means your deck will be shuffled as well. You won't be able to keep AHiL at the bottom of your deck if you keep using Infinity Core, at least that is my assumption.