Hello, I'm new in SV (like, last night new) and I need some pointers at playing the Craft that caught my eye, which is Artifact Portal. I believe I have the basics down so no need to elaborate too much in your reply. I have a few questions:
1. What is Artifact deck's archetype? I believe it's control since all you do is hold out until you draw to a Deus Ex Machina (in every sense of the word) but if I draw into an artifact early they often do quite the beating by themselves. Do I build Artifact Portal to a Control or Midrange type?
2. How to best utilize Spinaria? So far I've only been using her as diversion and her artifact as starter. Spina just swings in, drop her artifact, get evolved, then both of them remove a piece from the board and disappear again, netting me a card.
3. How many Deuses (Dei? Whatever) do you need? So far I've been using only one and she appears almost on every match. I suck at using her though so I have like 75% lose rate, but I think the number isn't the issue here. I suck at turning the Resonance on and off when I need it, usually ending with a handful of good cards getting trashed or having zero hand. I have a bad habit of spending all of my PP even if it's unnecessary, which leads to my Resonance problem.
4. How the heck do you play this deck? I've only been playing haphazardly throwing Wards when swarmed and Rushes when a piece drops but really, early game I have zero goal except surviving until I draw into Deus. Should I run more draw power cards? The success of the whole deck hinges on ONE card and there's no reliable way to toolbox her.
5. What's a rotation and how do you determine which card will be usable in the next rotation?
Since I only have a limited amount of time, I'll only awnser Q.5!
Rotation is a gamemode. Only the 5 newest card expansions are usable in Rotation meaning that all cards released in Rise of Bahamut will not be available after the next card expansion coming out in approx. 2.5 months.
I'm not expert of artifact portal but I'm in AA3 and I've seen many of them, different decklists exist you can make your own but keep card which are in all portal decks like deus, icarus, acceletarium, etc.
Im going to focus on how to manage resonance cuz its probably the most important.
What I found so far is that Artifact Portal is a charming hybrid between Control and Midrange. They can't constantly destroy things and throw Banes around like C. Blood, so Aggros can make quick work of them before Deus comes. They can't spawn Zambies and Skels for days like Mid Shadow, so Controls can shut them down if they run out of Acceleratium.
On the other hand, they have pretty solid answers to most things, especially if they manage to draw into Artifacts and get the draw engine going. The Resonance also provides pretty nice Midrange-like pressure, but instead of flooding the board and gnaws at resources slowly, they scare people from committing with Subs, Resonance D. Cuts, and Puppeteer Strings. All in all they're a fun little toolbox, just like the first impression these cyberpunk cards gave me.
sorry if this is a reply but this is an answer to the main question . as a protal craft player you need to know 3 things .
1. your deck will screw you over due to the lessening of chances to draw needed cards (by placing artifacts in your deck) you increase the chances of drawing unwanted cards (if you want to clear this bahamout on the board but get a stupid artifact instead as an example)
2. you must know how to manage resonance (this basically means play the deck more than just 1 to 2 times)
3. avoid too much of the other artifacts and focus on the analyzing artifacts only (other artifacts are ok but will screw you over due to their cost like radiant or mystic which cost 3 and 5 ) since analyzing artifacts help you draw your cards more and are most useful
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all in all portal is not that good in the meta for now for 2 reasons
1. the screw up with very few cost effecient cards to get you artifacts (mechanized soldier on 3 or icarus evolve on 4/5 . hakrabi is ok but i really wan to replace her and deus is fffffffffffffffffine but not that fine ) so you need something like an amulet that costs 2 or 1 that can get you artifacts per turn then you will start seeing its power
2. you almost most of the time wont win if you dont draw properly (this can happen to any faction but for the sake of just portal this happens more often than any other faction you want to invest in so keep it in mind ) basically prepare your salt mines and be ready to activate the machines
thats my take on portal so far they get screwed by alsmot all other factions except swordcraft because you can do what they are meant to do 10000000X better by making boards consistently to the point they cant clear at all . so yyyyyyyyyyyeah other factions youre just ded . oh though you can beat the midrange shadow (few times not often) if you are decent in the portalcraft mechanics . but not the other 6 . sorry if its a rant but its kinda the fact that portal has no deck organizer card to help pumb out the artifacts into the play . so you will start veryyyyyyyyy slow .
