Sun Mar 25, 2012 DOTP 2012 Eglin's Decks v1.01

[Eglin]

Updated today, with a handfull of new decks and some bug-fixes. Enjoy!

[ravemotion]

Thanks for the updates! I've been constantly playing with your decks. Here are some problems I found in release 0.95

1. Sidestep deck - mana casting problem with some cards - I have enough mana to cast Crag Puca but the game says I dont. Some spells I cast gets tapped less mana than what's written on the card. Also when attacked with Riverfall Mimic and get blocked by a 2/2, I play Inside Out on my creature. I thought my creature would turn into a 3/3 but it turned into a 1/2 instead and eventually died from battle with the 2/2 surviving

2. Hella Mental deck - Taurean Mauler gets +1/1 counters on every phase/action in the game - tapping, untapping, drawing, casting...I have it at 152/152 now!

And here are some comments -

I like the Turbofog deck. Wish it had a Millstone or two, since the deck art has a millstone on it. Late in the game I tend to have more mana than I can use.

The Swans deck is quite powerful but boring - you have to keep drawing hoping the other card in the combo would show up. And when it shows up you have to keep looping the whole discard, draw lands, until you have enough lands to kill your opponent which is also done in a loop of discarding lands one by one.

The Allies deck is also powerful, they grow so fast. And the life gaining is awesome!

[Eglin]

Thanks for the updates! I've been constantly playing with your decks. Here are some problems I found in release 0.95

Thanks a million for testing the decks out and reporting some bugs!

1. Sidestep deck - mana casting problem with some cards - I have enough mana to cast Crag Puca but the game says I dont. Some spells I cast gets tapped less mana than what's written on the card. Also when attacked with Riverfall Mimic and get blocked by a 2/2, I play Inside Out on my creature. I thought my creature would turn into a 3/3 but it turned into a 1/2 instead and eventually died from battle with the 2/2 surviving

The mana issues seem to be related to hybrid cards. As far as I can tell, the game doesn't quite handle hybrid cards correctly. I've noticed that whenever I cast a hybrid card, the number of symbols appears as the card is cast like an overly. Then, when I cast a second hybrid card the same turn, the cast cost is usually reduced by the number of hybrid symbols in the last card's cast cost (or something like that). I haven't seen it go the other way and make cards more expensive to cast, but I guess I wouldn't be shocked if it did. I'm not sure what I can do to fix this issue, unfortunately.

Inside out merely uses the get and set functions to swap the target's power and toughness. If the get functions are reporting the unbuffed numbers, I'm not sure what I can do to fix it.

Sorry. Maybe DoTP just isn't ready for hybrid decks, but I don't know that I'll be able to fix either of these problems.

2. Hella Mental deck - Taurean Mauler gets +1/1 counters on every phase/action in the game - tapping, untapping, drawing, casting...I have it at 152/152 now!

HAHAHAHA. That's a pretty egregious bug to release - my apologies. Most of my testing with that deck was for Ashling the Pilgrim - I probably noticed that the bull was getting counters and disregarded the rest. It seems that I mistakenly used a <CONTINUOUS_ACTION> block instead of a <RESOLUTION_TIME_ACTION>. If you have the mod tools installed, it would be easy to fix. Otherwise, I'll try to post a new release before too long with this bugfix - thanks to you.

I like the Turbofog deck. Wish it had a Millstone or two, since the deck art has a millstone on it. Late in the game I tend to have more mana than I can use.

I, too, have been having a BLAST with this deck. It doesn't seem like it should be so powerful, but I've been pwning with it. There are a few tweaks that I've considered, and I'll add your great suggestion to the list. I'm also considering swapping the counterspells with more Path to Exile or perhaps Swords to Plowshares. Sometimes, I even think that I'd rather have Enlightened Tutor over Time Warp. Dunno', but there's certainly some room for tweaking.

The Swans deck is quite powerful but boring - you have to keep drawing hoping the other card in the combo would show up. And when it shows up you have to keep looping the whole discard, draw lands, until you have enough lands to kill your opponent which is also done in a loop of discarding lands one by one.

I agree with you, completely. It's a very cheesy deck. I usually mulligan until I have at least one swan - ideally, you'd have a swan and either an assault or a bloodbraid. Still, this version of the game has so few non-beatdown combos of any sort that it seemed worthwhile to include it. I'm also running out of preferred archtypes to offer in my wad! I guess it could be worse - I could've used Guilty Conscience + Stuffy Doll.

The Allies deck is also powerful, they grow so fast. And the life gaining is awesome!

Allies are a blast, aren't they? They certainly aren't perfect - it's pretty easy to derail them such that the pilot is left with no cards in hand and no removal. The Mimic Vat helps a lot, but it can still get pretty hairy versus decks with removal or sweepers. I have a version in WUg that solves a lot of problems using totem armor, providing lots of mana (Crab Umbra on a Harabaz Druid can often mean infinite mana), and card draw via the Sea Gate Loremaster, but it doesn't seem to be quite as consistent.

Thanks for the bug pointers and constructive comments. I appreciate the feedback!

Sincerely,
Eglin

[sadlyblue]

Hi,

Thanks for the new decks.

After playing with them i got a couple of errors:
[lua] [string "NOGGLE_HEDGEMAGE_888263046_TITLE (RESOLUTION_TIME_ACTION)[13AD..."]:5:
'then' expected near 'targ'
[lua] [string "INSIDE_OUT_888263042_TITLE (CONTINUOUS_ACTION) [1400F850]"]:2: attempt to index a nil value

Turbofog is really, really good. And i don't think it needs any change. But if you need to change anything, you can trade a Elixir of Immortality for another Path to Exile or a Vengeful Dreams/Final Judgement to deal with those indestructible pests.
Path to exile, in this deck is better than Swords, you can trap the opponent when he searches for land...

Sidestep has the problem with the dual mana, that sometimes it doesn't even need neither U or R. And Spell Syphon only says counter spell.

Swans could be more usefull if you used Pyroclasm, Slagstorm or even Wildfire. And for Ad Nauseam instead of an enchantment, could be an instant with a repeating resolution time. You could also use Seek the Horizon or Treasure Hunt.
To use with Seismic Assault i made last week a deck using it. Just can't find the error in Life From The Loam (it crashes the game at end of match).

Great job.

[Eglin]

Hi,

Thanks for the new decks.

After playing with them i got a couple of errors:
[lua] [string "NOGGLE_HEDGEMAGE_888263046_TITLE (RESOLUTION_TIME_ACTION)[13AD..."]:5:
'then' expected near 'targ'
[lua] [string "INSIDE_OUT_888263042_TITLE (CONTINUOUS_ACTION) [1400F850]"]:2: attempt to index a nil value

Sidestep has the problem with the dual mana, that sometimes it doesn't even need neither U or R. And Spell Syphon only says counter spell.

And for Ad Nauseam instead of an enchantment, could be an instant with a repeating resolution time. You could also use Seek the Horizon or Treasure Hunt.

This is a wealth of troubleshooting information! Thank you very much, Blue! Your suggestion for using a repeating resolution is brilliant - I will study it very soon. I initially tried to trigger on myself and all kinds of ugly hacks - I didn't realize that there was a built-in mechanism to handle this kind of action. Thank you for teaching it to me.

Swans could be more usefull if you used Pyroclasm, Slagstorm or even Wildfire.
...
To use with Seismic Assault i made last week a deck using it. Just can't find the error in Life From The Loam (it crashes the game at end of match).

I'm disinclined to add anything that would prevent Bloodbraid Elf from cascading into Seismic Assault. As it is, it's pretty easy to mulligan until you get a swan and you're sure to land either an elf or an assault poste-haste. In truth, this is not a deck that I will be spending a lot of time tuning or playing. It works well enough as it is, and aside from occasional use as a gag, its mechanics are too broken to be fun for me. I'd love to see your Life from the Loam / Seismic Assault deck, though! I'm also VERY interested in hearing about your troubles with end-of-match crashes and their resolutions. Valakut is still probably my favorite deck, and it habitually crashes at the end of the match. It only takes 20 seconds to restart the game and get back into a new match, but it drives me crazy. Troubleshooting is very difficult in this case for me, because I have to play a whole match with every single custom card to narrow down the offending card or cards, and I just haven't devoted the time to that kind of troubleshooting.

Turbofog is really, really good. And i don't think it needs any change. But if you need to change anything, you can trade a Elixir of Immortality for another Path to Exile or a Vengeful Dreams/Final Judgement to deal with those indestructible pests.
Path to exile, in this deck is better than Swords, you can trap the opponent when he searches for land...

Great job.

Thanks! Removing Elixirs is dangerous, because they don't cause the shuffle if they are destroyed or milled. If we get away from the retro-t2 format that the deck is currently in, I like Swords to Plowshares a lot more than Path to Exile. Enlightened Tutor would pwn face in the deck, too, as it can fetch pretty much anything in the deck's toolbox except for fogs. I find that I don't often have the two blue open for counterspells when I need them, and the Time Warp has never won a game for me - it just speeds the process up. So I will probably experiment with some new cards. Either way, thanks for the wonderful feedback!

Sincerely,
Eglin

[elminster63500]

Thanks for the new decks, Eglin

Allies and Turbofolg are great !! (i rather allies deck which is my favorite !)

Great job again

[Eglin]

Thanks for the new decks, Eglin

Allies and Turbofolg are great !! (i rather allies deck which is my favorite !)

Great job again =D>

Thanks!! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

[sadlyblue]

Usually, on turn 5-6 if i have 1-2 time warp it's a win. Not immediately, but with at least a Howling Mine/Font of mythos and at least a Jace's Erasure, each time warp mean more 2-3 cards to get what i need to own the match.
The Achilles' heel are indestructible creatures, a piromancer, and since there's no sideboard here, there's no way for Gaea's Blessing (an others like it)

For the repeating action in Countryside Crusher i used:

Code: Select all

    <RESOLUTION_TIME_ACTION repeating="1">
    local card = Object():GetController():Library_GetNth(0)
    player = Object():GetController()
    if card == nil then
       return true
    else
       if (card:GetCardType():Test( CARD_TYPE_LAND ) ~= 0) then
            card:PutInGraveyard()
            return true
          else
            return false
       end
     end
    </RESOLUTION_TIME_ACTION>

Hope it helps.

[Eglin]

Updated today with a new Doubling Season deck and a slew of bug-fixes.

I discovered that I wasn't registering tokens properly for a bunch of cards - not just the mana-producing tokens. I've made corrections and this should solve most of the crashes at the end of the matches for many of the decks. Affected decks include: Tribal Prowl, Beastmaster, Jund, Dredge, Mono-Green Ramp, Allies, and Treefolk.

The Doubling Season deck is great fun, but I'm hoping to get lots of great suggestions for improvement. I've always LOVED the theme, but never been able to make competition-level decks around it. Losing support for Garruk Wildspeaker (no planeswalkers), Wurmcalling and Gelatinous Genesis (no X/X creature tokens) sucks, but I'm sure there are still some nice ways to improve the deck and I can't wait to hear about them.

Enjoy,
Eglin

[CWheezy]

Man you just pump out decks willy nilly don't you

[Eglin]

Man you just pump out decks willy nilly don't you

Hehe. It's a lot more fun for me to make new decks than debug my old ones - I write bad code! Seriously though, I've pretty much got all my favorites covered now. Without planeswalkers being available, I can't think of too many more decks that I really like to play. Someone else is about to release a myr deck, and aside from a couple of decks I've seen Conley Woods run, there aren't too many more that I'm keen on. I'm not really up-to-date with the newest cards, but Winter.Wolf's wolf deck looks pretty good. Something with infect or proliferate might be fun, but Blue already has an infect deck and proliferate just isn't as much fun for me w/o Ajani Goldmane. Anything you'd like to see?

[CWheezy]

Can you make the transform cards work? The newest ones?

[elminster63500]

Hi Eglin,

Thanks for this new deck.

There are many other decks we like to see.
A black-red vampire deck (Stromkirk Noble - olivia voldaren - falkenrath marauders - cursed of stalked prey)
A slivoid deck (i like these creatures !! )
A melira deck (combo : Melira sylvok outcast - kitchen finks - viscera seer or murderous redcap - )
a Cursed deck (curse of bloodletting - death's old - exhaustion and etc ...)
A delverblade deck (delver of secrets - geist of st traft - snapcaster mage - sword of war and peace - ponder ...)
A birthing pod deck (birthing pod of course - birds of paradise - geth lord of the vault - phyrexian obliterator - sheoldred - sutured ghoul and ...)

And so many more : But of course, are all theses cards can be played on magic 2012 ? may be not !

[Eglin]

Can you make the transform cards work? The newest ones?

Probably not the way they are supposed to. TBH, I haven't checked it out yet. thefiremind said that he couldn't work it out, so I'm guessing that I would also have trouble. The winter.wolf deck does use Daybreak Ranger and Huntmaster of the Fells, so I might fool around with it soon.

[Eglin]

Hi Eglin,

Thanks for this new deck.

There are many other decks we like to see.
A black-red vampire deck (Stromkirk Noble - olivia voldaren - falkenrath marauders - cursed of stalked prey)
A slivoid deck (i like these creatures !! )
A melira deck (combo : Melira sylvok outcast - kitchen finks - viscera seer or murderous redcap - )
a Cursed deck (curse of bloodletting - death's old - exhaustion and etc ...)
A delverblade deck (delver of secrets - geist of st traft - snapcaster mage - sword of war and peace - ponder ...)
A birthing pod deck (birthing pod of course - birds of paradise - geth lord of the vault - phyrexian obliterator - sheoldred - sutured ghoul and ...)

And so many more : But of course, are all theses cards can be played on magic 2012 ? may be not !

Wow! That's a very impressive list, sir. I thought I knew a lot about MTG, but these are unfamiliar combos. Are these tournament decks, where I could view complete deck lists?