Quest Difficulty?

[Paprik]

So.. uhh... I'm getting beaten as hell. Playing medium difficulty. I'm still probably a beginner to Magic but I'm doing sooo baaad.

The problem is I can't put a decent deck together. The cards I win are random, the cards in shops are random - it seems impossible to even get 2+ of ANY card on purpose.

After 14 wins, the decks I meet completely destroy me. Without multiples of some decent cards, I can't build a specialized deck and their decks are basically perfect. And since I can barely afford one deck, I get beaten by any deck that counters mine, cause I can't swap to another.

Also WTF is up with money? I make enough for one booster in the same time I get 8 boosters from playing wtf.

Any advice would be helpful, but don't tell me to lower the difficulty or cheat (play less than allowed cards) etc. I'm too proud.

[friarsol]

I play the Quest (a lot) and am generally responsible for balancing Quest scenarios.

I play Medium Fantasy quest, and rarely lose. Now, some of this is due to a good deck building skill, but some of this is knowing how to game the system a bit. One of my recent Quest decks had a huge amount of synergy at around 50ish wins.

GUDraw | Open

[metadata]
Name=gudeck
[main]
1 Birds of Paradise|LEB
1 Brainstorm|5ED
1 Brainstorm|MMQ
1 Chastise|JUD
1 Counterspell|TMP
1 Earthbrawn|MOR
1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest|COM
1 Elvish Fury|TMP
3 Forest|M10
1 Garruk Wildspeaker|LRW
1 Gush|MMQ
1 Halimar Depths|WWK
1 Hallowed Fountain|DIS
2 Hinterland Harbor|ISD
3 Island|M10
1 Jhessian Infiltrator|ALA
3 Lorescale Coatl|ARB
1 Mimic Vat|SOM
1 Mishra's Factory|ATQ
1 Misty Rainforest|ZEN
2 Mox Sapphire|LEB
1 Mulldrifter|LRW
1 Naturalize|10E
1 Nimbus Maze|FUT
1 Path to Exile|COM
1 Powder Keg|UDS
1 Questing Phelddagrif|PLS
1 Slippery Karst|USG
1 Sol Ring|COM
1 Spawnwrithe|SHM
1 Spike Weaver|EXO
1 Thornling|CFX
1 Trygon Predator|DIS
1 Tundra|LEB
[sideboard]

Here's some tips:

• Forge doesn't restrict how many cards you can play, but Quest mode is a limited format (not a constructed one). So play 40 cards if you can, just like if you were playing a Sealed Tournament. This is not cheating, this is how the format is designed. Please please please don't ignore this. This is important early on when your cards aren't as cohesive with each other.
• Feel free to start with a Precon deck. You won't get as many starting cards, but you will have a pre-built deck.
• Sell extra cards in the beginning. Quest mode gives you lots of extra cards that you can turn into easy cash early. I know some people are against this as they want to be able to switch colors later, but you'll be able to gain enough cards back later on to sacrifice some now.
• Buy a pet and a plant. Even if it's only level 1 of both, it's such a huge boost to balance at your (likely) slow deck and lower life total.
• Play for ante. Nothing better than stealing good cards from your opponent.
• Try to win fast, or win with an alternate win effect. You will get more gold that way.
• Scour the cardshops. Buy cheap singles to improve your deck over boosters. Don't be afraid to try cards you are unfamiliar with. They might be better than they read.
• Don't try to build a certain type of deck from the start, just take a bunch of good cards, and throw them together. Remember, this is a limited format. Two or three colors is plenty.
• Remember your limited format rules of "BREAD". Bomb, Removal, Evasion, Advantage, Defense. http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/1514/magic-bread

[lazylockie]

In earlier stages, also try not to play against Red decks, because they are usually very fast and you start at severe disadvantage because of 15 life. (Un)fortunately AI can't manipulate very well card advantage (unless by brute force like Ancestral Recall), so playing a slower deck against a slower deck ends up in your favor.

[Doublestrike]

Great post, @friarsol.

Couple things to add, if it helps - when I play a quest, I typically build my initial deck around the best card in the selection. So, if that happens to be Umezawa's Jitte, then that affects the purchases I'll make later.

Also, I'm not sure if it's balanced yet (which is a different discussion), but a win by poison counters is generally pretty sweet. I'll let you take it from there.

[friarsol]

Also, I'm not sure if it's balanced yet (which is a different discussion), but a win by poison counters is generally pretty sweet. I'll let you take it from there.

Yea, awarding so much for Poison made more sense before Standard cards were so readily available (and infect existed). Now that you can start with only Standard cards and buy boosters of Standard, it's much easier to throw lots of Infect at the AI to cash in. At some point I'll probably scale both of those down in their allotted bonus.

[mtgrares]

I randomly create quest decks by mashing 2 colors together. I follow a few rules of thumb:

1. You need 14+ creatures. Three mana 2/2 creatures are the backbone of your deck.
2. 9 land of each color. This is probably too many lands but now you have a chance of playing your 6 mana cards.
3. Only 5 or 6 cards that cost 6 or more because they are usually dead cards in your hand.
4. You need a mana curve, with most of your creatures need to cost 2 to 4 mana. Sometimes I remove all 1 mana costed card because they do so little, unless it is a flyer.