Sally - A Quest deck ?

[Chris H.]

This is a Sliver deck. It might make it as a mid level quest deck.


60 Total Cards

26 Creatures
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1x Battering Sliver
1x Blade Sliver
1x Bonesplitter Sliver
1x Essence Sliver
1x Fury Sliver
2x Gemhide Sliver
1x Heart Sliver
1x Horned Sliver
3x Metallic Sliver
1x Might Sliver
1x Muscle Sliver
1x Plated Sliver
1x Reflex Sliver
1x Sinew Sliver
1x Sliver Legion
1x Sliver Queen
1x Synchronous Sliver
3x Venser's Sliver
1x Watcher Sliver
2x Winged Sliver

16 Spells
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1x Ancestral Recall
1x Breath of Life
3x Concentrate
1x Darksteel Ingot
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Raise Dead
1x Regrowth
1x Vampiric Tutor

18 Land
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3x Bayou
3x Plateau
3x Savannah
3x Taiga
3x Tundra
3x Underground Sea

[GandoTheBard]

If you want this to be a midlevel deck take out the Sliver Legion. With that the AI is guaranteed a kill by turn 7 or 8 at most if it gets it out. Yes good players can beat this sort of deck but lots of us are not good players. Lets keep that in mind. In addition Sliver Queen is probably ALSO not a good idea until the AI is fixed. It will cause the AI to go into infinite sliver mode.

[DennisBergkamp]

Would it be helpful by the way if I would make Sliver Queen only be able to make tokens during Main2, and then maybe limit the times it can be used, maybe to a max of twice per turn?

[Chris H.]

If you want this to be a midlevel deck take out the Sliver Legion. With that the AI is guaranteed a kill by turn 7 or 8 at most if it gets it out. Yes good players can beat this sort of deck but lots of us are not good players. Lets keep that in mind. In addition Sliver Queen is probably ALSO not a good idea until the AI is fixed. It will cause the AI to go into infinite sliver mode.

Thanks for the heads-up. I found myself originally with far too many slivers in the deck and tried to cut back - and I missed the obvious. I'm finding that the Slivers by themselves can pump each other up to awesome levels.

I need to resist the temptation to create high level AI quest decks. I think that we can find enough of them in the 100 deck archive. I will try to concentrate on easier decks ... as hard as that may be at times.

[Chris H.]

Would it be helpful by the way if I would make Sliver Queen only be able to make tokens during Main2, and then maybe limit the times it can be used, maybe to a max of twice per turn?

We may need to consider these types of limitations for the AI. I read Mr.Chaos' report on the bug board. I was awed by his patience as he created an army of tokens. Most of us would not enjoy watching the computer take it to that level.

[GandoTheBard]

Would it be helpful by the way if I would make Sliver Queen only be able to make tokens during Main2, and then maybe limit the times it can be used, maybe to a max of twice per turn?

I think this is exactly the wrong idea. Don't cripple the AI or it will be even easier. Also dont cripple the cards just because the AI doesn't get the idea. Better would be to exclude cards from the AI's decks that are likely to cause said problems until we can get a better algorithm. Also While I do not mind finding and reporting bugs which Huggy said he doesn't much care for, Id like to see a version without all the broken (by broken I mean not working) cards. There's nothing we can do about the phases and other problems but for instance seeing first strike bugs popup really bothers me. Maybe taking First Strike off the table until its fixed is a better idea than adding more and more cards? Just my 2.5 cents.

[Chris H.]

This is a Sliver deck. It might make it as a mid level quest deck.

I removed the following two cards:

1x Sliver Legion
1x Sliver Queen

and I replaced them with:

Raise Dead
Naturalize

[Vecc]

Quest Mode needs one of these. Slivers are such tradition.

Maybe even having a version of this deck for each difficulty level? I could give it a shot, if no one minds.

[gohongohon]

Well if you want a really hard sliver we have most of the cards for it. Thing is people play slivers and say lets play all the colors and man they are all great stuff like that but really the only ones that matter are just 2 drops and nothing more. There is a deck that i play in 1.5 it is called meathooks. it is a countersliver deck. It uses Aether Viel set at 2 to play all of them when you want and Crystalline Sliver (which we dont have) and you play counterspells and just play then down until you get winged sliver and just win . Some list you will see plated sliver but that does not really get played anymore because it was there for goblins (goblin lackey).

[GandoTheBard]

Well if you want a really hard sliver we have most of the cards for it. Thing is people play slivers and say lets play all the colors and man they are all great stuff like that but really the only ones that matter are just 2 drops and nothing more. There is a deck that i play in 1.5 it is called meathooks. it is a countersliver deck. It uses Aether Viel set at 2 to play all of them when you want and Crystalline Sliver (which we dont have) and you play counterspells and just play then down until you get winged sliver and just win . Some list you will see plated sliver but that does not really get played anymore because it was there for goblins (goblin lackey).

Yep 2 drops are the brokeness of Sliverdom but there are some great 3 drops too.

[Chris H.]

Quest Mode needs one of these. Slivers are such tradition.

Maybe even having a version of this deck for each difficulty level? I could give it a shot, if no one minds.

Awesome, we would enjoy seeing your decks.

My recent elemental and sliver decks were just a test to see how well the computer could handle a 5 color deck. The land stacking system makes it possible. Overall, it may be best to keep the computer at three colors or less.

[DennisBergkamp]

I actually coded Crystalline Sliver already (to test shroud).

[Vecc]

I thought of Counterslivers as soon as a "hard" Sliver deck came to my mind, but considering the AI can't handle counterspells properly for now, I think a straight-aggro version a full set of the +1/+1, Winged, etc Slivers, some of the 'power' cards (Moxen, Ancestrall Recall...), Sliver Legion and whatnots would already be pretty reckless for a deck build in Quest Mode to deal with.

Also, yay for shroud being coded. Kodama beatings for life.

And now that Chris mentioned it... would someone mind explaining me how exactly does the AI Land Stacking works and what's the purpose behind it? I tried searching through the forums but couldn't really understand it well from what I read. (probably something to do with my bad english. xP)

[DennisBergkamp]

And now that Chris mentioned it... would someone mind explaining me how exactly does the AI Land Stacking works and what's the purpose behind it? I tried searching through the forums but couldn't really understand it well from what I read. (probably something to do with my bad english. xP)

It works like this, basically:
To smooth out land draws for the AI the deck gets "stacked", the AI will always end up with 7 non-land cards in his opening hand, and draw a land on his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh and ninth draws. The rest of the lands are stuffed on the bottom of the deck (this is important, since unless the AI has some way of shuffling his deck - this will lose the land stack - or has access to a Mox/Llanowar Elves/Darksteel Ingot/etc., the AI won't be able to cast spells that are more expensive than 7 mana if landstacking is enabled).

In addition, these lands the AI draws are "threaded", which means that for each different land type present in the deck, lands are alternated. For example, say a deck has 4 of each basic land type, then the first 7 land cards the AI draws look something like this:

Forest - Swamp - Mountain - Island - Plains - Forest - Swamp.

Or another example, showing the top 20 or so cards from an actual White Weenie deck:

Valorous Charge (99)
Soul Warden (117)
Soul Warden (92)
Mass Calcify (111)
Savannah Lions (87)
Savannah Lions (86)
Glorious Anthem (67)
Plains (113)
Flagstones of Trokair (65)
Plains (78)
Flagstones of Trokair (64)
Plains (79)
Soul Warden (94)
Flagstones of Trokair (108)
Ranger of Eos (114)
Glorious Anthem (68)
Plains (77)
Swords to Plowshares (97)
Glorious Anthem (66)
Savannah Lions (115)
Serra Avenger (91)

(Note that in this case, the land stack will actually get messed up on the AIs 4th land draw, because the AI will play a second Flagstones of Trokair, which in turn will cause both of them to be sacked, and the AI will fetch a Plains and shuffle, and another Plains followed by another shuffle).

Hope that makes sense The land stacking is a way of giving the crippled AI more options, and balance things a bit in his favor.

[Chris H.]

Thank you Dennis for explaining land stacking.

Until recently, the computer could not use sources of mana that provided multiple colors and could only use basic lands for example. Dennis spent some time with the code and found a way for the computer to use dual lands and Birds of Paradise, etc.

This enhanced our ability to create the quest decks.