8 oldschool quest worlds, 252 opponents, 56 challenges!

[Xyx]

Ever wonder what it was like to play Magic in the early 90s? Here's your chance!

It is my sincere desire to see these worlds added to Forge. I submit my work for your approval.

The worlds

The Domains: The Golden Age of Magic (Limited Edition Beta) | Open

Dominaria is said to be a nexus among the planes, and the archipelago of Aerona is home to powerful magic and strange creatures.

Magic as Garfield intended it! That apparently means powerful spells and an unsettling amount of mana denial. Limited Edition Beta does not offer much cohesion in terms of factions, so the initial wave of opponents has been built around distinct aspects of the five colors.

Even though the creatures are feeble by today's standards, you still need them. Thanks to the dual lands, this is one of the few worlds with good color fixing, so don't hesitate to splash for that awesome blue power!

Rabiah (Arabian Nights) | Open

Little is known about the dust-swept plane of Rabiah (rhymes with "hiya"), but it is said to have refracted into a thousand versions. Perhaps this explains why you can encounter more than one Sindbad.

Magic's first expansion is a tiny set with awesome distinct flavor and some surprisingly decent creatures. The color pie had not really solidified at that time, so prepare for blue aggro, red flyers and green removal!

The set hoser (City in a Bottle) has been banned for hopefully obvious reasons.

Terisiare: The Brothers' War (Antiquities) | Open

The Brothers' War! The artificers Urza and Mishra duke it out on the Dominarian continent of Terisiare and completely wreck it in the process. Will you follow in their wake of ecological disaster? Or do you sympathize with the survivors of the Third Path or the plight of the forest of Argoth?

This tiny set is all about artifacts. Except for Strip Mine and the Urzatron lands, every single card is an artifact itself and/or has rules text concerning artifacts. The set hoser (Golgothian Sylex) has been banned.

With half the set consisting of artifacts, it's easy to build a colorless deck. Urza's and Mishra's lands allow you to power out artifacts at an alarming rate. The various colors mostly provide means to fight against artifacts. Watch out for the green decks!

Dominaria: Legends | Open

This expansion is basically a prequel to the original core set. It is set in the distant past of the Dominarian continent of Aerona.

The world is all about its namesake legends. They are generally the best creatures you will find, though that is a low bar to clear. The two legend hosers (Karakas and Arena of the Ancients) have been banned to preserve the theme of the world.

The utter lack of color fixing means those sweet three-color legends will not be easy to cast. Also, perhaps even more than by its namesake legends, the world is characterized by incredibly powerful enchantments and the total absence of enchantment removal. Plan accordingly!

Terisiare: The Dark | Open

This is what you get when two artificers fight. The Brothers' War on Dominaria has concluded with a bang (literally), plunging the continent of Terisiare into a post-apocalyptic dark age. Magic is mistrusted and the winters grow ever longer.

One of Magic's weaker expansions, featuring only four creatures that reliably attack for at least 3 damage. Maze of Ith has necessarily been banned to keep games from grinding to a complete halt.

Sarpadia (Fallen Empires) | Open

See empires fall as the Dominarian continent of Sarpadia is overrun by various categories of beasties.

Another weak expansion, but at least it has a good amount of creatures to work with. The Easy opponents showcase the five eponymous empires and their respective downfalls.

The set provides various incentives to stick to one color, not the least of which is the total absence of color fixing (unless you count Rainbow Vale.) For removal, look to the hard-to-find Aeolipile.

Homelands | Open

Apocalypses are a dime a dozen in the Multiverse, and the little backwater plane(t) of Ulgrotha is only just now recovering from near-extinction after someone (spoiler alert: Grandmother Sengir) rang the Apocalypse Chime. Most of the world is still affectionately known as the Dead Zone (devoid of mana and therefore life), but the Homelands have recovered under the guidance of Serra and Feroz. With those two out of the picture (spoiler alert: dead), Baron Sengir has his own designs on the world.

What Magic's first true top-down, story-first set lacks in cards, it makes up for in backstory. Good luck finding playable cards under four mana. The set hoser (Apocalypse Chime) is of course banned. Watch out for green removal and flyers!

Terisiare: Ice Age (and Alliances) | Open

Poor Terisiare. First the continent gets blown up by Urza, then it is plunged into a dark age, and that turns into an ice age. Thanks, Urza! Fortunately, the planeswalker Freyalise plans to cast her World Spell and usher in The Thaw. (Spoiler alert: The cold will be back in Coldsnap.) Meanwhile, the evil planeswalkers Leshrac and Tevesh-Szat are trying to get the Necromancer Lim-Dûl to conquer the world, forcing the kingdom of Kjeldor and the Balduvian barbarians into an uneasy alliance.

Ice Age and Alliances form Magic's first true "block" and the biggest world thus far. Coldsnap is technically part of that block now, but those cards looked completely out of place with their modern frames and anachronisms, so I kept things oldschool and pure. There will be a separate Coldsnap world.

This is the first world to contain some decent dual lands since Limited Edition Beta (as well as some terrible ones.) Magic's very first Pro Tour was Ice Age Block Constructed. They were hard to find, but I got my hands on some sweet decklists from that top 8. Think you can beat them?

Jamuraa: The Mirage Wars (Mirage, Visions) | Open

Poor Jamuraa. As if ordinary war between the nations of Zhalfir, Femeref and Suq'Ata wasn't enough, now there's also a war between powerful wizards! The overly ambitious Kaervek has imprisoned the peaceful Mangara in amber and tricked the reclusive Jolrael into supporting his conquest of Jamuraa with her beasts and dragons. Meanwhile, Teferi has vanished into the flow of time but manages to send visions to help the people of Jamuraa.

Mirage and Visions were originally developed as a single set known as "The Menagerie". It was split into two when it became too large. It is the first set that was designed with Limited in mind, and has a much lower incidence of terrible cards than the earlier worlds. The expansion Weatherlight is not part of this world because it is unrelated to the Mirage Wars storyline.

This is the biggest world thus far! It is also the second world that had a Block Constructed Pro Tour, so expect stiff competition!

Worldbuilding philosophy

I have spent enormous amounts of time and effort to make the worlds the best I could:

• I have personally tested each and every card to see how the AI handles it.
• Every single card that the AI could handle has been given a home.
• Each quest opponent deck is as unique as possible. There is little-to-no overlap especially at the lower levels.
• I have studied the lore as best I could, short of reading the novels.
• I spent countless hours playtesting the worlds.

All decks, including the challenges, have been built using solely cards from that world (and Beta basic lands for the sets that do not have their own). The nature of opponents is as follows:

• The Easy quest opponents have decks that are based on lore. These decks represent people, factions, areas or aspects from the world in question.
• The Medium quest opponents have decks built around a theme. This can be a tribe, a gimmick or a funny but not-very-competitive strategy.
• The Hard quest opponents have decks that are built to crush you. This includes decks that I built myself while playing in the quest world (adapted to the AI's propensities, of course), as well as decks from Magic's very first Pro Tour.
• The Challenge decks are puzzles. They do not obey the normal deckbuilding restrictions and may start with some cards already on the table. You should be able to defeat the Easy ones with just a good quest deck, but the Medium ones might require some "pre-sideboarding" and the Hard ones will require decks specifically built to take them down (but I promise they're all doable!)

Installation

1. Unpack the attached archive.
2. Copy the eight world folders to your <res\quest\world> folder.
3. If you have no other custom worlds installed, simply copy worlds.txt to that same folder and overwrite.
4. If you already have other custom worlds, copy the bottom eight world lines from my worlds.txt to your worlds.txt.

When building decks, don't forget that you can add your own basic lands by clicking the Add Basic Lands button! I recommend Limited Edition Beta basics, but you can choose whichever set you like.


Recommended Settings

The worlds were designed to be played with the following settings:

• Difficulty: Medium
• Fantasy Mode: No (This one's important!)
• Starting World: The one you intend to play, of course. (They're sorted by the year and month in which they were printed.)
• Allow duplicate cards: Yes
• Allow unlock of additional editions: No

Furthermore, you are encouraged to:

• stay in your world. The worlds were designed to be self-contained. For the purest experience, do not travel to other worlds. With the exception of basic lands, no opponent or challenge contains or expects to face any cards from outside their world.
• build Vintage legal decks. 60 cards, honoring the Restricted List. Forge will not enforce this but your quest opponents all play by these rules. What you are playing is much closer to Block Constructed than it is to Limited.

Let me know what you think!

• Did you have fun?
• Did you have any technical issues?
• Did you try the recommended settings and restrictions? How did you feel about that?
• How did you experience the flavor of the Easy opponents?
• How did you experience the gimmicks of the Medium opponents?
• How did you experience the challenge of the Hard opponents?
• Did you see the AI make any particularly bone-headed plays?
• Did any of your opponents give you an easier or harder time than you expected?
• Did you attempt any of the challenges? How did it go?
• Did you find any discrepancies or irregularities with the official lore in the Easy opponents?
• The descriptions are mostly flavor text quotes. How do you feel about that?
• Some of the smaller worlds don't have enough cards to support more than 16 opponents. How do you feel about that?
• I did not provide custom icons. Did you miss them?
• Can you think of a good deck that's missing?
• Are you looking forward to more worlds like this?

Happy questing!

[Sloth]

I haven't tested all the worlds yet, but from what i saw when playing and peeking at the deck lists, it looks like you've put a load of work into designing the opponents Xyx. Because of the very limited card pools it's hard to put synergies into the decks, but at least they have a clear theme and character.

I normally don't play the quest worlds, nor have i designed any of them, so it would be nice if someone other than me can comment on Xyx worlds. I would be ok with adding them to the official version.

[Agetian]

I have only started playing this quest world set (Ice Age world) but I'm enjoying it immensely so far! I'm having a lot of fun and I'm certainly looking forward to more worlds like that, they're an interesting and unique experience, and it really shows that a lot of work went into this! I will be able to comment in more detail about the gameplay as I play a bit more (I'm taking it slow because the month is particularly busy when it comes to work :/ )
At any rate, great job and here's hoping that we'll see and play more worlds from you in the future!
I also don't mind adding these to the official builds unless there are objections.

EDIT: There's currently a technical issue with an IndexOutOfBounds exception happening when you create a game e.g. in the Ice Age world. It most likely has to do with draft generation, I'm looking into what might be causing it. It's not fatal (if you click Continue you can play normally), but it's still something that needs to be resolved.
EDIT 2: This is patched upstream (r31309) - was caused by the fact that e.g. Ice Age features an incomplete block (ICE/ALL vs. ICE/ALL/CSP).

EDIT 3: There's also a minor technical issue with some symbols not appearing properly in the description of certain opponents (seen this in both Ice Age and Legends).
EDIT 4: I fixed most of the incorrectly displayed symbols in descriptions. Some most likely still remain.

EDIT 5: Committed the fixed version to trunk for wider testing. Feel free to update as necessary.

- Agetian

[Hanmac]

@Agetian:
while test building i got this:

Code: Select all

[tar] Entry: res/quest/world/1996-05 Ice Age/duels/ICE 1 Lore Kjeldor Gustha Ebasdotter, Kjeldoran Royal Mage.dck longer than 100 characters.
      [tar] Resulting tar file can only be processed successfully by GNU compatible tar commands
      [tar] Entry: res/quest/world/1996-05 Ice Age/duels/ICE 1 Lore The School of the Unseen Jaya Ballard, Task Mage.dck longer than 100 characters.


maybe they should be renamed to shorter files?

[Agetian]

@Agetian:
while test building i got this:

Code: Select all

[tar] Entry: res/quest/world/1996-05 Ice Age/duels/ICE 1 Lore Kjeldor Gustha Ebasdotter, Kjeldoran Royal Mage.dck longer than 100 characters.
      [tar] Resulting tar file can only be processed successfully by GNU compatible tar commands
      [tar] Entry: res/quest/world/1996-05 Ice Age/duels/ICE 1 Lore The School of the Unseen Jaya Ballard, Task Mage.dck longer than 100 characters.


maybe they should be renamed to shorter files?

Yeah, I renamed them (had to abbreviate them a bit) to satisfy the specified requirement. Looks like it might have been an issue with generic tar (under Mac OS X, for instance). Thanks!

- Agetian

[Agetian]

Ok, time for my answers for the questions I can answer by now:

Q: Did you have fun?
A: Absolutely! This is a lot of fun, and I'm especially enjoying the "old-school" flavor of the worlds, something that Forge somewhat missed (well, there were Shandalar and Jamuraa worlds, but you can never have enough of 90s style MTG fun, and I was particularly looking forward to Ice Age and Legends-themed worlds).

Q: Did you have any technical issues?
A: Several minor issues described above which were fixed. No other issues so far.

Q: Did you try the recommended settings and restrictions? How did you feel about that?
A: Yes, I'm playing according to the recommended settings and restrictions and I find the experience to be fair and interesting.

Q: How did you experience the flavor of the Easy opponents?
A: Very well done! Very much in the spirit of MTG.

Q: How did you experience the gimmicks of the Medium opponents?
A: I haven't made it this far into the game yet, will keep you posted.

Q: How did you experience the challenge of the Hard opponents?
A: I haven't made it this far into the game yet, will keep you posted.

Q: Did you see the AI make any particularly bone-headed plays?
A: Not yet, at least not anything I'd not normally expect from Forge.

Q: Did any of your opponents give you an easier or harder time than you expected?
A: Can't say so yet, but I'm playing Easy so far, so... Will keep you updated.

Q: Did you attempt any of the challenges? How did it go?
A: Not yet, but I'll keep you posted.

Q: Did you find any discrepancies or irregularities with the official lore in the Easy opponents?
A: There were some minor mistypes, but nothing major.

Q: The descriptions are mostly flavor text quotes. How do you feel about that?
A: This is a very nice touch, in my opinion.

Q: Some of the smaller worlds don't have enough cards to support more than 16 opponents. How do you feel about that?
A: It's fine by me.

Q: I did not provide custom icons. Did you miss them?
A: I liked the idea of having the icons color-coded according to the color the deck is centered around (or gold for multicolor). I understand that it's difficult to provide hundreds of custom icons for every opponent.

Q: Can you think of a good deck that's missing?
A: Not off the top of my head, at least.

Q: Are you looking forward to more worlds like this?
A: Absolutely! And I'd love to learn what your plans for this are. Will you continue going in the chronological order, or will you do something else entirely different next?

- Agetian

[Xyx]

Because of the very limited card pools it's hard to put synergies into the decks

True. I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. You should find some synergy in the Medium opponents. The Easy opponents are built purely for flavor and have incidental synergy at best.

Q: Did you find any discrepancies or irregularities with the official lore in the Easy opponents?
A: There were some minor mistypes, but nothing major.

Do you remember which? I'd like to fix them.

I'd love to learn what your plans for this are. Will you continue going in the chronological order, or will you do something else entirely different next?

Theros is 90% done, needs overhauling and finishing up. Other than that I'd like to continue in chronological order. I'm currently working on Mirage (including Visions, but not Weatherlight. Weatherlight is to be a stand-alone world because it is not thematically tied to Mirage.) I know there's already a Jamuraa world but I'd like to continue doing what I've been doing.

[Agetian]

Do you remember which? I'd like to fix them.

Actually, after a bit of research I'm not even sure *if* they're mistypes, but they're indeed minor inconsistencies - for example, in Ice Age (for memory) there's a person mentioned with the name Gustha Ebasdotter. In the opponent title you have Ebasdotter, while in the description you have Ebbasdotter (two "B"'s). I googled for both and found both mentioned on very reputable websites (for example, MTG Salvation uses the two B spelling, while MTG Vault has the one B spelling). If you tell me what to do here I can update the files on SVN accordingly.

Theros is 90% done, needs overhauling and finishing up. Other than that I'd like to continue in chronological order. I'm currently working on Mirage (including Visions, but not Weatherlight. Weatherlight is to be a stand-alone world because it is not thematically tied to Mirage.) I know there's already a Jamuraa world but I'd like to continue doing what I've been doing.

Both sound great! Can't wait for Theros (one of my favorite modern sets), and can't wait for the upcoming worlds based on classic MTG sets, I'm a big fan of 1990s Magic! Thanks a lot!

- Agetian

[Xyx]

in Ice Age (for memory) there's a person mentioned with the name Gustha Ebasdotter. In the opponent title you have Ebasdotter, while in the description you have Ebbasdotter (two "B"'s).

Two "B"s is correct. There are eight cards with her quote in flavor text and they're all "Ebbasdotter".

If you tell me what to do here I can update the files on SVN accordingly.

The world is already on SVN? If so, then I should get SVN set up so I can make updates myself, yes?

[Agetian]

Yes, I added all eight worlds to trunk after some minor corrections (in particular, I corrected some non-printable symbols and fixed the technical issues described above to prevent crashes). You can indeed request SVN access (unless you already have it) and make the necessary alterations yourself, as well as add your future finished worlds, that would be great! I'm not sure who exactly can grant the access to SVN nowadays, but personally I used to ask Rob Cashwalker back in the day.

By the way, found something stupid that the AI does when playing one of the decks: sometimes Leshrac (Ice Age easy opponent) casts Kjeldoran Dead and sacs it immediately (the card is marked RemAIDeck so I guess the AI is not really taught to utilize it smartly). First it cast it on its first turn and sacrificed it immediately (since it really had no other option), then a few turns later it cast it one more time with two Lim-Dul's Cohorts on the battlefield, and sacrificed it nonetheless to its own ETB ability. Then, one its third turn attempt, it played it and correctly sacrificed a different (and weaker) creature to it. Not necessarily a biggie for an easy opponent I guess, but still a rather dumb behavior. In Rounds 2 and 3 I did not experience this behavior, in both rounds Kjeldoran Dead was only cast later in the game and a different creature was sac'ed to it. I guess it kind of depends on the order in which the AI gets its cards and plays them, you may or may not see this happen (1 or more times) in any given game.

- Agetian

[Xyx]

I added all eight worlds to trunk

I corrected some non-printable symbols and fixed the technical issues described above to prevent crashes).

Let me guess... "Lim-Dûl"?

By the way, found something stupid that the AI does when playing one of the decks: sometimes Leshrac (Ice Age easy opponent) casts Kjeldoran Dead and sacs it immediately

Presumably, the correct creature to sac is the Kjeldoran Dead itself. It's just unfortunate that the AI casts it in that case. I suppose I'll have to take it out if that happens too often.

This is a common problem with 90s cards. A lot of them have pretty severe drawbacks that aren't merely challenging for the AI but often for humans as well. Like Wood Elemental, Mind Bomb or Mana Vortex... what do you do with cards like that? Other than not put them in your deck and/or never cast them, the only thing you can do is cross your fingers and blindly jam them. And that's exactly what the AI does, so... par for the course, there.

[Agetian]

I see that Sol added a special variable to Kjeldoran Dead which should prevent the AI from casting it unless it controls another creature. I think this should reduce the amount of miscasts to a minimum.

About non printable symbols - yep, stuff like that, but also, for some weird reason, the dash symbol - there must have been a nonstandard one.

And btw, that's the beauty of MTG of the 90s. You had to actually consider the strong drawbacks of powerful cards vs. their usefulness. This, of course, makes it more difficult to implement for the AI, but personally I think you did a great job with the decks!


- Agetian

[serrasmurf]

Hi Xyx,
Great to see these new well developed worlds added to Forge!
Currently no time to explore them but definitely planning to do so, i'll give you feedback afterwards.
Updating & cleaning up Ravnica & Zendikar is still on my to do list. It'd be cool if we could cover all planes and blocks in the end with worlds!
KR,

[dingbat1]

I have a gazillion decks listed by year of creation, ranging from 1993 to 2014. Hope these are useful for you as you create more worlds

Note: I also have more old decks on file, that are not so neatly categorized. I've split some by block, but haven't gotten very far. Let me know if you want me to send them your way.

[Agetian]

If you upload those decks you have, I can try sorting them with my deck sorter (by set) and see if that helps.

EDIT: The decks appear to be in some unusual format, most likely meant for another application or game. I'll try writing a converter for them when I have some time, doesn't look difficult to me.

- Agetian