Welcome to Mirrodin!In the latest release you’ll find the Mirrodin quest world with 53 opponents (decks) ready to battle you.
Specifically: 11 easy opponents, 17 medium, 19 hard, 2 very hard & 4 challenges.
In the attached file you’ll find the deck files, the world specifications file, icons & a deck overview sheet.
Mirrodin world setupI chose to include only cards from the 6 sets of the 2 Mirrodin blocks. No core sets, no extraterrestrial cards, just pure Mirrodin.
Deck development was done from 3 angles:
- Adaptations of intro/precon decks. These are mostly your easy/ medium opponents and nicely cover all themes of Mirrodin
- Adaptations of (block) constructed decks, these are always hard opponents
- Other random decks, around combo’s, cards etc.
Cards & decks that did or did not make itThese are the Mirrodin cards that are banned for official tournaments:
Mirrodin block: AEther Vial, Arcbound Ravager, Disciple of the Vault, Artifact lands, Skullclamp
Modern: Artifact lands, Chrome Mox, Cloudpost, Second Sunrise, Seething Song, Skullclamp
Legacy: Skullclamp
Vintage (restricted): Trinisphere, Thirst for KnowledgeIn this world they are all fair game.
The reasons for that are:
- It’s a tool to make strong opponents, like the moxes in the main world. You’ll mostly see these cards in hard+ opponents
- The AI can’t handle most of these cards optimally
- Some cards don’t have the support in this world to become broken
- Banning cards is not in the spirit of Forge, you can always choose not to use the cards yourself and avoid battling opponents playing a lot of these cards.
Mirrodin has 1147 cards, almost 20% can not be played properly by the AI, these cards are not in the opponents decks. You won’t be battling against:
- Sunburst
- Imprint
-
Sacrifice artifact cards
- The plethora of “machine” combo’s that this world has to offer (
Blasting Station,
Myr Galvanizer combo,
Triskelion,
Clock of Omens,
Staff of Domination,
Mycosynth Lattice, Eggs, etc.)
- several of my favourite cards:
Venser, the Sojourner,
Mimic Vat,
Proteus Staff,
Death Cloud,
Isochron Scepter- and yes, i tried them all in dedicated decks, and they let all me down
Some simple AI code however would allow dedicated decks with these cards, e.g.: AI uses Proteus staff to target their own creatures; Mimic vat: don’t activate it when nothing is imprinted; don't play
Isochron Scepter when no valid cards in hand.
The good news is: it is up to you to discover and build around all these cards!
I used 4 cards that are deemed not playable by the AI according to Forge. They work however sufficiently well in the decks i crafted for them. These cards are:
Birthing Pod,
Dispatch,
Magma Giant,
Endless WhispersKarn Liberated is listed as playable by the AI, but in my opinion he is not. Are planeswalkers coded that they only use the + ability and the ultimate? Too often the wrong ability is chosen resulting in a loss instead of a certain victory. Tezzeret does the same, but remains strong enough to earn his spot in a few decks.
Power levelCrappy opponents are scarce. Mirrodin has some strong synergy themes (dump lot’s of artifacts on the battlefield…) and that is something the AI handles pretty well naturally. If you find yourself losing more than you can handle emotionally, try some of the following:
- Play on “Easy” level
- Make sure you have lot’s of artifact & creature removal (
Viridian Shaman,
Shatter,
Pyroclasm,
Skinrender) to break the synergy and stop a creature rush (which is basically where most strong decks are about).
- Change your quest preferences settings:
: Forge let’s you progress pretty fast. Change the “Wins for …AI” to : 16-32-48
: Get more credits for a win, so you can save for some shop goodies
: increase the number of “starting rares”to make sure you have some bombs that can take down opponents
- Your sideboard is your best friend (to dump your artifact removal cards for instance when you meet opponents with the same game plan)
- Start with a 40-card deck, expand to 60 later
- Have an infect sub-theme/creature, infect kills yield more credits
- Some opponents might look tough at first encounter, but are much easier to beat if you have the right plan; AI decks are in that sense a puzzle you have to solve.
- For the easy opponents it is hinted what they play so you can anticipate. For the tougher opponents the hints are more subtle: make sure you have all the tools you might need in your sideboard
- The mana fixing is horrible in this world (specially for opponents as AI can’t play some of the fixing). Don’t play more than 2 colours and play all these great artifacts of course!
Storyline/ VorthosThe Vorthos is not that strong in me, but I tried to adhere to most of the storyline by allocating the appropriate characters to the right decks with the right quotes . You’ll mostly meet the people & haymakers of Mirrodin. But sometimes you’ll meet a stranger; you can’t stop Wall-E from planeswalking, can you?
I could have told the story linear, batlling first the original Mirrodin decks and later the myr & phyrexians form Scars, but you would sacrifice too much by doing so.
What I did do is using the duel decks respresenting the 2 decisive battles:
- Glissa versus
Memnarch- Mirrans versus Phyrexians
These duel decks are your challenges in this world.
A final multiplayer battle between the 5 Praetors would have been cool but is unfortunately not possible. They don’t command duel decks either because there would be too much overlap with other cooler decks.
Any feedback is welcome. Last not but least, have fun!
Alex