[Archive] Challenge Set 2

[Salbei]

a playset of divining tops also helps a ton for that one.
mixed with the bunch of fetch lands they are really strong.
loxodon warhammer on that first strike/lifelink knight is usually too much for the AI to handle.but just 1 or 2 hammers - otherwise they will show up when you don´t want them.

[thedrigo]

EDIT: @thedrigo: do you have any non-artifact lands in the deck, such as Mishra's Workshop / Factory, or Tolarian Academy? Those might be the culprits...

I think that might be it. Thanks a lot, Soma.

[somacat]

@thedrigo: no probs, I had the same issue when I built the all-creature deck: I thought lands would be allowed...

@aww1979 and Salbei: thanks for the tips. I'm actually the opposite of aww1979 - I've only hit round 3 of Super Mulligan, but I hit round 7 or so of Land Ho pretty often. I have been trying Oath / Saclands / Balancing Act in SuperMull. How many lands do you guys run in that challenge? I have been running 30+, since you need to draw some early...

I'll post a list and strategy guide for Land Ho later on today. Because the deck is full of suck, you need to eek out small advantages all over the place - there are actually tons of decisions to make with the deck and the games are really quite skill intensive...

[somacat]

Just completed Land Ho, obviously got insanely lucky. Here's the list, although everyone likely has something pretty darn close, since there's not much you can do with this challenge:

.377 4 Maze of Ith
.508 4 Mishra's Factory
.806 4 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
.1946 4 Treetop Village
.1728 4 Wasteland
.528 1 Strip Mine
.1721 3 Kjeldoran Outpost
.694 1 Karakas
.407 4 Desert
.319 2 Gaea's Cradle
.438 1 Library of Alexandria
.1499 4 Temple Garden
.212 4 Savannah
.1989 3 Secluded Steppe
.1990 4 Tranquil Thicket
.428 2 Island of Wak-Wak
.1844 3 Dark Depths
.740 3 Pendelhaven
.398 3 Bazaar of Baghdad
.833 2 Urborg

The bulk of the strategy for playing this challenge is the 'surprise, I have a creature to block with' plan, since the AI seems unaware that Factories and Treetops can be animated, or that Outpost and Dark Depths can put creatures into play at instant speed. For this reason it is incredibly important to mulligan into a manland, as you need to be able to kill their early attackers to stop them getting ahead of you. Factory is by far preferable to Treetop, since it comes online earlier, and a second Factory can make for a 4/4 blocker. This strategy is most effective against decks that attack with alot of 2/2s (obviously). For this reason the Rats deck is the easiest to beat unless they have an early turn with two Rats, since you can keep them getting any bigger than 2/2. Once they stop dropping creatures, then you can start attacking.

The other major strategy is mana denial, both from the Strip Mine / Wastelands, and the Tabernacles. If your opponent has a turn 1 of land-go, I usually recommend using a Strip / Wasteland asap, as they are far more likely to get manascrewed than you With a Tabernacle in play, sometimes you *want* the AI to keep 2/2s you can deal with, rather than have it suicide them into a manland. In this situation, you just activate the manland at the beginning of the AI's attack step to dissuade them attacking. Pendelhaven is pretty amazing here too, as the AI thinks it can pump any size creature. I held of an army of Hierarchs and Rhow War Monks with a Treetop Village and an open Pendelhaven Maze of Ith really shines in this strategy too. If you are playing this way, generally you are going to be winning in the late game either by Outpost + Cradle, or Marit Lage.

The Urborgs may need some explaining: the toughest match in this challenge is probably the soldier deck. Not only are Crusade effects very bad for you, they have Preeminent Captain, which can get around the mana denial strategy by plopping creatures directly into the red zone.

This is a very tough challenge, as the cardpool for it is incredibly small. There are alot of situations it can't deal with, since it can't effectively deal with artifacts, enchantments, or large creatures, and as an aggro deck it doesn't provide much of a clock (you are only the aggro against Burn, Turbofog and often Faeries).

I still think Super Mulligan is tougher though... ;p

[aww1979]

Yeah, Land Ho requires taking a lot of incremental advantages. The problem is the deck is just plain garbage! Also, Desert doesn't work on creatures you Maze of Ith, which rather hurts. I went white/green (if land can be said to be such) for treetop village and kjeldoran outpost, and skipped barbarian ring. I'd guess that's what everyone else did, too.

edit: oh, you put up a decklist while I was writing this :p It's exactly my deck, only I didn't have gaea's cradle, urborg, island of wakwak, and only 1 pendlehaven, and i had 4-ofs for some of the ones you had less.

[somacat]

Yeah, Barbarian Ring doesn't kill anything a manland can't already. And the Maze / Desert noncombo sucks too. Also I wished more than once that Tabernacle wasn't Legendary! (although I guess it might be a bit good then...)

[somacat]

Made it to round 6 of Super Mulligan - vs. Elves, with a Magus of the Moat and Visara in play, as well as a Ring of Maruf I was going to use to get a Balance next turn to avoid the crashes the Elf deck is prone to... when of course it crashed

Brings back memories of that 10:1 challenge!

EDIT: Derf... just noticed the hand you 'mull away' are the first cards you draw, bottom of the hand up. That might make things easier

[aww1979]

Dude... (unlocks Kiki-Jiki, Mirror-Breaker)

In dude, your deck can have only creatures. (not even land, except dryad arbor)

There aren't many things to try for this one, since the only available mana sources are 4x Dryad Arbor, 4x Elvish Spirit Guide, and 4x Simian Spirit Guide. That leaves green or red as the core of the deck, or artifacts, like maybe affinity, which I tried, but it didn't work.

So, like probably everyone else, I made an Elf deck. I tinkered around with a few ideas, including Elves of Deep Shadow and splashing black for things like Dark Confidant or Shriekmaw, but I found that 1) if you can actually cast dark confidant, you've already won most games, 2) shriekmaw sucks balls against zombies and rats, and again, if you can cast it, it means you've got a decent board presence already. I'd advise against doing this. Splashing the simian as colourless mana might work, but since you'd still need an arbor or elvish spirit guide, I didn't bother using him.

The final list I used:

.1913 4 Dryad Arbor
.1892 4 Elvish Spirit Guide
.1934 4 Heritage Druid
.149 4 Llanowar Elves
.1293 4 Fyndhorn Elves
.1974 4 Priest of Titania
.1816 4 Wirewood Symbiote
.1360 4 Wren's Run Vanquisher
.1461 4 Imperious Perfect
.1564 4 Elvish Archdruid
.1942 4 Regal Force
.1997 4 Birchlore Rangers*
.15 4 Birds of Paradise
.1939 4 Nettle Sentinel
.1308 4 Platinum Angel

I'd wager that the only surprises here are Platinum Angel and maybe Wirewood Symbiote (which wins MVP this round). The angel is autowin most of the time, and it provides insurance against enemy flyers, which basically instantly defeat this deck.

Strategy: mull until you have dryad arbor (preferably) or elvish spirit guide, and hopefully any one-mana dude that makes mana himself. Get out any one-drop mana producer (use spirit guide even if you have arbor first turn too) and play Priest of Titania as soon as you can. Also remember to play things in the right order; for instance, playing one mana elves before tapping Priest of Titania (or elvish archdruid) translates into those elves being zero cost. The deck plays just like a typical elf deck, only you mulligan a lot more :p

Wirewood Symbiote deserves special mention. He can make oodles of mana by bouncing a tapped elf to untap a Priest or Archdruid. He can save your elves from death by bouncing them before they die. You can also make suicide runs with Wren's Run Vanquisher, then bounce him before combat damage is assigned, and all defenders will die from the venom effect. He can even let you make extra warriors with Imperious Perfect. For all these reasons, plus costing only G to play, he wins MVP for this deck (imagine if he was subtype elf instead of insect...)

The hardest matchups are slivers, (winged sliver, plus it's really fast and has counters to boot) goblins, (piledriver and haste-giving lords), though the shadow deck and zombies can be troublesome, too. Turbofog is tougher, but can be beaten (I didn't see it much with this deck, and not at all in the winning gauntlet). Soldiers, kithkin, elves (both), merfolk, grow, and rats usually lose if you didn't mull yourself away.

The winning gauntlet went against shadow, zombies, elves, rats, merfolk, soldiers, kithkin, slivers, burn, (those 9 not necessarily in that order) and then goblins in the last round, which scared the crap out of me, but he didn't drop a lord on turn 3 for his piledriver/prospector on the board, and I dropped Regal Force and Platinum Angel the turn after I would have died if he'd had a turn 3 chieftain/warchief :p

That leaves super mulligan and land ho. My land ho deck probably looks just like everyone else's, only I made it about 75-80 cards so that it can beat turbofog more consistently, and my super mulligan deck keeps changing, but usually its weenie or burn/removal.

I'll have to watch that thing about knowing the order of the first cards in super mulligan; that will be handy, and you could even take mulligans just to 'peek' at your top few cards until you like what you see, since your hand is zero cards anyway. An oath deck might be great when you can mull and ensure you'll get one in time!

[somacat]

Yeah, OK, Super Mulligan is completely do-able with the ability to mulligan into your first few draw steps. Although I do feel a little bit dirty, since I did actually use Contract from Below:

.10 1 Balance
.349 4 Enlightened Tutor
.43 4 Contract from Below
.1890 1 Demonic Consultation
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.331 1 Imperial Seal
.333 1 Vampiric Tutor
.1902 4 Oath of Druids
.17 1 Black Lotus
.965 4 Ensnaring Bridge
.230 1 Sol Ring
.402 4 Sensei's Divining Top
.451 1 Ring of Ma'rûf
.403 4 City of Brass
.722 4 Gemstone Mine
.1473 4 Windswept Heath
.1893 4 Forbidden Orchard
.216 4 Scrubland
.12 2 Bayou
.1489 2 Bloodstained Mire
.36 1 Circle of Protection: Red
.1308 2 Platinum Angel
.1198 1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
.1314 1 Magus of the Moat
.1585 2 Baneslayer Angel
.1226 1 Visara the Dreadful

Basically, it's all about drawing lands and something to make the field a bit more even after the AI has had 3-4 turns of dropping lands and playing spells. Contract, Balance, Oath and Bridge fill these slots. Bridge was made for this format lol. The CoP: Red is obviously the tutorable 'I win' card against Burn (and is also semi-useful vs Goblins and Kobolds. The Ring of Maruf is there for an auto-win against Turbofog (providing it doesn't get milled before you can tutor it up), fetching either Yawgmoth's Bargain or Necropotence. I could have ran one of those instead, but Ring can fetch win-cons against other decks (for example if you need to keep Bridge active, it can fetch Aladdin's Ring or something).

Bring on set 3... in a while....

[aww1979]

LOL Contract from Below works in this challenge? I tried that in one of the first series in a Tendrils deck, but because I used it, I didn't get to unlock anything when I got to the end. I was able to wish for it in the past, but I couldn't use it in the maindeck.

This ought to make super mulligan pretty easy. Now I just have to figure out how to answer four creatures on turn 3... with lands in land ho :p

edit: It's ok to feel dirty, Somacat; did you look at my decklist for the Epic Challenge? I hang my head in shame at that one... I might try it again properly later, though.

2nd edit: Do you have an older version of this challenge, Somacat? I just tried to put Contract from Below maindeck and I cannot pick the deck to use in the challenge :p

[somacat]

I deleted all of the decks except the ones I finished with, sorry - to clear up my Gauntlet folder. I kept the finishing decks for posterity though.

Have you tried checking the 'Ante' box on the main Gauntlet screen? Otherwise it won't show up as playable, since it's an ante card...

[aww1979]

Oh, I probably didn't click on ante I'm going to try to do it without Contract from Below, but if I get frustrated... well, you drove me to it!

[jatill]

Oh, I probably didn't click on ante I'm going to try to do it without Contract from Below, but if I get frustrated... well, you drove me to it!

Dirty cheaters!! So far I've been able do 4 of the 8 challenges without cheating.

I had a nice Epic deck that regularly cast turn 2 Eureka for the win, but I kept hitting a Force of Will deck somewhere along the line. So I used this deck instead. I guess it's technically cheating, since I had to invent cards to win the challenge

I'm guessing this list will be good for super mulligan also, since stack deck into bazaar = win.

Code: Select all

.681   4   Narcomoeba
.684   4   Golgari Grave-Troll
.700   4   Dread Return*
.691   4   Ichorid
.398   4   Bazaar of Baghdad
.390   4   Crop Rotation
.711   4   Serum Powder
.252   4   Tropical Island
.1488   4   Flooded Strand
.682   4   Unmask
.705   4   Bridge From Below
.675   4   Flame-Kin Zealot
.678   4   Golgari Thug
.680   4   Stinkweed Imp
.1728   4   Wasteland


[Salbei]

uh a working dredge pile
(tropical+flooded ? did i miss something )

shall i start preparing pics ?

->
there you go,think i got everything (incl. alt artwork)
http://salbei.spacequadrat.de/magic/updates/dredge%20pics.rar

[somacat]

Haha jatill, that's hilarious (and utterly awesome ) How is the Dredge deck working out for you?

EDIT, now that I've thought about it: so, Flashback has made it's way to Manalink finally! I'm curious about the asterisk for Dread Return though... I assume the Flashback is working, otherwise it'd be pretty bad in that list...

And for the Serum Powder did you finish 5:1 or 10:1? I'm just interested in your experiences with crashes in that challenge, since when it was 10:1 aww1979 and I had a horrible time trying to finish the Strip Mine round. Did you experience that in 10:1, or, if you did 5:1 does that solve the issue?