[Archive] Challenge Set 2

[jatill]

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?

The * on Dread Return is for 2 things. First, like Yawg Will etc, you can't counter Dread Return, it doesn't play nice with alternate costs, etc. Second, you can target one of the creatures you sacced to reaminate.

Changing 10:1 to 5:1 doesn't do anything to directly effect the crashes, but it makes the games quicker, so crashes are less frequent and less time consuming when they happen.

[aww1979]

Super Mulligan (unlocks Rout)

-you start with no cards in hand
-in what may be an unintended consequence of this, whatever cards your opening hand contains before it disappears will be the top cards of your library, the bottom card in your hand being the top card of the library

.43 4 Contract from Below
.1890 1 Demonic Consultation
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.1484 4 Diabolic Edict
.1772 4 Innocent Blood
.1275 4 Damnation
.55 4 Dark Ritual
.333 1 Vampiric Tutor
.331 1 Imperial Seal
.808 4 Liliana Vess
.812 4 The Abyss
.1944 4 Shriekmaw
.166 1 Mox Jet
.17 1 Black Lotus
.239 21 Swamp
.1705 1 Necropotence

After struggling for a very long time to beat this challenge (even with contract from below in other decks, mostly Oath) I hit upon this idea. It failed its first attempt when it hit turbofog in match 2, so I added Necropotence, which is an autowin against turbofog, and then it cleared the entire gauntlet on my next attempt.

The strategy was to mulligan until you had at least one swamp and either a contract or a way to get one in the top few cards. Failing that, swamp and lots of removal. Then kill everything until Liliana gets up to 8 counters, animate everything you killed, and then you win. Against turbofog, tutor for necro asap so it doesn't get milled, and be careful not to topdeck it when millstone is in play.

Zombies, Kithkin, Shadow, Spawnwrithe, Black Artifact, Turbofog, Rats, Faeries were the decks I faced, some of them twice. I'm very lucky I never faced the burn deck, because there's no way this deck could have beaten it. I I also never saw Slivers, Merfolk or Goblins, all of which would probably would've been the next worst after Burn.

I had a few extremely close matches where I was as low as one life :p The last match I thought I'd lost when I tapped out for The Abyss and Su-Chi hit the board with Winter Orb in play, but at the very last turn when I was at 1 life I topdecked the swamp I needed, and with 5 mana in play used Demonic Consultation on Damnation. (he had a 2nd Su-Chi by then) Against the Shadow deck I nearly lost when I didn't notice one just-played creature had protection black when I had The Abyss out and 1 life, but fortunately I had Diabolic Edict to respond with. (as well as several sorceries, but I didn't see I should have played one until I realized The Abyss didn't eat him :p) I also won a couple games by using Liliana to tutor for removal when I didn't have any, but didn't need it yet, rather than getting greedy and trying to rush the animate out sooner. Since Liliana topdecks the card, you have to do it beforehand, or it is too late.

If I were to do this again, I'd probably switch Shriekmaws for Barter in Blood, since they kill 2 creatures instead of 1, and I never attacked with Shriekmaws except after Liliana animated them, though they did chump block sometimes. Then I'd pray not to see Burn again :p

Now to beat Land Ho... that's all I have left. With respect to somacat, I still think Land Ho is the hardest one :p

[aww1979]

Epic (revisited)

;dredge
;
;#oldgames
;
;16/09/2009
;1
;4th Edition
;

.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 4 Golgari Thug
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.675 3 Flame-Kin Zealot
.700 4 Dread Return*
.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
.1967 4 Life from the Loam
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.711 4 Serum Powder
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.791 4 Goblin Lore
.403 4 City of Brass
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.1531 1 Angel of Despair
.691 4 Ichorid

The volcanic islands were a relic from having ancestral recall and time walk in here, but it doesn't really matter because you don't need any land at all besides the bazaars. It won my second gauntlet attempt, and the first was lost only because I made a mistake in understanding the concept of this deck.

[somacat]

Nice mono-black list! To deal with burn, you could add a 1-of CoP: Red, and switched some swamps for Scrubland / fetchlands, and swap Necro for Ring of Maruf (with tutors fetching it early, an extra turn is unlikely to matter vs. Turbofog), that can get a Silver Knight or something.

I agree Land Ho is harder, but only because now I know you can check out your first few draw steps in Super Mulligan. That, and it's harder to add Contract of Below to the Land Ho list!

[aww1979]

Yeah, that should work just fine. I'd remove the Shriekmaws first, since they didn't seem to help very much at all. I probably would have hit on the CoP:Red/Scrubland thing right away, but I doubt I'd have thought of Ring of Ma'Ruf in there for a Silver Knight or similar.

[meesterhans]

that's big

.1521 4 Font of Mythos
.132 4 Juggernaut
.1308 4 Platinum Angel
.529 4 Su-Chi
.510 4 Mishra's Workshop
.541 4 Urza's Mine
.543 4 Urza's Power Plant
.544 4 Urza's Tower
.1906 4 Sundering Titan
.1548 4 Myr Enforcer
.508 4 Mishra's Factory
.1710 4 Ancient Tomb
.1106 4 Patagia Golem
.1112 4 Phyrexian Hulk
.1888 2 City of Traitors
.1709 2 Temple of the False God

3rd/4th turn sundering titan :D:D:D

It looks like a worthless deck with 28 lands... But it worked for me!


March of the Machines

.17 1 Black Lotus
.230 1 Sol Ring
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.1706 4 Master of Etherium
.1216 4 Seat of the Synod
.1215 4 Vault of Whispers
.1547 4 Frogmite
.1548 4 Myr Enforcer
.1210 4 Silver Myr
.1714 4 Skullclamp
.1677 4 Arcbound Ravager
.1676 4 Arcbound Worker
.1724 4 Cranial Plating
.1833 2 Sword of Fire and Ice
.1308 1 Platinum Angel
.1219 4 Ancient Den
.248 1 Time Vault
.1550 1 Voltaic Key
.550 4 Yotian Soldier

Nothing suprising here i think!

Thanks to all who submitted there decks!
Here my thanks so far!

Byebye

H.

[jatill]

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

Finally beat this myself, on my second try (last challenge complete, woohoo!)
Here's my deck:

Code: Select all

.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
.694   1   Karakas
.407   4   Desert
.438   1   Library of Alexandria
.1499   4   Temple Garden
.212   4   Savannah
.1989   3   Secluded Steppe
.1990   4   Tranquil Thicket
.1844   3   Dark Depths
.740   3   Pendelhaven
.398   4   Bazaar of Baghdad
.1709   4   Temple of the False God
.1913   4   Dryad Arbor


My strategy is a little different from yours. I used Dryad Arbor + Pendlehaven extensively. I cut the Outposts after the first try, since I never wanted them in play, and use Temple of the False God instead. Helps to get those Dark Depths going. Overall, I used 1 of 3 game plans depending on the deck:

1) Make Marit Lage ASAP. Works best against decks like Turbofog and ones with large creatures.

2) LD. If I start with 2 Wastelands / Srtip Mines in hand, I'll play Bazaar and try to find the rest to cripple the opponent.

3) Manlands. This is the most common strategy, as explained by somacat. I never found myself needing to abuse the Pendlehaven AI bug, though.

[aww1979]

I've been using Temple of the False God, too, as well as Windswept Heath (for Dryad Arbor) and Oasis. Yes, Oasis! It helps keep the manlands alive :p I haven't been using the cycling lands, since I find those are usually used so that you can replace a land with (hopefully) a nonland card when you have enough land. However, in Land Ho, you always cycle it into another land, so it doesn't do anything.

[somacat]

I think you still want to run cycling lands in the challenge. Since there aren't huge amounts of good utility lands in the game, you want to have the maximum shot at hitting your 'good' cards - more manlands in particular, but sometimes you really need to find a Tabernacle or Maze of Ith. If you normally use cycling lands to find spells, you have to think of any relevant land in your deck as a spell, since that's basically what they are in Land Ho

For similar reasons, I would have run fetches in Jatill's list to thin the library, and to find Dryad Arbor, cutting the Temple Gardens. I didn't, since I used Outpost, and you want more Plains (one to sacrifice, one to activate).

I do like Arbor though, if I was to do this challenge again, I'd definitely run a playset.

And Island of Wak-Wak is *really* good in some match-ups, it holds of 20/20 Jenaras in the Gold Aggro deck without untapping it to block!

[meesterhans]

Defeated; what hand? and epic with the same dredge deck!

.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 4 Golgari Thug
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.700 4 Dread Return*
.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
.1967 4 Life from the Loam
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.1531 1 Angel of Despair
.691 4 Ichorid
.675 3 Flame-Kin Zealot
.390 4 Crop Rotation
.91 8 Forest
.1913 4 Dryad Arbor

Just added Dryad Arbor, crop rotation, forests. the dryad turns out to be very handy. Can be used for crop rotation and a flashbackcost. It also increases the chance of a good starting hand!

[thedrigo]

I haven't been playing much lately 'cuz Uni's been killing my free time... but I gave the new Challenges a try and beat Epic, March of the Machines and That's Big...

The first two were easy with Dredge and Affinity as obvious deck choices; my lists don't really vary from the ones put up here except for one or two cards.
With That's Big..., however, I decided to build my own list as there's tons of possibilites. Here's the deck, tell me if it worked for you:

(I built the deck without much thought, so if you have better ideas for it, I'm all ears)

4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Volcanic Island
4 Steam Vents
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Crumbling Necropolis

4 Mulldrifter
1 Time Spiral
2 Time Warp
3 Force of Will

4 Kokusho, the Evening Star

4 Ali from Cairo
4 Bogardan Hellkite
4 Wildfire Emissary
4 Sneak Attack

4 Gilded Lotus
2 Nevinyrral's Disk

I could've added another set of Fetchlands instead of the Necropoles but I decided against it because of the already significant life loss to the Tombs and the early turn weenie A-holes . The Emissaries might seem like an odd addition but they will hold off A LOT of the enemy creatures and heftily discourage the AI from attacking, I picked him over Flametongue Kavu for longterm effectiveness; they can also push through enemy lines and survive with the added toughness. Ali from Cairo might seem more fragile but he's a step up from the Platinum Angel in this matchup for 2 reasons:
1. Naturalize and Qasali Pridemage (now that it's actually used by the AI). Those two cards mean game over in their matchups and I don't know if it's just my luck but experience with the other challenges painfully taught me that they seem to come along a little too often for comfort.
2. Tempo. The angel takes too long to come online without tutoring, fast mana or quick reanimation effects and there's enough alternatives to recover from Ali dying on turn 3 or 4 than from a disenchanted Platinum Angel on turn 6 or 7.
The Time Spiral works beautifully with the Gilded Loti allowing for TONS of mana to be reused for explosive post-reshuffle Sneak Attack madness.

Lemme know what you guys think!

[somacat]

I too have been moving away from Platinum Angel in these challenges for the most part, since it's alot more fragile than it used to be =D I believe more of the challenge decks can actually deal with Angel than they can Ali or Magus of the Moat, since there is no black removal and the burn decks can deal with either (although Angel is probably better vs Kobolds, which just has 4 Lightning Bolts), while there are 3 decks with Disenchant effects.

On the other hand, Platinum is good for decks that don't run many win conditions, since it beats for 4 in the air (although that's not much of an issue with 4 Hellkites and 4 Kokusho!).

Your list seems good, the only thing I'm not sure about is the Time Warps - were they helpful for you at all? The only real use I can see for Warping is to drop an extra land to cast a Dragon (although Kokosho turn 5/6 off a turn 4/5 Warp is tough without a Lotus, and if you have a Lotus, you didn't need the extra land drop), or to get another attack phase in, but if you have a dragon in play, you should be in a fairly stable position and not really need an extra attack phase). On the other hand, taking extra turns is just cool anyway

You know how I like me some Sneak Attacking!

[thedrigo]

To be perfectly honest, I needed more cards to pitch to FoW . I didn't think it'd help a lot at all but I think Annex might be a better choice to hasten mana fixing. I didn't really take a lot of time to build the deck but thinking back, all I did with the Time Warps was pitch them to FoW...
Sneak Attack was the star, along with Ali from Cairo; the great thing about them together is the fact that sneaking another Ali into play when the one on the board has been killed can double as a Fog and give you an extra turn to find an answer/kill the opponent. It definitely saved my ass a couple times.
FoW'ing the Fog effect against TurboFog was incredibly satisfying, too.
I pondered on adding Damnation but the Disk takes care of Worship, Ivory Tower, opposing Moxen, etc. It's a more complete kind of removal. Maybe Shriekmaw would make the cut but the deck works pretty decently so far.
How's everyone else been doing with the challenges? I can't imagine how long it's gonna take to beat that Land Ho one.... Great work Jatill!

EDIT: I beat the challenge out of sheer luck with this build . I went through it again and died many, many times.
I fixed the mana base and added some support spells/creatures.
So:
-4 Wildfire Emissary
-2 Time Warp
-3 Force of Will

+4 Concentrate
+1 Nicol Bolas
+1 Angel of Despair
+1 Magister Sphinx
+1 Lonely Sandbar
+1 Forgotten Cave

Nicol Bolas is a game ender. Given enough time, you can even drop him on the board without Sneak Attack with the new mana base. I've never seen anyone not get a little uncomfortable when this guy is staring you in the face as he eats away your hand, life and game.
The Angel is very useful when Worship or Ivory Tower hit the table and a snuck-into-play Sphinx drops an opponent down to 5 life, regardless of his total. He can also buy you another turn if you're low on life.
The cycle lands are really good in this challenge because not only do they help prevent flooding, but their drawback becomes meaningless when you never play stuff on the first turns anyway.
The Emissaries and FoWs became obsolete because there's really no use in playing defensively with a deck built to kill on turn 5. Concentrate helps sift through your library and get you answers when you need them.
After the changes, the only deck I suffered against was TurboFog.

[Squee]

I just wanted to make a little update about the "Super Mulligan" challenge as I wasn't able to cheat the game with Contract from Below (jatill must have updated it).
So I've done it with a Dredge deck. After trying multiple version of it (with Crop Rotation to have a Bazaar of Baghdad in play as soon as possible), I ended with a 40 cards dredge deck, so you've the best probability having a quick Bazaar of Baghdad.
Here's the list :
.705 4 Bridge From Below
.666 4 Cabal Therapy
.700 3 Dread Return*
.675 2 Flame-Kin Zealot
.684 4 Golgari Grave-Troll
.678 4 Golgari Thug
.691 4 Ichorid
.1967 3 Life from the Loam
.681 4 Narcomoeba
.680 4 Stinkweed Imp
.398 4 Bazaar of Baghdad
Just mulligan till having a turn 3 Bazaar of Baghdad (I found that after turn 3, you must have an insane luck to win).

And this is the deck I used for beating the That's Big challenge :
.1707 4 Academy Rector
.1585 4 Baneslayer Angel
.1314 3 Magus of the Moat
.726 3 Moat
.1453 4 Spectral Procession
.1165 4 Sunweb
.372 1 Test of Endurance
.1814 4 Wall of Reverence
.290 4 Wrath of God
.1788 4 Ruins of Trokair
.1709 4 Temple of the False God
.188 2 Plains
.815 2 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker*
.823 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant*
.562 4 Orzhov Basilica
.216 4 Scrubland
.189 4 Plateau
.254 4 Tundra
With numerous mass removal and gain life, this challenge was really an easy task
The other challenges were done with decks more or less like somacat and aww1979's ones.

[thedrigo]

Am I the only dumbass who hasnt been able to beat Dude yet? My deck is obviously Elves but I keep getting run down by Soldiers and Zombies. I added two copies of Gaddock Teeg to beat TurboFog (worked like a charm) and two Platinum Angel s as fillers but I keep getting my ass handed to me.
Any suggestions?