[Archive] Challenge Set 3

[Tattooedoni]

Alright now I am soliciting help for March of the Machines 2. I have ran it about 30+ times now. The furthest I have gotten is to the 10th game when I played the mirror match and the game crashed when he tried to cursed scroll me. I have started with Drudgers deck at the top of page 3 of this thread and tuned it from there. Basically I made finding Belcher and Bridge the main main main priority, and I want to be able to kill quick with belcher so i took it down to 5 lands. The deck is still really good, but it just isn't consistant enough to win 10 non-crashing games in a row. At some point usually between game 4-8 I will get a slow draw or never get to bridge/belcher and get blown out by a tribal deck with the nut high draw and 20+ power in play on turn 4. Most of the time the game is taken into control and the other deck has no chance to win, often times its early, other times by playing super tight I can shave off a win with that is not handed to me, and then sometimes I just fail to get into the game until it is too late.

I danno, I didn't know if there were any other strategies that people were playing that downed it quicker. I have been thinking about stacks style control, but the games with this deck are already long enough that I want to break stuff every time I play 4 long games, and lose to a slick zombie draw in game five and check the clock and I just wasted an hour and a half. Stacks control seem like they would be harder, longer games that I am less likely to win over 10 games. I will try and get my list up tomorrow

[aww1979]

Looking back, I used a Stax deck, but I think if I were going to do this again I'd do an affinity deck.

4x Arcbound Ravager
4x Arcbound Worker
4x Master of Etherium
4x Frogmite
4x Myr Enforcer
4x Etherium Sculptor (maybe not this, due to the U mana, but you could use Islands or Chromatic Stars. Islands would let you do Vedalken Shackles, too)
4x Cranial Plating
8-10 other cards, whatever strikes your fancy. Juggernaut, Courier Capsule, Cathodion, Ornithopter; a lot of choices will work. If you want some control elements, Icy Manipulator, Winter Orb, Moonglove Extract, Cursed Scroll are ideas.
22-24 mana (moxes, Seat of the Synod, Vault of Whispers, Darksteel Citadel, sol ring, lotus, mana vault/crypt)
-I don't think the challenge will let you use Mishra's Workshop or other nonbasic lands besides duals, excepting the artifact lands for this particular one, since they are, of course... artifacts.

[Systral]

Most of the lists here seem to lack consistency and skimp on mana, which sets you up for popping a vein when you lose a match at the end of a round due to a bad draw. Here's the list I used to beat March of the Machines #2. Pretty easy to play; don't be afraid to mull away slow hands, lock the game up with bridges and stones and start aiming belchers and scrolls to the dome when creatures aren't a threat anymore.

;Challenge March
;
;User
;User E-Mail
;07/12/2009
;1
;4th Edition
;

.17 1 Black Lotus
.157 1 Mana Vault
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.230 1 Sol Ring
.1774 4 Grafted Skullcap
.1957 4 Cursed Scroll
.965 4 Ensnaring Bridge
.1306 4 Sculpting Steel
.457 1 Mox Diamond
.1894 4 Goblin Charbelcher
.164 18 Mountain
.159 4 Meekstone
.1900 1 Memory Jar
.1468 4 Wayfarer's Bauble
.546 4 Weakstone

[scherbchen]

I personally found the Sculpting Steel to be pretty useless in the original decklists.... tweaked, tweaked, tweaked some more and finally won it with this list, though I do agree that you have to get lucky...


mana
12 Mountain
Black Lotus
Mox Ruby
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Emerald
Mox Sapphire
Sol Ring
4 Mind Stone
Mana Vault
Mana Crypt
Grim Monolith
Mox Diamond

damage
3 Goblin Charbelcher
3 Cursed Scroll

lockdown and defense
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack
4 Weakstone
3 Meekstone
3 Crucible of Worlds
Trinisphere
4 Sphere of Resistance
Zuran Orb
4 Winter Orb (not the best combo in the world with Smokestack but having either orb or stack plus Tangle Wire will make your life easier till you lock down the opponent for good)

your starting hand should have mana acceleration and some sort of controllish artifact, Tangle Wire is your best bet (a 1st turn Sphere of Resistance or Trinisphere is fine as well) and is the only card in this deck I would consider running Sculpting Steel for. a redundant Winter Orb, Meekstone, a run-out Tangle Wire or damaging Mana Vault or Mana Crypt is the first thing you want to sacrifice to Smokestack (which you can, and sometimes have to, run up to two, at times three, counters if you have another copy in hand) followed by Mountains.

[jatill]

I went for the Black Vise kill. I love any deck with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos.

.503 4 Ivory Tower
.18 4 Black Vise
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.230 1 Sol Ring
.159 4 Meekstone
.114 4 Howling Mine
.1521 4 Font of Mythos
.287 4 Winter Orb
.119 4 Icy Manipulator
.630 4 Vedalken Shackles
.126 20 Island
.1468 2 Wayfarer's Bauble

[Professor]

Tried to throw together an affinity deck off the top of my head for Easy as 1,2,3. It auto-loses at the start of the game. It totally sucks, but it shouldn't be illegal. Where did I fail? (other then the obvious suckiness)

.1810 4 Broodstar
.1520 4 Inkwell Leviathan
.1549 4 Qumulox
.1548 4 Myr Enforcer
.1664 4 Somber Hoverguard
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.230 1 Sol Ring
.503 1 Ivory Tower
.18 1 Black Vise
.47 1 Copy Artifact
.318 1 Fellwar Stone
.249 1 Time Walk
.1779 1 Lightning Greaves
.1547 4 Frogmite
.1758 1 Show and Tell
.1351 2 Tinker
.1706 1 Master of Etherium
.1336 1 Gilded Lotus
.1666 3 Thoughtcast
.126 20 Island

I believe what is going on is that it's counting Frogmite and Myr Enforcers as non-creatures, and the stats screen shows my card count at 52 instead of 60. Or is it something else?

Thx

[jatill]

Tried to throw together an affinity deck off the top of my head for Easy as 1,2,3. It auto-loses at the start of the game. It totally sucks, but it shouldn't be illegal. Where did I fail? (other then the obvious suckiness)

.1810 4 Broodstar
.1520 4 Inkwell Leviathan
.1549 4 Qumulox
.1548 4 Myr Enforcer
.1664 4 Somber Hoverguard
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.230 1 Sol Ring
.503 1 Ivory Tower
.18 1 Black Vise
.47 1 Copy Artifact
.318 1 Fellwar Stone
.249 1 Time Walk
.1779 1 Lightning Greaves
.1547 4 Frogmite
.1758 1 Show and Tell
.1351 2 Tinker
.1706 1 Master of Etherium
.1336 1 Gilded Lotus
.1666 3 Thoughtcast
.126 20 Island

I believe what is going on is that it's counting Frogmite and Myr Enforcers as non-creatures, and the stats screen shows my card count at 52 instead of 60. Or is it something else?

Thx

Minimally, 2 Tinker is illegal.

[Professor]

Tried to throw together an affinity deck off the top of my head for Easy as 1,2,3. It auto-loses at the start of the game. It totally sucks, but it shouldn't be illegal. Where did I fail? (other then the obvious suckiness)

I believe what is going on is that it's counting Frogmite and Myr Enforcers as non-creatures, and the stats screen shows my card count at 52 instead of 60. Or is it something else?

Thx

Minimally, 2 Tinker is illegal.

Thanks! I had no idea.

[Tattooedoni]

Is the deck awww posted legal for MotM2? I thought it had to be non-creature artifacts. Am I missing something?

Sculpting skill is pretty good in a deck where lots of different things can be good in different games.

My friend and I have been working on the deck, and it looks like I am going to have to cave and go to a more control oriented list. I wanted to avoid that because the games are more likely to be really long and skill intensive, which makes defeat all the more crushing! Here are some cards I am unsure about, but maybe you can enlighten me about why they are good/how to use them more effectively.

The meek/weekstones: Maybe there is nothing better to run here but aren't they pretty bad when you will still get hit once, and in some cases (pumped slivers, zombies, rats, piledrivers) that can be pretty hard even though it will be stuck down. I guess thats why it helps to run ICY.

Fonts and Howling MInes: I am guessing they are much better when you cast Sphere of Resistance or Trinishpere first. It just seems very questionable to be giving tribal decks with creatures that cost 2 or less and/or burn that many more cards.

I am going to give it a shot.

[aww1979]

Haha, ok ignore the affinity deck I made, I forgot you couldn't use artifact creatures. That explains why I went Stax instead of affinity I guess It should work well for the first MotM challenge though.

[Systral]

The meekstones are probably the weakest cards in my deck, but since activating scrolls and belchers suck up so much mana I wanted a cheap drop that would help against early fatties (like that artifact deck that likes to drop 1st turn Juzams and Juggernauts). Most good artifacts cost 3-4 mana and having too many of them clogs up your hand and makes you not take full advantage of skullcap and bridge imo. The weakstones are stronger since they shut down more decks (esp in multiples), but come at a higher cost. I tried some different cards like Serrated Arrows and Moonglove Extract in there but ended up going with the 4/4 stone config as posted above.

On Howling Mine and Font of Mythos I love playing prison as much as everyone else, but I think the whole concept is a lot harder to pull off without access to all the fast mana lands that you'd normally play. If there's one thing I've learned from playing Stax irl it's that you want a really high density of lock components so that you can drop something on the first turn pretty much all of the time. Cards like Ivory tower and Howling mine are good when you are ahead but lousy topdecks when you're staring down a bunch of fast goblins or zombies. So for the reasons outlined here I decided to go with a little more pro-active approach

[Tattooedoni]

Yeah I would have played Stax much faster if we had access to Workshop, so far I have had a hard time with these control versions.

The best game I have had so far is when I played Turn 1 Vise, Turn 2 Sphere of resistance and the opponent never played a land. I danno if that is a bug or a AI issue, because I thought all challenge opponents get 2 lands in their opening hands. Either way it was the best luck I have had with it so far. I am like 4-3 with it (so really more like 3-3), but maybe my list isn't optimized yet. THe mirror is also really tough, I lost with my opponent on 0 cards because he went first. I was destroying him with vise damage until at about 5 life he got skullcap and there went all that damage...

[discoransom]

I'm not getting a draw step at all when playing The Perfect Storm...please tell me there is something wrong, because it is probably harder than 1 in 10,000 attempts to hit ten straight kills off 7 random cards...

[aww1979]

Stupid question, but are you sure you aren't playing the other challenge where it intentionally skips your draw phase every turn as the challenge condition? Otherwise, maybe something weird happened to challenge mode, because in the last few days I've seen a lot of bug reports related to it that I never ever saw when I did the challenges.

[Professor]

Agree - I'm autolosing everything I try. Even with the Suggested Decks from Salbei's site.