Challenges Are Ridiculous? Hours Wasted,,Please Any Help

[sandman423]

I have been trying ALL the challenges and have failed miserably on several occassions...

Most of the time I lose to Goblins, Slivers, Soldiers and FAIRIES(I HATE THEM SO MUCH)...

I have won the following cards so far

BloodBraid Elf (Beat Easy as 1,2,3)
Donate (Master Warlock )
Illusions of Grandeur(Enchanted Evening)

I notice a lot of people who have made decks for the challenges use cards they unlocked to beat the Challenges #2-#4 and so I am trying to do the same.


Dealing with swarms is vicious and I have been trying different challenges..

These are the main Challenges I need help on beating. Deck List and descriptions on how to use them would be really helpful.

::Challenge's #1::
Tribal Trials (Mystic Enforcer) - opponent plays a tribal deck and gets a free creature

Shandalar 2.0 (Goblin Welder) - opponent starts the game with specific challenging cards in play

::Challenge #2::
What Hand? (Brain freeze) - skip your draw step

That's Big... (Goblin Charbelcher) - you deck can only include lands and cards with mana cost > 3

March of the Machines (Tangle Wire) - your deck can ONLY include artifacts

::::Challenge #3::::
Gimme! (Sower of Temptation) - You may only use copy / stealing cards that are not also creatures. You can have 4 cards that break this rule.

March of the Machines 2 (Umezawa's Jitte) - You may only use non-creature artifacts

The Perfect Storm (Mind's Desire) - The turn you play a spell, you must win the game

Sliver Nation (Essense Sliver) - Fight an increasingly difficult horde of Slivers

::::Challenge #4::::
Chaos Orb (Violent Umtimatum) - Randomly have a permanent of yours tapped, bounced, or destroyed each turn.

Life's a Lich (Phyrexian Negator) - Win the challenge without dying to your own Lich

Cascade (Bituminous Blast) - Every spell opponent plays has cascade

ABC's (Leyline of the Void) - Every card in your deck must start with the same letter.

Challenge Challenge (Helm of Obedience) - You can only use card you have unlocked via challenge mode. You may also use basics and beta duals for lands.


The main problem I am having is whenever i play Fairies and get an advantage they steal my Creatures or CounterSpell Me before anything...

The Main Challenges I need right now are..

5:1 Odds (Serum Powder) - Would help beat some challenges I think

What Hand? (Brain Freeze) *I Want this So Bad*

That's Big (Goblin Charbelcher) (So hard to keep up)(Tried Oaths Deck but I can't get big guys out fast enough)

March of the Machines (Tangled Wire) (I Want this Bad)

March of the Machines 2 (Umezawa's Jitte) - You may only use non-creature artifacts

The Perfect Storm (This is Ridiculous is there anyway to just beat this without having to do it? It is Impossible to do in 9 rounds)

Chaos Orb (Violent Umtimatum) - Randomly have a permanent of yours tapped, bounced, or destroyed each turn.

[aww1979]

Well, there are threads describing how people beat the various challenges, so I won't go into too much detail. However, looking at the ones you want the most...

5:1 Odds (Serum Powder) - This is one of the hardest challenges there is. It's also unfortunately one of the best rewards :p It took me about 2-3 weeks to beat this one. My suggestion is to play a heavy control deck with lots of Ring of Ma'Ruf and several of the 'wish' cards (like Burning Wish, etc). I would also suggest practicing Magic on some of the other easier challenges before tackling this one.

What Hand? (Brain Freeze) - There are two types of decks I would suggest for this one: Oath, and Dredge. When you start this challenge, you will see a hand of 7 cards. When the hand disappears, it puts that hand on top of your deck, so you know the first cards you will draw into. (number depending on how far you mulligan) Mulligan until you see Oath+mana (in the oath deck) or bazaar of baghdad in the first few cards, then kick ass with your oathed creature or 30 zombie tokens, whichever deck you pick. Oath probably takes less skill, but isn't quite as good a deck, so take your pick.

That's Big (Goblin Charbelcher) - Try using cards that have a 4 or more casting cost, but can be played cheaper, to keep you alive in the early game. Shriekmaw, Force of Will, Frogmite, Myr Enforcer, and other large affinity cards, Stratadon, that sort of thing.

March of the Machines (Tangled Wire) - This challenge is pretty easy. An affinity deck will beat the crap out of it.

March of the Machines 2 (Umezawa's Jitte) - This one is a lot tougher than the first March. A Vise deck or Smokestack deck is probably the way to go; again you can find decklists in the appropriate threads.

The Perfect Storm - I think you basically have to do Tendrils or Charbelcher here. I think Tendrils is the better deck, and that is the one I used. Unfortunately, Mind's Desire is also one of the best rewards, but that's how it goes. You have to earn it to use it.

Chaos Orb (Violent Umtimatum) - I played Tendrils on this one, too. Dredge will fail because your bazaar gets tapped or destroyed and you cannot respond by using it. There are a few other choices here, but that's still my recommendation.

I don't know what your skill level at Magic is or how long you have been trying these challenges, but most of them took me a couple evenings each. A few I still haven't beat.

I'd start with the easiest challenges first, to get some practice (even if you don't really want the reward card) and then work up from there.

[sandman423]

Well that is the thing..

I am coming back from a 5 year absence and most of these decks I have been trying for each of the challenges feels like I need to be a master to use them...


Could you possibly post deck lists that WORK for the Challenges I have tried a bunch of peoples deck lists but none are working for me.

Dredge I haven't tried yet nor do I know how to use it...I know Unearth is the key for Dredge.

[stassy]

Dredge is quite "easy" to play because the game will make all the hard work for you (dredging rule for searching cards, etc...).
To summarize:

- Get at least one bazaar in play asap (with Crop Rotation, by mulliganing up to 1, etc... for eg.)

- Each time you tap a bazaar in a dredge deck the game will often ask you to dredge "card something" instead of taking the top card of your library, just do it, else try to discard all your cards tagged "dredge x" from your hand. Dredge x mean you put x cards from your library to your graveyard.

- Sometimes you will be asked to put back in play like Narcomoeba or Ichorid or some card, do it and pay the cost (exiling black creature from graveyard).

- Once you have nearly all your library in your graveyard and at least 3 creatures in play, before attacking click on the RuleEngine card, choose Dread Return, sac your 3 creatures and select Flame-Kin Zealot from your graveyard and you should have at least 13 creatures in play ready for the instant kill :p

[aww1979]

A lot of the challenges can be beat with some variant of an Oath of Druids deck. Throw in 4x Oath of Druids, 4x Forbidden Orchard, all the tutors you can cram in, and then a few creatures of choice. 4x Platinum Angel is one of the best for this, since most of the challenge decks can't deal with it. The deck is extremely easy to play. In fact, enough of the challenges, particularly the older ones, can be beat with Oath of Druids that I try not to use it anymore unless absolutely necessary :p

The tendrils and belcher decks are harder to play than most, as is the keeper-type deck you will need for 5:1 challenge, which is why I recommended doing most of the other ones first. (i.e. save ones like Perfect Storm, 5:1, onslaught, for later)

[Stroggoii]

To this day I still havent been able to beat "There can be only one".

It has gottent completely tiresome, tried with GW, tried 5C, tried Artifacts and Grixis colours, notthing works for nine damn consecutive rounds, specially when you are always facing perfectly well built thersehold and burn decks.

[monopoman]

The challenges are not easy for a novice at the new cards and interactions. These challenges are designed to be challenging like beating Battletoads for the NES type of challenge.

I have been playing a lot since about 1998 or so and even I have trouble beating certain challenges. Especially if the opponent gets a lucky hand or my mulligans get me nothing since its best 1 out of 1.

[Marek14]

As an aside, "wastested" is a beautiful portmonteau.

[Stroggoii]

The challenges are not easy for a novice at the new cards and interactions. These challenges are designed to be challenging like beating Battletoads for the NES type of challenge.

I dont remember Battletoads involving 90% luck tho.

No matter how good you are or how well you play, there's notthing the Dude... elf deck can do against turbofog.
There's notthing dredge can do against slivers if you dont get Bazaar out in the first two turns.
Even decks as broken as Oath and Hexdepths will eventually have a game-breaking hand.

That's what, IMO, should be fixed about this, the whole inmense luck aspect it currently holds.

[stassy]

For dredge, Bazaar is not a problem, with crop and mulligan (and the uber 5:1 reward), I only got an empty 1 card mulligan hand once out on the 50th play ; the problem is getting out creatures in play that can survive long enough to be sacced into zombies while you try to dredge your library as much as possible and asap.
It's very troublesome to see your narco/icho getting exiled/destroyed while you don't have enough bridge in graveyard or getting zombie too early and you don't have a dread return ready. Usually if you didn't already kill the AI on the 3rd turn, he will finish you off with challenge mad creatures combo.

Magic heavily rely on luck anyway because of the drawing system. You can lower the rate of a bad draw with constructed deck but it will still be there so it can't be blamed for everything.

[sandman423]

I Finally Beat What Hand?, but I didn't get the card...

What happened?

I got up to round 10 and it started but I didn't unlock the card.

Is there a way I could hack the code to get the card so I wouldn't have to do it all over again

Tried it again and got to round 10 and beat it for the Unlock of Brain Freeze...I won with a Oath Deck with Hellkite Overlord, Bogardian Hellkite (Amazing how much he could be used for either Removal or Direct damage), Progenitus with Chrome Mox (What a combo), and I should have added Platinum Angel.

AWSOME Card...

Now I just need some decent decks for the following

March of the Machines #1 & #2
ABC's (So Frustrating)