Salbei, Please Check This Out!

by **Bog Wraith** » 11 Jan 2010, 01:15

Many times as I'm sure allot of players will do, I will pick my deck that I want to play with and select the "random" setting for my opponent and then play which ever deck comes up. Well I did this last night, selecting one of my Necro decks as I was in the mood to play with my favorite card of all time which is of course Necropotence. Lo & behold, what deck should greet me to play against but one of the decks that you posted just the other day, Artmeister which is loaded with cards from the Power 9, and is a fun deck to play with as I later found out as I tried it.

Well I proceeded to have a match for the ages that started with a game 1 big win for your side. The second game was much closer but it was heading for a possible 2 game sweep against me, when things lined up for the second game to end in a tie!. The circumstances were quite remarkable.

On my last turn I was down to my last life when I had to play a Blood Crypt for the Red Mana I needed to cast a Blightning.
Needing to use the Crypt right away, I had to take the 2 point life hit that brought me down to -1. I then cast the Blightning which with the 2 Megrim in play and only 1 card in my opponents hand, brought the AI's life total down to 1!
With my last three swamps untapped, I cast a Drain Life for 1 measly Life point, one life that brought my opponent down to 0 and me back up to 0 for a final result of a very rare tie game! :shock:

It truly was an amazing game that i shall never forget. I've included the save game state that it was at the time of the start of my last turn so if you want, you can see it for yourself!

Can you tell me if under the newer rules of MTG, would I still be able to continue my turn after having fallen to -1 Life? I think not as I'm under the impression that the game state is checked after each phase, thus the check would have me losing at that point.

BTW, the match also ended in a 1/1/1 tie as I ended up winning the last game.

As for your deck, I like what I saw of it both in playing against it, and the couple of games I tried it. The change I would make from what I've seen so far is I'd swap the 3 Fabricate for 3 Tinker. It would facilitate getting the Darksteel Colossus in play quickly & cheaply as this deck has many artifacts to sac to Tinker!

Anyway, I had to share this fantastic game that I found myself in with the author of the deck that I played in & against!

by **240sxforever** » 11 Jan 2010, 04:27

If you have 0 or less life, you die as a state based effect. No chance to respond or anything. (this is of course if you lack something like platinum etc...)

by **aww1979** » 11 Jan 2010, 05:47

Yeah, the way you describe the scenario, you would have lost under modern rules. A true tie is rarer, but it can still be done; for instance, casting Earthquake for 5 when both players have less than 5 life.

The modern rules produce some strange effects, though. For instance, in a real life game against my brother once, he cast what would have been a gamewinning Drain Life against me. I responded by casting Fork on it and targeting *him*, and since he was also at low life, my Forked Drain Life killed him before his could resolve and gain the same amount of life right back :p

I guess it makes a little more sense than some guy sitting at negative life while he starts drawing for a Tendrils of Agony or something, though.

The change I would make from what I've seen so far is I'd swap the 3 Fabricate for 3 Tinker. It would facilitate getting the Darksteel Colossus in play quickly & cheaply as this deck has many artifacts to sac to Tinker!

Excellent plan, except for one fatal flaw. Tinker is restricted. Otherwise, your change would be the correct design.

by **Salbei** » 11 Jan 2010, 14:41

240sxforever wrote:If you have 0 or less life, you die as a state based effect. No chance to respond or anything. (this is of course if you lack something like platinum etc...)

Like he said : under modern rules you would have been dead instantly once you drop to 0 or less life.

@Bog Wraith
Glad you are enjoying the Deck and that the AI can play it.

Offtopic:
Reminds me of a tournament i´ve played in Hamburg December 99.
I´ve played my alltime favorite. A homebrew version of "the Deck" with a couple "modern" cards.

Score was 1:1 my win conditions are 2xMorphling / Mirror Universe / Fireball .
He played a simmilar control deck , surprisingly close to my list.

Had to pitch Morphling 1 for Force of Will.The 2nd one got taken care off cause i was to greedy and thought Force/Drain are enough to protect it ... well he tried to countered it (there goes my Drain ...)and played Swords to Plowshares on it during his turn and played Ivory Mask. Tough position now for me.
Already blew my disenchants on Ivory Mask #1 and Disrupting Scepter (yes , this saw play back in the days^^).
So i can´t target him anymore while all my remaining winning options (Mirror Universe , Fireball) just got worthless.

Things got worse a few turns later when he got his Morphling to play.So i was as about to loose in 2 turns (damn City of Brass^^).
Still a couple minutes on the clock so stalling out of it was no option ^^.
After checking each others graveyard + removed cards i realized he can just have 1 drain left to counter while i had already blown all my counters - and i guess he knew it too.

So this is my last turn before his Morphling kills me.My hand was full of junk i can´t play/use cause of the Ivory Mask. And i draw ...

Wheel of Fortune

I was screwed anyway so it can´t get worse -> i played the wheel, and we both draw new hands (turned out he didn´t have the Counter in his hand).
Got lucky and got a Regrowth within the new hand. Did the math and played another Wheel of Fortune after i recovered it from the Graveyard and decked the opponent while i had exactly 0 cards left in my library.

The 4th Manadrain was within the 2nd Wheel of Fortune and it turned out that playing with more than 60 cards sometimes pays out (my list had something like 65 cards).Was extreme luck there.

Same tournament 2 rounds later :
I play Wheel of Fortune and the opponent shuffles his Graveyard/Hand into his Library and drew 7 cards (he thought it was a Timetwister) ... and got a gameloss for it.

So the Wheel of Fortune won 2 games for me :mrgreen:

by **Bog Wraith** » 11 Jan 2010, 15:15

Cool guys thanks for the response and confirming my suspicion. I was pretty sure I was right in what I said that in the modern rules, I would have lost before being able to continue.
Still, under the older rules that ManaLink still uses, it was a heck of a game.

As for Tinker, yes I forgot that it is restricted. I still would swap 1 of them in though!

Cool story about Wheel of Fortune, very interesting reading. These are the kinds of things, discussing deck ideas and relating things that happened in games we've played in that make MTG such a great game. For those & other reasons, IMHO, the greatest game ever invented!