Challenges

[Latti]

Welcome,

first of all - I really appreciate all work you did with this pretty much dead game. I don't think I deserve anything more, I don't think you have to do something. And I fully understand I get hundreds of cards for free, with just few locked.
Unfortunately, some of those few cards are essential to certain decks or even archetypes. In order to unlock them one have to beat certain challenges. I won't lie - it just annoyes me. Not having card available because it was difficult to code or just because nobody did it is, at least for me, much different then seeing it's done and having to do some very difficult and rather unfair challenges to use it.
Because those challenges, in my eyes, are unfair. Anyone who played Magic tournament know how difficult it is to go 5-0, even in local tournament. And it is extremely difficult to win every game 2-0 in this run. Of course, you're playing against better decks and players, but in challenges AI receives free cards or other advantages to compensate it's worse skill and decks. So, it's more about luck - of course, skill and deck is extremely important, but I've see too many tier 1 Vintage decks beaten by elves, random aggro or Block Constructed decks to say luck isn't important. Sometimes, you just have mana screw or opponent starts with god hand. During tournament, you will win 2-1, during Challenges you just have to start over.

I don't argue if it's possible - it just takes lots of time. You clearly have lots of time available, considering amount of work you put into this project. I don't - and as I said before, it just annoyes me to see card already in game and not being able to play it. All I want is to play few quick hands, not spend many hours during challenges or set-up VM winXP to cheat through it.

I don't want to sound bitter - you have every right to provide this mod in any form you desire. I read why you did it this way - and while I disagree, I certainly can understand you. Maybe I just got spoiled by Civ4 modding community, where mods were pretty much open - with end users able to modify most parts of it and authors providing help about modifying more complicated parts of it.

If you were selling it, I wouldn't buy it. As you're not, I just delete it. I don't think you should care about it, as I'm just one user, and I hope other users like it better. Good luck and keep working on it - because it's a truly wonderful mod !

[Gargaroz]

Indeed, some Challenges are VERY hard to beat.
But I suggest you to try different ways and exploit the "broken" cards that the Constructed version offer : one little example is Oath of Druids + the Eldrazis.

[Salbei]

Most of the Challenges are a lot easier now since there are so many very strong decks available.

You can beat a lot of Challenges with following Decks (depends on the restrictions) without many re-tries:
customized Oath of Druids
customized Tinker -> Platinum Angel
standard Vintage Dredge
standard Vintage TPS

Don´t forget cards like Ali from Cairo that basicly work like Platinum Angel as it is implemented now - most Challenges you just have to get either Ali or Angel into play and can´t loose.

[Cognis]

Or Show and Tell for Emrakul, the Eons Torn on turn 1 or 2 and that's that.

[frankzappa]

Hehe yeah...

I used to play MTGO and it's totally cut throat on that So I'm used to this kind of thing. There are so many insane combos now in modern MTG. I don't actually like it... but you can use it to help you win against these challenges. I just started against the challenges today too, and my fun decks weren't reliable enough, so I just made one of my angry nasty decks. I made a list of these decks when I got annoyed at people playing obnoxious decks in MTGO, and I still have the decklists. I can cut and paste full deck lists if you like, but here are some general ideas off the top of my head.

1) Kiki-Jiki + Pestermite combo deck. Basically you hold your ground until you can do the combo. You get the pestermite out, then copy it with the Kiki and use the copied pestermite to untap the kiki and then repeat over and over.. you can technically make unlimited pestermites and then attack the same turn and win. Have a big bunch of counters to protect your combo.

2) Makeshift Mannequin / Dread Return type deck. Not sure if the Mannequin is in the game yet, but I've seen at least one equivalent. Basically you want 4 (or several) of any card which brings out a creature from your graveyard. Then you just make a strong deck which holds it's ground, and you have a few big game winning creatures in there. I used Emrakul, Kozilek, and Iona. Not sure if they need unlocking, but you get the idea. Basically you just keep your hand at 7 and discard them to your graveyard, or ideally you use cards like "Bonded Fetch" or "ghastly discovery" to discard your huge creatures. Then use the mannequin or dread return card to pop them straight in to play. One turn of those attacking and it's game over. The trick with the two Eldrazi is that they pop out of your GY and back to your library so you have to use the mannequin not dread return because you need it to be an instant. But if you can't do that, use cards like Iona as she will wait in the graveyard for you to dread return her. (You don't even need white mana).

3) Mass LD - this was a deck I made because I wanted to reap revenge on obnoxious land destruction decks. The deck is white / green / blue, and you mana accelerate like crazy. Use a full set of birds of paradise, sakura tribe elders and whatever else you fancy. Seeing as money is no object in this game now, you can probably use black lotus or whatever is legal. Anyway, accelerate like crazy and defend, use 4 path to exile/condemn to defend, and use 4 acidic slimes in your deck to slow down your opponents land progress and to defend while you accelerate. Have a full set of Momentary Blink to bounce the slimes and kill even more lands, and remember you can play momentary blink from the graveyard too Then soon enough, play a Woodfall Primus and kill yet another one of their lands. Then next turn, use Rite of Replication (with kicker) on it, killing seven! of their permanents and giving you an unstoppable army too.

4) Evil deck: I made this one again because I thought some of the cards in modern MTG are just too powerful and evil, and I was tired of complaining about them and nobody caring. So I just made a super obnoxious deck to kind of prove a point. It wins about 95% of the time because its just so powerful and cruel. Basically, it's black and blue, fill your entire deck with nothing but counters and removal. 4 Diabolic Edict, 4 Gatekeeper of Malakir, 3 damnation, 3 disfigure, 4 Counterspell, 2 negate, 2 whatever else, 2 Cryptic Commands, etc... Then the finisher "Haunting Echoes". You can also use a few Extirpate too. Basically you just stand your ground the entire game. Either counter whatever they play, or kill it after they have played it. It's slow and repetitive (although satisfying in an evil b***ard kind of way). Eventually, their graveyard is bursting at the seams with most of their cards. Then you just use Haunting Echoes and they are utterly screwed. It empties their graveyard and removes all other cards in their library that are the same - which if you wait long enough, is basically their entire library. You can also make a version of this which uses mill cards to speed the process up, but I prefer to not deviate from the masses of removal/counters just to make absolutely sure nothing ever reaches you. This is the one I'm using to fight the Gauntlet challenges and it looks like it will work. I just played about 8 games in a row and won them all, but then the game crashed

5) Polymorph - this is pretty boneheaded but it works. Basically you just need to get a few token creatures out that aren't actual creature cards. So use something like "growth spasm", "nest invader", and/or "Khalni Garden". (Not sure if any of those are in the game yet?). Then you just play polymorph and you have a creature like Emrakul as the only creature in your whole deck. You can sometimes do this as early as turn 3 or 4. You play polymorph, it kills the token, and brings out Emrakul.. Game over.

Anyway, good luck.

[aww1979]

We don't have Makeshift Mannequin or Polymorph yet, but you could make those other decks. I think only #4 would stand a chance in most of the challenges, though. The polymorph idea might work, too, but without the polymorph card coded... :p Even so, I think Oath of Druids works better, especially in challenges where often the AI starts with a creature anyway.

[frankzappa]

Ahh cool. And yeah you are right about the decks. Polymorph is powerful but it's not actually that reliable, or it wasn't for me anyway. I could win maybe 80-85% of games, and many of them by about turn 5, but it wasn't super reliable because it only takes a doom blade or lightning bolt or something to kill the token that you are trying to polymorph. Or if you are up against a nasty tribal deck like Vampires or something, they tend to be able to rush you to death by turn 5 too, and most poly decks are so focused on getting to polymorph quickly, that they don't have much in the way of defence.

Number 3 was pretty reliable actually because once you have an acidic slime out, you have a major upper hand. I used to use 4 momentary blinks, but also 4 "Otherworldly Journey" (not sure if that is in this game yet). It's very powerful because you can wait for them to attack, and then block their creature with the slime, and then bounce the slime with a momentary blink or Journey. That way their attacker does no damage, your slime survives, and you kill yet another one of their lands. Then you start playing the momentary blink from the graveyard too and it makes it even nastier. Before you know it, you get the woodfall primus out and you can do the same with that, but even nastier, and then the kicked Rite of Replication wins the game. The only thing you had to be careful of with that deck, was very fast tribal which could play its cards even after you killed most of their lands. So for those decks it relied on you getting your blockers. Luckily green has some amazing blockers. My favourite was one called "Carven Caryatid" and with the white I could have "Wall of Reverence" which really helps against red burn decks.

I did Number 4 though because it just never seems to lose. It's a boring concept though, but at least it works.

But yeah, really my point is that generally there are some amazing cards and combos out there these days. I found some of this stuff by looking at tournament winning decks. Tournaments are so competitive now, they have to use insanely powerful decks to stand a chance. So if you don't mind using someone elses ideas instead of your own homebrewed ideas, then it could really work to get you through these challenges.

p.s. I forgot to mention that in deck 4, I have one "Eldrazi Conscription". Often that will win the game for my by itself. I just put it on a Gatekeeper of Malakir and it wins within a couple of turns.

[frankzappa]

Lol the "Chaos Orb" challenge is nasty.

My evil black deck didn't work too well for that one because it's a 'sit back and disrupt' deck, so the chaos orb just kept messing up my lands. I think a token deck would be nice for it so the orb will probably end up affecting useless tokens.

[Cognis]

Storm decks were usually played for the Chaos Orb. I played Shandalar 2.0 with a deck that exploits Show and Tell for Emrakul, Platinum Angel, Moat and Worship and got to the final round, lol, that deck won't work against that, I thought about a Tendrils deck but that won't work in the round with Titania's Song, nasty.

[frankzappa]

Haha nice. I gotta say its fun as hell making decks to beat these challenges, and it doesn't cost me any money! I just made an amazing white deck with 4 Elspeth planeswalker, 3 Sun Titan, 4 Honor of The Pure, and then a bunch of kithkin which all end up pumped by the honor and the planeswalker. It's doing great so far

I agree with the OP that it might be nice for people to skip these challenges if they want to, or maybe get an easier mode or something, but personally, this is the most fun I've ever had with my pants on.

Kudos to the people who worked on this game, it's so great.

[frankzappa]

Is there an easy to way to know which cards are legal for the challenges or not? I keep making decks and then trying them and they aren't suitable and I'm not sure which card is causing it to not be legal.

[Cognis]

Either Vintage or Legacy, usually you'll want vintage because of moxes and the rest of power 9, Oath of Druids and the like.

[frankzappa]

Do I have to look the cards up individually to check? Or is there a way to check them in the deck editor?

[Cognis]

Google the banned and restricted lists or just vintage and legacy and you'll get the list, I don't know the exact link, I think you even have the link in the wiki.

[frankzappa]

Ahh ok, thanks!