Shandalar enemy decks overhaul

[gmzombie]

ok so i believe we need to seriously change uber villains deck as it is super easy to kill him with a U/W controlish style deck with 2 archangel of thune out..surprisingly easy really. killed him till he was -5 in maybe 15 turns. turns out though none of my wizard videos or end video worked.

[jiansonz]

ok so i believe we need to seriously change uber villains deck as it is super easy to kill him with a U/W controlish style deck with 2 archangel of thune out..surprisingly easy really. killed him till he was -5 in maybe 15 turns. turns out though none of my wizard videos or end video worked.

What difficulty was this on?

I suppose one way would be to give the final boss something to wipe creatures off the board with (Wrath of God, Nevinyrral's Disk, Jokulhaups).

On my first campaign, on Sorcerer difficulty (boss has 300 life), my aim was to win with Felidar Sovereign. I had two in the deck but it took a long time to draw one (I had tutoring stuff for enchantments and lands but not for creatures). Ended up damaging him enough just before I would have won via the cat beast.

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

ok so i believe we need to seriously change uber villains deck as it is super easy to kill him with a U/W controlish style deck with 2 archangel of thune out..surprisingly easy really. killed him till he was -5 in maybe 15 turns. turns out though none of my wizard videos or end video worked.

What difficulty was this on?

I suppose one way would be to give the final boss something to wipe creatures off the board with (Wrath of God, Nevinyrral's Disk, Jokulhaups).

On my first campaign, on Sorcerer difficulty (boss has 300 life), my aim was to win with Felidar Sovereign. I had two in the deck but it took a long time to draw one (I had tutoring stuff for enchantments and lands but not for creatures). Ended up damaging him enough just before I would have won via the cat beast.

In my current Arzakon deck, I've added some wipe (Damnation, Wrath of God, Balance) for that reason. I'm just not sure whether the AI is smart enough to use the tutors to get them, when needed. But.. yeah... maybe the deck should be even more control-oriented (e.g. add Day of Judgment, Nevinyrral's Disk; remove all creatures from the deck; add counterspells; add Moat), and less theme-oriented

[stassy]

Would be funny to add the EDH version of boring angel deck from Challenge 1 with all the irritating cards, it fit Arzakon theme which is to survive until player die of boredomness

[gmzombie]

Yea I guess I forgot I was on level 2. But there is still a lot of nuthin in that deck. the game is actually hard with some of the normal creatures but I think I'm going to adjust the wizards to a more tribal theme. I hope we will see some planeswalkers as I think I have a good ideas for the future wizards.

How are you guys editing those dck files anyways as i know they dont load up in deckbuilder due to having the extra .vsblue .vblack and so on. is there something that can be done to load those files up?

[stassy]

Open them with Notepad/Notepad++, and you can modify them as long is you don't add any invisible character/line which completely disable it ingame (at the end of the file there should be one empty line, dunno why but if you remove it the deck is disabled).

For the sideboard, you can delete all of them and let one empty line left, it work for me and others so far.

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

As already pointed out by stassy, it is far from trivial to make a simple Shandalar deckpack where there is some level of internal consistency (e.g. dueling a Witch should be of comparable difficulty to dueling a Druid and it should be easier than dueling a Warlock, etc.). This problem only becomes worse if Korath ends up implementing his (very awesome, I should say) idea of assigning a pool of decks to each character and, at each encounter, choosing one of them at random (see tracker.php?p=5&t=576).

As such, I think it would be a good idea if the people making Shandalar decks could agree on a common set of rules (more like guidelines, actually) for deckbuilding, to ensure that the player experience is preserved. As a first proposal, I'm submitting an Excel file contaning not only general deckbuilding guidelines, but also all the information provided in this thread by jiansonz (regarding each character) in a more convenient format (I mostly compiled it only because it's useful to have a quick way of knowing which .dck file corresponds to which character, without having to open all the .dck files).

Obviously, the set of guidelines should be decided by the community as a whole, so, please, do point out what is wrong and should be changed, so we can reach a consensus and start working on the Shandalar 2015 Ruined Tower Mega-DeckPack (:P) for reals...

(Note: again, these guidelines are not supposed to be a strict set of rules... just a method of ensuring that each deck does not deviate too much from the norm, and that there is some level of internal consistency)

EDIT: I'm not 100% sure about the information on the "Main color" column. If you find mistakes, do point them out, so I can fix them...

[jiansonz]

Nice work! I can't see anything I don't agree on.

The Sylvan Library in play for the green wizard is the castle advantage on wizard difficulty. You can see them all here.

Not sure what you mean with 'Ramp' theme for the green wizard. Originally, it is a deck that produces a ton of mana, with a few big creatures and Killer Bees for the damage. In my and Abe's ovehaul, it keeps some of that but is more control oriented.

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

Nice work! I can't see anything I don't agree on.

The Sylvan Library in play for the green wizard is the castle advantage on wizard difficulty. You can see them all here.

Not sure what you mean with 'Ramp' theme for the green wizard. Originally, it is a deck that produces a ton of mana, with a few big creatures and Killer Bees for the damage. In my and Abe's ovehaul, it keeps some of that but is more control oriented.

Thanks for the feedback. I have corrected that point regarding Sylvan Library and added a note reminding people that, in castles, there is another difficulty-dependent advantage for both Wizards and other characters (with a link to your list). I'll wait to see if people find more mistakes before uploading a new version of this file.

Regarding the "Ramp" thing... though the Green Wizard's deck is not a prototypical Ramp deck, it follows the same logic: early on, try to accelerate your mana production (through stuff like Llanowar Elves, Birds of Paradise and Untamed Wilds) and then use that to dump big scary green monsters onto the battlefield. I guess the use of stuff like Aspect of Wolf, Killer Bees and Living Lands is not standard, but makes sense in a Ramp deck (if you have many forests in play/lots of mana, these cards can be useful). I guess the Enchantress mini-theme is more weird and difficult to fit the "Ramp" strategy, but... well.. I guess the overall feel of the deck is mostly Ramp-like.

Another important point (that stassy already pointed out, if I recall correctly) is that the weakling characters should probably have more Aggro-oriented decks that try to inflict as much damage as possible in the quickest possible way (since, let's face it... when you're dueling someone who starts with 4 to 10 lives, there won't be much of a "late game"), while the "bigger" characters are in a much better position to pilot Midrange, Control or (simple) Combo decks (since they can survive more than a handful of turns). So.. yeah, a Ramp deck is something that makes sense for the Green Wizard, but wouldn't be good for (for example) the Druid.

(and, yeah.. in general, it's often not easy to sum up some of the crazy Shandalar decks into a 5-word description I did my best...)

I'll leave this here, as it is a decent reference for the different MTG deck archetypes, in case it's helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_Th ... deck_types

[Bog Wraith]

quatrocentos-e-vinte, your Excel file is an ESSENTIAL part of doing what is necessarily a first step in redoing all the creature decks in Shandalar. I agree that there should be guidelines in going about this and I think we all should study the info you put together here and then come to a consensus of what to do and then make sure that all future decks stick to the agreed upon conditions.

This is a great start and I hope that everyone who is interested in the development of new decks for the game takes the time to read your list carefully and submit any additions, changes or suggestions for things that they might think needs to be addressed here.

Thanks for launching this most important topic and for doing the work in getting this organized in an easy to access & understand presentation!

[Korath]

Another important point (that stassy already pointed out, if I recall correctly) is that the weakling characters should probably have more Aggro-oriented decks that try to inflict as much damage as possible in the quickest possible way (since, let's face it... when you're dueling someone who starts with 4 to 10 lives, there won't be much of a "late game"), while the "bigger" characters are in a much better position to pilot Midrange, Control or (simple) Combo decks (since they can survive more than a handful of turns).

These are also the same enemies that are most likely to be encountered at the start of the game, when the player only has ten life too; so some restraint's in order.

[stassy]

There is also a case that need to be addressed, not sure what are the requirement to make it happen but...sometimes a "weak" enemy summon a more powerful one, and early ingame, swapping its deck with the later (I had a Witch summon a Necromancer, and I didn't even hit a dungeon yet), so early it's a lost game already. Do we have somewhere the list of those?

[jiansonz]

There is also a case that need to be addressed, not sure what are the requirement to make it happen but...sometimes a "weak" enemy summon a more powerful one, and early ingame, swapping its deck with the later (I had a Witch summon a Necromancer, and I didn't even hit a dungeon yet), so early it's a lost game already. Do we have somewhere the list of those?

Some of them are in quatro's spreadsheet, the ones I've mentioned in this thread. I did not know that the Witch can summon a Necromancer(!), I've only seen her bring in Undead Knight or Warlock.

The other ones I've seen and can remember are Enchantress -> Summoner and Seer -> Conjurer.

[quatrocentos-e-vinte]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've included all the fixes pointed out.

Also, I've added a new column regarding "associated tribes/creature types". For the associations that are not obvious and/or subjective, I've marked them with a question mark. This is not really a "rule", but more like a way of brainstorming good tribes that would fit the theme of the character, helping people to make flavorful decks (for people that like to make tribal decks). Some of the characters are really difficult to associate to specific tribes/creature types

Anyway, any comments regarding both the objective and subjective parts of this file (particularly the subjective parts) are more than welcome

[jiansonz]

I associate Beast Master mostly with wolves. OK, green animals as a whole but mostly wolves. Timber Wolves in the original, both in the deck and as starting advantage and potential reward in the next duel, and Wyluli Wolf was added in the overhaul. Also, look at his animated avatar in-game.
Master of the Hunt and Master of the Wild Hunt would fit, but they aren't in the game this far.
Another idea is to splash a little white for Tundra Wolves, Isamaru, Watchwolf and Tolsimir Wolfblood.
I am fine with beasts as well - there weren't many (any?) green ones in the original game.

Witch - Agreed. Skeletons, zombies, rats, maybe also bats and ravens?

Undead Knight - Knights, zombie/skeleton, 'unholy war'. If we had the black Paladin cards, they'd belong here too.

Necromancer - zombies, spirits, wraiths

Summoner - yeah, maybe spirits, but also green/nature Forces and Elementals.

Azaar - vampires, demons, liches

Astral Visionary - something large and aquatic. And mind tricks.

Sainted One - Angels, Avatars, Knights and 'holy' artifacts