Shandalar Strategies

[jasonbrown669]

I ussusally try to start with Red or White. White becomes WW, then adds Sera angel and wrath of god. Every Red deck I build ends up a big pile of Kird Apes and Lightning bolts. Ball lightning rules in a world where many enimes have 10 or less life.

I only recently learned about the Tempest Efreet cheat... and have been going nuts. So this trip through I decided to prove to myself why there had to be a restricted list.

I started mono red. I like Kird ape, lightning bolt, Ironclaw Orc, ball lightning and then Tempest efreet. After abusing Tempest Efreet I built this deck I call Timelord

Timelord:
4 Tropical Island
4 Volcanic Island
1 Bazzar of Bagdad
1 Black Lotus
4 Mox Saphire
3 Mox Ruby
3 Mox Emerald
4 Time walk
4 Time Twister
4 Ancestral Recall
3 Regrowth
3 Lightning Bolts
2 Tempest Efreets

Yeah, basicly it's like masterbating. Because I'm just playing by myself. I go into timewalk recursion and the other play just gets to watch. Many games end with the opponent having 0-1 lands in play, because they got 0-1 turns before I went off. After I Tempest Efreet a Black Lotus, I figure I'll user more Black Lotus and remove the Tempest Efreets.

This is why they had to have a restricted list.

[jiansonz]

I set up a 'goal deck' before I start - usually one I really like playing and that I have constructed and played in Duels/Gauntlets.

I randomize starting colour (for the fun, and challenge), and also difficulty (between Magician, Sorceror or Wizard). Since the different difficulties have different castle advantage cards, I think this leads to better variety, and sometimes a need to create a second deck for certain castles. (e.g. it´s damn tough to play heavy-creature blue with a Magnetic Mountain in play...)

Starting off, I try to narrow down my starting deck to three colours before I even think about dueling (if possible). I do this by visiting lairs, and buying and selling cards. As you know, Wizard level can play some cruel jokes, like giving you five black cards and no swamps...
Usually I go down to a two-colour deck if I can. Often a simple deck with lots of creatures, lands and cheap spells that are useful on their own.

As soon as I have reasonable deck (it´s still crappy, but it may be able to compete with the minor foes), I begin exploring the map, and looking for lairs, plus quests in villages. Village quests reward you with mana links and/or amulets - city quests only give cards. Mana links and white amulets are what I want the most.

As has been said earlier, the Sword of Resistance world magic is almost essential, so I look hard for that one and buy it ASAP.

Sleight of Hand is my second-favourite world magic. I even go so far as to not put any of the restricted cards in a deck before I have another copy of that card, or Sleight of Hand.

I ask for dungeon clues only when my 'goal deck' needs a card in that dungeon. Those are usually the only dungeons I visit, and I leave them when I have found the card I am after.

In order to gain more white amulets, I try to fight many Paladins and Tusk Guardians. If I can establish a massive win-loss ratio over these guys, they fear me in duels, so they will start trying to buy me off, often with white amulets.

When I get more and more cards for my goal deck, one of two things happen. Either, I keep going with my generic creature deck (of course improving it as I go) and build up the goal deck in another slot. Or I slowly "morph" the user deck into the goal deck by switching out card after card as I find them. This all depends on how a "half-hearted" version of the goal deck is going to work. Some of them need to be complete to even work at all, so it´s the first option in that case.

When I have (or is getting close to) my goal deck, I will keep buying/acquiring extra copies of these cards, so I can replace cards I lose in the ante.

Only when I get close to completing the goal deck will I start doing city quests. I also try to keep a large sum of money on me, in case I find a Nomad´s Bazaar.


I usually don´t care about what happens in the Arzakon fight, but if I do, I will build a special green-red-white deck in slot 3, for use only in that fight. It has heavy defense/removal (CoP Red, Wall of Swords, Giant Spider, some red blast spells for creature removal, Ali from Cairo, etc), and wins by poisoning Arz with unblockable (Tawnos´Wand or Dwarven Warriors) Marsh Vipers.


I do not reload if I lose a duel.

As soon as I have a useable deck with 60 cards, I generally stay with 60 cards in the deck, with a maximum of 4 for all cards that aren´t basic lands, and a maximum of 1 for restricted cards (I have my own list for them - it´s very similar to most such lists).

[Enchanteur]

All my decks end to get :
5 or 6 Contract from Below, the worst broken card.
And some ivory tower because dungeon keep life total.
I always build near 150 LP in first duel, it prevent bad luck for the next duels..

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

I've found the best deck to simply "win" a match, once you have the Tome of Knowledge, is a monoblack Contract From Below/ Dark Ritual/ Nether Shadow/ Black Lotus deck. Shandalar basically proves that Contract From Below was the most broken 1 casting cost card printed in Alpha, and Nether Shadow is the most broken 2CC creature ever printed (although technically you almost never "cast" it). This is like the most consistent T1 kill deck possible...

The deck I use to "steal" cards is primarily Green/ Blue, using Natural Selection + Rebirth to set up snagging Lotuses/ Ancestral Recalls/ Time Walks, etc... with one big endless turn with Timetwister, Regrowth, Lotus/ Moxes/ Mana Vaults/ Hurkyl's Recalls, etc... White is kind of useful for Swords to Plowshares, removing their creatures from their deck to increase Natural Selection's accuracy. The deck also features Veduran Enchantresses since she is my all time favorite Alpha card, backed with Black Ward, Deathlace and Life Force... although I can't often get Deathlace to work the way it should work.

[discoransom]

I play by the 'rules' and build legal decks. I start with R/G and get a fast aggro strategy going which kills all the easy decks fast. Combat tricks and Mishra's Factories to go with little creatures. I morph into a Ball Lightning/ChannelBall deck asap (splashing black for contract) to acquire pieces for Serra/Stasis.

Wizard mode is insanely hard if you play fair and follow restricted rules. I consider Bronze Tablet etc to be fair in this mode, but not two Demonic Tutors.

[RanDomino]

Hmmm... it'd be fun to construct a lockdown deck that would give you a way to steal all his cards while living long enough to do it. Any takers with shadalar cards only? Oh, and as few unique cards as possible. After all, if you already have alot of restricted cards... why are you stealing cards in the first place?

Sometimes you want a playset of power 9 for each deck

[flounder]

(Note: For the sake of not being overly abusive, this deck follows the Vintage Format Deck Construction rules. I do, however, follow the 40 card rule rather than the 60. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resour ... sfrvintage)

I'll explain the mechanics of the deck and what parts you can customize later in the post, but let's get the basics down first. Here's the deck, with cards listed in relative order of importance:

4 Black Vise
2 Winter Orb
4 Howling Mine
3 Island Sanctuary
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Timetwister
1 Regrowth
3 Icy Manipulator
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
3 Bayou
3 Savannah
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Dark Ritual
2 Llanowar Elves

41 Total

Sideboard

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Disenchant
2 Ivory Tower

Optional

1 Black Lotus
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Instill Energy


This is a late game deck, since it requires most of the restricted cards. It's fun if you're looking to make the comp suffer. The Winter Orb shuts down his mana flow, so often he'll be at 7 or more cards. The Black Vise takes care of the rest. To avoid being affected by the Orb yourself, you need to rely on non-land mana sources, hence the cards like Sol Ring and Birds of Paradise. You can use others as you see fit. The ones I use are just an example.

The deck's main weakness is its lack of creatures for offense and defence. This is solved by using the Island Sanctuary against his regular creatures and Icy Manipulator against whatever flying creatures he's able to cast. The sooner you can get out a Howling Mine and Island Sanctuary the better. Once these are going, you can relax and cast everything else and it comes.

Demonic Tutor helps get whatever card you need at the time. Usually I use it to get an early Howling Mine. I use Timetwister to speed things up, and Regrowth to get Timetwister back in my hand. This has the added benefit of allowing this tiny deck to slog it out for as long as it takes to kill off whoever I am fighting, even Arzakon.

The Icy Manipulator is used to tap his Serra Angel / Sengir Vampire / Shivan Dragon during his upkeep, or his sole remaining untapped land. Other fun things to do with the Icy is to tap his Mana Vault before he even gets to use it, tapping his Erg Raiders so he takes damage from them, or tapping cards with an untap casting cost (like Colossus of Sardia). Icy's are all around just plain fun.

Certain castles have annoying enchantments or creatures in play at the start of the match. Add Lightning Bolt or Disenchant cards before entering if that's the case.

Note that I didn't invent the concept of a prison deck. It's been around for a long time. This is just my way of implementing it in Shandalar.

[flounder]

Something seems to be broken when it comes to how Pestilence interacts with Fungusaur. Since Fungusaur gets a permanent +1/+1 after each damage resolution phase (rather than, say, at the end of your turn) you can essentially pump Fungusaur - permanently - by damaging it with Pestilence over and over again during the course of your or your opponent's turn. And if you have two out, it's double the pump for the same cost. Coupled with the fact that you are killing all of his creatures simultaneously...

Other cards are essentially filler, or quick cards to get out before you get enough mana to run your Fungusaur pump. Whirling Dervish ignores the Pestilence damage, and Erg Raiders, while normally I hate using them, are the only early black creatures that can survive the occasional Pestilence use that you need to do to kill off the little annoying 1/1 or 2/2 creatures your opponent will cast. Stream of Life is there in case the game goes on longer than you expected, or for those life carry over dungeon crawls.

4 Pestilence
4 Fungusaur
4 Whirling Dervish
4 Erg Raiders
4 Giant Growth
2 Stream of Life
4 Dark Ritual
5 Swamp
5 Forest
4 Bayou

40 Total


So far the main weakness is having to deal with an early 1/1 creature that gets Unholy Strength or Giant Strength, or both, very early. I should consider adding some Terror cards, but I'm still experimenting.

You could also pump this with restricted cards, but the idea with this deck is to see how powerful we can make it prior to dungeon crawling.

[240sxforever]

While not the best deck possible, a fun deck list to play around with is:

35 plague rats
4 dark ritual
22 swamp

You can put in some draw if you like, and a 50 gold each the rats are not hard to buy at a bazaar.

It is almost like playing with modern cards (relentless rats at least) in Shandalar.

[profse]

I found this to be one of the best decks to take on the final boss:

4 Blue Mox
4 Sol Ring
4 Black Lotus
4 Library of Alexandria
4 Island

4 Mahamoti Djinn
4 Timewalk
4 Timetwister
4 Ancestral Recall
4 Ivory Tower

You can go infinite quite early with a 40 card deck more consistently with a 60 card deck, unless it's 2x Fireball, 28 Timetwisters and 20 Black Lotus or something else completely degenerate which also takes a lot of time to build. This deck can go infinite turn 1, sometimes it takes a few turns to go off because of RNG.

Basically, it takes at least 20 turns to beat the boss with 400 life, but he rarely takes more than a turn or 2. The Ivory Towers are in there in case he drops a turn 1 Black Vise or some enchantment that pings you, plus at 1 mana they quickly get onto the table so the recursion of Timetwisters will more easily result in just Timewalks and Ancestral Recalls. Eventually you also want to stop sacrificing the Black Lotuses so you don't Timetwister them back. The Library of Alexandrias are excellent for digging deeper before all permanents are on the table. With 8 lands, you can get a free mulligan, assuming you are playing with the original all land/no land mulligan rule. This deck is also easy to build, since killing the Blue Wizard should be the last wizard you kill so plenty of "duplicate a card" mobs are left.

Anyone who is worried about the Black Wizard's Dungeon having mobs that start with a Hypnotic Specter in play, just start with 4 Lightning Bolts and 4 Immolates, and even 4 Swords to Plowshares if you are really paranoid. Plenty of Red DD for creatures is always nice, Control Magic for swamp walkers and of course the Disc for the over-extending computer.

Against Power Struggle Dungeons I always start with 4 Red Elemental Blasts and 4 Disenchants.

The Red Wizard's Dungeon is where I stack Blue Elemental Blasts, Disenchants and COP:Reds. You want to stop Mana Flares and Gauntlet of Mights, and those mobs will usually kill themselves to Mana Vault damage.

Everyone knows to stack Ivory Towers in Dungeons that carry over life loss.

40 Card decks, while not quite as fun as some of the 60 card decks of pure brokeness, are more mathematically effective at warding off RNG screw.

Also Lightning Bolts and Immolates are great early on. Kird Apes are super sweet and nothing beats Contract from Below, which makes splashing black a great idea for a long time.

[HornofAmmon]

Wow, I hardly ever play Magic outside of Shandalar, so I've never thought of any of these recursion/one-turn kill combos before. My rather proletariat way of fighting Arzakon usually involves some big air units, Spirit Link, and some spells to mess up his lands (Demonic Hordes, Cyclopean Tomb) and maybe a unit to bounce his spawns like Witch Hunter. I usually play by Vintage rules or entirely don't use any of the restricted/overpowered cards, so most of these combos wouldn't apply.

For dungeons, I use Life Chisel for getting lots of health, by getting the enemy down to a hopeless lock and then eating all of my creatures, usually including inflatables so I can really get some health. With only 1 Ivory Tower as I would play it, I doubt I could get enough that way.

I will try out the Time Twister craziness the next time I get a chance, though, it looks fun

[HornofAmmon]

I'm playing the game over on Sorceror for the first time, and I'm finding that the castle magics are so much better than on Wizard. The Red Castle has Power Surge instead of Mana Flare, which makes it quite a challenge since red is generally better at exhausting mana pool and since the creatures often start with a Fire Drake or Brothers of Fire that they can tweak. Plus the Hydras, probably the hardest opponent in the game in general, really get harder with a Power Surge to start with. Venduran Enchantress in the Green Castle also plays much better than Sylvan Library, since they're not constantly killing themselves for cards. I've yet to see what the other castles have, should be harder though since the Wizard starters can't get much worse for the AI.

[podbelski]

Here is my last Shandalar deck, always wanted to use the "Winter Orb" somehow, and finally made it. I'm not a fan of plain, straightforward decks, I like it to be tricky but powerful.

It's not the most powerful deck I've ever made, it's just looks like the last one I will ever create in Shandalar, cause I simply can't see any other combos I haven't tried yet

Here we go:

4 Island
6 Forest
4 Tropical Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Time Elemental
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Prodigal Sorcerer
1 Old Man of the Sea
1 Power Leak
1 Control Magic
1 Unsummon
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Singing Tree
2 Ley Druid
1 Giant Badger
2 Cockatrice
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Wild Growth
2 Instill Energy
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
3 Winter Orb
1 Tawnos's Weaponry
1 Sol Ring
1 Ivory Tower
1 Icy Manipulator
2 Black Vise

[jiansonz]

I'm playing the game over on Sorceror for the first time, and I'm finding that the castle magics are so much better than on Wizard. The Red Castle has Power Surge instead of Mana Flare, which makes it quite a challenge since red is generally better at exhausting mana pool and since the creatures often start with a Fire Drake or Brothers of Fire that they can tweak. Plus the Hydras, probably the hardest opponent in the game in general, really get harder with a Power Surge to start with. Venduran Enchantress in the Green Castle also plays much better than Sylvan Library, since they're not constantly killing themselves for cards. I've yet to see what the other castles have, should be harder though since the Wizard starters can't get much worse for the AI.

Agreed, Sorcerer difficulty does in fact have more useful castle advantages in general. I am sure you have seen the other three by now, but here they are:
White: Castle
Blue: Flood
Black: Rod of Ruin


And here are the castle advantages for Magician difficulty:
White: Karma
Green: Birds of Paradise
Red: Magnetic Mountain
Blue: Energy Flux
Black: Gloom

So, in four of the cases, it mainly steers your deck away from some builds. Birds of Paradise is a great advantage for the green critters, especially those that have birds/elves in them, which can really start off fast.

[jasonbrown669]

I updated Mono Blue Timetwister (TIMELORD)

8 Island
4 Strip Mine
4 Mox Saphire
4 Black Lotus
4 Braingeyser
4 Timewalk
4 Timetwister
4 Ancestral Recall
4 Black Vise

The opponent doesn't get many turns and I go into Timewalk/timetwister mode. I can stip mine their few lands if I have to give them a turn. Then I go crazy until I pass the turn over when I have all 4 Vises out and he has many cards in hand. For awhile I used Sol Ring and Mahamoti Djinn. The blackvise is stupid fast and you can toss it out early on those few early turns where your opponent might still be taking turns. Really I started using blackvise because I was looking for a substitute for Underworld Dreams... which would be sick in this deck, if it was in the card pool. I might switch out Strip Mine for Library of Alexandria or Sol Ring (Sol Ring + Braingeyser)