Improved Shandalar General Playtesting & Feedback Thread
Posted: 23 Sep 2015, 12:20
Maybe there is allready a thread like this, maybe not, but I'm in the process of making a nice and abnormally patiently thought out overhaul of the enemy decks (and all the world mechanics I can possibly mooch off Korath). I've got a whole life experience of playing magic, all possible formats, casual, professional, constructed, limited, cube, I organized tournaments, delved into actual development, and all that kinda stopped a few years ago with Forge and Shandalar bringing me back periodically. I'm making a mod for myself and my family, and a bunch of buddies, but I'd like it if I managed to make it have a broad appeal, and I've got some reason to believe I have the necessary experience for making a great mod. And well, the expansion that Korath pulled through created a whole new metagame (and will continue evolving it as he adds more stuff), one well worth discussing at lenght
So, basically, what this is about is if anonye would like to share their Wizard / Arzakon wins, exploits, stuff that always bugged them about Shandalar, and most importantly - impressions about how difficult / tricky was it to put togather a deck they were going for. I've read a bunch of stuff from columnists about Shandalar over the years, but it's not really all that spot on (even the more involved guys tend to confuse the order in which critters scale and completely miss the point occasionally) - I'm interested to hear from other folks who obviously still play it after all this time. I've seen many knowledgeable comments allready, but this pre-alpha thing ought to turn into a serious beta test
Also, I do lack experience with some of the relatively recent blocks, and some stuff that might fit in well with my ideas could've just gone right past me. For example I was sad about Mental Note not being in, simply because I missed the memo on Thought Scour. (I was pleasantly surprised at how the AI still uses it to acquire Threshold by targeting itself in "mind control" matches, v nice tbh).
Thieves Hideout 2, a quick 2 day full playthrough:
Anyway, I've been testing some white decks I've made for the low end white critters (Cleric, Priestess, Crusader), they seem to be doing their thing and in the process I completed a full wizard (highest difficulty) game. Got all the mana links on the map, got a deck togather and kicked the wizards and Arzakon.
I didn't use any of the current enemy deck overhauls apart from one bundled with Thieves Hideout - I'm sure folks can put togather powerful decks for the AI, but I was looking to remind myself about the (semi) original decks, their limitations and how the new stuff behaves in an environment similar to the original one. Slapping staples in there is not what I have in mind for where I'm taking it and even the adjusted merfolk deck wasn't much to my liking (I find the idea of playing with the deck injector strange, once you have the deck you were looking for you just round up the wizards, no point playing that way IMO, and overly powerful decks force you into cheeze). Some of the applied changes from the whoshisface collumnist fellow (I kinda remembered his articles as stuff popped up) were quite nice, others were problematic.
Anyway, it was very refreshing to not have any restricted T1 stuff in the deck for a change, and in that sense I'm overjoyed with the update. The deck was:
Notes on the deck & playthrough:
- It's a 40 card deck, but it's also a Moxless, Power 9 less deck. A variant of the Legacy Threshold, and making it a 60 card deck would require stuff that's unavailable, as there's no real reason to add anything to it.
- Blue Stuff is threshold Enablers, so are the Fetch Lands and Armageddon is instant threshold. Aeolipile adds an artifact in the graveyard for Tarmogoyf, Serum Visions is a Sorcery and Thought Scour is an Instant.
- I didn't intend to go for this deck, it sort of built itself. It went from a GW thing to the 3 color thing in a convoluted way which mostly involved me picking up stuff that would make Tarmogoyfs useful. As broken as they are, you gotta work to make them work in Shandalar, which was in fact awesome. Since most of the cards are absent from AI decks (apart from dual lands and StP) I hand picked them as they came to mind. Finally having Aeolipile in the pool is AMAZING, that thing would've been a well loved and well remembered Shandalar staple had they just not skipped adding Fallen Empires to the pool originally (was a mistake IMO).
Now, there's an OLD BUG that reared it's ugly head in full glory again, and I've informed Korath about it via a ticket, but it's probably quite a bit of work and would mess saved games up, but is well worth fixing for several reasons:
- As I informed Korath (possibly, maybe he knew) Critters will start offering you tribute / running away even if you've beatein them just onece. As Korath informed me it works like this under the hood:
What happens if it's not fixed is the following:
- Critters get wrong values applied to them in regards to how many times you beat them. This has most often happened in my games with Fungus Lords (but happens with others, too).
- The affected critters will start running away from you as if you've beaten them 3 times, even if you didn't, and even start offering tribute as if you've beaten them 5 times. (It can be a bit of trouble catching them occasionally.)
- All this is actually terrible because you can then mooch jewels, money, info and, most importantly, dual lands, swords to plowshares and whatever else they have in their decks.
- What's even more silly is that dungeon wins count as regular wins (not sure if they decrease wizard life total anymore, and not sure if the overlap is applied but I believe it is). Since dungeons have a large ammount of identical critters you can either clean it all out with lifegain cheeze (there's oodles of it in the pool right now), or in case life loss didn't carry over simply have a large number of similar critters you can be well prepared for, line them up and get them to tribute status (plus all the "incidental" overlapping tribute status on other critters potentially). And then just walk around with everyone giving you tribute, easily collecting mana links, powers, lairs and dungeons.
- Whether the bigger problem is that it's exploitable or that it's buggers up the game even if you don't try to exploit it is a question, and I whish I were a programmer capable enough of fixing it. Been bugging me for ages ever since I was a kid simply chasing those damned Fungus Lords and not understanind what the hell was wrong with them. Oh, and this particular time, just walking from one castle to another got me 4 Bayous because I ran into 4 Centaur Shamans.
IDEA:
If some work was put into fixing that bug up there, possibly in a way which managed to prevent in-dungeon monster kills for counting as global kills, and if it were possible to have monsters pick decks other than their default ones it would be possible to have:
- Dungeons with different permanent stuff (Growing enchantments from Urza Block which the monster could fire off and get a powerful effect once per match, or simmilar enchantments from Zendikar Block, am allready making a list)
- Dungeons with different dungeon-specific dice effects (so a dungeon with a certain flavor could give you adventuring gear or flavoruful allies depending on which dungeon you were in instead of the highly exploity way it works now)
- Monsters using dungeon appropriate decks - so that you could have R/W clerics and Priestessess in appropriately flavored dungeons where you couldn't beat them up and take stuff from their decks and the enemy deck pool would be much more varied and more new cards could be used without breaking the orinal feel of the overworld.
^ That there's the dream. Well, my dream at least.
If it's not fixed, a serious attempt at a fun & challenging AI deck composition has to take into account that it's way too easy to accidentally turn monsters into very concreete card dispensers. This would also turn any power cards you give to lower-end guys (easier to beat ones with not much life) practically guaranteed on every playthrough steering people towards particular cards and strats. Oh, and also ones you give to higher end guys overlaping with them. I'm not sure if it's possible to get a critter you've literally never met before to hand over tribute without fighting you even once, but it may as well be.
---
Anway that's enough textwalling, I got very nice Priest, Paladin and Crusader decks so far which are still work in progress but I'll be happy to share them in the decks overhaul (except they've been designed to fit into a larger whole) and I'm working on the higher up white decks for the next run.
What have your experiences been like so far?
So, basically, what this is about is if anonye would like to share their Wizard / Arzakon wins, exploits, stuff that always bugged them about Shandalar, and most importantly - impressions about how difficult / tricky was it to put togather a deck they were going for. I've read a bunch of stuff from columnists about Shandalar over the years, but it's not really all that spot on (even the more involved guys tend to confuse the order in which critters scale and completely miss the point occasionally) - I'm interested to hear from other folks who obviously still play it after all this time. I've seen many knowledgeable comments allready, but this pre-alpha thing ought to turn into a serious beta test
Also, I do lack experience with some of the relatively recent blocks, and some stuff that might fit in well with my ideas could've just gone right past me. For example I was sad about Mental Note not being in, simply because I missed the memo on Thought Scour. (I was pleasantly surprised at how the AI still uses it to acquire Threshold by targeting itself in "mind control" matches, v nice tbh).
Thieves Hideout 2, a quick 2 day full playthrough:
Anyway, I've been testing some white decks I've made for the low end white critters (Cleric, Priestess, Crusader), they seem to be doing their thing and in the process I completed a full wizard (highest difficulty) game. Got all the mana links on the map, got a deck togather and kicked the wizards and Arzakon.
I didn't use any of the current enemy deck overhauls apart from one bundled with Thieves Hideout - I'm sure folks can put togather powerful decks for the AI, but I was looking to remind myself about the (semi) original decks, their limitations and how the new stuff behaves in an environment similar to the original one. Slapping staples in there is not what I have in mind for where I'm taking it and even the adjusted merfolk deck wasn't much to my liking (I find the idea of playing with the deck injector strange, once you have the deck you were looking for you just round up the wizards, no point playing that way IMO, and overly powerful decks force you into cheeze). Some of the applied changes from the whoshisface collumnist fellow (I kinda remembered his articles as stuff popped up) were quite nice, others were problematic.
Anyway, it was very refreshing to not have any restricted T1 stuff in the deck for a change, and in that sense I'm overjoyed with the update. The deck was:
- DECK | Open
Notes on the deck & playthrough:
- It's a 40 card deck, but it's also a Moxless, Power 9 less deck. A variant of the Legacy Threshold, and making it a 60 card deck would require stuff that's unavailable, as there's no real reason to add anything to it.
- Blue Stuff is threshold Enablers, so are the Fetch Lands and Armageddon is instant threshold. Aeolipile adds an artifact in the graveyard for Tarmogoyf, Serum Visions is a Sorcery and Thought Scour is an Instant.
- I didn't intend to go for this deck, it sort of built itself. It went from a GW thing to the 3 color thing in a convoluted way which mostly involved me picking up stuff that would make Tarmogoyfs useful. As broken as they are, you gotta work to make them work in Shandalar, which was in fact awesome. Since most of the cards are absent from AI decks (apart from dual lands and StP) I hand picked them as they came to mind. Finally having Aeolipile in the pool is AMAZING, that thing would've been a well loved and well remembered Shandalar staple had they just not skipped adding Fallen Empires to the pool originally (was a mistake IMO).
- Aswan Jaguar and Might of Oaks | Open
- LIFEGAIN | Open
- DUNGEONS | Open
Now, there's an OLD BUG that reared it's ugly head in full glory again, and I've informed Korath about it via a ticket, but it's probably quite a bit of work and would mess saved games up, but is well worth fixing for several reasons:
- As I informed Korath (possibly, maybe he knew) Critters will start offering you tribute / running away even if you've beatein them just onece. As Korath informed me it works like this under the hood:
- BUG | Open
What happens if it's not fixed is the following:
- Critters get wrong values applied to them in regards to how many times you beat them. This has most often happened in my games with Fungus Lords (but happens with others, too).
- The affected critters will start running away from you as if you've beaten them 3 times, even if you didn't, and even start offering tribute as if you've beaten them 5 times. (It can be a bit of trouble catching them occasionally.)
- All this is actually terrible because you can then mooch jewels, money, info and, most importantly, dual lands, swords to plowshares and whatever else they have in their decks.
- What's even more silly is that dungeon wins count as regular wins (not sure if they decrease wizard life total anymore, and not sure if the overlap is applied but I believe it is). Since dungeons have a large ammount of identical critters you can either clean it all out with lifegain cheeze (there's oodles of it in the pool right now), or in case life loss didn't carry over simply have a large number of similar critters you can be well prepared for, line them up and get them to tribute status (plus all the "incidental" overlapping tribute status on other critters potentially). And then just walk around with everyone giving you tribute, easily collecting mana links, powers, lairs and dungeons.
- Whether the bigger problem is that it's exploitable or that it's buggers up the game even if you don't try to exploit it is a question, and I whish I were a programmer capable enough of fixing it. Been bugging me for ages ever since I was a kid simply chasing those damned Fungus Lords and not understanind what the hell was wrong with them. Oh, and this particular time, just walking from one castle to another got me 4 Bayous because I ran into 4 Centaur Shamans.
IDEA:
If some work was put into fixing that bug up there, possibly in a way which managed to prevent in-dungeon monster kills for counting as global kills, and if it were possible to have monsters pick decks other than their default ones it would be possible to have:
- Dungeons with different permanent stuff (Growing enchantments from Urza Block which the monster could fire off and get a powerful effect once per match, or simmilar enchantments from Zendikar Block, am allready making a list)
- Dungeons with different dungeon-specific dice effects (so a dungeon with a certain flavor could give you adventuring gear or flavoruful allies depending on which dungeon you were in instead of the highly exploity way it works now)
- Monsters using dungeon appropriate decks - so that you could have R/W clerics and Priestessess in appropriately flavored dungeons where you couldn't beat them up and take stuff from their decks and the enemy deck pool would be much more varied and more new cards could be used without breaking the orinal feel of the overworld.
^ That there's the dream. Well, my dream at least.
If it's not fixed, a serious attempt at a fun & challenging AI deck composition has to take into account that it's way too easy to accidentally turn monsters into very concreete card dispensers. This would also turn any power cards you give to lower-end guys (easier to beat ones with not much life) practically guaranteed on every playthrough steering people towards particular cards and strats. Oh, and also ones you give to higher end guys overlaping with them. I'm not sure if it's possible to get a critter you've literally never met before to hand over tribute without fighting you even once, but it may as well be.
---
Anway that's enough textwalling, I got very nice Priest, Paladin and Crusader decks so far which are still work in progress but I'll be happy to share them in the decks overhaul (except they've been designed to fit into a larger whole) and I'm working on the higher up white decks for the next run.
What have your experiences been like so far?