Improved Shandalar General Playtesting & Feedback Thread

[jiansonz]

Also, what do you mean by Manalink AI being competent with the vault?

That it at least will sometimes pay to untap it...

Anyone know where I could find the original decklists?

They are all in my overhaul thread. Enemies are listed in alphabetic order from post 3 and onwards.

The first Shandalar expansion, Spells of the Ancients, had decks which were remade, using some of the added cards. Here is a download link to a complete Decks folder with that setup.

[lujo]

Oh, god, you can't imagine how much you helped me out.

Just look at this:

This is the OG Vampire Lord deck, a deck simply notorious for being ramp-into-5cc:

OG Shandalar w annotation of intention no matter how janky | Open

22 Swamp - suspiciously little land, standard for the day and age
4 Sengir Vampire - What you ramp out ofc

4 Carrion Ants - Mana sink for all your ramps. Abe concludes it's not the best thing in the world and I agree. Go Abe!
4 Vampire Bats - Mana sink
3 Mana Vault - ramp
4 Dark Ritual - ramp

2 Terror - Abe's ok with it, he upps the count.

4 Weakness - Abe's sceptical, he cuts them all out. Abe's a noob, because this sort of cheap removal is sorely missing as it deals with utility dorks and shuts down evasive stuff, and most importantly, BLACK stuff, for cheap. And it serves another purpose - it increases the value of the cards below:

4 Sorceress Queen - Abe's confused. What doesn't cross his mind: This is what you block the ground with while you ping with bats and the vampire. Another deck would have a wall of bone, but this also sinergizes (in a naive and old timey way) with Sengir Vampire because it will ensure he kills stuff that blocks him (or just makes gang blocking him difficult). Also, it obviously makes stuff unwilling to block Sengir Vampire, doh.

2 Uncle Istvan - Abe's confused. ACTUAL POINT: Blocks up the ground quite well. You have air superiority.

3 Howling Mine - Abe's VERY confused. Concludes it's there for flavor, like other cards he's confused about. ACTUAL POINT: What's to be confused about? The only on-color alternative for card draw is Greed. Almost 30 cards in the deck are mana sources, it needs to draw stuff.

4 Animate Dead - Abe's happy with it. Abe's a noob, because Abe's rework looks like this:


22 Swamp - same, ok.
4 Sengir Vampire - same, ok

4 Will-o’-the-Wisp - Abe added 4. The problem with that is that the deck has no way to pump it and it's way less annoying that way. And he cut the Sorceress Queen -.-'

4 Vampire Bats - same, well, ok I guess.
2 Uncle Istvan - same, ok.

2 Howl from Beyond - Err, he added it for flavor reasons, since he concluded Howling Mine was there for flavor reasons. It's ok I suppose, he did cut Carrion Ants.
3 Drain Life - Abe added it, but cut the rather handy weakness. But he bloody cut the Sorceress Queen, and that's the whole point of adding Drain Life to this deck
4 Animate Dead - This isn't the point of the deck, and if you've cut sorceress queen and weakness, less stuff is likely to die (especially vs. black), and Carrion Ants make a fine target to animate from your own grave while Will of the Whisp doesn't really (it can keep blocking, wow). He also cut the queen, which is also an animate dead target. So since the AI spams Terror on the first thing that hits the board (or gets killed), the current AI just puts this ting on a random 2cc dork it Terrored or it's own Will of the Whisp. Yes, it's a fine card in general, but Abe's got a bit of "OH I know this card it's legendary, so it makes sense on it's own" thing going.
4 Dark Ritual - Abe kept it, makes sense.
4 Terror - Abe upped the count at the expense of weakness. Well, he did add Drain Life, but the AI unfortunately doesn't cast Drain Life, and casts this asap when it has it so it most often accomplishes exactly the same thing as Weakness would, but for 2 mana and doesn't work on black and artifacts.
4 Mana Vault - Abe upped the count
3 Howling Mine - Abe kept it unsure of what it's there for. Good thing, too, because he further upped the count of stuff that's sort of a dead draw.

On the other hand the SotA list is not only more interesting but it helps make sense of the OG deck:

SotA Vampire Lord | Open

.239 22 Swamp - covered
.55 4 Dark Ritual - covered
.157 4 Mana Vault - covered
.68 4 Drain Life - Here it is, too, but Terror was cut, and now there's even more removal and it all works vs. anything, with this being the pricey one, and weakness below being the quick one.
.3 4 Animate Dead - This is kept around, but pay attention to the rest of the list.
.280 4 Weakness - Sensible. Pay attention to below.
.220 4 Sengir Vampire - covered. But what's that below?
.172 4 Nettling Imp - AHAH! So this thing was missing and probably in the works, like Kird Ape was for the Ape lord. Why? As janky as it sounds, it's supposed to make stuff attack into Sengir Vampire, or just make stuff with Weakness on it attack AND... also
.460 4 Sorceress Queen - Is supposed to make anything food when it attacks because of Nettling Imp making it attack. Also: See 4 X Drain Life? Kill anything for 4 mana if this thing is in, which in Abe's Version it isn't. This is the MAIN card of the deck Or rather, this is what the deck is looking to exploit through all the other cards when it doesn't just ramp out a Sengir Vampire.
.435 2 Khabal Ghoul - This is here to profit from stuff dieing all the time.
.286 2 Will-o-Wisp - I suppose it's to stall up better.
.835 2 Vampire Bats - Are Vampire bats, obv.
.589 2 Carrion Ants - mana sink, Animate Dead target.

And back to the Animate Dead - it's there because the key stuff is Sorceress Queen and Nettling imp which can get killed and the user is supposed to easily bring them back - or pick up anything that can get killed, and anything can get killed. Sorceress + Drain Life or Nettling Imp really can kill anything. It's supposed to be a control deck which happens to have the whole ramp package in there because "lol t2 vampires" and because it's a 3 card combo thing, you need the vampire, the sorceress and the nettling imp on board to make things happen. Right now it's pretty much only a "lol t2 vampire" deck.

Abe's version doesn't work very well (outside of mad ramp) because it's a bit of a pile and the OG theme must've been to junky to spot. And it also doesn't work because Drain Life doesn't seem to work in TH2 and Mana Vault is supposed to go out. Whether the SotA deck would work is questionable because it's kinda slow, and even slower if I take out the Mana Vaults. However, if I were to tweak it with the TH2 Pool, just temporarily before I sort black out properly, keeping it as intact as possible, I'd go something like:

Light Tweak Vampire Lord | Open

Provided the AI can handle Nettling Imp, ofc.

.239 24 Swamp
.55 4 Dark Ritual
.3 2 Animate Dead
.220 4 Sengir Vampire
.460 4 Sorceress Queen
.172 4 Nettling Imp
.10703 3 Vampire Nighthawk
.3456 4 Wall of Souls
.10544 4 Giant Scorpion
.1185 3 Vicious Hunger
.11923 4 Dead Weight

Vampire Nighthawk, Giant Scorpion and Wall of Souls should work with Nettling Imp. If it works Wall of Souls + Nettling Imp should be VERY annoying. Sengir Vampire and Nettling imp is janky and all that, but I'm trying to keep close to the original idea here.

Four of those 3 kill anything they meet if Sorceress Queen is on board. Sorceress Queen + Vicious Hunger or Dead Weight also kill anything that isn't buffed, and both of those are on-flavor and kill stuff early, while the deck is setting up it's 3cc heavy plan.

The curve isn't the best in the world, but there are Dark Rituals and all that. Depending on how the AI uses Nettling Imp and the Queen it should work better than it does currently.

It can be powered up with more deadly removal, or reworked into a less janky deck, the numbers on the control creatures might be off and produce too many weak hands, but I kept it janky as I can't actually test it easily (and because I stuck Wall of Souls and Nettling imp in there which if it works is bound to be frustrating as hell).

But at least it doesn't just ramp sengir, get sengir killed/bounced, spam a few terrors and die to self ping or randomly win with Howl from Beyond. A good idea might be to cut a Wall of Souls, a Scorpion and a Sengir vampire for either Sign in Blood, Charcoal Diamond, or an early Flying threat (Vampire Interloper looked like something to replace Vampire Bats with, but he can't block which is anti-sinergy with Nettling imp.

It's also probably not overwhelming. People might use it as a source of Vampire Nighthawks, but since I haven't sorted black properly it was the only deathtouch thing I could find that was on flavor.

Anywho I also found mana vault at Sea Drake, so I did this with it:

Sea Dragon Slight Tweaks | Open

.126 26 Island
.427 2 Island Fish Jasconius
.218 4 Sea Serpent
.10675 4 Spreading Seas
.782 4 Segovian Leviathan
.48 4 Counterspell
.191 4 Power Sink
.14087 4 Coral Barrier
.3376 4 Hammerhead Shark
.2613 4 Sky Diamond

Essentially I didn't like the Azure Drake. My next-door neighbour got a bunch from chronicles IRL so I played casual vs. them a bunch, and they are evasive Giant Spiders. Looks like it's just there as defensive filler, works too well, deck becomes "that deck with Azure Drakes that you can only get over if you draw bombs". They make a ton of sense to put into a janky deck to help it out, don't get me wrong, but you can put them in any deck and they'll help it out.

I took out the Turtles because they're the 2cc cousin of the Azure Drake (need something to stall up the place, pick turtle, every deck in Shandalar seems to have them). Put in Coral Barrier, for some sneaky offensive pingange Put in Hammehead Sharks, seemed like the perfect deck for them, and while they're probably not any good, they can even sorta get offensive early on.

Put in Spreading Seas instead of Phantasmal Terrain. It's a serious improvement to compensate for losing the Drakes and the Turtle for less defensive (and evasive) chumps. Kept the junky top of the curve stuff, 5/5 for six isn't even bad and the leviathan is unblockable.

Put Sky Diamonds in place of Mana Vault, but I also kept the ludicrous land count which might be too much. I think the deck could lose some combination of lands and diamonds for either some bounce or some pump (or some 1cc card draw). It's probably not stronger than it was, but it won't ping itself, it draws cards for it's islandwalk, it has cool looking flavory cards and has some early stuff going on and nothing the AI should arse up with. And the Fish can always get replaced by any of the much stronger Krakens, there's a load in the pool. Should be good after some tweaks.

I'll spare poor Abe a lecture on how the OG Siren's Call was meant to be used to make the other guys dudes attack into your islandhome stuff (until you draw the phantasmal terrain), hoW Creature Bond was supposed to make that even more proffitable and how Jump was meant to let you, well, jump the Serra Angel when it tries to fly over your dudes. Most of it WAS pretty junky (or unfeasible for the AI), but that's no excuse for moving cards out of a deck just because you don't know what they're for. My rework could use a bit of anti-flying combat tech in lieu of Jump, possibly, tbh, to combine with the Hammerheads and stuff if the AI could pull it off.

But the biggest lol:

SotA Archangel doesn't even HAVE Mana Vault in it! The OG had 2, but, to quote Abe directly: "This deck wants to drop Mana Vault on the first turn and Serra Angel on the second but it doesn’t have enough Mana Vaults." Ofc, it does, what deck doesn't?

Guess which default TH2 deck is most likely to have it's 5cc thing bounced/killed on the spot and keep sadly pinging itself to death?

Right, well, the SotA deck isn't too inspired, either, and the whole Hive + Angelic Voices thing was a good idea on Abe's Part, and it's quite possible to actually tweak that with some stuff that doesn't eat mana like mad, but I'm too tired and I'd be able to do this sort of thing a lot better if I finally sorted the damned pool out. The decks up there were just wild stabs, not what I'd consider proper work done. So I'll do like today, divide my Shandalar time between tweaking decks to just not have mana vaults / problematic stuff in it (Vampire Lord is worrying me I could really go make it less fiddly) and sorting the pool.

Sorry for rambling and hating on Abe and thanks A LOT for all the helpful help! (Also, I just checked your huge list of overhauled stuff and big props for spoting various bits of Abe's, well, Abeness Seriously, that fellow made 3 blunders for every good move on average, and his semi-sensible improvements were rather ham-fisted more often than not.)

[lujo]

Ok, after some tweaking here's the two from yesterday and some new ones. I only had the chance to test them in manalink, so there's no telling how the Shandalar AI treats them, and I'm still a bit unhappy with some choices but It's something I can report on as oposed to the endless pool sorting:

Vampire Lord | Open

.239 24 Swamp
.55 4 Dark Ritual
.1185 3 Vicious Hunger
.3 2 Animate Dead
.11923 4 Dead Weight
.220 4 Sengir Vampire
.3456 4 Wall of Souls
.460 4 Sorceress Queen
.172 4 Nettling Imp
.10703 3 Vampire Nighthawk
.10544 4 Giant Scorpion

It's still unchanged, because the AI turned out to be strangely competent with the cards. It does need a bit of tweaking for some card draw, which is why the OG variant had Howling Mines, but I think I'll stick Sign in Blood, as the deck doesn't really do enough on the early turns. In fact, I could possibly take out all the Giant Scorpions out for something more offensive.

The Manalink AI handles Nettling imp well, but is way less ok with Sorceress Queen. It will use the queen to kill something with Dead Weight on, but it's way too prone to use her on it's turn and often for no reason (and often before the attack so you don't actually attack and then get reduced). I'm afraid to report it and waste Koraths time if Shandalar AI handles it better.

A big AI problem is that it tends to fire off Vicious Hunger on anything it can, including it's own scorpion. Again, I'm not sure what happens in Shandalar, but I'd love it if Korath could do something about AI being overeager with it's removal in general.

Sea Dragon - Changed | Open

.126 25 Island
.427 2 Island Fish Jasconius
.218 4 Sea Serpent
.10675 4 Spreading Seas
.782 4 Segovian Leviathan
.48 3 Counterspell
.191 3 Power Sink
.14087 4 Coral Barrier
.3376 3 Hammerhead Shark
.2613 3 Sky Diamond
.13543 3 Sea God's Revenge
.184 2 Phantasmal Terrain

I trimmed some counterspells and a land as well as a Hamerhead Shark and a Sky Diamond, and put in 2 Phantasmal Terrains and 3 Sea God's Revenge.

The problem was that without the Siren's Call and the Jump plan the Deck was in serious trouble if it couldn't draw it's Spreading Seas. It not only couldn't win, it couldn't really do anything. I wasn't going to put Sirens Call back in because I'm suspicious of the AI about firing it off as soon as it draws it, so I went this way instead.

I'm not sure cutting the Shark over the Reef was a good move, now I think I should've cut a Serpent instead of either. To be perfectly honest, the Island Fish are too top heavy, and I'd love if the deck topped out with 4 Serpents and 4 Sea Gods Revenge, and developed it's board with 4 Sharks and 4 Coral Reefs. Heck, I'd even ditch either of the counterspells for something to pump the early dudes with, probably some sort of equipment.

Arch Angel | Open

.188 23 Plains
.1331 4 Nuisance Engine
.564 4 Angelic Voices
.1657 1 Voice of Duty
.1658 1 Voice of Grace
.1659 1 Voice of Law
.1660 1 Voice of Reason
.1661 1 Voice of Truth
.221 4 Serra Angel
.12458 3 Scroll of Avacyn
.2537 3 Marble Diamond
.8663 4 Serra Avenger
.203 2 Resurrection
.954 4 Angelic Page
.10527 4 Day of Judgment

Abes version had Vaults + Serra and Angelic Voices + Hive, but all versions had Wrath of God. I had to ditch the Vaults, so I thought about it and decided to try a slow roll like this one:

Various Voices can be kept like one-offs or they can be worked into a sideboard option, so a bunch of each get sideboarded in. With Marble Diamonds they can get ramped out on turn 3.

Angelic Page* - the AI probably can't play it but it's kinda there because all variants had some cheap fliers and this one lets the AI get a bunch of life with Scroll of Avacyn. And a I wanted that in to get some life and pseudo-cycling while the deck stalls for Day of Judgment into Serra Angels and Serra Avengers. Ressurection is to recurr it's own angels after it goes Day of Judgment on you.


I kept the Hive + Angelic Voices plan with Nuisance Engine. It's significantly less powerful because the pests are not evasive, but it's also much, much cheaper for the AI to make tokens which also get pumped by Angelic Voices for post-wrath shennanigans. Not sure if only 4 day of judgment are enough, but it seems to be doing ok in Manalink vs the other decks.

*And Angelic Page could maybe do some work with the Pests if the Voices are on board, if the AI could use it, ofc.

Should be quite a bit weaker than the current Archangel, simply because of no Vaults and no Swords to Plowshares, and Day of Judgment not hitting regenerators. On the flipside - it's a deck with 8 Serra Angels, and 2 Resurections, and if the Voices are it's sideboard plan there's probably room for some spot removal, too.

War Mage | Open

.164 23 Mountain
.145 4 Lightning Bolt
.84 4 Fireball
.75 4 Earthquake
.229 2 Smoke
.295 4 Ball Lightning
.65 4 Disintegrate
.155 4 Mana Flare
.396 2 Aladdin's Ring
.1746 3 Arc Lightning
.11198 3 Arc Trail
.318 3 Fellwar Stone

I kinda just wanted Vaults out of it, but then I stopped to think about it a tiny bit. It's a ghastly opponent to play against in Shandalar before you seriously beef your life, but on the other hand it's a very antique design and actually clunky.

I put Fellwar Stones back in, the deck needs some sort of mana stone and I tried Fire Diamond but decided that maybe Fellwar would be better because it comes into play untapped. The only thing that could go wrong is if it gets played turn 2 and turn three no land is drawn and the enemy isn't red so the deck can't play ball lightning on turn 3.

However, I went and tried it out a bit, and what I re-discovered is how eager the deck is to throw away it's RX burn on whatever is on the board (same problem with Vicious Hunger and removal in general, AI's mad about it). So I sifted through Red a bit (would be quite easier if I had it all sorted out), and tried with Arc spells which let the AI madly kill whatever it's trying to madly kill, but also get some damage in. Huge improvement over madly killing stuff with X spells, especially because having these kill early stuff left the AI with more opportunity to throw fireballs at my head.

This kind of red deck, one with just burn and no cheap beats, doesn't really sit all that well with the AI, at least in Mana Link. And I'm not entirely sure anyone wants to actually play against a fully functional burn deck in Shandalar. But if this guy ever needs improvement hes probably best off with 4 Arc Trail, 4 Arc Lightning, 4 Pyrotechnics and 4... I forget the name, I think there's an Arc "shock" variant + whatever else because of what I just said about the AI.

Shapeshifter - oh, god, long and ranty | Open

.126 24 Island
.525 1 Shapeshifter
.510 1 Mishra's Workshop
.263 4 Vesuvan Doppelganger
.47 1 Copy Artifact
.538 1 Triskelion
.531 1 Tawnos's Coffin
.1351 1 Tinker
.13902 3 Gold-Forged Sentinel
.11331 4 Palladium Myr
.11545 4 Treasure Mage
.12551 4 Chronomaton
.1606 3 Levitation
.1344 4 Snap
.3731 4 Copper Gnomes

I've lost hours with this deck. It's buggy as all hell, and when you take away everything that's buggy what's left is terrible, and there's just 0 way to make it work (or so it seems to me because I haven't sorted blue out fully and it's a tall order in any case).

I went through at least 10 possible reworks, but ones the AI could play were bad, and ones which weren't bad the AI couldn't play.

I took out Mana Vaults. But if your deck is going to play 6 cc artifacts in blue and actually cast them, it just won't work without Mana Vault, or Sol Ring, or Mana Crypt (Sota) or... Eh. I took Mishra's Factories out, too. They're also kinda bugged, make the AI play slower (or faster) and are one more cheat that made it's way into too many decks just so they'd do anything and I'm curious what the game looks like without them in every other deck.

Right, so I replaced 2 Clones (crash) with Vesuvan Doppleganger, and took out Drafna's Restoration (crash) and replaced Transmute Artifact with Tinker (because Transmute Arifact seems to get cast as if it were Tinker anyway).

Then I took out the clockwork stuff (bugged to death) and Urza's Avenger (also unbelievably bugged, at least in Mana Link, the AI just can't handle that thing). I also took Tetravus out because the AI just keeps it a 4/4 flier all the time anyway. So I added a bunch of Gold-Forged Sentinel because it's just a 4/4 flier for 6 and that's impossible to mess up for the AI and isn't bugged.

I pondered and pondered and pondered how in the hell to make the deck with so many expensive artifacts and no mana Vaults to actually work, and settled on Palladium Myrs and the blue small myrs initially. The problem then was, that the deck was way too slow and just had a ton of overpriced stuff in it - Vesuvan Dopplegangers had nothing interesting to copy a lot of the time and there were 3 Shapeshifters and 4 Primal Clays in the deck which are bad, and 4 1/1 myrs and 3 2/2 myrs, and only one tutor and nothing for the deck to really do early on.

So then I rearranged stuff and ended up with what you see up there - there's chronomaton to play on turn 1, there's Snap to flash other guy's stuff back, there's Treasure Mage to tutor the big things into your hand. There's Copper Gnomes to, then, cheat it into play. If the damned AI would ever try to cast Copper Gnomes (maybe it does in Shandalar) that's an actual curve:

T1: Chronomaton
T2: Gnomes
T3: Treasure Mage
T4: Sac gnomes for 6cc artifact into play.

And in wild dreams the AI can even cast Snap on something in the middle of that and not mess the curve up.

Otherwise there's kind of the Palladium Myr t3 into 6cc art turn 4 if it makes 4 land drops and has something in it's hand. And there's the occasional Tinker off a Chronomaton.

And if everything else fails there's always Levitation so all the little junky buggers can just attack, bless them.

Oh, and I took out 2 Shapeshifter and 4 Primal Clay because, well, frankly, they're terrible. I tied the deck with them in, but the deck had too many expensive and unimpactful stuff in it already and there was just no room.

This is all ham-fisted. The original deck was ambitious, the Abe deck was ambitious (although I like it as far as his decks go), the Sota deck was not so ambitious but had bugged cards in it too. And 4 copies of Mana Crypt (restricted) which were supposed to be sacrificed to the Sage of Lat Nam but I'm not sure if the AI can be trusted with that.

I'll try to rework it again tomorrow into something better.

EDIT: LOL, I went and checked out Abe's article and it illuminated me about the Shapeshifter. I think I know where I went wrong, because it's also where HE went wrong and I followed thim

| Open

The original Shapeshifter was much, much more a Power Struggle deck than anything, and I was trying to consolidate a deck that got pulled in 4 different directions (original flavor demands, building a power struggle deck to make up for the fact that the flavor was somewhat unworkable by the original developers, abe's "hur dur gotta put clone and vesuvan doppleganger in it" blundering, and my own trying to make it all work with no mana vauts). Gonna be a lot easier tommorrow.

[jiansonz]

@lujo: I really like to read you deck posts. I also like that you make more low-key changes (for example with the War Mage and Sea Dragon) than most of what's been done in the overhaul thread.

War Mage is the only deck I currently play with unchanged (compared to my original overhaul, that is). It was always one of the strongest decks in the game and I am not too thrilled about the only other suggestion (an Elfball deck with very little red left) that's been presented. I like your version so much that I'm going to incorporate most of it (yes, Mana Vaults usually did more harm than good - the deck has no life gain to counter the self-pinging), those arc spells are great and complements Earthquake to make it hard for a weenie flyer opponent as well). But I am still going to keep at least one Pyrotechnics and one Orcish Catapult. The Catapult mostly for 'teh lulz' but it does make sense in an almost creatureless deck.

Have you seen guinsoo's Shapeshifter deck? (scroll down to blue enemies)
The AI doen't play it as well as a human would but I still had some very interesting battles against it in my last playthrough.

[lujo]

I'm very relieved you like them, in particular the philosophy. I put in effort/research to get into the OG makers heads, decode the decks, and not deviate too much for the original power level / intentions, but I wasn't ready to stick them in the overhaul thread before I was sure they worked better. It's because I know I'm not able to use the full extent of my abilities as I haven't got the pool fully sorted out. This is stopgap measures, because I'd really like to have a way to test stuff without Mana Vault (and also Mishra's Factory) everywehere for pool sorting and meta development.

The vamp and the archangel do play better, as Abe's reworks tend to reduce decks to a fraction of their potential gameplan. I also didn't post the decks because before I did that I'd have to adjust them for sideboarding, and, yeah, the War Mage would certainly keep the catapult from the sideboard (I liked that and experimented with Puncture Bolt after being inspired by it), and pyrotechnics is another Arc spell, which makes it probably the most AI friendly type of burn.

I was also a bit afraid to make him more functional on account how he's pretty much the poster boy for "format with less than 20 has conceptual issues", and I've avoided him like the plague in-game since I was a child XD. Very interested in how it plays out with the Arc spells.

---

Right, so for the newest installment of CIS: Shandalar This time the crime scene was trampled by everyone who ever went to take a look at it and it took major forensics XD

Right, so I took a look at Guinsoo's Shapeshifter and I have to say that I also noted most of the cards that he did, but both him and me fell into the same trap - we tried to make Abe's deck work. Which it can't because Abe missed the point of the OG deck and didn't take it in the direction SotA take it but tried to make it a Tinker deck and even he admitted that he had no idea how it was going to work out. So I did what I should've done right away and took a look at the source:

OG Shapeshifter Revelations | Open

Everyone who's tried to Tinker up this thing was wrong and too clever for their own good. And they were working form the Duel of the Planeswalkers which looks like this:

20 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory

1 Mishra’s Workshop - Ramp, but for what?
3 Apprentice Wizard - Ramp, but for what?
3 Mana Vault - Ramp, but for what?
2 Fellwar Stone - Ramp, but for what?

3 Shapeshifter - It's a terrible card the deck is stuck with because of the theme. It can be ramped out on turn 3 with the Workshop, or turn 4 with the Apprentice Wizard (if the AI even uses the Wizard)
4 Primal Clay - Also terrible, somewhat less so if ramped out on turn 2.
3 Urza’s Avenger - Also terrible, and the deck goes out of it's way to try to make it less terrible, but in a rather clumsy way.

2 Power Struggle - THIS, in fact, is what the deck is actually about and why it's so artifact heavy. This was quite a revelation for me, but it makes perfect sense, once you get past the point of "Noone in their right mind would go make a Power Struggle deck, right?". WRONG. They did and it's this deck.

See, unmodified blue dungeons start with Power Struggle, and this deck is actually built to accomodate for that and to be able to play through a power struggle in play. (So is, in fact, to a degree, the original Sea Dragon - power struggle helps it stall and makes sure islands get swapped around.)

The way this deck works is that you power out your, obviously bad, creatures (including the Wizard Apprentice), they get swapped by power struggle, whereupon you cast:

4 Unsummon - Bounce your terrible critter back into your hand from the other side of the board, keep their probably much better critter.
4 Hurkyl’s Recall - Bounce all the artifacts Power Struggle gave to the opponent back into your hand, while keeping their stuff.

(NOTE: Hurkly's Recall would also be for Mana Vault shennanigans which the AI can't do well.)

And then you can play your stuff because it's all artifacts so you don't care which lands Power Struggle gave you. This, however, almost never works because the AI is and always has been ABSOLUTELY GODAWFUL at playing instants and always throws them out at first opportunity. The Forge AI (which has it's own million issues) is actually adjusted on a per-enemy basis so individual decks can actually do this sort of thing, they know what to save their stuff for somewhat, but in Shandalar anything involving timing instants is rather unworkable except when it happens by accident. It also puts major constraints on deckbuilding, like, extra huge ones.

2 Backfire - Abe took this out, but this is actually a rather efficient blue Pacifism, especially in a sub-20 format.
4 Unstable Mutation - This is here because your creatures are godawful and it's the only way to make them stronger (or get anywhere with Urza's Avenger), and you have a lot of bounce to get the creature back once it gets lost to Power Struggle or starts decaying. It's clunky to say the least, but that's what's meant to happen.

1 Ivory Tower - It's somewhat sinergistic with power struggle in theory because your hand can get clogged and the games can drag on (and there's 4 hurkyl's recall so you can end up with a bunch of stuff in your hand).

So it's a somewhat lousy Power Struggle deck that the AI being the AI can't play! The OG variant (if indeed it is the OG and the one above was Duels, could be other was around), is also a Power Struggle deck, except with Triskelions:

.126 20 Island
.508 4 Mishra's Factory

.157 3 Mana Vault - Ramp
.318 2 Fellwar Stone - Ramp
.300 3 Apprentice Wizard - Ramp

.539 3 Urza's Avenger - Power Struggle - Hurkyl's Recall fodder
.525 3 Shapeshifter - same
.519 4 Primal Clay - same
.538 3 Triskelion - Actually quite burtal Power Struggle / Huryl's Recall fodder which actuall works even without PS, with just the Recall (except the AI's no good with that)

.260 4 Unsummon
.502 4 Hurkyl's Recall

.867 2 Power Struggle

.575 2 Backfire
.462 4 Unstable Mutation

.503 1 Ivory Tower

---

So the problem is that Abe, Me and Guinsoo were not trying to make it a Power Struggle deck, but kept a bunch of stuff which was only there because it was a Power Struggle deck! And added a bunch of stuff which wouldn't really work in one, and also kept the supremely junky creature which only really work because of the silly ramp TM.

The Sota version abandoned the Power Struggle plan entirely and looks like this (Most likely because a Power Struggle Deck turned out to have been a bad idea and the AI couldn't really get places with it):

.126 22 Island
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.894 4 Mana Crypt
.152 2 Mana Vault

.524 4 Sage of Lat-Nam

With the obvious plan of using the ramp and then saccing it to the Sage of Lat-Nam. Which I'm not sute the AI can do or is worth keeping Mana Vaults around for.

The Creatures are actually quite a bit better with no shennanigans:

.185 3 Phantom Monster
.183 3 Phantasmal Forces
.39 4 Clone
.263 2 Vesuvan Doppleganger
.446 4 Old Man of the Sea

With the overcosted / bad stuff severly reduced in number (not to infringe on Seer territory):

.525 2 Shapeshifter
.519 2 Primal Clay

And no bounce being there because it's not a Power Struggle deck anymore:

.48 4 Counterspell
.232 3 Spell Blast

And the ramp present here is present because it's Illusion / Clone theme was a bit 4cc heavy so the deck wanted to cheat them into play earlier.

Phwief! Right, this is important stuff - this actually opens up paths which can lead to functional Shapeshifter decks as the theme isn't "try to make a Tinker deck with buggy cards, lacklustre / OP targets, not enough tutors or even Mana Vaults and engine components from Power Struggle decks.

It can simply be a more efficient Illusion deck, in order to lose the need for Mana Vault / Mana Crypt spam, and it would be in line with the SoTA take on Shapeshifter, but possibly with a very light Tinker theme, and severly reduced number of terrible creatures and stuff the AI can't use

Something like:

Shapeshifter ^^ | Open

.126 24 Island
.1210 4 Silver Myr - Tinker fodder & Ramp

.1351 1 Tinker - Since Transmute Artifact is bugged
.47 1 Copy Artifact - I think I could add the blue artifact land
.538 1 Triskelion - One Sivler Bullet
.525 1 Shapeshifter - Obligatory terrible artifact dude
.531 1 Tawnos's Coffin - Removal tinker target

.194 4 Psionic Blast - Removal, taking a cue from the SoTA direction. The AI is a bit trigger happy with it.
.575 2 Backfire - This is actually better than it looks, if the AI wasn't prone to throwing removal onto stuff that's been Backfired already it would be worth even bumping in count. Korath might straight the removal AI out at some point.

.263 2 Vesuvan Doppelganger - Obligatory Shapeshifter, handy to coppy enemy bombs

.185 3 Phantom Monster - Taking a cue from the SoTA deck, and heading in this direction
.183 3 Phantasmal Forces - Same

Supporting the Illusion theme to make Phantom Monsters and Phantasmal Forces able to tackle 5cc stuff and also for the deck to present a threat earlier and more consistently (and also some sinergy with Backfire - if you backfire their dudes and your dudes are unblockable, well, lol).

.1151 4 Sneaky Homunculus - Semi unblockable illusion
.1109 3 Phantom Warrior - Fully unblockable ogre

.11824 3 Lord of the Unreal - And, err, mortal sin. Hexproof on unblockable dudes. Now, normally I'd stay away from this sort of thing, but the deck lacked oomph in every incarnation and it always had mad ramp in it which isn't there anymore, and while this does give a bunch of dudes hexproof IT doesn't have hexproof so it's gonna eat removal like mad. But it does give the deck a way to present threat early on while the more expensive dude get going. It's also obviously sinergistic with the Homunculus, makes Phantom Monsters able to handle Serra's and such. If it turns out to be a big problem (or the two new illusions turn out to be a bit too difficult to deal with), it can probably be let go.

.12082 3 Spectral Flight - the OG deck ran Unstable Mutation as a way to make it's bad dudes better, and most incarnations of the deck had trouble making use out of their mana/utility dorks and it's far easier for the AI to get agressive if it gets flying. This comnos with the Homunculus and can be even put on the mana myr or Lord of the Unreal for some early beats and later it can be put on an artifact creature, the doppleganger or phantom monster to make it a serious threat.

The deck might look scary on paper or like it's been boosted too much, but I'm not sure I went overkill with it. It has 28 mana sources, which is half the deck, no way to draw cards, no counterspells or bounce and is likely to missplay it's removal. If lord of the unreal isn't on the board it's creatures are somewhat fragile and it relies on an aura to make them very dangerous which opens it up for 2 for 1 (not to mention that it isn't likely to deal with mass removal wery well). I might tweak it in the mean time in various possible directions, but I think it's quite worth giving a whirl to test both hexproof (especially in conjunction with unblockable) and have a not-too-buggy, non-madly-Power Struggle-based Shapeshifter, more in line with the generally more sensible SoTA deck plans than any of the less fortunate takes on decks.

Also, if it's overwhelming, it's going to be a lot easier to rebuild it along these same lines when more illusions are ported in and I've studied the blue pool better. I'm curious about hexproof, too. It's a cancerous ability, but it's not necessarily that horrible if you can get rid of it by killing a 2/2 dork somehow and when it isn't mixed with Regeneration and more powerful buffage than present here.

---

Elementalist! No Abe to hate on, and jiansonz arena tweak looks completely sweet, but lets take a look at the SoTA decklist, as those tend to be more focused (and highly cheezy):

SoTA | Open

.164 10 Mountain
.126 10 Island
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.157 4 Mana Vault
.230 1 Sol Ring
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.0 4 Air Elemental
.73 4 Earth Elemental
.83 4 Fire Elemental
.279 4 Water Elemental
.267 2 Wall of Air
.274 2 Wall of Water
.256 4 Twiddle
.75 4 Earthquake
.84 4 Fireball
.25 1 Braingeyser
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.69 3 Drain Power

Er, right. Eh. Heh. Hmmmm. This deck's theme is so difficult to pull off in a sensible way that it needs pretty much all of relevant power9 to be able to stay on flavor and not hopelessly lose every game. It's also too damned ambtitious in it's support stuff and what's holding it together somewhat are the walls. I'm not sure the OG deck was like this, it's possible that this is really the SoTA incarnation and they kinda piled on the cheeze in SoTA to help out struggling decks (except they ussually knew their stuff better than Abe did). Breakdown is like this:

10 Island
10 Mountain

4 Volcanic Island - I'd like to get rid of these if possible. But in order to actually do that I'd need to make the theme somewhat more workable as the ideal land for this guy is actually one of the ravnica bouncelands, but more on that later.

Mana Vault, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire and Sol Ring ought to get out. A deck should work without those. So are Ancestral Recall and Braingyser.

4 X Air Elemental
4 X Water Elemental
4 X Earth Elemental
4 X Fire Elemental

Apart from Air Elemental the rest of them obviously just have to be there but they're all vanilla and all 5cc, and none of them Fly. Earth Elemental is actuall qute good, +0/+1 is sneakily above the curve for a 5cc vanilla dork. There's just waaaaaaay too damned many of them. 20 5cc dudes, only one of them which is even remotely bomby is just too much, and this overload mandates all the cheezy ramp in the first place. What's also not helping things is that all of them have 2 colored mana in their CC so that pulls towards Volcanic Islands too strongly.

Also, the OG list had fewer of these, too. Sensible.

2 X Wall of Air
2 X Wall of Water

Wall of Air is excellent blockage (it blocke evasion) and Wall of Water is a bit meh, but they're both problematic becaus of the double colored cc in a non-mono deck. When I'm being tourney competitive, spells with 2 of the same colored mana in their cc ONLY go into mono colored decks. You can play 5color domain vs Destructive Flow and win (and I've done so on purpose tourney after tourney when Ravnica duals were everwhere and once had a grown man break down and cry for real and one guy scooped all his 100$ lands and threw his entire deck phisicaly at me, good times) because all your lands are basics and nothing has 2 of the same color in their casting cost.

In short - this sort of thing is bloody necessary for this deck to have any hope, but not with cc like this.

Also - the OG list had 1 of each elemental wall, but the SoTA adjustment seems to have taken into account that only 1 elemental is flying and that 3 walls don't block fliers, and this way they could have 2 walls which do. So they put blue in charge of blocking and ramping, and red in charge of removal.

4 Twiddle - in case anyone was wondering, this is to manipulate Mana Vault. Mana Vault is going out, and I'm not sure the AI could ever use it this properly (even though some tapdown could've bought it a precious turn here and there making it somewhat useful)

4 Earthquake
4 Fireball
3 Drain Power

These are... unfortunate. It's not senseless, the deck needs some board wipe because of the ludicrous 5cc creature spam plan, and the deck has cheezy ramp, so whoever made it probably thought that since they're ramping with the artifacts they might as well take advantage of it. Drain Power was meant to charge these two.

In case folks don't know how Drain Power works, you cast it and then the other guy either taps all his mana and casts instants to get rid of it, or doesn't cast instants and forks the mana over, and then you can use it to fuel your stuff. It can also be used as pure tapdown to prevent the other guy from casting counterspells and such.

The deal, however, is that all your elementals have 2 colored casting cost symbols in ther cost, as do the walls so fueling anything but Fireballs and Earthquakes with it is a bit dodgy. Jiansonz also rightly spotted that it can't really be effectively used to ramp the elementals out faster - you'd need 4 mana (either all blue or 2 blue 2 red) and hit 3 opponents lands to be able to ramp for... 1 mana. Eh.

*crack knuckles* Let's see about tweaking this thing

After a lot more testing than I though I settled on this. Mana base is a real problem for Shandalar right now - the way the AI prioritizes stuff means that if you give it lands that come into play tapped it will play VERY strangely and much more slowly than usual. Which is why I ended up with this mana base allthough I would've been much happier with a few other ones.

Elementalist Tweaked | Open

Ok, so, the deck was one big wheel of cheeze, so instead of preserving actual cards I did my best to preserve the actual conundrum of it - how to play more than one copy of each alpha elemental and have the deck actually work? The Sota and OG answer was mad rampz, my answer would be something like:

.164 9 Mountain
.126 9 Island
.10654 4 Scalding Tarn - This really should've been either Izzet Boilerworks (which the Manalink AI doesn't even attempt to play and which messes it up in other ways) or anything but Volcanic Island (and the AI is awful at that sort of thing right now)

.0 2 Air Elemental
.73 2 Earth Elemental
.83 2 Fire Elemental
.279 2 Water Elemental

Those guys have to be in, obviously, but the problem is that three of these are non-evasive and the AI plays non-evasive stuff badly as it has no mechanism to deduce when it is in it's favor to attack into a trade (and always trades on defense but that's not an issue here).

I tried to compensate for the lack of fliers and early plays by adding these guys:

.13591 4 Vaporkin
.2682 4 Cloud Elemental

Which are on flavor and actually do their thing well enough. The problem is that if I give the AI a land that comes into play tapped these guys don't get played and the AI sort of just skips to the later plays and waits out turns 2 and 3 if it happens to have a cip-tapped land in hand. It's v. annoying.

.1746 4 Arc Lightning
.10930 4 Forked Bolt

Then I decided to give it the War Mage treatment by replacing the X cost spells with these thinggies (found the "Arc Shock", which only goes to show I'd be much better at this if I had full awareness of the pool, and also take a lot less time ). These things are REALLY good at getting rid of chumpers, so a barrage of this into elementals can get very ugly very fast. I'm not sure if this alone hasn't made the deck consistently stronger than it was with all the cheezy ramp (where it was owewhelmingly bursty or just sad).

.14292 2 Icy Blast

I thought this thing is actually perfect for the deck, as it's likely to bring out big groundpounders which it won't attack with unless it can do something like this. I also tried Barrage of Boulders but the AI seemed to be more comfortable with this. I could see Barrage being rather good, too.

.8349 4 Coldsteel Heart
.1394 2 Opportunity

The deck needed some ramp and card draw, and even something like a Coldsteel Heart can have it churning out fat elementals from turn 4 onwards. After some testing, Opportunity was added. Seems strange to be adding a 6cc thing, but it's kind of an attempt to give the AI fewer things to do instead of putting the cheap flying dudes on board early on it seems to have worked.

.1071 4 Lightning Elemental
.4430 2 Cinder Elemental

I've tried walls and I've tried different walls, and in the end they have the same problem as the big elementals do - only one of them does anything against fliers, and by that logic you could stick Wall of air into any deck. Except this one because it didn't want to have a card which demanded strictly UU early on and just sat there if threaths were removed. So having seen the Arc stuff deal with low-toughness stuff, and what with having the tapdown rare in the deck, I kinda figured Lightning Elemental might actually do it's thing in this deck. I also needed to even out on red stuff by this point. So I added the Cinder Elemental (which I'm not sure how the AI handles) as a replacement for the removed Fireball which can't be tossed at a ranomd 1 mana bugger by the kill-mad AI.

That's after a lot of testing, and the thing I'm the most unhappy about is havign to use Fetches which aren't the best if your plan involves expensive stuff. The deck isn't using anything cheezy, but it seems to be nicely deadly from what I've seen in the Manalink.

I was trying out the Arena for a good while there, and it's an awesome idea, but the poblem was that the AI messed up it's tempo with it - it would play it instead of a mana producing land setting itself a turn behind a lot, and it also, and this was just infuriating, made it keep hands with only Arena in it instead of mulliganing them

Still room for tweaks, though.

So, full list for easy copying:

.164 9 Mountain
.126 9 Island
.0 2 Air Elemental
.73 2 Earth Elemental
.83 2 Fire Elemental
.279 2 Water Elemental
.13591 4 Vaporkin
.1746 4 Arc Lightning
.10930 4 Forked Bolt
.2682 4 Cloud Elemental
.14292 2 Icy Blast
.8349 4 Coldsteel Heart
.1394 2 Opportunity
.10654 4 Scalding Tarn
.1071 4 Lightning Elemental
.4430 2 Cinder Elemental

That seems to be all of the Mana Vault's out. I think I'll do Power Surge next and also undo some of Abes screwups and tweak some stuff the AI can't possibly play. Oh, and trim some of the Mishra's Factory count, it's insane.

---

Hydra!

Eh, poor thing kind of lost much of it's power with the loss of mana burn, and it was never all that different from War Mage in practice. Removing Mana burn helps every other monster not randomly have less life and stuff, so preserving Power Surge isn't too high on my priority list, but I don't feel like remaking decks for the sake of it just yet, so let's see:

Hydra, OG/Duels and SotA | Open

22 Mountain

4 Power Surge - Mana Burn Card
4 Wall of Fire - There to soak up mana that would otherwise burn, at least in that capacity it isn't necessary anymore.

4 Mana Flare - since I'm taking Power Surge out, this leaves Mana Flare in only as symetrical ramp. Red has accumulated a bunch of ramp in the meantime, and it would make the Hydra and the War Mage to mono red creature-light decks with Mana Flare in it. I'm pretty sure there's other ways to build red these days, so I'm contemplating taking this out along with Power Surge.

2 Shivan Dragon - This is the iconic, yet completely random Fatty. Also a mana sink for the Flare and Power Surge, so depending on what to do with the Flare this could stay or be replaced.

4 Fireball - Mana Flare X spell, because limited pool and mana flare
4 Disintegrate - Same thing, this is just stealing thunder from War Mage
1 Detonate - Same thing

2 Lightning Bolt - Because limited pool.

4 Inferno - This, howewer, is NOT stealing thunder from Warmage
4 Onulet - Here to combo with Inferno and block up the place so it can hit
2 Soul Net - Supposed to combo with Inferno and the Hive Below, but it's kinda slow if I take out Mana Flar
3 The Hive - Also an universally overused Mana Sink

----

So as far as this original variant is concerned, one of it's claims to individuality is Power Surge (gone) and being a burn deck with creatures in it. Prismat has the whole Inferno-Onulet thing going, Hive is in everything it could be crammed in, Mana Flare is also all over the place (and could've actually replaced all the ramp in Elementalist if someone wanted a REALLY light rework). And the Disintegrate/Fireball plan isn't there because it's so good with Mana Flare, I suspect, but because there wasn't really all that much burn in the OG pool (Lightning Bolt, Pyrotechnics, Fireball, Disintegrate, Earthquake, Inferno and that's pretty much it).

Where Abe went with it is pushing Power Surge on one hand, and adding Dragon Welps on the other. I'm not even going to comment on Mishra's Factories and Strip Mines, that stuff is on it's way out as far as I'm concerened you can stick that in any deck ever and ruin someone's day. Welps are actually fine IMO. He said he wouldn't push mana flare, but that's exactly what they do, so not necessarily them.

The scepters are flawed logic incarnate, if anything would keep me from playing excess land is the opponent making me discard a card every turn. If I dumped lands on board madly wth do I discard? My instants? Abe -.-

Let's see what SoTA did:

.164 22 Mountain
.155 4 Mana Flare
.192 4 Power Surge
.84 4 Fireball
.65 4 Disintegrate
.145 4 Lightning Bolt
.396 2 Aladdin's Ring - So even more Warmage Copyright infringement
.103 4 Granite Gargoyle - Some early flying threat with mana sinking defensive capability (except, valuably, against air stuff)
.207 4 Rock Hydra - X power Creature, on flavor, gets pretty silly with Mana Flare
.270 4 Wall of Fire
.318 4 Fellwar Stone - Some help with not burning yourself if you need one mana with flares and surge on the table. Also ramps somewhat, because there's only 4 Mana Flares to draw.

Now me:

What I did | Open

So it's a flavorful clone of War Mage with Power Surge to kinda even out the symmetry of Mana Flare, but no board wipe whatsoever. And now no Power Surge.

I'm torn.

No way to make a Rock Hydra deck without Mana Flare. But that would be just adding a sneaky X spell to War Mage. Unless...

Out: 4 Mana Flare
In: 4 Gauntlet of Might -> less symetrical vs folks w no mountains and this deck runs actual creatures

Out: 4 Wall of Fire
In: 4 Storm Shaman -> Offensive Wall of Fire which gets pumped by GoM. Being just a mana sink doesn't cut it anymore.

Out: 4 Power Surge
In: 4 Flamekin Spitfire -> A 2 Drop which pings you because there's a Mana Flare out, for a 2 Drop which pings you (and your dudes) because Mana Flare's out. What's not to like apart from the little bastard being a pain in the ass, ofc.

Out: 2 Alladins Ring
In: 2 Flame Wave - > How's that for ramp target, eh? Overkill, much? Well, the Gauntlet is a mite slower to get into play, but can still be out on turn 2 with the stones same as the flare. And this is just Inferno back in, except in a way which lets you play creatures.

Out: 1 each Granite Gargoyle, Storm Shaman, Rock Hydra
In: 3 Dragon Welp - > Err, why not, although it might be a tad overkillsih. Still, the AI needs something that's offensive, flying and has some attack to really go places.

Out: 4 Lightning Bolt
In: 4 Flame Slash -> Because ATM I think i buffed the deck up quite a bit and this serves to differentiate the deck from the War Mage further. Hydra wants to kill opposing creatures so it's dudes can get through. And also, this bolts bigger stuff. And bolts to the head from every red opponent is annoying as balls anyway.

Lemme just test this.

---

List:

.207 3 Rock Hydra
.103 3 Granite Gargoyle
.318 4 Fellwar Stone
.65 4 Disintegrate
.84 4 Fireball
.164 22 Mountain
.96 4 Gauntlet of Might
.3367 2 Flame Wave
.9142 4 Flamekin Spitfire
.1679 3 Storm Shaman
.67 3 Dragon Whelp
.10928 4 Flame Slash

Yep, it works. The AI can be funny about prioritizing stuff, like playing Rock Hydra at strange moments and there's a bit too much evasion, but otherwise it's pretty damned silly. In fact, I think it could use nerfing as it seems to quite able to kill you dead from 20 to 0 too easily. The problem are the X spells, honestly, because they all become Hidetsugu's Second Rite look-alikes at 5 lands down with Gauntlet of Might out. The deck has plenty of stuff to sink mana in productively, the pingin Elemental is quite a nuisance and the Gauntlet really does work better with this plan so I think even the X spells could be replaced.

Oddly enough it feels distinct compared to both Prismat and War Mage now but if you look at how much was really "reworked"... Not all that much. The wall of fire can theoretically go on offense, there's a 2 drop that pings the other guy in place of Power Surge (a 2 drop which pings the other guy), "Mana Flare" isn't so symetrical anymore so no need to try to balance it and the lightning bolt won't get aimed at your head. And there's a few Dragon Welps around. And Inferno's kinda back in.

Might be a little light on lands, though.

Caveat - this was a silly dangeorus deck orginally, because Shandalar + Red = Trouble, just saying. It kinda wipes the floor with opponents in gauntlet. But there's ways to reign it in when I get a better grasp of the full scope of Red. Also, there's gotta be more ways to deal with Pro: Red than just cramming Alladins Ring in every deck (and I seriously consider discontinuing Circles of Protection to be one of the best moves WotC ever made), so sideboard/contingency fine tuning is for later.

Onwards!

---

Forest Dragon - I had big plans and ideas for this guy, but anything I tried didn't seem to work. Mostly due to AI. I'd need to test things in Shandalar rather than Mana Link, though, and the deck has enough problems to write a novel about. I do want to make a quick tweak to it before my next run - it keeps shooting itself in the foot with the whole living lands plan, and I'm taking that thing out of everywhere for that very reason.

Abe didn't touch Forest Dragon much, which figures. It's about on par with Elementalist in terms of ambition, except someone stuck a bunch of Mana Vaults in Elementalist and nobody did that for Forest Dragon. Mana Link AI just stubbornly won't attack with a Lured-up Basilisk even though it would kill 2 Serra Angels and 2 Serra Avengers -.-'

Anywho here's my tweak list:

Tweaked Forest Dragon | Open

Old:

.91 22 Forest
.49 4 Craw Wurm
.40 4 Cockatrice
.244 4 Thicket Basilisk
.152 4 Lure
.149 4 Llanowar Elves
.409 2 Desert Twister
.237 2 Stream of Life

.1248 4 Heartbeat of Spring
.7273 4 Kashi-Tribe Reaver
.11397 2 Untamed Might
.1243 2 Harmonize
.12009 2 Make a Wish

Here's the deal - i tried a bunch of stuff and none of it worked, and this was the only thing that finally made the damned Forest dragon do it's thing.

Hearbeat of Spring - if ever there was a deck to rival the Elementalist in ambition it's the amazing 12 5cc+ Forest Dragon. Also 8 of those had only 2 power It also had only 22 lands, and I cut the untamed Wilds and just made it ramp like it wants to. Not my proudest moment, but there you have it.

Kashi-Tribe Reaver - if the AI could actually use certain handy Snakes this would've not been the only one to make it in. The deck lacked power (as in stuff to put on board and do stuff with before hitting 5 cc). This guy also has all that Lure could want, it regenerates and stuff that blocks it won't be doing anything for a while. Also, he has the most damage int the deck apart from the signature Wurm.

Untamed Might - Something to ramp into with all your flared mana. I was careful to not actually give the deck any source of trample, but now it might bloody well attack with it's Basilisks, lure or no lure, or do some damage with Cockotrices or just knock you out.

Harmonize - I noticed it didn't handle mass removal too well, and Heartbeat tended to empty it's hand a lot, so I added this to help out with that.

Make a Whish - and I also added some recursion in order to not give it full 4 Harmonize. Who knows it might even be stronger.


Now it actually works. The Faerie Dragon was a nice idea, but in practice the AI can't handle it and it would just pour all it's mana into it for dubious gains. Living Lands leaves Power Struggle in the dust when it comes to shooting yourself in the foot - and in fact that was the main reason for me to even touch this deck (but there were many others which I didn't touch, this is actually light tweaks, woudln't you know it). I wrote a long section on just how ridiculously ambitious the whole thing was so if someone, for whatever reason, wants to read MORE of my spam I can retype it again.

It's the best I could do for now, ham fisted, but I did try a bunch of tamer stuff. Folks lived with 2 red mana flare decks around, now there's a green one, too.

---

Who else has living lands? Fungus master, in the sideboard, but he can actually make his work, so I won't get into that. Enchantress has some in the sideboard for the exact same plan as here, except she can also kinda make it work... But her main problem is that she has pretty much the exact same plan as Forest Dragon so I'll do her next. There's also better ways to build her deck (allthough the AI might still be screwy when it comes to enchantments).
So much so that giving her Argothian Enchantress over Verduran Enchantress could be a good idea simply because shed have to stack auras on other stuff.

But that's for another day.

---

Any ideas for stuff that's up for "patching out" like Mana Vault, Living Lands, Power Surge? Clockwork dudes, Urza's Avenger and Primal Clay come to mind. Any truly lacklustre decks around?

I know I'll give Merfolk Shaman a twack with the nerf stick, Druid and Priestess need doctoring, Seer might need forensics, Sorcerer and Sorceress could use a bit of tweaking to make red easier to get into. Lord of Fate needs both forensics and doctoring I took a look already, it's trying to do too many things at once. So is the paladin, and probably the winged stallion. Anyone'd like me to take a look at an OG/Abe deck to try to puzzle it out (or puzzle out how to make the AI do what it's supposed to do better)?

[lujo]

I'll try to keep it breifer

Druid | Open

The OG deck was a bit of a pile, but it had a "wall up and ping them to death with wanderlust" theme. Abe decided to scrape it in favor of lands. SoTA decided to make it a pile with more 4offs. I think the Wanderlust thing was misevaluated to a degree because getting stuck with it when you start at below 20 and the other guy has lifegain in form of charms is the kind of annoying I'd like in an entry level oponent. So I decided to test this out on the next run for the druid because I'm interested if it works out (seems to work fine in Mana Link, heck, more than fine).

.91 21 Forest
.288 3 Wooden Sphere
.276 4 Wanderlust
.2863 3 Bee Sting
.11131 3 Hornet Sting
.2295 3 Hail Storm
.5631 3 Nantuko Elder
.13594 3 Voyaging Satyr
.5756 3 Woodland Druid
.13165 4 Kraul Warrior
.14112 2 Hornet Nest
.275 3 Wall of Wood
.10402 3 Deadly Recluse
.1481 2 Kaysa

OUT: Mishra's Factory, Ley Druid, Oasis, Instill Energy - Mishra's Factory in entry level decks is why that thing was all over the place, and it's one of the most powerful lands ever made. It also tends to occupy AI's mana, has that persistent bug, and the AI being saddled with Ley Druid is asking too much of it.

OUT: The whos-who of OG green creatures.

BACK IN: Wanderlust, for several reasons. It either pings you, or makes you attack with your dude.

NEW THEMES: Insects, Direct Damage, Druids

Pinging is backed up by: Bee Sting and Hornet Sting, because I want to see how it does.

Trying to get rid of it by attacking is backed up by: Deadly Recluse, Hornet Nest, and especially Hail Storm.

Hail Storm is backed up by the fact that all the Druids have 2 toughness (there's several, the satyr is a straight upgrade of Ley Druid). So it can in theory give you a nasty jump you won't see coming. It also combos with the Hornet Nest which makes a rather deadly hornet when stirred. I've seen the AI also ping it with Hornet Sting for a Hornet, and it can get 2 Hornets for Bee Sting if Kaysa is on board.

Kaysa is safe, I think, because all the other creatures are rather unimpressive when it comes to stats. It also helps potential hornets survive hail storm and makes Walls of Wood a bit better at defending.

Kraul Warrior is on theme with all the insect stuff and is also the mana sink for the on-theme druids (one of whom is also an insect). As opposed to Killer Bees, it's less likely to cause the AI to play it stupidly because it takes more mana to pump.

Deadly Recluse is a Giant Spider which can actually be killed from a distance and which won't survive too many possible encounters.

Ant Queen isn't in. Deck's plenty nasty and tricky as it is, but I think the player should be able to take it down before it gains too much life with wooden sphere.

It has quite a few clever moves it can actually pull relatively consistently (in Manalink, though), it's not a complete pushover and should keep you on your toes. It also tossess it's stings at creatures rather than life totals, so it's less scary in that department. It also has a large number of not very impressive creatures so it can have weaker and stronger games, shouldn't be overwhelming.

Don't be afraid to try it out, it's quite a bit more interesting than the OG druid with a delightful amount of easy to stumble into sinergy. I sure stumbled into it XD Curious for feedback.

---

I'm having A LOT of trouble with Enchantress. In a worrying way

Enchantress | Open

I always wanted enchantress not to be Basilisk/Lure deck, because Forest Dragon is one, obviously. And now I went through about 5-6 variations and everything I do is just too brutal... or doesn't work. This is what I got now, and it's too damned strong, even after a lot of nerfing.

.91 23 Forest
.262 4 Verduran Enchantress
.486 2 Coral Helm

.1490 2 Centaur Glade
.13676 4 Charging Badger
.469 4 Argothian Pixies
.2641 4 Uktabi Faerie
.1279 3 Moonglove Extract
.2949 3 Briar Shield
.13441 3 Feral Invocation
.1371 2 Gaea's Anthem
.13910 2 Humbler of Mortals
.3344 4 Burgeoning

If you'd believe me, this is a very nerfed down version. Centaur Glade needs to be something else, it makes rather too large tokens too easily (but all the other dudes are wimpy if not buffed and the deck really needs to be able to cheat up a bunch of dudes if the weenies bite it).

Charging Badger used to be Scryb Sprites, but I went "oh god no" too many times during testing, so now it doesn't fly (but tramples). Don't laugh it can murder you on it's own if the AI draws pump. Humbler of Mortals would be kinda ok if it wasn't so easy to cast. Deck might need some further nerfing, but it's not Forest Dragon, it's a green Fearie deck I always kinda wanted to make (would be more faeries, but dear god no, too many easily pumped evasive weenies), and it doesn't roll over if the Enchantress eats an Aeolipile or any of it's numerous descendants.

Curious about feedback, not sure how Shandalar handles it as opposed to Manalink.

Oh, I tried everything, Ancestral Mask, Ediolon of drawing too much, Defense of the Heart, you name it, and it's all too damned strong for where this deck is supposed to be on the power scale. And none of it is any good without decent ramp. It's also a bit swingy depending on what it draws, as enchantress decks tend to be, which is I put in the "just buff the weenies" plan in there anyway. Forgot that in Shandalar a lousy looking green weenie deck can murder you.

Heh, this took longer than I expected. I'll do something less tricky next, forensics on Seer.

---

Seer Forensics, well worth a read for those who're into that sort of thing | Open

Err, Abe missed the point, this deck is less of a pile than most tier 1 decks it's just that it starts with too little life for it's ambitious plan to go off, and also misses a bit of I in it's AI. So I'm not gonna bother with Abe on this one, and technically, removing the Hydroblast from this thing should be reason enough to also pick my tweaked version below up.

I also have to figure out which deck is OG and which is Duels but this is non-SoTA as a starting point, I've rearranged the order of cards, it reads pretty clearly, and is much less of a pile of random stuff than say, the OG druid:

.126 22 Island
.52 4 Crystal Rod - They're no so much obligatory as much as some form of VERY QUICK lifegain is neccessary and the devs figured the earliest opponents will be chased down by players who are on-color.

.48 2 Counterspell - Kinda self explanatory, the deck can be stuck with expensive things in hand. Also so that players can farm them, likely.

.859 4 Zephyr Falcon
.514 3 Ornithopter
.462 4 Unstable Mutation

^^^ The ole reliable "deal with this first" package, except with more "falcons". It's not like blue had any other options for being dangerous early, this package is all over the place (+/- Ornithopter). Also, it's not like it can't kill you.

.326 4 Ghost Ship

^^^^ !!! You see a "giant spider" you know the deck has an expensive late game plan and that it needs to seriously shut the board down. This is a regenerating Giant Spider, so extra annoying, and, as those are prone to, becomes hugely annoying if buffed with the Unstable Mutation. Can also be bounced and recast after it decays from it.

.534 3 Tetravus
.538 3 Triskelion

^^^^ These two jokers are the expensive late game plan, slap them down, unload (AI never unloads the thopters and can't time it for shit), bounce back to hand, recast. That's the idea.

.817 2 Time Elemental - You bounce the big guys back to your hand with. Can't combine with UM. Takes 10 mana, but a Triskelion every turn is likely game over, and a so is 3 Tetravites per turn.

.260 4 Unsummon - What you use to bounce your big guys back to your hand. And I suppose also to survive until you can even cast them.
.502 2 Hurkyl's Recall - Same, but with all the artifacts.

.69 3 Drain Power - What you use to help you recast the big artifact guys after you've bounced them. By the time they've hit the opponent has likely emptied their hand and you can hit a bunch of untapped lands.


So, it's a rather slow Triskelion / Tetravus bounce deck, but it's no mystery what it's trying to do. It's unfortunate that it starts with the least amount of life, as the Falcon early game won't necessarily let it get there often enough.

SoTA tries to make the plan "competitive":

.126 22 Island

It adds a lot of ramp:

.318 3 Fellwar Stone
.157 3 Mana Vault

And a rocks full sets of it's bussiness big guys:

.534 4 Tetravus
.538 4 Triskelion

As well as the bounceage:

.260 4 Unsummon
.502 2 Hurkyl's Recall
.817 3 Time Elemental

And, as opposed to Shapeshifter which plays crappy stuff on purpose, this IS the Tinker deck:

.537 3 Transmute Artifact

With a Mana Vault down you can get a Triskelion or Tetravus out on turn 4 and lose the Vault.

And it also runs the whole aggro package in addition to the Tinker/Bouncing shennanigans:

.514 3 Ornithopter
.859 4 Zephyr Falcon
.462 4 Unstable Mutation

Except it also sports:

.506 3 Mightstone

Which provides offensive capability to Ornithopters, Falcons, and most importantly TETRAVITES.

---

Deck is pretty much focused as hell and not that far off the mark even in the OG version, and if the AI could play it (and Transmute Artifact wasn't bugged) it would be the strongest blue AI deck. Heck, it's hard to tell if dropping Ghost Ships for Mightstone was actually a good idea.

So that's that.

But now I'm torn. If I make the deck work, it's a bloody Mana Vault Tinker deck with Serra Impersonator Falcon Aggro in it for good measure. That's an end boss deck, not an intro deck. And it's been tried with the Shapeshifter, and too many cards are bugged and the AI misplays the bounce.

So I'd have to pull a Druid and rework it, except I haven't studied the blue pool enough to be sure it comes out as lovely as the Druid did, but I'll see about it tomorrow.

[lujo]

It's taking me a long time to get Seer sorted out. It's mainly got to do with the blue pool (or more accurately, the blue cards historically). They tend to be blunt objects or unusable by the AI. I'm not at all surprised folks have been having issues with Seer. I've even taken a look through the new cards coming in the next update and it's still not much good.

This should be worth a try, at least for science:

Seer - Updated List: | Open

.11615 4 Hovermyr
.859 4 Zephyr Falcon
.52 3 Crystal Rod
.12066 4 Sensory Deprivation
.7578 3 Threads of Disloyalty
.462 4 Unstable Mutation
.7143 4 Trinket Mage
.126 19 Island
.1216 4 Seat of the Synod
.11532 3 Spire Serpent
.5510 3 Cephalid Retainer
.476 2 Ashnod's Transmogrant
.12837 3 Stealer of Secrets

I kept the Falcon + Unstable Mutation package, and replaced Ornithopter with Hovermyr. It works a tad too well. I got rid of the busted ramp stuff, and I also got rid of the overcosted (but actually solid) artifacts and revamped it into this:

Trinket Mage fetches either lands, some more pump (which doesn't work with the Hovermyr) or crystal Rods. This sets up Spire Serpent to be able to attack.
Stealer of Secrets is another "Gray Ogre" which is supposed to make the player chump-block if either of them get pumped. To make sure the deck can get any attacks out of them, Cephalid Retainer can hit the board and tap stuff down for serious mayhem.

Also, to nudge the AI to attack with it's stuff I gave it Sensory Deprivation and Threads of Disloyalty. The threads are a mite too good in this setup now that I've seen it, so I'm thinking of giving them over to the Sea Dragon (he actually needs help vs. weenies). But it seems to work quite well in punishing overly efficient cards.

It does really well in Mana Link, and is possibly over the top if the AI draws 2 Mutations or the Cehpalid Retainer sticks on the board. Idk, I'm very curious about feedback on this deck, knowing whether people find it ok or overwhelming would help me with other balance considerations quite a bit.

That was grueling and took a good chunch of two days. Sounds silly, but it's true.

---

Lord of Fate! I wanted to try to tweak this one for ages!

Right, so there's how he's layed ot OG:

Old Lord Of Fate | Open

.188 11 Plains
.239 11 Swamp

.55 2 Dark Ritual - Some Ramp

Plan no. 1: Vigilance + Castle

.28 3 Castle
.550 4 Yotian Soldier
.221 4 Serra Angel
.930 3 Brass Man

Plan no. 2: Pestilence

.182 3 Pestilence
.108 3 Healing Salve
.871 2 Necropolis of Azar
.70 3 Drudge Skeletons
.736 3 Osai Vultures

Something to keep the opponent busy with while the clunky and expensive plan 2 comes together or you can drop a Serra Angel:

.112 3 Holy Strength
.259 3 Unholy Strength
.616 2 Divine Transformation
.514 3 Ornithopter

So it's obvious what this guy has going on, and it's not even weak, because the only vigilance dudes are the rock-solid Yotian Soldier and the ever-so-bomby Serra Angel. It's also quite bursty because slapping auras on dudes with regeneration or big butts is bound to murder someone.

In fact, that's actually how it panned out most of the time - the Pestilence plan is so clunky in a 2 color deck with only basic lands, and while Castle plays great with Pestilence in theory, in practice it's pretty much an excuse to stick the some cheeze into the deck. Hur-dur my theme is Vigilance, what has vigilance in the OG set? Very convenient to theme a deck around Serra Angel -.-'

There was also so much that could go wrong - some games it would draw only creatures, some games it would draw only enchantments, some games it would draw only 1 source of a color and just sit there, sometimes it would not draw anything below 4 cc, most times it didn't have enough black sources to activate Pestilence even if it came down. And it couldn't really play Osai Vultures right no matter how awesomely flavorful they made the deck besides the epic "vigilance" flavor.*

*Incidentaly, you know what happens if you make vigilance the theme of a Blue White deck? You get to play Zephyr Falcon + Unstable Mutation and Serra Angels in the same deck. You then add Yotian Soldier, obv, and then you can also make "Artifacts" a subtheme so you can put in Mana Vault and Mishra's Factories, because, you know, flavor. -.-

Anywho, the actual way to make a WB Pestillence deck is with cretures with protection from black (white's loaded with them), but I'd like to tweak THIS deck because it's kind of cool. However, the two colors don't actually support each other too well - black doesn't have any vigilance, and white just makes a Pestilence deck not be mono-black which it wants to be (and also there's Cemetery Gate so you could actually make a pro:black + pestilence mono black deck easily).

My rework which attempts to retain the spirit and flavor of the deck, while giving the clever bugger who snuck "vigilance" in a ding behind the ear for being a dope:

Lord of Fate Tweaks | Open

.188 8 Plains
.239 8 Swamp
.216 4 Scrubland
.13025 4 Orzhov Guildgate

.182 4 Pestilence
.871 2 Necropolis of Azar
.12976 3 Hold the Gates

.9776 4 Edge of the Divinity
.616 4 Divine Transformation

.1589 3 Night's Whisper

.10984 4 Lone Missionary
.14278 3 Gurmag Swiftwing
.8835 3 Revered Dead
.14256 3 Disowned Ancestor
.13925 3 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer


I did a lot of cleaning up on the WW and BB cost front, but playing Pestilence in a non mono-black deck is shooting yourself in the foot so much that I caved in and just kept the 4 Scrubland and added 4 Orzhov Guildgate. Pay attention to those. (I also put Volcanic Isles back into Elementalist, we'll need AI tweaks before we can get rid of duals).

Kept ALL THE THEMES!

Pestilence - still in, I bumped them to 4, even. Necropolis of Azaar - still in, huzzah. Castle ? Oh, no you don't, it's still in except now it's stronger and gives folks vigilance so there's no excuse for bomby angels: Hold the Gates . Hah!

I trimmed down the Holy/Unholy strenght count and put 4 Edge of the Divinity in. On the one hand this is cool flavor backup for Divine Transformation and all that (also bumped). But it did have serious concequences - artifact creatures had to go out because it doesn't work with them, and I had to pick my stuff carefully because white guys get Holy Strenght and black guys get Unholy Strenght.

But before that I added 4 Night's Whisper. This thing needs card draw. I'm somewhat unsure if this exact deck really needs to be paying life for cards, but then again, he does start with plenty and really likes the cards.

Dudes go like this:

Lone Missionary - He helps stall and recuperates life. You don't mind him dropping dead, but he get's Holy Strenghted to a 3/3.

Gurmag Swiftwing - A rather nasty offensive threat if buffed, get's Unholy Strenghted for kick-ass early threathenige. Royal pain in the hind with Divine Transformation. Ossai Vultures replacement, because the AI wasn't using them in a satisfying manner.

Revered Dead - it's Drudge Skeleton, except white! So if it has to regen, you don't use the same mana you need for Pestilence hits. Old way around used to be really I'm not sure whether he's really necessary anymore though and I have several potentially interesting options here. Less offensive because he only gets Holy Strenght, but there's more Divine Transformations in the deck now.

Disowned Ancestor - To keep with Lord of Fate theme (he obv. decides who gets revered and who get's disowned). Also to keep pestilence around, stall, and also grow as things stall. Get's Unholy Strenghted.

Lagonna-Band Trailblazer - Another impossibly fatass roadblock, get's Holy Strenghted and mirrors Disowned Ancestor (except he also grows simply from having Auras dropped on him, but slowly).

The deck is interesting to play against, sometimes plenty tough, and quite flavorful (it's pretty much exactly the same deck, lol, but it stumbles around less and doesn't cheat it's way to win with convenient Serra Angels). If it's not tough enough it can be buffed with Auramancers, Afterlife (plays cool here, you ping the token with Pestilence), there's all sorts of ways to tweak it further. It could even be too tough - the backsides on these guys can get ludicrous, it's a sight to behold. Bit weak vs. flying, though.

Feedback appreciated, this was a pleasure and I hope it works. It was about 50-50 against other tweaked decks. Lost to Druid* to wonderlust pings because it couldn't get rid of it's own fat blockers. It's a bit too defensive outside of explosive aura-stacking draws.

*I am SOOOO tweaking in some more Hornet Nest and Hail Storm into that Druid, it's a complete hoot. I set the lolz bar too high for myself with that one.

---

Oh, wow, Centaur Shaman got so many new toys I can't decide where to take it Looks like it'll take fine tuning to not make it's too crazy ^^

I'm thinking of piling on the Wanderlust with Stab Wound and Enslave, and keeping Cursed Land in for creature-light opponents. Copper Tablet is also probably fine. Darn shame Song of Serenity isn't in the pool, it's just made for this sort of thing.

Past that point there's a ton of cheezy ways to make it ludicrous, and quite a few sensible ones the AI can't play. If it was a human controlled deck - Beast Within is pretty much necessary to make sure you've for targets for your Wanderlust. I've seen how the AI mishandles Pongify so my hopes aren't up.

Deck also needs a way to not get killed by all the dudes attacking it to get rid of the pingage, so I guess it needs a bunch of walls (vast quantities of those around). Pheres Band Centaurs go without saying, they're even on theme. If I put any enchantress or that eidolon it'll just draw way too many cards. Crosswinds? Too harsh?

Gonna take a while

[lujo]

I went with this for the Centaur Shaman:

Centaur Shaman | Open

.91 10 Forest
.239 10 Swamp
.12 4 Bayou

.276 4 Wanderlust
.53 4 Cursed Land
.8774 4 Enslave
.12836 4 Stab Wound
.46 4 Copper Tablet

.13514 4 Pheres-Band Centaurs
.13279 4 Deathgaze Cockatrice
.13566 4 Sylvan Caryatid
.7339 4 Orochi Sustainer

Not sure about it's power level in a below 20 format, will need Shandalar testing. The archetype has more support in the pool than the entire color blue, and I tried to not go nuts.

I did try various things, but this list kind of stuck to the original theme the best. It's mostly pinging auras and defensive creatures, and since numbers can be tweaked it has room to be taken in any direction.

AI mishandles Stab Wound occasionally, but I want stuff in the Shandalar deck pool so that I can report them as bugged and hopefully improve things.

---

I went to just take Clockwork Avian out of Queltosh, then I checked out the OG list, and then I checked out where SoTA took it, and then I remembered seeing a bunch of prowess guys (and Djinns and Efreets) in the pool, and did this:

Queltosh - Pure Awesome | Open

.126 4 Island
.188 4 Plains
.164 4 Mountain
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.254 4 Tundra
.189 4 Plateau

.1672 2 Wildfire Emissary
.14231 3 Bloodfire Expert

.14352 2 Riverwheel Aerialists
.14580 2 Lotus Path Djinn

.14299 4 Jeskai Student
.14375 2 Seeker of the Way

.14358 2 Sage of the Inward Eye

.4660 4 Accumulated Knowledge
.8752 3 Brute Force
.2799 3 Tithe
.4757 3 Seal of Fire
.4758 3 Seal of Removal
.4755 3 Seal of Cleansing


Holy wow is this mechanic awesome. Not just/even powereful it's AWESOME.

It's martial artist djinns! Who break seals to display their awesome stuff-breaking martial arts moves!

I stuck to the highlander theme in spirit, not overdoing on any individual card or type of effect (except prowess obv.) The creatures are varied, the silly mana base allows for shennanigans, the seals are so that the AI doesn't madly missuse them (fat chance in case of seal of fire), but it's a nice way to have prowess trigger.

It also plays like a Red deck more than any other in spirit, even though the colors are sort of equally represented. If it's too explosive that can be adjusted, and there's a sort of high count of noncreature spells (which can probably lead to swingy draws), but the awesome factor is over 9000. Best mechanic ever ^^

If there's too much Prowess to handle, or if Seeker of The Way is too damned annoying I think Auramancer would be cool with all the seals. One Seal of Clensing could be cut for another Bloodfire Expert, too.

---

I also found the buggy clockwork stuff in at Arzakon. I wasn't going to tweak it (in part because I can't find some rather handy Domain stuff for it), so I took the clockwork dudes out (along with a few other non-descript things) and put in some appropriate stuff:

Arzakon light tweakage | Open

.9 3 Badlands
.12 3 Bayou
.189 3 Plateau
.212 3 Savannah
.266 3 Volcanic Island
.258 3 Underground Sea
.241 3 Taiga
.254 3 Tundra
.252 3 Tropical Island
.216 3 Scrubland
.425 2 Hurr Jackal
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.415 2 Erg Raiders
.161 2 Mesa Pegasus
.942 2 Pikemen
.211 2 Samite Healer
.213 2 Savannah Lions
.859 2 Zephyr Falcon
.841 2 Wall of Dust
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.14 1 Berserk
.202 1 Regrowth
.249 1 Time Walk
.250 1 Timetwister
.282 1 Wheel of Fortune
.230 1 Sol Ring
.25 1 Braingeyser
.3 2 Animate Dead
.409 2 Desert Twister
.65 2 Disintegrate
.88 2 Fog
.113 2 Howl from Beyond
.679 2 Immolation
.145 2 Lightning Bolt
.162 1 Mind Twist
.179 2 Paralyze
.191 2 Power Sink
.752 2 Pyrotechnics
.198 2 Raise Dead
.794 2 Spirit Link
.396 1 Aladdin's Ring
.930 2 Brass Man
.485 1 Colossus of Sardia
.931 1 Dancing Scimitar
.376 1 Diabolic Machine
.318 4 Fellwar Stone
.500 1 Grapeshot Catapult
.176 1 Obsianus Golem
.525 1 Shapeshifter
.534 1 Tetravus
.538 1 Triskelion
.11826 4 Manalith
.10174 2 Might of Alara
.1619 4 Matca Rioters
.10211 2 Spore Burst
.1590 4 Tribal Flames
.6887 2 Echoing Truth
.10496 1 Arid Mesa
.1488 1 Bloodstained Mire
.1487 1 Flooded Strand
.10612 1 Misty Rainforest
.1486 1 Polluted Delta
.10654 1 Scalding Tarn
.10706 1 Verdant Catacombs
.1472 1 Windswept Heath
.1473 1 Wooded Foothills
.10606 1 Marsh Flats

I took out the Mana Batteries and gave him 4 Manalith. I took out Gem Bazaar and Mishra's Factory and gave him one of each fetch land. Took out Elvish Archers and Grizzly bears and gave him 4 Matca Rioters. Gave him Might of Alara and Spore Burst, too. Took out Bloodlust for Tribal Flames, and something for Echoing Thruth.

I've played 5cc Domain for years and years and years - it's a powerful deck that just keeps getting stronger as more cards get printed and you can adapt it to any metagame. Some key stuff isn't there and the AI isn't using some other key stuff well (like Sakura Tribe Elder and Etched Oracle), and there's a bunch of ways to build that but Arzakon starts with a million life so which (and how powerful) Domain deck to build is a good question. They can be rather brutal, in college we used to customarily play "Gang-up" where one player would play Domain (hardly any rares in it) and up to 4 guys would play co-op against that player. Last I herd my brothers playgroup had the same thing going (or rather their every multiplayer game would devolve into that, and the Domain would often win).

A curious fact about a well played / built Domain deck is that it's the deck most similar to Mono Black Control from the Odyssey block. If you played a bunch of MBC you get a strange sense of Deja Vu. Go figure.

I'll leave tweaking Arzakon properly for later, this was just light tweaks.

---

Winged Stallion and Paladin were too damned similar and had their respective issues with their spells (namely Island Sanctuary for the horse and the general greedy effects pileup for the paladin). SoTA had the right idea and separated the "hack" effects between them - the horse got Magical Hack effects and the Paladin got the Mind Bend effects.

This is a bit problematic because they'd actually fit better the other way around - the paladin would make more sense with Karma, Angry Mob and changing new white landwalkers to get some evasion. The stallion now has a ton evasion so I only left Karma and Lifetap and Magical Hack as his "rest of the plan".

I'm sort of unhappy with both of those decks and their OG concepts. The Paladin is gratuitously UW for no good reason. While the archetype is marginally historic it's unfun to play against when it works (and just meh when it doesn't) and it automatically hoses black and (and/or red), and the horse hoses green and black with no effort.

I just tweaked the SoTA lists for now, I'd need a better overview of what's in the pool to make really flavorful Paladin, and I just reworked the SoTA horse creature base into a Pegasus Weenie. It's a mite too deadly, IMO, and the Karma and Lifetap are d**k moves which aren't ment to be mainboard and working against everyone in a best-of-1 format anyway.

Paladin | Open

.188 16 Plains
.175 3 Northern Paladin
.283 4 White Knight
.13 4 Benalish Hero
.64 2 Disenchant
.205 2 Righteousness
.254 4 Tundra
.228 4 Sleight of Mind
.240 4 Swords to Plowshares
.1487 4 Flooded Strand
.3982 4 Defender of Law
.3041 3 Southern Paladin
.12421 4 Mass Appeal
.11900 2 Champion of the Parish

Took out some semi-generic stuff and added some stuff, namely some card draw and stuff like that. I'm not happy with this deck in any incarnation, but wth, not in a position to really work it over properly yet. It's pretty much the SoTA list.

Winged Stallion | Open

.188 10 Plains
.126 10 Island
.254 4 Tundra
.161 4 Mesa Pegasus
.153 4 Magical Hack
.134 3 Karma
.144 3 Lifetap
.10475 4 Stormfront Pegasus
.8636 3 Plated Pegasus
.12688 3 Concordia Pegasus
.12368 3 Favorable Winds
.1364 3 Serra Sphinx
.2590 1 Sacred Mesa
.1352 3 Repulse
.8349 2 Coldsteel Heart

This one also hass identity issues and there's likely a million better ways to make a UW deck but I didn't want to change it much. There's a variety of pegasus (2 offensive, 2 defensive, they even got some interplay, one makes them harder to kill, one's offensive, on provides toughness for banding etc). There's also Favorable Winds to pump them.

Sacred Mesa is a bit overkill in retrospect. Serra Sphinx instead of Serra Angel, for variety, and it's also a winged critter. Also, blue kinda needed some reason to be there. The deck's a bit too evasive and all that, but that's unavoidable with the Pegasus theme.

Otherwise it's mostly the SoTA list, except it had the 3rd Magical Hack target in Segovian Leviathan, but the deck really didn't need another thing with complicated evasion when all it has flies anyway.

[lujo]

Right, so lemme just run through the Dragons, see where SoTA takes them (the djinns and dragons tend to be a LOT more focused in SoTA) and see if there's a simple flavourful thing for them to be testing wehicles for in the pool for a run or two:

Kiska-Ra | Open

There's really not much to change here, at first glance. It's kinda obvious why this deck is the way it is - it's a Pandora's Box deck. It wants semi-vanilla weenies so that the opponent never gets anything spectacular from the box. But since it has pretty much the all-star collection of decent/good weenies from 3 colors, Unstable Mutation and Giant Growth to back them up
(as well as half the restricted list to back them up) and Control Magic and Desert Twister to deal with the box giving the opponent something tough, this makes it a fine old deck.

I disliked the concequences of only having the OG pool to work with which cause the actual white cards in it to be less than stellar compared to the other colors. It also doesn't need Time Walk, and is somewhat unlikely to get too much out of Braingyser. 4 Tawnos Weaponary is also kinda overkill since it's actually got other ways to buff it's stuff.

So I trimmed all those and Tundra Wolves and Holy Strenght and made white a bit tougher while trying to make it so that I don't disrupt the general idea:

.188 2 Plains
.126 2 Island
.91 2 Forest
.252 4 Tropical Island
.254 4 Tundra
.212 4 Savannah
.870 2 Gem Bazaar
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.213 2 Savannah Lions
.422 2 Giant Tortoise
.76 2 Elvish Archers
.217 2 Scryb Sprites
.859 2 Zephyr Falcon
.247 2 Timber Wolves
.15 2 Birds of Paradise
.942 2 Pikemen
.462 3 Unstable Mutation
.97 3 Giant Growth
.533 2 Tawnos's Weaponry
.44 2 Control Magic
.409 2 Desert Twister
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.250 1 Timetwister
.10795 2 Loam Lion
.1405 2 Mistral Charger
.10619 3 Nimbus Wings

New stuff is 2 X Mistral Charger, 2 X Loam Lion and 3 X Nimbus Wings. It now has 60 cards. Should do alright, it's a pretty effective concept for Shandalar, and is especially likely to whittle your lives down in dungeons.

Well, that was quick

---

Now Dracur:

Rambling about Dracur OG and SoTA | Open

The OG Dracur is a kind of deck that IRL took decades and a lot of busted cards made to make really work in RBG, and that's a deck attacking everything at once. There are a few decks which managed to do this, like Mono Black Control from Odyssey or various Domain decks with tutors and silver bullets, but I'm not inclined to go full-Jund and try to recreate it.

The SoTA deck was made by someone who understood all this and went the other route. Instead of attacking everything it uses its 3 colors to provide tools to mostly attack one thing and that one thing is lands. It doesn't f**k around, either:

Crazy mana base:

.164 2 Mountain
.9 4 Badlands
.241 4 Taiga
.239 4 Swamp
.12 4 Bayou
.91 2 Forest

Crazy jewelry:

.165 1 Mox Emerald
.17 1 Black Lotus
.166 1 Mox Jet
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.230 1 Sol Ring

Kick-ass land destruction:

.528 4 Strip Mine - one of the dumbest cards ever printed
.236 4 Stone Rain - wotc stopped making them as good as even this a lond time ago
.118 4 Ice Storm - ditto.
.226 4 Sinkhole - oh, dear go no.

Good beats:

.437 4 Kird Ape

Random thematic finishers:

.49 1 Craw Wurm - only real non-cheeze card in the deck.
.224 1 Shivan Dragon

.63 4 Dingus Egg - because it can afford to run it.

.84 3 Fireball - Same
.65 2 Disintegrate - Same

.62 1 Demonic Tutor - Mad tutor
.145 3 Lightning Bolt - Quality Burn
.251 2 Tranquility - No circle of protection shenanigans

So there's not much to do in the way of really improving it. If there has to be a truly arsehole LD deck all it takes it sticking 4 Magnivore and some Cruel Edict type stuff along with some Earthquake / Pyroclasm in it. The OG version is a joke, this one is would be too brutal with the obvious adjustments. Heck, playing a top-quality land destruction deck has been considered griefing for ages. And by top quality I don't even mean Strip Mines and Sinkholes, that's not even top quality, that's straight up retarded.

Also, actual issue with that is that playing against LD takes very specific decks/sideboards, and that narrows down further the stronger the LD deck is. A good LD deck is essentially made of Timewalks, the reason they don't get played as such is that anyone looking to go that way can just recur Wastelands with shennanigans to achieve the effect so they don't have to devote the whole deck to it, and also because some combo decks go off with no lands. Otherwise - there's not a lot that can actually beat them. So making one of the Dragons a brutal LD deck kind of forces the players hand if they mean to have a shot at beating it. Especially since the AI can actually play LD.

What's worse is that sideboard cards vs. ld mostly shut it down completely. So it's a matter of either certain win or certain loss, and a RBG variant with Moxes could even get around many traditional sideboard options.

Anywho, I decided to rather make it this annoying thing for now:

Polished up Dracur | Open

.9 4 Badlands
.241 4 Taiga
.12 4 Bayou
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.5232 4 Flametongue Kavu
.1610 3 Indrik Stomphowler
.3593 4 Cruel Edict
.91 3 Forest
.239 3 Swamp
.164 3 Mountain
.224 2 Shivan Dragon
.1589 3 Night's Whisper
.10379 3 Acidic Slime
.1124 4 Rampant Growth
.1746 4 Arc Lightning
.12556 3 Crimson Muckwader
.1256 3 River Boa
.3 3 Animate Dead

It doesn't look like anything special and the mana base might need looking into, but it's annoying like you wouldn't believe. It's got it all - regenerating early threats in River Boa and Crimson Muckwader, boatloads of good removal in Arc Lightning, Cruel Edict and Flametongue Kavu (should be a dungeon treasure, that thing), Animate Dead because to steal your stuff and Flametongue Kavu 5-7, Enchantment and Artifact hate in Acidic Slime and Indrik Stomphowler (along with a Deathtouch bugger and a beatstick), cheap card draw in Night's Whisper and some ramp/fixing in Rampant Growth. Oh, and Shivan Dragon. Mana base might need some adjusting, but overall it's a grindy pain in the ass deck well suited to a high starting life opponent.

Depending on what you're playing it might be too damned tough.

---

Prismat | Open

I always thought this was one of the stronger decks in Shandalar. I'll just take a quick look if anything can be beneficially tweaked, but I doubt it.


Modified Prismat deck:

.164 2 Mountain
.188 2 Plains
.91 2 Forest
.189 4 Plateau
.241 4 Taiga
.212 4 Savannah
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.318 2 Fellwar Stone
.17 1 Black Lotus
.230 1 Sol Ring
.290 2 Wrath of God
.116 4 Hurricane
.75 4 Earthquake
.337 4 Inferno
.64 2 Disenchant
.490 2 Detonate
.146 4 Living Artifact
.204 2 Reverse Damage
.512 4 Onulet
.11494 3 Peace Strider
.8789 4 Healing Leaves

Well, I did end up making 2 changes, but nothing dramatic. I noticed the AI sometimes arse up with Stream of Life - the deck actually has a fair number of expensive spells so it either casts an insignificant Stream of Life or time-walks itself in panic by spending all it's mana on Stream of Life which ends up not doing anything much. I changed it for 3 Peace Strider, which is basically an up-front Onulet and can also help with chump blocking. I also changed Healing Salve for Healing Leaves to make the deck Greener (it's supposed to be a Green Dragon but it's kind of... not all that green. Oh, and I think Healing Salve / Leaves are actually a fine card (better in a deck with creatures as the combat trick part is useful). I would very much appreciate if Reviving Dose made it into the pool, it's a rather fine Shandalar card, stupid as that sounds.

Hope no-one takes this Prismat tweak the wrong way, I think it might turn out for the good. It's a well made deck, could be made a lot stronger, but I don't see a particular need to right now. The SoTA version is an Atog deck, but I kinda don't feel like making the AI try to jump through hoops instead of just slow-rolling this old thing.

Well, that was... very quick!

---

Whim - I was pleasantly surprised how Whim almost managed to hand me my backside in slices several times on the previous two runs. Liked the tweaks already in place! However, that deck has it's issues so let's see how to improve it!

Whim Tweaks | Open

.126 3 Island
.188 2 Plains
.239 2 Swamp
.254 4 Tundra
.258 4 Underground Sea
.216 4 Scrubland
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.195 4 Psychic Venom
.256 2 Twiddle
.191 4 Power Sink
.209 4 Royal Assassin
.227 2 Siren's Call
.159 2 Meekstone
.119 4 Icy Manipulator
.550 3 Yotian Soldier
.699 2 Kismet
.864 1 Whimsy
.3199 2 Marble Titan
.14539 3 Dragon Bell Monk
.1364 2 Serra Sphinx
.1618 3 Assassinate

I took out some singletons and the lone Word of Binding (I understand it's function and blowout potential, but the deck is somewhat ambitious and has a rather low land count and no fixing), and I took Black lotus out and added:

One more Twiddle - I whish Jolt was in the pool, it's more expensive so the AI is less likely to just fire it off turn 1-2. It also cantrips! Also, I whish Zap was in, too.

One more Icy Manipulator - I liked how it kicked my ass with it.

2 Marble Titan - hey, Kismet and Meekstone are in, and the deck has actual ways to untap him, so why not?

Dragon Bell Monk - there's moxes, and twiddles, and stuff, and he's on theme Also vigilance ^^ Any deck can use some prowess

Serra Sphinx instead of Serra Angel. Serra Angel wouldn't get involved in zany schemes like this and is overused anyway.

3 Assassinate. The deck's a bit slow to get going if it doesn't draw the nuts, and it's a control deck with neither card draw or actual pinpoint removal. This seemed to be the logical removal, what with it being a Time Spiral refference to the Royal Assassin and all.

Andywho, I think I made it a tad better than it was, building up on the nice inclusion, looking forward to losing to it on the next run.

That was a bit less quick but certainly enjoyable. One more left!

---

Oh god, it's Mandurang, the most boring deck ever. In design terms, I mean. It's just evasive aggro portions of what seems like a bunch of other decks in the OG variant. I mean, you can stick the Zephyr Falcon + Mutation and Will-o-the-Whisp + Unholy Strenght into any deck in their respective colors and the deck will still work -.-' Also sticking auras on Dancing Simitar is similarly as inspired. It works, don't get me wrong, but yech...

I'm changing it, there's way better things to do with Grixis colors. Doesn't matter if it happens to end up weaker, taping Seer, Witch and Sorceress together doesn't really make a dragon in my book.

Mandurang - actual dragon edition | Open

OK, I might've gone overboard a bit:

.164 2 Mountain
.239 2 Swamp
.126 2 Island
.9 4 Badlands
.258 4 Underground Sea
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.166 1 Mox Jet
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.230 1 Sol Ring
.9735 2 Ashling, the Extinguisher
.5518 4 Childhood Horror
.7880 3 Hunted Horror
.13535 4 Returned Centaur
.7879 3 Hunted Dragon
.14224 3 Barrage of Boulders
.75 3 Earthquake
.282 1 Wheel of Fortune
.5470 4 Ǵher Burst - that's Aether Burst
.6887 4 Echoing Truth
.1613 4 Man-o'-War
.7578 3 Threads of Disloyalty

But something along those, lines just less silly. With more mana sources and less trying too hard. I need to refine that a bit before it's usable, but I'm really toying with the idea of giving a dragon some bounce spam to see how nasty playing against it really is for a run or two.

Err, the Mandurang's a work in progress. Comments, questions, potential statements of huge dissapointment in my character and all that is wellcome. Feedback, too, if anyone got any. I'm not in love with any of these, this is trying mechanics and power levels out so I can balance the pool/rarities better and so that we can find bugs and mechanics the AI can and can't use and stuff.

[lujo]

Right, so I've been testing out the ludicrous Mandurang deck listed above and came to a conclusion that it's ludicrous and that I went overboard in every direction. With an adjusted mana base that deck is a fine illustration of some things actual Shandalar decks have to keep in mind. Time for some theory:

Long bunch of thoughts on multicolored decks | Open

1) Thinking of Dragons (and Djinns) as "bosses" or "tough enemies" as a rule is, in fact, very problematic and counter-productive. I mean, thinking of their decks as being more deserving of having bombs or supreme focus because they're supposed to be scary and they're dragons. Why?

a) They have the most starting life anyway, often way more than the game's balanced for. This fact alone makes them formidable threats regardless of what deck or quality of cards they are using, in some cases overwhelmingly so. Prismat, for example isn't so much a well built deck, as it's crazily effective due to the high starting life which lets it absorb hits before it lets loose with symetrical effects. The effect is amplified for control decks or lockdown decks because they like the extra time life advantage gives them, but even aggro decks like having additional time to draw into and use more cards.

b) The reason they have so much life is because the OG pool made playing three colors significantly more difficult than mono or two colors. This is also the reason why they have so many "power" cards, like moxes and such - it's because these decks actually need that stuff to get off the ground in a meta with 0 dual lands. Particularly if they want to run stuff with two same colored mana symbols in them. The life was meant to give them time to draw land, and the higher quality of non-treasure cards was supposed to compensate for inherent issues in playing more than two colors. The original Dracur deck is kind of the poster boy for the deck-building issues that mandated that high-life enemies be multicolored ones.

c) They don't run moxes or Ancestral Recall, Time Walk and Braingyser and Wheel of Fortune to be powerful - they play them to counteract the issues the OG pool had with multicolored decks. Multicolored decks like their card draw if they can have any, and the original pool doesn't really offer too much choice - it's either those design mistakes or nothing. The moxes are just to help them out be relevant if they get stuck with dead cards, so that they can at least play what they can a bit faster. The problem is that they end up playing 3 moxes, and even monocolored decks would play all 5 if they could. In Shandalar you can only get on-color moxes and they happen to be 3 color.

c.1) This is also why there's a bunch of Yotian Soldier, Onulet, Ornithopter, Brass Man, Dancing Scimitar and such around the place - with little card draw, no mana fixing, no dual lands, even 2 color decks can easily get mana screwed so artifacts are there to make sure they get to play anything in case it happens. This is, for example, why OG Whim looks the way it does. This sort of thing is much, much less necessary with just Duals being around. Many of those are there out of desperation and necessity, it's just that some of them often got worked into deck-themes because they were the things most likely to consistently hit the board at all.

d) It's very easy to "overload" a 3 (or 4 or 5) colored deck with "the best stuff", now that the mana base is completely different than the OG pool. This means duals, mostly. This is a complex thing:

d.1) It automatically breaks the "color pie", which is to say it allows a deck easy access to signature abilities in colors which get them for cheap. A green deck has access to Hornet Sting and Bee Sting if it want burn to back up it's signature efficient creatures. A red deck is stuck with bad creatures if it wants beaters to go for with it's kick-ass burn. You can combine them for great aggro easily, but any two colors taken together still can't get everything at it's most efficient or at low rarities. Three colors pretty much can, and it's easy to make a brutal deck in combination of 3 colors even without particularly rare or bomby cards from each color, if the mana base makes playing it too easy. Kiska-Ra and, in fact, Mandurang exemplify this, they both just have the best splashable weenies and the most efficient pump and they can easily murder you with it.

An example to this getting out of hand would be my rework of Dracur (possibly, I held back). With a huge historical pool, just taking signature commons/uncomons from 3 colors and putting them in a deck can easily create something that's basically unplayable against for most decks. Giving that sort of thing to an enemy who starts at 30ish life and is actually all over the place (dungeons, quest targets, just roaming around), isn't, in fact, a good idea.

d.2) If, however, you load a 3 color deck with bombs, and the mana base allows for it to be trivial, well... It's easy to see what happens. There's the reworked Mandurang list above, it needs it's mana base adjusted with a bunch of fetch lands added in and some stuff trimmed. It can, and probably will, murder anything that runs creatures and most stuff that doesn't. It's got three colors worth of stuff to make it's bombs not have any opportunity cost, so it casts 7/7 tramplers for BB and can keep bouncing your whole board all game long. There's very little that can be reasonably played against a deck like that and there's 0 sense in that kind of deck having the starting life of Dragons.

d.3) The whole situation with multicolored decks having an inherent weakness actually disappeared and got completely flipped over the years. Fetches + Dual Lands make it trivial to play 5 colors, and even just fetches, some cheap ramp and some cheap card draw make it trivial to play 5 colors even without duals (for a player). Multicolored cards were often made in a way which makes them strictly superior to mono-colored ones and over the years cards like these have piled up. So being multicolored is pretty much a large advantage if these are used. Same goes for strong/efficient/splashable mono-color cards made to be played in multiplayer environments - these have piled up dramatically. Not to mention that the domain mechanic lets you get mythic quality effects out of easily cast commons if you just run fetches and duals.

For example, 5-color Zoo is actually a 3 colored deck, except running all 5 colors is trivial, and it's easy to achieve "domain" at turn 3. This means that a Boros Swiftblade can attack you on turn 3, get Might of Alara or Gaea's Might cast on it, and hit you for 12. If two of those get cast you get hit for 22. Or you can do the same with an effectively GW deck with just Fencing Ace. Heck, you can run mono-white, have those two pumps as your only green cards, stick fetches and duals and be able to do it. The same deck would be able to also run Tribal Flames, 5 damage for 1R, no problems.

What this means is that just being in 3 colors is no longer something to be compensated with busted cards, it's a hugeish inherent advantage.

d.4) In contrast to d.3, Djinns and Dragons are the only set of enemies which are inherently open to thematic decks which feature mechanics from multicolored blocks focusing on their combinations of colors. There are a bunch of mechanics/block themes represented in several colors and not others, but there are also mechanics specific to blocks/sets focused on them. An example would be Prowess for Queltosh - it's a Blue/White/Red mechanic.

Now, the deal here is that while many of those mechanics make for flavorful and unique or at least memorable decks they're not necessarily end-boss-scary-dragon-uber-competitive type mechanics. Some of them might be, most of them aren't.

However - if you give them a start advantage, kick ass mana base, and the ability to dip into historically cool stuff from across the ages to shore them up, some of them could be interesting and many of them could make the decks they're in quite flavorful and memorable. If instead of making djinns and dragons as brutal as possible we look at them as multicolored oponents to showcase multicolored stuff in, I think they would better justify their starting lives and that it would make the whole experience quite a bit more enjoyable.

I'll be sure to map out all possibilities, and I really hope that one day we will be able to add the missing white Djinn as well as another "cycle" of 5 enemies because not all 3-color combinations are truly represented.

d4.1)Not to mention that they can be loaded with cards that the player is supposed to get, just regular cards than naturally fit into multicolored deck which you can't really give any other enemy. Making taking these from them any harder than it is just because of their starting lives and 3 color perks is, well, unreasonable tbh

d4.2) Another reason not to make Djinns and Dragons too brutal is that they aren't really "boss". You have to fight heaps of them in dungeons and they are by nature likely to take chips and chunks of your life total away even if you beat them due to their starting life. If they were truly brutal then fighting any of them would mean a phyric victory - it would be quite impossible to get through one duel in shape for even one more. Fighting OG Kiska-Ra or Mandurang is very likely to mess you up irreparably in any dungeon and just giving either of them acess to Bonesplitter or even just more efficient commons from multicolored blocks could easily make it infinitely worse. Giving them actually bomby, actually efficient non-gimmicky decks is probably utterly suicidal - if you had to fight 2 of my reworked Mandurag fiascos in a row in a dungeon, you're pretty much screwed out of whatever is behind those two. Heck, fighting 2 OG Goblin Lords is a massive pain and those weren't meant to be terrifying.

---

Anywho, working on reworking the Mandurang to be less insane. Bounce spam is just too damned brutal to play against.

UPDATE: New Mandurang in, still damned tough but at least it's interesting and more in line with Prismat's unconventional control playstyle than just mad aggro. Since it's a control deck the AI can actually play I'd be curious about how it works out - we don't have too much experience dealing with functional control decks, when you think about it.

It does have a bit of a problem with "giving an actually rather good control deck to a guy who starts at 20+ life",

Mandurang Reimagined | Open

.164 2 Mountain
.239 2 Swamp
.126 2 Island
.9 4 Badlands
.258 4 Underground Sea
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.1202 4 Crumbling Necropolis

.1275 4 Damnation
.5584 4 Innocent Blood
.7936 4 Ribbons of Night
.7086 4 Magma Jet

.4970 1 Crosis, the Purger
.791 1 Sol'kanar the Swamp King

.7239 4 Honden of Infinite Rage
.7242 2 Honden of Seeing Winds
.7241 2 Honden of Night's Reach

.2255 4 Arcane Denial
.5757 4 Words of Wisdom
.7929 2 Psychic Drain
.495 1 Feldon's Cane
.1108 1 Persecute

Right, so I took out all the moxes and put in the appropriate tri-land. I don't mind this deck screwing itself over with lands that come into play tapped, as it is quite nasty.

Damnation, Innocent Blood, Ribbons of Night and Magma Jet make for 20 removal spells. I think I've overdone it. The deck runs only two creatures so there's at least a bit of a chance it screws itself over with the first two occasionally. Ribbons of night are also a tad too good of a card in a deck like this, if the mana cost isn't an issue it just does 3 cards worth of work in one card. Magma Jet used to be Electrolyze, but that IS too damned good. In all honesty, I'd take out 2 Ribbons and all Magma Jets for Zap (or even find a place for Afflict in place of some of the good stuff). But hey, it's a control deck, it's supposed to be able to control the board.

There's two on-color bomby beatsticks. One gains some life, and the other is actually interesting in the context of the rest of the deck.

Hondens are what the deck kills with. It's kind of slow, but it sort of gives the player hope and at least you're not getting killed by 7/7's for 2 mana. The blue one is really nasty, and the Black one is very sneaky in this deck.

Arcane Denial and Words of Wisdom are the counterspell and the card draw, respectively, but the let the other guy draw cards. The deck doesn't really mind - it has a ton of removal for creatures and almost no creatures for the other guy to remove. Also, some of the cards drawn can get discarded by Chrosis, the black honden and the lone Persecute.

The third way the deck can win is by decking the opponent. This isn't very likely because the deck draws a lot of cards, but Feldon's Cane is there to help it not deck itself before the opponent runs out of cards, and Psychic Drain is there to help the opponent deck himself. Actually, that's not strictly true, I actually put it there to let the deck gain life - it seemed like an interesting option.

The way the deck can lose is if all of it's whooping 6 kill cards (2 creatures and 4 red hondens) get killed / nullified and it doesn't manage to deck the opponent. This hasn't yet happened in manalink (I give the deck to the AI and take a random deck for myself from the one's I've modified so far), but I kind of expect that player decks might be crafted with fewer self-imposed power restrictions than the AI decks and do better.

If it needs nerfing, I've got a few ideas, but I'd love to see how it feels in-shandalar first. Some of this stuff merits testing.

Right, that should do it. I think including "how does this deck lose" into consideration when making decks might be a good idea for the future.

---

I think I'll round out the djinns now.

NOTE TO SELF: There's a cool 2B Zombie which pings folks when you play an enchantment, look into that for Centaur Shaman. Also, Icy Manipulator can't untap Marble Titan, so adjust Whim with that in mind. Also - add Shards lands to Dragons, see about getting moxes out of them. Consider adding Invasion Dragons to dragons, 1 copy each. Possibly straight up move Ribbons of Night to Whim and sort out Mandurang, and move Threads of Disloyalty to Sea Dragon and sort out Seer. Maybe add Hunted Lamasu to Whim, and replace Kismeth with the blue color-shifted variant to make it more blue. See about Auramancer + Prowess monks in place of the Seeker of the Way for Queltosh and cut a Seal of Removal for a creature. Tweak Vampire Lord and Archangel, and finally do Merfolk Shaman into not being insane.

---

[lujo]

Right, so, here's the Djinns, flavored with Khans of Tarkir and, of course, Arabian Nights

Queltosh | Open

.126 4 Island
.188 4 Plains
.164 4 Mountain
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.254 4 Tundra
.189 4 Plateau
.1672 2 Wildfire Emissary
.14231 3 Bloodfire Expert
.14358 2 Sage of the Inward Eye
.14352 2 Riverwheel Aerialists
.14580 2 Lotus Path Djinn
.14299 4 Jeskai Student
.8752 3 Brute Force
.2799 3 Tithe
.4757 3 Seal of Fire
.4758 3 Seal of Removal
.4755 2 Seal of Cleansing
.5757 4 Words of Wisdom
.14332 3 Monastery Swiftspear

Since I moved Accumulated Wisdom elsewhere, I decided to add Words of Wisdom o this guy (also to lower his ability to bounce back a tiny bit). I took out Seeker of the Way and a Seal of Cleansing and put in Monastery Swiftspear. Wonder how it turns out, but now the deck is more red.

Aga Galneer | Open

.239 2 Swamp
.91 2 Forest
.188 2 Plains
.212 4 Savannah
.12 4 Bayou
.216 4 Scrubland
.415 4 Erg Raiders
.14569 4 Honor's Reward
.14380 2 Siege Rhino
.14363 4 Sandsteppe Citadel
.116 2 Hurricane
.14582 3 Map the Wastes
.1589 3 Night's Whisper
.1247 4 Fledgling Djinn
.855 2 Winter Blast
.476 3 Ashnod's Transmogrant
.11833 4 Personal Sanctuary
.14209 3 Abzan Falconer
.434 2 Juzám Djinn
.294 2 Ashes to Ashes

This guy took a bit of tweaking, but I wanted to leave the Erg Raiders in at all costs (Aga is a Turkish noble/military title, those guys were so on flavor). It has several things going on:

There is Personal Sanctuary to counteract Erg Raiders, Fledgling Djinn, Juzam Djinn, and Hurricane. The AI is hit and miss with playing it, but seems satisfactory in Manalink.

Honor's Reward also provides lifegain, and it Ashnod's Transmogrant and Map the Wastes provide counters to buff the early threaths (or make a later threat huge). Ashnod's Transmogrant is also there to hopefully help with anti-black strategies on top of the obvious sinergy. I tried out Thrive, but it was sort of meh because other things add counters and serve other purposes.

The counters also provide flying with Abzan Falconeer (I had a lot of trouble getting this guy to attack since everything was non-evasive). Winter Blast is also there to help power through. It's also a bit of a remnant as I was trying to make the deck work with Aku Djinn (good colors for it), but it didn't come together.

For large size threats there's Juzam Djinn and Seige Rhino. Night's Whisper draws it cards for some life so it doesn't run out of steam if the board gets wiped.

It's rather flavorful and unique (even though it's just creatures and buffs). Several ways to nerf/adjust it, too, I had trouble fitting stuff in and deciding on what exactly I wanted it to do, so there's options galore.

Alt-A-Kesh | Open

.252 4 Tropical Island
.12 4 Bayou
.258 4 Underground Sea
.1411 3 Nettletooth Djinn
.416 3 Erhnam Djinn
.14347 3 Rakshasa's Secret
.1508 1 Windfall
.5571 4 Ghastly Demise
.5873 4 Seton's Scout
.14636 4 Sultai Skullkeeper
.5752 4 Werebear
.5518 2 Childhood Horror
.14339 4 Opulent Palace
.1486 2 Polluted Delta
.10612 2 Misty Rainforest
.10706 2 Verdant Catacombs
.4660 4 Accumulated Knowledge
.5594 2 Krosan Beast
.13145 4 Drown in Filth

The problem with this guy is that he really wanted to be themed around "Ferocious" which is blue-green with RED, and he wanted to be themed around Ferocious because pairing his green Djinns with UG Threshold stuff left it with a milion 4 powered creatures. But it only had Threshold because he was themed after the Sultai which is blue-black + BLACK.

I wanted to leave Ferocious for the blue-red-green djinn instead of blowing them both on this guy, which is a bit of a shame. Black doesn't really lend much to Ferocious (Red does) and it lends plenty to Threshold so this is what we got. I also held back, it could've been way more brutal.

You got a lot of 4cc beef with the two djinns and Krosan Beast. The Beast is a bit questionable, it's a "mite" too big. There's Werebear and Seton's Scout and Childhood horror which become 4/4, too.

Windfall can be instant threshold, Drown in Filth, Rakshasa's Secret, Sultai Skullkeeper and the fetch lands get you threshold. Ghastly Demise and Accumulated Knowledge benefit from it.

That's basically that. If it's too deadly somehow, Krosan Beast can easily go out.

Saltem-Tor | Open

.154 4 Mahamoti Djinn
.241 4 Taiga
.252 4 Tropical Island
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.145 4 Lightning Bolt
.8186 4 Coiling Oracle
.14214 4 Alpine Grizzly
.4149 3 Keldon Vandals
.5232 3 Flametongue Kavu
.14273 4 Frontier Bivouac
.91 1 Forest
.126 1 Island
.164 1 Mountain
.14292 3 Icy Blast
.14622 3 Shamanic Revelation
.406 4 Dandân
.1333 2 Spidersilk Armor
.14223 3 Awaken the Bear
.14269 2 Feed the Clan

This one turned out strange - not enough Ferocious cards were ported and it kind of really wanted in on the threshold action that the green guy got, but it seems to work. If it's not strong enough that's probably easy to fix - just putting in Electrolyze ougt to make it much stronger.

What it does is this - stall with it's big powered creatures (Dandan, Alpine Grizzly, Keldon Vandals, Flametongue Kavu) backed up by Coilling Oracle ramp and Spidersilk Armor Reach. It can attack if it has Awaken the Bear or Icy Blast, and trying to bait it into blocking can open you up for counterattack. It also has Feed the Clan which can bump it's life considerably.

Then it starts dumping huge Djinns in, either with or without casting Shamanic Revelation before (which can also gain it varying ammounts of life and cards). The Djinns are fat enough that you can't really deal with them, and if you don't deal with the cheaper high-power dudes it can and will mess you up with Icy Blast.

It's not really as focused as the other djinns, but this might even be a good thing since there's a good chance the others are too focused. If it doesn't seem overly blue - well, it's likely you'll feel it when Mahamoti Djinn hits the board and rules the battlefield.

I'm looking forward to tryign those out and I'll probably get around to doing the stuff from the note above and doing the henchmen next. I'm thinking an Eldrazi deck for the Summoner, War Mage is allready done, Thought Invoker is a bit generic (if I remember it correctly) but I don't have a clear idea about it yet, Necromancer can probably do better than the swampwalk shtick (or do swampwalk better if that's the idea, there's not all that much reanimation to work with I think) and the White Guy seems to work as-is, so maybe just a light tweak or something.

EDIT: I also tweaked the tweaked Mandurang to account for the fact that hondens are legendary (completely slipped my mind and the deck was still winning. Gave it another Fledons cane and that X lifegain/milling spell instead of 2 hondens, I'll adjust the list later).

EDIT2: Also have to check the decks for "how does thing lose" factor. It needs to bloody be there because they got 8/8 squirrels and stuff. Has to be sorta fair for the player, too. I tend to shore them a bit too well on all fronts when I'm given more than 1-2 collors to work with.

[gmzombie]

While I haven't played any of your decks yet..haven't had time I enjoy reading the thought out and in depth info on each of your changes. You are doing what Korath does when he does an update and that is a great way of doing things. Well done.

[lujo]

Thank you very much! I try my best, but please don't be too dissapointed if the results are all over the place. This is faaaaar from "finished product" - I haven't even mapped stuff out properly yet and I'm kinda just changing up stuff that reuses the same old cards (so I don't keep grinding through the samey/buggy/disfunctional decks in Shandalar, or to undo various Abes screwups). And I'm playing around with power levels and mechanics - some of these could turn out to be horribly overwhelming, some completely underwhelming, and none have been tested at their starting-life tier at all! Or with ante taking a card out of the deck for the duration of the match considered, or they aren't built with a sideboard in mind (you can't really take something out), or... A million things could go wrong with any of them, and there's faults in my logic, and there's been a million forced choices, cards overlooked, stuff scaled up/down in power too much (or too little), etc, etc. And god knows how the differences between Manalink and Shandalar AI affect the AI handling of various cards, or even Shandalar-endemic bugs!

It's really just a temporary workover to get a better feel of a more diverse field of stuff, give people food for thought, share observations about the inner workings of OG decks / pool... Catch bugs, help get the AI better / mechanics working, make flavorful and logically consistent decks (I actually do my very best to keep on flavor when doing these things which accounts for some choices over others to give decks as much of a cohesive factor as I can), because I feel it'll be more fun for folks to try mechanics out that way.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised and highly motivated by the way the views on this thread keep going up all the time and I'm glad I can give you guys some stuff to play with (even if a bunch of it turns out horrible somehow). But I still haven't even mapped everything out properly, not even remotely so - so as lovely as these decks might look on paper (or even play out) it's quite possible they'll need serious refactoring (never was sure how that word is different from "reworking" or "fiddling with") with card availablity / rarity alterations / general meta considerations in mind. But it's gonna be fun!

Oh, and the more Korath makes possible to do with the adventuring engine, the more cool stuff can be done with the decks themselves, it's all quite interconected.

---

Anywho, working on the henchmen, will put them all here.

[stassy]

Attached in this post is an archive of all current revamped lujo decks and savegames for some enemies (they will/should immediately pop on you when loading but you should have time to hit the switch deck option, this savegame take the last savegame slot ingame) on wizard difficulty with player at 27 life and default deck tribal goblin (which can be customized with Ciroth library tool).

This is to quickly test those decks, this is a work in progress until all enemy decks/enemy savegame are covered.

So far, with the current savegames available, no issue found but Sea Dragon's Phantasmal Terrain AI, sometimes AI will cast it several time on the same land and will choose another land type instead of island for islandwalk or the original land type which is clearly not intended (though it's quite difficult to setup a good AI for this card, there are plenty of strategies that can be used depending on AI or player deck...)

[lujo]

Awesome! Thank you so much for that! I'll try to post up an updated decks folder when I re-tweak stuff I made some notes on

Here's some thoughts on henchmen in general and then Summoner in particular:

Some brief thoughts on Henchmen | Open

Henchmen are the guys who chase you down, have a bunch of (scaling I think someone said) life, you have to fight them and you can't get anything out of it. I'm not sure they start running if you beat enough of them or stop spawning if you hit that threshold, but they seem to stop spawning if you beat the wizard who keeps sending them at you.

Now here's a catch - you have to fight these guys, which is a major difference compared to other guys. They also have more life (reportedly they can have quite a bunch over 20) so they're tougher to beat regardless what you or them are playing (to a degree, this does depend on deck archetypes somewhat).

Do these guys really need to also be crazily strong? What are the concequences of making them extraordinarily tough?

a) You'll lose fights. This will make you lose cards, which can have a snowball effect. A bunch of archetypes really need a solid mana/ramp/burn/whatever base, and if you start bleeding mana elves or important backbone stuff it can make the cards you don't lose significantly weaker. Bombs can be quite interchangable, you lose one undercosted fatty, you stick another one in, but replacing key uncommons can be quite a pain.

b) The only way to get rid of them is to kill their wizard. And from what I've seen (and this might've been due to the win-count bugs) killing a wizard prevents all his minions from spawning so if you do that too quick there's not much game left for your color. I'm really not sure pushing folks towards that is a good idea.

And when I look at the OG Henchmen they were made way less optimal than they could've been, or at least some of them were. Take Summoner for example, I've dissected her along with a potential improvement plan below. Every single card in it (almost) can be buffed! Are brutally tough henchmen really a good idea?

Summoner Forensics | Open

Right, so, this is a very, very, very curious deck once you get past the obvious and try to update it. My initial idea was to just scrap the OG plan and make Grandma summon Eldrazi, which is what the deck means to do anyway and it would make a very cool special minion, but I'm not sure I'd saddle folks with a potentially buggy deck (have to try it in Shandalar, Manalink AI can be quite bizzare with Eldrazi Spawn, ty Korath for clearing that up).

Anyway, let's have the jiansonz tweak of the OG deck it's not very different and I've used it to try to apply tweaks:

Right, so, this is the mana base:

.91 13 Forest
.188 3 Plains
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.212 4 Savannah

Sure, moxes out, and adjustments it it goes mono-green, nothing special.
-
This is plan A, summoning a big bad "Eldrazi":

.485 1 Colossus of Sardia
.30 1 Channel

There used to be 2 Colossus and the Channel is pretty much there for summoning it, so if you take one Colossus out no point in leaving Channel in, really. It was there for a purpose. Of course, it can still be used to untap the Colossus.

The note to make here is that there's exactly one ramp spell besides the Channel in the deck:

.149 4 Llanowar Elves

Which means that the probability of casting or untapping that Colossus is pretty slim if Channel isn't drawn. But I could replace the Colossus with any number of large green (or artifact) monstrosities and add some ramp, but that would mean you get to face a huge critter almost every time - and that would make the deck waaaaaaay stronger than it used to be. Not to mention that the Colossus, even if it lands is either not going to untap after it swings once, or is going to cost all the mana in the world to maintain so it's unlikely you'll be facing more than one of these at a time. If I put virtually anything else, and make it ramp like a "Summoner" would want to, not only are you going to be seeing the "Eldrazi" more often (probably every game), you're gonna be facing multiples, probably turn after turn.

It's quite a conundrum, only 6 cards in. But there's more!

.89 3 Force of Nature

See, this thing is both huge and cheap, and you get to see it way more often than the Colossus. Depending on what color you're in, it can be easy or impossible to get rid of, but it also ties up all the Summoner's mana. So the idea is that if this guy hits he can kill you very quickly, but there's only gonna be one on the board (CoP shennanigans excluded, I haven't actually seen the AI pull it off very often, I think it just keeps paying the upkeep, but I'm not sure).

Now, if this guy is the Eldrazi, then Wild Growth is probably way better than Llanowar Elves - because I've often times killed the elf and had it do damage to the Summoner when it got ramped out. Provided that works.

But what's more important is that I could replace this guy with a decent number of undercosted green monsters but those don't have a crippling upkeep cost, so, again, you'd be facing multiples turn after turn, possibly from turn 3 onwards. 8/8-ish Trampler is no small deal in Shandalar, and a Primalcrux could easily be larger than that.

But the biggest deal comes from the fact that having a huge undercosted critter like that makes all these be in:

.143 3 Lifelace (Which the AI is currently not too good at using)
.35 3 Circle of Protection: Green

And the circle makes the deck white and further pulls in:

.116 4 Hurricane
.405 2 Cyclone

Which then make it a CoP deck. I don't want CoP's in the pool, let alone in a deck, let alone making a henchmans deck rewolve around an off-color splash, but it can be either replaced with Personal Sanctuary (no way for the AI to mess that up as long as it plays it), or replacing the Force of Nature, which then means that the Lifelace can go out, and this whole section of the deck's point is questionable. Cyclone is cool and I'd love to have a cyclone deck around, but it's another thing which ties up the mana, and the deck doesn't currently even ramp very much.

Then there are these two things:

.64 2 Disenchant
.108 2 Healing Salve

Healing salve can be Healing Leaves, but it's there to shore up life because of Channel and all the self-damage effects. Disenchant can be Naturalize, or even Return to the Earth, and, heck, if Force of Nature is replaced, and I just put 4 Return to the Earth in the deck, Disenchant, Hurricane and Radjan Spirit can all be replaced to a satisfying degree, and then the CoP is out, and then the only thing worth keeping Healing Leaves in is Cyclone, so I can pull that, too, and that leaves me with a deck worth of cards to put in.

And if I replace Force of Nature with something on-par with it but with no huge upkeep, that alone would be enough for the deck to murder you. All this other stuff is kinda dead cards anyway in one way or another, and if the deck can kill you with all the chaff in it, then immagine what it would be like if it wasn't chaff? I mean, look at what's left:

.277 4 War Mammoth - There's a bunch of more threatening 4cc dudes with Trample in there, many of them rares.
.756 3 Radjan Spirit - This could be replaced by anything at all, if the disenchant handles fliers, too.
.419 2 Flying Carpet - Power Matrix does what it does except with no mana, and just puting it in place of the carpet is actually good for the OG deck what with it's enormous upkeep costs and stuff
.409 2 Desert Twister - Return to the Earth copies 4-6
.97 3 Giant Growth - The better and more numerous the creatures get, and there's a deck worth of space currently occupied by highly replacable cards, the better this gets.

THE DEAL: All the cards in the deck can be replaced. If Force of Nature is replaced, the deck doesn't need white at all, or many of it's other cards. The deck can murder you with Force of Nature despite it's drawback, but the deck as is exists because of that drawback, and it's also a safety catch - it makes the deck not be too brutal to handle.

But wth do I replace all the stuff WITH? I mean, if I just make it able to cast it's "Eldrazi" and it's "Smaller Eldrazi", that's 16-ish cards at best.
I put in Return to the Earth and Power Matrix, that's, say, 6 more, 22. I put in 24 lands that's 46. Probably less. Let's say I have 16 more cards to work with. And it's a deck that can brutalize you on the spot once it hits 6 mana, which is going to be easy enough for it. You'll be swimming in huge fatsos past that point and it's likely it'll take all your resources to deal with whatever the big guys end up being.

Whatever those 16 cards are they'll be overkill if they're actual good cards. Heck, just more functional ramp targets are overkill (or, like, functional ramp).

Summoner Reworked | Open

Let's try this then, it tries to follow some principles of how the old deck was layed out (past the obvious ones):

.91 24 Forest
.14612 3 Return to the Earth
.4553 2 Power Matrix
.11012 4 Overgrown Battlement
.285 4 Wild Growth
.405 2 Cyclone
.1250 4 Wall of Blossoms
.4604 3 Silverglade Elemental
.485 2 Colossus of Sardia
.13377 3 Arbor Colossus
.11538 3 Tangle Mantis
.97 2 Giant Growth
.14503 2 Abzan Beastmaster
.8789 2 Healing Leaves

Colossus of Sardia is the same and Force of Nature is replaced by Arbor Colossus. It doesn't have trample which may be a bummer, but it doesn't have a drawback and Power Matrix is in. If needed, Giant Growth and Healing Leaves can become some source of Trample.

The ramp is Wild Growth, Overgrown Battlement (with Wall of Blossoms), and Siverglade Elemental. Besides the ramp they all have obvious other functions - the walls are something for the deck to play very early to block up, cycle a card etc, and the Elemental is a body on the ground.

Abzan Beastmaster was a last-minute addition. Might be worth playing it up, it can draw the deck some cards.

Tangle Mantis is the Wild Mamooth. Healing Leaves is Healing Salve, and Return to Earth is disenchant + flying hate (along with the Arbor Colossus, make note) because I cut Hurricane. There's a bit of Hurricane spam in the OG pool anyway, makes sense, but is quite annoying because it gives too many decks a sudden "I win" button, so I'm trying to see how it works without it.

Cyclone is still in. Manalink doesn't let you pay upkeep for it at all. The deck seemed to have a bit of an issue with being swarmed with weenies, and I would've put some Highland Game for that and Cyclone benefits but it's not gonna be working properly until the update so let's have it like this for now.

There's saveral ways to build this deck differently, more flavor and early offense with Spirits (with the 7cc 4/4 flying Kirin topping the curve and Kindercatch as the 6/6 for 6 threat), different fatties, Force of nature still in without the CoP, etc. Eldrazi Ramp, obviously. Some green source of mass trample that isn't Overrun (i think there's an enchantment in Exodus that does it for 1G) would be welcome in the pool.

Heck, the first thing I tried was Treefolk (Cradle Guard, Oakgnarl Warrior and Treefolk Harbringer - I mistook the harbringer for a Defender thinking it would power Overgrown Battlement) - they worked fine enough even without their insane bombs).

But let's have it as this for now, see how it does. The idea is that all the old slots are filled with similar enough stuff, ramp is actually in (and can't be pinged off), it's mono green and it's economy is somewhat better managed (I hope), so it has fewer dead cards. Overall I think it's a stronger deck, but it might not seem so because it probably won't beat you with a few individual cards which might've been better or just more instantly deadly (like Force of Nature or Hurricane). And it also might not seem so because it actually plays stuff now as opposed to before when it mostly didn't except for it's few functional cards, and a bunch of that stuff aren't gameending threaths - except previously it wasn't really anything so yeah.

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And here's Thought Invoker - I liked how it worked and decided to make a few updates, and a few adjustments to up the annoyance and sheer WTF factor of Psychic Venom shennanigans. That's a very unique card in blue, btw, and decks revolving around it to any degree, if mono-colored, have to get creative if they want to back it up with something in the same vein. I haven't studied the blue pool enough to be sure there isn't a fatty which taps all oppoents lands (or how much stuff from Prophecy got in so far, that set is hugely underrated in general) but for now here's this:

Thought Invoker | Open

.126 24 Island
.422 4 Giant Tortoise
.195 4 Psychic Venom
.191 4 Power Sink
.326 4 Ghost Ship
.494 2 Energy Flux
.154 1 Mahamoti Djinn
.1170 2 Temporal Adept
.12325 3 Captain of the Mists
.9234 4 Pestermite
.1341 2 Treachery
.7116 4 Serum Visions
.1325 2 Annex

I did what Abe suggested and upped the land count and gave it some card draw. The Manalink AI is a bit strange when it comes to casting Serum Visions for some reason I've seen it not get cast on turn one for no obvious reasons.
Took out Power Leak, too, obviously.

Then I updated Time Elemental into Temporal Adept, and I kind of didn't like how both generic and sort of efficient the creature base was and decided to put in one of the most annoying things ever - Pestermite. Which is, incidentally, Twiddle on a stick, and I think I'll just stick it into Wihm when I come around to re-tweaking him. I wanna see how the AI is with that thing, should be worth a bunch of laughs.

Then I thought about Mana Short and Drain Power a bit. I decided that while they do have thier ups and downs and such, having a semi-Icy Manipulator creature in Captain of the Mists might be a better plan. This depends on how the AI handles him, ofc. I added another Power Sink to ensure the deck has some way to tap multiple enemy lands (and also because it's a rather busted card/counterspell that stopped getting reprinted a long time ago).

And then I decided to up the whole Psychic Venom wtf factor with - Annex. Yes, really! I always wondered about that card and never in my life used it before. The few times the AI pulled it on me leaving me with yet more turns of having to tap something with Psychic Venom made me groan and clap. I think I'mma retool the deck sometimes down the road to add two more - it's the perfect partner in crime to Psychic Venom. One more thing on the list of potential Whim improvements, too.

Oh, and to compensate for some of what I saw as possible nerfs I bumped the Controll Magic to Treachery. Let's see how that pans out.

Enjoy, feedback wellcome and since I have to map blue out properly - anyone know of anything simmilar to Psychic Venom in blue? Or mass enemy land tapdown that's in?

Anyway I'm not even sure it's stronger, but it's quite a bit more annoying and I think that's actually a better quality for a henchman deck. Then again it might in fact just BE stronger.

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And here's Necromancer, the zombie tribal edition:

Cosmic Horror | Open

In case folks were wondering - the Cosmic Horror in the deck was part of a mini-theme for all the different OG Big Black monsters to be in a deck, like Lord of the Pit is. Or on in other words, they wanted this guy to have something huge at the end of the curve and they had Lord of the Pit and Sengire Vampire busy elsewhere. I didn't keep it - it's a very cool monster thematically but it's drawback is too killer. It's upside, though, when it comes to the OG pool, is that it's brutally hard to kill him if he does hit the board. Sorry for digression.

Necromancer | Open

.239 22 Swamp
.291 4 Zombie Master
.54 2 Cyclopean Tomb
.10893 4 Contaminated Ground
.11939 2 Endless Ranks of the Dead
.11274 4 Grasp of Darkness
.13532 2 Read the Bones
.11931 4 Diregraf Ghoul
.11968 3 Ghoulraiser
.13451 3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
.11360 4 Skinrender
.6274 2 Soulless One
.12124 4 Walking Corpse

Anywho, I left the Zombie Master + Evil Presence/Cyclopean Tomb in there, except it's Contaminated Ground now. Come to think of it, there's not too many ways for the deck to exploit the new card (Whim just did a backflip, though), so maybe keeping the cheaper Evil Presence in might have been better. I'll see after I test it out in Shandalar, in Manalink the AI just won't play Contaminated Ground. Eh, and I kind of reduced all swampwalk to having a Zombie Master out, not sure if that was a good idea

There's no Bad Moon or Dark Ritual - the creature quality got significantly improved so no need. I didn't even go overboard with the creatures, I think, or the spells. No sense making henchmen too hard to deal with. Also Bad Moon is symetrical and thus weird to play against with black (especially if Swampwalk is only guaranteed with Zombie Master out). I gave it Endless Ranks of the Dead so that it can swarm you, Read the Bones to draw some stuff and Grasp of Darkness to kill stuff.

No Unholy Strenght either, I'm curious to see how that works out.

Diregraff Ghoul is out early, Walking Corpse also, Zombie Master makes them unblockable, Ghoulraiser gets zombies back if they die, Skinrender kills stuff, Gray Merchant drains life (also counts the Evil Presence) and Soulles one gets bigger and bigger. They should be able to attack too, because Grasp of Darkness is an instant that can be used to kill a blocker like a semi Giant Growth (but if there's too many weenie zombies and too little pseudo-pump to make it behave properly, there's a bunch of other similar stuff around that can be added).

I hope it doesn't dissapoint. We know the old Necromance works this is a good chance to try a heap of new stuff.

EDIT: Note to self: This deck needs a mana tweak, too few lands. A bunch of them do, in fact.

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Thought I wouldn't but I did end up tweaking this guy, to check some things out:

High Priest | Open

.188 23 Plains
.2537 3 Marble Diamond
.6 4 Armageddon
.10 1 Balance
.41 4 Consecrate Land
.5 3 Ankh of Mishra
.11833 2 Personal Sanctuary
.9964 4 Excommunicate
.10412 4 Elite Vanguard
.11900 4 Champion of the Parish
.5629 4 Mystic Visionary
.5628 4 Mystic Penitent

Heh, here's what I did, and why:

The SotA deck leans it up much like Abe did, but sticks 4 Consecrated Ground in there with Mishra's Factories. I didn't feel like Mishra's Factories, but I liked the goofy sensible inclusion and decided to stick with it because an Armageddon deck can ruin you day anyway. I also didn't, for some reason, include a Crusade -like effect to hamstring it a bit more, just in case. Armageddon might've seemed like fair game way back then, but this stance has been reevaluated a while ago. Still, it's nice to try stuff out with it

I gave it some mana stones too, and I changed Dingus Egg for Ankh of Mishra, for variety. With the Ankh you can sort-of manage to not kill yourself if you watch it (and it's more on flavor) and the Egg is one of those "I win instantly" cards, as if Armageddon needed more upsides. I also gave it 2 Personal Sanctuary. I say, that's one handy card. I think I'll pop over to Prismat with that thing, too, he seems to be struggling vs. the other decks, he'll love it.

Swords to Plowshares... Eh, long time since it's been deemed too damned good. I gave the deck Excommunicate. I've been playing around with it before I started mapping stuff when I just reworked cleric and priestess and it's actually quite good. Should be fine in this deck, particularly, it slows the other guy for a turn, and if the deck lands an Armageddon with a consecrated ground and a mana stone down, it's like killing something AND slowing you down for a turn. Also, he's the high priest, stands to reason that he can excommunicate people.

Obviously, if the deck isn't strong enough now, a lot of these changes can be turned into more scary-looking stuff or straight up reverted.

For the creature base I gave it Mystic Penitent and Mystic Visionary who fly with threshold. Now that I think about it, the deck is a bit permanent heavy for Threshold - Armageddon and Balance will probably get it but it's possible that something in it really should've been Honor's Reward, that there should've maybe been some fetch lands and spells to help it out. Hmmm.

I actually started out by giving it Champion of the Parish, which is quite a guy, and he needed humans and those two were obvious for an Armageddon deck. I just swapped Savannah Lions with Elite Vanguard for tribal reasons.

Right, well, I seem to have nerfed it. It can do more damage without armageddon via the Ankh now, and you don't get life from Swords to Plowshares (but he gets a much worse "removal" option). He gets more out of Armageddon but you can have more on the board before it hits (allthough you may get pinged a bunch for it), and the champion can get big. Lot's of way to re-buff him, but let's see how this works. I'm not too crazy about having an OP Armageddon grandpa beating me up and taking my cards all the time.

---

Warmage has allready been done, he does his thing except with a load of arc spells now because they do the AI favors. They're also rather strong and provide much needed alternatives to Lightning Bolt and Fireball for card advantage. I haven't reconsidered him much.

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