Improved Shandalar General Playtesting & Feedback Thread

[lujo]

Well, I can put these up - Witch, Undead Knight, Warlock and Vampire Lord. No time to write them up, I'll do it later.

In short I buffed the witch and the knight back up a bit, might be too much, not sure. Warlock got a full rework and since the exalted implementation is a placeholder he's rife with misplays, except that he can still win matches fine enough it seems. He'll need more work after testing, ofc. Vampire just got some things it was misplaying replaced with things it won't (I think), and I think I also made him a bit more consistent. Will also potentially need more work but he was being tested in a disfunctional state so we couldn't really know where he was at. (Also I suppose I need to write up the vampire tribe... not issues, so much as conceptual unfortunate circumstances.)

I'll do Nether Fiend next and then backtrack back to the djinns and put them up, and write it all up. Just later, sometimes tonight probably.

---

Oh, and indeed, yes, deckbuilder makes playdecks, I'm aware of that XD Notepad++ is very helpful with that, if you keep both the deck and the playdeck decks open in it, it automatically updates the one you edit, so you just copy paste into the other one and hey stay opened forever.

I was talking about other kinks, and as for testing - I meant that I could make a separate folder full of shortcuts to duels with every deck so that testing something would mean just clicking on an icon with it's name instead of looking up numbers one way or another.

[Thesaguy]

Took me a while to get a functional install onto another machine. I really got lucky the last time around, this time around I hit quite a few snags. The proper procedure, in broad terms, seems to be this:

1) Get Cirith Ungol's install.
2) Run his patcher.
3) Get windows c related files from one of the updates.
4) Get the 3 art updates from the same post where you got the install, apply them.
5) Get the shandalar update from Cirith Ungol's folder
6) Get current shandalar update

and then, ofc, put all my stuff back in.

And this would still leave someone without magic_updater, and possibly other things as well.

Lujo,
All I did with my last install was download Cirith Ungol's
Manalink3_20150325.7z and Shandalar Korath preAlpha ThievesHideout1.7z from his DropBox

Download the additional Art, not sure where I got that again.

Then downloaded Korath latest update

What is step 3 you did? "Get windows c related files from one of the updates"

[lujo]

There's a post by Cirith Ungol with everything you got except the latest update. That's also what I did last time and it all worked like a charm.

This time I had several missteps/mishaps along the way, one which caused everything in the game to not have text. That one was solved by getting a folder called "win updates" or something like that. I think.

---

Right, djinns still sitting still, because I though I'd get through Nether Fiend more easily than I did.

Anywho, I can at least put up the remaining black guys, including a lolzy black wizard attempt and write them up for you guys to see where I took them, and also point out a few things handy to notice and know.

Also, It's not like Azaar needed a rework. What he had was not so much a good deck as much as a good pile of random cards which tended to just work out better than most others. Mostly because it could dark ritual out a hypnotic spectre and had several other "one card wins game" things going on. What I did with it isn't commendable in any way, but might serve as an illustration of why "using the best ever cards and the best ever everything" isn't such a hot idea in practice ^^ That's if it works, it seemed to in infinite duels mode.

---

Right, so the writeup, I'll try not to ramble too much:

Witch | Open

I had a really fun and cool spirit deck for the withc with Kami of the Waning Moon and Infernal Kirin and stuff, but none if it works unless I tweak the .csv , which I'm leaving for another update. This one might have been buffed a bit too much, I'll need feedback on it.

.239 21 Swamp
.10632 4 Piranha Marsh - Added this. Why not?

.7557 3 Shuko
.14201 3 Witch's Familiar
.7158 4 Ashen-Skin Zubera
.13294 3 Gnawing Zombie

I'm keeping that package as a core throughout, it just evolved a bit with the Zubera.

.4922 4 Addle
.12016 3 Maw of the Mire

Those things are also surviving permutations and are core by this point.

.10530 4 Disfigure - Let's try this out.
.7891 3 Keening Banshee - Questionable.
.12828 3 Slum Reaper - V. questionable. Deck does appreciate a sac effect.

Those two things used to be Infernal Kirin and something I don't remember right now, but at one point Dark Hatchling. This is a bit too much quality removal for the early game, especially since they kill stuff and leave stuff to deal with behind. The banshee whould be Bloodhunter Bat if it turns out problematic, and I'd like to keep the other guy below 5 mana to prevent mana cost inflation.

.10886 3 Cadaver Imp - I think this guy'll become core. The 1B 1/1 lifelink flying imp was too good, Kami of the Waning Moon, when tweaked, was very nice, this guy is a nice standin.
.5451 2 Urborg Uprising - What's not to like? Draw 3 cards for 5, if the AI doesn't misplay it. Keep an eye out.

Otherwise if you've played my witch before it's mostly the same as it was - cheap blockers, some sac effects wich work, shuko for boosting filers and general attrition and some expensive utility. Shuko is a stronger card than you'd think as it effortlessly messess with the numbers on cards - Witch's Familiar becomes a 3/3 for 3 and such. If the game drags they pile up for a mini repeatable Howl from Beyond, etc.

Then the Undead Knight:

| Open

Last time around he was nerfed, this time around he got buffed. I think. Flanking implementation still means he's not as agressive as he could be if the AI understood it right.

.239 24 Swamp

.13542 4 Scourgemark - Old core buff
.1835 4 Thrull Retainer - Old core buff
.11909 2 Cobbled Wings - Let's see how it works out.

The guys below had their numbers adjusted along the way, but one of them is new:

.4271 4 Corrupt Court Official
.2702 3 Fallen Askari
.2422 2 Cadaverous Knight - This guys is v. nasty.
.667 4 Headless Horseman
.7685 3 Kuro's Taken - He's new. Let's see how he does.

Removal:

.12602 3 Public Execution - This is still in.
.14590 4 Merciless Executioner - And he's back. He's really strong, mind you.

And I added:

.971 3 Abyssal Specter - To give the deck a persistant evasive and disruptive dude who isn't an outright bomb.

Let's see if this pushed him too far, or wasn't enough.

The Warlock is brand new, laden with misplays and understandable exalted weirdness, but much more like the old original warlock in spirit. Except, you know, more functional as a deck, and with 100% less dark rituals into hypnotic spectres.

Warlock back to roots | Open

.12549 1 Cathedral of War - Only one, because the AI is weird with them, and also can't mulligan.
.239 24 Swamp

.10410 4 Dread Warlock - vs. Non-Black, he's the star of the show.
.13522 3 Prowler's Helm - Otherwise some guy puts this on and then they're the star of the show.

The show is:

.12564 4 Duty-Bound Dead
.12583 4 Knight of Infamy
.12617 4 Servant of Nefarox

Which... are misplayed. If the AI has 2 potential attackers, like 2 warlocks, it'll attack with them for 4 instad of just one for, like 7 or 8. Duty-Bound Dead won't ever attack. This might be because otherwise it would attack all the time, it might be because the AI can't inlcude exalted bonuses into the equation. So if it has 3 of them on board, and you have nothing, they'll just sit there. Maybe they're just messed up somehow independently? Anyway, they're in there more as an enchantment that enables exalted for now.

The auxiliary attackers and removal bait are:

.12696 4 Daggerdrome Imp - Moved over from the Witch, a potential pain in the ass with exalted. Also a potential exalted nullifier if several can attack, we have to see how often this happens.
.12545 3 Bloodhunter Bat - Shuld be something else, really. I think I'll probably swap him and Keening Banshee between warlock and witch at some point.

And the removal:

.12594 4 Murder - Kills anything, and by means of a dagger, much like the one in the Warlock portrait.
.13310 3 Liturgy of Blood - Also kills anything. Not entirely happy with this, as how useful the mana is depends on what can be played in the same phase as this if anything, and you can see the mana being wasted. There's alternatives, ofc.

And something really important:

.13892 2 Font of Return - This reads: "Pay 6 draw three cards". It's sometimes played strangely, and has a tendency to get used over more pressing things that could be played instead, but since the deck is vulnerable to removal and needs it's creatures on board it just has to be in. Heck, if the AI handled it better there's be more of it in.

The plan is simple - get a hard-to-block bugger to hit the other guy several times. Kill anything that's racing you, because exalted buggers in general, and black ones in partcular, suck on defense. It's a strange offensive banding variant (and if you ever get your ass kicked by it properly you might realize just how madly strong actual banding is).

Along with all the problems that come from the AI/code etc, what the deck is kinda bad at is that there's not all that much to do with all your exalted guys sitting idly. Paladin has Hand of Justice, if he has a bunch of dudes sitting idly he wipes your side of the board. This guy doesn't.

I did try and ending up with that functionality enabled is probably possible. Skirsdag High Priest , for example would be madly good in an exalted deck. The problem with him was that the exalted dudes were getting killed and I got him to make a deamon every once out of 6-7 games. Which is silly, because if I build it right I think I could have him really churning them out, just have to figure out how exactly to make that happen.

Also, another thing is that Gallows at Willow Hill would also work quite fine if there was more black exalted guys who were humans. But since there's only 5 black exalted things in the whole game, no dice, really. Maybe I could get it to work one day, we'll see.

Enjoy, and I'm curious about how it works out.

Then Vampire Lord:

Vampire Lord | Open

.239 25 Swamp
.11923 4 Dead Weight
.220 4 Sengir Vampire
.3456 4 Wall of Souls - Too many?
.460 2 Sorceress Queen - Took one out
.172 4 Nettling Imp - Bumped one up
.10703 4 Vampire Nighthawk - Bumped it up.
.12114 4 Vampire Interloper

.11451 3 Go for the Throat - The old removal was getting misplayed, now it has proper removal.
.12563 3 Duskmantle Prowler - Err, more vampires? Here's another vampire. I'll say something about vampires below.
.1589 3 Night's Whisper - Sign in Blood was getting cast at the opponent very often early in the game. This was pure insanity, obv, and every time the deck did this it lost badly. Every time it drew it later and targeted itself it didn't, it drew into it's lockdown and kicked ass.

EDIT: That's actually a really good example of how one misplayed card can cause an entire deck to fall apart. If the AI, on turn 2, spends it's turn to lose a card and give me 2 cards - that's likely game. If I wanted to replicate this effect, I would have to possess a card which said: "0cc, instant, target player discards a non-land card and you draw 3 cards". Or, more precisely "0cc, instant, target player discards a card, you draw 3 cards, tap all lands that player control and empty all mana from their mana pool". This is not even going into the fact that losing that particular card meant that it was very easy for it to run out of steam, which was precisely why this card was in the deck in the first place. No wonder it felt lacklustre.

Also, I took Dark Ritual out - sure, it ocasionally did something for the deck, but nothing major and was often a dead draw instead. When you factor in the (severe) misplays and the general ambitiousness it was causing it to be less dangerous than it should've been on paper.

Let's see how it works now that everything in it, hopefully, works as intended.

A note on vampires and vampire lord:

Vampires in Shandalar currently | Open

So, folks want vampires. There's a problem with that. There's several, actually.

0) Black Vampires only. No splashy minnions. Yes it would make my life easier, but no, I have integrity.

1) Vampires that don't have evasion are creatures that don't have evasion. The AI can't play those effectively, not even if they're Leatherback Baloth, and none of the vampires ARE Leatherback Baloth. Not my fault for this, if you find this a problem, contact anyone being unrealisticaly positive about the general AI capabilities.

This is why you can see that the three Vampires I have in have flying. The one I added doesn't, but he can, in theory, contribute to winning.

Also, it's not just that vampires in general don't have flying, it's also that they're generally offensive, and one of the ways non-flying fails is exactly because the AI can't play offense properly.

2) Many of them don't really work. The ones that can sacrifice creatures to pump themselves? Lolz to be had if you try to use them. Ones which count the opponents life total - in Shandalar? Seriously? Why are those even in the pool at all? Etc.

3) Those that DO fly tend to be, well, bomby, or lords, or only incidentaly vampires beause a set with particular themes got it's flying fattie to be a vampire and not a demon. Vampire Lord isn't that high in the tier chain. He shares his tier with Forest Dragon , Sea Dragon , Paladin and Goblin Warlord. Goblin Warlord can be an unholy menace simply because lords , shandalar and 1/1 for 1 guys don't mix, but the current Vampire Lord is much, much, much stronger than any of the other guys except maybe paladin. For a simple reason, really, most of his guys fly, and it also has ways of dealing with enemy creatures directly (and repeatably).

Vampire Nighthawk isn't just a crazy good vampire, he's a crazy good creature, and the deck also has ways to make stuff attack into it. Vampire Interloper isn't objectionable either. Sengir Vampire isn't that great, granted, but if he was a bomb then the deck would be full-evasive aggro with semi-unpenetrable defense, card draw and removal (because you gotta have those).

If Gatekeeper of Malakir was in, I'd add him as removal, sure.

4) Those which aren't bomby, suck. Keep in mind that for someone who's been around mtg very intensively for a very long time I'm quite relaxed with what "sucks" and can find delight in and understanding for a wide variety of cards. But if my kid was preparing a mtg deck for a tourney and asked me to help I'd say "The picture is irrelevant, the name is irrelevant, the stats are irrelevant, the flavor text is irrelevant. If it costs more than 4 mana it sucks by design and you would do best to take it out of the deck". This isn't always true, ofc, and depends on the meta, but in general cards over 4cc are more hassle for a deck than they're worth.

I've allready got 4 Sengir Vampire topping the curve, and even though they're painfully filler, they do what they're supposed to do. Stronger than that - no need for it unless testing shows otherwise. And if testing shows otherwise it just means the rest of the deck isn't working right.

Weaker/fiddlier than that - adding it would just inflate the number of expensive cards. If Sengir Vampire was too strong - again, problem with other cards. It's not that I couldn't possibly stick in something stronger, but there's no real need.

Also:

5) People seem to like lords. This is probably because you don't have to be the most experienced person to undersand what lords do at the basest level.

At a more advanced level, what they do is effortlessly fiddle with statistics on too many cards. 3cc 2/3 flying deathtouch is fine, if it needs buffs it doesn't need buffes that affect all other creatures in the deck. 2/1 for 2 flying/can't block - same thing. 4/4 flying for 5 - workable. Do I want all of these guys to have +2/+1 , or +4/+2 on them because I played a 3/3 for 4 (who is also a 5/4 for 4)? If a deck needs it's 1B 2/1 flier to be a solid 1B 4/2 flier in a way which also buffs everyone else and leaves another fat creature on board, that deck has bigger problems than a lack of lords.

If someone wants the deck to be more mechanicaly tied to vampires - well, I wouldn't mind that, it's just that vampire mechanics currently don't make for a good deck. Nettling Imp actually does play ball with Sengir Vampire and Vampire Nighthawk, everything else is issues, issues, issues or plain unsuitable.

and then the Nether Fiend:

Nether Fiend take 3 | Open

I can tweak him again, too.

.1592 4 Tendrils of Corruption
.1588 3 Corrupt
.239 26 Swamp

Right, so, what was making the Warlock so annoying is that I gave him a deck with these. That was obviously too out of place at tier 3, should be right as rain here.

.3373 4 Foul Imp
.4271 4 Corrupt Court Official
.11144 3 Liliana's Specter

Those are the minnions. They're early disruption and beats, the idea is that they might kick some stuff out of the opponents hand, which might cause the opponent to use removal on the flying ones, or at least have less of it to use on the guys the deck is supposed to be about (but can't, cc 4+ is shmuck bait except in reanimator or with moxes which are cheat-code mode). What's gonna happen is that folks will get killed by these guys as they use removal on the deamons, but that's just how things always work - any boring evasive weenie is a better and more usable card than most 4 cc+ cards in the game taken together.

.13366 3 Abhorrent Overlord
.14516 3 Archfiend of Depravity

I left those two in. They're dead weight, as Deamons ussualy are, and any deck with deamons in it would probably work a lot better without deamons in it simply because it wouldn't have expenisve stuff that's vulnerable to removal sitting in it's hand. Afer a lot of testing I decided I'd abandon even trying to make them actually playable in a sane way and decided that Master of the Feast is out on his fat ass and that I'm putting a completely different bit of cheeze in, one which sinergizes with the corrupts and ramping:

.8956 4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade

And what's going to happen is that folks will think the deck is now too much about him. And this isn't so much true as much as deamons just aren't very good cards. They can win, sure, but something like this guy can win faster and harder. He's there to eat removal so the deamons get to live if they hit play, and potentially fetch swamps so that Corrupt and Tendrils hit harder and the overlord can even get played.

.1589 4 Night's Whisper
.13430 2 Erebos, God of the Dead

And these things are there to draw cards. This is one of the things that black has over other colors, it has Night's Whisper, which is simply better than just about any other thing in the pool for what it does (even stuff in other colors, even blue). If every color had a 2 mana card which the AI can't screw up with and which draws 2 cards they'd be 4 in every deck.

Phyrexian Arena was in there, but it would get passed over in favor of other things and played last like enchantments generally do. Night's Whiper was faring better with the AI, and so was Erebos, so they're in.

Somebody respectable should be wishlisting Bloodgift Demon. He'd be 4-of in the deck quite easily. Phyrexian Arena is getting misplayed, he, I think, wouldn't be. And he's also actually good enough to put in a deck all on his own.

If it lacks bite I know what to do.

And the Azaar thing. Well, I haven't actually checked what other folks have done with him, but somehow I suspect they went and did the same thing because most of the cards for it are in the pool and I thought I'd do it for a lark. As I said, the old one was a bit of a pile, except the pile had Hypnotic Spectre + Dark Ritual and several cards which were good enough to beat you on their own so it tended to work.

I'm curious if this turns out to be completely lousy or completely unbeatable:

Black Wizard Lol | Open

.239 23 Swamp
.230 1 Sol Ring
.166 1 Mox Jet
.17 1 Black Lotus

Well, that's obvious, I think Mox Diamond could/should also be in.

.535 4 The Rack
.12820 4 Shrieking Affliction

You see where this is going?

.10958 4 Inquisition of Kozilek - Discard
.1456 4 Hymn to Tourach - Discard

.8669 4 Smallpox - a small pox
.2069 4 Pox - a large pox

.3593 3 Cruel Edict - Removal
.1589 3 Night's Whisper - Card Draw

.10182 2 Nyxathid - Random cheap bugger to sidestep Personal Sanctuary
.3 2 Animate Dead - Same thing.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, what it does is madly throw poxes at you until you croak from The Rack and Shrieking Affliction. This is actually more dangerous than what it sounds like.

It worked against other AI decks, but could use refinement, this sort of thing generally does. What's missing is guys that come back from the dead like Nether Spirit or somesuch.

I bet if I went and looked around what other folks did it'd probably be that.

So here's the missing 2 them, enjoy and Feedback much appreciated. No Necromancer tweaks - I didn't play a single game against him last time around, and there was no Feedback on him yet, so wth. Saved him for the next round (as I did with a bunch of other guys, too).

EDIT:

Something about red vampires | Open

I'm quite curious about whether I could fit the red vampires in somewhere. Not as a splash, god forbid, but, like, somewhere. They're sorta more workable than black vampires, I think, but I'm unsure how to reconcile 2 things: their cc pricing is generally low-power (they only had one block of cards ever, pretty much), but their ability could make them too damned annoying at a low-tier opponent. It's not that it's really strong, it's that it's not too friendly to low life. If the deck worked it'd be hitting a lot with creatures that grow while the player has a pile of a deck. And to hit (or even attack) they'd need to be unblockable and stuff because of the AI.

Hmmmmm, I could give them over to the hydra, as both them and hydras use counters, and it could be, like, their god or something for flavor. Not sure if they'd make for a good almost-end boss enemy troops, but then again... Eh, what they want is a deck similar to the one Sorceress runs right now. Hmmm. Or I could give the Sorcere's deck to the War Mage (buffed up, ofc), and then give them to the Sorcerer? Hmmmmmmmm.

Tell you what, I'll see if I can whip something with them up then see how to fit it somewhere ^^ Folks will, of course, feel bad about that deck having more vampires going on than vampire lord, but meh, all red vampires do is Slith Firewalker impressions anyway. It's the laziest design ever XD

EDIT: Dangit, looks like Rakish Heir is missing. And Curse of Stalked Prey, too...

[lujo]

I sat down to do green guys top to bottom. First deck, Elvish Magi.

Take a look at the screenshot.

Just so I say it and it doesn't build up | Open

There's a 14/16 creature on the other side of the board. If it attacks, it will destroy 2 of my permanents (Argentum Armor). It won't attack, because the AI thinks I'll block it with the Cockotrice and it's precious creature will die.

Problem with any of the cards on board by themselves? Nope. Problem is that the AI can't, and never ever could, attack with 90% of it's creatures unless you somehow made them effectively unblockable. And green doesn't, in fact, have that many ways to do this and just about everything the AI ever used in green is very atypical for green. Green can't play right if the only way for creatures to attack if they either can't be blocked or can't be killed in combat. Neither can red for that matter. Evasion is not what they do.

Green attacks with it's dudes because those dudes have higher stats than dudes in other colors, and this means the the other guy has to block them unfavorably. Or there's more of them and the other guy can't take wave after wave. That's the core philosophy of green and pretty much all it ever does IRL. If the AI can't do this, with no gimmicks or deck space devoted to facilitating this, then you can just go and delete a vast majority of green cards in the pool right away as far as the AI is concerned.

If at one point the AI can't play a green deck with 32 vanilla creatures like Leatherback Baloth and Kalonian Tusker properly - you can just take all green enemies and delete them from the game, as there's no point to them being there. It doesn't have to win, just play it properly, which is to say attack like mad as long as that results in 1-for-1 trades. Otherwise the existance of green enemies, the idea that they're balanced along tiers, all that is a fraud and false advertizing. Any green deck which only attacks with unblockable or unkillable stuff or when attacking means winning the game on the spot is either wizard tier or complete trash.

And yes, I can make it win games with Overrun and Hurricane or by scraping the barrel for green fliers and unblockable guys. Which is what I'll obviously have to do. But that's moraly questionable - then I'm just helping create an illusion that things work when they don't at a level so elementary that it makes my head hurt. And folks will be complaining about too strong decks - and rightly so, a green deck where you can't block it's creatures or kill them in combat IS too strong.

I mean, I gave this guy Argentum Armor. That's obviously a joke, that thing is complete overkill on a tier2 guy, hell, it's probably overkill on any guy. What it wants, on top of it, is an unblockable creature to put it on or it can't use it. But if I give it an unblockable creature, wth is the point of giving it Argentum Armor? It can only play if it can't possibly lose. And one unblockable guy doesn't cut it - if that guy gets killed by a spell, it'll still sit there, so everything has to be unblockable, or everything unblockable has to be hexproof or undying, or both. You see the problem here?

Had to get that out of the way.

This is going to be a long night.

---

Last Elvish Magi had a terminal problem with green being fundamentaly unplayable and it actually being a somewhat sane deck. This one isn't a sane deck, there's plenty of misplays, but with the AI being what it is, let's see how this goes:

New Insane Elvish Magi | Open

.91 24 Forest

The elves:

.149 4 Llanowar Elves - Funnily enough, they tend cause all sorts of self-sabotage in general because the AI will attempt to play most buffs on them. That wastes turns and defeats the purpose of them even being in decks. This is why I prefer Wild Growth for shandalar decks. Come to think of it, maybe they should be Wild Growth here, something to consider.

.1533 2 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary - You'd think this is overkill, but it's not - the AI will sac him to an attacking 1/1, he'll die to removal, and if the infinite duels mode is anything to go by you'll see him used to a good effect very rarely. Still, low tier shandy decks tend to not have enough removal, so IDK.

.7914 2 Nullmage Shepherd - He's there to kill artifacts and enchantments, with any luck. Also, since the little dudes get poked off the board, he's ussually what the deck ends up beating face with.

.9040 4 Thornweald Archer - The source of many lols. AI doesn't realize what exactly deathtouch does, and the deck needed some cheap reach. You'll see sights with this guy. But do join me in my misery, please, hopefully it gets fixed.

Now, the bussiness elves!

.13073 4 Spire Tracer - The OG deck had Elven Riders. Problem with Elven Riders is that they're a rather big unblockable guy, and playing them meant that if I put anything that pumps the little guys in it'll wind up on a big unblockable guy... At tier2. This little feller can even be moderately equipped and still not kill you in 2 turns. And occasionally (that is, likely all the time) you'll get to see the wonderful sight of just him pinging you while a bunch of useless dorks sit idle, which is folklore for green. Not always mind you, there's some more incentives to attack.

.1461 4 Imperious Perfect - Hon hon hon hon, what have we here? Lujo the "Lords are a blasphemy in Shandalar" sticking this piece of bulls**t in a low tier deck? Why get on everyone's nerves with your textwall spamming and then do this, you twerp? Because:

a) This thing doesn't make anything unblockable.
b) Since it doesn't do that, it means that the rest of the guys are as useless as ever and the deck is still green, and so stuff will sit there and inanely look at you. You can give it moxes, won't do anything.
c) It's a lightning rod. If the player kills the all-important Spire-Tracer and sees this guy afterwards they'll think twice next time.
d) It saves deck space so that I don't have to put more useless non-evasive dopes in it in order to have elves on the board if it lives.
e) It pumps Spire Tracer in a way which can't get misplayed by ending up on Llanowar Elves.

The con's are obvious, it 2 are drawn lots of stuff gets too damned big, and it can kill you on it's own if the game goes on long enough. In theory it gives the opponent something to worry about while the only really usable card in the deck, Spire Tracer, pings away. If there's only one out, the tokens are kinda harmless since they're not evasive, but Winter Blast can mess you up.

This is just infinite duels with 20 health each, god knows it could easily be overkill in the actual game, but considering that green is painted on a fence I say let's give it a whirl.

Now for some obligatory stuff, and then the actual cheeze:

.855 3 Winter Blast - The classic "play card - win game" card that occasionaly makes it look like the AI can play green. The AI tends to throw it away to kill random fliers (often complete misuse) but it's ok here because that's what it's there for. It'll just occasionally use it right if it draws one mid-game.

.1243 4 Harmonize - The green Night's Whisper. 4 in every deck, no questions asked. Green doesn't actually do this sort of thing, it's quite a bit of an anomaly, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Increases the chance of multiple lords drawn, though.

.11110 3 Cultivate - this is acceleration and actual card draw. What the deck draws is lands, true, but taking lands out of the deck ups the chance it draws into other things. Everything in the deck looks cheap, but it does need a bit of land, and since that's a thing, it has a bit more than it would otherwise need so pruning some with this is well worth it. Wish Kodama's Reach was in for spirits.

.11551 3 Viridian Claw - For the "how to waste a turn 1 Llanowar elves for 3 mana on turn 2" lols. Also for "how to have a Thornweald Archer and a source of first strike for it yet still misplay it completely" lols. What it does do right, when it does it right, is pump Spire Tracer.

The weird but fun thing is that first strike helps the AI to attack suicidally. Which is why some OG Shandalar decks worked better than you'd expect, the AI will (occasionally) attack into trades if the creature has first strike, for some reason.

Also, something needs to bait artifact removal, because:

.11200 3 Argentum Armor - Indeed! Now, you may think, is this a bit overkill for a tier 2 deck. If we're talking sense then, yes, it's indeed complete and gratuitous overkill. If we're talking AI, then, well, no. It's not underkill, as it can murder you well enough, but things to consider:

a) You can stop it if whatever it's on would die from attacking. This depends a bit on whether the AI realizes this or not (meaning Deathtouch won't scare it as it doesn't realize it's there).
a1) What'll also generally scare it is if you just have enough things on the board to gang-block whoever it's on.
b) You can kill it. Well, that depends on what color you're in, honestly, but still. It's a 6 mana artifact, that needs to be on a creature to work. Sooo much that can go wrong in theory.
c) It also means that if the AI pays 12 mana and then attacks it gets to have a large creature on board and gets to cast a Desert Twister. Err, that's kinda fine.

On the other hand, if this gets stuck on something you can't block, meaning the Spire Tracer, you're in trouble. And if you just kill the creature it'll get put on something else. Also, if the deck can work up the mana and two get layed down, you're screwed.

Well, that's that, I'm curious about what happens. There's ways to handle this, there's other equipment, there's other elves and I suppose the nifty land destruction thing that searches up a forest could fit in nicely. Also, Llanowar Elves could get replaced by Wild Growth and the only really offensive thing in it is the Spire Tracer, while the reach guy is kind of puny and misused.

Last time I made an on-paper overkill deck with green (Tusk Guardian) it turned out to be the deck the tester went after the most. I wonder if it happens again.

Needless to say, feedback appreciated.

I'll keep going and put them up before I go to bed in case I make changes on the fly as inspiration strikes (or I find things that fit while trying out other decks).

Enchantess up next, hoooh boy, this'll get ugly.

---

Well, took a while and there's plenty of reasons to not be happy with it, but it's not really that ugly.

New improved Enchantress | Open

Korath seemed be interested in making the enchantress work and there's a lot to work with, except, unfortunately, green is green, AI is AI, and as usual some obscure but handy fundamentals are missing. This time in favor of much stronger cards, but the "why's anyone ever gonna use X if they have Y" logic kinda sinks the moment you consider that enemies are supposed to be in different tiers. Or should, I suppose.

When I first tried to do enchantress, everything suffered from overkill, then I nerfed her too hard, so it was underkill, and then this incarnation kinda danced all over the line.

.91 22 Forest
.285 4 Wild Growth

Happyface, no Llanowar Elves screwups.

.217 4 Scryb Sprites
.2641 3 Uktabi Faerie

That there's something you'll prety much never see in a RL green deck. It's quite good, mind you, but that's because green as such has been made with the premise that folks generally won't open up with evasive buggers on turn one. Not strictly true, ofc, but every time green could do it it ended up being rather brutal. I held back, ofc. Immagine if I put Rancor in.

.1194 4 Yavimaya Enchantress - The enchantress du jour. Other ones get skipped and cause traditional "enchantress uneven hands" to happen even when they don't. High-end enchantress decks live and die by mulligans, moreso than most decks. Like any such creature, this girl can easily spiral way out of control.

.13941 4 Oakheart Dryads - Um, there's often targeting and timing issues (not too upset by them), but also fine fine, even "didn't see that coming" moves for the "AI does something right" thread. You can't argue that the AI generally plays it right, because statistically it arses up more than it does the right thing, but still - was quite pleased when they contributed. Also, fine ole roadblock, would be better down a tier.

.12520 2 Dreampod Druid - This guy is quite good, but also quite meh when not enchanted, and moreso because of, you know, not having evasion. I'd have more in, but I'd rather have the buffs end up on flying stuff that can, you know, attack.

The buffs:

.13441 3 Feral Invocation - a stick-on giant growth. High upper tier of "fair", much recommended.
.2949 3 Briar Shield - a canned stick-on giant growth, also much recommended.

Those things are the most inconspicious of cheeze, make for interesting plays and so on and so forth. Didn't want Gaea's Embrace in there, but I'm seriously considering Rancor. The deck is vulnerable to removal, and those actually help with that, Rancor doesn't, but on the other hand Rancor sticks around and gives things trample.

And trample, as you'll see, is serious bussiness in this deck and also the reason it took so long to get it kinda done (or at least ready for in-game testing).

.1243 4 Harmonize - This needs no explanation. 4 in every deck.

Now for the tricky part and all the trample. See, the only things that are evasive are the faeries, everything else can be menacing but, AI being AI, just sit there doing nothing. The deck is very vulnerable to removal. By design, because stuff with auras loses it 2 cards when somethign dies, and hands can also happen where it draws few creatures. Harmonize helps a bit, but generally, it doesn't like removal one bit.

.1490 2 Centaur Glade - Which is why this has to be in. Probably even 3 off. It's a bit slow, and the AI is simply horrible with it, because it'll just sit there stacking centaurs and fat enchantressess and enchanted druids and do absolutely nothing while you murder it with fliers. But it just has to be there.

So the only thing to do now, what with Primal Rage not being around, and short of going full-Rancor are these two:

.4774 3 Stampede Driver - This is a rather good card anyway, but I haven't seen the AI activate it even once, and I've seen the AI suicide attack with it (probably thinks it can activate the buff mid-combat). It's purpose is to break mind-boggling ground stalls which happen because the AI is way too reluctant to attack in general. I'm leaving it in, because it's nonsense that he's not in with Centaur Glade and everything else that begs for him and if I see him activated properly even once I'm sticking it on the "AI did something right" page (except in this case it's more like "AI did what it was supposed to do).

.13495 2 Nylea, God of the Hunt - And, err, well, look, Primal Rage isn't there, Overrun and the stampede thing are nonsense and the AI shouldn't even need this sort of effect to begin with. She's literally in because something needs to give her dudes trample. See what I mean when I get depressed with the prospect of making green decks? You just want those 10/10 enchantreses and legions of centaurs to attack, you gotta give it a 6/6 indestructible "pumps whatever" creature-enchantment. If it ends up being too murderous - I'll try to think of something.

Ok, so, between the misplays and non-plays and no ways to deal with enemy permanents and having too many non-creatures for uneven hands and vulnerability to removal it's not like it's a really solid deck.

On the other hand it can be a rather brutal deck, much more consistently powerful that the old one.

Unevenness is in the nature of aura decks, and quite a bit about the deck that can obviously use nerfing is only that way because of the AI. That makes it difficult to nerf. The AI either gets what it wants and totaly destroys everything, or doesn't get what it wants and sits there doing nothing despite it being able to destroy everything.

Let's see how it goes?

If anyone sees stampede driver actually do his thing, do let me know, I'll be really happy to hear that (not just for this deck, it a VERY solid alternative to sticking Overrun or Nylea in everything).

Well, sun up, sorry about being annoying. Enjoy the decks, I hope it was worth it. Scream if they're too brutal, complain if they're underwhelming.

[lujo]

Trying out a new Forest Dragon:

Look at it. Just... look at it.

2 guys who can regen it's creatures? Doesn't attack. An instant in hand which can regen it's creatures? Doesn't attack. Overwhelming board advantage? Had it since turn 3. Did it attack? Hell no. Can it kill me straight dead if it just attacked with Nemesis Mask on anything? It could for 2 turs (or more). Does it attack? No.

Long day ahead it seems.

[Korath]

I bet complaining about it some more will really motivate someone to lift a finger to do something about it.

[lujo]

My wife found the two screenshots on my desktop, asked me what those were. I explained in a few sentences, she couldn't stop laughing. She never played magic in her life, yet she asked: "Did the guys who made this game know anything about how it's supposed to work?" I'd love to say yes, but how can I? She's looking at the screenshots, they got a convincing argument. She said it was the funniest thing she saw all week.

If the situation is hilarious even to a bystander, why would someone who'd want the thing to work need extra motivation to want to fix it? I mean, how can you expect it to not be hilarious or complained about? You and me are irrelevant, how did some people, who're not us, get paid for a mtg simulator where attacking with creatures is something the AI can't do? That's what my wife asked, how did those guys ever get away with obvious fraud?

Anywho, if I want a deck for the Forest Dragon for me and mine, I'll have to stay up all night - if I'm lucky. I'm at v7 right now, none worked, because they can't. How can I find motivation for that, even though the situation is what the screenshots say it is? I don't even expect you to do anything, but anyone trying to make a green deck behave like a green deck is up against those screenshots in a 1000 varieties.

Imagine if I went and posted everything that's wrong in the bug tracker? I don't even want to bother you with it - you'll do something about it when you do something about it, if you do anything about it. But expecting anyone who sees that not to comment on it is a bit much. You could have an full concert hall of people who don't know anything about mtg laughing their assess off with a slideshow of the AI attempting to play green decks, someone could make good money on the tickets.

I mean, relax for a second and just looook at the screenshot with all the regen effects and the AI not attacking. What that meant could be hours of me sitting there trying to get the bastard to just bloody atack, but I couldn't help but laugh about it in the end. I could put it on the desktop and whatever's currently giving me a hard time would immediately seem easier that that poor AI struggling with the epic question if whether it's safe enough to attack It can regen it's dude 3 times over, but you know, can't be sure, can't be sure... It's so ridiculous it makes you feel sorry for it instead of yourself for having to deal with it.

---

Anyway, my sanity-keeping techniques aside, this is what I got for forest dragon. Because the damned thing exhausted me and I still need to keep room for 2 more functional green decks (that being the Beastmaster and the Green Wizard). The tools are very limited (because of how green is designed), and the problems are quite deep, and what's worse even when the tools (cards) which could help the sitatien are there, they end up not working right (not that there anything wrong with the cards, it's that the AI can't do with them what it's supposed to).

I'm also annoyed at myself because my testing has a big flaw. I'm testing decks against other Shandalar decks, but it's me handling those decks. And they're built to account for the fact that they'll be played by a fradulent AI which means that their actual power level is quite high (but you don't get to realize this too often in-game). In the hands of a player, they're all too good, so the enemy decks can end up being stronger than they need to be and will need nerfing in practice - even though they're often misplayed.

Anyway, the forest dragon, with explanations:

Forest Dragon, the "has a shot" edition | Open

OG Forest dragon was a very, very bad deck. Very. The way it planned to cheat the fact that the AI can't actually play was Lure. The problem with that, though, is that the AI can't actually play Lure very well. It's reluctant to attack with a creature that has Lure on it unless it can also regenerate the creature (can't be 5-for-2 has to be 5-for-0), and it also plays lure on anything.

But even if Lure did work and was played properly, the deck had a deeper problem in that it had way too little damage on it's creatures. It had 8 5 drops with 2 damage, and then 4 six drops with fine damage but measly toughness. You just don't want to be playing a deck which plays nothing relevant until 5 mana and then starts playing one creature per turn.

But then, if you gave it stuff to play earlier, that stuff just runs into the whole "green can't attack" problem, and everything that goes along with that. Blah blah blah, this is what I ended up with, 100% against my own better judgement:

.91 24 Forest
.285 4 Wild Growth

That doesn't look necessary when you see the rest of the list, but giving the AI more mana than it needs makes for a decent missplay buffer. If it makes the wrong play, it might be able to also make the right play. There's also card draw and reccursion, mana helps being able to play the stuff it draws / reccurs.

.1377 4 Muscle Sliver
.13322 4 Predatory Sliver
.1387 4 Spinneret Sliver
.14195 4 Venom Sliver

I added the slivers. I personally have conflicting oppinions about slivers. I absolutely understand their appeal (on a pure logical level), as they're all lords. I also understand that if you're playing them you're probably unaware of why they're not so hot, and that means I understand why people tend to cram every sliver they can get their hands on into sliver decks. Can't do that here for 3 reasons - a) it's a bad idea in general, b) it can make the AI even more vulnerable to instant removal and c) this should be powerful enough as it is.

So why slivers of all things? Simple - it's a way to have a lot of things with reach (provided the reach guy doesn't get killed). Also, it's a way to have a lot of things with deathtouch, so that I can get the overcosted basilisks out. The lord ones are there because their stats are otherwise puny, and because that's the only real way to play them. Horned Sliver could be in if the AI was better with handling the game in general, but trample isn't what this deck is looking for.

And in case it beats you up - it's got 8 lords for 16 cheap creatures (with all the other stuff in the mix). Handled remotely well it would beat the player up every game unless the player has a really well constructed deck, or a deck with way more removal than is otherwise healthy. If it beats you to a pulp - nothing special and also my mistake because I was testing it agaisnt too strong decks and AI couldn't handle anything less overbearing, if it loses due to a bad hand - too many things needed to be in because of AI quirks, left not enough space for more objectively reasonable cards for this specific deck, if it just loses - it sucks like any other attempt I scraped or I made it badly.

.1243 4 Harmonize - 4 in every deck. Tbh, Restock would maybe be better, or some mix of them, but the deck needs to keep drawing threats.

.7258 2 Jugan, the Rising Star - the dragon. If the deck didn't need gimmicks to perform basic functions, 4 would be there. First one is a big dragon, other ones then dump a lot of counters on the slivers because of the legend rule. The handy thing is that removing him from the board doesn't remove the p/t threat he presents, which is not often the case with expensive creatures.

.1223 4 Eternal Witness - because slivers being slivers means you really want them on the board and not in the graveyard. In other words removal proofing. Also handy for more Jugan spam if drawn late.

.152 3 Lure - If deathtouch worked wold be great, but the AI tends to missplay even it. The deck could work without it, honestly, if it coud work at all, I hope it gets used properly on occasion.
.10653 3 Savage Silhouette - Err, well, this is the pump. Even if 2 sliver lords are drawn the slivers are wimpy, and the AI won't attack with anything that's wimpy and can die in most situations. So this. And it's also more likely to use Lure right if the creature can regenerate. On the one hand this might make something more resistant to removal, but in practice it'll make it spend 3 mana on turn 3 and lose 2 cards on removal, or just lose them as soon as it taps down all it's mana. Still, those are honest things, that can happen to anyone.

So there you have it. Not what I would've wanted, and it'll very likely need nerfing (if it doesn't it's not played right XD). Too many hoops to jump through for something more subtle atm, I did try quite a bunch of things.

You know I'm desperate when I'm reaching for slivers, for my own personal "reduce the number of things to scroll through when buying" ini list I'd put slivers on it in a blink. Unless I specifically wanted to play them, ofc.

Feedback appreciated!

---

Beast Master, with explanation ("Light Tweaks!" )

Beast Master | Open

Well, this was rather quick. I just gave the AI what it wants, more or less. It's the tier where that can happen, but the previous experience with giving the AI what it wants was quite bad (it was impossible to play against). Might be a bit more tolerable here, though.

.91 19 Forest
.8962 4 Llanowar Reborn - pinched this from the druid. If it works, cool, it works, if it make the deck trip up, who cares - the deck deserves it.

Stuf from before:

.285 4 Wild Growth - Llanowa Elf that you can't ping.
.868 4 Aswan Jaguar - Royal Assasin
.12143 4 Briarpack Alpha - V annoying wolf. Seen it always misplayed in some decks and always played fine in others.
.4728 3 Pack Hunt - Well, I'm sick of harmonize, and pack hunt for Aswan Jaguar is too cool to pass up.

Stuff of the kind the AI wants in every deck:

.8132 4 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk *
.12507 4 Wandering Wolf
.10872 4 Aura Gnarlid

And those three are unblockable as long as you don't have something bigger than them in play. But:

.4046 4 Rancor
.13788 3 Raised by Wolves
.12050 3 Ranger's Guile

and also that nice Briarpack Alpha mean that you probably won't. Ranger's guile is an attempt at making things more resistant to removal.

Now, yes, this is a duchebag strategy, BUT, if you do get somethng bigger (or Control Magic one of it's dudes), they'll shut down and sit there and wait for a pack hunt on Aswan Jaguar to clear the way.

Rancor isn't all that good when it's in the hands of someone who'll be extremely reluctant to sacrifice the guy it's on and it's also the reason I took Jungle Lion out. No screenshot but it had a 6/1 Jungle Lion out on turn 2... which sat there for the entire game because it would die if it attacked, and 2 Wandering Wolf also set there because Rancor was on someone else.

Oh, and I didn't give it any way to deal with equipment and enchantments, I'm not that crazy. All these scary and insane decks are to see if there's enough ways to make the AI play anything in a remotely threatening fashion (or even how to make it behave sensibly). You'd think this deck, for example, would win every game - and in theory it should, honestly, but I can bet my gravestone that the feedback I get on it is that it was harmless due to some reason or the other.

But if we can see what's actually foolproof enough and what isn't, we can easily shuffle things around like with the warlock and the nether fiend. And whenever Korath feels like fixing anything, it'll just spontaneously enable more smoothing out (because AI playing green decks is so rock bottom it can entertain even folks who don't play mtg, the only way is up).

Err, very curious about anyone consistently beating this guy up.

*EDIT: Also, the pit-skulk guy isn't on flavor per se, but let's say he's eiter the beastmaster himself, or that being primates humans are also part of the animal kingdom, or that he's totaly beastly at what he does, or that fighting in the pits reduced him to a beast, or that his enormous sex appeal qualifies him for the title of "beast", or that a man is a wolf to another man. Lets not be specieist, he's totally on flavor, right?

EDIT: Or it's a bunch of ferrets in a coat and turban convincingly impersonating a human! That's why his face is in the shade!

Right, Green Wizard time. Will upload the BM a bit later if I happen to stumble upon the right thing for the wizard right away. The old deck was just a pile of fliers, for obvious reasons - that's just about the only thing the AI could attack with that also blocked fliers.

---

Green Wizard. This was sorta easy, but I'm not sure if I covered all the bases properly. Too many bases to cover with wizards, it'll take a lot of work to get them right. For now:

Green Wizard | Open

.91 22 Forest
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.230 1 Sol Ring
.17 1 Black Lotus
.285 4 Wild Growth

.13848 4 Bassara Tower Archer - can't touch this
.11802 3 Dungrove Elder - can't touch this
.8127 4 Silhana Ledgewalker - can't touch this

.12945 3 Forced Adaptation - This gets put on a ledgewalker early, and you're boned. It could be a million things, but this kinda has the best mana-investment-to-dick-move ratio.

.13377 2 Arbor Colossus - Fat Reach, also kills something.
.11208 2 Bellowing Tanglewurm - Probably the biggest dick move in the whole game. Not against green and a lot of multicolored with green in it, but what should often happen is that if you're not green it's just gg.

.13495 2 Nylea, God of the Hunt - obviously in
.868 3 Aswan Jaguar - this is about the right tier for these guys, too.
.11155 3 Obstinate Baloth - why not, needed some lifegain. Could be a million things, green 4 mana buys you a lot of nasty things, but it seems to be a nice way to squeeze lifegain in. Also a dick move if you go around throwing Hymn to Tourach at people.

.10209 3 Soul's Majesty - Well, it has it's pros and cons, but it can sure draw a lot of cards. Problem is, big card draw in green helps reset vs. board wipe, and this can't be used after board wipe so it's a bit iffy. On the other hand, harmonize was getting cast over threaths and killing the hexproof buggers shold be a pain so something should be around to cast this at.

.14612 2 Return to the Earth - too many ways to stop the pain train, it needs this. I think this is too little. After some refinement the deck should have more of this sort of thing worked into it.

Well, it seems to slap most things around. It's quite resistant to removal (not so much mass removal, but that's actuall a card pool thing). It's also a collection of dick moves (a fraction of the dick moves available in the pool, that's the problem - the AI can play these things fine, but you can't go around giving them to dudes below wizard tier. And it wants these or bust - it's unblockable hexproof with big stats or nothing, playing this sort of thing in a casual group should get you punched in the face by decent people).

It's vulnerable to, of all things, land destruction, and well, a lot of things, really. All it can win with is creatures, even a meekstone could make it cry. 60 cards isn't really enough to cover all bases in a best-of-1 match. More than sixty cards just makes it harder to draw land right (or avoid mana flood, or draw your stuff or...). And at this point the player could really have anything at their disposal... If you have a turn 1 kill combo deck going idk if the AI could handle that even if yougave it a deck that could handle it (and what that deck would be, in green, is a good question).

Still, probably less shaky than my other wizards, if you don't come prepared it should walk all over you most times. It's a big pain in the ass that you could theoretically get to this fight with somethign big allready in play as that does what it does to the AI - it won't be able to put early pressure on you. But you know, if someone's walking around with a deck with only 1 Blightsteel Collossus in it to cheeze dice they're not looking for a fight anyway.

Also - the overall thing with green should drastically improve in every imaginable respect when and if:

- Deathtouch is properly working and "understood" by the AI (it's a v. important tool for green)
- Anything usable that draws cards is added (green craves card draw, even the addition of Eternal Withness was enormous, I just didn't cram her everywhere on this pass. There's some fine stuff in allready, but you just can't have enough of this.)
- Fight cards are added (darnit, shoulda made the wizard a tracker deck! Or someone! I forgot that he's in here because I keep thinking the mechanic must for some reason be undoable. Maybe it is, who knows, but green really needs that stuff.)
- Undying is added
- V. important - flashback is added. Flashback does so much for green it's unreal.
- Also, bestow gets added. A way to not have to waste deck slots on auras is also a big deal.

So whenever any of that happens things will instantly look up. And well, whenever the AI gets any better at handling the actual game besides pwning you with outliers. That's just so it's clear that even if things are insane right now, things can look up eventually in many ways.

Very curious about how it all works out, expecitng the worst as usual, willing to sink silly amounts of time in refining them and making them enjoyable. Point of groaning about the AI is to keep me sane and in good humor instead of beign depressed about the limitations a deckbuilder is up against - this won't stop me from madly pushing a stone uphill untill the bloody things stays there. It should also give you guys an idea of where the problems are if you have suggestions or requests (or know of solutions) and things like that Should also give anyone giving feedback a better idea when the deck actually isn't working - if something behaves like what I groan about do tell (and it's likely not working right even if it does win a match).

Reuploaded all 3, enjoy!

[BlueTemplar]

I'll just have to post now without reading the rest, otherwise I might forget about it by the point I eventually catch up :
In this post :
viewtopic.php?p=189577#p189577

About the Cleric deck :

1.) why so many lands (23!) in a deck with such a fast mana curve?

2.) I could see it use not having any lands in hand as a threshold enabler!
Or will that auto-trigger mulligan?

It's supposed to be a weak deck anyway, and here's an opportunity to use a mechanic that would probably never get used in competitive play as something that works for the deck! You could try finding other cards that would synergize with this (0 cost Madness?) - but at that point they're unlikely to fit the "Cleric" flavor...

3.) Why the Flagstones of Trokair if he has no way of sacrificing them?

P.S.: Didn't that deck had Armageddon (and Ankh of Mishra / Dingus Egg ) at some point?

[lujo]

1) You wouldn't believe it, but anything under 24 lands tends to cause mana screw since there's no mulligans. Also, it wants to actually draw land not be stuck on 2 all the time. And also - if it plays a second flagstones, one of them dies and fetches a plains, which automatically reduces their number. And also Ghoulcallers Bell mills it, which also automatically reduces the number of everything. And also, nonbasics can get ante'd which is why you can't give anything a sensible ammount of anything as it can randomly not be there.

Also, it currently has a lot of cantrips in it so it draws an inordinary ammount of cards for a ww deck, helps with preventing being flooded.

Everything has at leas 24 for lands right now, it's rare that it's worth risking going lower in the circumstances regardless of what the deck composition is due to no-mulligans, best-of-one, lower than 20 lives (v. punishing for mana screw) and ante (nobasics going awol on you messing stuff up). This guy is pretty edgy with only 23.

2) Err, that'd be a bad threshold enabler. What's the point of threshold if you don't have permanents on board?

3) They're legendary, if it plays the second one, one dies and fetches a plains. Thins the deck, while also ensuring it doesn't get mana screwed initially. Used to be better, as before the last legend rule both flagstones would die.

4) Nope, that was High Priest, they were both threshold decks.

---

I need advice. Or at least someone elses opinion to reflect upon. Some of my guys looked at it but they haven't been playing the new pool so much yet and the whole lives thing has us stumped on some things. We can't seem to work it out.

Been working on Sea Dragon and Goblin Warlord.

I've barely touched the Goblin last time around, and what I did with the Sea Dragon had a flaw in the plan.

It's two different things, but the essence of it is that I'm not exactly sure how tough lvl4 enemies are supposed to be. Vampire Lord is easy to scale up and down, because black + vampires has card draw, removal, discard, fliers, you name it, you can make something that evades AI problems. Paladin is also easy to work with to a degree, or at least seems like it. Forest Dragon inadvetedly pushes the power level because green is so difficult to work with in general, but there's no dillema there, anything that works goes and you can just stick Jugan in for flavor and call it a day. You have to, ATM.

But:

Sea Dragon, though, kinda has enough to work with to satisfy the flavor, but not only is "big blue" not really a high power archetype in any way, but it's also slow and non-evasive and if you're on flavor you're forcing the AI to play ground troops which only ever works out in green at all if you give it insane ground troops. Blue doesn't really have those.

So what I'm currently trying out is this:

Experimental Sea Dragon | Open

.126 26 Island
.2613 2 Sky Diamond

.10675 4 Spreading Seas
.48 3 Counterspell
.7578 3 Threads of Disloyalty

.3376 4 Hammerhead Shark
.14087 4 Coral Barrier

.13572 2 Thassa, God of the Sea

.1613 3 Man-o'-War
.3318 3 Tradewind Rider

.7275 4 Keiga, the Tide Star
.13970 2 Scourge of Fleets

And this isn't what I'd do as it's quite uneven, ranging from "doesn't do anything" to "murders you".

The idea is that Keiga, the Tide Star plays the role of Sea Dragon, because the early dudes are already dependent on Spreading Seas to do anything offensively and are pretty much roadblocks so the deck doesn't die to weenie rush. She flies and has 0 downsides, and steals stuff if she dies, and she's one of the few dragons even I had to acknowledge as a really good card. But I don't feel like a tier 4 deck really needs to have that sort of thing in it, or that it even solves all of it's problems.

I tried to make the early guys more useful by adding Man-O-War and Tradewind Rider. The rider is also off-topic, but mechanically plays into what the deck can actually do - have some semi-useless dudes on board to tap down for him. Also prevents the deck from necessarily rolling over to flying aggro, but then that's a lock mechanism that can win the game on it's own.

And since the deck was still uneven, I felt like I had to add Thassa, God of the Sea . It makes sense mechanically, there's Spreading Seas and all the little dudes to provide devotion, and she can make the Sharks and the Yellyfish unblockable so that they can do damage (they won't ever attack otherwie and are dead cards past blocking). Not optimistic about the AI's scrying capabilities, but she's a damned 5/5 indestructible for very little mana and she can also win the game on her own. Or lose to just getting rushed by fliers and be inconcequential.

And I had to take out Sea God's Revenge even though it was perfectly on flavor, because whenever he AI was faced with the choice of playing a 6cc thing (used to be various serpents) and it it would choose it. And get nothing done, really.

All this shores up some of the problems the deck had. Buys it time to get to the expensive stuff, and the expensive stuff is more impactful and doesn't interfere with anything. Tradewind Rider can block some fliers, Keiga can steal big fliers, the little dorks can be useful for the rider and thassa if Spreading Seas isn't drawn (and there's no need for the buggy Phantasmal Terrain as the seas only help get islandwalk for the squid, draw a card, mess with opponents mana and get devotion for Thassa).

But now the player will be up against this whenever the blue mage sends a blue dragon to seige a city. I'm not remotely sure this isn't too much to handle, Thassa, Tradwind Rider and Keiga were all format-defining cards in their respective metagames, and the deck has indestructible, creature stealing, unblockability and repeatable bounce. Vampire Lord and Paladin don't need this much good stuff to get off the ground.

What do you guys think?

And here's where I am with the Goblin:

Goblin Lord, rough draft v.4 | Open

.164 24 Mountain

.1090 4 Mogg Sentry - randomly annoying
.10937 2 Goblin Arsonist - sac fodder
.8564 3 Goblin Skycutter - kills random fliers
.1781 2 Goblin Chirurgeon - V. annoying

.8855 2 Stingscourger - I whish the AI took uneven echo costs into account instead of playing him as soon as possible. I need to take him out, but having him available to be drawn is still probably worth it.

.12517 3 Beetleback Chief - sac fodder
.14289 4 Hordeling Outburst - a lot of sac fodder

.4385 4 Arms Dealer - what it sacs fodder for.
.6351 3 Clickslither - Kills you right dead.

More on those two and the whole concept below, and the dilema.

.10928 4 Flame Slash - I could give him something else for a change.
.5433 2 Smash - kill an artifact, draw a card.
.6267 3 Slate of Ancestry - what card draw is there, and it can be all over the place.

If this is build merits developing it obviously needs ironing out, but goblins just explode too easily. This is about as close as I got to a mid-tier goblin deck, which isn't just an RDW (weenies & burn variant, because I have to conserve precious usable cards for that as the AI needs help).

How this works is, well, it's all up there. It's a bunch of inoffensive looking gobbos with numbers on their side.

What works is that Arms Dealer can present a memorable problem, and I could play that up with, say, Fodder Cannon - it would make for something to be going on in the match instead of the goblin deck just drawing __________ and killing you straight dead instantly, as tends to happen with anything more serious (or even non-serious, like any old lord or mass-pump effect).

What can also happen is that it recovers from your removal with Slate of Ancesty while wiping your board with the Arms Dealer so it's a race to recover, that's also cool. It can also get to draw a million cards, which is somewhat less cool, but it's still not Seige-Gang Commander UR DED.

It can also just plain swarm you if it gets that kind of draw.

The problem is that it needs the damned Clickslither, which makes it attack better than any other card I've seen in the game (which is odd because vampires with simmilar effects have far worse execution, although the trample bit on him might explain things). That is, it actually attacks with things, then sacrifices them if they'd die anyway.

Except the problem is that if you don't block the Clickslither even once, UR DED. Or if you block the clicklither and don't kill it, UR DED.

And that's the problem - if you don't give goblins something that combos with them, they're useless. If you do give goblins something that combos with them, UR DED. No middle ground whatsoever.

Goblins are a tier 1 creature based combo deck for tought formats, how do you even make a mid-tier shandalar goblin deck at all? Because if you don't give them anything that combos with them, then it's "making a green deck" all over again but even worse because there's no Harmonize or Wild Growth and your creatures are godawful by design.

Has anyone played against a goblin deck in Shandalar they felt was just "OK"?

Not uploading anything yet, I'm not happy with these two. Not terribly displeased or even worked up or anything, I'm just a bit stumped and so's everyone I can turn to.

[BlueTemplar]

3.) Oh, I missed Flagstones of Trokair being legendary. And I guess the AI is stupid/smart enough to play a second one when one is already in play? Nice job!

2.) Yeah, that's the point, it would be a bad threshold enabler on purpose :

Another aspect of this that could make it viable (while it generally wouldn't be expected to), is that a human player wants to prevent being mana screwed because it's so soul-crushing. An AI wouldn't care about that.

Of course it isn't that much fun playing against a mana-screwed deck either, but in Shandalar it's compensated by the fact that a player would be happy not to lose cards and get free ones.

What's interesting here, is that it could make for a nice psychological trick where the player thinks it has won the match, only for the AI to quickly catch up.
But it might only really work for an AI opponent with lots of lives (so it actually has time to catch up), which goes against the requirements of a low-tier enemy with a "bad" deck...

Enemy lives are set by tier in Shandalar, right?

[lujo]

a) about Flagstones: that's how they're always played, acually, can't claim credit for that one. You can stick them into any white deck to make sure you draw lands initially, but also thin you deck occasionally. Also, since they fetch plains you can fetch duals with them, so I'm not entirely sure that I'm doing the right thing with making them such low-hanging fruit. Some of the old cip-tapped fetchlands might actuall be a better idea (they also end up in the graveyard more reliably). Thanks for asking about this thinking about it made me conider this last thing which might be quite worthwhile.

b) Yeah, and it would only work with a different set of threshold (or even graveyard based) cards.

A point I forgot to mention, before I explain, is that I generally bumped up the land count to account for the alien lives system. You really want the enemies to be able to comfortably play out their early game and not miss land drops even if it means a higher chance for them to be a bit flooded later on. Because they might not even get to later on as mana screw is so easy to punish. Many other nuances and considerations figure into this (really I could talk someone's ear off, but I spam too much as is).

EDIT: An important one, which certainly contributes some enjoyment to playing with this deck pack, stems from this as well - the enemies are more able to present their threat, give you a sense of danger and show you some of their cards to make you really feel you're playing against a distinct opponent (provided the AI or my incompetence or lapse of reason doesn't get in the way), but the player might be at a long term advantage as their threat density is a bit lower as a tradoff. Which is fine, because losing in Shandalar is harsh.

Now for discarding initially - threshold in this particular deck (and, well, most of white threshold in general) is there to give your guys flying once the other guy has made it impossible to attack. It makes no sense to try to trigger it right away, there's no real rush.

Where that stunt could, and probably would work (and does irl) is graveyard based reanimations strats with dredge (it's what you simulate with Bazaar of Baghdad , too). That's a tier 1-ish vintage deck that plays barely any lands, discards a dredge card and then murders you in one or two turns. For threshold, you want to develop the board and then hit it, or hit it smoothly and simultaneously as developing the board, but you don't want to sacrifice what it takes to develop the board to do it.

Also, threshold is 7 cards. It would take forever to get it that way. Discarding something enormous first turn, then putting down a swamp and casting Reanimate, or somesuch in on turn 3, that's a different pair of shoes. Had a buddy do that in tourney's all the time, drove people up the wall.

In fact...

In fact, that's what I tried to work into the black wizard. I gave him Pox and Smallpox and Animate Dead. It creates this silly situation where he dumps those on you, and neither of you has any lands, and then he throws down Animate Dead. It's even funnier when he discards his fat creep, you thinkg "oh, thank god he's discarding that"... and then it gets on the board. That deck needs refinement, though.

[BlueTemplar]

No, the credit would be for working out that AI's (in?)competence would still allow him to use Flagstones of Trokair in a beneficial way.

I never meant that the AI would have to discard cards for all 7 turns in a row (it would end up drawing a land eventually anyway).

It's just that I've played one version of your white threshold decks in the infini-duel mode, and had trouble hitting the 7 cards in the graveyard - so when I saw the deck listing with all those lands, that idea of getting help from land screw came to me.

(And of course, card drawing spells help to get threshold in a more effective, albeit in a less weird way.)

[lujo]

Ah, well, when something like that happens I generally feel grateful to Korath for porting the card in the first place and the universe for nothing getting in the way of it being used properly. But thanks!

But what you say is very nice feedback, and a good point. The deck IS a bit slow with it's threshold, and the Flagstones in particular aren't the best way of using lands to help out with that.

This is in part due to the pool, most of what I'd use to help it along isn't there or isn't properly usable, but it's also due to me.

I had this line of thinking - it's a tier1 opponent, and what threshold gets it is mostly just evasion. So I didn't really want it to (or wasn't sure should it) be hitting it too quickly and easily. But now I'm gonna bump that aspect up a bit, as I seem to have toned it down a bit too much.

Ideally the deck would have Reviving Dose for a bit of lifegain, Guided Strike and Gallantry if those were there / worked right, a land that ends up in the graveyard easily (cycling lands from onslaught or self-destructing lands from oddisey rather than fetches) and either Ghoulcaller's Bell or Sandstone Deadfall. Also a Spellshaper and Dedicated Martyr. There's quite a few other options, but I think for a tier1 opponent those would be the best.

Not all of this is available right now, and the current version is quite a bit more cantrippy than the uploaded one, but I'll brush it up a bit, see what happens.

Now I'm also curious whether Peace of Mind works right, allthough that's one hell of an annoying card. Another think which is obvious is that the deck could use a combat trick to have something going on in the pre-threshold phase (but Defiant Strike and anything else that looked adequate kept being misplayed).

Good feedback and interesting discussion, keep it coming whenever anything at all comes to your mind.

---

Ok, how's this for cleric then:

Improved Cleric | Open

.188 16 Plains
.2495 4 Grasslands
.2483 4 Flood Plain

Right, so this is 24 lands on paper, but the Mirage fetchlands drain the deck of lands and end up in the graveyard for threshold. They do come into play tapped, and this can slow the deck down a bit, but it can't actually screw anything up the way it cip-tapped lands do in multicolored decks. Also, these are significantly less great than onslaught fetchlands, so feeding the player cheeze probably isn't he issue. Also, they don't cost life so you can give them to an early opponent.

Flagstones were replaced, because, among other things, the deck needs to draw 2 to fire them off, and if ante interferes there's only 3 to draw instead of 4 making it quite a bit less likely. Not to mention the self mill.

Should be more helpful for both threshold and deck thining.

.5628 4 Mystic Penitent
.5843 4 Mystic Familiar
.5629 4 Mystic Visionary
.5864 4 Possessed Nomad

That's the full assortment of threshold guys. Early on they're mostly cheap or mediocre creatures, and the deck stalls you with lifegain until it gets them to be evasive. Playing against it should be a nice, layered experience.

.11966 3 Ghoulcaller's Bell - Theshold helper
.5533 3 Dedicated Martyr - Same & stalling

.14603 3 Pressure Point - Cantrip
.14053 3 Rousing of Souls - Cantrip & possibly some non-threshold reliant fliers

How these two are used is less important than their role in getting to threshold without losing card advantage.

.4454 3 Devout Witness - Threshold friendly equipment proofing.

.12027 3 Moment of Heroism - This is here to provide the deck with ways to put early pressure and mask the fact that the AI can't actually play ground troops too well. This should ideally be a cantrip, and this particular card might be a bit too good, but I decided to go with it instead of other options for now.

.1733 2 Angel's Feather - It's strong, especially since it'a a sideboard card vs. white, but the deck probably has adequate lifegain otherwise, and it doesn't do anything for threshold. It's also kinda overkill-ish, even a tourney worthy deck could sideboard these agaisnt the proper color and not regret it, they're a big improvement over the OG lucky charms.

Feedback appreciated, and I'll do some more work and upload a batch later tonight, possibly with Sea Dragon and Goblin Lord and whatever else gets done, too. Not all that much left for this pass.

---

Crusader, tweaked | Open

.188 20 Plains
.10829 4 Sejiri Steppe

The deck was too explosive, and a good indicator of what happens when you give it enough lord effects to get over it's paralyzing conservativism which keeps it from using ground troops right. I was going to try to nerf it (which I'm still a bit stumped about how exactly to do), but I thought maybe Sejiri Steppe might find a home here eventually, so let's see if this happens.

.3663 4 Alaborn Musketeer - This guy replaced Longbow Archer. This might cause various things to happen - First Strike, oddly enough, causes the AI to attack into trades properly. What's strange is that I've seen the AI attack into exact same trades it could get with no first strike (kills one thing, another thing kills the first striker, but same would happen with no first strike). The problem with Longbow Archer was that a) it's a rather strong card, just underrated, and b) it was meant to give the deck reach, but the first strike combined with lords gave it air-invulnerability making the deck way too strong if not up against white. This might help.

.391 4 Abu Ja'far - bumped
.13 4 Benalish Hero
.2940 3 Benalish Infantry

Stressed the dastardly Abu Ja'far + Banding combo, which should provide "AI messed me up like a boss" screenshots. As is AI folklore, it plays banding, a mechanic deemed to incomprehensible to the average human if you write down how it works, infinitely better than it does the regular game, go figure. It's probably because it's actually a crazy strong ability which keeps stuff from droping dead while it's attacking, so it eases it's paranoia.

.8486 3 Benalish Cavalry
.443 3 Moorish Cavalry

.51 3 Crusade
.432 2 Jihad
.13556 1 Spear of Heliod

.12515 4 Zealous Strike
.6787 3 Soldier Replica
.311 2 Dust to Dust

Everything else is the same, except I took some stuff out and gave it Dust to Dust. Simple because that needs 2 targets to be on the board so it might hopefully sit dead in it's hand and do nothing and make it a bit less explosive.

If it's still nuts, the next cards I'll be looking at are Benalish Cavalry (flanking + banding + lords can be too difficult, even though the AI can't actually "read" flanking right), and Zealous Strike (it needs pump, yes, but giving a source of First Strike to a guy with Flanking Banding and Lords, well, maybe not a good idea at tier 3)

---

Further Refinement on the exalted Paladin:

Exalted Paladin | Open

.188 24 Plains
.12549 1 Cathedral of War - this got in

.1018 4 Distorting Lens
.1525 1 Enlightened Tutor - 5th Distorting lens? Is this still restricted?

.10120 4 Celestial Purge - Xeno blast
.316 4 Exorcist - Small Xenophobe
.175 2 Northern Paladin - Large Xenophobe

Then the exalted package:

.9911 4 Akrasan Squire
.10111 4 Aven Squire
.10066 4 Sigiled Paladin
.12624 3 Sublime Archangel - Decided she's in, lot's of non-exalted guys in the deck, comes in handy if she sticks around, and is, well bomby as hell

And this also plays nicely with exalted:

.1787 2 Hand of Justice - It's Shandalar Paladin when he's in the office, look at the color scheeme!
.205 3 Righteousness - Trololol. Extra funny for "WP AI" screenies, because the AI generally wastes pump so it's rare it even has one on defense. You don't see it coming, and it's a big one. This is telling me Gallantry would be a perfect cantrip for the AI, as the AI has a reaaaaaaaly small window to misplay it, someone should be whishlisting that, in the manalink section even

Right, so, I made it a bit more likely to have the lens and thus not have the purge and the xenophobes be useless if not up against black. I increased it's offensive capabilities by quite a bit with the angel, and I also made it much more likely to have a xenophobe on board with the much cheaper priest.

I did ditch Guardians of Akrasa, which I'm not sure was the right move, tbh. I think that if we can agree that the color scheeme on Hand of Justice is impossibly genuine, and what with there being an actual Sigiled Paladin in the deck, I could trim the Northern Paladin for one more angel and a maybe some more consistency for the hideous combo.

Should work better than it did in several ways, feedback very wellcome! Dedicated to getting this to work as well as it can, it's quite good despite some general exalted difficulties.

---

Leaving Archangel untouched, she wasn't widely tested with the last set of tweaks, except by me and I had my ass handed to me all the time. She was my toughest matchup!
---

I seem to be having trouble with the high priest. It's me, not anything else. Actually, there is one thing - I just saw the AI pull off a brilliant complicated move with Mother of Runes, but then 4 games in a row not use her offensively at all. Unfortunately, that was why I put her there, so it seems I might have to find another plan. maybe for the better.

I'll leave it for tomorrow, and I got another idea for Centaur Warchief, something to tone down Enchantress with a bit, I'm curious if I could use the general eldrazi drone mishandling instead of slivers in Forest Dragon, think I'm onto something with Sunder for Thought Invoker, and I also remembered I took out too many buffs out of the Green Wizard which lessens the impact of his hexproof.

Need to see about those djinns, too.

Curren status: About 20 to go (I'm leaving some as-is, including, I think, Astral Visionary), but some are really minor.

---

And folks, don't hessitate to comment, feedback ask questions, suggest things (if you know of things that make things work better, by all means!), even snark and jeer at stuff (some deserves it completely!) - at the very least it gets me thinking in directions I haven't thought before or encourages me to pursue things I was hesitant to pursue before. Jiansonzs did a huge job with his full-campaign feedback, and Blue Templar just got the Cleric spruced up incredibly well (even though I think he was talking about the High Priest, but hey, something got done ^^), and your feedback can lead to a great deck pack for everyone to use.

cleric, Crusader and Paladin right here:

[lujo]

A bunch I'm done with (tweaks and preliminary testing) for now, some have really slight tweaks:

---

Enchantress tweaks | Open

, She got Nylea, God of the Hunt replaced with Roughshod Mentor. Stampede Driver was malfunctioning (he activates at strange times and attacks in a way which suggests that the AI probably thinks it can activate his ability while he is tapped)

It got it's mana base adjusted for casting Roughshod Mentor a bit, as the changes severely bumped it's mana curve. I'm also not happy with the change, the deck wants a much cheaper, enchantmenty mass trample and I'm not even sure this will work right.

However, it's been buffed quite a bit since the previous version, in theory, so lets see how it goes. If it's still too weak I'll go for a Gaea's Anthemn build.

---

Troll Shaman | Open

He had Flamecast Wheel replaced with 2 Pyrite Spellbomb and one more Uthden Troll added. The wheel is fixed for the next update, but since there's no ETA no use having it in the deck until then. I'm also not sure whether only 3 Demonmail Hauberk is enough, considering how important it is, it's possible that I should replace one of the eggs with one more copy.

For now, let's have him like this.

---

Mind Stealer | Open

Had his lands adjusted for shocklands, and Tome Scour replace with Glimpse the Unthinkable. He was lacking bite with his milling, and I need him to be a capable milling deck to seriously punish anyone running around with below 60 decks.

It's also why Mind Control on him of all people is not so hot - he can act as a planned deterrent for below 60 decks, and an incentive to play the game like god intended. Can't if you just reload until he's got a random pile of cards which he might not even be able to use.

Also, if he's a bit underwhelming, that's because he's waiting on some cards coming in the next update which will make him better, but this is sort of the core of what he's pretty much got to be about.

---

A word on "milling" | Open

Milling, after Millstone, is the strategy of removing cards from the enemy library. If the enemy can't draw a card from the library, you won. It's actually quite "invasive" if the pushed-for-competive cards are used, as it attacks from a direction most decks can't defend. However, it's very useless if you're using low-quality cards.

How it works is, when you get down to it, very simmilar to a "burn" deck - the opponents total is his library count, and you throw stuff at his head until that goes away. Naturally, it's a bit less disruptive / interfereing in Shandalar by default as the library count is generally higher than the life count. (Although quality mill does more "damage" per mana invested than actual burn).

On the other hand, it's VERY brutal in Shandalar if folks are running around with sub-60 decks, which is exactly why there's gotta be a few dedicated mill dudes there to ruin your day.

Blue and Black got this strat as their "thing" quite often, so Mind Stealer is naturally pre-disposed to be the guy running it, and mono-blue ally engine combined with shapeshifters makes for a mill deck that can brutally murder you in under 5 turns, so that's probably gotta be the Shapeshifter. That's also good because you can pay them both to bugger off and leave you alone.

Which you might want to do - it's a very alien concept, milling, and you might not be equipped to deal with it. Blue has a big problem with it in general, because the best milling strats have a lot of permanents and cip effects involved and blue has a hard time dealing with those in a way that helps (you can bounce Halimar Excavator, but then he comes back and mills you for a ton, and Hedron Crab is a complete menace).

And well, if blue guys are running around abusing bounce, they get what's coming to them, I suppose.

It's also a bit easy to dodge with cards that shuffle your grave back into your library, but then you have to have those in your deck. So for both reasons I'm a bit unsure how it'll work out, but it's well worh a try.

As I allready mentioned, having a few milling enemies around is invaluable to force players to make proper decks (60 card ones), which then makes Mind Control on Mind Stealer (him specifically) counterproductive. I'll take it off for testing purposes, ofc, and upload the exe when the whole pack is ready, but I'll think about where to actually put it where it wouldn't be messing that up.

I like Mind Control, but I'd preffer it if it was a trap on lairs, rather than making enemies not play their decks.

Shapeshifrer | Open

I've reworked the deck slightly, as the previous version was an unstable rough draft featuring the bugged Body Double among other things:


.126 24 Island

.14215 3 Altar of the Brood
.10563 4 Hedron Crab
.10774 4 Halimar Excavator

That's all the mill the deck has. Mind you it can deck you in about 5 turns easily. Because:

.10698 4 Umara Raptor - "Dmg" attack plan
.10677 3 Stonework Puma
.10784 3 Jwari Shapeshifter - Titular Shapeshifter

All those guys trigger the Excavator, which fires off for any excavator allready on board, and that's a ton of mill. Also because of:

.13706 3 Fated Infatuation
.10399 4 Clone
.263 2 Vesuvan Doppelganger

Which can clone him for a crapton of mill. Fated Infatuation tends to be used on him, but luckily the actual clones tend to be used on the enemy creatures. This is not that much of a relief, as that usually means the deck clones your bombs and sits behind them while it mills you. Or it clones Umara Raptor for a ton of fat fliers.

.14637 3 Supplant Form

Is the only thing it has to interact with your part of the board other than the clones. Which is for the best, honestly.

And this:

.368 3 Tormod's Crypt

Depending on if it actually works (not too sure), is there to make you lose your graveyard should you try to get clever with shuffling it back. I really hope it works because otherwise Eldrazi can be used to cheat it out of winning, but on the other hand it's got an army of clones and raptors, and can live with a dead card. Or clone your Eldrazi if you play it.

Err, I'm not sure it's not overkill against folks who can't wipe the board and stamp out the crabs and excavators before they get out of hand. But we got to try it, I loved the fact that I ran into this girl and was rudely reminded to stop being a jackass and put 60 cards in my deck.

Jiansonz had 4-0 vs. the previous version, but that could be because of various things, lets see how this one does.

---

Lord of Fate | Open

He got good feedback from jiansonz, and he seems to randomly kick my ass and randoly fail. I know what I did wrong, and why the deck is too naive to really work in a satisfying manner, but for now I just took Necropolis of Azaar out and gave him a couple of Vindicate , and adjusted his lands a bit. This was needed to ease his mana demands and adress his slowness. But that's not all he's having trouble with.

He'll probably get a seeing-to at a point when more of the other stuff is working and I can really sit down with him and spin builds until I get it right.

---

Centaur Shaman | Open

He also needs a bigger seeing-to, these are just tweaks I had pegged in the notes, and some made after a bit of testing:

.91 8 Forest
.239 8 Swamp
.1707 4 Overgrown Tomb
.5397 4 Llanowar Wastes
.285 4 Wild Growth

Added Wild Growth.

.276 3 Wanderlust
.53 3 Cursed Land
.8774 4 Enslave - Removal
.12836 4 Stab Wound - Removal

Trimmed this bunch a bit, there was too many of them. Stab Wound can, for some reason, get played on it's own creature occasionally, not sure what's up.

.13903 4 Grim Guardian - Handy dandy thing.

.5873 4 Seton's Scout - Some on-flavor reach
.13939 4 Nyx Weaver - Some more reach, threshold helper for the Scout (it's not a priority and with all the permanents in the deck it's a bit hard to achieve), and can also reccur stuff (not sure can it in practice)

.13279 3 Deathgaze Cockatrice
.13514 3 Pheres-Band Centaurs

And those two are the same. I originally put in the black cockotrice before I knew dethgaze is being misinterpreted, so I might have to put the original Cockatrice back in, but that might get straightened out in the next update, if not, that's an easy tweak.

There's a lot I could do with this color combo, and it seems to me that it was originally built with all the pining stuff to evade the "AI can't play creatures properly" problem rather than any other reason. Still, I'd build upon that, but developing a creature base would necessarily mean grappling with that for yet another deck so I'll get to it when we're more satisfied with the mono-green roster in general (and in particular the Enchantress).

--- EDITED QUITE A BIT:

Tusk Guardian | Open

He was being heavily misplayed, and was also a victim to the traditional "AI using ground troops" farce, so I did this, for now:

.188 8 Plains
.91 8 Forest
.1498 4 Temple Garden
.1882 4 Brushland

.10181 4 Noble Hierarch
.14582 4 Map the Wastes

.10331 4 Qasali Pridemage
.10047 4 Rhox Charger
.8790 4 Hedge Troll

.5599 2 Lieutenant Kirtar
.14283 2 High Sentinels of Arashin
.13990 2 Supply-Line Cranes

.14618 2 Sandsteppe Mastodon

.10064 4 Sigil Blessing
.6713 4 Loxodon Warhammer

It's a combination of exalted and counter adding. It's also quite misplayed still. Something seems to be wrong with Sigil Blessing (it's gettin cast at strange times, but that also seems to happen if Birds of Paradise are in the deck, which is why they aren't there).

I hope grappling with green issues is easier in the next update (it can be in various ways without Korath trying to do anything about it specifically), and this will have to do for now, and will possibly be tweaked again later on if it completely crashes and burns.

There's a rather strong foundation for a deck here, with Hedge Troll , Sigil Blessing (if it's working), a modest smattering of exalted and some sort of equipment. That can be built upon unil it works, very likely.

There's also the whole +1/+1 if control a land of some sort thing, with many above the curve things, also developable around the same core, but somewhat pointless due to AI being unable to play it right.

Ultimately, there's a very obvious Green land destruction deck topping out with Terastodon or something like that. What would white be there for beats me (although Loxodon Gatekeeper does fit into it), I'll probably get tired enough to make it one day, too. If the whole "multiple choice decks for enemies" work out, I'll certainly make it

--- NEW!

Elementalist | Open

.5432 4 Shivan Reef
.1712 4 Steam Vents
.6870 2 Darksteel Citadel
.126 7 Island
.164 7 Mountain

.8349 4 Coldsteel Heart
.7116 4 Serum Visions
.1078 3 Mana Leak

.10928 3 Flame Slash
.1121 2 Pyroclasm - Oddly misplayed at times.

.12726 4 Frostburn Weird - Causes hard to spot tripups, especially for Mana Leak

.1325 4 Annex - Nick a land, get to Wildfire sooner
.7827 4 Dream Leash - Also, but can also steal dudes
.1553 4 Wildfire - Trolololol, I hope
.13428 4 Ember Swallower - The finisher, and also a wilfire-y mana sink, too.

The elemental support card pool isn't really there yet, and while I'm reluctant to go for a LD Tusk Guardian, I'm not against having a Wildfire deck in the pool. Especially if it means Annex is in a deck somewhere.

The plan is simple and kinda obvious, although this may not be the best way to build it and it'll certaily need polishing. It's pretty close to a regular "eminent domain" type of deck, allthough it would benefit from a better selection (and higher count) of mana stones. It also possibly trips itself up around Frostburn Weird (which is one hell of a turtle, that would go into any elementalist deck anyway, probably).

---

Witch - Got Keening Banshee replaced with Bloodhunter Bat , and I remembered that I haven't stuck a charm in so I took out 1 Addle and 1 Zubera for 2 Demon's Horn .

Will be bundled with the rest.

---

Sedge Beast - got his lands adjusted to be in line with the rest of the guys (and avoid some stupid plays). I think I need to tweak him up a bit, too, but I'm leaving it for the next pass.

---

Ok, those 10 are in this batch. Feedback appreciated!

What I have left (that I'm sure of) is:

1 X Tier 1: Seer
2 X Tier 2: Elvish Magi Re-Tweaks, Merfolk Shaman
1 X Tier 3: Warlock Re-Tweaks,
0 X Tier 4: Yay!
3 X Tier 5: Goblin Lord, Sea Dragon, Forest Dragon (maybe)
4 X Tier 6: All the Djinns need at least lands sorted out
2 X Tier 7: Winged Stallion, Centaur Warchief Re-Tweaks
1 X Tier 8: Hydra
0 X Tier 9: (Although I'll touch up Kiska-Ra and Dracur)
3 X Tier 10: Thought Invoker, War Mage and High Priest
0 X Tier 11: Not too happy with my wizards, but hey
1 X Tier 12: Arzakon (got to get around to him)

So, 15 to go, some just touchups, some full reworks. Not too happy with my Wizards, not too happy with a bunch of decks and the somewhat all over the place power level, but it's getting better than it used to be. I think. I also have a bunch of these sketched out in forge allready, but not all. You know how it goes, if the sketch turns out to work, I can do a lot of decks, if not, it can take a while to get a single deck anywhere.

Enjoy, and I hope it will really be all done by the end of the week.

EDIT: I have just tricked the AI into a convoluted scheme designed to make it able to attack with creatures for Centaur Warchief. The obstinate twerp will do anything as long as it's complicated enough. Now I just need to refine it a bit.

[Thesaguy]

Hey Lujo,

Have you done any testing with some of the deck parameters:
.vNone
.vBlack
.vBlue
.vGreen
.vRed
.vWhite
.vfast
.vlarge
.vdirect
.vartifact

I won't be surprised the AI has trouble with them, given all the 'challenges' you've highlighted, but some of them might be helpful on higher level enemies to help the AI with Direct or Mono-Decks.

I'm looking forward at testing your decks. I was hoping Korath would release an update soon.... anyone heard anything.

Keep up the good work!