Improved Shandalar General Playtesting & Feedback Thread

[Korath]

Henchmen are the guys who chase you down, have a bunch of (scaling I think someone said) life

They get 1 extra life for each worldmagic you have.

[lujo]

Ty! That sounds like something that would nicely apply to monsters with less than 20 life in general, capped off at 20.

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Anywho, I've made a big ole' updating and revising and tweaking update "patch" as I went through all the decks (and I've kept making notes as I sorted through the pool and spammed testing matches all the time in Manalink).

What I can provide you with right now is just the "patch notes" - I need to put all this stuff into actual Shandalar decks and adjust sideboards and stuff before it can be used, but Moba players dig this sort of thing so I thought you might like it too You can also yell at me like Dota folks yell at Icefraud when he nerfs their favorite stuff

Oh, and there's the new reworked Paladin list in there too, if the Shandalar AI doesn't play Shifting Sky right, that ought to be looked into to make it do that better. And that "flag which makes the AI stop prioritizing enchantments with non-stacking effects like Shifting Sky and Drop of Honey and a million others" for the AI is kind of necessary.

Patch Notes | Open

* Aga Galneer

- Cut 2 X Winter Blast for 2 X Return to the Earth
- Cut 1 X Personal Sanctuary for 1 X Siege Rhino (Up to 3)

* Archangel

- Cut 2 X Plains for 2 X Seraph Sanctuary
- Cut the sinlge copy of each "Voice", added 4 X Voice of Truth (the others will be sideboarded vs. appropriate opponents)
- Cut 1 X Nuisance Engine for 2 X Wrath of God (there was a slot left from the Voices)

* Arzakon

- Cut about 9 pieces of random junk, added 4 Drag Down and 4 Nature's Lore

* Dracur:

- Nature's Lore for Rampant Growth (I wanted this in the first place, my mind slipped, difference is that this fetches duals)
- Moxes for Taplands
- 2 X Shivan Dragon and 3 X Acidic Slime for 3 X Roc of Kher Ridges and 1 X Crimson Muckwalker
- Added Darigaaz, the Igniter

* Necromancer:

- I cut a Skinrender and Grey Merchant for 2 Swamps

* Sea Dragon (Powered him up a bit, to see what happens)

- Cut 4 Segovian Leviathan for 4 Harbor Serpent
- Cut Island Fish Jascinous for Scourge of Fleets
- Cut a Sky Diamond for Hammerhead Shark
- Cut Power Sink completely for Threads of Disloyalty

* Centaur Shaman

- Cut 1 each Pheres-Band Centaur, Deathgaze Cockatrice, Orochi Sustainer, Copper Tablet for 4 X Grim Guardian

* Druid

- Cut 3 Wall of Wood for 2 Hornet Nest and 1 Hail Storm. (It's just never gets old.)
- Cut 1 Kraul Warrior, 1 Voyaging Satyr for 2 Spidersilk Armor

* Elementalist

- Cut 1 Cloud Elemental, 1 Vaporkin, 1 Coldsteel Heart, 1 Arc Lightning, 1 Lightning Elemental
- Added 1 Island, 1 Mountain (needed more land)
- Added 1 Cinder Elemental (Now there's 3 of each smaller elemental)
- Added 1 Air Elemental and 1 Earth Elemental (It needed some beef back, Air Elemental is evasive, Earth Elemental has a big a** and the other two are identical anyway)

* Forest Dragon

- Cut 1 Cockatrice, 2 Make a Wish, 1 Kashi-Tribe Reaver, 2 X ???
- Added 4 Orochi Ranger (this deck was waaaaaay too top heavy even OG, one of the most badly built decks in the game)
- Added 1 Harmonize and 1 land

* Hydra

- Cut 2 Fireball and 2 Disintegrate for 4 Spitting Hydra (it was getting a bit annoying with fireballs to the head out of nowhere)
- Cut a Fellwar stone for a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (yes it doesn't sinergize with Gauntlet of Might, but protection from red is a silly ability)
- Cut a Dragon Welp for a Granite Gargoyle (now there's 2 Welps and 3 Gargoyles, Welps doo too damned much damage)

* Kiska-Ra

- Took out 2 Gem Bazaar and 3 Moxes
- Gave it 4 Seaside Citadel and one Tawnos's Weaponary back (now there are 3, I cut it too hastily, it's very good with Pandora's box)

* Lord of Fate

- Cut 3 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer and a Pestilence (Deck lacked bite somewhat)
- Added 3 X Celestial Ancient and 1 more Disowned Ancestor (Now it has a black plan with Pestilence and a White plan with the Celestial Ancient)

* Mandurang

- Replaced 4 X Ribbons of Night with 4 X Smoldering Tar
- Replaced 3 X Magma Jet and 1 X Honden of Infinite Rage with 4 X Ghostfire

* Paladin

Reworked to work around Shifting Sky - the AI defaults to blue, have to try it in Shandalar

.188 14 Plains
.175 4 Northern Paladin
.283 4 White Knight
.254 4 Tundra
.1487 4 Flooded Strand
.1146 4 Shifting Sky
.5843 4 Mystic Familiar
.5626 4 Mystic Crusader
.1395 4 Frantic Search
.10120 4 Celestial Purge
.14251 4 Defiant Strike
.11966 2 Ghoulcaller's Bell
.3002 2 Lotus Vale
.10529 2 Devout Lightcaster

* Prismat (was losing a lot vs. other guys in testing)

Got quite a shuffle, mostly an upgrade

- cut 3 X Moxes, Black Lotus and Sol Ring, added 4 X Jungle Shrine
- Cut 4 X onulet, added 1 X Peace Strider (essentially just an upgrade, it has 4 of them now), and 3 X Skyshroud Claim (it can fetch duals and gives him back some ramping he lost with moxes and the rest of the junk)
- Cut 4 X Living Artifact for 4 X Personal Sanctuary (I think I might've just broken him, but this was what I wanted to add to him, and the rest is just cleanup, updating and catching up to the fact that this damned thing is in. I don't think Living Artifact is bad at all, Sun Droplet isn't and neither it that thing, but there just wasn't as many artifacts around - only the disposable Peace Striders, now that I've cut the moxes)
- Cut 2 X Wrath of God for 2 X Day of Judgment (essentially a downgrade to give him an actual weakness vs. creatures)
- Cut 2 X Disenchant for 2 X Natural End
- Cut 4 X Healing Leaves, 2 X Reverse Damage for 3 X Dawnglow Infusion (Stream of Life for 2X the power, interested in how it pans out) and 3 X Drop of Honey (Because it's such an obvious thing even if redundant, and the deck was not very green until these changes)
- Also 1 X Rith, the Awakener (all the other dragons got a dragon, so why not? It'll probably kill it with spells, too, lol)



He might be pretty deadly now, not that he wasn't before.

* Queltosh

- (allready did this) Cut 4 X Accumulated Knowledge and 2 Seeker of the Way, for 3 X Words of Wisdom and 3 X Monastery Swiftspear
- I noticed the deck had way more lands than it needed, so I cut some of them and 1 X Seal of Cleansing (2 now in the deck) to add 4 X Mystic Monastery, 1 X Wooded Foothills, 1 X Arid Mesa and 1 X Sage of the Inward Eye (3 total now). 24 total lands now.

* Saltem Tor

- Was somehow missing 2 cards and had too few lands, so I cut a Shamanic Revelation and added one of each basic land

* Seer (still considering these changes, there are a few other options up in the air, and some stuff to take into account)

- Cut 3 X Hovermyr for 3 X Seacoast Drake (It can be hit with Ashnod's Transmogrant and is quite defensive even without buffs)
- Cut 3 X Threads of Disloyalty ( :_( Moved them to Sea Dragon ), added 3 X Volition Reins ( , although a mite expensive)

* Thought Invoker

- Cut 1 X Captain of the Mists and 1 X Serum Visions for 2 X Annex (XD, let's go full Annex just to see what happens, lol)

* Vampire Lord

- Cut 4 Giant Scorpion for 4 Vampire Interloper (To give the deck some offense and a cheaper creature)
- Cuit 1 Dark Ritual, 1 Nettling Imp and 1 Sorceress Queen for 3 Sign in Blood

* War Mage

- 1 X Mountain for 1 X Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle (But just 1 for now, interested in how it works out, it's a bit too Black Vice -y when you look at it)
- Cut one of each Disintegrate, Fireball, Earthquake and Lightning Bolt, added 4 X Pyrotechnics to the rest of the Arc Stuff he's loaded with. Let's just see what happens

* Whim

(Somewhat largeish update with stuff I dug up as I explored the pool and made other changes, and he was fine at controlling the board but lousy at actually getting aroudn to kill the opponent)

- Cut Moxes for 4 X Arcane Sanctum (and also cut some other artifacts too)
- Cut 3 X Yotian Soldier added 3 X Shadowmage Infiltrator (The deck needed both attackers and card draw)
- Cut 2 X Marble Titan added 2 X Serra Avenger (The creature I wanted in was either Tidehollow Strix or Baleful Strix, but the deck both needed white and had no room)
- Cut 1 X Meekstone, 1 X Icy Manipulator added 2 Ribbons of Night (It's a very strong card and while the others are too, I wonder how this works out)
- Cut 2 X Twiddle, 2 X Siren's Call for 4 X Pestermite (Well, Pestermite's a Twiddle on wheels, gotta get the AI playing it to sort the bugs out)
- Cut 3 X Assassinate, 3 X Dragon Bell Monk for 4 X Memory Lapse, 2 X Basic Land (Ribbons were in and Memory Lapse is a nice time walk)
- Cut 4 X Psychic Venom for 4 X Contaminated Ground (This is actually quite an improvement, as it tends to mess up opponents mana. I'd love to run both, but there's no place for it with the whole Assassin-Meekstone-Stuff engine, would have to rework the deck quite a bit - maybe Mind Stealer)
- Cut 1 X Whimsy for Dromar, the Banisher (Awww, I would love to keep the astral cards in, but Whimsy is just too damned random and all the other dragons got a dragon - this guy doesn't actually NEED the dragon, and it doesn't play well with Meekstone, but Pestermites acn untap it and it doesn't have to swing too often)

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And I've also done Beastmaster, an important deck/version to try out the power level and opressiveness factor of some things, but I can't write it up now, no time.

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Right, so here's Beastmaster, some thoughts first, then the deck:

Beasmaster Thoughts | Open

Beastmaster I always remembered as one of the stronger Shandalar decks - very little chaff and it had cards which would be sub-par in a different environment but killed you dead in Shandalar.

In fact, it's probably the strongest any deck got to the strongest, cheapest "adventuring" deck the OG pool allowed for, which is this:

http://www.schacherer.de/frank/sparetim ... dalar.html

The one under "green horde". I suppose most folks here are familiar with that deck, and admittedly Black Vise, Mishras Factory and Strip Mine were key to it's brutality. But when you get down to it, weenies that were easy to play alongside a lot of Mishra's Factories and Strip Mines (and the fact that you could actually make it out of commons) along with the power and flexibilty of pump (manifested in still one of the best mana-to-pump ratio cards Giant Growth) was what made that deck gloriously abusable.

If a deck like that was so brutal (and believe me, if you yourself don't know, it was) how brutal is green going to be with all it's new toys? Knowing about that deck is made me interested in MtG set and cube design in the first place - I wanted to adjust rarities in Shandalar more than I wanted new cards in it. You put stuff at the wrong rarities and it ends up easier making a completely killer deck than not. And now that I'm testing cards for their Shandalar Appropriate rarities I have to try stuff like that out with Beastmaster, because he kind of wants to be that deck - efficient green weenies and efficient green pump.

So if my version of the Beastmaster turns out too difficult to deal with, it might be because I added cards which look like improvements on the original green weenies like Naf's Asp (does more than 1 damage and costs 1 G), Scryb Sprites (evasive green dude for G which you can dump pump on quickly), etc. I need to know whether Pouncing Jaguar, Jungle Lion and such are something you can give to the AI, in what numbers, backed up with what, and where do I put them on the rarity meter for the player. This seems to be a good way to test it, and I think Guardian of the Tusk, Fungus Master and maybe even Ape Lord will potentially go through a few of these "limit testing" incarnations before they get decks with maybe less treathening looking cards.

Beastmaster Deck | Open

He's go a wolf companion and, as I wrote above, he's where we test out mad green weenies, so I decided that he's the Beastmaster because he can even make cats and dogs work together:

.91 22 Forest
.7 4 Aspect of Wolf
.868 4 Aswan Jaguar
.2867 4 Jungle Lion
.3858 4 Pouncing Jaguar
.8159 4 Wildsize
.12630 4 Timberpack Wolf
.14050 4 Predator's Howl
.4728 3 Pack Hunt
.285 4 Wild Growth
.12143 3 Briarpack Alpha

Hey, I didn't say I wasn't going to make it have a flavor ^^

Jungle Lion and Pouncing Jaguar are the early threats. Timberpack Wolf can also get somewhat big for it's cc.

It doesn't have Giant Growth, because I wanted to see how much of a drawback Echo on Pouncing Jaguar is, it instead has Wildsize (to draw some cards) and Briarpack Alpha (to pump and get dudes on board at the same time). And, ofc, Aspect of Wolf - rather than any of the strictly better newer auras which can end the game single-handedly like Blanchwood Armor or Gaea's Embrace or whathave you. I'm trying to see if a deck with 8 creatures with 2 power for G can kill you by executing it's game plan rather than just by pumping the early threats.

Wild Growth is there because mana elves can be pinged off, which is very counterproductive, and because I'm interested in seeing whether it works out in a swarm deck. Also, this deck does, in fact, have a plan.

I left in Aswan Jaguar because he's part of the plan (and evens out the cats to dogs ratio at 3 - 3 (not counting Aspect of Wolf) XD). The plan is to swarm the enemy via Predator's Howl, Pack Hunt and whittling down available enemy blockers with Aswan Jaguar and attacking with an overwhelming pack - without Overrun or that stampede thing. Obviously Howl of the Night Pack would not prove anything, that thing can overwhelm anyone, I'm more curious to see how the deck does with the morbid card.

We can learn from this deck - if it just always beats people silly with the early guys, then we know even Jungle Lion and Pouncing Jaguar are problematic because the deck is not really built for speed otherwise. If it wins via the swarm plan - they are not, and the swarm plan is executable without Howl of the Night pack level or power. And we also see if it uses morbid right, and if it ever exploits not paying echo to activate morbid as that's quite an important bit of info when considering echo cards over similar cards for inclusion/rarity.

Eh, sorry about the lenght, I bet noone expected me to go on this long about a simple concept as the Beastmaster, right?

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And here's what I got for Nether Fiend, also somewhat experimental (the OG one was working pretty well lately from what I've seen):

Nether Fiend | Open

.239 25 Swamp
.3 4 Animate Dead
.151 4 Lord of the Pit
.871 2 Necropolis of Azar
.8273 3 Ratcatcher
.7318 4 Nezumi Cutthroat
.1125 4 Ravenous Rats
.12106 4 Typhoid Rats
.3589 3 Ancient Craving
.1446 4 Douse in Gloom
.243 3 The Hive

There's an interesting twist in the SotA version where it adds Bazzar of Baghdad to discard Lord of the Pit with and reanimate it. Actually, since the deck originally doesn't have any kill cards, Animate Dead is a bit of wtf moment in it, but I tweaked it to work thusly:

Typhoid Rats were supposed to be early defense. The AI madly attacks with them all the time in Manalink. Nezumi Cutthroat just madly attacks because that's the only thing he can do (OG deck had a smattering of cheap early threaths in Erg Raiders and Black Knight).

Ravenous Rats, though, are there to make the enemy discard, and this can actually net you a reanimation target. In fact, replacing Necropolis of Azaar and a Hive and 1 X something for 4 Hymn to Tourach would probably serve to bring that aspect of the deck more to the forefront and I'd like that. Well, maybe not Hymn to Tourach as it can randomly win games on the spot, but something like Rakshasa's Secret (mill both players, more chance to score a reanimation target) - woot! (Got that in my notes for the next "patch").

Ancient Craving is card draw, Douse in Gloom is the removal (hopefully we get the AI not to cast such things on it's own dudes if it even does so in Shandalar).

The Lord of the Pit plan now has two ways to support the old fiend.

One is the Hive, which I tried to replace with Nuisance Engine, but Manalink AI tends to use all it's mana to dump pests on the board for no reason (and prioritizes casting it over other things), so I kind of stuck with the Hive for now (although I would have to test the engine in actual Shandalar).

The other is much more interesting - Ratcatcher. If one of them gets on the board, it can summon other copies and/or an endless stream of rats. Those should be good with Lord of the Pit. The problem, though, is that Ratcatcher has Fear, and so does Nezumi Cutthroat, so it can end the game on it's own.

There's another option in Pack Rat, which is notoriously busted and tends to take over games.

What I wanted to see here was whether we can get the hive out of this, how well these rats do, and whether Ratcatcher is too strong. This deck can be reworked further/restored back in various ways or to a varying degree.

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It seems like the only enemy at the Vampire Lord - Paladin - Forest Dragon - Sea Dragon - Goblin Lord tier left is Goblin Lord.

That's the most difficult Shandalar deck to tweak from my perspective. It's a long story why, but I've spent hours trying to not make it too brutal or too meh, and I think I'll actually leave that one for last.

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In the end I'll go with this for now, it's a very small tweak of the OG list:

Goblin Lord | Open

.164 22 Mountain
.178 4 Orcish Oriflamme
.102 4 Goblin King
.101 4 Goblin Balloon Brigade
.163 4 Mons's Goblin Raiders
.135 4 Keldon Warlord
.866 4 Goblin Polka Band
.533 2 Tawnos's Weaponry
.679 2 Immolation
.649 4 Giant Strength
.1090 4 Mogg Sentry
.11856 2 Tectonic Rift

I pretty much just took out Helm of Chatzuk for Mogg Sentry and Manabarbs for Tectonic Rift. The AI couldn't really use the helm historically, and the Mogg can be tricky to deal as a defender (and he's a bit tricky to casually ping off the board). I just didn't feel like playing against a Manabarbs deck in Shandalar, and I didn't feel like avoiding Goblin Lord just so those don't get randomly played against me in dungeons.

Actually reworking this guy... I don't know. It one of the poster boys for "In Shandalar red = trouble". He manages to win with so much junk in there and no actual burn, that he feels like he could use nerf, while at the same time almost everything you can do to it would buff him - or nerf him too much. I mean, Dragon Fodder / Krenko's Command or Hordeling Outburst seem perfect for it, but the problem with that is that if you have a Lord/Oriflame then that's 4/4 for 1R and 6/6 for 1RR in a way that helps AI swarm. That's Deranged Hermit level of too damned good ecept it's faster and the bloody hermit even has Echo. Heck, with Goblin King these guys are 2/2 Mountainwalk and with Goblin Chieftain they're 2/2 haste, and I've tried it (and all sorts of other stuff) and you probably don't want to play against that sort of thing.

Also I think the Goblin Polka Band is there precisely so it doesn't win as often as it could. If it curves out (turn 1 one 1/1 for R, turn 2 two 1/1 for R, turn three Lord) you're playing against an OG deck with 10+ 2/2 guys for R, that's pretty insane in a below 20 format. Sure you might kill them all and it has no proper way to reset, but whenever you don't you're doomed. And to top it off one of them is a flier and the deck also has a +2/+2 for RR buff, which can kill you in a few turns.

Maybe the situation improves for me subjectively when I map out the pool, or when the update hits.

[lujo]

After getting exhausted with the Goblin Lord, I decided I'd do the circle of tier two opponents next, instead of the two-color or tier 3 guys. I haven't done any, yet, and Merfolk Shaman needs a less crazy-ass version (although I do believe the fellow who made it when he says he could've made it way more insane).

Here's Undead Knight, a somewhat flavorful take on stuffing your guys full of Auras, tweaks can be applied as needed in any direction:

Undead Knight | Open

After I realized the flanking undead knights from Mirage block weren't in, I decided it wasn't gonna be a tribal deck and that instead I'll do one flavored on the idea of what a court of a black knight would look like. The cards are still selected with care for mechanics, mind you:

.239 24 Swamp
.16 4 Black Knight
.4271 4 Corrupt Court Official
.13580 4 Tormented Hero
.14590 4 Merciless Executioner
.1374 2 Ihsan's Shade
.2329 4 Phyrexian Boon
.13542 4 Scourgemark
.174 2 Nightmare
.13729 4 Grisly Transformation
.13667 2 Ashiok's Adept
.8771 2 Dunerider Outlaw

Right, so there's a reasonably easy to deal with black deck which can still stack a bunch of auras on various buggers and kill you. The OG deck was a pile of random stuff, so it's not even that far off. There isn't any Unholy Strength or Bad Moon, though, I wanted to try out less-efficient pump with better creatures.

Black Knight are the loyal knights of their Undead Leader. Corrupt Court Official is the only kind of official this guy would tolerate (and also fodder for other things and a bit of ealry disruption). Tormented Hero is the kind of adventurer he would be a patron to. Merciless Executioner kills folks for him (and also Corrupt Court Officials ). Dunerider Outlaw is what he keeps as rangers/border patrols and Ashiok's Adept is the court wizard. Ishan's Shade is the Knight of the castle and Nightmare is his fateful Steed (thy're also big beaters).

Phyrexian Boon, Scourgemark and Grisly Transformation are the kind of boons he bestows upon his subjects. Most of them are better when buffed, one of these makes them evasive, and 2 of them Draw Cards.

So in short, he plays dudes, buffs them, the dudes in question like getting buffed, and some have CiP abilities too. It's very simmiar to how it used to be, except it's possibly cooler, but not as explosive due to no Unholy Strength and Bad Moon. I'm curious if it turns out to be a satisfying low-tier enemy.

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Priestess

Right, so here's the temporary priestess, it seems to actually be quite decent despite the AI blundering around quite a few things (most of which I've reported after a few hours worth of testing, and there's a couple more I need to see crop up more often to be sure)

Priestess | Open

.188 23 Plains
.7264 3 Kami of Ancient Law
.7572 3 Tallowisp
.7294 4 Lantern Kami
.14158 1 Radiant Fountain
.4 4 Animate Wall
.642 4 Fortified Area
.11078 4 Wall of Omens
.273 4 Wall of Swords
.8807 3 Mesa Enchantress
.8845 3 Serra's Boon
.545 4 Wall of Spears

It's got 24 lands, which I'm kind of bumping most decks to to avoid mana screw as much as possible. I sure hope the new mulligan rules get ported at some point.

Right so the idea is that you've got the early spirit package, along with the three walls: Wall of Omens, Wall of Spears and Wall of Swords. Wall of omens is getting Animate Wall cast on it a lot, which sucks, but if Fortified Ground hits it's a 1/5 banding dude, which is one mean banding dude when you think about it. Wall of Spears turns out to have to be in - protection from red would otherwise mess the deck up. Wall of Swords is a rather nasty critter even when unbuffed by anything.

As backup there's Tallowisp which draws the deck it's auras, and Mesa Enchantress which draws it cards for all the enchantments, and that's sort of necessary since it has quite a bunch of them and needs to play them.

The enchantments are Serra's Boon, Fortified Area and Animate Wall. Serra's Boon is a handy ole thing that's more expenisive than Holy Strenght (so no Spirit beatdown for tier2 opponent), but can also serve as removal in a pinch. You gotta be carful with your enchantments around Tallowisp, it's a really strong card. Also - originally I reworked the deck with no Wall of Spears in it, and you can't buff Wall of Spears with Serra's Boon, which is a crying shame - adding another buffing aura might be necessary, but also might push Tallowisp a mite too far. Gotta puzzle that out. I really don't want to remove Serra's Boon, it's kind of ideal for the deck otherwise.

However, there are several AI problems: Tallowisp won't look for Animate Wall (it will search the library but it won't fetch it), which is a darned shame on the one hand, but maybe not terrible on the other. I could substitute it for Rolling Stones, but that would mean Wall of Air is a 3/5 flier and the Wall of Spears is a 2/3 First Striker , both get buffed by Fortified Ground and it would be a mite too aggro I think. Not entirely sure though.

Another problem is that the AI will prioritize playing its enchantments over playing Mesa Enchantress, and that's really not good for it.

Another problem is that if I put in Auramancer to bring spent Auras from the grave, the AI is highly likely to cast it over anything else as soon as it has mana instead of keeping it in it's hand to do his thing.

It can also get really weird with Tallowisp - attack, then play spirits after the attack, and then keep the Sera's Boon s in hand. A player would play spirits before the attack, play the buffs and then attack. So I'm not quite sure about it's true power level as it tends to missplay just about everything - but it's still a rather decent deck and it can still stumble into or even practically perform a lot of it's gimmicks.

However, it could be tweaked in various ways (there was already tweaking involved to get it to "just" these problems - when I say I build around the AI more than the card pool I really mean it). I could drop the Wall of Omens (which I don't want to as it's just right), so that Animate Wall ends up on the correct walls more often (I've got nothing I'd like to put in it's place, though), I could try a bunch of different compromises but I'd preffer if the bugs/AI messups got sorted out as it would make a cool deck and probably have long term benefits concetning the cards involved. I'll leave it like this for a bit, got to port all the decks into shandalar format and retest everything and get on with it.

I think that despite it's many execution blunders it's actually playable in Shandalar as-is, at least as a temporary thing.

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Sorcerer

Making red decks that don't consistently murder you 20 to 0 in fiveish turns max, don't suck in obvious ways, or both, is a bit of a nightmare.

Despair rant I wrote in several incarnations over the last few days but didn't wipe this one off | Open

I think so many things about the situation with red right now that I could write a book on it. There's a bunch of stuff that red lacks in the current pool (TH2). Namely, cards like Zap or Flare, every red cantrip ever made that's no in yet, or something one-shot that gives a creature +1/+1, very crappy looking unglamorous effects and cards that do elementary things or variations on them with block mechanics, kicker, etc. There's a million dragons and such, but all that stuff is useless: If you try to make a mono red deck, and have something that needs it to survive until you can cast it, you are forced to fill the deck with other red cards. If you fill the deck with red cards you either won't survive to cast whatever it is, or you will play the red cards and just win without casting anything much above cc3 or even 2.

For example, turn 1 Satyr Hoplite, a common. T2 any combination of Brute Force and Titan's Strength (both commons, you can draw doubles of either or one of each). The opponent is at 1 life if they started at 10 and you have a 3/3 creature on board which you payed R for. Whatever the rest of your deck is the enemy is dead. The fact you start at less than 20 lives is irrelevant, as the enemy never really gets to attack.

I think it would take someone very, VERY bad at magic, not just, "haven't caught up with cards since point X", not "I'm just casual never got much into tourney stuff" or "Never drafted much", but, like actually someones great-aunt who's never herd of magic to just pick 40 red cards completely at random, add 20 mountains and that MIGHT be a "fair" red deck at 10 life for early opponents. Might!

Terribly sorry. Lost way too much time with this, if I could code and add cards, at Korath's rate, I could've used the time I lost on Goblin Warlord and
Sorcerer here to get several hundred red cards in which MIGHT be what's needed to start making sensible (or at least interesting) mono-red decks for the AI. That's how disenheartened I feel.

Anyway after way too much time I have this for the Sorcerer. It might still be unplayable against and the Manalink AI seems to be able to sacrifice Frostling with no target for it, but I'm interested in how this works:

Sorcerer | Open

.164 24 Mountain
.7341 4 Pain Kami
.7468 4 Frostling
.7749 2 Skyfire Kirin
.1361 2 Prodigal Pyromancer
.11663 4 Priest of Urabrask
.9640 4 Pyre Charger
.10381 4 Act of Treason
.8434 4 Rite of Flame
.13983 4 Spite of Mogis
.13798 4 Scouring Sands

I got Manabarbs out of it, and the rest was just goblin lord without goblins and lords and with lightning bolts. Same principle, same Goblin Ballon Brigade + Giant Strenght and some burn and other non-descript 1/1 for R dorks.

This one doesn't work in any sensible way, and you seemingly can't give red decks any concentrated theme, because then it just kills people. Or sucks, depending on the theme. This one has a bunch of spirits who sack themselves to burn enemy creatures, with Skyfire Kirin just to give the deck an illusion of not being a pile of meh red dorks, along with somewhat meh red spells. Don't expect it to ever be relevant except as a 3/3 flier for 4 possibly.

There's 2 Prodigal Pyromancers to help the critters trade up better and spells do a bit more. There's a Priest of Urabrask because you can cast him and then cast something else on the same turn or have some mana to activate Pain Kami and Pyre Charger. Pyre Charger - the only cheap thing with haste I could find that wasn't terrible or too difficult to handle.

There's Act of Treason, Rite of Flame, Spite of Mogis and Scouring Sands. They're all Sorceries, because Sorcerer. They do what the vast majority of red spells (at least ones in the pool) do - make the creatures that the other guys played unable to block. One way or another. Rite of Flame is obviously a bit of ramp.

If it needs buffing, that's easy - pick any card in the deck and replace with any of the ones which do the same thing better for the same or lower price.

How it loses? It runs out of steam. It's creatures are weak and it can keep killing yours, but you can beat it on card and creature quality if you can kill the inital wave. I hope.

Red shouldn't have too many problems with it, too. All of it's stuff is easy to burn out.

---

Elvish Magi

I don't agree with what Abe did to this deck - it was one of the stronger Shandalar decks, well made and not trying to be tribal at all. Which is good because that either ends up awful if there's not enough support, or too damned good because lords and below 20 formats don't mix too well. If I tried to make this guy tribal I'd get an elfball, and there's no way in hell I'm giving a 2nd tier green opponent anything resembling that, that's insane.

However, it being a deck with 4 Giant Spiders to lock up the place and Hurricanes to blow you out, along with rather unblockable 3/3 dudes to kicks your ass after the Spider sayes "you shall not pass" is also kind of inappropriate for a 2nd tier opponent. I couldn't help respect the power of the OG deck, but it was very annoying that Enchantress and Forest Dragon were disfunctional piles compared to it.

I got a lot to work with, so let's see what I can do later today.

Here's what I ended up with temporarily:

Elvish Magi 0076 | Open

.91 24 Forest
.622 4 Elven Riders
.149 4 Llanowar Elves
.855 4 Winter Blast
.6806 4 Tel-Jilad Archers
.14081 4 Carnivorous Moss-Beast
.1243 3 Harmonize
.13284 3 Elvish Mystic
.4902 3 Thrive
.1042 4 Fyndhorn Elder
.1363 3 Elvish Visionary

I've got a caveat - testing things in Manalink in the previous version might have seriously skewed my decks towards "too strong", because I was testing them at both me and the AI having 20 life. I'm unsure how to set lower it even in the new, exciting and wonderful perma-duel mode in shandalar, but there'll be serious nerfage all over before this is ready to roll out, even as a temporary pre-sorting measure.

The deck is quite like the OG one, with cards I'm very curious about.

Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic should ensure the deck realiably has a Mana Elf. If it draws Fyndhorn Elder, it'll be able to ramp out a threat quite early (provided you don't answer with a handy dandy Honet Sting or whatever).
If no mad rampz, then it might still have an Elvish Visionary to draw into things, or even Harmonize.

I kept the Giant Spider, except not Giant Spider but Tel-Jilad Archers, which I sort of look to to replace the omnipresent show-stopper bug. The benefits of them, in terms of balancing things out, is that they cost 1 mana more (so their solid defense kicks in a bit later) and that they can't be equipped (I hope) because of the protection from artifacts, so it's a bit more difficult to use the same thing to defend and kick ass one decks start having equipment.

The threats are also different - Winter Blast is still there, and it can still kill your small fliers and blow you out in general. The AI is trigger happy with it, which I reported, we'll see how that goes. Hurricane got the axe along with stream of life - no more X burn to the face from tier 2 opponent. It has plenty of anti-air in the Archers and Winter Blast. Stream of life is also a bit less needed because of no Hurricane, so it got axed too. In their place it got Harmonize and Thrive - which is my compromise solution to giving it a way to pump it's dudes which isn't a Lord.

It's trigger happy with the thrive too, somewhat, but because of the pretty kick ass ramp, card draw and Thrive, I gutted it's midsection, so no Elvish Archers, no War Mamooth and the spider became more expensive. It still has the nigh-unblockable Elven Riders (which can now get pumped with Thrive!) and... Carnivorous Moss Beast! Booga, Booga, Booga!

Yes, really! Now, I don't claim that's a good card, that's a hilariously awful looking card - but then again this is a tier 2 opponent who can bust it out on turn 3, and sink it's mana into growing it. And it has heaps of mana - but if I give it anything deadlier to do with all that mana it'd kick your ass. Heck, it can still kick your ass, as it turns out. I liked that goofy thing while I was sorting green out and decided to try it out, and this is basically the perfect deck for it.

So in short, it's still the old Elvish Magi, except he sets up his ramp turns 1-2-3, either blocks up the place with the defensive/slowly growing stuff or tries to murder you with elven riders, and if it draws a Winter Blast you're probably doomed. I'll be testing it and possibly nerfing it a bit these days.

Enjoy!

---

Merfolk Shaman

Well, at least this was relaxing. Blue felt a bit constrained when I was building Seer, and the the pool could use quite a large helping of cards that noone adding cards would add to the pool, but at least it's signature effects aren't necessarily too impactful. I toned down the deck that was being used to this:

Merfolk Shaman Rework | Open

.126 24 Island
.1688 4 Manta Riders
.11146 3 Maritime Guard
.1687 2 Rootwater Hunter
.14004 3 Whitewater Naiads
.3732 4 Coral Merfolk
.4758 4 Seal of Removal
.13951 4 Pin to the Earth
.10445 4 Merfolk Sovereign
.13212 4 Runner's Bane
.11171 4 Scroll Thief

Bumped the land count a tiny bit so it has fewer cards in it (it's one of the things which make weenie swarm decks too good), got Manta Riders to be it's Goblin Baloon Brigade (but it has limited pump), got Maritime Guard and Coral Merfolk as non-descript early stuff, Scroll Thief and Rootwater Hunter as intereting but not overwhelming three drops.

I chose Merfolk Sovereign as the the lord - the Manalink AI couldn't use Merfolk Reejerey properly at all (so I couldn't tell if he was overwhelming or not). Sovereign at least doesn't give a special ability to every creature in the deck (unlike the 2 Goblins) and the ability doesn't hose the color most likely to be fighting the deck (like landwalk granting lords do). Also, you can get pinged by a weenie in addition to Coral Merfolk, or even Scroll Thief so the deck draws cards, it's the least threatening thing I could find. The deck that was being used had unblockable 1/1 dudes, 3/2 lifeling 2 drops and 3 lords -.-

I definitely didn't want to make this an islandwalk deck. Sea Dragon is an islandwalk deck. Heck, the original Merfolk Shaman could've been Sea Dragon's deck - it just uses Merfolk as early threaths and I could easily stick Vodalian Knights into the current Sea Dragon Tweak Deck as far as functionality is concerned if I wanted it to have fliers.

I chose a non-merfolk creature to top the curve, Whitewater Naiads, which also makes stuff unblockable when you play an enchantment, and all the non-creature spells are enchantments: Runner's Bane, Pin to the Earth and Seal of Removal. The Manalink AI is a bit prone to misplay them due to silly aura stacking, but that HAS to be fixed eventually. I wish there were some small blue pumping auras that just gave +1/+1 or something in the pool, but there you have it.

I hope it works and is appropriate, as then I could try to apply some of this logic to Red decks. IDK how this deck, with a lord, a bunch of removal and unblockability manages to be less scary than the red ones. Maybe it's just more difficult to judge how powerful red cards really are because they aren't the strongest red cards you know of you you think you're putting junk in and you in fact aren't. Hmmmm...

I'd advise anyone who's in charge of the deck pool which comes with the updates to swap the current Merfolk Shaman deck with this one, even if the aura play isn't too stellar. The one in the pool is waaaaay above curve compared to the rest of the decks. I can't guarantee plopping most of my other decks in there would instantly make things better before I test it, but I think I can for this one.

[jiansonz]

Very nicely done, lujo. I keep enjoying your posts, but don't really have the time right now to let it all sink in (and many cards are completely new to me). So it's nice to be able to go back later.

As for the life of the henchmen, I never knew it depends on the number of purchased world magics! This means they max out at 28 life on Wizard difficulty (I've seen 27, but I never buy Tome of Enlightenment...).

And yes, if you beat them enough, they do try to run away from you (but won't ever pay tribute, I think).

[lujo]

Ty! Well, it's a good thing you're not trying these out, I had a bit of power creep happen on me and I can only just now test them all out properly (and probably sneak in some cool new stuff too!)

The Merfolk Shaman, though, can most likely just default-replace the current one. The current one is brutal, the tweaked version is somewhat more sane. And quite different from the Sea Dragon, now

I've put up the missing Elvish Magi. Might be a tad too good, but, funnily enough, I managed to keep it the old Elvish Magi AND make it an elf ramp AND lose the hurricane and Giant Spiders to account for how they were a mite too good for a low tier opponent originally. I'm not sure I didn't make it a tad too good again, but it'll get it's testing.

I've also put up a priestess plan, looks sweet in my head and seems to be a good way to actually make a Tallowisp deck actually be low tier. Got to put it togather and run tests, but it ought to be quite an improvement. Not sure if potentially feeding folks Tallowisps is a good idea, but then again, this is temporary stuff.

---

Priestess in! The AI mishandles her in a lot of ways, but it'll get sorted out one way or another and it allowed me to catch some bugs/AI tings (possibly). She's quite playable I think, not the strongest deck in the universe but no slouch either. The deck is in the post with the other tier2 decks, with all the bugs and silly mishandlings noted. As I said I build them around the AI in multiple ways, so a casual observer focused on their own deck (or unfamiliar with particular cards and strategies) might not even notice, but if you take a closer look (and have the debug mode on so you can check the AI's hand and are familiar with the cards/deck/mechanics/intentions) you get to see memorable and eyebrow-raising stuff.

Got a ton of work on porting all the recently tweaked decks into manalink, then soaking up new cards, mapping stuff out, testing stuff in the proper engine finally, and making the rest of the decks. And equipment hit, gotta test that, too. And I can finally test decks at their proper lives (wizard difficulty). Tweak status update might be slower for a while, not enough hours in a day.

[lujo]

Important note for anyone thinking of using my decks: My sorcerer needs an immediate rework - the Scry cards, and Spite of Mogis in particular are behaving very counter-productively.

I've reported the most silly aspect of this where it tends to completely missplay cards (which may or may not be scry related), but I also think the AI tends to scry lands away too much which makes the deck mana screwed as well (which also makes Pain Kami not work right). The way the deck misuses the concrete scry cards in it also causes it to misplay Frostling (It will cast an unreasonably small Spite of Mogis and then sacrifice Frostling to finish something off). I've also seen it make strangely pointless suicide blocks with solo Frostling, too.

I'm trying to figure out a way to properly report (anything! I try, fail and suck at reporting! but in particular) something about the way the AI makes blocking choices. That Sorcerer up there has a serious problem of choosing to chump block with Pyre Charger rather than Priest of Urabrask. It's evaluation system for blocking is all kinds of strange.

I'm very curious whether summoning sickness figures into any of the AI calculations about blocking choices and Aura targeting when choosing who to buff, because it that was true it could explain a lot of strange things and insane blocking. What I see a lot of, might be coincidence, is the AI madly blocking with things when they have summoning sickness which it doesn't otherwise madly block with. Pain Kami for example - it'll sit on it for ages if it doesn't have summoning sickness, but if it does and you attack with something it'll chump block like mad. Same with most things that have activated abilities (or possibly even all things). The Pyre Charger over Priest of Urabrask often happens like that, or when the AI doesn't have any untapped lands at the moment but behaves like it never will so maybe it thinks the priest is just strictly better or something.

If this were true, also, doing something about it could improve the AI play by leaps and bounds (simply because anyone treating everything with summoning sickness as if it was vanilla is bound to be making mistakes left and right).

The Aura targeting is something I suspect but haven't really kept a close eye on and it might not be anything, too, but it tends to prefer doing things with whatever is furthest to the left on the battlefield. Same with it's own buffs - they'll most likely end up on it's own thing that was in play the longest. I kinda noticed this (or got the notion of it even if was coincidence) whenever the AI was having problems with stacking auras or making spectacular removal missplays in general. Could be I'm way off with that, though, it's a bit difficult to dig into it on my end.

[stassy]

Also one thing that must be taken into account but I completely forgot it in AI behavior : the AiDecisionTime setting in Shandalar.ini

It's worth a shoot now that testing is easier to quickly test the same duel with different settings (every patch I put it at 1040 something but I don't see much difference though)

[lujo]

The new Sorceress tweak I've been trying out plays quite a bit better at double the thinking time - and the playspeed difference wasn't noticeable. For one thing I only got sensible Goblin Tunneler activations 5 matches in a row, whereas previously there'd be screwups 4 times out of 5. Thanks A LOT for this tip.

How far do you think it can be pushed before encountering massive slowdown, anyone tried that? Because this just changed an unworkable deck into a very workable one
---

!!!

;Relative time to allow AI to think. The default in the normal game is 5405;
;lower numbers mean quicker (and, to some extent, dumber) decisions.
;
;Corresponds to AiDecisionTime in config.txt for Manalink.
;
;Defaults AiDecisionTime = 540.

Which one of these numbers is a typo!?

---

The AI plays some things a bit better at 2160, however it still has serious issues with anything that has "Draw a card" or anything similar in addition to another effect. It can get quite crazy about casting those things at any possible time (except, funnily enough, at the right time), and does the exact opposite of what a player would in most situations - instead of ignoring the "Draw a card" part when determining how to use it, it ignores everything else XD

This is awful. "cantrips" are usually the best variants of any individual effect because drawing a card in addition to doing something you would do anyway is basically the most worth you could possibly tack onto a utility card. Basic cantrips are sorely missing in the pool - porting everything ever with "draw a card" and "draw a card at the beggining of the next turns upkeep", into manalink and into Shandalar (or bypassing Manalink), no matter how insignificant it looks at first glance would be huge. Zap, Afflict, Jolt, things like that would hugely but sneakily improve every low-to-mid tier deck you could think of. If the AI can't use them (or brutally misuses them), this is really bad.

And boy does it ever misuse them, it'll not even bother realizing that it could attack and kill something with Defiant Strike, I've just had it pass the attack phase and cast it in it's second main - and making itself unable to cast other things because of it.

Another thing that simply has to be fixed (inasmuch as anything "has to" be done in the world, ofc), with as much haste as possible, is the AI madly throwing removal as soon as it can target anything. Match after match I watch it Unsummon / Excomunicate a lonely insignificant threat instead of playing creatures. Empty board, no tempo to be gained, it sees a target - bam! If it actually had something to attack with on the board it would be a huge deal, if it waited a turn it would have a better target, heck if it played a creature the player would almost certainly supply it with a better target, but no - it has a target, it'll cast Seething Song to throw a 5cc 5 dmg spell to kill that LLanowar Elf. The game wasn't developed to be played like that, cards weren't made to work like that - I can't scale deck power by giving it more efficient spells because it's more likely to misuse them than benefit from them XD

Just think - if I give it a spell which does 5 damage to a creature for R, it will actually play worse than it would if I gave it a spell which does 5 damage to a creature for 3RR. Because the first one will get thrown at a grizzly bear while the second one has a chance of actually hitting a Serra Angel. The take-it-to-a-logical-conclusion-concequence, which I've also seen a bunch of is that the AI actually manages to play better if it gets mana screwed and misses a land drop than if it doesn't. Same spell, the 3RR 5 damage to a creature thing - the AI missed a land drop and didn't have 5 available on time to kill my Angelic Page, so when I played a Serra Angel and the AI hit the 5th land, it killed the big guy and went on to win. If it wasn't mana screwed I would've beaten it o.0

Whats more is that if it's making stupid plays at stupid times it's also wasting mana on it, which often means that if I give it the most efficient creature curve in the world the easiest way to make it mess it up is if I also give it efficient removal. But if I don't, if I give it removal/spells which it can use somewhat sensibly (read: overcosted), It will get stuck with hands where it can't play anything before turn 4-5 and will be eaten alive by then (and can't deal with a basic curve-out by the player because it can still only cast one of it's overcosted spells per turn).

Otherwise it'll spam Pacifism for 4 turns while 2 Mesa Enchantress sit in it's hand.

It's... difficult.

Oh, and AI blocking decisions are still mind boggling. It's easy to explain what's wrong with it's attacking theory in MtG terms - it hasn't got a way to decide what's a favorable trade for it and is unwilling to sacrifice almost any creature on attack (Even though you could, so to say, train a chimp to attack into trades which would result in two-for-one or three-for-one trades such as trading it's one creature for an enemy creature with an aura on it, for example.) This creates big trouble in terms of deck building because it forces me to give the AI blowout cards which just "win" on the spot (like Winter Blast or Icy Blast), especially in conjunction with how trigger happy the AI is with them.

This means that most decks can only really utilize one strategy - get stuff to be evasive or unblockable so that it would attack with it, which is bad and either uninteractive or easy to shut down for the player (somewhat dependent on the player color), or overload it with overly powerful (and very specific) removal that it's so powerful that you can't misplay it (like the Arc spells which you can't really missplay too hard). Or I have to just plain trick it into missplaying itself into moves like the Hornet Nest + Hail Storm interactions (which is also a variation on giving it removal and evasion).

But it's blocking logic is just strange.

TLDR:

- Nobody has to do anything they don't want to do, or accept anything they don't want to accept. Everyone involved in this does things of their own will and finds their own motivation for what ever they do. This isn't a rant, I'm not demanding anything and I don't want to kill anyone's motivation or make anyone feel bad about anything - I'm just saying this because I happen to be in a position to judge. So might other people, I don't know how good you guys are at MtG so I might just be stating the obvious, but I feel like I have to say this so we know where we are, in case we don't.
- The AI is VERY BAD - it does some stuff better than Manalink, but otherwise it is very lousy at handling some fundamentals, which cause issues. This is why I takes me ages to develop a deck - the way AI treats some stuff goes against how the game was designed to be played in fundamental ways. I suppose that the task of getting it to be better at it might be so daunting and work intensive that noone would even want to try, shrugging the current AI off as "passable". It's very far from passable if the purpose of adding more cards is anything other than having them there for the players to beat a very bad AI with. Specifically:
- AI related to cantrips (cards which have a "draw a card" clause in addition to a different effect like Defiant Strike or Repulse) needs serious fixing.
- AI related to removal and targeted spells in general is causing the AI to missplay the game so fundamentally as to give someone trying to make decks for it a brain stroke. It's waaaaaaay too trigger happy.
- AI doesn't display enough elementary capability to evaluate trades on offense. If you were teaching someone to play Magic, and the person showed complete inability to understand this concept, you would do well to give up and try another game with this person.
- Adding new cards, while cool if you want to play with them as a player, means very little at this point, because the AI can't really use anything but the bluntest, most simple things as is, and getting it to use less blunt stuff takes hours of tweaking decks so it stumbles into something resembling passable play or you make the deck unable to fail to do what you limit it to be able to do. The more cards are in, the more cards might need to be tweaked as the AI gets improved.


Anyway, sorry about the tone, length and all that. I don't mean any ill, I'm just banging my head against the wall here and feel like an idiot every time I try to report something related to basic fundamental things - I want to go through all these decks (and finish off the remaining ones), but just from the 4-5 I've already gone over I can see a AVALANCHE of bug reports. And for a bunch of them I'm not sure it's going to be easier for Korath to just shrug off as none of his business (and I wouldn't even blame him), or that everyone will just decide I'm immagining things or that I'm just a spam bot. And the guy worked his ass off for this update and here I am shoveling him with reports, I feel awful

Right, back to work, Sorceress down, Priest almost there, then Witch, check Druid, check Seer, and I might even have them in the "shandalar rework thread" by the end of the day ready to be enjoyed by everyone.

[stassy]

The original game AIDecisionTime was 5405, and for long game it was taking lot of time to calculate play, so it was reduced to 540 for faster decision some month ago.

Edit: I would say even some years ago when it was introduced in Manalink

[lujo]

No wonder the AI is playing like a complete fool. It is too slow at 5400, though, but it's stupidity goes way beyond that. I wrote a big exhasperated rant, not angry at anyone but the universe in general it's in the post above do give it a look, guys, and please don't kill me. I have no social-intelligence- friendly way to express this as benignly as I mean it - but now you know what happens when you get a semi-pro mtg heavyweight to struggle with the current AI I just want to do what I'm really good at, and I suppose you guys wouldn't be reading the thread if I wasn't, but it's getting to me. I actually admire Korath a lot and enjoy reading every lengthy explanation of whatever he does because I have a good idea of what HE is dealing with on a different front

The AI makes me feel like I'm a parent to a child with very special needs which I love the most in the world but is it ever retarded and do I need to hit my fist against the wall about it occasionally

Off to get that priest done.

[stassy]

Don't be so mad with the poor AI, even with the default longest thinking delay it was still doing dumb choices (though after reading the latest gitub patch note this behavior can be partially explained).

With a decent computer (I3 or even good ol'dual core), there should be nothing noticeable at max delay now, and with your current enemy deck pool and unless the player has the best control/annoying/slow deck, it's usually kill or get killed at T5/6.

[lujo]

I'm mad because I wasn't trying to make a kill or be killed by turn 6 pool, but got forced by the AI into it. That's the thing, the AI isn't killing you by turn 6 because it's good - it's doing that because it's hopelessly unable to play anything but that. The pool is also a limiting factor because a lot of not-so-lethal themes and strategies were ported into either Manalink or Shandalar with parts missing - people were porting famous tourney stuff which is mostly all exceptional standouts and putting together decks made of those often can't result in anything else. Or they were porting themes and mechanics without having a good enough idea of what holds them togather or what cards that don't have "obviously exceptional" or "obviously cornerstone of mechanic X" written on them. I mean, I understand that Circular Logic is difficult to port, but the idea that you'd go port UG Madness or Psychatog into Manalink without that card is... it's ludicrous. Those decks would have never existed if it wasn't for that card. Odyssey and Wild Mongrel would've been remembered for Red Green Madness (or Frog-in-a-blender) or WG Madness, if Psychatog happened it would've been far less lethal as it wouldn't have had a hard counter for 1 mana (especially post Upheaval, as this means you have to wait a whole turn less), UG madness wouldn't be able to draw+discard for a counterspell with Merfolk Looter, or play Mongrel turn 3 with a hard counter to make sure it sticks on board. The idea of there even being UG Madness without Circular Logic is just EDIT:(The point here not being to badmouth Korath for not busting his ass to port Circular Logic, but whoever ported the rest of the damned thing into Manalink after realizing they couldn't do Circular Logic - it's a constructed format, wth. That deck can actually work without Wild Mongrel, and with either Roar of the Wurm or Arrogant Wurm, but not without Circular Logic). Decks don't exist in a vacuum. Or for the previous kind of problem - even if Circular Logic was in so that you could actually put UG Madness togather - it's a monstrous deck, you give that to an AI that can play it, you're asking for trouble. But if I wanted to give the AI a saner deck using the mechanic I can't, because there's no Aquamoeba - that would make the deck possible but it wouldn't be Wild Mongrel who's busted with or without madness. I wanted to make a Dwarf deck for the Sorceress - there's no Dwarven Soldier or anything resembling it, so whatever the 2 drop is can't get tapped for Dwarven Bloodboiler once it inevitably gets stuck (AI can't attack) and can't be pumped by Dwarven Liutenant who is the "pump enchantment" and not your proper 2 drop. So I have to drop all that for something else... Several "oh, damn the AI asses up with this" or "the hell, who ported X without Y, what were they thinking" and hours and hours spent sifting through the pool over and over what I inevitably end up with is most often something too damned good.

And don't get me started on mana bases, dear jesus. MtG would've died an ugly death were it not for mulligan changes, because, and as much as I love it, it has a huge flaw in that too damned many hands are auto-lose for the guy mana screwed or flooded. Previous mulligan changes, not the recent ones. I can't possibly put enough lands in decks to guarantee that he AI won't be mana screwed - the entire MtG world admitted that and just instated the mulligan rules, and then recently decided it didn't help enough and made them even more lax. When you combine that with the fact that the AI missplays removal and spells by being trigger happy with them (meaning I gotta give it expensive stuff in a weenie deck) and then inflate the mana base - they get mana flooded in decks archetypes which only looked the way the did because of the ability to mulligan agressively. A bunch of wholesale-ported decks wouldn't have existed without mulligans. Oh, and I can't give the AI all sorts of lands because players only put them in the deck because they can mulligan if that's the only land they got.

I also seriously need to nerf stuff across the board, but I was waiting for the update and am in the process of doing it going from bottom up. That's why these aren't in the "deck remake thread". I needed to test a bunch of mechanics, too, for evaluation purposes - prowess is cool as all hell to both play and just get your ass kicked by, but it's a bit new and I'm not yet sure where to draw the line.

The level of AI's stupidity forcing decks to be either murderous or harmless (or a completely different outlook when porting cards) is madning. IF you want it to attack you gotta give it pump, if you give it pump it draws several copies and kills you in two-three turns. Or you have to give it evasion, it draws more evasion than the player, it kills you in a few turns. You don't give it evasion it just sits there. You try to give it a mechanic - either it's a brutally simple mechanic and it rolls you over with it, or key cards are missing and it doesn't work. I'm unhappy with 60% of all non-land choices I make because they turn out to be forced or semi-forced by the AI and I go through 4-5 testing cards before caving in and just giving it the cheeze.

It can't bloody attack sensibly, so I have to give it things which win drafts if you have 1 copy in a pile of cards. Icy Blast, Winter Blast, whatever. I'm not saying you guys did a worse job of the AI or anything - I'm saying that the functional decks in the OG were held up with duct tape and that the AI was no measure of anything. The way it is currently, so many cards that have been added, comparatively uncomplicated ones, don't work for it.

---

Anyway, here's Sorceress and Cleric:

Cleric | Open

Cleric (W, 4th)

.188 23 Plains
.5533 3 Dedicated Martyr
.5843 4 Mystic Familiar
.5628 4 Mystic Penitent
.5629 4 Mystic Visionary
.1181 3 Venerable Monk
.11966 3 Ghoulcaller's Bell
.14158 1 Radiant Fountain
.11936 3 Elder Cathar
.8399 4 Kjeldoran War Cry
.2743 3 Miraculous Recovery
.5864 2 Possessed Nomad
.12314 3 Bladed Bracers

This took 6 hours. Of taking cards the AI can't play and praying that the next most appropriate thing it can play. 6 hours. I could've earned money to pay someone to bugfix for Korath in those 6 hours XD

23 Plains and 1 Radiant Fountain - the AI can still land the fountain and not mulligan the hand and lose for sheer mana screw. It is also bound to be mana flooded, and occasionally screwed.

Dedicated Martyr - it's a 1 drop which sacrifices for life, which it needs, because of low starting life. It's also a creature that can be sacrificd at will for Threshold. This actually works.

Mystic Familiar - it's flying and a better card at it's tier than one would think. Becomes quite fine with threshold and equipment. Prevents 1/1 fliers without buffs from kicking it's ass, too.

Mystic Penitent, Mystic Visionary - these are sef-explanatory. Well, not really, why these guys? Because they're highly unexceptional as opposed to a million other things and the only thing that threshold gets them is evasion which the AI can use to get some damage it. I didn't make this a threshold deck because I like the mechanic, but because it's a way to not make an OP deck with a gimmick the AI happens to be able to execute so that you guys can go "oh, wow, game is much better, AI got threshold and totally flew over my dudes, the tricky bastard" whenever that happens.

Possessed Nomad - Because why not? I can't put it into Lord of Fate or anything that can actually use it's ability, because getting threshold takes a dedicated deck and this guy isn't all that good even with threshold, so he's there to add to the theme. The AI will not get anywhere with him too often because it won't attack with him as he doesn't have evasion unless it has pump if you could theoretically kill him while blocking, so he's only something to have on board until the little guys get flying. I took them out, but after several hours and running out of things that don't turn out to be bugged I just stuck them back in.

Ghoulcaller's Bell - the only way the deck gets threshold, besides Dedicated Martyr and playing Kjeldoran War Cry. This makes the deck a terrible threshold deck. 6 hours ago it had more spells in it and creatures it could sacrifice, but the AI was casting them idiotically instead of playing creatures so it was impossible to make a threshold deck be supported any better than this. And that's kind of the story of Shandalar - too many things have been ported without understanding that cards from their environment that don't say "threshold" are necessary for the mechanic having any sense or just because some bomb, like Mystic Enforcer was ported and it was easy to add everything similar. And again, I can't even point a finger at orath and be an ingrate, because a whole bunch of stuff like that never even made it into manalink.

Kjeldoran War Cry - it's a complete cave in. Originally this started out as Defiant Strike because it's cheap, not too powerful and could help the AI get somewhere with the early buggers, draw a card to smooth out potential mana problems and get the deck closer to threshold. The AI played it in ways that would make you cry out of shame. Then it was several other cards with the disbelief inducing factor somewhat reduced by them not having "Draw a card", but that same factor made those cards not make as much sense in the deck as this one. I can totally understand why Reviving Dose isn't in either pool, but if you're playing against an AI who can't play cantrips (cards which say "draw a card" you're not playing MtG, and if you're playing against decks which have to be built with that kind of limitation in mind what you're playing is something strange. I had 0 intention of putting Kjeldoran War Cry in this deck, as it does way more than this deck is supposed to be able to (and the AI will also missplay it but you might not notice because you might not know what it could be playing instead). It's there because I lost it after several hours of being unable to find something that the AI can play in the most literal sense and which will have some impact even if misplayed.

Venerable Monk - Because all the other life gaining options gain too much life.

Elder Cathar - Was originally a few other cards, but again, AI. At least there's some chance the AI suicide blocks with this guy to chump-block another guy and thus get a bit closer to threshold. Chance, I say, because I haven't yet seen it happen.

Miraculous Recovery - This was orginally Excommunicate. Which is something this deck would play wonderfully if it had any sense - move something out of the way, for the little guys to go through, set the opponent back a turn and get closer to threshold, exactly what it wants to do. Except the AI being the AI would cast this instead of guys as soon as it saw a target. Since it also preffered to cast (and activate) Ivory Cup and the deck originally had a 2cc equipments, this would be quite a regular occurence and also completely poinless, so I had to remove Excommunicate (ended up removing the cup and the equipment, too). In it's place I put Banishment Decree, which is a 5cc Excommunicate which affects creatures and enchantments (and doesn't fit the flavor nearly as well as Excomunicate did). The AI played that the way it was meant to play Excommunicate - because of it's price it couldn't play it in stead of creatures so it ended up casting it with creatures on board. Except - this effect isn't worth paying 5 mana for, or having a 5 mana card in what's basically a weenie deck, and most of all - the AI would invariably go for artifacts and enchantments because this could target those too, achieving nothing. So I said - f**k you, and put in a reanimation spell, because it might, just might get some value out of reanimating something wich it self-mills with the Ghoulcallers Bell. Whatever that turns out to be is not going to be worth paying 5 mana to reanimate, and doing this doesn't get it closer to threshold (and the point of spells in a threshold deck is to facilitate it), but too many hours and too much frustration. And I wouldn't bloody well give a tier1 white deck loaded with potentially evasive critters pinpoint removal, it allready got Kjeldoran War Cry to murder stuff with for no good reason.

Bladed Bracers - this was a number of more flavorful things, but the problem they have is the same the AI has with a lot of other stuff and that is that it will prioritize anything over playing creatures. So the turns a weenie deck would spend filling the board up would be spent equipping things on weenies for no reason and then not attacking or being able to cast anything because I wouldn't give it a broken piece of equipment with completely off flavor which it can cast and equip for negligible mana and enough attack power to let it attack. If I gave it Bonesplitter it woud've had a lot less trouble - at being too damned good for a tier1 deck. And the only reason to even have equipment in the deck was to test it - a threshold deck doesn't need equimpent it needs just creatures and spells (which once used go to the graveyard, and also prefferably let/let make the user sacrifice a land or something like that).

Right. And that's all after what I went through with the Sorceres. And it was like that for a lot of these decks - systemic problems which make the huge pool just something you have to endlessly sort through looking for things the AI won't defeat the purpose of in the first place until you cave in and just give it stuff that an idiot could win with in under 5 turns. Why did I even try to use the threshold guys to not make it overwhelming? Why didn't I just give it 4 Squadron Hawks, 8 equipment tutors, 4 Bonesplitter and a bunch of removal and an Armageddon for good measure, and a Serra Angel?

If it kicks people's ass overwhelmingly somehow, it's not because the AI is good, it's because it sucks so hard at playing most of MtG that this is basically the only thing it can do. And I'm not even talking about complicated stuff, either, or stuff that can't be fixed, it's the idea that I'm looking at thousands of cards which will just sit there because the AI is so bad at a systemic level that reporting individual cards as bugged makes no sense and the more get added the more work it will probably be to get some use out of them. The deck I put together 6, now probably 7 hours ago for the cleric would've been a fine, simple deck, flavored in the right way, gimped in the right way and done in 5 minutes and it would've been perfect (considering that I don't have the white pool mapped and with what I have to work with), but it took a third of my waking day because of the things that should've been fixed at any cost before adding any cards at all - because what's the point of adding them? To play them? Why thousands of them?

Sorceress | Open

.164 24 Mountain
.123 3 Iron Star
.11395 3 Turn to Slag
.993 3 Cinder Wall
.9140 3 Flamekin Brawler
.10938 4 Goblin Tunneler
.10007 4 Magma Spray
.4720 2 Moggcatcher
.10549 4 Goblin Shortcutter
.14163 2 Rogue's Gloves
.11663 3 Priest of Urabrask
.1422 4 Seething Song

Sorcerer is getting reworked, and since a bunch of stuff, including Dwarves, couldn't possibly work out properly, this is what I eneded up with after a few hours last night and this morning.

Iron Star - I'm more and more dissapointed with the charms. The AI is too eager to play them and use them, for understandable reasons, but it also eats into it's board development. This then means that how powerful the deck is/seems depends in large part to how many copies of them it draws. I've scraped Ivory Cup out of Cleric for this reason, and I think I should also do the same here. You can't really tell how much these things slow decks down and affect it's choices until you start looking at their hands and noticing it.

Turn to Slag - If I made the AI able to throw it at the player - more chance to missplay it. If I make removal cost too little - either too good removal or missplays, and if I costs 2-4, just missplays as it'll throw it at anything. But I make it cost 5 it's a 5cc removal spell whether I wanted it to be that effective or not. The AI will also throw it at a random little dude it it doesn't have another target, too, but at least it's somewhat unable to avoid having a better target most of the time. Obviously not my first choice, in any sense.

Cinder Wall - I like this thing. Bit too good as a roadblock, but it's cheap. Hint - don't put walls in decks with Equipment with them, especially equipment with non 0 activation costs. It'll end up with a well equipped wall and very little else on the board for a while.

Flamekin Brawler - again, a dude who can kill you very quickly. Original intention was to have Dwarfs pumped by Dwarven Liutenant, but the one drop has mountainwalk, so kill or die vs. red which is most likely to fight it, Bloodfire Dwarf had too much missplay potential, and already pulled my hair out with the Sorcerer originally, long story short he starts with 0 power which is nice, is a bit more difficult to ping off the board and there you have it.

Goblin Tuneller - Shandalar? The game where the AI won't attack you unless it has evasion? Dwarves weren't gonna be in, so this guy was as on flavor as the Dwarven Warriors (I was trying to actually preserve the original strategy of the deck), and had a chance for at least some flavor and uniformity if another thing eneded up being a goblin (which was very likely)

Magma Spray - The Ai missplays this gloriously. It will actually attack into trades if the trade includes throwing this at the enemy creature. So it attacks into 2-for-1 trades, in the opponents favor. Still, it's a shock which only hits creatures, and there's simply isn't too many effects red gets at all, let alone for 1 mana apart from pump, damage and unblockability, and this at least doesn't scry or draw a card, so it looked harmless enough.

Moggcatcher - I figured the deck could get walled in too easily and through I'd give it a way to tutor Goblin Tunnelers more reliably. OG deck had Ball Lightinings and Dragon Welps, with a limited ammount of Goblins this is hardly amazing. Bonus point was that a Tuneller could get something unblockable to chip away while this guy tries to pile on a swarm to finish you off. It's a bit of a slow an shaky plan but it's something.

Goblin Shortcutter - Because I wanted something to tutor for with Moggcatcher and to make unblockable with the Tuneller. If it turned out too strong, it would've been downgraded to Goblin Piker or something.

Rogue's Gloves - What little cantriping red has it causes weird behavior, this goes with the theme and can draw the deck cards. Still it has the same problem as all equipment seems to have and that is that it will be priotized over creatures, and it's not as scary as you'd tihnk because the biggest thereat is the Flamekin who needs mana to be threatening. So card drawing can actually slow it down.

To counteract that last bit (and the general mana hungry nature of the deck, as you can't really have a mana hungry tier1 deck due to how life affects match lenght) I took Priest of Urabrask out of Sorcerer and put him here, but lowered the number to lower the chance of too many hitting the board at once.

And just to get it over with (I couldn't go sorting through the pool again looking for something that won't arse up the deck if it gets stupidly played at the wrong time instead of something else), and to help the deck occasionally cast it's expensive removal or get to play something and pump the Flamekin I added 4 Seething Song.

Probably not a very good idea and I have a note here saying "get the damned Seething Song out, doofus". Makes sense. Except - what the hell do I add? If I take out the Iron Star, and then take out Seething Song, the deck already has what it needs to occasionally kill someone who isn't resisting too hard. If the two 2cc red "discard a card, draw 2 cards" things were in 4 copies of one of them would be in from the start (in every red deck) because it helps smooth out mana and reduces mana screw and lets the deck play out whatever it was supposed to play out in front of you to enjoy, and I suppose I could something unthreatening for the last 3 slots, but as things stand whatever I add now will push the deck to either 10 removal, too many weenies, too many expensive cards along the Turn to Slag for potential unplayable hands, too many non-creature cards etc etc.

Should be playable though, after I tweak it.

Noone asked me to do anything, but you know how Korath occasionally remarks snappily when something about Manalink coding turns out to be preposterous/godawful? I can't tell how bad it is, but I think I can understand the frustration, because all this ranting (and it's actual ranting now) is the very short versions of what can go on with the AI when I try to get it to do elementary stuff.

---

Incidentaly, are all the decks I've made really OP? Like kill-or-be-killed in 5-6 turns?

And now I feel even worse. I'll try to make up for it, sorry folks.

[lujo]

The discussion and writing up stuff got me somewhat calmer and even more determined, and writing up threshold for the mechanics thread (it's coming, it's a complex issue and a worthwhile read) got me reworking the Priest into a much less angry thing. It's still buggy as f**k, but most of it's issues are either individual card tweak things or global issues which just have to be adressed. This deck HAS to work evenutally, because if it doesn't that means too many basic things don't work at all, and even in this state it's still a nice ole deck that can spring cool moves on you if it manages to stumble into them. And, well, players won't be looking at it's hand to notice how badly it is missplaying at least some of the stuff, at least not all the time:

Cleric, the "I believe in Korath" edition | Open

.188 23 Plains
.5533 4 Dedicated Martyr
.5843 4 Mystic Familiar
.5628 3 Mystic Penitent
.5629 4 Mystic Visionary
.1181 4 Venerable Monk
.11966 3 Ghoulcaller's Bell
.5864 2 Possessed Nomad
.2799 4 Tithe
.1874 3 Blessed Wine
.4007 3 Hope and Glory
.5694 3 Shelter

So, how does it work? It's what a very lightweight white threshold deck looks like, with some key features purposefully missing and a woefully inadequate supply of cantrips.

Mystic Familiar is a 2 toughness flier which stops early pinging and becomes a respectable 2/3 flier for 2, with Protection from Black to boot. Mystic Penitent and Mystic Visionary are rather unthreatening weenies who become rather threatening evasive weenies once threshold kicks in. The beauty of white threshold, what makes it so good for Shandalar is that it's not explosive. It builds up to it's (potential) lethality, white can't achieve threshold any other way but grinding towards it*, which makes the match have a sense of progression and layering - you're fighting vanilla dudes which get combat pump spells thrown at them, and if enough of those get used the guys become above-the-curve weenies. It was beautifully conceived, it's like a critical-mass, slow rolling cousin of Prowess (and should easily combine with it as if they were from the same block).

*It can, in fact, but not with this pool, read below

The deck has Dedicated Martyr to buy it time, life and threshold, and Venerable Monk should serve much the same purpose. Possessed Nomad is still in - he doesn't get evasive, but goes black. He's vigilant and nice to have at least something fatter on the ground and the fact that he goes black is actually an awesome feature - it makes the deck more vulnerable against other white decks which it will be fighting, which is quite important. But it also gives it an out against things that hose White! So you can't necessarily screw it over that way, if it manages to hit threshold in time, ofc.

The cantrips/card draw is... what there is of it. White support for threshold simply isn't there (there's a crapton of it historically, and since a bunch of it is applicable to way, WAY more than just helping Threshold/Prowess/whatever out it's gotta be ported, the sooner the better). I gave the deck Tithe, which is obviously too damned good to make easily available to the player, but there you go - it's a card which fills the grave and "draws" a plains or two for 1 mana*. Hope and Glory would've been Defiant Strike (and something would've been Guided Strike), but it's something to pump the weenies with.

*Except if the pool had white threshold support, it would make a ton of sense, see below

Shelter is a cool card, and the only white cantrip from the original enormous supply of those from Odyssey and it's neighbouring Invasion block (as well as "Kicker - Sacrifice a land", also from Inv, or White Cycling cards/lands from the following Onslaught) kinda necessary to have White threshold work the way it's supposed to (on top of being as widely applicable as cards go). The three main purposes of Shelter are saving weenies from targeted stuff (or taking auras off stuff - bad ones from your guys, beneficial ones from enemies), making them survive attacks or even making a fat Possessed Nomad unblockable - and if used for any of these it will fill the grave while replacing itself in the hand automatically. That's how White Threshold works - it's support cards are so generally applicable that they can go into any white deck at all. It's creatures are covering such a large range that with enough cards like Shelter you can put any number (even just a sprinkle) into any white deck at all. Since pretty much any deck benefits from cantrips, this also means "supporting" Threshold on a passable level (and possibly Prowess, to a degree) comes built in for white as long as the deck doesn't overdo enchantments/artifacts instead.

Blessed Wine is there in the same capacity - it does practically nothing, but it helps draw into mana and cards, fills the grave and it can be used to activate threshold mid-combat. It would've probably been any of the twenty or so white cantrips which actually DO something, but, eh, those need to be in the pool first. And the AI has to be able to handle them right, because their purpose ISN'T to to be just filler for threshold, they just happen to do that perfectly and the ability got developed for Odyssey specifically to be used with them. I do have Defiant Strike at my disposal right now, but the AI mishandles that too hard right now.

--- The Current Failings:

The way the AI mishandles cards, as far as quite a bit of testing managed to catch it, have all been duly reported. Possibly not in a helpful manner, but what can I do, I try.

The AI misprioritizes playing Mystic Familiar, it playes non-evasive things with 1 toughness first, and then it also misprioritizes blocking so it's early plays trade for random 1/1 things. If it just played the Familiar First, it would be much stronger, as you can't attack into it with 1 powered stuff. It also tends to sacrifice Mystic Visionary and Mystic Familiar for blocking trades, in place of Dedicated Martyr and Venerable Monk, which it can't really do much with. This is related to global issues, which you can't expect anyone to try to adjust to when making a deck, as if the AI is failing that it'll fail too many things and god alone knows what would actually work sensibly.
I hope those get worked on as soon as possible and as thoroughly as possible - the only thing a deckbuilder could do to stop it from blocking like an idiot would be to give it only 1 and 2 drops that can't be attacked into. In every deck ever. Right.

It also fails to sacrifice Dedicated Martyr when it's going to die anyway (which, strangely, it doesn't in Manalink, or at least not nearly as much in Shandalar, which might have something to do with thinking time, but might not). Again, that sort of thing can't happen. If the guys who made the card named it "Dedicated Martyr", the AI should be able to play it as such. It's purpose is to chump block and sacrifice itself, sacrifice itself in response to anything ever, or otherwise be the lowest thing on the totem pole in the deck (and obviously fill the graveyard, it's from Odyssey) - if the AI isn't doing that with it then there's gonna be a lot of black and white cards which will be unusable. It tends to misplay Benevolent Bodyguard harder in more ways, which is why he's not in the deck at all.

The AI does an ok job with Thithe because there's not too much to do with it - it's there to pretty much just plainscycle for 1. White theshold digs that. Ghoulcallers Bell is also pretty hard to fail - the AI just taps it all the time, and this ends up getting threshold eventually. If I could manually adjust card usage on a per deck basis it would probably stop after it has threshold, but this is kinda fair enough. **With some of handy Prophecy cards which let white sacrifice lands, the bell would be unnecessary and Tithe would be much better, but like most things which make white threshold actually work right - it's not in the pool yet. It has to get in eventually because it's so impossibly great with threshold, Tithe, Land tax, Planar Birth, stuff that counts cards in hand, Knight of Reliquary, Terravore and so on and so forth, that not porting it would be some kind of crime. You could make a very nasty Sainted One deck with some Prophecy enablers (not even Exalted Dragon is in the pool, eh...). I suppose there's issues with getting the AI to play those sensibly, but the players would certainly appreciate them to make all this other stuff work right, and well, if "AI plays X terribly" is argument for anything, then I have to wonder why creatures, as such, are even in the pool. And quite a bunch of spells, too. And a lot of lands, too XD

The AI seems to value the untap effect of Hope and Glory a bit too highly, but that's probably fixable with just adjusting when it's supposed to cast it in the turn. Manalink AI used to cast it on a single creature a lot, this fortunately didn't happen even once yet in Shandalar. The deck sort of handles even misplaying it slightly - at least gets a card in the grave, which is fortunate.

The AI occasionally does a fine job with Shelter and Blessed Wine, it'll save a creature, make it unblockable or at lest attempt it. I've had it spam to activate threshold, even during combat, that was nice to see, but the general cantrip mishandling wasn't and that needs to be fixed as it'll cause problems elsewhere. Well, not for blessed wine - that thing really is just lousy card draw Shelter has too many uses to be mindlessly spammed unless it's for the win. Also, there's strange colors being chosen for protection occasionally. So many possible cool moves with Shelter, whenever the AI does something right it looks and feels very cool, and whenever it messes up you feel sorry for it

I could probably make a different cleric deck - but the AI would very likely missplay any other one in the same ways as it missplays this one, or I'd be forced to push it way past the "tier 1" opponent level. Heck, played right, this thing could use a twack with the nerf bat as is, but the mechanic has sort of a perfect structure, too, when limited to these creatures. Spirits are too evasive (and their buildarounds aren't tier1 material), metalcraft and +x/+x when equipped guys are too strong for tier 1, random piles of stuff are probably as prone to being misplayed (even more so than this), etc, etc. This is practically old cleric with no rares or busted removal in it, a theme and a plan it can even execute (and will be more an more able as stuff gets adressed). When the AI can play this the way it's meant to be played, or when we know how to tweak these cards to work the way they are supposed to, we've got an AI that can be worked with or at least we know how to fool it into functioning adequatly.

Now let's see where we are with other Tier 1 guys.

---

Right, so sorceress writeup, briefer and somewhat better handled by the AI, but with quite a few blunt concessions and compromises on my part (because most of what I tried was too buggy and mishandled in generic ways).

Sorceress 0074.dck | Open

Sorceress (R, 4th)

.164 24 Mountain
.11395 4 Turn to Slag
.993 4 Cinder Wall
.9140 4 Flamekin Brawler
.10938 4 Goblin Tunneler
.4720 3 Moggcatcher
.10549 4 Goblin Shortcutter
.1736 3 Dragon's Claw
.2881 3 Fire Imp
.3768 3 Fiery Mantle
.8434 4 Rite of Flame

Rite of Flame isn't getting played (seems to produce the wrong colors), but Korath said it was already fixed, and it is a concession to Red's shallow effect / proper theme pool (to some degree in general). This would've been Wild Guess / Tormented Voice / Manamorphose / Some cantrip, otherwise, most likely. Once it's usable for the AI it'll help it occasionally get it's more expensive stuff out on time.

Goblin Tunneler, Goblin Shortcutter and Moggcatcher are concessions to the lack of Dwarven Soldier, as are many things. Along with Flamekin Brawler and Fiery Mantle (also compromise solutions), they are what the deck is trying to do - same as the OG Sorceress - make a firebreathing guy unblockable. It is somewhat easier to accomplish vs. non-red deck than red decks which should be quite a relief to red mages out there.

Cinder Wall is there to help it shore up early, not have more offensively lethal one drops (Flamekin Brawler is quite deadly enough), and also an attempt to sidestep it's mindless blocking tendencies. Meaning when it madly blocks whatever you throw at it it won't be sacrificing something that's not meant to be sacrificed - which is currently still vogue in Shandalar and nowhere else where MtG is played except maybe kindergardens and insane asylums. Fiery Mantle is also an attempt to sidestep that, as in case it ends up on Cinder Wall, it should be back in hand in no time.

I do understand that giving an entry level deck Fiery Mantle, a repeatable Fireball, probably isn't the best ever idea, but the combination of AI being AI and Dragon Mantle not being in the pool forces my hand a bit.

Turn to Slag is the overcosted removal spell that won't get thrown at your head turn 1 and won't get played instead of creatures turns 1-4. It can create bad/terminally slow hands, and it inflates the mana curve on it's own, but again - fundamental issues which can't be left unfixed long term.

Fire Imp - a completely forced decision, as the deck needed cheaper removal. Cheaper removal was getting spectacularly misplayed in the usual ways, so this was the only way to make the AI play removal when it wants to and play creatures when a sane person would (meaning at the same time). The problem with that that it now gets to play a dude who's also removal, and also another thing to make unblockable with the Goblin Tunneler. It's quite a bit too good of a deal, but if the deck ends up kicking more ass than it should at tier 1 - we need to get to AI able to play actual sensible MtG before hamfisted solutions like this can be avoided. Not to mention that this puts removaldudes way to close to the players grubby little hands.

It might turn out to be satisfying to play against in the meanwhile, and it seems to do it's thing reasonable well. Also unreasonably well, too. However, remember, if it's beating you, this doesn't mean the AI is good but so bad it forced me to make it a stronger deck than it should have at this tier. Still, it might be enjoyable.

EDIT: I'm also trying out Dragon's Claw in place of Iron Star. AI's handling of lucky charms is slowing it down and might be causing missplays due to how it uses mana. This might work out better in that regard, but is also obviously stronger in raw terms. That's actually somewhat welcome in Red, as red doesn't have lifegain and is likely to be facing red which is fast, nasty and burny. On the other hand, even having these things available to the player in any way can be a problem - you can actually sideboard these into any deck against, for example, red, and people have done this in serious competitive environments to such extent-success that it was known to chase red out of metagames until a core set with less good lucky charms rolled around. Still, we do have to test these things to see what happens and they're much better for the AI than the original lucky charms (I think).

---

The Seer 0069.dck | Open

.11615 4 Hovermyr
.859 4 Zephyr Falcon
.52 3 Crystal Rod
.12066 4 Sensory Deprivation
.462 3 Unstable Mutation
.7143 4 Trinket Mage
.126 20 Island
.1216 4 Seat of the Synod
.11532 3 Spire Serpent
.5510 3 Cephalid Retainer
.12837 3 Stealer of Secrets
.6700 3 Leonin Scimitar
.1872 2 Binding Grasp

Right, so she hasn't changed much

Err, I struggled with the blue pool when I was putting this deck togather, and I have to say a bunch of new stuff I found mellowed me out. I spent a few hours trying out different directions to take this deck and some were interesting, but unfortunately whatever I tried turned out to be buggy/malfunctioning.

So back to the old seer, it's quite effective in the "The AI drowned me in the Pool until I gave it bombs" sense.

Zephyr Falcon and Hovermyr do their Serra Angel impression using Unstable Mutation. I bumped it down to 3 to lower the chance of the AI drawing 2-3 and killing folks. There used to be Ashnod's Transmogrant - that's Leonin Scimitar now for testing purposes. The state of equipment handling it quite bad right now, but the AI can't mess that one up too hard, right? Eh, depends, I've tried various other stuff and... seen things. Anyway, it works on Hovermyr and sticks around, watch out!

Trinket Mage's the mana fixing and also fetches scimitars and crystal rods. Stealer of Secrets gets pumped and then you gotta deal with it, Spire Serpent gets huge even when not buffed by anything and you really gotta deal with it, and Cephalid Retainer is a madly bomby flood on wheels who makes the other stuff hard to even block, let alone deal with.

Sensory Deprivation is Swords to Plowshares, the "Huh, I never thought about it that way, but now that I've seen it a buch..." edition, and Binding Grasp is the replacement for threads of Disloyalty and possibly a way to make the AI not have a too good Control Magic.

Seer needs feedback - really, there's a high number of quality cards here, which might be working or might be failing to work together. If she's beating you - that's not good, she might need nerfing, if she's too pushovery - I'd be curious about what deck's/colors you're using and what's going on in matches.

---

[jiansonz]

I'm also trying out Dragon's Claw in place of Iron Star. AI's handling of lucky charms is slowing it down and might be causing missplays due to how it uses mana. This might work out better in that regard, but is also obviously stronger in raw terms. That's actually somewhat welcome in Red, as red doesn't have lifegain and is likely to be facing red which is fast, nasty and burny. On the other hand, even having these things available to the player in any way can be a problem - you can actually sideboard these into any deck against, for example, red, and people have done this in serious competitive environments to such extent-success that it was known to chase red out of metagames until a core set with less good lucky charms rolled around. Still, we do have to test these things to see what happens and they're much better for the AI than the original lucky charms (I think)

I like this a lot. Those original 'lucky charms' rarely helped. Are there equivalents for the other colours?

The five castles have lucky charms as starting advantages on Apprentice difficulty. Replacing them with these artifacts would likely be an improvement (or would make beating the castles more annoying, I don't know...)

[Korath]

Original cycle: Ivory Cup, Crystal Rod, Throne of Bone, Iron Star, Wooden Sphere, followed by Urza's Chalice in Antiquities.
Darksteel cycle: Angel's Feather, Kraken's Eye, Demon's Horn, Dragon's Claw, Wurm's Tooth, followed by Golem's Heart in Scars of Mirrodin.
M2014 cycle: Staff of the Sun Magus, Staff of the Mind Magus, Staff of the Death Magus, Staff of the Flame Magus, Staff of the Wild Magus.
Paradise Plume is also relevant, though I don't know how well the AI would deal with it coming into play before any of its other cards.

By the time a player's attacking castles, I wouldn't think we'd need to be pulling punches at all. Same reason why I wouldn't have any problem with Dracur being a top-tier land destruction deck or Mandurang a hand destruction deck or so on: by the time those enemies start showing up, you can assume the player's able to put together a deck that can deal with them.

Or maybe I'm just biased because LD and HD and permission and so on were rampant when I started playing. During my brief stint on MODO during the Time Spiral block, I put together a janky Prodigal Sorcerer deck; when I'd play an Island on my first turn without anything else to cast, my opponents would assume I had countermagic and would just scoop. Every single time. Whenever someone gets upset that WOTC only seems to want to print "Durr, just turn all your creatures sidewise" cards these days, I want to shake them and say "It's because you all whined so much whenever anyone played anything else against you, you dolts!"