I'm very relieved you like them, in particular the philosophy. I put in effort/research to get into the OG makers heads, decode the decks, and not deviate too much for the original power level / intentions, but I wasn't ready to stick them in the overhaul thread before I was sure they worked better. It's because I know I'm not able to use the full extent of my abilities as I haven't got the pool fully sorted out. This is stopgap measures, because I'd really like to have a way to test stuff without
Mana Vault (and also
Mishra's Factory) everywehere for pool sorting and meta development.
The vamp and the archangel do play better, as Abe's reworks tend to reduce decks to a fraction of their potential gameplan. I also didn't post the decks because before I did that I'd have to adjust them for sideboarding, and, yeah, the War Mage would certainly keep the catapult from the sideboard (I liked that and experimented with
Puncture Bolt after being inspired by it), and pyrotechnics is another Arc spell, which makes it probably the most AI friendly type of burn.
I was also a bit afraid to make him more functional on account how he's pretty much the poster boy for "format with less than 20 has conceptual issues", and I've avoided him like the plague in-game since I was a child XD. Very interested in how it plays out with the Arc spells.
---
Right, so for the newest installment of CIS: Shandalar
This time the crime scene was trampled by everyone who ever went to take a look at it and it took major forensics XD
Right, so I took a look at Guinsoo's
Shapeshifter and I have to say that I also noted most of the cards that he did, but both him and me fell into the same trap - we tried to make Abe's deck work. Which it can't because Abe missed the point of the OG deck and didn't take it in the direction SotA take it but tried to make it a
Tinker deck and even he admitted that he had no idea how it was going to work out. So I did what I should've done right away and took a look at the source:
- OG Shapeshifter Revelations | Open
- Everyone who's tried to Tinker up this thing was wrong and too clever for their own good. And they were working form the Duel of the Planeswalkers which looks like this:
20 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory
1 Mishra’s Workshop - Ramp, but for what?
3 Apprentice Wizard - Ramp, but for what?
3 Mana Vault - Ramp, but for what?
2 Fellwar Stone - Ramp, but for what?
3 Shapeshifter - It's a terrible card the deck is stuck with because of the theme. It can be ramped out on turn 3 with the Workshop, or turn 4 with the Apprentice Wizard (if the AI even uses the Wizard)
4 Primal Clay - Also terrible, somewhat less so if ramped out on turn 2.
3 Urza’s Avenger - Also terrible, and the deck goes out of it's way to try to make it less terrible, but in a rather clumsy way.
2 Power Struggle - THIS, in fact, is what the deck is actually about and why it's so artifact heavy. This was quite a revelation for me, but it makes perfect sense, once you get past the point of "Noone in their right mind would go make a Power Struggle deck, right?". WRONG. They did and it's this deck.
See, unmodified blue dungeons start with Power Struggle, and this deck is actually built to accomodate for that and to be able to play through a power struggle in play. (So is, in fact, to a degree, the original Sea Dragon - power struggle helps it stall and makes sure islands get swapped around.)
The way this deck works is that you power out your, obviously bad, creatures (including the Wizard Apprentice), they get swapped by power struggle, whereupon you cast:
4 Unsummon - Bounce your terrible critter back into your hand from the other side of the board, keep their probably much better critter.
4 Hurkyl’s Recall - Bounce all the artifacts Power Struggle gave to the opponent back into your hand, while keeping their stuff.
(NOTE: Hurkly's Recall would also be for Mana Vault shennanigans which the AI can't do well.)
And then you can play your stuff because it's all artifacts so you don't care which lands Power Struggle gave you. This, however, almost never works because the AI is and always has been ABSOLUTELY GODAWFUL at playing instants and always throws them out at first opportunity. The Forge AI (which has it's own million issues) is actually adjusted on a per-enemy basis so individual decks can actually do this sort of thing, they know what to save their stuff for somewhat, but in Shandalar anything involving timing instants is rather unworkable except when it happens by accident. It also puts major constraints on deckbuilding, like, extra huge ones.
2 Backfire - Abe took this out, but this is actually a rather efficient blue Pacifism, especially in a sub-20 format.
4 Unstable Mutation - This is here because your creatures are godawful and it's the only way to make them stronger (or get anywhere with Urza's Avenger), and you have a lot of bounce to get the creature back once it gets lost to Power Struggle or starts decaying. It's clunky to say the least, but that's what's meant to happen.
1 Ivory Tower - It's somewhat sinergistic with power struggle in theory because your hand can get clogged and the games can drag on (and there's 4 hurkyl's recall so you can end up with a bunch of stuff in your hand).
So it's a somewhat lousy Power Struggle deck that the AI being the AI can't play! The OG variant (if indeed it is the OG and the one above was Duels, could be other was around), is also a Power Struggle deck, except with Triskelions:
.126 20 Island
.508 4 Mishra's Factory
.157 3 Mana Vault - Ramp
.318 2 Fellwar Stone - Ramp
.300 3 Apprentice Wizard - Ramp
.539 3 Urza's Avenger - Power Struggle - Hurkyl's Recall fodder
.525 3 Shapeshifter - same
.519 4 Primal Clay - same
.538 3 Triskelion - Actually quite burtal Power Struggle / Huryl's Recall fodder which actuall works even without PS, with just the Recall (except the AI's no good with that)
.260 4 Unsummon
.502 4 Hurkyl's Recall
.867 2 Power Struggle
.575 2 Backfire
.462 4 Unstable Mutation
.503 1 Ivory Tower
---
So the problem is that Abe, Me and Guinsoo were not trying to make it a Power Struggle deck, but kept a bunch of stuff which was only there because it was a Power Struggle deck! And added a bunch of stuff which wouldn't really work in one, and also kept the supremely junky creature which only really work because of the silly ramp TM.
The Sota version abandoned the Power Struggle plan entirely and looks like this (Most likely because a Power Struggle Deck turned out to have been a bad idea and the AI couldn't really get places with it):
.126 22 Island
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.894 4 Mana Crypt
.152 2 Mana Vault
.524 4 Sage of Lat-Nam
With the obvious plan of using the ramp and then saccing it to the Sage of Lat-Nam. Which I'm not sute the AI can do or is worth keeping Mana Vaults around for.
The Creatures are actually quite a bit better with no shennanigans:
.185 3 Phantom Monster
.183 3 Phantasmal Forces
.39 4 Clone
.263 2 Vesuvan Doppleganger
.446 4 Old Man of the Sea
With the overcosted / bad stuff severly reduced in number (not to infringe on Seer territory):
.525 2 Shapeshifter
.519 2 Primal Clay
And no bounce being there because it's not a Power Struggle deck anymore:
.48 4 Counterspell
.232 3 Spell Blast
And the ramp present here is present because it's Illusion / Clone theme was a bit 4cc heavy so the deck wanted to cheat them into play earlier.
Phwief! Right, this is important stuff - this actually opens up paths which can lead to functional
Shapeshifter decks as the theme isn't "try to make a
Tinker deck with buggy cards, lacklustre / OP targets, not enough tutors or even Mana Vaults and engine components from Power Struggle decks.
It can simply be a more efficient Illusion deck, in order to lose the need for
Mana Vault /
Mana Crypt spam, and it would be in line with the SoTA take on
Shapeshifter, but possibly with a very light
Tinker theme, and severly reduced number of terrible creatures and stuff the AI can't use
Something like:
- Shapeshifter ^^ | Open
- .126 24 Island
.1210 4 Silver Myr - Tinker fodder & Ramp
.1351 1 Tinker - Since Transmute Artifact is bugged
.47 1 Copy Artifact - I think I could add the blue artifact land
.538 1 Triskelion - One Sivler Bullet
.525 1 Shapeshifter - Obligatory terrible artifact dude
.531 1 Tawnos's Coffin - Removal tinker target
.194 4 Psionic Blast - Removal, taking a cue from the SoTA direction. The AI is a bit trigger happy with it.
.575 2 Backfire - This is actually better than it looks, if the AI wasn't prone to throwing removal onto stuff that's been Backfired already it would be worth even bumping in count. Korath might straight the removal AI out at some point.
.263 2 Vesuvan Doppelganger - Obligatory Shapeshifter, handy to coppy enemy bombs
.185 3 Phantom Monster - Taking a cue from the SoTA deck, and heading in this direction
.183 3 Phantasmal Forces - Same
Supporting the Illusion theme to make Phantom Monsters and Phantasmal Forces able to tackle 5cc stuff and also for the deck to present a threat earlier and more consistently (and also some sinergy with Backfire - if you backfire their dudes and your dudes are unblockable, well, lol).
.1151 4 Sneaky Homunculus - Semi unblockable illusion
.1109 3 Phantom Warrior - Fully unblockable ogre
.11824 3 Lord of the Unreal - And, err, mortal sin. Hexproof on unblockable dudes. Now, normally I'd stay away from this sort of thing, but the deck lacked oomph in every incarnation and it always had mad ramp in it which isn't there anymore, and while this does give a bunch of dudes hexproof IT doesn't have hexproof so it's gonna eat removal like mad. But it does give the deck a way to present threat early on while the more expensive dude get going. It's also obviously sinergistic with the Homunculus, makes Phantom Monsters able to handle Serra's and such. If it turns out to be a big problem (or the two new illusions turn out to be a bit too difficult to deal with), it can probably be let go.
.12082 3 Spectral Flight - the OG deck ran Unstable Mutation as a way to make it's bad dudes better, and most incarnations of the deck had trouble making use out of their mana/utility dorks and it's far easier for the AI to get agressive if it gets flying. This comnos with the Homunculus and can be even put on the mana myr or Lord of the Unreal for some early beats and later it can be put on an artifact creature, the doppleganger or phantom monster to make it a serious threat.
The deck might look scary on paper or like it's been boosted too much, but I'm not sure I went overkill with it. It has 28 mana sources, which is half the deck, no way to draw cards, no counterspells or bounce and is likely to missplay it's removal. If lord of the unreal isn't on the board it's creatures are somewhat fragile and it relies on an aura to make them very dangerous which opens it up for 2 for 1 (not to mention that it isn't likely to deal with mass removal wery well). I might tweak it in the mean time in various possible directions, but I think it's quite worth giving a whirl to test both hexproof (especially in conjunction with unblockable) and have a not-too-buggy, non-madly-Power Struggle-based Shapeshifter, more in line with the generally more sensible SoTA deck plans than any of the less fortunate takes on decks.
Also, if it's overwhelming, it's going to be a lot easier to rebuild it along these same lines when more illusions are ported in and I've studied the blue pool better. I'm curious about hexproof, too. It's a cancerous ability, but it's not necessarily that horrible if you can get rid of it by killing a 2/2 dork somehow and when it isn't mixed with Regeneration and more powerful buffage than present here.
---
Elementalist! No Abe to hate on, and jiansonz arena tweak looks completely sweet, but lets take a look at the SoTA decklist, as those tend to be more focused (and highly cheezy):
- SoTA | Open
- .164 10 Mountain
.126 10 Island
.266 4 Volcanic Island
.157 4 Mana Vault
.230 1 Sol Ring
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.0 4 Air Elemental
.73 4 Earth Elemental
.83 4 Fire Elemental
.279 4 Water Elemental
.267 2 Wall of Air
.274 2 Wall of Water
.256 4 Twiddle
.75 4 Earthquake
.84 4 Fireball
.25 1 Braingeyser
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.69 3 Drain Power
Er, right. Eh. Heh. Hmmmm. This deck's theme is so difficult to pull off in a sensible way that it needs pretty much all of relevant power9 to be able to stay on flavor and not hopelessly lose every game. It's also too damned ambtitious in it's support stuff and what's holding it together somewhat are the walls. I'm not sure the OG deck was like this, it's possible that this is really the SoTA incarnation and they kinda piled on the cheeze in SoTA to help out struggling decks (except they ussually knew their stuff better than Abe did). Breakdown is like this:
10 Island
10 Mountain
4 Volcanic Island - I'd like to get rid of these if possible. But in order to actually do that I'd need to make the theme somewhat more workable as the ideal land for this guy is actually one of the ravnica bouncelands, but more on that later.
Mana Vault, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire and Sol Ring ought to get out. A deck should work without those. So are Ancestral Recall and Braingyser.
4 X Air Elemental
4 X Water Elemental
4 X Earth Elemental
4 X Fire Elemental
Apart from Air Elemental the rest of them obviously just have to be there but they're all vanilla and all 5cc, and none of them Fly. Earth Elemental is actuall qute good, +0/+1 is sneakily above the curve for a 5cc vanilla dork. There's just waaaaaaay too damned many of them. 20 5cc dudes, only one of them which is even remotely bomby is just too much, and this overload mandates all the cheezy ramp in the first place. What's also not helping things is that all of them have 2 colored mana in their CC so that pulls towards Volcanic Islands too strongly.
Also, the OG list had fewer of these, too. Sensible.
2 X Wall of Air
2 X Wall of Water
Wall of Air is excellent blockage (it blocke evasion) and Wall of Water is a bit meh, but they're both problematic becaus of the double colored cc in a non-mono deck. When I'm being tourney competitive, spells with 2 of the same colored mana in their cc ONLY go into mono colored decks. You can play 5color domain vs Destructive Flow and win (and I've done so on purpose tourney after tourney when Ravnica duals were everwhere and once had a grown man break down and cry for real and one guy scooped all his 100$ lands and threw his entire deck phisicaly at me, good times) because all your lands are basics and nothing has 2 of the same color in their casting cost.
In short - this sort of thing is bloody necessary for this deck to have any hope, but not with cc like this.
Also - the OG list had 1 of each elemental wall, but the SoTA adjustment seems to have taken into account that only 1 elemental is flying and that 3 walls don't block fliers, and this way they could have 2 walls which do. So they put blue in charge of blocking and ramping, and red in charge of removal.
4 Twiddle - in case anyone was wondering, this is to manipulate Mana Vault. Mana Vault is going out, and I'm not sure the AI could ever use it this properly (even though some tapdown could've bought it a precious turn here and there making it somewhat useful)
4 Earthquake
4 Fireball
3 Drain Power
These are... unfortunate. It's not senseless, the deck needs some board wipe because of the ludicrous 5cc creature spam plan, and the deck has cheezy ramp, so whoever made it probably thought that since they're ramping with the artifacts they might as well take advantage of it. Drain Power was meant to charge these two.
In case folks don't know how Drain Power works, you cast it and then the other guy either taps all his mana and casts instants to get rid of it, or doesn't cast instants and forks the mana over, and then you can use it to fuel your stuff. It can also be used as pure tapdown to prevent the other guy from casting counterspells and such.
The deal, however, is that all your elementals have 2 colored casting cost symbols in ther cost, as do the walls so fueling anything but Fireballs and Earthquakes with it is a bit dodgy. Jiansonz also rightly spotted that it can't really be effectively used to ramp the elementals out faster - you'd need 4 mana (either all blue or 2 blue 2 red) and hit 3 opponents lands to be able to ramp for... 1 mana. Eh.
*crack knuckles* Let's see about tweaking this thing
After a lot more testing than I though I settled on this. Mana base is a real problem for Shandalar right now - the way the AI prioritizes stuff means that if you give it lands that come into play tapped it will play VERY strangely and much more slowly than usual. Which is why I ended up with this mana base allthough I would've been much happier with a few other ones.
- Elementalist Tweaked | Open
- Ok, so, the deck was one big wheel of cheeze, so instead of preserving actual cards I did my best to preserve the actual conundrum of it - how to play more than one copy of each alpha elemental and have the deck actually work? The Sota and OG answer was mad rampz, my answer would be something like:
.164 9 Mountain
.126 9 Island
.10654 4 Scalding Tarn - This really should've been either Izzet Boilerworks (which the Manalink AI doesn't even attempt to play and which messes it up in other ways) or anything but Volcanic Island (and the AI is awful at that sort of thing right now)
.0 2 Air Elemental
.73 2 Earth Elemental
.83 2 Fire Elemental
.279 2 Water Elemental
Those guys have to be in, obviously, but the problem is that three of these are non-evasive and the AI plays non-evasive stuff badly as it has no mechanism to deduce when it is in it's favor to attack into a trade (and always trades on defense but that's not an issue here).
I tried to compensate for the lack of fliers and early plays by adding these guys:
.13591 4 Vaporkin
.2682 4 Cloud Elemental
Which are on flavor and actually do their thing well enough. The problem is that if I give the AI a land that comes into play tapped these guys don't get played and the AI sort of just skips to the later plays and waits out turns 2 and 3 if it happens to have a cip-tapped land in hand. It's v. annoying.
.1746 4 Arc Lightning
.10930 4 Forked Bolt
Then I decided to give it the War Mage treatment by replacing the X cost spells with these thinggies (found the "Arc Shock", which only goes to show I'd be much better at this if I had full awareness of the pool, and also take a lot less time 
). These things are REALLY good at getting rid of chumpers, so a barrage of this into elementals can get very ugly very fast. I'm not sure if this alone hasn't made the deck consistently stronger than it was with all the cheezy ramp (where it was owewhelmingly bursty or just sad).
.14292 2 Icy Blast
I thought this thing is actually perfect for the deck, as it's likely to bring out big groundpounders which it won't attack with unless it can do something like this. I also tried Barrage of Boulders but the AI seemed to be more comfortable with this. I could see Barrage being rather good, too.
.8349 4 Coldsteel Heart
.1394 2 Opportunity
The deck needed some ramp and card draw, and even something like a Coldsteel Heart can have it churning out fat elementals from turn 4 onwards. After some testing, Opportunity was added. Seems strange to be adding a 6cc thing, but it's kind of an attempt to give the AI fewer things to do instead of putting the cheap flying dudes on board early on it seems to have worked.
.1071 4 Lightning Elemental
.4430 2 Cinder Elemental
I've tried walls and I've tried different walls, and in the end they have the same problem as the big elementals do - only one of them does anything against fliers, and by that logic you could stick Wall of air into any deck. Except this one because it didn't want to have a card which demanded strictly UU early on and just sat there if threaths were removed. So having seen the Arc stuff deal with low-toughness stuff, and what with having the tapdown rare in the deck, I kinda figured Lightning Elemental might actually do it's thing in this deck. I also needed to even out on red stuff by this point. So I added the Cinder Elemental (which I'm not sure how the AI handles) as a replacement for the removed Fireball which can't be tossed at a ranomd 1 mana bugger by the kill-mad AI.
That's after a lot of testing, and the thing I'm the most unhappy about is havign to use Fetches which aren't the best if your plan involves expensive stuff. The deck isn't using anything cheezy, but it seems to be nicely deadly from what I've seen in the Manalink.
I was trying out the Arena for a good while there, and it's an awesome idea, but the poblem was that the AI messed up it's tempo with it - it would play it instead of a mana producing land setting itself a turn behind a lot, and it also, and this was just infuriating, made it keep hands with only Arena in it instead of mulliganing them
Still room for tweaks, though.
So, full list for easy copying:
.164 9 Mountain
.126 9 Island
.0 2 Air Elemental
.73 2 Earth Elemental
.83 2 Fire Elemental
.279 2 Water Elemental
.13591 4 Vaporkin
.1746 4 Arc Lightning
.10930 4 Forked Bolt
.2682 4 Cloud Elemental
.14292 2 Icy Blast
.8349 4 Coldsteel Heart
.1394 2 Opportunity
.10654 4 Scalding Tarn
.1071 4 Lightning Elemental
.4430 2 Cinder Elemental
That seems to be all of the
Mana Vault's out. I think I'll do
Power Surge next and also undo some of Abes screwups and tweak some stuff the AI can't possibly play. Oh, and trim some of the
Mishra's Factory count, it's insane.
---
Hydra!
Eh, poor thing kind of lost much of it's power with the loss of mana burn, and it was never all that different from War Mage in practice. Removing Mana burn helps every other monster not randomly have less life and stuff, so preserving
Power Surge isn't too high on my priority list, but I don't feel like remaking decks for the sake of it just yet, so let's see:
- Hydra, OG/Duels and SotA | Open
- 22 Mountain
4 Power Surge - Mana Burn Card
4 Wall of Fire - There to soak up mana that would otherwise burn, at least in that capacity it isn't necessary anymore.
4 Mana Flare - since I'm taking Power Surge out, this leaves Mana Flare in only as symetrical ramp. Red has accumulated a bunch of ramp in the meantime, and it would make the Hydra and the War Mage to mono red creature-light decks with Mana Flare in it. I'm pretty sure there's other ways to build red these days, so I'm contemplating taking this out along with Power Surge.
2 Shivan Dragon - This is the iconic, yet completely random Fatty. Also a mana sink for the Flare and Power Surge, so depending on what to do with the Flare this could stay or be replaced.
4 Fireball - Mana Flare X spell, because limited pool and mana flare
4 Disintegrate - Same thing, this is just stealing thunder from War Mage
1 Detonate - Same thing
2 Lightning Bolt - Because limited pool.
4 Inferno - This, howewer, is NOT stealing thunder from Warmage
4 Onulet - Here to combo with Inferno and block up the place so it can hit
2 Soul Net - Supposed to combo with Inferno and the Hive Below, but it's kinda slow if I take out Mana Flar
3 The Hive - Also an universally overused Mana Sink
----
So as far as this original variant is concerned, one of it's claims to individuality is Power Surge (gone) and being a burn deck with creatures in it. Prismat has the whole Inferno-Onulet thing going, Hive is in everything it could be crammed in, Mana Flare is also all over the place (and could've actually replaced all the ramp in Elementalist if someone wanted a REALLY light rework). And the Disintegrate/Fireball plan isn't there because it's so good with Mana Flare, I suspect, but because there wasn't really all that much burn in the OG pool (Lightning Bolt, Pyrotechnics, Fireball, Disintegrate, Earthquake, Inferno and that's pretty much it).
Where Abe went with it is pushing Power Surge on one hand, and adding Dragon Welps on the other. I'm not even going to comment on Mishra's Factories and Strip Mines, that stuff is on it's way out as far as I'm concerened you can stick that in any deck ever and ruin someone's day. Welps are actually fine IMO. He said he wouldn't push mana flare, but that's exactly what they do, so not necessarily them.
The scepters are flawed logic incarnate, if anything would keep me from playing excess land is the opponent making me discard a card every turn. If I dumped lands on board madly wth do I discard? My instants? Abe -.-
Let's see what SoTA did:
.164 22 Mountain
.155 4 Mana Flare
.192 4 Power Surge
.84 4 Fireball
.65 4 Disintegrate
.145 4 Lightning Bolt
.396 2 Aladdin's Ring - So even more Warmage Copyright infringement
.103 4 Granite Gargoyle - Some early flying threat with mana sinking defensive capability (except, valuably, against air stuff)
.207 4 Rock Hydra - X power Creature, on flavor, gets pretty silly with Mana Flare
.270 4 Wall of Fire
.318 4 Fellwar Stone - Some help with not burning yourself if you need one mana with flares and surge on the table. Also ramps somewhat, because there's only 4 Mana Flares to draw.
Now me:
- What I did | Open
- So it's a flavorful clone of War Mage with Power Surge to kinda even out the symmetry of Mana Flare, but no board wipe whatsoever. And now no Power Surge.
I'm torn.
No way to make a Rock Hydra deck without Mana Flare. But that would be just adding a sneaky X spell to War Mage. Unless...
Out: 4 Mana Flare
In: 4 Gauntlet of Might -> less symetrical vs folks w no mountains and this deck runs actual creatures
Out: 4 Wall of Fire
In: 4 Storm Shaman -> Offensive Wall of Fire which gets pumped by GoM. Being just a mana sink doesn't cut it anymore.
Out: 4 Power Surge
In: 4 Flamekin Spitfire -> A 2 Drop which pings you because there's a Mana Flare out, for a 2 Drop which pings you (and your dudes) because Mana Flare's out. What's not to like apart from the little bastard being a pain in the ass, ofc.
Out: 2 Alladins Ring
In: 2 Flame Wave - > How's that for ramp target, eh? Overkill, much? Well, the Gauntlet is a mite slower to get into play, but can still be out on turn 2 with the stones same as the flare. And this is just Inferno back in, except in a way which lets you play creatures.
Out: 1 each Granite Gargoyle, Storm Shaman, Rock Hydra
In: 3 Dragon Welp - > Err, why not, although it might be a tad overkillsih. Still, the AI needs something that's offensive, flying and has some attack to really go places.
Out: 4 Lightning Bolt
In: 4 Flame Slash -> Because ATM I think i buffed the deck up quite a bit and this serves to differentiate the deck from the War Mage further. Hydra wants to kill opposing creatures so it's dudes can get through. And also, this bolts bigger stuff. And bolts to the head from every red opponent is annoying as balls anyway.
Lemme just test this.
---
List:
.207 3 Rock Hydra
.103 3 Granite Gargoyle
.318 4 Fellwar Stone
.65 4 Disintegrate
.84 4 Fireball
.164 22 Mountain
.96 4 Gauntlet of Might
.3367 2 Flame Wave
.9142 4 Flamekin Spitfire
.1679 3 Storm Shaman
.67 3 Dragon Whelp
.10928 4 Flame Slash
Yep, it works. The AI can be funny about prioritizing stuff, like playing Rock Hydra at strange moments and there's a bit too much evasion, but otherwise it's pretty damned silly. In fact, I think it could use nerfing as it seems to quite able to kill you dead from 20 to 0 too easily. The problem are the X spells, honestly, because they all become Hidetsugu's Second Rite look-alikes at 5 lands down with Gauntlet of Might out. The deck has plenty of stuff to sink mana in productively, the pingin Elemental is quite a nuisance and the Gauntlet really does work better with this plan so I think even the X spells could be replaced.
Oddly enough it feels distinct compared to both Prismat and War Mage now but if you look at how much was really "reworked"... Not all that much. The wall of fire can theoretically go on offense, there's a 2 drop that pings the other guy in place of Power Surge (a 2 drop which pings the other guy), "Mana Flare" isn't so symetrical anymore so no need to try to balance it and the lightning bolt won't get aimed at your head. And there's a few Dragon Welps around. And Inferno's kinda back in.
Might be a little light on lands, though.
Caveat - this was a silly dangeorus deck orginally, because Shandalar + Red = Trouble, just saying. It kinda wipes the floor with opponents in gauntlet. But there's ways to reign it in when I get a better grasp of the full scope of Red. Also, there's gotta be more ways to deal with Pro: Red than just cramming Alladins Ring in every deck (and I seriously consider discontinuing Circles of Protection to be one of the best moves WotC ever made), so sideboard/contingency fine tuning is for later.
Onwards!
---
Forest Dragon - I had big plans and ideas for this guy, but anything I tried didn't seem to work. Mostly due to AI. I'd need to test things in Shandalar rather than Mana Link, though, and the deck has enough problems to write a novel about. I do want to make a quick tweak to it before my next run - it keeps shooting itself in the foot with the whole living lands plan, and I'm taking that thing out of everywhere for that very reason.
Abe didn't touch
Forest Dragon much, which figures. It's about on par with Elementalist in terms of ambition, except someone stuck a bunch of Mana Vaults in Elementalist and nobody did that for
Forest Dragon. Mana Link AI just stubbornly won't attack with a Lured-up Basilisk even though it would kill 2
Serra Angels and 2
Serra Avengers -.-'
Anywho here's my tweak list:
- Tweaked Forest Dragon | Open
- Old:
.91 22 Forest
.49 4 Craw Wurm
.40 4 Cockatrice
.244 4 Thicket Basilisk
.152 4 Lure
.149 4 Llanowar Elves
.409 2 Desert Twister
.237 2 Stream of Life
.1248 4 Heartbeat of Spring
.7273 4 Kashi-Tribe Reaver
.11397 2 Untamed Might
.1243 2 Harmonize
.12009 2 Make a Wish
Here's the deal - i tried a bunch of stuff and none of it worked, and this was the only thing that finally made the damned Forest dragon do it's thing.
Hearbeat of Spring - if ever there was a deck to rival the Elementalist in ambition it's the amazing 12 5cc+ Forest Dragon. Also 8 of those had only 2 power 
It also had only 22 lands, and I cut the untamed Wilds and just made it ramp like it wants to. Not my proudest moment, but there you have it.
Kashi-Tribe Reaver - if the AI could actually use certain handy Snakes this would've not been the only one to make it in. The deck lacked power (as in stuff to put on board and do stuff with before hitting 5 cc). This guy also has all that Lure could want, it regenerates and stuff that blocks it won't be doing anything for a while. Also, he has the most damage int the deck apart from the signature Wurm.
Untamed Might - Something to ramp into with all your flared mana. I was careful to not actually give the deck any source of trample, but now it might bloody well attack with it's Basilisks, lure or no lure, or do some damage with Cockotrices or just knock you out.
Harmonize - I noticed it didn't handle mass removal too well, and Heartbeat tended to empty it's hand a lot, so I added this to help out with that.
Make a Whish - and I also added some recursion in order to not give it full 4 Harmonize. Who knows it might even be stronger.
Now it actually works. The Faerie Dragon was a nice idea, but in practice the AI can't handle it and it would just pour all it's mana into it for dubious gains. Living Lands leaves Power Struggle in the dust when it comes to shooting yourself in the foot - and in fact that was the main reason for me to even touch this deck (but there were many others which I didn't touch, this is actually light tweaks, woudln't you know it). I wrote a long section on just how ridiculously ambitious the whole thing was so if someone, for whatever reason, wants to read MORE of my spam I can retype it again.
It's the best I could do for now, ham fisted, but I did try a bunch of tamer stuff. Folks lived with 2 red mana flare decks around, now there's a green one, too.
---
Who else has living lands? Fungus master, in the sideboard, but he can actually make his work, so I won't get into that. Enchantress has some in the sideboard for the exact same plan as here, except she can also kinda make it work... But her main problem is that she has pretty much the exact same plan as
Forest Dragon so I'll do her next. There's also better ways to build her deck (allthough the AI might still be screwy when it comes to enchantments).
So much so that giving her
Argothian Enchantress over
Verduran Enchantress could be a good idea simply because shed have to stack auras on other stuff.
But that's for another day.
---
Any ideas for stuff that's up for "patching out" like
Mana Vault,
Living Lands,
Power Surge? Clockwork dudes,
Urza's Avenger and
Primal Clay come to mind. Any truly lacklustre decks around?
I know I'll give Merfolk Shaman a twack with the nerf stick, Druid and Priestess need doctoring, Seer might need forensics, Sorcerer and Sorceress could use a bit of tweaking to make red easier to get into. Lord of Fate needs both forensics and doctoring I took a look already, it's trying to do too many things at once. So is the paladin, and probably the winged stallion. Anyone'd like me to take a look at an OG/Abe deck to try to puzzle it out (or puzzle out how to make the AI do what it's supposed to do better)?
Posted: 15 Oct 2015, 00:02