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Title. Anyways, I've been replaying the game with the rebalance mod, and couldn't help but notice those decks are still trash. Worse, a lot of them plays similar cards, making them homogenous, and that affects immersion; after building a decent deck the game becomes a chore. It becomes more interesting once you are ready to enter dungeons, but those are populated by the same mediocre decks. Worst, the Archmagi are absolute pushovers. Even without dupe restricted cards, they provide little to no challenge to decks with all the power.

So I started modifying the enemy decks, sprucing them up, making them more competitive, while sticking to their theme. Currently have 13 finished (all the mono-G decks, including Archmagi, and all the mono-R decks with the Archmagi deck coming next), over 1.5 days. Is anyone still interested in Shandalar replays?

So I just completed the Dragon Lord Kzzy'n deck; and I actually don't know if the game can support it. Its a Contract From Below + Gauntlet of Might + Kobold Aggro, with Fireballs and Shivan Dragons as finishers. Fits the theme, cuz Kobolds are dragon worshippers; and dragons love fireballs and big mana, and there's Shivan Dragon. Problem though, is to win by turn 3 this deck needs to be piloted well. And also, if the AI casts too many spells a turn, the game might crash. Was fun designing the deck though, and the basic Kobold beatdown with Gauntlet of Might and then endgame Fireball/Shivan Dragon for lethal works pretty well. Dark Ritual + Contract From Below is what causes the problems, but without them, I've no way to make a Red + X colour turn 1-3 kill deck. Can't run multiple Timetwisters or Balance or whatever, those are restricted in game, but Contract isn't.

Edit: Red Castle has Mana Flare, so this deck doesn't run them.

Edit: In Manalink 1.3 at least, the AI pilots the deck well; it knows to cast Rituals before Contracts, Dtut for draw7 (they typically get Wheel over Contract, unfortunately). The crashing problem persists. Might work out in game since I think its more updated than Manalink 1.3.

If you're wondering, the Morgane deck is the classic Channel Fireball. She starts with Sylvan library, letting the deck fix one of the big weaknesses: Card Draw/Filter. To beat her you'd need an excellent deck with P9s; or a specific deck that can counter/bounce her big spells. Also whittle her life down, and raise your life before fighting else you'd be at a big disadvantage.

So, off resuming my work! I finally got the down the basic ideas for each of the decks of the archmagi, feel free to reply with ideas.

White: Guy starts with Elder Land Wurm, a defensive creature. So a natural fit for it is a white/blue Stasis/Kismet prison deck. For wincon, could just run the old Armageddon Clock + COP: Artifacts combo, or use Black Vise. Black Vise is weaker against high power stuff that can dump their hand turn 1 and win turns 1-2; but if they get Kismet online turn 1, you often can't do the really broken stuff; the blue card that makes all artifacts cost 2 mana upkeep also hoses fast mana hard; then once Stasis hits with Howling Mine on field, its probably GG. They'll just keep hitting land drops and lock you out of any mana. Since free spells don't exist in the game, its a hard lock.

Blue: Guy starts with Leviathan, a trash creature, but still a 10/10 trample. I've got quite the idea for this deck, funnily enough. I want to build a Time Vault + Instill Energy/Twiddle deck; where you animate artifact Time Vault, then Instill Energy for infinite turns. Instill Energy is the perfect card for the Leviathan too, along with Fastbond, that can actually let the Leviathan attack for consecutive turns. Problems: deck's hard to pilot. Since there can only be 1 Time Vault, the AI needs to use its Transmute Artifact wisely; and then Animate it and not the other Mana Rocks; and then Instill Energy/Twiddle it. Feels a lot of work to be honest; no idea if the AI will pull it off. Not going to build it anytime soon probably; if you want to test build it to see if the AI can pilot it; comment!

Black: Actually still thinking about this. AI has a lot of life + Greed on the field; basically equivalent to a LOT of cards. A HUGE amount, especially with Contract and Dark Ritual. I'm thinking of the second colour being Blue, for Timetwister specifically. Can't run Regrowth if I do though, for Regrowth Time Walk/Timetwister; but 4 Dark Ritual + 4 Contract + Black Lotus + Timetwister is still a shit ton of draw7. What do I run as wincon though? Personally, I'm a huge fan of Deathgrip + Sleight of Mind for a hard lock on coloured spells; along with Sinkhole, Blight, Evil Presence (sideboard out vs Black decks); blue locks like Energy Flux (insane card vs fast mana, btw); Power Sink + Blight is good... etc. Finish with other hate pieces to prevent turn 2 wins (can't do much against turn 1), Gloom + Sleight of Mind/Counterspells; and you've probably got a really good control deck thats different from Stasis/Kismet. As an added bonus, Energy Flux destroys your own tapped Mana Vaults; that is incredible for the AI who never untaps their vaults but is playing control. Probably not too powerful, because multi-colour can deny a lot of this deck's power, and Colourless fast mana is incredible too, but very consistent with that much card advantage.


Arzakon: No idea yet, but I want this deck to be a monster. Unlike others, he's allowed multiples of restricted cards (4 max), but will have a 100 card deck; or he's allowed multiples of restricted except specifically the P9 (Moxen, Twister, Walk, Ancestral, Lotus) but in exchange can run 60 cards. Dunno which way I'll lean into; but to beat this guy, you'd need a deck with multiples of P9s yourself; and ideally a wincon via infinite combo/loop; instead of traditional aggro cuz 400 lyfe. I don't remember what this guy starts with, I think its a Celestial Prism, and that's pretty good for fixing while not giving any predetermined theme; so maybe I just run the broken Time Walk/Regrowth combo? It'll probably not crash the game, and is a lot easier to pilot than Fast Mana + Hurkyl's Recall + Draw 7s into Braingeyser the opponent for win.

Okay, so this one's spicy. I just revamped mono black decks, including Azaar, and upped the power level of the 100-gold (Tier 5) guys and henchmen even more. Summoner got 3x Fastbond and Untamed Wilds over vulnerable dorks, upped Sylvan Library count to 3. Also, Beast Master got a huge boost. My previous version of Beast Master, for example, was running:

4x Nafs Wasp
4x Timber Wolf
4x Grizzly
4x Wyluli Wolf
4x Aswan Jaguar
2x Killer Bees

plus some random 1-of animals for flavour, and then top it out with 4x Giant Growth. Deck's decent, but then I built Hydra as big red control with Earthquake as board wipe, Power Surge and Disrupting Scepter as introduced in the deck overhaul; topping it out with more mana sinks like Jayemdae Tome, 4x Rock Hydra, Aladdin's Ring etc. Then built War Mage as Tron Burn with Mana Flare and good Artifact creatures. That's a lot better than this. And today I built Nether Fiend, with 4x Nether Shadow 4x Dark Ritual 4x Contract 4x Bad Moon and all the 1-drops. Basically, Nether Shadow becomes a free creature in those builds as the AI discards them to Contract and gets them back for free later or same turn. That is nuts. Then Necromancer came, with Bazaar/Contract discard Lord of the Pit into Animate Dead/Call of the Grave and then Spirit Link it. Thats also nuts. So I went back to my Beastmaster deck and thought, what restricted-ish card is good here? Berserk! Can't imagine I didn't think of the Berserk/Wyluli Wolf synergy. Before I only kept Wyluli Wolf as it was in the Jiansonz deck update and its a decent 2-drop animal; but now its an actual synergy piece. This can just drop threat into threat into threat into Giant Growth + Berserk and win outta nowwhere. Love it.

So anyways, Lichlord Azaar. I posted before I was gonna try to build it like a control/ponza deck, given it starts with Greed and Hypnotic Specter. It went really nice, with 3-4 1-of removal pieces for anything that slips through the 3x Power Sink and 4x Sinkhole 4x Blight 4x Strip; and a shitton of card draw from 3x Contract and Greed. Problem was, I was lacking space for wincons. Best wincons here are Artifacts like Black Vise etc, except I was running 2x Energy Flux because ponza sucks versus fast mana. So I ended up running 2x Feldon's Crane, as just before I had posted a deck with 4x Berserk; new rule: not-so-high-power-but-restricted cards like Berserk/Feldon's Crane/Fork are fine; since half the point of Classic Shandalar is to have fun with the busted stuff in all their glory; doesn't make sense to run 1x of Berserk when I can run 4x of Contract. Regrowth I'd consider restricted though; because of its interaction with Twister and Time Walk. Cane exiles itself, so it can't go infinite unlike Regrowth.

Funnily enough, I also found a space for Lich (the enchantment). Its very much on theme, and is actually really good since this deck is pretty bad vs aggro (as far as dedicated control decklists go). I'm banking on the high starting life total of Azaar to stave off aggro long enough for him to find his removal; but Lich is a decent anti-aggro countermeasure if he's really in dire straits. No Lord of the Pit though; Necromancer is the dedicated Lord guy; doesn't make sense for a Lich to be a demon summoner either. Azaar is now a real Archmagi; and will make you suffer for a long time before he finally wins by decking you out. Unless, of course you're specifically trying to cheese him with multiple Feldon's Crane, in which case he'll kill you with Drain Life/Pestilence and looping them with Crane; or just countering your Land-Crane play. He's got Mind Twist he can loop too, so yeah, good luck suffering.

Edit: Great Druid Morgane now has too little power. With Only 1x Wheel of Fortune and 3x Fastbond; she's relying way too much on the super life-expensive card draw of her starting Library. Since Contract is 4x Legal; because it by itself doesn't enable Time Walk loops, lets also make Wheel 4x legal (thankfully there's no Hullbreacher). It won't run it as 4x though, since she will mostly cast it to find her combo pieces and fastbond lands instead of playing a long game; 3x Wheel mirrors Lichlord Azaar 3x Contract. Kzzy'n has 6x now; but that's fine, he relies on them since he's playing a lot of 0-drop Kobolds (8, to be exact).

Summoner doesn't use Fastbond well. I wanted Land Tax + Fastbond, but since I ditched the old COP: Green combo for Spirit Link instead, the deck needs speed a lot more. It isn't resilient like black decks with contract. Multiple tests convinced me that multiple Libraries are essential, and I'd often need to pay life (despite having Untamed Wilds' shuffle) because I needed cards if my first Force of Nature got beaten. And that much Sylvan Library use made me super weak to aggro, so, after a lot of testing; decided that there was no way this deck could match other henchmen by playing fair, so 3x Forcefield.

If anyone's interested, here's a couple normal enemy decklists that I massively overhauled while keeping a theme intact:

WITCH (B, Tier 1, 40 gold bribe)

24 Swamp
4x Cuombajj Witches
4x Wall of Bone
2x Frozen Shade
2x Nightmare
4x Weakness
4x Spirit Shackle
3x Drain Life
3x Syphon Soul
3x Raise Dead
2x Sacrifice
2x Terror
3x Throne of Bone

Note: These decks sideboard Oubliette/Ashes to Ashes in place of Terrors vs other Black.

So the original game's Witch decklist was one of the better ones, that gave starting players a lot of trouble. Colours without anti-regenerator removal (-X/-X or exile) had issues beating Witches for no fault of their own. That was frustating, and is a large reason for the change. Its probably a controversial change, since the basic 4x Disk + Regenerators list was very iconic; but a tier 1 deck having 8x rare-equivalents (Wisp and Disk) feels unfair to other Tier 1 decks; and was infact a large reason for the deck's success: Wisp was the only flying regenerator, and without drawing a Disk the deck did nothing at all.

And there's this nice card: Cuombajj Witches. Its a cheap pinger, with a minor downside; but having 3 toughness plus coming down a turn earlier probably makes it better than Prodigal Sorcerer. Since the enemy is called 'WITCH', it was a natural direction to take the deck towards.

This deck is a mediocre control deck. It's main theme is to control your board with the help of its Witches (a lot of early creatures have 1 toughness, making a Witch equivalent to a boardwipe over multiple turns). It plays no 1-toughness creatures that can be killed by the backlash of the Witches' ability; it has a lifegain theme because in absence of killable stuff; the backlash will hit their face; and it has a lot of wincons for a control list; Nightmare, Frozen Shade, Drain Life, and Raise Dead (though it is mostly for your Witches).

I don't think this deck is too strong, though. While it is indeed stacked with removal, it has no card draw, plays a bunch of bad spells like Sacrifice, Throne of Bone, Syphon Soul; and Spirit Shackle, Wall of Bone are both below average too, despite being relevant to the game. If you don't bumrush these girls with your starting 5-colour nonsense, and take your time looking through towns for good cards of your colour, you have a decent chance of beating them. Also, if they ante a Nightmare, take the fight! Nightmare is an incredible card; this also encourages the habit of checking the ante before deciding whether to fight or bribe.


VAMPIRE LORD (B, Tier 4, 80 gold bribe)

23 Swamp
4x Sengir Vampire
3x Sorceress Queen
3x Nettling Imp
3x Vampire Bats
3x Animate Dead
2x Weakness
3x Drain Life
4x Dark Ritual
4x Terror
4x Fellwar Stone
2x Jayemdae Tome
2x Rod of Ruin

Basically the upgraded black control deck. This is something I am aiming for, each colour will have 1 inefficient aggro, 1 inefficient control (the early game chump enemies); and 1 efficient aggro, and 1 efficient control. The 5th normal deck usually is has a somewhat combo-ish theme; as I'll be describe next, with the Warlock. Black's inefficient control is Witch, inefficient aggro is Undead Knight (which now has only 2x Bad Moon; a 40-gold bribe deck having 4x of one of the best aggro rares along with almost-rare Hypnotic Specter is a bit too much for early game). This is the efficient control, the efficient aggro is Nether Fiend; and the combo is the Warlock.

So, the first thing you'll notice is that the Mana Vaults are gone. Well, I just have stopped putting mana vaults in any deck that cannot typically win by turn 5; because the AI is incapable of ever untapping their vaults. Mana Vaults are there in the high-power decks, because you can't cheese a Vault win vs them, they'll kill you before their vault damage becomes an issue even if they never untap it. This one though, isn't one of them. A turn 2 Sengir Vampire that can start attacking for 4 on turn 3, is just underwhelming, especially vs Humans who know to pack their decks with good removal. The intial decklist had Sorceress Queen, so I kinda realised that the way the deck creator wanted to take this was to somehow force creatures to block Sengir Vampire, and then Sorceress Queen them to a 0/2, this way the creature dies, and the Vampire grows. But that's very unlikely to happen on the attack. What if, we had a taunt effect? Yep, Nettling Imp. Its a good combo with Royal Assassin, but that interaction takes away focus from Sengir Vampire, plus Icy Manipulators are better with them anyway, so no Royal Assassins, just a 3x Sorceress Queen, 3x Nettling Imp, 3x Animate Dead, 4x Vampire Lord package. Like how Cuombajj Witches can pick off weaker creatures (especially in a coven of 2); just Nettling Imp + Sengir Vampire usually kill off a creature a turn, letting the vampire grow and fight even bigger stuff; and then the Sorceress Queen comes down and can let the Vampire eat even stuff like Force of Nature or Lord of the Pit. Vampire Bats are on-theme, and actually quite useful since they're flying 2/1, so they can eat any incoming attacker if there's a Sorceress Queen on the field. The Rod of Ruin is nice to have, as one on the field lets the Sorceress Queen block something and activate its ability, then the Rod can deal the second point; and 2 at once allows you to ping creatures without need of a Nettling Imp. The rest of the deck is just a bunch of removal, draw, and ramp for a turn 3 Sengir Vampire (turn 2 Fellwar Stone into turn 3 Dark Ritual), so the early Vampire strategy is still there, just a turn slower and happens less often, but makes this deck so much sweeter in exchange.

Edit: I just checked the rulings and apparently, you can use Nettling Imp on tapped creatures and they'll still die EOT. Wtf? That's almost a Royal Assassin! I didn't need do so much work with 3 combo pieces if all I needed was a Icy Manipulator. Gah! Now I'm tempted to just replace the Rods with Manipulators, and 1x Sorceress Queen with 1x Imp. Pshh...


WARLOCK (B, Tier 3, 70 gold bribe)

23x Swamp
4x Hypnotic Specter
3x Demonic Hordes
4x Bog Wraith
4x Evil Presence
2x Animate Dead
1x Contract From Below
4x Drain Life
4x Dark Ritual
3x Terror
2x Howl From Beyond
2x Cyclopean Tomb
4x Fellwar Stone

So, the first thing you'll notice is the Contract. Hell yeah! No more wandering about hoping to encounter a Nomad Bazaar; you can now farm contracts from Warlocks. This is in fact, intended; each type of enemy has an okay-to-good rare that they can randomly ante, so you can obtain them without the RNG of Nomad Bazaar. As fights are harder, they also has to be more rewarding.

Anyways, as you can see, this deck merges two specific themes into one nasty thing. The original one, Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter, is now supplemented by Turn 2 Fellwar, Turn 4 Demonic Hordes (or in magical christmasland, even earlier). Since Demonic Hordes are land destroyers, I decided to try out budget ponza (no Sinkhole or Blight, those are for Sedge Troll); aka Evil Presence and Cyclopean Tomb. Funnily enough, this opened up some interesting synergies. First, Fellwar Stones now tap for B, so you can get some really big Drain Life-s off; remember, Drain Life is an iconic spell of the original Warlock. Second, Bog Wraith is now a 3/3 unblockable for 4, that can be cast on turn 2 with a Ritual. That enhances our Ritual pay-off chance. If you've ever played Black Weenie in classic Shandalar, you'd know how much strong Bog Wraiths versus you. I've lost games where I've cast Contract twice just because of Bog Wraith. This also kind of keeps the old Warlock theme of unblockable stuff there, in a fashion. Lastly, an actual unblockable creatures feeds into the big mana burn strategy; with 4x Drain Life and 2x Howl, without unblockable stuff, Howl is just mediocre; but now, its a legit X-burn. The list is rounded out by a little bit of cheap removal and 2x Animate Dead, so that you can turn 2 reanimate your turn 1 Specter after it was Bolted. Oh, and the contract! You know what a Warlock is? A Demon-summoner/worshipper/ritualist; this just finishes out the trio. Demonic Hordes is the Demon, Dark Ritual is the, well, ritual; and this is the demonic pact he made to gain his powers. Pretty neat little bit of on-theme power.

Forcefield isn't good. I don't even know why its restricted. I just gave up on shoving 'power' into Summoner and just put 4x Swords to Plowshares (cutting a Untamed Wilds) and called it a day. Kind of sad that I couldn't do more with the theme of summon big stuff; it is such a classic green deckbuilding concept but doesn't really work here as most big creatures are terrible. I could've use the Cyclone/COP strategy, but firstly, what part of 'Summoner' is a Cyclone Summoner? That's a 7/7 blue giant wizard from Kaldheim.. Also, Cyclone COP feeds heavily into creatureless control lists, shoving in Force of Nature in a deck like that just goes against all my deckbuilding instincts.

Started working on multicolor decks, and immediately had a huge question: Why is Fungus Master G/U??? Firstly, fungus grows on damp moldy places, like Swamps; and literally every Saproling/Fungus cards are G/B. Plus Fungusaur is the perfect Pestilence card, since it gets counters immediately after damage, not end of turn. Its a 2/2 3G card; easy to splash into a deck with Pestilence. Unfortunately, I already built Centaur Shaman as the Pestilence + Whirling Dervish list; using these two cards to lock out weenies, black point removal for big creatures; and punish control/creatureless lists by playing Howling Mine, Black Vise and Storm Seeker. Storm Seeker is a really cool card I just couldn't find a home for before this. Also has 4 Living Artifacts, which in multiples allows you to gain life off pestilence triggers (and the singleton City of Brass/Fastbond). But now I'm already tempted to shove Fungusaur into this deck because its the perfect Pestilence synergy.

I probably will still put Pestilence in the Fungus Master deck. I'll build it heavy black, because unlike Pestilence/Living Artifact which requires only 1 black per turn for the combo; and Whirling Dervish is GG; Fungusaur can grow infinitely with black mana. Cyclone also exists with a similar effect; but after it has grown you can't cast Fungusaurs anymore; so all they need to do is kill your on-board Fungusaur after you cast Cyclone, and the combo fizzles. Plus, I'm reserving Cyclone for a proper Cyclone/Hurricane/Drop of Honey green control/burn with COP:Green later (maybe the Abzan Djinn?).

Dracur is now nasty. That old Witch Disk combo I talked about last post? The one I ditched? That's now in an appropriate shell here. Its a tricolour Ponza with all the efficient land destruction spells like Ice Storm/Stone Rain/Sinkhole in one place. But just that would fold against aggro with numerous 1-2 drops; so we needed a wrath. And Nevinyrral's Disk is probably the perfect wrath here, because artifacts and enchantments are so strong in the game; and all good ponza lists need a way to beat artifact mana. The classic Disk combo card was also included: Rukh Egg. 4 copies is a bit less since its the deck's only wincon, so 3x Animate Dead as Rukh Egg doesn't transform or exile to create the token. 2x Diamond Valley; probably the only kind of deck that can run this mediocre land; because with only Disk as my way to kill Egg; it just wasn't working out, made the deck uneccessarily slow. Now this a proper 110G deck, devastatingly punishing vs bad draws, and can hold its own against decks with power. And all of this, without shoving in Moxes and Lotuses in a normal deck that antes cards. There's power here though, a singleton Regrowth, so you can farm Regrowths even if you can't do so for the actual P9. Honestly, this deck is probably better than Summoner; but that is fine, you can't avoid fights against Henchmen so I intentionally designed Henchmen decks as one-trick-pony decks; You can counter their gameplan to cheese wins versus them; but they're quite powerful versus fair decks.

Man, these blue decks are complex! Although the AI won't pilot them well, I still want to put them in the game in all their glory. And if by chance someone can improve the AI later on, woo! While the basic decks are done; I'm having issues with the Shapeshifter deck.

Anyways, Seer is now the control decklist; Prodigal Sorcerers, 2x Time Elemental, a solid suite of countermagic and bounce to supplement her handful of walls and ghost ships; with Air Elemental as the finisher. So why exactly is this deck called Seer? I tried to answer that by putting in a 2-of Glasses of Urza. While I'd prefer something like Visions to really fit the theme; glasses does kinda let her 'see' your hand, though I've no idea if the AI actually does use that info at all.

Merfolk is now the evasive aggro. Plays all the merfolk, 4x Water Wurm, Devouring Deep, 3x Azure Drake, 2x Segovian Leviathan; idea is that these evasive creatures are the perfect carriers of Unstable Mutation, and is also solid with Sunken City. 3x Phantasmal Terrain as enablers rounds out the aggro part; leaving open slots I spent on 2x Fishliver Oil and 1x War Barge. I know that War Barge is supposed to be the Merfolk Assassin combo card, but playing a 2-drop, then two turns later a 4-drop, then another turn later finally kill something; all while potentially paying for Sunken City upkeep, that just isn't ideal. So Fishliver Oil is just point removal if you have Merfolk Assassins out (didn't find out if the AI knows this interaction), and is actually useful even without Assassins because of Phantasmal Terrain and Unstable Mutation.

Conjurer is now one version of artifact combo. Doesn't run tron, but instead runs Basalt Monolith, Su-Chi, and Transmute Artifact; ideally looking to drop a Colossus of Sardia on the field by turn 4 (with Fellwar Stone support); then use the playset of Twiddle and 1-of Jandor's Saddlebag (tutorable via Transmute) to untap it and win in short order. Of course, the AI doesn't understand any of it; I've yet to see it fetch up Colossus, it'd rather get Su-Chi or other 6-drops (I ran Obsianus Golem because this is only a Tier 3 deck; but do have 3x Triskelion). Doesn't untap Monolith, never tutors for Jandor's Saddlebags either, but that's expected. Even without doing the optimal combo; the deck can still hardcast Colossus because Twiddle/Energy Tap/Basalt Monolith; and the standard 4 mana 4/4 Su-Chi is quite strong; and later on Triskelion is excellent, and Obsianus Golem is pretty decent too. Btw, artifacts, because Conjuration in typical fantasy speak is using magic to create matter. Pity there's no Artificer enemy.

Spent a lot of time on Sea Dragon, because I just couldn't combine 2-mana Dandan with 6-mana Sea Dragon and 7-mana Island Fish Jasconius. What deck would run them both? Because Dandan is a decent card, unlike the other two, so first I thought I'd force an optimized mono-blue aggro with Sunken City and multiple 1-drops; but that isn't anything like Sea Dragon. So I ended up with an awesome control list that I totally forgot already existed in the game: Stasis-Leviathan-Island Fish Jasconius combo. Its the old blue Archmage deck theme; Leviathan doesn't untap during untap step, so you can ignore the Stasis downside; then on upkeep you can pay to untap through a stasis. Its just, Leviathan is bad even then, because you'd need 4 lands to barely support a single attack. Jasconius is perfect combination for a Leviathan because total Jasconius untap cost + Stasis upkeep is UUUU, thats exactly the amount of Islands you need to sac to sacrifice for a Leviathan attack; so by sacrificing 4 lands, you get a 16 power attack instead of 10. Much more efficient. But this is a normal deck. For a normal deck; you can't start with Leviathans, because they actually have to cast them, they don't get one for free. So you start with Stasis. Stasis is a natural shell for a Flood control deck. Then you slot in Dandan because its a solid blocker early; and can pressure other control lists (especially other blue decks) with a Phantasmal Terrain. Phantasmal Terrain isn't a bad draw early, color screwing and enabling your late game Island Fishes too. Round it out with some Reset, as I've no idea if the AI is smart enough to boomerang their own Stasis at the end of enemy turn; so Reset is just a less versatile version of that effect. And there we go. Free slots get Icy Manipulators, Sindbad (to hit your land drops, 26 lands in deck); and 2x Sea Serpent for flavour (no need for maximum efficiency, this is only a 80-gold deck). These deck, when piloted by a human can be really sweet, but the AI will probably butcher these. I did try to make the decklists idiot proof; like with Reset; but only to a certain extent. This hopefully isn't as easy to mess up; since all you do is cast Flood, counter and tap everything; then Power Sink into Stasis; the AI should be able to win after that. Also, 2x Island Fish and 1x Leviathan cuz Leviathan is more expensive and can't even defend, and absolutely terrible in multiples. I'm pretty sure this is the reason the original decklist had Island Fish and Leviathan, but ended up cutting Stasis for whatever reason.

And now Shapeshifter. I intended to build this deck around Vesuvan Doppelganger, the strongest shapeshifter. According to the new rules of Magic, when you Clone something that has counters as ETB effect, the counters are separate from the creature; so you could Vesuvan Doppelganger a Clockwork Beast and get 7 +1/+0 counters; then doppel anything else next turn and keep those counters. It'd be powerful, but not broken; but when I built the deck and played it in Manalink 1.3; the doppel ability doppels the creature entirely; you can enter as a copy of Triskelion and get the 3 counters as expected; but what is not, is using the Vesuvan Doppelgangers dopple effect on upkeep refreshes those counters! So the combo I'm thinking of is entering as a copy of Triskelion or Tetravus; at your next upkeep, shoot or create tetravites, then activate the Triskelion ability to get back those counters. Again, even if I do it, I've no idea if the AI can. And I'll have to check if the rules in the updated game is same as in manalink. Ugh... If anyone can answer this, please reply.

So uh, at least in Manalink, the AI doesn't even use the Vesuvan Doppelganger's upkeep ability. Basically means this is guaranteed to be a boring deck regardless of whatever ruleset is valid. Oh well. I'm still keeping the concept as is, since with Triskelion copying and such, it has enough power to be good. Not entirely satisfying. Anyone know which folder is the AI code and what language is it written in?

Edit: I was testing how the AI plays this deck with my Druid deck that has Argothian Treefolk; apparently the AI doesn't know about that ability, it just blocked my Argothian Treefolk with their 5/2 Shapeshifter. Old game...

Okay, I'll be closing this thread. I'm just going to work on the Korath's version instead (I'd have started working on it if I knew I could play it from start; I downloaded it later from a reddit post in r/Shandalar). That means more cards (yay!); but I'll have to start from scratch. Cheers! Will make a new thread when I do start.

I'm currently documenting my attempts to achieve a perfect Shandalar run (no losses, no cities *ever* conquered by enemies, all treasures obtained) on the "Good Gamery" "Magic Cards Seriousness" subforum; you may find that to be interesting. (I'd include a direct link, but it gets flagged as "too spamy for a new user".)