Premade decks please

[sponeta]

Yeah I didn't find those updated decks anywhere. I must have overwritten them when I updated Magarena at some point. Anyway, have some new decks instead:

decks_sep2013_2.zip

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Evolution
I created the base for this accidentally when I was trying to reproduce a bug with Battering Krasis and Stolen Identity. It's got grotesque Simic mutants and experiments gone horribly wrong. Trampled by fish beasts is the way to go!

Haunted
Spooky spirits that make your opponent tremble in fear. Many useful abilities combined with weakening and incapacitating your opponent's creatures.

Landfall
With the introduction of lands you can sacrifice to search for more lands, classic Landfall decks can now be built. This one's got everyone's favorite Plated Geopede and Steppe Lynx.

One Creature Challenge (40)
Can you beat your opponent without ever controlling more than one creature?

Storm, Wind and Fire (40)
A white-red-blue deck with a strong offense built around Battalion and cheap multicolored creatures.

Unholy Clerics
It's an unholy alliance of black and white! Use clerics to prevent damage from your enemy, pain lands, Djinns and Spiteful Visions. Annoy with clerics that have protection. Follow up with Worship for that extra touch of divine untouchability.

[jerichopumpkin]

A selection of my decks. I stick to Vintage 60 cards deck, and sometimes they are a bit clumsy, but I love to play them.
Some cards are not included in the actual version, but I've already tested and submitted all of them, so they should be in the upcoming release.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I do

[sponeta]

I think it's important to have decks that aren't necessarily tournament winners. I mean, that's the first thing you try when you have a program like Magarena, you build that super-duper deck with cards that would cost an arm and a leg or aren't allowed in modern rules. And it's fun, but then it gets old pretty quickly, because there isn't an infinite number of super-duper decks. But there is a near infinite number of interesting and fun decks that aren't necessarily three-turn winners, so it's also important that the AI presents a fair challenge instead of playing with the very best decks. Especially when you start including cards that would be "kind of meh" outside of a sealed tournament.

Hmm... makes me think if there should be a sealed tournament in Magarena... something that would sit halfway between deck-building and totally random matches. Pick a base set and expansions, get a selection of cards to build a deck from, then win duels to earn new random boosters.

[ember hauler]

I think it's important to have decks that aren't necessarily tournament winners. I mean, that's the first thing you try when you have a program like Magarena, you build that super-duper deck with cards that would cost an arm and a leg or aren't allowed in modern rules. And it's fun, but then it gets old pretty quickly, because there isn't an infinite number of super-duper decks. But there is a near infinite number of interesting and fun decks that aren't necessarily three-turn winners, so it's also important that the AI presents a fair challenge instead of playing with the very best decks. Especially when you start including cards that would be "kind of meh" outside of a sealed tournament.

I quite agree with that. It's fun to build very powerful deck, but the fun goes away very quicky for two reasons: let's face it, there are lots of powerful "tournament" cards which are not present in Magarena yet, and AI is not so intelligent at the moment and could be easily beaten with strong aggro deck. But this leads me to a different idea.

What if...

1. There is a feature which allows to categorise every deck, something like this:
- deck timing: aimed at quick wins, or midrange, or powerful in the late game
- deck type: aggro, control, combo, mill, infect...
- conditions / deck winning idea: card advantage, land advantage, tokens, lots of small creatures, very fat creatures, exalted...
- deck strength / power: pro, very powerful, FNM, "event" deck, "intro" deck
- AI piloting: AI is good with this deck, mediocre, totally bad

2. There is a feature which allows a player to specify which categories is preferrable for deck generation. For example, I don't like playing against control and weak decks, so I'm able to switch them off.

3. Most important: AI knows about those deck categories and this influences decisions. For example, if the deck is aimed at milling, then all or most of the card draw/discard should be aimed at the opponent. Now it is not so.

I understand that 1 and 2 should be easy to implement, and 3 is probably a hard one.

But what do you think, guys?

[sponeta]

You mean something like in Duels of the Planeswalkers? They had a rating system for each deck with the following attributes (each one had 1-5 stars):
- Creature size
- Deck speed (rush vs. defense)
- Card synergy (how well cards work together rather vs. by themselves)
- Flexibility (how reliant on getting the right cards early)

I think deck strength might be separate from whatever other categories exist. It would be useful even by itself. A lot of my decks have a power level equal to randomly-generated 40-card decks, but some are more powerful and not very exciting unless played against something equally powerful.

As for making the AI take cues from categories... I don't really know much about how AIs work. But I do know that what's intuitive for us humans usually makes little sense to AIs. On the other hand, I remember someone mentioned that the Monte Carlo AI works well only when it has domain knowledge. Maybe such overall categories count as domain knowledge?


Anyway, have some more decks, including not one but two based on the newly-added illusions!

decks_oct_2013.zip

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Big Golems
A pure artifact deck with nothing but bigger-than-average golems.

Disabler
Disable your opponent's creatures without killing them, then end the game with Scourge of Geier Reach or Gideon, Champion of Justice.

Esper 2
Blue, white and black with interesting artifacts.

Green-Blue Sorcerer
A complex green-blue deck filled with unique and useful creatures and counterspells. No card synergy, but each one is useful in its own way.

Illusionist's Assault
Mono-blue rush deck consisting of cheap but powerful illusions and Lord of the Unreal. Cheap Unsummon and Hands of Binding serve to counter any early resistance before you stomp your opponent.

Illusionist's Bestiary
A variant of Illusionist's Assault, this deck exchanges some of the overkill for creatures with Evolve (since Illusions are powerful) and Beast synergy.

Lord of Land
Beat your opponent by growing trees! Gather up huge amounts of land, survive by chump-blocking and lifegain, then wipe out with massive green monsters.

Sliver Horde
A deck focused on getting a massive number of Slivers out with the help of Hivestone and cheap tokens.

Sliver Defense
A defensive Sliver deck. Instead of trying to rush with a mob of Slivers, this deck is based on utility, denial and removal.

Green Populate (40)
Mono-green deck that makes copies of tokens left behind by dead cards like Penumbra Bobcat and Elephant Guide. Don't worry about getting your creatures killed - that's the whole point!

[ember hauler]

You mean something like in Duels of the Planeswalkers? They had a rating system for each deck with the following attributes (each one had 1-5 stars):
- Creature size
- Deck speed (rush vs. defense)
- Card synergy (how well cards work together rather vs. by themselves)
- Flexibility (how reliant on getting the right cards early)

Yes, something like that. I'm not sure if their rating system has any meaning for AI in the game, though.

As for making the AI take cues from categories... I don't really know much about how AIs work. But I do know that what's intuitive for us humans usually makes little sense to AIs. On the other hand, I remember someone mentioned that the Monte Carlo AI works well only when it has domain knowledge. Maybe such overall categories count as domain knowledge?

That would be cool.
I think that "odd" decisions that AI sometimes make could be significantly improved if assisted with the deck strategy. For example, for the Eldrazi deck it is crucial not to sacrifice Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 during combats, because they are needed for mana to cast huge monsters. Sometimes it's better to lose life a little, but save a couple of creatures. But AI have no clue about this.

[ember hauler]

Another crazy idea that crossed my mind:

What if...

There is another AI engine/type/script, which knows very little about the game, but is able to LEARN. Yeah, I'm talking about machine learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning).

This way a human player can choose a deck and play it like 50 or 100 times, making decisions and trying to win against lots of other decks. Meanwhile the new AI algorithm learns his/her moves.

Of course every new deck will require this learning cycle, but I play my decks anyway, so it's not some special time.

It's a pity I know nothing about AI programming, it's such a fascinating area!

[sponeta]

I couldn't really say if that's feasible. I do know that almost every game I play is with a different deck. I love to create new decks, play them a few times, then move on. I also play random games half the time, sometimes even more often. Also, isn't a deck's strategy also dependent on the opponent's deck? If you have a stompy deck, you can't play it the same way against a burn deck as you would another stompy deck. So wouldn't that mean the AI would have to learn how to play each deck against each other deck separately? That's a lot of decks.

[tiagoruback]

I really like theme decks and event decks.

I have started a project to create all the theme decks starting from Eighth Edition. As new cards are being added, I will complete more decks.

So far I have two decks ready to play:
Army of Justice (White, 9ED)

[9ED] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Army of Justice.dec

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Cho-Manno's Resolve (White, 10E)

[10E] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Cho-Manno's Resolve.dec

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They're simple, well balanced(IMHO) and work pretty well on Magarena.

I even started coding some missing cards, but I'm not very good at it, so I'm just creating the simplest ones.

[Lodici]

So far I have two decks ready to play:
Army of Justice (White, 9ED)

[9ED] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Army of Justice.dec

Cho-Manno's Resolve (White, 10E)

[10E] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Cho-Manno's Resolve.dec

Thanks, tiagoruback. I am not sure what the procedure for submitting decks is. You might want to PM @melvin in case he has missed your post.

[ShawnieBoy]

I've also submitted cards that fill some gaps for the 10E green and red precons too
Spitting Earth and Stampeding Wildebeests.

I don't mind giving you a hand if you want some pointers on how to script new cards, those two required no groovy coding (Either all scripted, or referring to groovy that already existed) - Or even put up a tutorial for script and groovy? (I'm a bit of a card-making machine )

[Lodici]

Or even put up a tutorial for script and groovy?

There is a tutorial on the wiki - http://code.google.com/p/magarena/wiki/ ... ntingCards but I think a sticky topic here on the forum would be much more useful and probably easier to keep up-to-date.

[melvin]

So far I have two decks ready to play
Army of Justice (White, 9ED) [attachment=1][9ED] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Army of Justice.dec
Cho-Manno's Resolve (White, 10E) [attachment=0][10E] [Theme Deck] [W] [40] Cho-Manno's Resolve.dec

Thanks, tiagoruback! It is nice to see that we're able to support these theme decks. Will be including them for the next release, so that all our players can try them out.

[tiagoruback]

Glad you guys liked the decks!

Thanks, ShawnieBoy! Spitting Earth has just completed the Kamahl's Temper Theme Deck! Here it is:(will work only in the next version)

[10E] [Theme Deck] [R] [40] Kamahl's Temper.dec

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Thanks, melvin, for including the decks in the game. And thanks for the tips and help offered!

[tiagoruback]

Another release!
Thanks to Blanchwood Armor and Howl of the Night Pack(avaiable in the next release), now we have Teeth of the Predator, a Special Theme Deck from Duels of the Planeswalkers(special physical set inspired by its digital namesake, released in 2010)

[DPA] [Special Theme Deck] [G] [60] Teeth of the Predator.dec

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