Manalink Update 7/31: Challenge Mode + Launcher

[scherbchen]

love the idea of the challenge but I keep getting the weirdest bug on challenge 1 duel 3 (other than the game crashing for the usual reasons in between).

rules enginge pop up saying "gauntlet 2: challenge0" you have lost the duel, back to duel/world/challenge interface.

[aww1979]

I have no explanation, but I tried running challenge mode again and it's working fine for me now :p I'm liking it a lot; the AI getting a free card in play makes it challenging. If the enemy decks are supposed to be in order of difficulty, though, the Zombie deck is more difficult than most, and the Relentless Rats deck is really easy; I've never lost against it. I haven't finished it yet today; usually the zombies or the elves get me.

The extra AI card make strategies like Keeper or control rather difficult, because they rely more on stopping threats before they ever get out, and less so threats that already exist from turn 0 :p Straight aggro decks seem to do okay, but the problem is that when the AI gets some phat dude that pumps all his creatures +1/+1 or +2/+1 for free, they're usually bigger than yours. I'm finding a mix of weenie and control to be best so far.

The best decks I've ran with so far were a Merfolk deck, a Soldier deck, a Turbofog deck, and right now a really weird white weenie WUB deck with Isochron Scepters and various support instants, notably 4 path to exile and 4 plowshares, and the creatures are chosen with the metagame in mind. It's working very well, but it just tanked against the elves when it didn't get any removal all game, lol. I'll post the deck I beat the challenge with first.

[courgi]

This is really outstanding work. I've been playing this challenge mode for hours now, though I am not nearly good enough to win all challenges.

I hope development and creative challenges like this continue and perhaps one day get integrated into Shandalar. I would imagine you could make it feel like a completely different game by integrating all sorts of challenging decks and surprises.

[somacat]

@ Snacko: all of the rounds are 10 matches (9+boss, as jatill said), except for the 3rd challenge, which is 9 rounds. The reason for that is obvious once you get there!

[Snacko]

@somcat and jatil
Ye somehow the second challenge took so little time that I didn't notice it had 10 games there.

[jatill]

love the idea of the challenge but I keep getting the weirdest bug on challenge 1 duel 3 (other than the game crashing for the usual reasons in between).

rules enginge pop up saying "gauntlet 2: challenge0" you have lost the duel, back to duel/world/challenge interface.

You'll get these if you try to start a new challenge without first closing down the program and starting over.

[Snacko]

Can't get the 6th challenge to show up, after Shandalar 2.0 (5th) no new options appear.

[somacat]

I assume you have the second challenge update, on page 3 of this thread, right? Just asking because that's the one with the 6th challenge... Congrats on beating the 5th, I had alot of trouble with that one. The only deck I had that would do enough on turn 1 against the last boss consistently, kinda folded to the 9th round deck...

[Snacko]

That's what I've been missing. I had the older one without the 6th challenge.

I agree with you I most of the time folded on 9th and 10th match. You need to design your deck around those otherwise you'll most likely loose it. Took me a couple attempts to tweak the deck against those.

[scherbchen]

love the idea of the challenge but I keep getting the weirdest bug on challenge 1 duel 3 (other than the game crashing for the usual reasons in between).

rules enginge pop up saying "gauntlet 2: challenge0" you have lost the duel, back to duel/world/challenge interface.

solved my own problem. restart the program if you lose a gauntlet.

[Zeek]

Bleh, I've been trying to beat the 2nd challenge, but the problem is that even with being busy, a lot of matches take so long that it's very time consuming. It really sucks to need 10 minutes to bring down mister Chaos Orb's 50 life, then lose on the "discard your basic land deck to summon random creatures" match because you're getting Demonic Hordes or Cosmic Horror for your 6/7 mana creature and your opponent gets stuff more like Visara and Platinum Angel. I once tapped 10 and got a Broodstar, which immediately died due to me not having an artifact. >_>

In all fairness, perhaps I should just wait for Tendrils to get lucky enough to win straight matches. I'm trying to use a twisted RDW build, simply because it is pretty resistant to counter control, and has some great 3 mana hosers in Magus of the Moon (good luck paying WUB with pure mountains) and Ensnaring Bridge. Tendrils has some real problems with cost increasers and when key draw spells are countered to oblivion. It's also not fun to require a 25+ spell count to bring down the aforementioned first opponent.

[aww1979]

Possible Spoilers: (trying not to though)

I completed challenge 1 yesterday, and it was great. I just about choked when I saw the card the last guy gets in play, but fortunately I had a turn 1 answer for it.

There are now five new cards in my deckbuilder that I can find. I won't name them, but there is one land and four spell cards. (this tiny spoiler is necessary to describe what happened to me) I didn't see the other fifteen. I went through kind of fast, so some more might be there, but a few I specifically looked for and did not see.

Anyway, I ran a test deck with 4 of each of the five cards, and dual lands appropriate. I cannot cast any of the new spell cards, and when I play the new land, it comes into play, but it tells me that I have to unlock challenge mode to use this card, and the land does not behave properly. (cannot tap for mana, and the other affect doesn't work)

Is it necessary to beat all challenges to unlock all cards? I was under the impression that a few cards would be unlocked per challenge until all 20 were unlocked. Do I get no cards at all until I beat everything?

[Zeek]

The new cards show up in your deckbuilder, regardless of whether they're "unlocked" or not. I don't think you had 5 new cards after clearing the first challenge, you just didn't see them before.

I sorta think it may be necessary to list which cards require unlocking, simply for any new or not-recent users. Personally, I've played with the deckbuilder enough in the past to recognize when something seems new, so if someone hadn't see Jalill's past updates posted, they may see that Lorescale Coatl and Quirion Dryad are both new cards to them, but since the former was introduced before challenge mode it doesn't need unlocking, while the latter does.

[aww1979]

Okay, well since you mentioned it, Quirion Dryad is one of the five. It's in my deckbuilder but I can't cast it. It's in at least one of the 2nd challenge mode decks though, and seems to work fine there. The land is City of Traitors, since I probably already gave that away since I think there's only 1 land in the 20 cards.
I can put that one into play, but it told me that it hasn't been unlocked yet, and wouldn't tap for mana, and stayed in play when further land was played. I really did beat the first challenge, but after beating the sliver deck, I accidentally pressed enter too many times and missed whatever message was at the end. I was too used to hammering down 'enter' to skip past all the 'respond with fast effects?' caused by Tabernacle :p

I won't say the names of the other 3, but I can't cast them, either.

As another example, Cursed Scroll is not in my deckbuilder, but it is one of the 20 cards that can be unlocked later. I assume that will be unlocked in a challenge after the first one.

[somacat]

If you can only see five new cards in the deckbuilder, you probably need the second challenge update located on page 3 of this thread. Those 5 were originally the 1-card-per-challenge prizes jatill had set, with the update, the prizes are now as many cards as the # of the round you just finished.

Having beaten the first challenge, you should have unlocked Mystic Enforcer. If that card is still uncastable, it probably means you didn't wait around until the AI's first upkeep of the game after the 10th round, where you get a message saying the card has been unlocked. Another possible issue is if you had 10 rounds in your gauntlet options; it needs to be set to 11 or more.

Hopefully you won't have to re-do the first challenge, but if you do, you've won it once, so you know you can do it again!