Improved Shandalar General Playtesting & Feedback Thread

[BlueTemplar]

No, what I meant is that, taking the simplest example, if basic lands could end up in ante, and assuming there are no other considerations you have 1/60 chances of a card ending up as ante, as well as 1/60 chances of a card ending up at the bottom of the library.
Except for the rare cases where you do get to play until you've drawn all cards of your library, there's no practical difference (except for knowing what the cards in ante are).
So shuffling your library at the start of the duel "messes things up" "exactly as much" as the ante.

Now, there's the fact that lands don't seem to end up in ante, so that changes the odds somewhat.

And of course once can mess with the library odds to pick up the card (on average, not for that particular duel) will change in favor of no ante.
Though if I'm not mistaken just shuffling the library won't change anything, nor card draw (except for the % of matches you'd expect to draw the last card of the deck).
Many of the other features of library manipulation are no concern for AI decks since the AI won't be able to use them competently anyway.
Now fetchlands are indeed a feature that the AI can use and that will change the average odds (because cards of your library aren't treated "equal" when using them) - but how much? And fetchlands generally replace basic lands (that can't end up in ante), so won't the two compensate?

[lujo]

Forget it. I need to learn how to do it myself. It's easier than explaining it.

If I find someone who can figure out how to explain it to someone who doesn't understand it I'll try again.

Just find someone who's really good at drafting, sit down with them for a draft they care about and try to talk them into letting you take a random card out of their deck at the beginning of a game. If they let you, they're crazy, if they don't - ask them they might manage to explain.

---

Now I can't bloody let it go. But the point isn't explaining this to anyone, it's just it becoming a togglable option. Most people who haven't played with ante, once they notice cards are randomly missing will first try to report it as a bug and then just toggle it and be mistified about why it isn't the default.

Heck it's so unbelievably moronic I forgot about it entirely until I tried to make that Biovisionary deck, put 4 in and became aware of the glorious fact that someone managed to hack Shandalar and it still works that way. I was speechless. And I talk/write a lot. Even putting 5 Biovisionaries didn't work because suddenly my 4 Pack Hunt were randomly tutoring for 2 instead of 3 or I had 3 Aether Burst instead of 4 or milling myself for threshold meant I had a higher likelyhood of milling all my X away, and...

No - it isn't the same as having a card on the bottom of your library, by a long shot, it just means you can't in a blink of an eye thing of a long list of things it completely arses up by default, let alone basic deckbuilding issues that arise from it. And now I'm being needlessly hostile because God didn't put anyone on earth to understand these things

I did fallout 2 modding. Knew a guy from Siberia, great chap, killer programmer. He cracked it, mapped it, did stuff to it you wouldn't believe. But he never actually played it past the den before he decided it was the best game ever and set out to do all this. I had the hardest time ever convicing him that the first shotgun shouldn't do the same damage as the combat shotgun and H&K whatever because "they have the same caliber, it's obvious that they should do the same damage, woudn't make sense otherwise". No matter how I tried to explain to him I couldn't, the first gun you find had to do the same damage as the last gun you find, despite the enemies you fire the first gun at having a fraction of the health of the guys you fire the last one at.

All my attempts to explain flaws in logic like that to him ended up in either him feeling bad for fiddling with something he obviously doesn't understand (when I managed) or being even more suspicious of me because "I think he's stupid". And I can't code for shit and the mod was rather good (I helped on some stuff once he figured out that, yes, I did indeed know what I was talking about). And he can't be stupid because he bloody well reverse engineered a complex damned program a large community of nerds couldn't for a decade (or more). He couldn't be doing/arguing for something that misguided.

This is like that. Either it's obvious to someone or you can't explain it. How would you explain the error of the shotgun thing to someone who'd go and edit the first weapon in an RPG to do the same damage as the last one?

[lujo]

I talked to a buddy of mine, all it took was mentioning Squadron Hawk and showing him my current rework of the Beastmaster and he said he'd do it for me (and that so that he could play Shandalar I suppose), but we have no idea what in the src we'd have to edit. So he told me to ask whether anyone would explain what exactly you'd have to do where to prevent cards being removed from decks at the start? And I don't know what builds the exe when you edit the code?

---

Right, so I installed Eclipse and found what looks like what I was looking for. I suppose someone could've told me where it was so it wouldn't have taken me a day, but what can you do. Now it's going to take me another day to figure out how to hack a way to prevent this nonsense from going on without disabling ante entirely, because I have no clue of even the basics of programming or what's called what in this particular program. -.-

Ego's a terrible thing folks, and only keeps you down.

[BlueTemplar]

You have to realize, that at the speed you're going, most people won't even have *read* your posts, even less likely had time to respond to them...

[lujo]

Tru tru. I kno. Eh. Need to figure out how to stick a copy of the ante card into a deck and shuffle the deck after the "duel" is pressed but before cards are drawn, and how to take out a copy out at match resolution. Can't do a million things I need to do and try out before I do that.

(I'm still tweaking stuff I know needs tweaking and debrutalizing decks, mind you)

[BlueTemplar]

IMHO, if you have the time to trawl the code, finding how to change mulligan rules would be more important...

Consider also that as development goes on, the available cards, rules, and gameplay are going to change, and so with them the kind of decks that the AI should use.
That's why AI and balance are generally the last things to be worked on in video game develoment.

[lujo]

I know the mulligan rules would be more important (actually, that's not necessarily true at all) but I shouldn't be thrawling the code or fiddling with it because I'm incompetent for that. Mulligans will get themselves done because people who can do it don't get confused about why that should be done, this won't unless I do it. And I don't have time to thrawl the code (or the skills), it just has to be done. EDIT: I also won't have the time, realistically, to reapply it every time Korath makes an update, but I'll still have to find time for it every time. I'm still pissed at my Siberian buddy that I had to figure out how to edit Fallout 2 code so that I can undo his insane Shotgun buffs every time I want to install it or update the mod, but in these situations you gotta do what you gotta do

As for the second part - oh, I know that, I'm not even trying to make a be-all-end all deck pack right now, I'm just trying to make something worth playing and bugtesting with while I sort stuff out and things get done. Folks will want to play stuff, OG pool can't hold it's own against the new cards players have. I've got a large number of folks offline expecting me to give them a bunch of stuff to just play while the situation improves.

[lujo]

Right, so I've saddled a poor newcomer with the tweaked pool that had a bunch of unwise tweaks in it. I've got a lot on the "to do" list for it, but I got around to getting some stuff off it and also some bugtesting and general testing.

Anyone using these is well advised to pick this update up. There might be some blunders in it, but I think I've toned down the black guys a smidge (I've overdone them before. Witch got more spiritual, Warlock got a little less lethal and Nether Fiend has had the 2/1 Fear rat cut down for Dirty Wererat. The wererat provides a way to discard lord of the pit and animate him and is a less murderously fast rat. I'm trying to slow things down a bit in general.

I've got a few A4 pages of tweaks and reworks and stuff coming in the next few days, but here's a Shapeshifter rework that ought to work and be more interesting and, well, shifty:

New Shapeshifter | Open

.126 24 Island
.10774 4 Halimar Excavator
.10784 4 Jwari Shapeshifter
.10698 4 Umara Raptor
.10677 4 Stonework Puma
.8747 2 Body Double
.263 2 Vesuvan Doppelganger
.10399 4 Clone
.1031 2 Evacuation
.13706 2 Fated Infatuation
.12788 2 Psychic Spiral
.5740 2 Traumatize
.10563 4 Hedron Crab

Right, so, the Jwari Shapeshifter was obviously drawn (or instructed to be drawn) by someone who played Shandalar. And if ever there was a deck for clones it's this one. It's in a very "testing" state, but it plays it's thing and I hope to get it properly murderous with playtesting. This tier of enemies is supposed to be the toughest - multicolored guys are unavoidably gonna be tough, and henchmen you always have to fight so making them too murderous is not advisable - these guys, on the other hand, can be as silly as one likes.

Plan is this - Hedron Crab and Halimar Excavator are the Mill engine. I kept the crab away from Mind Stealer, he's supposed to be grimmer. Umara Raptor is the damage / flying plan, and also fires off excavator mill. Puma fires of both Halimar Excavator and Umara Raptor.

However, every Shapeshifter except Body Double is also an ally! Which is why a mono-blue Ally deck can work really well. Jwari Shapeshifter, Clone and Vesuvan Doppelganger firing off the excavator and the raptor can get screwy. Also Hedron Crab, a deck with this many Hedron Crabs can kill mill you very quickly.

Body Double is obviously good with mill, but I'm thinking about whether to give him over to Mind Stealer. Fated Infatuation, though, is this guy's thing. Traumatize and Psychic Spiral are probably going to be something else, they're there just to try them out a bit (but not necessary).

Evacuation, though... is very good in this deck. The question is how the AI plays it, but I'm not sure it can screw up too hard. If he's supposed to be a blue tough guy, I can see it working. Yes, he can lose counters from Umara Raptor but if he gets to play all it's stuff back he can really mill you silly. Gotta see how it goes.

Old shapeshifter had untargetable unblockable weenies, and it was experimental. This, I think is a better direction it'll just need some fine tuning. There's also quite likely room for the tinkery theme in here, too, but for now let's have it like this. Also, the old one had the bugged Backfire in it, I took my sweet time takign it out, sorry.

Also, having a few nasty mill decks around might work to persuade folks to go for 60 card decks out of a sense of self preservation rather than self-imposed choice ^^ They do have to have their regular-non mill plan game a bit better planned out than this one does currently (although those raptors are no joke), but god help you if you're 40 cards vs. this guy

Ok, so that's that for today I think. Off to stare at hieroglyphs for a while. Do pick these up, the ones from earlier today had serious issues going on.

[lujo]

Yesterday I took some time and ran through several bug reports that were flagged as "awaiting information" and updated it. A lot of the new stuff got dismissed (fair enough) but I got nothing back on those so just in case it doesn't get properly reported and Korath is for some reason still paying atention to this thread - pump with multiple targets is indeed bugged, I posted a faeries decklist with a list of stuff that's wrong in very short points (after plenty of testing), and couldn't reproduce the odd behavior of Fate Unraveller so feel free to dump that one.

---

In other news I finally got my brain togather and simply ported the whole cardlist into Forge. I don't know what other folks who're building decks are using, and this is a bit on the tricky side (although actually porting the whole cardlist as a deck was surprisingly painless), but it's bound to help me keep my sanity, design better decks and understand what's in what isn't and what my options are a lot better. It's got more filters and just works better than the deckbuilder. EDIT: And it lets me flag non-working stuff as "favorites" (not what I'd flag them as but I'll take what I can get XD)

Making it an actual Forge expansion would take work, so I just made it a sealed deck, started a quest with that as my pool and now I can makes use off all the handy filters and stuff unavailable in the deckbuilder, and then, being not tech savvy enough, port it by hand into shandalar via the deckbuilder.

If, however, I was tech savvy, I'd first put in some time to turn it into a Forge set (this involves mainly setting rarities by hand afaik), and then write something that converts a forge decklist into a shandalar decklist (like, the actual shandalar decklist not a manalink one, so I can skip that whole step).

I think I'll still put in the time to turn it into a forge setlist, though, because that would help me quite a bit when determining new rarities for shandalar as I could use 5 rarities (I think) common, uncommon, rare, mythic and timeshifted ^^ (but that's for much further down the road)

[BlueTemplar]

While you're mentioning rarities again...

I think that some of the issues that have to do with accessibility of cards can be solved using the customizing options of Shandalar.ini that are already in Korath's latest release. 'Nochoose', 'Disable' and 'Dungeon Treasure' are pretty powerful commands there.

However, I think that the only way to prevent certain cards from being pickable from a creature paying tribute in the form of 'a spell from my deck' is to flag them as dungeon treasures, and as far as I understand it, there's only room for 30 of those.

Yes, I guess that I should have started my first post in this thread with that. We're referring to the very first post of the top stickied thread, which includes the following :

Accomplished so far:

3. Rewrote the list of which cards get put into dungeons, chosen somewhat arbitrarily from among the current restricted/banned in Vintage/Legacy lists. Open to suggestions; and I seem to recall stumbling across a couple "the least unrestrictable cards in Vintage" pages which should probably be consulted.
   [BlueTemplar : That's what I called "Treasure", that "the least unrestrictable cards in Vintage" pages he's referring to is probably this]

   Dungeon cards | Open

   Ancestral Recall
   Balance
   Black Lotus
   Channel
   Contract from Below
   Demonic Tutor
   Fastbond
   Imperial Seal
   Library of Alexandria
   Lotus Petal
   Mana Crypt
   Mishra's Workshop
   Mox Emerald
   Mox Jet
   Mox Pearl
   Mox Ruby
   Mox Sapphire
   Mystical Tutor
   Necropotence
   Sol Ring
   Strip Mine
   Time Vault
   Time Walk
   Timetwister
   Tinker
   Tolarian Academy
   Vampiric Tutor
   Wheel of Fortune
   Windfall
   Yawgmoth's Bargain

   I've deliberately omitted the ante cards (except Contract from Below, which is just ridiculous), conspiracies, un-set cards, the two dexterity cards (Chaos Orb and Falling Star), and Shahrazad. Not that Falling Star or Shahrazad are implemented in Manalink anyway, but there you go.
4. Those cards on the Vintage/Legacy banned/restricted lists that didn't make it into dungeons (and aren't mentioned as deliberately omitted above) aren't selectable in the cardpicker or available for sale in towns, just like the Arabian Nights cards in the original game weren't. They can still be won as ante, and can be found randomly after battles and such, but it's exceedingly rare. Paradoxically, they're even harder to get than the dungeon cards; so this'll need revising.
   [BlueTemplar : But does a card of that list have the same chance of appearing as a card from the Mythic Rare list? (in the sense that if this list has 10 cards and the Mythic Rare list has 100 cards, then a card of this list has 10 times less the chances to appear compared to a Mythic Rare, but not less.) ]

   The list; most of these that weren't originally in the game still aren't | Open

   Bazaar of Baghdad
   Black Vise
   Brainstorm
   Demonic Consultation
   Earthcraft
   Flash
   Frantic Search
   Goblin Recruiter
   Gush
   Hermit Druid
   Lion's Eye Diamond
   Mana Drain
   Mana Vault
   Memory Jar
   Mental Misstep
   Merchant Scroll
   Mind Twist
   Mind's Desire
   Oath of Druids
   Ponder
   Skullclamp
   Survival of the Fittest
   Thirst for Knowledge
   Treasure Cruise
   Trinisphere
   Yawgmoth's Will

5. Multicolored cards and mythic rare cards don't show up for sale in towns. That's maybe ok; it's almost certainly ok for mythic rares.[BlueTemplar : that's what I called "Mythic", they don't seem to show in the quest reward / gem trade picker either]

So if you use these features, there's no need to fiddle with new rarities programming!

I thought some more about it, and my idea placing the original dual lands in dungeons wouldn't be that good because compared to the other "treasure-grade" cards you would probably want the players to be able to acquire 4 of them by the end-game, and there's just isn't enough dungeon slots for that for now...

So I guess, as Korath suggested, the least bad solution is probably to make them "Mythic" (after, as we both said, removing them from the (non-Wizard/Arzakon?) AI decks so that the player doesn't just farm them off of them - and if I'm not mistaken, you've done a lot of progress on that front by now?)

[lujo]

I haven't made that much progress, but I have made some because more lands are now playable by the AI and more lands that could be have been added. All multicolored decks but Ape Lord still use duals, and I'm yet to properly test exactly what happens to which sort of deck if you give the AI lands that come into play tapped. I think with painlands now being in Duals could be replaced, but don't quote me on that yet - it's on the list for the current round of reworks. There were so many issues with the AI that I concentrated on just making somewhat playable decks and even just assessing the situation with what it can and can't do that I skipped even trying to get duals sorted out.

I do need to get my hands on the updater first, though, as I really need to set some stuff to be played in proper phases to solve some problems with options for various opponents and decks.

And, well, who sayes the player has to have alpha duals by the end?

Also, one of the things about duals is the whole ante bussiness - if you use them as a basis for 3 color decks, there's a high likelyhood of them ending up as ante, and this results in ante messing up the mana base unless there's so many duals in there... that you're inevitably farming duals off monsters more often than any other card. I mean, if they can be ante, there's a high chance it WILL be ante.

Honestly, I think the game would work best if there was no initial ante at all, either you win the match and just win some cards, or you lose the match and lose a certain card or cards (determined pre-match). If the ante altering cards can be worked into that, fine, if not, they're not worth it, but I'm not getting into that debate again.

---

As for rarities - I'm aware and have been aware of what you're saying, but it's still missing the point by not being aware of the complexity involved (or all the issues). Higher up rarities aren't the problem, stuff can be pushed to mythic, or dungeons or whatever. The problem is the lower rarities.

But there's not use even talking about that right now - the state of the AI is such that making a sensible meta is currently a pipe dream. Too many choices in deckbuilding are narrowly limited by what the AI can execute. The tweaked decks might even be better balanced (or flowing) than what's otherwise available (at least some of them), but they were mostly made by scrambling to find things the AI can at least play. Wasn't any room for proper considerations. This is just patching things up until actual work can be done on this front, checking out bugs, checking out the state of the AI and systemic problems, etc.

Too many things need to be done first.

---

Although - if the Apha Duals are in the cardpicker, they'll always be picked over other lands. Not sure what the proper method for acquiring them would be but that one sucks - except currently it doesn't as the AI decks can't possibly be made to not be brutal enough to warrant alpha duals pronto. If you use lands that come into play tapped, you can't keep up with it and will get overrun, if you use pain-lands you'll kill yourself.

So, again, most that can be done for now is get the AI painlands, as it's capable of using those, and see exactly which other kinds of lands it can play in what kind of deck, and do a lot of testing to see how much they affect it's performance. Usually it's lands and easily available commons that set up a metagame, but we're very far from anything but the AI limitations (and the cardpool, but the effective cardpool is crippled severely by those) setting the metagame.

[BlueTemplar]

Ah, well, I should have read Shandalar.ini more carefully, most of the information about enabled cards is there (along with information about sets) :

Sets | Open

[Sets]
;This section determines when cards from named Magic expansions appear.
;
;Lines listed in this section should follow the form:
;[setname1]--[setname2]=[disposition]
;including the -- (two of them in a row) and =, but not the [].
;
;setname1 and setname2 indicate a range of sets to set. They must exactly
;match entries from the @EXPANSIONNAMES block in Menus.txt, and furthermore
;should not include any of the first eight format-defining pseudo-expansions
;like (T1.X) Extended - the first valid one is Promo. setname2 should appear
;later than in Menus.txt than setname1.
;
;Either or both of setname1 or setname2 may be omitted. If setname1 isn't
;present, then the rule affects cards in all sets up to and including setname2.
;If setname2 isn't present, then the rule affects cards in all sets from
;setname1 onward. If neither is present (and so the line looks like
;"--=enable" or "--=nosale" or so on), then the rule matches all cards in all
;sets.
;
;You can also omit the "--[setname2]" to indicate a rules that matches only one
;set, as an alternative to writing out "[setname1]--[setname2]=[disposition]".
;For example, you could disable all cards that were printed in the Legends set
;by writing "Legends=disable" rather than "Legends--Legends=disable".
;
;disposition should always be one of "enable", "nosale", "nochoose", "disable",
;or "ignore" (without the " quotation marks):
;
;* "enable" means that cards in the named range of sets appear normally.
;
;* "nosale" means they won't be generated for sale in towns, and won't appear
;as one of the initially-owned cards at the start of a new game.
;
;* "nochoose" means everything "nosale" does, and the cards also can't be
;chosen in the cardpicker, whether as quest rewards, trading amulets for cards
;in cities, bought for gold in Nomad's Bazaars, or bought for amulets in
;Diamond Mines.
;
;* "disable" almost completely removes the cards from the game. In addition to
;everything in "nosale" and "nochoose", they won't be found randomly (whether
;in Lairs or after defeating enemies). They can, however, still appear as
;dungeon treasures, in enemy decks, and as "free" cards in duels, dungeons, or
;castles.
;
;* "ignore" means that these sets can never be matched by other rules except
;for "--=[disposition]". (Cards from these expansions can still be matched by
;rules for other sets they were printed in.) Useful for reprint-only sets like
;Masters Edition or Modern Masters.
;
;Setting too many sets to "nosale" or worse will cause the game to freeze when
;it tries to generate an initial list of cards; if, for example, the only
;expansion set to "enable" is Ice Age, you can't start a game as a Red Wizard,
;since it can't find enough different red enchantments to put in your deck.
;It's also possible that it'll run into a similar problem when trying to
;generate a card for sale in a city or village.
;
;The rules defined in this section are evaluated sequentially, and the first
;matching rule for each card is chosen. This is important, since - because of
;reprints - many cards appear in multiple expansion sets. So, for example, if
;you wanted to play a game including only sets up to and including Ice Age,
;then these lines:
;--Ice Age=enable
;--=disable
;would work, but these lines would not:
;Chronicles--=disable
;--enable
;even though Chronicles is the next set listed after Ice Age - the latter pair
;of rules would exclude any cards reprinted in any set from Chronicles onward.
;Abyssal Specter, for example, would be disabled since the rule matching its
;appearances in Fifth Edition, Sixth Edition Classic, Seventh Edition, and so
;on would match before the rule matching its appearance in Ice Age.
;
;However, expansions set to "ignore" take precedence over other rules, even if
;they appear later.
;
;Cards that don't match any rule defined in the section are treated the same as
;"enable".
;

Individual Cards | Open

;The disposition of individual cards can also be set in the [Enable], [Nosale],
;[Nochoose], [Disable], and [DungeonTreasure] sections. Each of those sections
;takes precedence over the set-based rules listed in this section.
[Enable]
;Individual cards listed in this section always appear normally in the game,
;even if they would have been removed from sale, the cardpicker, and/or the
;game because it matches an expansion rule in the [Sets] section.
;
;Cards should be listed one per line. Either a card's name or its id number
;from card_id.h can be used to identify it. (The latter is primarily useful
;for cards with accents.)
;
;No cards are specifically listed as Enable by default; however, regardless of
;any other settings, the five basic lands are always enabled.
[Nosale]
;Individual cards listed in this section won't be offered for sale in cities
;and villages, and won't be in the initial pool of cards owned at the start of
;a new game, and otherwise will appear normally in the game; even if the card
;would have been fully enabled or removed from the cardpicker or game because
;it matches an expansion rule in the [Sets] section.
;
;Cards should be listed one per line. Either a card's name or its id number
;from card_id.h can be used to identify it. (The latter is primarily useful
;for cards with accents.) Listing a card in this section will override its
;appearance in the [Enable] section if it's in both.
;
;No cards are specifically listed as Nosale by default.
[Nochoose]
;Individual cards listed in this section can't be chosen in the cardpicker
;(whether as a quest reward or trading for gold or amulets), and - like Nosale
;cards - won't be offered for sale in cities and villages and won't be in the
;initial pool of cards owned at the start of a new game. This overrides any
;rules the card would have matched due to its expansion appearing in the [Sets]
;section.
;
;Cards should be listed one per line. Either a card's name or its id number
;from card_id.h can be used to identify it. (The latter is primarily useful
;for cards with accents.) Listing a card in this section will override its
;appearance in the [Enable] or [Nosale] sections if it's also in any of those.
;
;No cards are listed as Nochoose by default, but the standard configuration
;lists most of the cards on the Vintage restricted list and Legacy banned list.
;(The restricted and banned cards not included here are the ante cards,
;conspiracies, un-set cards, the two dexterity cards (Chaos Orb and Falling
;Star), and Shahrazad. As an exception to this exception, Contract from Below
;*is* listed as Nochoose, because it's pretty ridiculous.) Note that some of
;these aren't actually implemented in the game yet.
;
;The 30 worst of them are assigned as Dungeon Treasures below; the rest are,
;paradoxically, even harder to find.
Ancestral Recall
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad
Black Lotus
Black Vise
Brainstorm
Channel
Contract from Below
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Earthcraft
Fastbond
Flash
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Gush
Hermit Druid
Imperial Seal
Library of Alexandria
Lion's Eye Diamond
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mental Misstep
Merchant Scroll
Mind Twist
Mind's Desire
Mishra's Workshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Ponder
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Survival of the Fittest
Thirst for Knowledge
Time Vault
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Treasure Cruise
Trinisphere
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will
[Disable]
;Individual cards listed in this section are almost entirely removed from the
;game: they won't be sold in towns, found randomly, appear in the player's
;initially-owned cards, etc. They can, however, still appear as dungeon
;treasures, in enemy decks, and as "free" cards in duels. This overrides any
;rules the card would have matched due to its expansion appearing in the [Sets]
;section.
;
;Cards should be listed one per line. Either a card's name or its id number
;from card_id.h can be used to identify it. (The latter is primarily useful
;for cards with accents.) Listing a card in this section will override its
;appearance in the [Enable], [Nosale], or [Nochoose] sections if it's also in
;any of those.
;
;No cards are disabled by default, but Duh is listed in the standard config,
;since it's from an un-set.
Duh
[DungeonTreasure]
;Individual cards listed in this section can only be acquired by finding them
;in dungeons. This overrides any rules the card would have matched due to its
;expansion appearing in the [Sets] section.
;
;Cards should be listed one per line. Either a card's name or its id number
;from card_id.h can be used to identify it. (The latter is primarily useful
;for cards with accents.) Listing a card in this section will override its
;appearance in the [Enable], [Nosale], [Nochoose], or [Disable] sections if
;it's also in any of those.
;
;Only the first 30 cards listed in this section will appear as dungeon
;treasures; any excess will be treated as Disabled. (I'm uncertain what
;happens if fewer are listed.)
;
;If no cards are listed, then the following 30 cards become dungeon treasures:
;Ancestral Recall, Balance, Black Lotus, Channel, Contract from Below,
;Demonic Tutor, Fastbond, Imperial Seal, Library of Alexandria, Lotus Petal,
;Mana Crypt, Mishra's Workshop, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby,
;Mox Sapphire, Mystical Tutor, Necropotence, Sol Ring, Strip Mine, Time Vault,
;Time Walk, Timetwister, Tinker, Tolarian Academy, Vampiric Tutor,
;Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Yawgmoth's Bargain.
;
;Card drawing:
Ancestral Recall
Contract from Below
Library of Alexandria
Necropotence
Timetwister
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Yawgmoth's Bargain
;Fast mana:
Black Lotus
Channel
Fastbond
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mishra's Workshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Sol Ring
Tolarian Academy
;Tutors
Demonic Tutor
Imperial Seal
Mystical Tutor
Tinker
Vampiric Tutor
;Miscellaneous
Balance
Strip Mine
Time Vault
Time Walk

Nothing about the rarity of Mythic Rares, however...

[lujo]

While I'm waiting on further assistance with getting the updater running, I've been doing some preprwork for serious deckubilding and sorting campaign on Forge, and this let me easily find all the Poison and Infect stuff. I won't be using it for making decks, and the cardpicker is overloaded as it is, so here's the list that you can stick into the Shandalar.ini. The list includes old poison stuff, too. There's also an explanation of why for anyone wondering.

What you stick in the Disable portion in Shandalar.ini | Open

;Lujo: Infect&Poison Stuff:
Blackcleave Goblin
Blight Mamba
Blighted Agent
Blightsteel Colossus
Blightwidow
Burn the Impure
Carrion Call
Chained Throatseeker
Contagious Nim
Corpse Cur
Corrupted Conscience
Corrupted Resolve
Cystbearer
Decimator Web
Fallen Ferromancer
Flensermite
Flesh-Eater Imp
Glistener Elf
Glistening Oil
Grafted Exoskeleton
Hand of the Praetors
Ichor Rats
Ichorclaw Myr
Lost Leonin
Marsh Viper
Mycosynth Fiend
Necropede
Ogre Menial
Phyresis
Phyrexian Crusader
Phyrexian Digester
Phyrexian Juggernaut
Phyrexian Swarmlord
Phyrexian Vatmother
Pistus Strike
Pit Scorpion
Plague Myr
Plague Stinger
Priests of Norn
Putrefax
Razor Swine
Relic Putrescence
Scourge Servant
Serpent Generator
Shriek Raptor
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
Tainted Strike
Tel-Jilad Fallen
Tine Shrike
Toxic Nim
Vector Asp
Viridian Betrayers
Viridian Corrupter

Why do this? | Open

Caveat: all these cards probably need playtesting to see if there aren't bugs, and there's a few that generally work fine as standalone build-arounds or kill cards regardless of the amount of infect around. So it's not like anyone has to remove them or anything.

But! - I'm not going to use them in enemy decks. Infect doesn't mix well with with non-infect, since some of your creatures are dealing regular damage and some aren't dealing proper damage at all. It's not that this couldn't be used to the deckbuilder's advantage, it's just messy as hell. Flavor issues too.

Second - infect is very odd in a below 20 format. If a deck revolves around infect, the opponent effectively has 10 life anyway. So if you give it to a low tier opponent, you might as well give it regular damage guys. If you give it to a higher tier opponent - well, infect is a very deadly mechanic which scales with pump. And since the AI won't attack properly without pump or evasion... you see where that goes. It also doesn't stack with other sources of regular damage, so what you can do with it is limited. Infect just happens to perfectly align with what the AI wants to do anyway, but the AI can do that with a million things that don't automatically reduce the player life to 10, interact with more things, and don't kill stuff through attrition.

And third - there's definitely some merit to having Wither available for the player (damage in form of -1/-1 counters to other creatures), defensively. But Infect is quite a bit insular in that you're either going for a lot of infect or none at all. It just doesn't stack with a million other things, so if you're going for infect you're probably going to be dumping a lot of amulets on those. Early on it's useless offensively, later on it's too damned good offensively.

So if you know infect/poison isn't something you're going to be running, taking it out for that campaign will save you browsing time in the card picker.

Since I'm not going to be using Infest in decks (at least for a temporary base tweak pack), ill save myself the browsing time by taking them off the list and put them back in if I want to play around with them.

This also won't disable the Marsh Viper green guys get in dungeons unless you change it to something else in the dungeon cards section, it'll still be there, but it won't show up elsewhere, apart from in any decks. Also, if you have an enemy with infect cards - that enemy will still work, this just takes them out of the shops/card picker/initial pool (i think for the last one) if you know you don't want them (and I think you can just clear it and rerun the game and they'll be available if for some reason you decide you want some mid run).

Edit, also, woot, made the Shandalar pool a Forge set, lol. Need to port about 30ish fake cards for stuff they don't have over there, but it's quite nice and functional. There's probably a better way to do this, but I chose this one.

Now if I could only get the card updater to parse stuff right I think I could make many non-functioning decks/themes to work. A lot of things have been ported with just a wrong field or two flagged/checked from what I've seen. Makes sense if cards are being ported in bulk.

[lujo]

Oh, god, yes!

The changes to the Witch from the last pack revolved around the fact that I wanted to tone her down a bit. This was done in the following way: I decided to give her Kami of the Waning Moon as the default flier and Ashen-Skin Zubera as a way to trigger the Kami and also sacrifice fodder for Gnawing Zombie. They could also be pumped by Shuko which was core with Gnawing Zombie and Witch's Familiar.

The problem there was that both spirits were flagged to be played after-combat only, which made them completely useless. Now that I managed to get the AI editor thingy somewhat functional (not sure about how functional yet, though), I re-flagged them to only be played before combat. A-MAZING difference, because you now can actually be attacked by a Fear + Shuko 'd up zombies and you couldn't previously.

There's still the minor issue of this AI fix not being approved yet (and also me not being sure if the way I did it didn't mess anything else up), the major issue of the AI choosing to play the Zubera first and then the Kami if it could do both, and also the issue of the AI targeting flying Kami's with the fear activation (and stacking them), but I now can, in fact, make an actual black spirit deck for the witch. And also probably an uncountable number of other decks which I couldn't before, too ^^

Right, time for some serious staring at the currently present AI flags to see what I can even do, praying for a confirmation on how to make sure I'm editing the correct version of the file that includes them so I don't unintentionally mess things up globally every time I tweak something for testing purposes, and then massive deckbuilding and tweaking with my new "scripting dashboard" and do-it-yourself deckbuilder ^^

He, he, he, the dashboard is missing a bunch of important knobs and valves, but fiddling with other ones is pure brain medication... Ahhhh, so happy.

[FadedSentry]

Hey Lujo, just finished going through Shandalar with your deck packs.

Oh man, such nostalgia seeing all these theme decks I remember back when I played at tournies. I think you did an extremely well job with most of their decks, and the AI didn't make too many mistakes that I noticed. There were some, for example, I remember the AI casting launch on one of my creatures giving it flying, and then nothing ever came of that. Outside of things like that, I can't recall anything completely stupid that the AI did other than early game where it will lose valuable creatures blocking my not so valuable ones, but I don't think there's anything you can do about that. Also, the AI does not seem to know how to deal with indestructable, but again, don't think you can do much there.

One thing I will say though, is that many of the opponents are outright brutal when you first start off. You do have to try to avoid most of them and build up your deck in order to face them. Maybe this is just because I've been out of magic so long though.

All in all, great job with the decks. =)