[Archive] Challenge Set 1

[ZG-Gnom]

White deck is also very good, I used orb to get intrepid hero so his creatures were just no problem.

[monopoman]

Just beat it with the green deck of all things Silvos = win. If you can hold them off for a while and get him down fairly fast. The deck has absolutely no way to stop Silvos except blocking.

[aww1979]

Ok don't use Meditate to do round 9 :p I got the error about how the card might not behave as normal and then the autoloss when it said I was out of cards in my deck, even though I was not.

[stassy]

Well I couldn't even set up a Meditate combo because game got AI stuck after several timetwister and balance in order to calm down an aggressive multicolor deck (god I hate Gaddock) that I will add to my hate list

The game wasn't even full of land and creatures since balance wiped everything (cheer for Tolarian Academy), so I suspect either a ridiculous amout of added card from outside the game (wished/mar'ufed Meditate x 5), or once in the cemetery the cards are counted also in the 255+ limit card in game.

Very frustrating as you can still have preview of cards ingame but everything else is stuck.

[jatill]

Jatill sent me and Somacat a private message with the link. I don't know why he didn't make it public, but I'm sure he had his reasons.

For duel 9, I think it has to be 10 in a row turns, not 10 scattered throughout the game.

I updated the top link in the Planeswalker thread.

[aww1979]

NOOOOOOOOOO my game crashed on round 10 after using a Jester's Cap! The last deck is like 200 Strip Mines, so be prepared for that. Also, Pandora's Box doesn't seem to work on artifact creatures (i.e. Silver Myr) so another trick is required. I can think of a few, but they are all really slow.

Oh, btw, Jatill's fix works, so that round 10 is actually playable now. The crash was just random, as Jester's Cap worked the 100 times I used it before.

[aww1979]

NOOOOOOOOOO it crashed on round 11! (when I tried to Reiterate / buyback a Living Wish) My deck couldn't have gotten the required cards out, anyway. I'll have to tweak it slightly, I think.

The Plan:

Since strip mine is restricted, and the AI deck is a giant library of Tranquility, it is necessary to wish for 10 strip mines (1 is already in the deck) and then give them to the opponent. The only card I can think of to give away any cards to the opponent is... Power Struggle.

However, we also need a card to give the AI permanents, otherwise Power Struggle does nothing. Forbidden Orchard will do that, as would Pandora's Box. I'll use an Orchard maindeck, since it'll be useful anyway, and my maindeck Moat will keep the tokens at bay.

Now, this lets us trade creatures, but we want to trade lands. Therefore, we need a card that is a creature and a land at the same time. Mishra's Factory and Treetop Village fit this requirement. Wishes are going to be in very short supply, so I will maindeck Mishra's Factory.

At some point, we will trade an activated Mishra's Factory for a Spirit token. This will need to be done 10 times so that the AI has 10 lands. Then, if any of those are not Strip Mines, we have to keep doing it. (Time Vault / Voltaic Key will be 'key' here to making this happen)

To get 10 extra Strip Mines, we need 10 wishes. 4x Ring of Ma'Ruf is basically required anyway, so that stays. Living Wish can get 4 more, and Burning Wish can get a Living Wish. When I got to this round the first time, I burning wished for a Reiterate, but using it on a living wish crashes the game, so that plan is out. Therefore, it looks like Copy Artifact or Sculpting Steel for the Ring of Ma'Ruf is the only way to get more wishes.

At a minimum, then, we need:

-Power Struggle
-Mishra's Factory (or Treetop Village, but it's weaker)
-Forbidden Orchard (or Pandora's Box, but it's weaker, and we can wish for it and the Leviathan to do round 2)
-4x Ring of Ma'Ruf
-4x Living Wish
-1x Burning Wish
-1x Strip Mine
-At least 2x Copy Artifact or Sculpting Steel, and a third copy if you don't want to maindeck Power Struggle for the 10 previous rounds. Since Power Struggle sucks, 3x Copy Artifacts are in.

A method of protecting our own lands from Strip Mine would be advantageous. Giving the AI strip mines is pointless if it just uses them. A Gaea's Liege or Cyclopean Tomb used on them before they are given away will work. However, that means either maindecking one of those, or throwing in a 4th Copy Artifact. Since they suck, that's 4x Copy Artifacts.

Ugh. Here we go again.

[somacat]

Power Struggle won't swap an animated Mishra's Factory. Try Living Lands (eg another Copy Artifact =p) instead. That works, I made sure I tested it in debug first before playing again!

I managed to Reiterate a Living Wish (after I misclicked and got an Urza's Mine instead of Strip Mine with an earlier one...) without the game crashing. So it might just have been a random crash for you.

Anyway, off to try again!

[aww1979]

Yeah, I found that out the hard way after I got to round 11 again :p All I did was swap my Gaea's Liege for his Spirit and it died.

I threw in 4x Copy Artifact and 4x Sculpting Steel for next time, and pulled out my 4 Mana Drains, Jester's Cap, 2 of my 4 Cunning Wish, and Silver Myr, and I'll just wish for the Cap or Myr if I need those again. My next plan is Living Lands or Dryad Arbor, so it's good to hear Living Lands will work. I might wish for a Reiterate with the 2 Cunning Wishes I have left if that works, then.

[somacat]

Here's the list I'm using. I feel it's pretty tight:

.333 1 Vampiric Tutor
.331 1 Imperial Seal
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.1886 1 Burning Wish
.1899 4 Living Wish
.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.499 1 Brainstorm
.1084 1 Merchant Scroll
.352 1 Mystical Tutor
.334 4 Personal Tutor
.250 1 Timetwister
.1351 1 Tinker
.312 1 Ponder
.1550 4 Voltaic Key
.230 1 Sol Ring
.451 1 Ring of Ma'rûf
.1308 1 Platinum Angel
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.166 1 Mox Jet
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.894 1 Mana Crypt
.157 1 Mana Vault
.1779 2 Lightning Greaves
.248 1 Time Vault
.1912 1 Crucible of Worlds
.17 1 Black Lotus
.390 2 Crop Rotation
.202 1 Regrowth
.1306 1 Sculpting Steel
.258 2 Underground Sea
.317 1 Tolarian Academy
.1487 4 Polluted Delta
.252 2 Tropical Island
.266 1 Volcanic Island
.1893 1 Forbidden Orchard
.528 1 Strip Mine
.47 4 Copy Artifact
.65 1 Disintegrate
.1889 1 Cunning Wish

I went all out on getting the Key - Vault combo happening, since the only round that it's not useful for is the first, and Angel is normally good enough for that one.

One interaction you may not be aware of. It may also be a bug, but it's been around since the original version of the game. If you Copy Artifact a Time Vault, you can untap both Vaults by skipping the same turn. Thus, skipping one turn gains you two, rinse and repeat =)

One more side note: I have been having alot less issues with crashes on the 10th round, by instead of Twistering into Ashnod's Transmogrant over and over, instead using Living Wishes for Eternal Witness and Time Elemental. Been helpful for me, so I thought I'd point it out...

[aww1979]

That looks fairly similar to mine (I keep tweaking it so I won't post it until I beat this challenge), but instead of the Platinum Angel, I am running 4x Ring of Ma'Ruf and 4x Sculpting Steel, along with a Moat and The Abyss. I've also got a few other Academy-style cards, like Mind Over Matter. Mind Over Matter + Tolarian Academy =

[somacat]

I think I'm giving up on this challenge. I managed to give the AI ten Strip Mines masquerading as Swamps with Cyclopean Tomb, when the game crashed.

For those planning to continue this adventure, I definitely think the best plan for round 11 is wishing for 10 extra Strip Mines, as well as Cyclopean Tomb and Kormus Bell (and Power Struggle). This lets you trade Forbidden Orchard Spirit tokens directly for your Strip Mines (rather than, say, a Dryad Arbour and then trading Arbor for Mine), and you have no danger of trading the Bell, like you do if you go with the Gaea's Liege / Living Lands route.

Some minor bugs also make this match annoying. My plan was to tap down all the AI 1/1 Swamp Strip Mines with Cryptic Command (so the AI couldn't sacrifice them), then bounce Tomb, then take infinite turns until all his tapped lands were Strip Mines again. On my first upkeep, right before the crash, no lands reverted back even though Tomb had left play. Also, one of the lands wasn't a 1/1 for some reason, so stayed untapped after the Cryptic. I also experienced several incidences where the AI would use a Strip Mine to kill a land even though it was a Swamp.

At this point, to me, the rewards are not worth continuing this challenge. It can take a couple of hours to get through, and is not particularly fun - though I admit it was a good idea in theory.
I will probably give it a crack again once jatill comes up with a new challenge to play, but right now I can live without the Planeswalkers' ulitmates.

Good luck to those still trying to complete this.

[jatill]

Well if you give up, what hope does anyone else have! You might want to try Living Lands instead of Tomb. That way they all switch back at once.

[aww1979]

I think I could beat this challenge if it didn't keep crashing :p I just lost a game in round 10 because the AI stalled out. It's deck is STRIP MINES for crying out loud! What is there to think about? Yet it stalled during his main phase, and I left for an hour, came back, and it was still thinking.

It's like that old movie (I think it was in Silent Running) where the main character is playing checkers against a robot, and the robot will lose next turn, but it sits there and doesn't move until the human has to forfeit because he has to go do some work :p

[somacat]

Yeah, it's just the crashes that make this challenge virtually uncompletable. I have tried lots of ways around it.

I have been putting my computer into Stand By mode for about an hour before each of the last two rounds, and whenever I have experienced slow down. It seems to help a fair bit, but once you hit the point where the AI freezes while thinking about its next move (it will periodically show the 'thinking' window), even leaving it on Stand By overnight won't do anything.

I did actually try the challenge again, and it froze on round 11 after I had palmed off 5 Strip Mines. I tried to avoid casting Time Twister in the match, by wishing for a Yawgmoth's Bargain to skip my draw step instead, since casting Twister was what froze the game last time. No use. I also didn't take an extra turn with Time Vault either =p

My apologies for the frustrated rant earlier. I enjoyed the theory and deckbuilding of this challenge, but actually playing it is a pain. The last two rounds especially are basically get the infinite turns set up and cast whatever you need, since there is nothing the AI can actually do against you anyway.

I just don't see the point of playing for hours merely to set up convoluted combinations of cards, just hoping that it won't crash *this* time. Which it will.

Again, maybe I will try again once the next challenge is up, because I really enjoy the mode and it's awesome unlocking new cards... but unlocking Planeswalkers' ultimates isn't enough of a reason to try again on its own.

I think it's just the nature of this challenge to induce board states that are likely to crash the game.

On the plus side, I'll use my time instead to do a massive update to the bug list =) Sorry I've been a bit slack with that lately. But that will have to wait until after the Magic Online Championship tomorrow!