[Archive] Challenge Set 1

[aww1979]

This is round 11 :p I did the strip mine thing (got my poison counter for it!) wiped the board with Balance, and started attacking. On the VERY LAST TURN it hangs...

I don't know why it was letting me attack with Gumas while Moat was in play, but the AI had been attacking me with Dryad Arbors and Meddling Mage for the last dozen turns. I think it was something to do with the Spirit token from Forbidden Orchard being corrupted. The turn before the one in the picture, it chump blocked with his token to save himself, and whatever corruption was on the token was now gone, further confusing it.

The reason I wished for Gumas was to use as blockers for the Dryad Arbors it was inexplicably attacking me with, and Guma is protected from Power Struggle.

[aww1979]

Okay, since I basically beat the challenge, though I didn't get credit yet, I'll put up the final version of the deck I used to do it:

;Keeper Challenge Version
;
;#oldgames
;
;29/08/2009
;1
;4th Edition
;

.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.249 1 Time Walk
.248 1 Time Vault
.250 1 Timetwister
.1351 1 Tinker
.1886 1 Burning Wish
.317 1 Tolarian Academy
.1550 1 Voltaic Key
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.528 1 Strip Mine
.230 1 Sol Ring
.17 1 Black Lotus
.10 1 Balance
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.451 4 Ring of Ma'rûf
.202 1 Regrowth
.1501 1 Zuran Orb
.1971 1 Mind Over Matter
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.333 1 Vampiric Tutor
.331 1 Imperial Seal
.349 4 Enlightened Tutor
.1893 4 Forbidden Orchard
.1899 4 Living Wish
.47 4 Copy Artifact
.1889 1 Cunning Wish
.254 3 Tundra
.258 3 Underground Sea
.252 3 Tropical Island
.1306 4 Sculpting Steel
.352 1 Mystical Tutor
.457 1 Mox Diamond
.1424 1 Lotus Petal

The deck has no win condition as such; it has to wish for one. The entire deck is based around wishing and getting the Time Vault / Voltaic Key combo, after which you can do whatever you want. Usually I wish for a Disintegrate (if I have lots of mana) or Broodstar (if not) as the kill.

Round 1) Get the Vault/Key out, wish for a Moat or something, and sit until the AI drops 10 lands. You may need to help him out by wishing for Path to Exile. After he drops the 10th land, throw a Disintegrate to the head and sac excess lands to Zuran Orb, which is maindecked.

Round 2) Vault/Key, then wish for Pandora's Box/Leviathan and any 1/1 (Goblin Welder is useful) or, against some decks, sit on a Moat and wait until enough lords are out to pump his zombie/goblin/merfolk/soldier/whatever to 10/10. Wish for a kill.

Round 3) Vault/Key, then Timetwister, wish for a Glimpse the Unthinkable and a win condition.

Round 4) Vault/Key, then wish for Magister Sphinx and Hatred, satisfying the life requirements and giving the win condition at the same time.

Round 5) Vault/Key, then Timetwister, Ancestral Recall the AI, and dump your cards in any convenient manner; cast them or dump to Mind Over Matter.

Round 6) Vault/Key, then wish for stuff to speed things along. Traumatize, Prosperity, and so on.

Round 7) Vault/Key. *Be careful to wish only once until you exile 10 AI cards* The card of choice is Jester's Cap, making sure for one activation to only pick one card, not 3. (Path to Exile and Tormod's Crypt also work, but Jester's Cap is easiest)

Round Vault/Key. Forbidden Orchards make AI creatures if he didn't get up to 10. Wish for any creature; a Broodstar is good since it can also go in for the kill.

Round 9) Vault/Key. Wish for Master Transmuter, Spellbook, Braingeyser, Moat, and Gravity Sphere, and play them all. Make sure you have 10 blue mana and 10 cards in hand, or else one card in hand for every blue mana you don't have. Use Mind Over Matter to untap the transmuter and blue mana as needed to bounce/return your Time Vault repeatedly and skip 10 turns. Then wish for a win condition or use the braingeyser if you get it back.

Round 10) Vault/Key. Wish for Goblin Welder, Ashnod's Transmogrant, and Arcbound Ravager. Use Forbidden Orchard, make 10 spirits, turn them all into artifact creatures, then have the Ravager eat everything except himself. Kill with Ravager or wish for something.

Round 11) Vault/Key. Wish for 10 Strip Mines, Power Struggle, Dryad Arbor, Pandora's Box, Moat, Cyclopean Tomb, Reiterate, Meddling Mage. Use Reiterate on each Wish. Turn all the Strip Mines into Swamps with the Tomb. Play Moat so you don't die to Dryad Arbors, and name Tranquility with Meddling Mage so the AI doesn't blow away your enchantments. Use the Box to pump out Dryad Arbors, and sac any you get with Zuran Orb. Sac all nonstripmine lands and one strip mine to maximize chances of giving away a swamp(strip mine), and sac the Dryad Arbor you get back. Once the AI *finally* has 10 swamps, Tinker your Cyclopean Tomb to destroy it, wait 10 turns (all your lands should have been sacced before) and play your Strip Mine, and wish for a win condition.

[somacat]

Minor differences to the way I did things...

Round 1: Platinum Angel, Maruf for Font of Mythos, maybe Copy Artifact it.
Round 2: Wish for a 1/1 and pump spells for their guys.
Round 3: Feldon's Cane and Glimpse.
Round 5: Usually Braingeyser.
Round 6: Wish for Geyser and Mind Over Matter; Using MoM / Academy, Geyser yourself to 1 card. Then Regrowth, Geyser AI for lethal.
Round 9: Kill AI's board, get 9 blue mana sources in play. Wish for Mind Over Matter, Smokestack and Trinisphere. Set Smokestack to 1. Use Ancestral on one of the AI's turns to get the requisite cards.
Round 10: Time Elemental, Eternal Witness, Transmogrant, Orchard.
Round 11: Kormus Bell, Cyclopean Tomb, Platinum Angel with Greaves.

[Blackblade]

round 9 all non creature spells are banned:/
also looks like i have all lands banned in turn 10

[aww1979]

round 9 all non creature spells are banned:/

That would explain why I didn't notice. My Sliver deck had no noncreature spells except moxes and aether vials, and I must not have gotten them that round.

[somacat]

I thought I was able to play Moxen in round 9, but my memory might be fuzzy on that...

[aww1979]

OMFG FINALLY! I managed to make it through without crashing! These planeswalker abilities better be worth it!

I have no tips for avoiding crashes/hangs. I just kept trying until I got lucky. The only thing I did different than my posting before was that I used Cumber Stone instead of Moat, since for some reason Moat seemed to get bugged in that game. I actually had Cyclopean Tomb bugged this time, too; when I Tinkered it away, it didn't let me remove counters from the 10 Strip Mines, but I recast it later and Tinkered it again, and then it let me start removing the counters. (why I do not know!)

The only other tip is that by using Cunning Wish on Reiterate, you really don't need quite as many Living Wish / Ring of Ma'Ruf / Copy Artifact / Sculpting Steel as I put in. I managed to do everything and I think I still had about five Ma'Ruf copies. (Reiterated 3 of my Living Wishes, forgot on one, Reiterated my Burning Wish to get two Living Wishes, both of which I Reiterated, all to get Strip Mines, Dryad Arbor, and the Meddling Mage) The Rings/copies got me Power Struggle, Cyclopean Tomb, and Cumber Stone, and maybe some strip mines if I didn't have 11 after all that.

[somacat]

Congrats!! Good job on having the patience to finish this one lol. Yeah, with Reiterate, you get some spare Marufs in the last challenge, some might be cuttable. I like having spares though, for emergencies (like Moat not working!).

I'm going to give this challenge another go, but not for a few weeks....

[somacat]

Finally got there! I noticed that the AI won't kill a Strip Mine with a Strip Mine, so I switched to the Pandora's Box / Dryad Arbor method (instead of the Forbidden Orchard one), and didn't use Tomb or Liege (since I had encountered many bugs with these cards in this match), and sacrificed any Arbors before the AI got proiority.
Experienced yet more bugs though, seem to be mainly with enchantments. Moat has already been mentioned, but in this match, I had Power Struggle swap an AI Arbor for my Greaved Platinum Angel, which was then swapped back to me for a Copy Artifact version of a Ring of Maruf (which then switched back to a blank Copy Artifact). I also got draw phases after a while with Yawgmoth's Bargain in play (used this to not draw the Arbor so it could be copied with Pandora's Box).

I have played through all of the other challenges more than once. I think it's safe to say I will never do this one again (unless the bugs / crashes are worked out somehow)!

Good luck to anyone perservering with this challenge.

EDIT: My decklist was the same as the one I posted on page 2, except for -1 Copy Artifact and -1 Disintegrate (since I made sure you could exile less than 3 cards with Jester's Cap for round 7), and +1 Ring of Maruf +1 Cunning Wish.

[aww1979]

I have played through all of the other challenges more than once. I think it's safe to say I will never do this one again (unless the bugs / crashes are worked out somehow)!

Good luck to anyone perservering with this challenge.

Amen to that :p (and congrats) I haven't repeated the other challenges yet, but I can well see myself doing so in the future for #1-6. There are many deck designs that could succeed for them, particularly the easier ones like Vanguard.

However, for #7, there really is only one deck that will work, with minor modifications, in my opinion. I had a lot of fun with #1-6, even the ones I had difficulty with, but #7 just wasn't fun. Even if every bug and every card were fixed 100%, I'd still never repeat this one. #1 through 6 were great, though.

[Salbei]

jees, this one is tough(from a deckbuilders point of view). couldn´t come up with any selfmade deck on this one so i´m just using your version.took me ages to get here

it takes like 30minutes+ for every match (and it is VERY likly to crash due to "hard think-bug".couldn´t make it past round 5 so far -it just crashed every single time.and then you can waste another 2-3 hours to get a crash during the next battle wtf?!
was fun the first few tries,but these crashes make this as enjoyable as taking a bath in battery acid.-> gonna quit wasting my time on this challenge and play some sealed deck .this challenge thing is a neat idea but seriously í´d rather wait 2 years till the ultimates get unlocked over attempting this one ever again.

[thedrigo]

ARRRGH! I'm pulling my hair out with this one... I designed a Welder/Titan/Reanimator with Master Transmuter that MURDERS all the competition up to round 9 but the damn goblins are too fast!
I tried Awww's Sliver deck and died a horrible death at the Kithkins' hand every time except once and then I got my ass handed to me by the Turbofog.

Any ideas?

[aww1979]

ARRRGH! I'm pulling my hair out with this one...Any ideas?

I'm surprised Kithkin was a problem, but Turbofog was probably the hardest one, other than the no land one. Turbofog required Aether Vial and luck, and no land required moxes in the opening hand, and if I didn't get those, it was all over.

The considerations I had when playing this round:

1st - Avoid gold spells. They will be banned in at least three rounds. (two+ colours & spell type)
2nd - Play at least 3 colours in roughly equal proportions, and do not rely on any one colour for combo. For example, Prosbloom would be disastrous, despite having three colours, because banning any one of them makes the deck useless.
3rd - Aether Vial, Aether Vial, Aether Vial. It lets you ignore banned colours except when artifacts are banned, and then who cares? You can play your real spells then :p You could probably do the same trick with Sneak Attack or Recurring Nightmare, but those are banned in two challenges (colour hoser and enchantments) rather than just one. (artifacts)

Noncreature artifacts are the only type of permanent besides land that will be banned only in one round; everything else will be at least two. (colour + spell type) A deck that relies heavily on these, but can still survive banning artifacts should do well, too.

Mishra's Factory and Treetop Ape might be good ones to use, too, since they are banned only in the last round, and it doesn't matter what land you have, then.

[thedrigo]

I hear you, Salbei. I FINALLY managed to beat challenge 6 last night and the game has crashed on me EVERY SINGLE TIME on the last 30 odd times I've tried to beat this challenge. I've decided I can live without the planeswalker abilites. Jeez...

[scherbchen]

gods... the Meddling Mage one has to be the most annoying step. ever.