[Archive] Challenge Set 1

[aww1979]

This one's tough. The basic idea is that a bunch of the cards in your deck are randomly changed for other cards in your deck. Thus, control and combo decks are pretty much out. I think the changes it makes are the same for the rest of that gauntlet, but I'm not sure.

Your opening hand will also be randomly changed, *except* for the lands, which seem to remain the same every time, though occasionally I get either Eye of Ugin or Eldrazi Temple in my hand, which I don't think were in the decks. I was using some of my 499 card decks, hoping that the 5-colours would mean that the randomness would affect me less, as I could still cast cards. While it is true I could still cast most cards, the average card is quite a bit weaker, and the inherent instability of such a large deck meant I didn't get past about round 4 or 5 with them. I haven't tried with any smaller decks, yet.

The AI decks are either randomized as well, and/or chosen from your playlist, rather than the standard challenge mode list. I haven't found any pattern yet to the randomization yet.

[juzamjedi]

*spoiler alert*

Nope, not at all. I played a 4 colored deck that was mostly Jund. Lightning Helix and Ajani Vengeant in particular are pretty awesome. Tidehollow Sculler was kind of a bad choice and if I did this again they would probably become more Maelstrom Pulse / Putrefy / Pernicious Deed instead.

The trick seems to be that cards are randomized to a different card with the same casting cost. I tried mono-black first thinking that there was a 1:1 mapping, but after multiple attempts it seemed to be just completely random. Once I figured out that the mana costs were driving the randomness I tried cards that had unique casting costs. Lightning Helix is always Lightning Helix, Ajani Vengeant is also unique.

Code: Select all

;Not_My_Deck
;
;User
;User E-Mail
;17/10/2010
;1
;4th Edition
;

.646   4   Bloodbraid Elf
.1337   4   Blightning
.1992   4   Putrid Leech
.1927   4   Sprouting Thrinax
.12   4   Bayou
.9   4   Badlands
.241   4   Taiga
.1443   3   Broodmate Dragon
.1328   4   Lightning Helix
.822   4   Ajani Vengeant
.212   4   Savannah
.189   4   Plateau
.216   4   Scrubland
.239   1   Swamp
.91   1   Forest
.1937   2   Maelstrom Pulse
.1764   4   Tidehollow Sculler
.188   1   Plains


[aww1979]

Ah yeah, then if that's the way it works, the best bet is probably a 3-5 colour deck with mostly gold cards so that they don't get swapped around as much, or at least if they do, you know better what you are getting. The other trick would be to find single colour cards with odd (hopefully unique) costs, like Force of Nature at 2GGGG, so that they are less random.

[bla]

Nice.
Glad that worked for you.
I see you used some of the new cards (new for me anyway, as I haven't played magic in a while.)
At first glance there seems to be nice combos in there. I bet that Sun Titan was useful at some point.
I also used Inkwell Leviathan and Buried Alive in previous iterations of my deck.
Iona is always plan B ... or A or C. Plain nasty.

Hope you're ready for some more nasty challenges ahead.

[gabeiq]

I used juzamjedi deck with -plains -forest +2 pulse.....I did it in like 10 tries...

I think pulse is the most exciting card, sometimes it is changed for Putrefy(less effective but an ok card) or for pernicious deed (saved my ass a lot of times)

Blightining is another good one, a lot of times Pyre Zombie helped me, against faeries, Merlfolk and against Gold bant I'm 100% sure I cant beat the match without it.

Xira Arien its not exciting, but at least gives you extra cards...

Tidehollow sometimes became Veredic, and with blithning it drives your oppo to topdeck mode, that most times lead to a gg or zealous persecution, that hellps more than a lot against decks like faeries, koboldts and goblins

Something I heard last weekend and I confirmed its true in this days is: When you take care of your planeswalkers, they take care of you..... of course when you look at jace/koth and even bolas its something thats easy to figure it out but I think ajani vengeant was the fist really broken planeswalker released, and when you take care of him he cold be great and really unbalance things 4 u even without the use of the ultimate abil....

Thx Jatill for the challenge and thank Juzamjedi for the deck and the experiencie....

Edit: Sorry for the extra large topic but that challenge gives me an idea, a challenge where the oppo have some handicap, like + live or permanents in play but you can play mental magic with the cards you have, like healing save could be plowshers or path or savanah lions..... well IDK if its possible and of course some cards have to be banned like ancestrall recall but i think it would be fun!

[juzamjedi]

FWIW, I played a ton of lands because I wanted to make sure I could cast Broodmate Dragons on time. Pulse / Putrefy / Pernicious Deed are all pretty sweet so cutting 2 lands for them seems fine

Mental Magic is a fantastic idea. I don't know how hard it would be for Jatill to code it because you would have to limit the usage of the card to once per game. Like probably the easiest solution is to present the big list like the Wishes do and after the card is chosen you remove the card from the "Wish List" until the end of that game.

[aww1979]

I think I'm going to make a black/red/blue deck this weekend so I can use the Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker :p I don't think anything else has THAT casting cost! Lots of multicoloured cards for the win. Hopefully.

[jatill]

You guys are all wimps with your multi-colored decks. I went mono-green with 4 copies of every GGG spell in the game!

[aww1979]

How is that any different? You could probably do the same in most colours. Red with Ball Lightning, Flame Javelin, etc.

[juzamjedi]

Except... Flame Javelin is 6 colorless so it gives you weird artifacts instead of good burn spells. I tried Red too figuring there were lots of common burn spells, but there was a lot of poop too like Winds of Change, etc. I think my attempt with Red (and seeing those artifacts) is what clued me in to the casting cost being the key.

There might be a mono-white deck with WW casting cost creatures / Crusade / etc. that could work. You could possibly get Workshop or Affinity to work since Mishra's Workshop isn't affected. Maybe 43lands.dec could work with Tabernacle, cycling lands and manlands. Eldrazi ramp with Eldrazi Temples and Eye of Ugin might work. Like I said given the nature of this challenge there are probably a number of interesting ways to perform the task. I just built the gold deck because it was the first idea that came to mind once I understood what I needed to do.

[jatill]

The challenge rules say you can only use lands from Alpha, so Workshop is not legal. Technically, the game won't stop you from adding it, but I'll give you nasty looks if you cheat

[aww1979]

I tried this challenge this afternoon with a BUR deck, but it failed. I switched to five colours and beat it without too much trouble. Here's the list:

;rainbow bolas
;
;#oldgames
;
;26/10/2010
;1
;4th Edition
;

.822 3 Ajani Vengeant
.1328 4 Lightning Helix
.1369 4 Woolly Thoctar
.1753 3 Rumbling Slum
.1927 4 Sprouting Thrinax
.109 4 Trygon Predator
.1357 4 Rhox War Monk
.1302 4 Vindicate
.1937 3 Maelstrom Pulse
.1225 3 Lightning Angel
.815 1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
.241 4 Taiga
.212 4 Savannah
.189 4 Plateau
.258 4 Underground Sea
.12 4 Bayou
.252 3 Tropical Island

'not my deck' edits that I saw:
Woolly Thoctar -> Fiery Justice, Naya Charm (both of which are useful cards)
Sprouting Thrinax -> Xira Arien (this one happened so often, that I think I saw a Thrinax in only one or two games, and Xira in the rest)
Trygon Predator -> Lorescale Coatl
Rhox War Monk -> Angus Mackenzie, Jenara, Asura of War
Vindicate - Necrotic Sliver (Mortify also possible, but I never saw it)
Maelstrom Pulse -> Pernicious Deed (had this happen maybe twice, but never actually cast a deed, so it never impacted anything. Putrefy is also possible but I never saw it)

Other: There are 10 rounds to this challenge, and decks are chosen both from the regular challenge lists, as well as your own playlist. Depending on your playlist, this may make things easier, or harder :p Mulligans also behave slightly weird; you'll always end up with a 7 card hand, even if you mulligan, but sometimes this will shrink your maximum hand size, too, as several games I played with a 6 card hand size.

[juzamjedi]

The challenge rules say you can only use lands from Alpha, so Workshop is not legal. Technically, the game won't stop you from adding it, but I'll give you nasty looks if you cheat

LOL, sorry that I was encouraging people to cheat, twas not my intention I swear!

Aww1979, did you mulligan a lot with only 23 lands? Personally I wouldn't mind playing 28 lands out of 60 cards if I could live long enough to cast Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. #dontjudgeme Actually your decklist has inspired me to build a 5-color deck that will always result in the card I put into the deck. Time to brew again!

[aww1979]

Not that often. Most of the deck takes 3 mana to cast, and that's your average at 23 lands. You can mulligan more safely in this one, though, since after the randomization your hand gets refilled to 7. 23 lands is the reason I only have 3 each of my 4cc cards, though. I actually had more issue missing a single colour of mana (usually blue, or black) than I did with not having enough. One game I had 7 mana out, 7 blue cost cards in hand, and couldn't play any of them.

edit: Interestingly, this is the one challenge that will get harder with the addition of more cards, rather than easier. A lot of challenges are really easy when you can use a dredge deck or emrakul/oath. (though not this one!) This challenge, though, will get harder. Imagine using my decklist, and someone codes a really crappy card that costs 1RUW or 2WR or WR or 1GGR, and you'll see that the reliability of the deck would plummet.

[bla]

For the first time I got to round 9 with the necessary cards to win. Played against elves. Moat. Joy.
Slowly I start to accumulate Meditate but at the middle of the game I realize there's a problem when he casts two Harmonize and seriously depletes his deck. A race ensues to get more Meditate before he runs out of deck. I manage to get them, but don't have enough blue mana to cast them all and he only has five cards. Game feels slow with all the elves in play and on the verge of crashing.
I cast Enlightned Tutor for my last Ring of Ma'ruf. Game stalls completely. After a couple of minutes of cpu crunching I'm about to bitterly let it go but the game pulls trough. I cast Ring of Ma'ruf, cast Balance to lighten the field. Game feels quicker. I get Timetwister from the ring and afterwards I cast 4 Meditate slapping myself on the head because I still had a tundra in my deck that I could have use to cast all the Meditate spells instead of going for Timetwister. Round won.

Round ten. All the Ai has is Strip Mine. I manage to create five spirit tokens from Forbidden Orchard without it being destroyed. Now only the Ashnod's Transmogrant is left. I get it via Ring of Ma'ruf. I cast the third and game slows down a lot. I cast the forth and game stops again.
This time I'm decided to not let it go, so I just leave the computer on. Couple of hours later I come back, it's running again and I finish the round. Joy.

Then there's a round 11. Conditions involve strip mines? The Ai deck only has Tranquility. I have no way of metting conditions, even if I had Donate unlocked. I win the game all the same, next round is a normal round without the warning of failure.
I concede, check the challenge, it's not unlocked.

What

a

letdown

When I got to round 9 for the first time and unavoidably lost, before redoing my deck for it I couldn't resist and checked this thread to see what was round 10. Nobody mentioned a round 11 with strip mines. Is this normal?