Thanks for the promo codes! So I'm relatively new to magic, but once I learned the rules I started playing on the medium difficulty. What are your favorite decks/strategies? Are the expansion packs worth it? I bought the story expansion with five decks and new story levels, but I'm not sure if I should get the other two packs of new decks. Also I know you guys liked the goblin gang deck, but I can't seem to use it well. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance for all the help! Also, if someone could post an overview of the strategies and usefulness of all the decks, that would be great (for example dream puppets strategy is to drain the opponents deck)
The expansion is worth it, but the DLCs, not so much. The last DLC will come out January 10ish if I am not mistaken. Due to the 'issues' with shuffling, I tend to rely on mono decks. My favorites are Obedient Dead (very well rounded), as well as Peacekeeper. Tip for beginners? Learn the rules, practice it, and get the feel of various tricks like last in first out. Be patient, use removals well, put early pressure, hold of early attacks, gain life if possible, drop bombs, control the game, too many. Heh.
This is a rundown of the original ten decks... Celestial Light The deck's theme is lifegain, but unfortunately lifegain is one of the weakest mechanics in Magic. The deck hints that you should play a controlling deck, with cards like Chastise to stay alive and a big White Sun's Zenith for the win, but without any good card drawing mechanics it's just not reliable enough as a control deck. I avoid using this deck, but my build is very aggressive, playing it as a creature rush deck and hoping to smash face with a big Ajani's Pridemate or Serra Ascendant. Chandra's Fury This is the burn deck - fire and destruction all the way. Most people play this as a controlling deck, taking all the Flamebreaks and Earthquakes and trying to kill more than one opposing creature at once, to gain an advantage. I play a more balanced version that uses removal to clear the way for my creatures, then drives a ton of damage in with a Firebreather (something that has R: +1/+0, like Fiery Hellhound) Pack Instinct Size matters. Pack Instinct is all about big big creatures, and hoping that simply being the biggest is going to win the game for you. Usually it doesn't, though, and Pack Instinct doesn't have Plan B. Garruk is a bad matchup for some decks (like Chandra) that use damage spells as removal because the guys are too big to burn, but most decks don't care about how big the creature is. Dream Puppets Out of the box, Dream Puppets is hands-down the worst deck in the game. Every other deck is 100% committed to a way of winning (reducing your lifetotal to 0) but Dream Puppets is 50/50 split between dealing damage and removing cards from the library. It's very hard to win the first ten games with this deck, but the more you win the more you can focus on one mode of victory and the easier it is to win the next game. The fully-unlocked Dream Puppets deck is EXTREMELY powerful. The version I play: 2 Hedron Crab 4 Jace's Phantasm 2 Aether Adept 3 Dreamborn Muse 3 Thought Scour 2 Unsummon 2 Counterspell 2 Into the Roil 3 Mind Sculpt 2 Crippling Chill 1 Dream Fracture 2 Mind Control 2 Traumatise 2 Howling Mine 2 Sapphire Medallion 2 Font of Mythos 25 Island The idea is that you are able to set up drawing more cards with Howling Mine and Font of Mythos, then each turn can bounce your opponent's threats back to hand (Unsummon, Aether Adept, Into the Roil) or stop them outright (Counterspell, Mind Control). You spend turn after turn delaying the inevitable, then your opponent simply runs out of time and cards to kill you with. Goblin Gangland Goblin Gangland is about raw speed, trying to win before the opponent even realises there's a game on. It's the drag racer of decks - if the game goes past turn 5 then Goblin Gangland starts to get a bit nervous, but it's more than capable of winning on turn 4 a lot of the time. Gangland really benefits from unlocking cards because it's another deck, like Dream Puppets, that needs to be really focussed on it's purpose. The key thing to be aware of is your deck's MANA CURVE. In the deck manager screen, down the bottom there is a little measure of how many cards in your deck are at each mana cost - I play a Goblin deck that fits the old Deadguy Red mana curve (we're talking Magic c.1997) and throws the entire thing down at 1 cost. ORIGINAL 0/8/11/8/6/2/1 UNLOCKED 0/15/10/6/4/2 With 15 1-drops I ensure not only that I will be able to play a creature on the first turn, but that I should be able to play 2 threats on the third turn, and maybe 3 threats on the fourth turn. If I'm doing that and my opponent is only playing 1 card per turn from the second turn, I generate a huge advantage early on. ME 1 / 1 / 2 / 3 HIM 0 / 1 / 1 / 1 By the end of turn 4 I've played 7 cards and he's only played 3 - I'm WAY ahead and can swarm his defences. Unfortunately I will pretty quickly hit 0 cards in hand and he'll be able to catch up, but I've got a big window for victory. That's called Tempo Advantage, it's why Goblin Gangland is so hard to beat. Obedient Dead The black control deck. Odedient Dead loves to kill creatures, then finishes the game with some horrific 7-cost abomination from the pits of hell. If your opponent is playing a lot of creatures then he probably loses, if he's playing any other sort of strategy then Obedient Dead sits there with an Innocent Blood, Murder, and Mutilate in hand and watches you win. Liliana's Shade is suprisingly important to the deck, which needs the Swamps for it's big spells, but also needs to thin lands out of it's deck for later in the game. Peacekeepers The gold standard for p***ing me off. Peacekeepers is full of pretty average cards that are simply there to carry the load for the three main ways of winning - Squadron Hawk, Geist-Honored Monk and Captain of the Watch. Peacekeepers is a lot slower than Goblin Gangland, but where Gangland is all-in on winning by turn 5, Peacekeepers has the legs for a longer fight. You kill all his men, he plays Geist-Honored Monk and has an instant army. So you kill the Geist and all the tokens, he plays Captain of the Watch for another instant army. So you kill the Captain and all the tokens, he plays Squadron Hawk to find an instant army, and this time you've run out of defences and lose. *sigh* Exalted Darkness A one-trick pony. Exalted Darkness is all about Exalted, funnily enough. If your deck has either a) Instant-speed removal or b) mass removal this is an easy game. If your deck has neither of these things you probably lose. Instant speed removal means that when he says "I attack you with my 2/1" and waits to give it +5/+5 you can just laugh and kill his 2/1 and not take any damage at all, mass removal means that when he has 4 guys out at once in an effort to make a decent Exalted creatures, you can just sweep away 4 cards at once. Game over. Ancient Wilds A bit tricksy and slow, the Ancient Wilds deck has lots of coming into play effects (Thragtusk, Elvish Visionary, Acidic Slime) and a couple of ways of returning those creatures to hand so you can use and reuse their effects. It can be fun to play around with that theme, and the deck works together very well, but what Ancient Wilds doesn't have is really any way of disrupting your opponent's plans. If you're trying to do something cute with Eternal Witness and Fauna Shaman and your opponent is trying to maul your face off it's going to end badly for you. Briarpack Alpha is the key card for helping this deck to stand up for itself against the big boys and buy time for Thragtusk and Roaring Primadox to do their thing. It's got Natural Order/Terastodon though, which is one of the most fun things you can do in this game. Crosswinds The most bonkers and difficult of the original ten decks. What looks at first glance like a deck of blue flying creatures is in fact a wacky infinite turns combo deck that features the card that is THE MOST FUN EVER - Rite of Replication. There are two or three overlapping combos in this deck that allow you to cast Time Warp to buy another turn, then return Time Warp to hand and do it again... your opponent never gets another turn! Panoptic Mirror will do it (either with Time Warp, or a Rite of Replication of Repulse if you've got Archaeomancer in play) or you can get to 14 mana simply cast Rite of Replication on Archaeomancer every turn, returning Rite of Replication and Time Warp to hand. Getting to that ultra-powerful 14 mana stage is the hard part, and the deck often walks a tightrope of needing to draw the exact right card to stay alive another turn and lay another land. In the hands of a beginner I imagine it feels like a horrible mess, in the hands of an expert it's hugely rewarding. Plus the number of opposing creatures that it's fun to cast a kicked Rite of Replication on is crazy (Rune-Scarred Demon, Pelakka Wurm, Captain of the Watch, Siege Gang Commander, Liliana's Specter, Acidic Slime...). The version of Crosswinds I play... 3 Azure Mage 3 Fog Bank 1 Spiketail Hatchling 2 Archaeomancer 3 Sleight of Hand 2 Disperse 2 Mana Leak 2 Cancel 2 Repulse 3 Rite of Replication 4 Talrand's Invocation 1 Bribery 2 Future Sight 1 Gravitational Shift 2 Time Warp 1 Cast Through Time 1 Panoptic Mirror 25 Island
BTW about 90% of Magic strategy can be deduced from these two pages... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_advantage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_(Magic:_The_Gathering) Tempo/Card advantage is pretty much everything.
Dueling Not a fan of the multiplayer version but the one on one version of the classic card game is amazing! Makes me want a table sized iPad to play it on
@FoolishEarthling thanks for the help! I was wondering about Goblin Gangland since I heard such great things about it. I actually unlocked the whole thing, hoping that would help me figure it out, but it still wasn't working. So should I try to remove some of the higher mana cost cards from my deck, since it looks like I won't be using them? I actually have been using Pack Instinct a lot, and I have found that against another creature deck its great because a lot of the cards allow you to have your creatures fight the opponents creatures. Given how strong your creatures are, these cards (and some creatures have an ability with the same effect) can be used to great effect. However against a control deck with instakill spells it gets pretty annoying and is hard to sustain. I do love the Peacekeepers deck. Unless you're going up against a deck with lots of area-of-effect spells that deal set damage to all enemy monsters (ie Chandra's fury, another of my favorites) its a monster, though it can be frustrated by a control deck. Its amazing how powerful just about any deck can be in the hands of an experienced player though. The difference in mage and archmage AIs is incredible, as I could beat the Mindstorms deck on my first try on mage, but I still haven't managed to beat it on archmage after upwards of 5 or 6 tries.
Here is my stock Goblin Gangland list that I play... 2 Goblin Arsonist 2 Goblin Balloon Brigade 2 Goblin Bushwhacker 1 Goblin Fireslinger 2 Goblin Guide 2 Raging Goblin 2 Ember Hauler 2 Goblin Piledriver 1 Goblin Wardriver 2 Warren Instigator 3 Gempalm Incinerator 3 Goblin Chieftain 2 Goblin Ringleader 1 Clickslither 1 Krenko, Mob Boss 2 Siege-Gang Commander 2 Goblin Grenade 2 Shock 3 Krenko's Command 24 Mountain
Awesome post FoolishEarthling. By the way, here is a great website to plan your deck/s. http://happypluto.com/~misterp/wiz/planner/
Just took out Nicol Bolas with the speed build of the goblin gang deck. On my 4th turn I was able to use a relentless assault to finish him off, which was really exhilarating! Thanks for the tips, I'll be sure to play around with the deck manager from now on.
I'm having the same problem. Did this get answered? I must discard several cards at the end of my turn. How do I "drag to select" for discarding? Where do I drag them? I've dragged them up onto the mat, down over my discard pile, left, right, I've tried double clicking and looking for "choose card" like in Ascension (much better UI), but I can't discard. I had seven cards in my hand, used the Plane ability with the squiggly symbol to draw many more cards, now have 14, ending my turn, and I have to discard seven. But I can't! It won't let me discard them! Who can tell me how? I'm not going to give them $10 for the full version with crap like this.
When you discard multiple cards sometimes they only will discard after you've selected all of the cards you're discarding. For example, if it's three cards, you have to drag three separate cards down or up (pending the exact card) before all three are discarded together. After dragging each one, you can see that it was selected by a white outline replacing the orange one. Hope that helps
Why can't I change the amount of mana in my deck? Am I missing something? I think the slower decks need more mana.
Mana are set depending on the amount of colored cards you have in your deck. Example, more red cards = more red mana (based on casting cost if I am not mistaken). You cannot manually configure manas.
Which is why I can't believe they still haven't developed a fully fledged version of magic for iphone/iPad, just like magic online or similar. There's so much money to be had with people buying/selling cards/decks/booster packs, much more than this set deck stuff. It would be the be all end all of card games for ios. People should google/youtube "wagic" if they have a jailbroken Iphone and a bit of folder structure modding know how, to see what could really be out of this.
Mana Mastery is one of the most interesting decks from a deckbuilding point of view... when you can play anything, which of the uber-powerful game winners do you leave on the bench?
Can someone give me a rundown of the strategies/skills involved in each of the decks in the 2 expansion decks (deck pack 2 and 3)? Also, how usable they are (for example, is it too slow?)? Im thinking about getting them but wondering if its worth the trouble.
Deck Pack 2 (GR Gruul, WB Orzhov) is a mixed bag. The Gruul deck is more interesting than Garruk, but not much more interesting. There are good laughs to be had by Berzerking up some huge 16/6 monster from a 4/4 and winning games, but it's a one-trick pony. The Orzhov deck is one of the strongest in the game, and perhaps the deck I'm playing against most often online - good versatile removal and solid threats, it's a great deck. Deck Pack 3 (UB Dimir, UWGRB Five Color) This is all about the 5 colour deck, which has all the crazy massive 6-9 mana cards, and some ways of casting them. The Dimir deck looks uninspiring (the theme is little creatures your opponent can't block, which won't stop him smashing your face in while you peck them for 2 per turn). The 5c deck is fun though, if you like casting ridonkulous spells. It also seems to be really powerful.
Is it just me or has the contextual card help gone to crap in these DLC packs? I used to rely on "More Info" to explain new card mechanics I'd never seen before but when I played a card last night with "Plain Cycling" the more info only covered silly basic aspects like this is a creature (no, duh) but nothing on what Plain Cycling is (looking elsewhere online I now get it is a tricky thing of discarding that card for a cost to pull up a plains card from my deck). Other than that I'm actually pretty impressed how they made Dimir (Mr. Rainbow) an actual viable deck!
I think the 5c deck may be one of the strongest in the game - it has all the mass removal you could want, and some really tough threats. The only thing it's missing is a bit of lifegain somewhere along the line, because you tend to stabilise on pretty low health... it's a shame none of the Charms have a lifegain option. Like I said, I'd be interested to see how people are building the 5 color deck as it has so many attractive options... Real Estate 4 Rampant Growth 4 Cultivate FEED! ME! MORE! 2 Savage Twister 2 Bant Charm 2 Naya Charm 2 Jund Charm 1 Maelstrom Pulse 1 Pernicious Deed 3 Vindicate 3 Day of Judgement 4 Allied Strategies 2 Prophetic Bolt Too Hot To Handle 2 Broodmate Dragon 1 Enigma Sphinx 1 Empyrial Archangel 1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind 2 Evolving Wilds 4 Terramorphic Expanse 3 Island 4 Plains 4 Swamp 4 Mountain 5 Forest The card I want to play but can't quite fit in is Violent Ultimatum, which with Vindicate and Naya Charm recursion I can use to completely smash all their lands. The casting cost on the Ultimatum is just too rich, though - you usually only need 1 Mountain and the Ultimatum asks you for three.
