I've seen the poster in person, but didn't think to take a picture of it. I'd assumed someone else would have done so and posted it.
I like this challenge deck, and look forward to seeing what will happen with it. Looks like main-decking Ratchet Bomb is a pretty good catch-all plan for neutering it, same as the previous two. I look forward to trying to kill Xenagos with a Far//Away.
"You may target Xenagos as though he were a player"? Why is that rule even necessary?
So that you can kill him with Font of Ire. Player-targeted burn worked against the other two challenge decks and I think it's fair for players to assume it works against Xenagos so they added that rule in to allow a perfectly logical interaction. I'm not sure what confusing corner cases you're thinking of that wouldn't fall under the "ignore any impossible action" rule.
From the three challenge decks, I like the contents of the Xenagos deck the most, but the rules (especially the win condition) the least.
"You attack Xenagos and his revelers directly with your creatures"? So, basically, you attack and choose a blocker for each of your attacking creatures?
You attack the creature directly, just like you attack players and planeswalkers in regular games. No need for "blockers".
It is exactly the same as in the Hydra deck.
And of course, you always make all decisions for the Challenge Deck when needed.
And can you play with multiple players against the Xenagos deck? The Hydra and the Horde decks both have mechanisms that scale with the number of players, but I see nothing like that here. I am only interested in this deck if you can fight with 2-4 players against it without making it too easy for the players.
Not really, I have the Hydra deck and nowhere in the manual has rules for "scaling with the number of players". You simply have a difficult setting, easy normal or hard, defined merely for the number of heads starting the game. It's up to you to decide the multiple players will go against the Hard setting.
You attack the creatures (as with the hydra). Damage is dealt both ways as if they were blockers. Trample damage does not have any effect (though it should have gone to Xenagos).
I like the way Xenagos can't leave the battlefield if any reveler is in play. So if you clone Xenagos you won't win the game as long as your version is in play. And insurrection won't work wither since you have nothing to deal damage to. But if you do have a sac outlet, one by one, you could win that way
I am so going to build a casual ting out of these decks and something elser
I'm thinking I'll play mono-White for this one (fitting enough, flavor-wise). I'm thinking run a bunch of cheap, high toughness blockers like Wall of Beef, Wall of Wool or Wall of Horse to stall until I can get both a board wipe and some disenchant (preferably Deicide) into my hand.
The fact that his "draws" dictate both his board state and his attacking decisions kind rubs me wrong, though. Sure, the flavor works from a character standpoint. (It's just a big party; Xenagos and co. are indifferent to killing you.) But this is meant to be the toughest challenge deck yet, right? What if Xen just topdecks passive spells for 4 - 6 turns? You can win without even taking a hit. Eh.
It's... unlikely. The cards that are really passive are 2 Maenads, 2 Dancers, 4 Centaurs. You can also count the 2 Dance of the Many (as they also need something else letting attacks to happen) 2 Oreads (only if the number of creatures remain low), 2 Impulsive Destruction (if the player has something to be destroyed), and the remaining 3-5 Throngs on the deck (and those are basically cantrips when drawn, reducing the chance of remaining passive). In a regular game, 18 'passive' cards vs 39 that order attack or deal direct damage (plus Xenagos and 2 Throngs starting on the field). The chances of the first card being passive is less than one third. For all the first 4 draws be passive... less than 1%.
Not to mention it says that Xenagos draws two cards a turn. In order to go four turns without anything happening, you'd have to flip 8 "passive" cards in a row, which seems even less likely to me.
You guys are right, but then there's thec equally improbable (but possible) flipside of a turn 2 kill. Basically, I just don't like that the deck's actions are so heavily driven by its "draws". At least the last two Challenge decks would reliably do certain things regardless of their topdecks.
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May I have a question? Does Xenagos counts as a player? So, when Xenagos casts 'Rip to pieces' while have 5 or more revelers, game is over? (assuming you have enough life to survive).
May I have a question? Does Xenagos counts as a player? So, when Xenagos casts 'Rip to pieces' while have 5 or more revelers, game is over? (assuming you have enough life to survive).
I think it says that you can target him as he were a player, not that he counts as a player.
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So, I counted 59 cards, including Xenagos Ascended. Am I miscounting or is there something missing?
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grr... I still don't know what kind of deck to bring along for this AND have a decent chance at the tourney that comes with. since i'm bringing my brother along, i can have two with me, but what kind of decks (that don't have lame cheap one-shots like a sweeper then a removal spell or Balustrade Spy) do you think would do well?
Spoilering decks that i've got because i want to see what others are bringing and their thoughts, but my choices are here in case anyone has comments
I've got WU heroic, RU spellheart, GU evolve, BG budget dredge (ok, most of these decks are budget anyway), and Simic midrange. some decks share cards, but anyway. I think UR spellheart will be interesting because it's got all that point-and-click removal
The hydra was too passive, the horde killed itself, Xenagos actually looks though.
I can see a team of white weenie and mbd beating this easy, Then again I can also see it lucking out early and completely stomping the player.
Exactly what I thought about the Hydra and Horde decks. Xenagos looks like a fun multiplayer experience with your buddies.
Defeated Xenagos today. It was really annoying, because I was running a budget control deck. By the time I won, I had about 15 lands on the board, 3 detention spheres, 1 blind obedience, 1 jace architect, 1 Keranos, and was playing my last Detention Sphere to finish off Xenagos himself.
And can you play with multiple players against the Xenagos deck? The Hydra and the Horde decks both have mechanisms that scale with the number of players, but I see nothing like that here. I am only interested in this deck if you can fight with 2-4 players against it without making it too easy for the players.
Not really, I have the Hydra deck and nowhere in the manual has rules for "scaling with the number of players". You simply have a difficult setting, easy normal or hard, defined merely for the number of heads starting the game. It's up to you to decide the multiple players will go against the Hard setting.
Many of the hydra heads have an ability that does stuff to "every Player" or "each creature". The Horde was not designed for multiplayer. From my limited experience with Xenagos, you're going to NEED multiple players if you aren't building your deck to fight it, it hits for 0-12 damage every turn right out of the gate, averaging somewhere around a T4 kill if unmolested.
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Out of three games, Xenagos got me as low as 5. He probably would have won that game if he'd drawn two revelers instead of one and a spell on a particular turn.
He couldn't ever beat me if I got a turn 1 Wasteland Viper (with haste). Once I was able to equip my bow and/or play a Mark of the Vampire, his chances were basically null.
My bow cost 2 to equip and untapped two lands when the creature dealt damage, so I could move it for free between my 20 deathtouch creatures to ping any number of revelers to death each turn.
Having him start with 3 revelers was SIGNIFICANTLY different than him starting with 2, mostly because he wanted to stay at 5 or more in order to ever do anything with them.
This deck is actually very brutal to play against. I watched it T3-5 kill quite a few players.
Honestly, it seems to me that all three decks win fast or not at all. So Xenagos winning turns 3-5 doesn't surprise me.
The Xenagos deck is perfectly capable of killing on turn 2 if you are particularly unlucky, as I was several times on game day. Plenty of games went 'Xenagos turn 1 ding me for 6-10, I play land, Xenagos turn 2 kill". I forget the exact cards that do it, but it's not particularly difficult for the deck to pull off.
I losted against this thing about 7 times, finally won went I got Tajic Blade of the Legion with my godslayer (spear of the general with vigilance and extra blockers) and Iros, God of Victory, most had to block until I could kill block most of the revelers and was able to draw Banishing Light to kill of Xenagos.
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It was my first time playing against such a deck and it was really fun!
I teamed-up with 3 of my buddies playing Gruul Aggro, Mono-black Aggro and Azorius Midrange.
One of my buddies had Detention Sphere but was stuck without a Blue Source - that would've definitely taken care of all those pesky Satyrs!
We played some small creatures to try to block Xenagos and avoid dying fast. We got hit once by Xenagos (we didn't know it had trample lol) and got hit by that 4 damage card. The turning point of the match was when the card that made all his Satyrs attack flipped - this left him with like one satyr which I Lightning Striked and Xenagos got hit with Hero's Downfall.
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I like this challenge deck, and look forward to seeing what will happen with it. Looks like main-decking Ratchet Bomb is a pretty good catch-all plan for neutering it, same as the previous two. I look forward to trying to kill Xenagos with a Far//Away.
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So that you can kill him with Font of Ire. Player-targeted burn worked against the other two challenge decks and I think it's fair for players to assume it works against Xenagos so they added that rule in to allow a perfectly logical interaction. I'm not sure what confusing corner cases you're thinking of that wouldn't fall under the "ignore any impossible action" rule.
You attack the creature directly, just like you attack players and planeswalkers in regular games. No need for "blockers".
It is exactly the same as in the Hydra deck.
And of course, you always make all decisions for the Challenge Deck when needed.
Not really, I have the Hydra deck and nowhere in the manual has rules for "scaling with the number of players". You simply have a difficult setting, easy normal or hard, defined merely for the number of heads starting the game. It's up to you to decide the multiple players will go against the Hard setting.
You attack the creatures (as with the hydra). Damage is dealt both ways as if they were blockers. Trample damage does not have any effect (though it should have gone to Xenagos).
I like the way Xenagos can't leave the battlefield if any reveler is in play. So if you clone Xenagos you won't win the game as long as your version is in play. And insurrection won't work wither since you have nothing to deal damage to. But if you do have a sac outlet, one by one, you could win that way
I am so going to build a casual ting out of these decks and something elser
You guys are right, but then there's thec equally improbable (but possible) flipside of a turn 2 kill. Basically, I just don't like that the deck's actions are so heavily driven by its "draws". At least the last two Challenge decks would reliably do certain things regardless of their topdecks.
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
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I think it says that you can target him as he were a player, not that he counts as a player.
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Technically, no. If you do that, his LTB trigger doesn't occur. Which gives you a rough time beating him when there isn't a copy on the battlefield.
Spoilering decks that i've got because i want to see what others are bringing and their thoughts, but my choices are here in case anyone has comments
enchanting Witchstalker with Raised by Wolves
Exactly what I thought about the Hydra and Horde decks. Xenagos looks like a fun multiplayer experience with your buddies.
All these decks are fun, but this looks to be the best one.
Many of the hydra heads have an ability that does stuff to "every Player" or "each creature". The Horde was not designed for multiplayer. From my limited experience with Xenagos, you're going to NEED multiple players if you aren't building your deck to fight it, it hits for 0-12 damage every turn right out of the gate, averaging somewhere around a T4 kill if unmolested.
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Honestly, it seems to me that all three decks win fast or not at all. So Xenagos winning turns 3-5 doesn't surprise me.
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He couldn't ever beat me if I got a turn 1 Wasteland Viper (with haste). Once I was able to equip my bow and/or play a Mark of the Vampire, his chances were basically null.
My bow cost 2 to equip and untapped two lands when the creature dealt damage, so I could move it for free between my 20 deathtouch creatures to ping any number of revelers to death each turn.
Having him start with 3 revelers was SIGNIFICANTLY different than him starting with 2, mostly because he wanted to stay at 5 or more in order to ever do anything with them.
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The Xenagos deck is perfectly capable of killing on turn 2 if you are particularly unlucky, as I was several times on game day. Plenty of games went 'Xenagos turn 1 ding me for 6-10, I play land, Xenagos turn 2 kill". I forget the exact cards that do it, but it's not particularly difficult for the deck to pull off.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
I teamed-up with 3 of my buddies playing Gruul Aggro, Mono-black Aggro and Azorius Midrange.
One of my buddies had Detention Sphere but was stuck without a Blue Source - that would've definitely taken care of all those pesky Satyrs!
We played some small creatures to try to block Xenagos and avoid dying fast. We got hit once by Xenagos (we didn't know it had trample lol) and got hit by that 4 damage card. The turning point of the match was when the card that made all his Satyrs attack flipped - this left him with like one satyr which I Lightning Striked and Xenagos got hit with Hero's Downfall.