Best deck in this game was
27x 5MoxLotusManacrypt (4 of each though only 3 Mox Emerald)
1x Underground Sea (it functions the same as a mox as you will only take 4x Black Vise
4x Timetwister
4x Ancestral Recall
Xx Braingeyser
Xx Hurkyl's Recall
Don't play workshop, dt, time walk or contract. When you have 4x recall + 4x twister, you never want to ante again. However while trying to grind to those cards, contract from below is BUSTED. Timetwister however is miles better.
You literally have 10% chance to draw a timetwister and a different 10% chance to draw Ancestral Recall seven times in each opening hand. There's no reason to play other cards that simply don't do enough.
Though there is the issue of casting twister so many times you eventually draw the deck down to the 4x recall 4x twister 4x lotus + whatever else you are running. Sometimes you can accidently deck yourself which makes geyser kind of nice.
Seriously the kill is simply blackvise + recalling them or even charging a huge geyser to cause insane amounts of damage. I guess you could play with whatever your choice of kill but black vise is simply the most efficient at dream crushing. It dominates all the duels in the early to midgame and it lets you do some really quick duels.
Also make sure you make the deck 41 cards and not 40. The game will always ante each game, and this is another reason you run more than one win condition. And if you have 40 cards and it antes one, it'll randomly replace it with a card from your collection.
"Sufficiently advanced experience is indistinguishable from clairvoyance." -Carsten
"Ah those eyes, those horrible creepy eyes!" -Chaosof99
DCI Level 3 Judge & TO "I do not consider myself a hero. I know only what the Vec teach:
justice must always be served and corruption must always be opposed."
Go read! I am one of the three authors of Cranial Insertion.
But seriously, if you can't remember "Woapalanne", just call me Eli.
It's a guaranteed first turn win 100% of the time, on the play or the draw. Just pray to God your opponent doesn't go first and somehow drop Howling Mine on their first turn, or else you'll look very silly indeed.
It's a guaranteed first turn win 100% of the time, on the play or the draw. Just pray to God your opponent doesn't go first and somehow drop Howling Mine on their first turn, or else you'll look very silly indeed.
There was not a world magic that let you have more than 4-of.
There was one that let you increase from 3-of to 4-of, but not beyond that.
That would be The Tome of Knowledge, and if you had a 40-59 card deck, your per card max was elevated from 3 to 4. But...if you had a 60+ card deck, then you had no card max.
When playing against the end boss guy,I always made sure to add a Time Elemental and a Clone to my lineup so you'd always have a lock option on the guy if needed.
That would be The Tome of Knowledge, and if you had a 40-59 card deck, your per card max was elevated from 3 to 4. But...if you had a 60+ card deck, then you had no card max.
When playing against the end boss guy,I always made sure to add a Time Elemental and a Clone to my lineup so you'd always have a lock option on the guy if needed.
I'll probably talk about this in my follow-up, it's strange how adamant some people are that there's no way to beat the 4-card max rule yet everyone who's played the game for a long time has messed around with ridiculous decks like the ones on this page.
Actually one of the nice strategic elements of the game if you're playing fairly (ie sticking to 4 card rule and not making a guaranteed t1 combo win deck) is building your three decks: one for normal duelling, one for dungeons, and one for the final boss. My favourite setup is RG aggro (wins fast, good as your main deck), UW Ivory tower control for dungeons (b/c life totals usually carry over there so you need some sort of lifegain) and UBwr control for the final boss, with Specter and Djinn to smack him down while Swords and Bolt manage his creatures and Timetwister stops you decking. This last deck is often 80 cards or more because I'm going to be cycling through it very fast w/ contract and recall.
There's a nice balance in the early game when you find a bazaar or something and get to pick any card you want: take the lightning bolt that you desperately need now, or the Armageddon you want for a nice dungeon deck you're planning?
So...anyone have "fond" memories of Goblin Polka Band and IT'S sound effect?
"Everybody Polka!"
(Craziness)
Haha probably the best sound effect in the game, a few people have commented on this but the super-cheesy effects are one of the best things about Shandalar.
I was reading through the comments about this game which brought back tons of memories for me, and I know it would a friend of mine, when I ran across this quote:
You could stir up nightmares by talking about the OTHER MtG game that came out the same time as Shandalar. I don't remember much about it other than it really sucked. You would summon the creature and it'd start wandering around the board towards the other wizard. I remember that the key mechanics of the game didn't work, like First Strike or Protection. IIRC, Microprose sued the company that released it, stating that it was causing confusion in the marketplace or something like that.
Early in my magic days, I managed to at one point or another borrow both of these games. Shandalar can really live on at times and keep recurring. The other game, as Mr. Superlove pointed out, was called MtG Battlemage. It was an interesting concept as a live action game; essentially summoning monsters actually did summon monsters, playing lands added mana to a pool that simply refreshed over a time interval, and there was a sliding window that allowed you to switch around your spells to "active" spells.
The problem was indeed as someone had mentioned, that certain mechanics didn't always work as expected, and I'll also point out that it was almost impossible to block unless you were on a map in which there was a bottleneck, forcing a creature into a particular spot. Creatures would fight until they died, if I remember right, as well. It was because of the fact that blocking was largely impossible that the game became "summon monster A and send it at the opponent". Serra Angel was the best creature in the game, I felt, because of the fact that Vigilance played very much like haste; when the creature hit an opponent, it would warp back to the mage's side, and if it didn't have vigilance, would sit there for a moment before it went back to automatically moving towards the opponent and attacking them. Vigilance made the creature come out of the gates running, and not tapping down when teleporting back. Therefore, Serra Angel was a constant stream of pain for the opponent.
A lot of cards were functional, but the problem was that the pace was just too fast to capture the feel of real magic for the human player. However, the computer could switch up spells fast enough to play counterspell in the narrow window, and the spell trees were never needed because there was just never any time to play more than 2 spells at once. The computer could also block and use activated abilities in a reasonable amount of time.
This game had one MAJOR advantage however that I really liked; there were several planeswalkers all out to take over Dominaria. Dominaria itself was set up like a map of Risk, with different regions having an encounter with someone which could lead to a great card, and conquest of a territory. Through it, sometimes you could conquer lands controlled by other planeswalkers by talking your way into it. This made that element of the game feel like Risk with some diplomatic possibilities. This aspect of the game was actually quite fun and was really enjoyable, even when you memorized the best routes in the conversation to get whatever it was you wanted. The simultaneous action duel could definitely have been approved though... Sadly, I felt Battlegrounds overall did a BETTER job of that feel than Battlemage. I guess that's really saying something.
Shandalar was a much better game because it really was Magic as an RPG, and was wonderful for that. I remember several of the discussed bugs, but I seem to have found one that no one else has mentioned involving Mishra's Factory. I noticed that when you tap Mishra's Factory, it asks you what you want to do with the Factory. Since it has an ability that can technically be activated even when its tapped, the window will come up even if Mishra's Factory is already tapped. However, in either case, the cursor will begin at the top action, which is "add 1 to your mana pool". It won't highlight it when the Factory is tapped, but if you press Enter, since the cursor is technically on it, you add 1 to your mana pool! Repeat for infinite and illegal mana. Colorless, but when you have a Fireball in hand, it wins games. Just a little less broken than making your opponent mana burn themselves for the loss.
The Polka Band sound effect was actually really amusing. While the rest of the sound effects had a magical feel to the them (even that obnoxious Power Struggle noise), this thing was just some deep voice saying "Everybody Polka!" Followed by a raspy instrument playing.
Oh, and one more thing about this discussion: In the earliest version of the game, I remember in the deck editor being able to build Lightning Bolt.dec. I think that actually there was either an edit for the released game down the line to force the 4-of restriction. Earlier versions allowed you to just play around with any number of cards, particularly in the external deck creator. I remember when I got the patched version, I didn't see the ability to create decks with more than 4 cards anymore.
Thanks for the article; some great memories!
oh yeah, best bug evar: Tempest Efreet. It takes work, but you can mug Dragons for their Moxen. First, you have to get them to 9 life with an Efreet in play. Then, they have to have a Mox in play (I'm pretty sure Dragons are the only things that play Moxen). Then, you Mind Twist their hand away, Boomerang the Mox, and fire off the Efreet. Then you can go ahead and finish off the dragon. This isn't too hard to do if your deck has that list of broken cards I listed before.
Now you'd think, when you're done, that you'll have a free Mox. However... well, just do it some time.
Two words - Bronze Tablet - very easy to mug dragons of their Moxen
After reading this thread I restarted a new Shandalar this weekend...(with a new patch making it playable on a current machine).
5 colored White Weenie with Power 16 (Power 9 & an additional set of Moxes and 2 additional Ancestral Recalls) is just great...you run through the dungeons without any problem (Serra with double Spirit Link since the life is being carried over).
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Signed card collector Current signed cards count (31.12.16):
Diff. signed cards: 16'451 Artist alters: 828 Beta Project: 2574/2853 Grand Total signed cards: 42'091
The boss mana-burned himself to death by tapping all of his lands at the end of my turn and not doing anything at all.
His eternal slumber has led him to senior moments.
Lol, yes! he did that to me too..
I have the original and both expansions on CD, but unfortunately I haven't got
Windows '95, I have XP. Is there any way to play this game on XP? I miss Bronze Tableting away all their moxen so much.
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"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." - Jack Handey
MY TYPE TOO DECKS
-B Rogues
-Sanguine Bond 5c Life gain
-Polymorph Tokens MY EXTENDED DECK
-BWrRs deck for da winz! MY TYPE ONE DECK
-Fluctuator
ptq 4th place
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
Yes you can run it on XP, i've had my copy work on every version of windows up to and including vista. just takes some fiddling and google detective work... you might try running in compatibility mode (ie right click the .exe file for the game, -->properties-->compatibility and select 'run in compatiblity for win 95'.)
I have the original and both expansions on CD, but unfortunately I haven't got
Windows '95, I have XP. Is there any way to play this game on XP? I miss Bronze Tableting away all their moxen so much.
Yes. You can play it in XP. I'm playing it right now. Search for setup.exe in your CD and change compatibility to Windows 95. I also recommend you install manalink 1.3.2 after installing the original and expansions. Google search manalink for more details.
Ah, Shandalar. I still have it installed, actually. Never tried the Manalink 2.0 expansion, though.
Power Struggle wasn't that bad if you knew how to play around it. Boomerang/Hurkyl's Recall your permanents back to your hand, play useless crap like Ornithopters, just play Black Vise (which read target opponent, so regardless of who controlled it, it would always deal damage to your opponent), and use symmetrical effects like Winter Orb, Moat, Howling Mine, and Wrath of God. Also Wall of Swords and Wall of Air.
Of course, if you got it in the same dungeon as the 'no instants' rule, it got a lot nastier...
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Esper Simperer; Even the court homonculi need someone to look down on.
Jund Fangirl; Few things can describe the bliss of the fangirl's cries fading to silence (broken by occasional munching sounds).
Grixis Emo; 'Why should I go out there? They're all uncaring zombies! *sniff* No one understands me...' Bant Wageslave; Behind every successful knight is a corporate drudge doing his taxwork.
Naya Overenthusiast; Because there is such a thing as too much enthusiasm.
Registered specially to reply, that's how much I loved this game.
If you want a real challenge (more difficult than anything else I ever tried in the game), try getting playsets of Ydwen Efreet and Mijae Djinn. They are not for sale. No opponents have them in their decks, so you have to hack a deck to even get them into the game. They will never appear as the ante, so the only way to get them is with special ante cards. The opponents will never play them, so Bronze Tablet is useless. About the only way to get them is with Tempest Efreet, and let me tell you, that ain't easy!
Back when I was building custom decks for all opponents, I decided to give Queltosh (red djinn) a Djinn/Efreet deck, containing the above cards and Serendib, backed up by burn. Usually when I was close to getting my Djinn or Efreet, the computer was about to kill me. Just thinking about that quest makes me sweat again.
Ha this is great, didn't know you could get Jamie and Wendy in Shandalar. This is one of the best ways to play the game- you have to impose restrictions on yourself since without them it's too easy to abuse broken cards and the computer's poor play, and once you never lose a game the fun's gone. Another fun one is to give yourself a time limit to win the game...
It may not win on your first turn every game...but your opponent never gets a turn. It took a while to assemble on the hardest mode but...the end boss passed his first turn to me and never got to untap.
I am a huge fan of this game. I have made Vintage legal decks, versions of current decks with older cards, and even rule specific decks (Only 1cc cards can be played...etc.)
My question is...what was the final expansion? Was it a downloadable program...or was it a store bought expansion?
After reading this article and the many posts written about the Shandalar game, I renewed my quest to try and find a way to download it with all the expansions and patches, to play on Windows XP. I have literally tried this on and off for years, and the best I could ever do was download the duel mode with a handful of decks.
On this last attempt, I did find a site that contained the full game, all the expansions, the fixes, etc. I have literally been playing the game for a couple of hours each night for the past two weeks and it is RIDICULOUSLY FUN. I combed through a few pages of links to get there and I will post the site if I find it again. I actually went out and bought a Beta Contract from Below after realizing just how degenerate it is in gameplay.
Anyway, on the easiest difficulty (Apprentice), I beat the game fairly quickly with a red/black deck playing fair (only 1 Contract from Below, no more than 4 copies of any card, etc.). Now on the Magician difficulty, I have beaten 4 out of the 5 Wizards but am having trouble with the Red Wizard. I am now playing blue/green for this campaign and am considering breaking my "fairness" by just sideboarding in 10 copies of Blue Elemental Blast. God damn Magnetic Mountain is really hard to get around in the Red Wizard castle.
Anyway, yeah, the game is silly addictive and can be quite challenging. With the patches installed, many of the bugs mentioned earlier don't work (so you can't force an opponent into a lock by tapping their mana for them during their upkeep phase, for instance), but there are still some issues. Here are a few I have noticed:
(1) The computer makes a lot of boneheaded moves from time to time, like using Giant Growth on one of my guys instead of theirs, choosing me as the target for a Stream of Life or casting Disintegrate on themselves. It doesn't happen terribly often or the game would be awful, but the fact that it ever happens is disturbing.
(2) The computer is completely oblivious to Mishra's Factory. What I mean is, sure, if they have one, they activate it properly on offense or defense, but if you have one, they totally ignore it when calculating combat. If they see an open field, they will ALWAYS swing with a 1/1 or 2/2, forgetting you can just activate your Factory into an Assembly Worker and block them. This gets really bad for the computer when you have out several copies of the Factory, as they still see a small or empty field and swing in, even though you can activate each Factory into a dude, or activate one of them and use the others for pump.
(3) The game sucks when it comes to "pay X to untap a guy/artifact during upkeep." I pretty much had to give up on playing Brass Man or Mana Vault because even when you have mana open, the computer will often skip your upkeep phase so you can't pay the costs of untapping. For some reason, 100% of the time the computer will remember to allow you upkeep effects for paying Phantasmal Forces or Old Man of the Sea. I guess that is because with the Forces, you pay mana but don't untap, and with Old Man, you untap but don't pay mana. When you have to do both at once, the computer's AI gets scrambled. Unfortunately, it only gets confused during YOUR phases, not during their own.
There are other issues that I'm just not remembering right now, but the point is, despite these flaws, it's a fantastic game, very in-depth, and deeply nostalgic, especially for us "Magic old-timers." I encourage everyone to try and find it to download, and I will help as well, if I come across the link again.
Piracy instructions removed. Permanent infraction for discussion of illegal activities —Annorax
(3) The game sucks when it comes to "pay X to untap a guy/artifact during upkeep." I pretty much had to give up on playing Brass Man or Mana Vault because even when you have mana open, the computer will often skip your upkeep phase so you can't pay the costs of untapping. For some reason, 100% of the time the computer will remember to allow you upkeep effects for paying Phantasmal Forces or Old Man of the Sea. I guess that is because with the Forces, you pay mana but don't untap, and with Old Man, you untap but don't pay mana. When you have to do both at once, the computer's AI gets scrambled. Unfortunately, it only gets confused during YOUR phases, not during their own.
All you have to do is tag your upkeep phase so the game makes an auto-stop there.
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All the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
Where can I get a copy of this game?
All we can discuss on this forum is where you can buy it legally. Anything else will result in an automatic suspension. --Mod.
27x 5MoxLotusManacrypt (4 of each though only 3 Mox Emerald)
1x Underground Sea (it functions the same as a mox as you will only take 4x Black Vise
4x Timetwister
4x Ancestral Recall
Xx Braingeyser
Xx Hurkyl's Recall
Don't play workshop, dt, time walk or contract. When you have 4x recall + 4x twister, you never want to ante again. However while trying to grind to those cards, contract from below is BUSTED. Timetwister however is miles better.
You literally have 10% chance to draw a timetwister and a different 10% chance to draw Ancestral Recall seven times in each opening hand. There's no reason to play other cards that simply don't do enough.
Though there is the issue of casting twister so many times you eventually draw the deck down to the 4x recall 4x twister 4x lotus + whatever else you are running. Sometimes you can accidently deck yourself which makes geyser kind of nice.
Seriously the kill is simply blackvise + recalling them or even charging a huge geyser to cause insane amounts of damage. I guess you could play with whatever your choice of kill but black vise is simply the most efficient at dream crushing. It dominates all the duels in the early to midgame and it lets you do some really quick duels.
Also make sure you make the deck 41 cards and not 40. The game will always ante each game, and this is another reason you run more than one win condition. And if you have 40 cards and it antes one, it'll randomly replace it with a card from your collection.
It's quite too old; you won't find it in stores. If you google, you may find a site selling it, though!
"Sufficiently advanced experience is indistinguishable from clairvoyance." -Carsten
"Ah those eyes, those horrible creepy eyes!" -Chaosof99
DCI Level 3 Judge & TO
"I do not consider myself a hero. I know only what the Vec teach:
justice must always be served and corruption must always be opposed."
Go read! I am one of the three authors of Cranial Insertion.
But seriously, if you can't remember "Woapalanne", just call me Eli.
2 Black Lotus
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Timetwister
3 Other cards you'll never play
It's a guaranteed first turn win 100% of the time, on the play or the draw. Just pray to God your opponent doesn't go first and somehow drop Howling Mine on their first turn, or else you'll look very silly indeed.
"Everybody Polka!"
(Craziness)
Currently 62/265 cards.
19 Black Lotus
19 Time Twister
19 Plague Rats
3 Time Walk
There was one that let you increase from 3-of to 4-of, but not beyond that.
The 3 card limite was for 40-59 card decks
Butcher of Words.
Made by Spiderboy4
That would be The Tome of Knowledge, and if you had a 40-59 card deck, your per card max was elevated from 3 to 4. But...if you had a 60+ card deck, then you had no card max.
When playing against the end boss guy,I always made sure to add a Time Elemental and a Clone to my lineup so you'd always have a lock option on the guy if needed.
I'll probably talk about this in my follow-up, it's strange how adamant some people are that there's no way to beat the 4-card max rule yet everyone who's played the game for a long time has messed around with ridiculous decks like the ones on this page.
Actually one of the nice strategic elements of the game if you're playing fairly (ie sticking to 4 card rule and not making a guaranteed t1 combo win deck) is building your three decks: one for normal duelling, one for dungeons, and one for the final boss. My favourite setup is RG aggro (wins fast, good as your main deck), UW Ivory tower control for dungeons (b/c life totals usually carry over there so you need some sort of lifegain) and UBwr control for the final boss, with Specter and Djinn to smack him down while Swords and Bolt manage his creatures and Timetwister stops you decking. This last deck is often 80 cards or more because I'm going to be cycling through it very fast w/ contract and recall.
There's a nice balance in the early game when you find a bazaar or something and get to pick any card you want: take the lightning bolt that you desperately need now, or the Armageddon you want for a nice dungeon deck you're planning?
Haha probably the best sound effect in the game, a few people have commented on this but the super-cheesy effects are one of the best things about Shandalar.
Tokyo Draft: A Cube Report
Adventures in Shandalar
Early in my magic days, I managed to at one point or another borrow both of these games. Shandalar can really live on at times and keep recurring. The other game, as Mr. Superlove pointed out, was called MtG Battlemage. It was an interesting concept as a live action game; essentially summoning monsters actually did summon monsters, playing lands added mana to a pool that simply refreshed over a time interval, and there was a sliding window that allowed you to switch around your spells to "active" spells.
A lot of cards were functional, but the problem was that the pace was just too fast to capture the feel of real magic for the human player. However, the computer could switch up spells fast enough to play counterspell in the narrow window, and the spell trees were never needed because there was just never any time to play more than 2 spells at once. The computer could also block and use activated abilities in a reasonable amount of time.
This game had one MAJOR advantage however that I really liked; there were several planeswalkers all out to take over Dominaria. Dominaria itself was set up like a map of Risk, with different regions having an encounter with someone which could lead to a great card, and conquest of a territory. Through it, sometimes you could conquer lands controlled by other planeswalkers by talking your way into it. This made that element of the game feel like Risk with some diplomatic possibilities. This aspect of the game was actually quite fun and was really enjoyable, even when you memorized the best routes in the conversation to get whatever it was you wanted. The simultaneous action duel could definitely have been approved though... Sadly, I felt Battlegrounds overall did a BETTER job of that feel than Battlemage. I guess that's really saying something.
Shandalar was a much better game because it really was Magic as an RPG, and was wonderful for that. I remember several of the discussed bugs, but I seem to have found one that no one else has mentioned involving Mishra's Factory. I noticed that when you tap Mishra's Factory, it asks you what you want to do with the Factory. Since it has an ability that can technically be activated even when its tapped, the window will come up even if Mishra's Factory is already tapped. However, in either case, the cursor will begin at the top action, which is "add 1 to your mana pool". It won't highlight it when the Factory is tapped, but if you press Enter, since the cursor is technically on it, you add 1 to your mana pool! Repeat for infinite and illegal mana. Colorless, but when you have a Fireball in hand, it wins games. Just a little less broken than making your opponent mana burn themselves for the loss.
The Polka Band sound effect was actually really amusing. While the rest of the sound effects had a magical feel to the them (even that obnoxious Power Struggle noise), this thing was just some deep voice saying "Everybody Polka!" Followed by a raspy instrument playing.
Oh, and one more thing about this discussion: In the earliest version of the game, I remember in the deck editor being able to build Lightning Bolt.dec. I think that actually there was either an edit for the released game down the line to force the 4-of restriction. Earlier versions allowed you to just play around with any number of cards, particularly in the external deck creator. I remember when I got the patched version, I didn't see the ability to create decks with more than 4 cards anymore.
Thanks for the article; some great memories!
Former R&D Development Team W leader
For your information, it's pronounced Argh + was.
Proud Co-Founder of
Magic Coffeehouse!
Come in, sit down, relax, get to know somebody!
Two words - Bronze Tablet - very easy to mug dragons of their Moxen
5 colored White Weenie with Power 16 (Power 9 & an additional set of Moxes and 2 additional Ancestral Recalls) is just great...you run through the dungeons without any problem (Serra with double Spirit Link since the life is being carried over).
Current signed cards count (31.12.16):
Artist alters: 828
Beta Project: 2574/2853
Grand Total signed cards: 42'091
All my stuff in a FB group
Me@WOTC
Lol, yes! he did that to me too..
I have the original and both expansions on CD, but unfortunately I haven't got
Windows '95, I have XP. Is there any way to play this game on XP? I miss Bronze Tableting away all their moxen so much.
MY TYPE TOO DECKS
-B Rogues
-Sanguine Bond 5c Life gain
-Polymorph Tokens
MY EXTENDED DECK
-BWrRs deck for da winz!
MY TYPE ONE DECK
-Fluctuator
ptq 4th place
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
Tokyo Draft: A Cube Report
Adventures in Shandalar
Yes. You can play it in XP. I'm playing it right now. Search for setup.exe in your CD and change compatibility to Windows 95. I also recommend you install manalink 1.3.2 after installing the original and expansions. Google search manalink for more details.
Power Struggle wasn't that bad if you knew how to play around it. Boomerang/Hurkyl's Recall your permanents back to your hand, play useless crap like Ornithopters, just play Black Vise (which read target opponent, so regardless of who controlled it, it would always deal damage to your opponent), and use symmetrical effects like Winter Orb, Moat, Howling Mine, and Wrath of God. Also Wall of Swords and Wall of Air.
Of course, if you got it in the same dungeon as the 'no instants' rule, it got a lot nastier...
Jund Fangirl; Few things can describe the bliss of the fangirl's cries fading to silence (broken by occasional munching sounds).
Grixis Emo; 'Why should I go out there? They're all uncaring zombies! *sniff* No one understands me...'
Bant Wageslave; Behind every successful knight is a corporate drudge doing his taxwork.
Naya Overenthusiast; Because there is such a thing as too much enthusiasm.
Ha this is great, didn't know you could get Jamie and Wendy in Shandalar. This is one of the best ways to play the game- you have to impose restrictions on yourself since without them it's too easy to abuse broken cards and the computer's poor play, and once you never lose a game the fun's gone. Another fun one is to give yourself a time limit to win the game...
Tokyo Draft: A Cube Report
Adventures in Shandalar
http://gero1369.com/MTG_game/
If you have questions on the game, they can be answered with the links found there.
thanks much!
Been playing since Sept. '95 (4th Edition; Ice Age Era).
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Click here for information on the Magic: The Gathering computer game.
4 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
4 Black Lotus
4 Mox Jet
4 Mox Ruby
4 Mox Sapphire
4 Ancestral Recall
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Demonic Tutor
4 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Time Walk
4 Time Twister
4 Wheel of Fortune
2 Fireball
2 Braingeyser
It may not win on your first turn every game...but your opponent never gets a turn. It took a while to assemble on the hardest mode but...the end boss passed his first turn to me and never got to untap.
I am a huge fan of this game. I have made Vintage legal decks, versions of current decks with older cards, and even rule specific decks (Only 1cc cards can be played...etc.)
My question is...what was the final expansion? Was it a downloadable program...or was it a store bought expansion?
I had access to Juzam Djinn and Bazaar of Baghdad...but I don't know what the latest expansion offered.
[EDH] Ob Nixilis the Fallen
On this last attempt, I did find a site that contained the full game, all the expansions, the fixes, etc. I have literally been playing the game for a couple of hours each night for the past two weeks and it is RIDICULOUSLY FUN. I combed through a few pages of links to get there and I will post the site if I find it again. I actually went out and bought a Beta Contract from Below after realizing just how degenerate it is in gameplay.
Anyway, on the easiest difficulty (Apprentice), I beat the game fairly quickly with a red/black deck playing fair (only 1 Contract from Below, no more than 4 copies of any card, etc.). Now on the Magician difficulty, I have beaten 4 out of the 5 Wizards but am having trouble with the Red Wizard. I am now playing blue/green for this campaign and am considering breaking my "fairness" by just sideboarding in 10 copies of Blue Elemental Blast. God damn Magnetic Mountain is really hard to get around in the Red Wizard castle.
Anyway, yeah, the game is silly addictive and can be quite challenging. With the patches installed, many of the bugs mentioned earlier don't work (so you can't force an opponent into a lock by tapping their mana for them during their upkeep phase, for instance), but there are still some issues. Here are a few I have noticed:
(1) The computer makes a lot of boneheaded moves from time to time, like using Giant Growth on one of my guys instead of theirs, choosing me as the target for a Stream of Life or casting Disintegrate on themselves. It doesn't happen terribly often or the game would be awful, but the fact that it ever happens is disturbing.
(2) The computer is completely oblivious to Mishra's Factory. What I mean is, sure, if they have one, they activate it properly on offense or defense, but if you have one, they totally ignore it when calculating combat. If they see an open field, they will ALWAYS swing with a 1/1 or 2/2, forgetting you can just activate your Factory into an Assembly Worker and block them. This gets really bad for the computer when you have out several copies of the Factory, as they still see a small or empty field and swing in, even though you can activate each Factory into a dude, or activate one of them and use the others for pump.
(3) The game sucks when it comes to "pay X to untap a guy/artifact during upkeep." I pretty much had to give up on playing Brass Man or Mana Vault because even when you have mana open, the computer will often skip your upkeep phase so you can't pay the costs of untapping. For some reason, 100% of the time the computer will remember to allow you upkeep effects for paying Phantasmal Forces or Old Man of the Sea. I guess that is because with the Forces, you pay mana but don't untap, and with Old Man, you untap but don't pay mana. When you have to do both at once, the computer's AI gets scrambled. Unfortunately, it only gets confused during YOUR phases, not during their own.
There are other issues that I'm just not remembering right now, but the point is, despite these flaws, it's a fantastic game, very in-depth, and deeply nostalgic, especially for us "Magic old-timers." I encourage everyone to try and find it to download, and I will help as well, if I come across the link again.
Piracy instructions removed. Permanent infraction for discussion of illegal activities —Annorax
All you have to do is tag your upkeep phase so the game makes an auto-stop there.
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide