Unrestricted

I've been playing with the cheesy little RPG-ish game that comes with Microprose's MtG called Shalandar. You wander around this tiny continent dueling the various decks that come with the game. You pick a color and get a totally crappy deck with that color and 1 or 2 others. Then you run around going on little quests, dueling creatures for ante, and buying cards to build a decent deck to take on the 5 wizards in their towers.

It's almost like the old days building decks in the back woods of Maine where cards are scarce. Decks evolve as you play them. Winning is rewarded by getting cards that you can integrate into your deck or sell to get money to buy more cards. It's a less artificial environment in that you don't start out with 4 of all the best cards and hone the deck, you start out with a wide variety of mediocre cards you'd never play otherwise. Rarity also becomes a factor. Cards appear to be priced by a combination of rarity and power. And there are some cards that are just really hard to find (didn't see a single Juzam Djinn anywhere).

This deck began as a black/green speed deck. Erg Raiders, Scrybe Sprites, Giant Growth and Unholy Strength. In Shalandar you and your opponent don't necesarily start out with the same amount of life, and it's generally less than 20, so games are fast and deadly. A speed deck built out of powerful common cards does really well. Once I had the deck working well I started collecting dual lands and red cards, and predictable built something very much like my old deck. For the white castle, where the defenders start out with Karma in play (1 damage per swamp per turn) I had to create an alternative red/green speed deck. Luckily it lets you save 3 different decks built from your card collection.

Once you beat the wizards of each color you play against this massive 5 color deck that would be extremely inconsistant, except that it starts out with a Black Lotus and a Celestial Prism, oh, and hundreds of life. A quick kill deck that burns out just won't do it. You have to acheive a lock down. I did so via card count domination, using the normally banned ante card Contract from Below. I layed down most of my hand in the first few hands, played a couple Dark Ritual and cast Contact from Below. Pulled a new hand that included a Mind Twist and emptied out his hand. By turn 4 or 5 I had a couple creatures, a spare Oubliette, Lightning Bolt and Drain Life, and my opponent had nothing but mana sources. He never recovered.

posted by Nils T. Devine  # Sunday, January 09, 2005