So last week, on a lark, I decided to tech in both Detonate cards really early on and use both of them to trash @Jeremetroid’s workers. He was playing Green, and had Gemscout Owl, Merfolk Prospector, Rich Earth, and Galina Glimmer out, and tl;dr spending 6 on taking out two of his workers was NOT A GOOD VALUE OVERALL
Anyone else have stories of experimental stratagems that backfired spectacularly not because of poor luck, but because it turned out to just be a fundamentally terrible plan?
I suspect that some people will come here with stories about trying to use Knight of the Conclave and/or Reaver… Good thing I found out about that before I tried Purple.
I actually succeeded in using KotC and Reaver in the same game once. was a very dicey game though
I think I saw that! It was on the razors edge, though. 99% of the time that would probably have gotten you killed, but I guess if you go for one you might as well go for the other, right?
I’ve tried to set up a Gigadon before, only to have it community serviced right out of my hand. That was not a nice feeling.
Ouch, that hurts… That said, the idea of using Gigadon was probably solid enough, depending on whether your opponent was obviously focusing on Law spells or not. I actually used Gigadon in my last IRL game to quite devastating effect.
Yeah, that sounds more Codex Salt Thread than red herring. It wasn’t a fundamentally flawed idea from the start the way that, say, going all-in on worker hate might be. ; )
Knight of the Conclave is great if and only if you combo it with Seer and Temporal Research (and, to a lesser extent, midband Vir). Knights are supplemental units that show up yo help swing, not your main line.
To stay on topic, a strategy that utterly failed me was trying to figure out how to tech only 3 cost things to pull off True Power of Storms. Turns out you need to be able to keep maxband Grave on the board before you can worry about casting his Ultimate.
I remember some people like @Bob199 going all in on early Lich’s bargain in the old forums. Don’t think it worked very well, or at least not consistantly.
In testing I thought Community Service had the potential to be too good so in the game after that thought the first cast whiffed. The second cast got me a Stewardess of the Undone and my opponents only target was in the resist patrol slot so I didn’t even have enough money to bounce a thing.
10 gold for a 2/3 and an opponent discard, now that’s value. I lost that test game.
In an old version of Codex several years back, I was playing White against Aphotix’s black, and he went all in on Lich’s Bargain, which IIRC was both more upside and more drawback back then (I think it cost even more life and destroyed more workers, and generated more tokens). Aphotix had already cast it twice and was trying to decide out loud whether to cast it a third time or not. Eventually I talked him into casting it a third time.
Then I played the DeGrey in my hand.
I’ve pulled off True Power of Storms several times. My current deck is [Disc]/Peace/Feral. Brave Knights are so perfect because they cost 3 and come back to your hand, so if they’re on the board, you can suicide them and use them to power TPoS. And the staples of Peace’s plan, Drill Sergeant and Flagstone Garrison both cost 3. Once you get the Peace draw engine running, you can count on having TPoS and enough 3’s to unleash it. I wouldn’t go all in on the TPoS Strategy against white starter, Past, or Necromancy, but otherwise it seems to work well.
I propose that Dreamscape be renamed to “Fart in a Crowded Elevator.” It is, at best, very much a double-edged sword, especially if your Tech II isnt Truth.
I played a game with my wife earlier tonight where Dreamscape and Hallucination helped me clear her side of the board, but after that was over, I was stuck with a board full of illusions and she had a Spore Shambler in hand to headshot two of my own units, and she teched in a bunch of targeted effect spells (and midbanded Argagarg). As a result, we wound up in this silly loop where we would basically each clear the other’s units from the board each turn, and the game sort of lingered on for a remarkable length of time — Quince lasted far longer in play than he should have, and frankly it was a relief for me when he died.
Now, that said, had I gone with a Tech Lab to bring in Macciatus…
That one time when I built a Feral tech lab to pull off Might of Leaf and Claw + Moss Ancient. I got killed before I could ever pull the combo off.
Honestly it would’ve been better to build a Tower and just use Feral Strike to pull out the combo instead.
Rickety Mine - just, Rickety Mine.
I love this card. I adore it. But it just - it gets me killed.
The question is: How much gold would Rickety Mine have to give you to be playable?
If it gave you four gold I think it would be too good, haha.
Consider other ramp cards like Murfolk Prospector, Gemscout Owl and Galina. (or Rich Earth) typically they take multiple turns to pay off. Owl costs one and returns one. Rich Earth costs three and returns one per turn. Galina costs two and returns two only if you’ve got four green units. Most of these cards pay for themselves in one turn then generate a profit only after that.
Rickety Mine costs two and returns three guaranteed. So it’s actually really good as a gold generation card. Generating a profit if it survives one turn. It’s just, it’s kind of hard to keep it alive as red. And then beyond that it’s kind of hard to justify the card cost when Red already struggle with cards and don’t hugely struggle with gold.
The damage to your base and sacrificing itself is actually fine IMO, it’s flavourful and as a downside it’s like, yeah, I could care less about two damage to base.
Honestly paying two gold to get an average return of six gold is crazy good. I just think I’m struggling to find useful ways to spend all of that gold in Mono-Red and it’s just a huge risk to play the mine at all given that it’s really easy to destroy and doesn’t help the board at all.
I need to think about including mine in some multi-colour decks with like, Growth or other good starting options.
This.
I am interested in hearing about your multicolour experiments ^^
You are ignoring that the other cards do more than just generate profit though (arguably with the exception of GS Owl). Prospector and Galina are very much on curve stats-wise.