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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yeah, if Rickety Mine was a 3/3, it would be very playable. I think even if it gave 4 gold, I still would never tech it…
Honestly, quite often when I play it in Red I end up floating some of the gold it generates anyway. (At least, if it survives the turn).
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I honestly don’t see why, facing a player with a Rickety Mine, I’d ever bother destroying it as opposed to doing the damage to a tech building or the base (assuming there were no units/heroes I wanted to kill).
I mean, it destroys itself usually after 2-3 turns AND does 2 damage to the base - which doesn’t happen if I destroy it 
At this point I do have to admit that I’m the guy who @Fenrir played Rickety Mine against yesterday - as well as Bloodburn on T1! Despite getting a predictable massive board advantage early on I messed it up and ended up losing 
(I still don’t even really remember what happened. I mean, I pulled off Inverse Power Ninja + Zane + Chaos Mirror for a hasty 6 attack past an empty patrol zone, managing to kill max Jaina AND break Tech 2 in the same turn. That was a fun thing to do, at least 
) I have decided I’m just not capable of playing well in real-time games, although clearly the best way to rectify this is more practice
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If you do destroy it and it doesn’t trigger at all it’s two gold and a card that your opponent just wasted. You’re hugely ahead on economy and board position now as whatever you attacked with is on full health. Probably from this position you win the game. That’s how far ahead you are if you make your opponent waste two gold on turn 3 or 4.
Ok, now assume you don’t destroy it and it triggers but doesn’t die. Ok, now you’re behind by one gold and unless you kill it this turn you’ll be behind by four gold. If it lives again you’ll be behind by seven gold. You can’t fall behind to the tune of seven gold. That means they’re ahead of you by a whole max band hero.
Killing a mine without it triggering is huge value. You just cost your opponent three gold (actually cost them five gold since they spent two to get the mine). That’s the main reason mine is such a weak card. The cost of using it if it doesn’t work is crazy high.
If you break through the patrol zone you should always kill Rickety Mine if you can. You can always do another two damage to base. Probably you can’t survive falling behind by 1.5g per turn that mine is in play.
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Good points. I’ve never thought of it like that - probably because I’ve never faced a Rickety Mine before and had already decided (before even reading the forums here) that this was a card I didn’t ever see any point in playing…
Rickety Mine’s actual text:
“Flip a coin 3 times. If they’re all heads you win. If not you lose.”
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I think it would be fine as is if it had Haste.
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Does Rickety Mine need an errata buff then?