Magic in Shandalar

[Komatteru]

Wasn't there a patch released where you could play duelands and what not. Im sure i remember somthing like that.

It wasn't a patch, it was an expansion pack that you had to buy.  It was called Spells of the Ancients and it had all the cards from Arabians and Antiquities that weren't in 4th.  It added the sealed deck generator that let you play with starters from Beta, Revised, or 4th and boosters from those sets as well as Antiquities and Arabians.

I never bought the Duels of the Planeswalkers.  I saw the card list and was pretty disappointed.  A lot of people probably did the same thing.  I think that might have contributed heavily to the game's demise.

[Malhavoc]

The link I posted have the game with all the expansions. But as you have noticed, most of the interesting cards are out: djuzam djin, the abyss, nether void, mana drain. It seems like they have chosen to add the worst cards! It is not such a great program if you want to play against someone online (use Magic Workstation instead), but the game itself, where you have to make your deck battle after battle, is quite amusing: you start with a 4 color orrible, unplayable deck and must build something decent as soon as possible.

[Mirificus]

The link I posted have the game with all the expansions. But as you have noticed, most of the interesting cards are out: djuzam djin, the abyss, nether void, mana drain. It seems like they have chosen to add the worst cards! It is not such a great program if you want to play against someone online (use Magic Workstation instead), but the game itself, where you have to make your deck battle after battle, is quite amusing: you start with a 4 color orrible, unplayable deck and must build something decent as soon as possible.

Juzam was actually available in the Spells of the Ancients expansion pack. Unfortunately, it was not even nearly as interesting as the other cards you mentioned that weren't present.

Brian

[TheBrassHerald]

I'm not sure if the game still works like this, but in the original version of Shandalar, I think one of the more effictive decks was something like this:

lightning boltx40
mox rubyx10
mountainx10



There was some special item that allowed you to have as many of any card as you wanted. Multiple mox rubys allows for mutiple first turn lightning bolts, leading, in many cases, to first turn wins.

[Komatteru]

I'm not sure if the game still works like this, but in the original version of Shandalar, I think one of the more effictive decks was something like this:

lightning boltx40
mox rubyx10
mountainx10

Yeah, but that deck really doesn't work.  I tried the all lightning bolt deck back in the day.  It works better with Wheel of Fortune.

It was difficult to get the power cards in Shandlar.  You usually had to win them from someone.  If you got really really lucky you could find them, but that was a rare occurrance indeed.

[goober]

Fight Mind Stealers once you have power, about half the time they offer to give you a card you already have.

If you can make it, do:
35 Ancestral Recall
20 Black Lotus
5 Feldon's Cane

First turn win garunteed, and you can no land mulligan if for some reaon you only get Lotuses, or Ancestrals.

[Alfred]

In the shandalar quest game, my life keeps falling, and I have no idea why. Could somebody help me out here?

[goober]

If you have mana links in cities which are taken over by the mages you lose the link, and thus 1 life.

Also dungeons often have life loss carried over.

[Malhavoc]

If you have mana links in cities which are taken over by the mages you lose the link, and thus 1 life.

Also dungeons often have life loss carried over.

Do I have a way to see which cities offer mana links? I only get quests for cards or amulet, and even if I am gone far in the game, my life is still at 12!

When I look at the city list, some city have an 'X' under the column "mana link", but they do not offer mana link quest if I go there...  

[goober]

You need to go to nearby towns to get mana links.  They say "Bring this message/letter to my brother at ___, he will reward you with a mana link".

Sometimes they ask for you to bring a card, like Red Sorcery or something like that.

Only the big cities offer the links, they are the ones that you can trade for cards at.

[Alfred]

Well, I'm fucked. I'm at 5 life right now. What do I do when I reach the city that I have a mana link to? Oh, and on top of that, my entire deck and character are gone because I had no idea I was supposed to stop some stupid evil idiot, and he now has dominoin over all of shandalar. Awesome.

[Matt]

Nothing, you already have the link there. You need to start going to places you DON'T have a link, and make one there.

[goober]

If you can handel it go to places that are controlled by wizards and win them back.  Your life will go up.

[Matt]

Oh, that reminds me. It may be worthwhile when venturing in the black and red castles (and any others where life totals carry over) to get the game locked up, then sit on like an Ivory Tower or two and gain 30-35 life, which will last you long enough to clean the place out.

[Komatteru]

Oh, that reminds me. It may be worthwhile when venturing in the black and red castles (and any others where life totals carry over) to get the game locked up, then sit on like an Ivory Tower or two and gain 30-35 life, which will last you long enough to clean the place out.

Yeah, that works wonders.  I used to do that all the time (intentionally run up my life). Go into the boss wizard with like 100 life and watch them try to beat you.

[Matt]

You should be able to beat him anyway. He plays with like Hurr Jackals and shit. Serra+Geddon > him. Though when I beat him, I did it by getting six The Racks in play, Mind Twisting him, and keeping him Hypnotic Specter-locked, all on turn one (go multiple Lotuses, go!) Took about 22 turns.

[Komatteru]

None of the bosses are good, but you can still get screwed.  You can draw 1 land, have it stripped, not draw any (or the wrong color) for like 3 turns, and not be able to do anything about it.  I think that happened to me once or twice.  Man, was that ever annoying.  Going in there with a ridiculous amount of life doesn't even give the poor bastards a chance.  

[MrZuccinniHead]

OH MY LORD!  Thank you for that website.  It has some of my old favorites like system shock 1 and 2 and crusader: no remorse and sid meyer's alpha centauri!

[Alfred]

I came up with a cool deck in the create a deck area of shandalar. It's a GW aggro deck that does well against control oriented decks:

GW Aggro:

4x Savannah lions
4x white knight
4x Naf's Asp
3x winter orb
4x Swords to plowshares
4x Brass Tablet
4x Anhk of Mishra
3x Disenchant
4x Ghazban ogre
4x Giant Growth
2x City of Brass
4x Savannah
4x Strip Mine
1x Mox pearl
1x Mox emerald
6x Plains
4x Forest

It's also pretty good against aggro decks as well.

[dandan]

Can anyone tell me how I can put the program into background? Believe it or not, I'd quite like to use it while working (not at work!) and breaking the tedium of number crunching or HTML tweaking would be good but I am far too lazy to constantly open and close the game.

Also (not that I even know why I am asking) how do you use banding when attacking? I got a free Wolf once but couldn't figure out how to make it band.

Is there a way to get the game to use 60 card decks rather than the 40 I use now. 40 cards is so Limited... Besides it feels cheap to use a 40 card deck with 4 Strips and 4 Bolts versus multicolour opponents who start with 6 lives!!!

[Malhavoc]

Can anyone tell me how I can put the program into background? Believe it or not, I'd quite like to use it while working (not at work!) and breaking the tedium of number crunching or HTML tweaking would be good but I am far too lazy to constantly open and close the game.

Also (not that I even know why I am asking) how do you use banding when attacking? I got a free Wolf once but couldn't figure out how to make it band.

Is there a way to get the game to use 60 card decks rather than the 40 I use now. 40 cards is so Limited... Besides it feels cheap to use a 40 card deck with 4 Strips and 4 Bolts versus multicolour opponents who start with 6 lives!!!

I use simplu ALT+TAB. Oddly... sometimes it works, and sometimes not! When it does not work, maybe after a match it works against...  :shock:  Don't know why...

If I remember right, to band you must attack with the banding creature first, then it asks you if you want another creature to band with it.

Well, you CAN play with 60 cards if you want, what's the problem? However, you can't set the program to force you using 60 cards... anyway, opponents usually have 60 cards decks if I remember correctly. Besides this, making a competitive 60 cards deck at the very beginning of the game would be really, really difficult.

[goober]

You can just put 20 more cards in your deck, but if you got the spellbook item, you can run 5 ofs.  If you want to.

Banding works by having someone already attacking, then choose the cander as an attacker.  It will ask if you want to band, then you can say yes and choose who to band with.

I am pretty sure you can open other windows on top of it, but you can't minimize it completely.  It is kinda annoying, but you can still do work over it.

[Matt]

During a duel, you can alt-tab, but not in the adventure screen.

As already explained, with banding, you have to declare the guys that actually have banding attack last.

It's actually better to get that worldmagic ("Tome of Enlightenment") and run four-ofs in a forty card deck than to run five-ofs in a sixty card deck (1/10 vs 1/12).

I started over again, this time with black. 4 Sinkhole 4 Strip Mine 4 Vise is pretty ridiculous, and I actually am up to 3 lotuses already (via duplicating effects). No other power though.

[Setnakt]

Actually, I'm not quite sure what's with the spellbook power deal. It only lets me run 4 ofs in 40 card decks, but my 60 card deck right now runs 6(!) Swords.

[Matt]

Weird, it's only supposed to increase the limit by one. Still, 6/60 = 4/40, so might as well go with the 40 card deck, eh?

[LordHomerCat]

Hrm with the book, i currently have 7 lightning bolts in my B/R deck, along with 7 badlands, and will be putting in more as i aquire them... hehe =]  oh, its a 60card deck too, if that helps.

[geela234]

The version i downloaded doesn't let me edit my deck and seems to be bugged, i have the duels of the planes walkers on a diffrent computer so i know how its suppose to work, is any one else having the same problem with the download from underdog i think it was.  And is there a better DL out there?

[waSP]

Combo is where its at.  4 Twisters + 4 Wheels + 16 artifact accelerants + 4 hurkyl's is dominant.  Just make sure you Time Walk a lot so as not to overload the system.

The actual best deck to use is probably Keeeper with a couple Timetwisters for infinite recursion.

[Matt]

Not without Force it's not. Combo is basically beatable only by crashing the program.

[Toad]

I am now using a funny Combo deck with 4 Black Vise and 4 Ankh of Mishra for the kill. Basically, the deck is running all the mana accelerants as a 4-off (32 mana sources - moxens, Mana Vault, Black Lotus, Dark Ritual and no lands at all), 4 Timetwister, 4 Ancestral Recall, 4 Hurkyll's Recall and 4 Wheel of Fortune. Your goal is to recur your deck so you can put all 8 prison components by turn 1. At his upkeep, opponent will take 12 damage from the Vises, and the 8 remaining if he wants to lay a land. It has consistant turn 1 kills. I'm also using a lone Fireball for immediate kill.

Note that you can mulligan as many times as you want in order to aim at a first turn kill since old rules allowed to re-draw your opening hand if it contains no lands.