Magic in Shandalar

[combo_dude]

IIRC you can only mulligan once, and that's only if you have no land in your hand.

And how would that deck deal with the boss at the end?

[Toad]

And how would that deck deal with the boss at the end?

Drop all your prison components on first turn so he takes at least 12 damage per turn via the Black Vise. During your turn, accumulate as much mana as possible to fuel a big Fireball (recur it from the graveyard with Timewtister first). Split the damage so you can kill whatever he played. Repeat. It usually takes 10 turns to deal with his 200 life points.

Note that It is theoretically possible to go infinite mana with the Timetwister recursion. Nevertheless, the program crashes when you have more than 50 manas in pool, so just break the loop at 40 manas approximatively for Fireball.

[combo_dude]

Yeah, and his AI is even worse than usual, for some reason (he once discarded a CoP: Red against my mono-Red Fireball/Mana Flare deck, when I had NO answer to it given he had cast a CoP: Artifacts already. WTF?).

Sounds like that could deal with the 500 he gets on the top level as well!

[goober]

The prison parts aren't really needed, just fireball for 30 when you get to 40 mana, then go off again.  Keep doing that till you get the 200 needed.

[Matt]

Fireball? No no no no no, Braingeyser. You know, with the Vises. Five Vises (Copy Artifact) + 40 card hand = 2-3 turns to kill, and maybe one turn to set up.

[Toad]

Oh yeah, awesome... I totally forgot about the Old Timer
<3 Matt.

[CCClark]

I noticed you can crash the game if you hit the last guy with a recur deck for a few hundred points worth of fireball.   Anyone else have that prob?

[combo_dude]

Nevertheless, the program crashes when you have more than 50 mana in pool

[Toad]

It also crashes after a couple of Timetwister recursions. So bad :<

[Necrologia]

I seem to be having the same problem geela234's having. Whenever I try to leave the deck editor in quest mode I get a black screen. The wonderful music continues to play but that's about it.

I'm currently running the game in XP, but it won't even open under any other compatability mode. I've tried messing with my monitor settings, and everything else I can think of. Anyone know what's going on?

[Kowal]

If you click on screen, the picture usually comes back.

I also haven't had the mana OR the timetwister problem.

What OS are you guys using?  I'm on 98, that might have something to do with it.  A lot of older games don't work right on newer OSes.

[Grand Inquisitor]

I got tired of abusive crap, so I beat the game the hard way: tempo based deck filled with unsummon, strip mine, control magic, flood, and timmy for the win.  ph34r.

Also, if you want something kinda fun and skill intensive for gauntlet mode, you can try this thing based off 5c green (it was around that time):

Critters (14)
1x Serra Angel
2x green efreet (i forget the name)
4x Ernham Djinn
3x Elvish Archers
4x Birds of Paradise

Answers (15)
4x Counterspell
3x Power Sink
3x Swords to Plowshares
2x Armageddon
2x Disenchant
1x Psionic Blast

Broken (10)
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Balance
1x Mind Twist
1x Timetwister
1x Braingeyser
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x LoA
1x Jayemdae Tome

Land (21)
7 Solomox
4x Tropical Island
3x Tundra
3x Savanah
3x City of Brass
1x Strip Mine

[MrZuccinniHead]

Here's my list I play with...

GroAWombat (60)

Creatures (7)
4x Verduran Enchantress
3x Rabid Wombat

Broken (6)
1x Balance
1x Berserk (Restricted then )
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Timetwister
1x Braingeyser
1x Time Walk

Enchantments (21)
2x Sylvan Library
4x Aspect of Wolf
3x Spirit Link (Broken with 2 Sylvan in play!)
4x Unstable Mutation
4x Flight
2x Red Ward (Against Removal)
2x Black Ward (Against Removal)

Alt. Win (1)
1x Rocket Launcher

Mana (25)
9x Forest
4x Tropical Island
4x Savannah
1x LoA
1x Island
1x Plains
5x SoLoMoxen

Just pop out a enchantress and a wombat and go to town.  The computer doesn't know what to do.

EDIT Grand Inquis.: LOL @ BIZROKEN JAYEMDAE TOME!

[Addolorisi]

Edit: I got it.

And what's up with the AI? It drops a Wooden Sphere, uses 1 of its 2 Ley Druids to untap a land and cast  Durkwood Boars and doesn't use Sphere. In response to me swinging for lethal, it uses the other Druid to untap a land (with no cards in hand) and then promptly dies.

...and I think I lost a Lotus + Jet + something that didn't matter. I talked to the wise man in some town, and they showed up on screen, but I couldn't figure out how to get them.  

[UMRDubs]

Is it possible to run the game in XP?

[Nibble]

UMRDubs: It works fine for me in XP.


Does anyone else just enjoy the amazingly bad AI plays more than anything else in the game? I definitely do. The previously mentioned 'durr mishra's factory wut's dat?' problem is one glaring one, but there are many, many others...

- They tend to play Firebreathing on your creatures just as readily as on their own. Even more funny was when they tried to make a combo out of it with Meekstone, pumping my creature to 3 power eot so it wouldn't untap. Except.. that doesn't work.

- I once faced a Witch at 1 life with no blockers, but an untapped Disk and plenty of mana. I swung with a Zephyr Falcon, and she died. Way to go.

- Fought someone in a perma-Bad Moon dungeon, who went first turn Swamp, Ritual, Sorceress Queen. I play land-go, and on his turn, instead of swinging with the 2/2 Queen, he.. attempted to activate it, targeting itself. As you probably know, this doesn't work. But it didn't stop him from trying. Multiple times each turn. And then third turn he dropped another Queen, and proceeded to do the same thing with this one. I went at least five turns with an empty board, and not once did he attack with his Queens. Sigh.

[Limbo]

A neat trick to get power cards in scenario mode: Use the already mentioned bronze tablet in combination with power struggle. Switch your Ivory Towers / Moxen / Black Loti for their crappy artifacts and steal them. That way you only need to kill shapeshifters/mind stealers to get the instants / sorcery's (ancestral, walk, twister, wheel) copied.

Power struggle combined with time elemental also is a powerful combination. I have had all land from myself AND my opponent in play on multiple occasions

The most annoying thing I encountered was when I combined the standard combo build (Loti, Moxen, Hurkyls, Ancestrals, Twisters, Wheels) with 4 berserks and 1 ball lightning. After berserking the ball lightning for the 13th time in one turn, I passed the 32k power, and I got an integer overflow, so the power of the ball lightning dropped to zero After drawing to my opponent going plains --> tundra wolves, I added one time elemental to this deck

As for one of the best and easiest decks to accumulate in scenario mode, I found an "old-school" version of parfait particularly interesting. Play Land Tax, Library of Leng, Ivory Tower combo. Just don't play any land, just tax them out  to gain insane amounts of life. Except for these 4-offs, use some demonic tutors, and timetwisters to keep you from decking yourself, and use channel-->fireball for the kill This deck just raped any dungeon with life-"loss" carried over as I always encountered monster #2 with like 2k+ life  

[terevaune]

The one thing I noticed abot this game, is that 90% of computer players cannot win if moat is in play.

The other thing is that if the computer casts desert twister and has a choice between your moat that is holding back enough creatures to kill you twice over, your library of alexandria that has drawn you 10 cards already and will make more, the candelabra that untaps your library, and your birds of paradise while you already have 15 other mana sources, and a tapped air elemental with 2 weaknesses and a paralyze on it, your elemental is dead unless you play a bigger creature.

If you have 3 plains, a tundra, and a library of alexandria in play, that strip mine is headed for your plains every time

[Redmage2k]

I loved that A.I.!
I made a 30Lotus/15Channel/15Fireball deck and let the comp use it.
It kept dropping one Lotus and fireballing me for two!

[DrLambda]

Drumroll for my pet decks.

40 Cards White Weenie.dec

4 Tundra Wolves
4 White Knight
4 Storm Spirit

4 Jihad
2 Crusade
3 Land Tax
3 Armageddon
4 Swords to Plowshares

12 Plains
1 Mox Pearl

40 cards beatdown troll

4 Sedge Troll
4 Hypnotic Specter

4 Lighting Bolt
4 Immolation
2 Pyrotechnics
4 Terror

4 Badlands
4 Strip Mine
5 Swamp
5 Mountain

This is so much fun.

Oh, and the campaign is pretty much over once you find a "Nomads Bazaar" with 2500+ coins in your bag because then you can nearly buy whatever you want.

[Nazdakka]

Having some trouble with the final boss...

I'm playing something like Cyberknight's 'Old School Parfait' deck against him, hiding behind a Moat and using Ivory Tower/Library of Leng to gain lots of life and Island Sanctuary to avoid decking. I was aiming to get to 400+ life so I could Channel-Fireball the boss out. What has happened is that when I'm a few turns from victory, with 200+ life, the AI takes longer and longer to take its turns until eventually it stops doing anything at all and just sits there, thinking. The game is not locked, moving the mouse causes the card picture to change, the AI just seems to be stuck in a loop. My only idea is that perhaps I need to start running 'geddons to keep the number of cards in play down and reduce the complexity of the board. Any ideas?

BTW, I played most of the game through switching between U/W Serra Aggro-Control with Control Magics and a 4-Strip 4 Sinkhole build of Suicide. The U/W deck is VERY strong, I begin to see why Serra used to be considered overpowered

[Nazdakka]

Another try, made it to 530 life when I drew the kill. Shandalar couldn't cope with that big a Fireball and crashed. It's a VERY bad loser...

[TheBlob]

My favorite deck in Shandalar is:

4 Lightning Bolt
1 Disintegrate
1 Balance
1 Disenchant
1 DT
1 Regrowth
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Ring of Maruf
1 Aladdin  (!)'
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 COP red
1 Ivory Tower
1 Black Vise

Black Lotus
Sol Ring
5 Moxes (all 5 colors)
4 Strip Mine
3 Volc Island
4 Plateau
2 Taiga
2 Badlands

The point of the deck is to bolt the enemy to death, while stalling his development with strips, swords, etc.  The Regrowth ALWAYS recurs the Timetwister, unless you can get a card to win immediately.   Disintegrate is a great finisher, and is helpful at removing creatures.  COP red is necessary, since a burn opponent is the one deck the AI plays that can deal LOTS of damage faster than the rest of this deck can handle it.  

The Ring of Maruf is there only because all games in Shandalar are played for ante - if one of my key combo cards is ante'ed, the Ring gets it back.  Aladdin is my way of dealing with opponents with multiple artifacts - he's the Mox Monkey of Shandalar.

This deck has NO difficulty dealing with the final boss.  And I always play in hardest mode.  

A tip for those journeying in Shandalar and trying to assemble a deck:  use the save/reload trick right before walking into one of the random shrines that appear in the landscape.  You will often find yourself opposing a tough enemy that antes some very nice stuff:  power 9, etc.  If you lose to him, you lose nothing.  Also, sometimes you get a "Nomad Bazaar" which lets you purchase most of the cards the computer knows about - so you can get those 4 bolts quickly.

I recommend the "Wizard mode" when starting out.  Yes, it's harder and opponents have more life, but the "drops" are also much better.

[Frappie]

Long time ago when i was playing the game i found a hack for it. YOu could use the deck editor to edit your deck in shandalar. Used that for the win. I'm still an awful magic player. The best trick is this...... If you have tons of money blow most of it on food. You run at like mach 10. very easy to keep the creeps where they need to be.

[Drogo]

I can't get the deck editor to work either.   My cards don't show up on the bottom display bar in Shandalar.  In the other mode only Air Elemental shows up.  Any fixes for this?

Tony

Edit: Sorry about the multiple posts, I was getting error messages.

[chainer]

Mine's the same  no bottom bar. Can anyone help?

[CCClark]

Well, I managed to find it via torrents.   Though trying to run it in win 95 compatibility mode locks it up with an error that mentions dave's cool timer.   Anyone have that prob?

[savekeeper]

Man Shandalar... that sure brings back memorie's. I used to play that game at my friends house as much as I could. To me Shadalar as one of the reasons and wanted a PC so badly.

So anyway I re-installed the game allong with Spells of the Ancients and immediatly found something to be wrong. For some reason I run around in the field with a airplane motor up my ass. It's really unplayable since you can't really avoid anyone and it's near impossible to go to a certain town. Does anyone else have the same problem and does anyone knows hot to fix this?

[chainer]

I have found that closing the program down several times seems to work and the bar to pick cards from appears after about 3 attempts. I have no idea why. Once you have the bar up it will stay for the duration of your game.

[CCClark]

Well the game was wrote for windows 95 so a newer comp sometimes speeds it up quite a bit.  If you're running it on XP you can right click on the shortcut and run it in compatibility mode for win95.   Not sure how to slow it down for win98 though.