Magic circa 1995

[President Skroob]

Yes, the "Try this deck out!" is the thing I most fear in the game. Their decks are awful, and when you lose you still lose the card that came from YOUR deck.

Also annoying, but not quite as deadly, are the enemies that can force you into the mirror match by playing a deck identical to yours. They aren't capable of the smart plays that a player can make, but sometimes they just get into that threshold of brokenness that a 9-year old can win with. And that is, of course, the sux.

[Mr. Nightmare]

That only happens when you play against specific characters.  There are a couple who give you a random creature's deck to play.  My favorite random deck is the Force of Nature/COP: Green combo deck.

[zeus-online]

Actually the most dreaded thing in the game is dungeons with the card "Power struggle"...Its just disgustingly annoying.
Anything short of first turn kill decks struggle in these dungeons. I actually created my first "First turn kill" deck simply to beat these annoying dungeons.

/Zeus

[OfficeShredder]

Actually the most dreaded thing in the game is dungeons with the card "Power struggle"...Its just disgustingly annoying.
Anything short of first turn kill decks struggle in these dungeons. I actually created my first "First turn kill" deck simply to beat these annoying dungeons.

/Zeus

Those are easy... just drop artifacts, and your opponent can't swap for anything good anyway.  I think those are the easiest dungeons.

[President Skroob]

I also use Mishra's Factory as a mana sink to tap out all my lands, which puts the opponent back on the curve since it's usually lands that get exchanged.

If you can play a first-turn creature and just keep your mana tapped, they have a very hard time playing anything.

The other option that I used early on (when I didn't have artifact mana) is just to run enchantment removal to break it.

[zeus-online]

I didn't say that they where tough, just damn annoying, i seriosly hate that card.

The best way to beat those dungeons is to do something ridiculosly broken....Which is pretty much the best answer to anything in that particular game.

/Zeus

[Harlequin]

I've had a card get stuck in my deck before.  It happened after I fought one of the random guys and he was like "your so cool you start with a white knight in play next game!"  A few games later I noticed that I had a random white knight in my deck.  When I went into the editor is wasn't in my deck list.  So I figgured everything was ok.  I went along a few game latter again I drew a random white knight.  So I went into the deck editor and he wasn't in my list.  What I ended up doing was adding a white knight to my deck and then saying "remove all cards by color: white"
... I haven't seen him sinse.... yet....

[zeus-online]

What? you had a champion of light, who came to your rescue when you needed him the most, and you removed him from your deck for it? Shame on you!  :lol:

/Zeus

[nataz]

@ nova

You can just go re-take the cities if you want to stop the spell. You can re-take them at a much faster rate then they can capture more, at least thats been my experience.
 

[OfficeShredder]

I don't actually try to stop them from beseiging cities, since I always am 10 seconds too slow when I get there 

[+t]

The city thing is the reason I always start with white.  The white spell is such technology.

[President Skroob]

The city thing is the reason I always start with white.  The white spell is such technology.

Quite so.

White jewels are the only jewels I find worth anything. The blue one gets useful in the late game when you just don't want to cross the entire worldmap, but I think that the black, green, and red one are just pretty unnecessary, black and red especially.


EDIT: Removed a random crazy character that my Websense filter inserted

[Mr. Nightmare]

Green is good when you run out of blue.

[Matt]

Power Struggle is the reason to own REBs.

[OfficeShredder]

I've only used the green one, and that was at the end of the game when I was too lazy to actually play opponents, so I just ran away  :lol:

[Hi-Val]

13nova, some keys to not losing to the Spell of Dominion are starting White because its World Magic is the best, and getting the Ring of Whatever that requires them to have 5 mana taps.

What color do you start in, by the way? I always start in White-- Mesa Pegasus, Divine +3+3, STP, Serra Angel being uncommon and pikemen are all reasons why that color is strong. The second-best starting color, I think, is blue, because you get Zephyr Falcon and Giant Tortoise, and with those  you can usually stall the board until you Unstable Mutation your flier. The starting guys have between 6-10 life so it's pretty easy, all things considered. You'd never see me start on Red or Green though and Black is only strong on account of Will o the Wisp and Unholy Strength in the beginning.

[JeremM]

Has anyone had any luck installing this under Linux via Wine?  I tried it last night (running the u.exe command found in Setup.bat), but it ran for ~10 minutes before I Ctrl-C'ed it due to the searing air blowing out the fans.

[OfficeShredder]

13nova, some keys to not losing to the Spell of Dominion are starting White because its World Magic is the best, and getting the Ring of Whatever that requires them to have 5 mana taps.

What color do you start in, by the way? I always start in White-- Mesa Pegasus, Divine +3+3, STP, Serra Angel being uncommon and pikemen are all reasons why that color is strong. The second-best starting color, I think, is blue, because you get Zephyr Falcon and Giant Tortoise, and with those  you can usually stall the board until you Unstable Mutation your flier. The starting guys have between 6-10 life so it's pretty easy, all things considered. You'd never see me start on Red or Green though and Black is only strong on account of Will o the Wisp and Unholy Strength in the beginning.

Blue is strong because it's easy to slip power into it once you start getting them.... the other colors you need to splash to put in time walk, or ancestral recall.  Also, 4x psionic blast is absolutely devastating.

[President Skroob]

Every time I start as Blue my deck is simply wretched. A four color deck with basic lands, and not enough lands at that (5 red cards with a single Mountain? wtf mate?), is just bad mojo.

If I went through on Wizard difficulty, though, I would probably take some incarnation of UB Control, but every time I try I get ticked off at the beginning because the deck starts so lousy.

[OfficeShredder]

Every time I start as Blue my deck is simply wretched. A four color deck with basic lands, and not enough lands at that (5 red cards with a single Mountain? wtf mate?), is just bad mojo.

If I went through on Wizard difficulty, though, I would probably take some incarnation of UB Control, but every time I try I get ticked off at the beginning because the deck starts so lousy.

4 colors isn't because it's blue, it's because it's the highest difficulty (I think)

[President Skroob]

Every time I start as Blue my deck is simply wretched. A four color deck with basic lands, and not enough lands at that (5 red cards with a single Mountain? wtf mate?), is just bad mojo.

If I went through on Wizard difficulty, though, I would probably take some incarnation of UB Control, but every time I try I get ticked off at the beginning because the deck starts so lousy.

4 colors isn't because it's blue, it's because it's the highest difficulty (I think)

You may be right. How lame.

[+t]

Yea, getting starting decks with four colors is the suck.  I ussually start the game on the second or third highest difficulty reason because of this.

[Illissius]

Has anyone had any luck installing this under Linux via Wine?  I tried it last night (running the u.exe command found in Setup.bat), but it ran for ~10 minutes before I Ctrl-C'ed it due to the searing air blowing out the fans.

There's no way I know of to extract UHARC under Linux, and believe me I looked. (Trying with wine yielded the same result). So I did it in vmware, then moved it back, to try running the game itself under wine. The first thing it did was segfault. So I play it in vmware, as well. (Which is probably faster than most computers of its time, so it's not that bad. Duelling is a bit laggy, though, but I can't tell what causes it -- vmware, Windows 2000, or the game itself.)

Every time I start as Blue my deck is simply wretched. A four color deck with basic lands, and not enough lands at that (5 red cards with a single Mountain? wtf mate?), is just bad mojo.

If I went through on Wizard difficulty, though, I would probably take some incarnation of UB Control, but every time I try I get ticked off at the beginning because the deck starts so lousy.

Mine was five, I think, but I got rid of two of them at the first settlement I encountered (before I tried duelling with it). It doesn't take that long to morph it into something respectable.

I also share the fate of having Wizards always attack whichever city is at the other end of the world from me, and then conquering it as soon as I reach the neighbouring village. It's frustrating as hell. Need to get some of those white gems. Anyone know how Shandalar tracks the passing of time? I assume it passes while walking around -- how about staying in place, duelling, or entering a settlement or dungeon?

[OfficeShredder]

I just tried to play a game on wizard difficulty.... I started off with a five color deck, but only had four types of basic lands.  A sea serpent with two islands for my blue splash, and eight white cards with no plains.  Thanks

[Harlequin]

Is it worth buying the cards from the towns, just to get thier inventory down?  Like do they ever restock with better cards.  right now I haven't bought a card from a town in ages ... because they always have tons of trash.

I got the global "you can buy better cards" thing.  and now the shops are carring about 5-6 cards.   

[JeremM]

There's no way I know of to extract UHARC under Linux, and believe me I looked. (Trying with wine yielded the same result). So I did it in vmware, then moved it back, to try running the game itself under wine. The first thing it did was segfault. So I play it in vmware, as well. (Which is probably faster than most computers of its time, so it's not that bad. Duelling is a bit laggy, though, but I can't tell what causes it -- vmware, Windows 2000, or the game itself.)

Thanks!  I'm emerging VMWare right now, and will give Shandalar a shot under it later tonight.

[DJ Catchem]

No matter how many times I try to download this, I get the error screen.  Super frustrating.

[Mr. Nightmare]

I just tried to play a game on wizard difficulty.... I started off with a five color deck, but only had four types of basic lands.  A sea serpent with two islands for my blue splash, and eight white cards with no plains.  Thanks

I started with the same deck this afternoon.  Within ten minutes I was mono-black, and had found 2 moxes and 2 demonic tutors.  Now I've added 3 Workshops to the arsenal.

[emidln]

I find mono-black is the easiest to build due to the ease of getting the Contract from Below early. Dark Rit, Contract from Below, Black Knight, Hypnotic Specter, Strip Mine, Mishra's Factory, Erg Raiders, Unholy Strength, Juggernauts, Paralyze, and Swamps early. That will actually beat most of the game, but it's easy to turn into Shop aggro as you get shops, Su-Chi, Trikes, and power.

Edit: Paralyze is easily the best removal spell available in the game.

[President Skroob]

I ended up not liking Paralyze very much. It's useful early on, but if you critically want to stop something, it's probably not going to do the trick. I switched these to Terror, then decided that Oubliette was my best choice. I thought I made the right choice.

Paralyze makes the computer tap out every turn and not play any additional threats, but it doesn't actually stop the threat you cast it on.