Trug: The One Man Magi-pile

I've been playing recently with a deck that has Trug first. "Trug first?" you say skeptically, "But that's crazy. Your chances of getting energy adding stuff on the first draw is low. Better to play him second and be sure of nixing a magi. You're a lunatic mitch, and I hate you."

Well, in response to these fine, convincing arguments, I say- Simple-

Don't detonate Trug.

I'll pause as you fall out of your chair, out the window of your 5th story apartment and into traffic, recieve medical attention/ voodoo raise from dead rituals, and then come back to your computer.

You don't have to detonate Trug right away. He has good calls- arboll and giant parmalag. Also he calls hidden door. So just play hidden door, use it to get amulet of ombor and strag's ring (if you didn't draw them). Then amulet gets gate, which you can use to call a parmalag or urhail and then burrow it. You have your wedge down now. If you play it right, you can defeat magi with Trug this way. The most important thing for underneath to do is get a wedge down early and Trug can do that right off the bat. Defeat 2 magi, then play focus, and then you can detonate on the turn after to win the game. Focus only says "can't play CARDS", don't say nothin bouts powers (spelling in tribute to Doug).

I've won at least three games this way. In the other games Trug defeated at least one magi, sometimes two.

But really, who needs other magi? Trug can take all three opposing magi by himself. Bring em on!



(Mitch Note-)

SOME people have suggested that Trug isn't worth it because he has only 14 energy or 9 if he goes first. This is a bit of a disadvantage i suppose. But not many people have a first turn answer for a 5 energy burrowed creature. I wouldn't suggest that this strategy is invincible, but it sure is fun. Smarter players will most of the tiem be able to catch trug early. But then again, most smart players can usually get around underneath anyway. All I'm saying is I was surprised at how effective leading with Trug actually was. There aren't many other underneath magi that can call everythign that he does right away.

Besides, I find that with underneath, the cards are more important than the energy. Undy is one of the best regions for conserving it, after all.

Keeper's Quest enters playtesting

Keeper's Quest, is a series of 4 promotional cards based on the images from the MND Puzzle game Keeper's Quest. The cards are now available for playtesting on CCG Workshop's gEngine. The cards were designed by the players in a series of competitions entitled "Keeper's Question" found at the Keeper's Quest Custom Card Forum.

Links:
CCG Workshop: http://www.ccgworkshop.com
Novelty's Custom Cards: http://www.dukenostalgia.com/mnd/index.htm
Keeper's Quest Custom Card Forum: http://elitrix.net/noveltycustoms/viewforum.php?f=21

What is Double Jeopardy?

Most people will remember Alex on Jeopardy, the game show where you have to guess the question to the answers in a diverse number of categories. Double Jeopardy is one of their special squares and that is now also the name for my next custom promo expansion.

A bit of history - Malovis has been asking for an Arderial/Orothe magi for a while now and I did promise him one if I did find the art. I was going through more of Whyrl's artwork when I came across a number of images with two magi. Some of them I've split off - Ardit and Darunia, for example. Those were hard to do. It's easier to actually keep the images as one, which was the idea for the birth of Double Jeopardy.

Why is it called Double Jeopardy? Firstly, they are all dual-magi cards, as explained above. Secondly, as I was working through the images, the one point that stuck out was that each of them featured magi from two regions, thus they were going to be dual-region as well. Dual-region dual-magi? Sounds bad, in fact it migh jeopardize the whole game if I added them as custom cards, but it's worth a shot, if only to showcase the artwork. I have no idea if these cards will actually be banned on gEngine after they are made, banned from tournament play that is, but that's one bridge I'll cross when I get there.

It's also a promo expansion - a small expansion of less than 20 cards, although how many cards will finally make it into this expansion, I have no idea at this point in time.

Here's probably my favourite card so far from the set, artwise:





Dark Twins, move over, the Stuff Twins are here. I hope that this will end up to be a good magi (together with Gorb or Stuffy Gorb) to harness the diverse powers of the Stuff cards (Green, Black, Orange, Brown, Right, Hot, Cool, Amulet and Herd). The text though, will be decided as a competition by the MND public as part of the Double Jeopardy contest, running over the next few months, starting in July at Novelty's Custom Cards.


People are still a bit confused about the custom cards vs the RP cards, so let me clarify a bit here.

The RP cards were made for a different game, Insiider Role-Playing, which has a different set of rules from the card game. There are currently 3 expansions for those - eXodus, Dreamstorm and Chimefall. I've been templating the eXodus RP cards and showing them here and I expect to start on Dreamstorm soon. Note that those cards are not design for the card game and as such will not be used with the current text in the CCG.

However, some of the cards, particularly those with better artwork, will be included in the custom CCG expansion Exodus Flight. Which of the cards haven't been worked out yet. All the cards will get new text that is balanced and is suitable for the CCG. Further infomation can be viewed at the Custom Cards main site.

Paradwyn Control

I was going to write about Paradwyn Control, and I still will- but the whole magi decline thing is depressing. Every month Nov gets all gloomy and says "if" there's a tourney next month- we'll do this.

But this month we're definitely kind of lagging. We only have like 5 people signed up for the tourney so far. It would be nice if some more of the insiider people would come down to gengine and play. It's possible that magi might just have a lull on the engine for a while, as it frequently does since 2i is in torpor. But even so, it makes me wonder if this will be it for magi for a long time. And that would be too bad, since I really think a lot of the new custom cards allow for some interesting new combinations in Magi.

And one of those combinations, is a much more powerful Paradwyn control. (How do you like that transition? And who says a degree in English is useless? Haha) I was playing a RomZombie Paradwyn deck the other day with a mid-level underneath deck (is there really any other kind?) and he basically stomped me. It made me realize a few things.

Firstly, I feel like Paradwyn got overlooked for a lot of eratta, because there are a lot of cards that are disproportionately good. For starters, Ninx is a goddess. And I don't mean her appearance. (Sorry ultradoug and others, I'm just not attracted to pixel clusters). She has 6 energize, which not many Paradwyn magi do, calls weave mat, and has arguably one of the best magi powers in the game. Let's face it,Getting rid of that last bit of energy on magi after you've "defeated" their creatures is hard. And Ninx can do it for FREE.

EVERY TURN. Plus you can just keep giving her back energy with n'kala after stare down. I also learned that a little card called "sneak attack' makes burrow completely useless. Paradwyn also has the spell that lets you take of an average of triple the energy you spent on it from magi (spirit drain) with no upper limit, and the cheapest relic killer in the game (spell pulse), not to mention the fact that it's also the only spell that kills other spells besides beam.

Ok, enough of cards I missed before. This is why I think Paradwyn control has the potential to start vying with even oro/ardy decks. Paradwyn is really the only other region besides orothe that can do control well. Control wins so much because it's the most cost effectice way to win games. If your opponent can't put cards on the board the way he wants to on his turn, he loses. And the more you make him think about what could happen when he plays such and such a card, the more likely he is to make a mistake. Upper level magi games are all about making your long term plan work, and messing up your opponent's. And i'm starting to worry about the way Paradwyn is moving in that regard.

Paradwyn control is different than orothe, since it's more about reaction your cards can have, than preventing cards from coming into play. Poison balloo roots that can keep going off from bahza type stuff can really mess up any plan you have with creatures. Bloom stare down can do that a lot too.

ANd now add to that the new stalked magi construction, and your opponent will really have to second guess himself before playing anything. With extoic ploomb, second shadow, loaded dice, baloo roots, bahza pendants, bloom and ninx, I can imagine a time when Paradwyn can be worse than orothe for control should more reaction/magi stalking constructions be added.