So...Azors Gateway's Trap of the Sun

2

Comments

  • IM_CARLOS
    IM_CARLOS Posts: 640 Critical Contributor
    Or take a N3 cycling deck and win on turn 4.
  • Brakkis
    Brakkis Posts: 777 Critical Contributor
    edited March 2018
    Thuran said:
    I disagree, i like that the encounter has a fixed timer, and that you don't have endless time.

    The encounter is simple; don't let him get blesses or you die.

    Nothing wrong with that really, there are lot of ways to easily avoid it.

    If you manage to get out starfield+intervention you can laugh hard

    By force is a card, rivers rebuke, hour of revelation, demolish, plenty of cood options, or you can cycle.

    Hey, sunmare makes all supports cost extra mana too, or supreme splendor also stops him.

    Its meant to be approached differently than a normal fight, and once you do it gets easy as hell.



    I love when you state that your deck is 60% focused on support removal and someone responds with "Bring support removal". When 6 of the 10 cards in your deck are directly centered around removing supports, and you can still lose to a cascade of supports by Turn 2 - and not due to the supports themselves mind you, but because those supports grant the AI a single ability at the start of Turn 3 that instantly kills you - that's poor design and it's a lack of balance.

    Just because something can be beat, does not mean it's well designed.

    IM_CARLOS said:
    Or take a N3 cycling deck and win on turn 4.
    For the love of everything good, stop using cycling as a metric. Cycling can beat the entire game because the AI has no answer to it. It is not something to be measured by in terms of how properly designed a given node is.
  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,731 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think they should keep the Zendikar's Roil glitch active just for this event :D
  • IM_CARLOS
    IM_CARLOS Posts: 640 Critical Contributor
    IM_CARLOS said:
    Or take a N3 cycling deck and win on turn 4.
    For the love of everything good, stop using cycling as a metric. Cycling can beat the entire game because the AI has no answer to it. It is not something to be measured by in terms of how properly designed a given node is.
    You are right on this node. But if I want to solve a problem I use a proper tool. And if I have a 'swiss army knife', why  don-'t use it. Okay for fun, ...


    As an Option I think a Garruk-Deck centered around Ghalta (and no other creature), Ucage Menagerie, Elemental Bond, Path of Discovery and rampage could work well. Ramp is very effective against supports and 200+ hp are no problem with a hand full of Ghalta's.

  • DBJones
    DBJones Posts: 803 Critical Contributor
    Prevent Damage (Gideon's Intervention and Haze of Pollen both work) will save you from this ability. Admittedly, Haze is best in a cycling deck, but it's still an extra chance to escape. Also, 9 loyalty is way too cheap for a potential instant win, with how easy it is for the AI to set up with one or two cascades.
  • ArielSira
    ArielSira Posts: 520 Critical Contributor
    I've played this match 3 or 4 times and only won once. Even with a Samut supportkilling focussed deck (Manglehorns which are killed right away, By Force, Demolish etc) it only takes him one solid turn to go from 5 to 10 and gain the Blessing of Valuetown.

    That, plus him packing so so SO many killcards, makes it the most annoying match in my view.

    Cycling drakes would be quite useless (though I didnt think of Pollen yet, cheers), hexproof is useless, don't have Starfield...anyone else got a solid idea?
  • TheExaminer
    TheExaminer Posts: 94 Match Maker
    Brakkis said:
    Thuran said:
    I disagree, i like that the encounter has a fixed timer, and that you don't have endless time.

    The encounter is simple; don't let him get blesses or you die.

    Nothing wrong with that really, there are lot of ways to easily avoid it.

    If you manage to get out starfield+intervention you can laugh hard

    By force is a card, rivers rebuke, hour of revelation, demolish, plenty of cood options, or you can cycle.

    Hey, sunmare makes all supports cost extra mana too, or supreme splendor also stops him.

    Its meant to be approached differently than a normal fight, and once you do it gets easy as hell.



    I love when you state that your deck is 60% focused on support removal and someone responds with "Bring support removal". When 6 of the 10 cards in your deck are directly centered around removing supports, and you can still lose to a cascade of supports by Turn 2 - and not due to the supports themselves mind you, but because those supports grant the AI a single ability at the start of Turn 3 that instantly kills you - that's poor design and it's a lack of balance.

    Just because something can be beat, does not mean it's well designed.

    IM_CARLOS said:
    Or take a N3 cycling deck and win on turn 4.
    For the love of everything good, stop using cycling as a metric. Cycling can beat the entire game because the AI has no answer to it. It is not something to be measured by in terms of how properly designed a given node is.
    I almost lost to Azor with cycling, because he had that vampire dude, which is a great answer to cycling. Growing for every Faith activation is very hard to beat, and it definitely took me a couple Floodwaters to survive.

  • Mainloop25
    Mainloop25 Posts: 1,959 Chairperson of the Boards
    The loyalty for that ability should be bumped up to 30, that would make it more in line with another boss battle with a "timer", Uncage the menagerie. Still would be formidable, but much less susceptible to bad luck. 
  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,731 Chairperson of the Boards
    It seems quite susceptible to beat-face.  So far I've won every match against it without really having to really panic (aside from originally reading the ability game 1).  My advice: Spend less time worrying about the opponent collecting the pieces it needs for its Death Star Planet-Destroyer and more about just beating it.  The cascades weren't too bad during each of my matches, I may not be as lucky in future battles tho.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    FindingHeart8 said:
    It seems quite susceptible to beat-face.  So far I've won every match against it without really having to really panic (aside from originally reading the ability game 1).  My advice: Spend less time worrying about the opponent collecting the pieces it needs for its Death Star Planet-Destroyer and more about just beating it.  The cascades weren't too bad during each of my matches, I may not be as lucky in future battles tho.
    I realized the same thing, went full Samut Blitz and have won 2 out of 3 (with the 1 loss coming with it having 10 health left).  Kill the supports when you can, but the key is to not let it take too long
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mainloop25 said:
    The loyalty for that ability should be bumped up to 30, that would make it more in line with another boss battle with a "timer", Uncage the menagerie. Still would be formidable, but much less susceptible to bad luck. 
    30 is a bit too much.  12 or 15 is probably sufficient
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
    It should be >10 turns, it's still an interesting challenge. His death abilitiy is too cheap though.

    I did it in 46 turns with Vraska, Manglehorn, gemchangers and still some support destruction, I'd love a count on City Blessing, I beat he was on 9 sometimes, but I got through.
  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,731 Chairperson of the Boards
    13 Turns...we'll pretend the gate actually opens to Innistrad :D
  • Quantius
    Quantius Posts: 228 Tile Toppler
    44 turns . . . and I still lost. It killed my creatures on every single turn and then on turn 43 from a wiped board via Great Aurora, just dumped the world out, drew cards and kept going until it had City Blessing. Turn 44, dead.

    I have no clue how people are keeping creatures on board. Vona's Vona's Vona's Vona's Bounce Bounce Vona's Vona's. Seriously 40 turns of that.

  • Mainloop25
    Mainloop25 Posts: 1,959 Chairperson of the Boards
    Quantius said:
    44 turns . . . and I still lost. It killed my creatures on every single turn and then on turn 43 from a wiped board via Great Aurora, just dumped the world out, drew cards and kept going until it had City Blessing. Turn 44, dead.

    I have no clue how people are keeping creatures on board. Vona's Vona's Vona's Vona's Bounce Bounce Vona's Vona's. Seriously 40 turns of that.


    Ive been going creatureless since my first battle against it.
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    For me, my best method so far is using Samut as my planeswalker and running Demolish, Dissenter's Deliverance, Violent Impact, and By Force in the deck. This really keeps down the number of supports it'll have in play and keep the city's blessing from going off.

    On top of that, the only creature it will summon is a 0/7 defender, and Samut's second ability to give afflict to your creatures will help keep the damage going even if that gets summoned. Sandwurm Convergence helps a lot here too since it loves to bounce and blow up your creatures.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    Quantius said:
    44 turns . . . and I still lost. It killed my creatures on every single turn and then on turn 43 from a wiped board via Great Aurora, just dumped the world out, drew cards and kept going until it had City Blessing. Turn 44, dead.

    I have no clue how people are keeping creatures on board. Vona's Vona's Vona's Vona's Bounce Bounce Vona's Vona's. Seriously 40 turns of that.

    Use Hexproof.  Gaia's Revenge is the best, but there are a couple of uncommon options that work too
  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mburn7 said:
    Quantius said:
    44 turns . . . and I still lost. It killed my creatures on every single turn and then on turn 43 from a wiped board via Great Aurora, just dumped the world out, drew cards and kept going until it had City Blessing. Turn 44, dead.

    I have no clue how people are keeping creatures on board. Vona's Vona's Vona's Vona's Bounce Bounce Vona's Vona's. Seriously 40 turns of that.

    Use Hexproof.  Gaia's Revenge is the best, but there are a couple of uncommon options that work too
    Doesn't help with Vona's Hunger, but the rest of the removal is targeted, so I would agree. Hexproof would work.
  • ArielSira
    ArielSira Posts: 520 Critical Contributor
    Hexproof is useless against his "destroy the first creature" card.
  • Azerack
    Azerack Posts: 501 Critical Contributor
    I got through this one, the first time, with a Dovin cycling deck. Just enough support destroying to keep it from getting the "Thumb's up" from Orazca while I built up drakes aplenty. This is one of the few I didn't mind not getting the "less than X hps" objective, but then I rarely try for those, anyway. 

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