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

mrixl2520

Okay, I will dial back my statement a bit. I was able to beat him on a second pass with a focused anti-support deck (Manglehorn + Siren's Ruse = awesome). I was able to knock out Greg's supports fairly easily, so they never got to Ascend. As a bonus, Greg will activate the 999 damage ability without The Sun's Blessing, simply burning all of its loyalty.

I feel like i got lucky on the second try. The turn 2 cascade threat can definitely hose you. I still think instant lose affects are bad design, even when stapled to easily defeated opponents. 

Kinesia

Maybe there need to be upper limits on mana gain in a turn regardless of cascades?

10 of each colour and 10 loyalty max per turn is still heaps and heaps but it might put the brakes on things slightly.
(probably base numbers, so Koth could get 19 red max)

Maybe that's still too high, but it's a lot better than the "50 blue and 100 green and 20 loyalty" numbers that I see currently.

wereotter

mrixl2520 said:

Okay, I will dial back my statement a bit. I was able to beat him on a second pass with a focused anti-support deck (Manglehorn + Siren's Ruse = awesome). I was able to knock out Greg's supports fairly easily, so they never got to Ascend. As a bonus, Greg will activate the 999 damage ability without The Sun's Blessing, simply burning all of its loyalty.

I feel like i got lucky on the second try. The turn 2 cascade threat can definitely hose you. I still think instant lose affects are bad design, even when stapled to easily defeated opponents. 

The node has two loyalty abilities. One if it has the city’s blessing, and one for if it doesn’t. It will use whichever one it can. 

Also thanks for reminding me Manglehorn exists! Now I just need to remember to use it next time the event runs.... Conclave Naturalists would possibly be a good inclusion too.

Kinesia

I was using manglehorn, Siren's Ruse is a good idea, but I was using Vraska for the builtin. Gemchangers can know out his treasures sometimes, her 1st can kill his biggest and then Manglehorn and the cycling green support killer covered others. Conclave Naturalists would be good too though, it's not like I needed specific other creatures for things.

I haven't honestly been looking for a way to win fast as well, though maybe Path to Roil is an idea since it fits in with the deck naturally.

mrixl2520

I also included Sword of the Animist (for board clearing & ramp) and... Hazepollen. I never needed to cast it in the games I boarded it in though. I kinda wanted to let Greg get powered up just to prevent the damage. 

Thuran

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.aI DONT run 60% support removal, I run ONE support removal card, and a good deck built around it.

Those were suggestions I personally just run only demolish as support removal and its more than enough to easily deal with anything.

Why? Because I got ramp spells and draw spells that help chain my support removal and my kill conditions. Days undoing, into desert of the mindful, demolish, or pull From tomorrow l.

Its not a 60% removal, its a finely tuned machine

ILikePancakes

Quantius said:

44 turns w2. . . 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.

Bolas 2nd ability, plus stir the sands and whatever that Liliana support is called summoning a 6/6 plus zombie buff and creatures with haste (especially that red one from ixalan that gets x/x buff when attacking from first other creature...I cant remember names today) just keep replenishing creatures and destroying/bouncing supports. I crafted goggles a couple weeks ago and it's a *huge* help.

FindingHeart8

Alright, I'm reevaluating my position on this and joining the angry mob of Azor's Gateway.  With cascade, the AI was able to activate his 2nd ability on me on turn...4.

A 200+ life boss that can deal 999 damage on turn 4.

That's just wrong.

Brakkis

Another viable method of nerfing this cascade into instant death ability is this - Treasure tokens don't count towards City's Blessing.

Though that would probably cause people to flip out.

Quantius

Well, I gave in and threw together a newbie's cycling deck (don't have the power cards, but I did have new perspectives) and I beat it. Well, can't say I'm shocked. The game is definitely much easier when you get to ignore everything and just win.

Still kinda sucks that I lost out on all those ribbons, 7 hour timer between attempts put a damper on things to be sure.

Quantius

Well, I gave in and threw together a newbie's cycling deck (don't have the power cards, but I did have new perspectives) and I beat it. Well, can't say I'm shocked. The game is definitely much easier when you get to ignore everything and just win.

Still kinda sucks that I lost out on all those ribbons, 7 hour timer between attempts put a damper on things to be sure.

FindingHeart8

FindingHeart8 said:

Alright, I'm reevaluating my position on this and joining the angry mob of Azor's Gateway.  With cascade, the AI was able to activate his 2nd ability on me on turn...4.

A 200+ life boss that can deal 999 damage on turn 4.

That's just wrong.

So I got really angry, and brought out my most OP non-cycling deck and came back and beat Azor's Gatway on turn 3.  Feeling a little better, but fear of dying on turn 4 shouldn't have to be a worry for a coalition event.  Even versus the 'ol Omniloop decks (that usually kick off and destroy you on turn 4 or 5) the AI you were facing had their life capped at 130 tops if it was Bolas, and ~100 if it was Kiora.

Azor's Gateway is double that HP and can just avoid bad-luck with card draw because the instant kill is one of its abilities.

arNero

Whoever had that idea for 999 damage needs to be fed to the sharks.

Can't they be at least reasonable like HoD Uncage the Menagerie? That 30-cost ability can spell doom to unprepared players, but at least 30 loyalty is not very easy to amasss quickly, so at least you have a headstart, on top of still allowing you to do a counterplay (Gideon's Defeat, Cast Out, etc)

But this? THIS? Whoever had that idea for 999 damage needs to be fed to the sharks.

madwren

Something else that's extremely silly is that when your pw takes 999 damage, the pw then has to regen that amount. I mean, I just used a potion, but it was funny that literally half a day later, my PW was still at 0 health.

Mburn7

madwren said:

Something else that's extremely silly is that when your pw takes 999 damage, the pw then has to regen that amount. I mean, I just used a potion, but it was funny that literally half a day later, my PW was still at 0 health.

As someone who just used a potion, I didn't realize this.  Thats hilarious, and strangely appropriate