Mana Maze Solitaire: Mighty Morphin'
Casual
SCORE: 6 | 3 COMMENTS | 1173 VIEWS
Preliminary Testing —April 19, 2017
Life got in the way and I left this deck to rot for far too long. Let me correct this transgression with some of what I've learned over the past week-or-so of testing.
First up:
-Ruthless Ripper
+Gathan Raiders
I thought I might have to make a change like this. Ruthless Ripper is just too Ruthless. Multiple promising games have been cut short by this instant death and there is far from enough lifegain to make up for it. The Raiders are mostly a placeholder. They have a bit of interaction with the two(?) bounce effects in the deck, but are otherwise awfully boring.
Second, this deck is currently quite "swingy". So far most of my games have either stalled out very quickly or I've steam rolled through every stack without a whole lot of middle-ground. This is definitely troubling, and I fear it's a product of the morph abilities as a whole. Effects I thought would be only fairly strong or fairly challenging end up triggering constantly and defining the game. And that brings us to our first problem card:
Bonethorn Valesk has an odd bit of errata I didn't notice when first putting it in the deck. Despite the card having never been printed with the new text, the Valesk now triggers off ANY permanent being turned face up rather than just creatures. This means it turns nearly every move in the deck into a ping, and that is... far too good. I could just ignore the errata and only let creatures trigger the ability, but I'm not sure I can live with that solution. It'll remain in the deck for the time being, but suffice to say I have my eye on it.
DinoTsar415 says... #2
@ Gattison: I'd love to hear what idea your playing around with, assuming you aren't trying to keep it a secret.
In general, I think it's easiest to build one of these by starting with what you want the win-condition to be. It doesn't have to be something nearly as kitschy and thematic as this one, and if there isn't any one card or interaction that jumps out at you simply gunning to remove all (or as many) cards as possible is never a bad goal.
From there, I'll admit that it is a whole lot of Gatherer-searching and dredging up of old cards you saw once before you can get a good balance of positive and negative effects. For this deck specifically, I just got every card that could possibly fit the morph theme and put them in a big list. Then I shaved away anything useless, boring, or overpowered in a few rounds of revision before getting an interesting suite of additional effects and shipping it out the door.
If you'd like to know, I have quite a few ideas for other MMS decks that I either haven't found quite enough support for or don;t love enough to put the effort into brewing them. Maybe you'd like to try your hand at them. Things like:
A deck with two cards representing seperated lovers which you must get to be in play next to each other through bouncing, flickering, re-casting, recursion, etc.
A deck all about exploring a tomb with artifacts to collect. The more prize artifacts you get before running out of possible moves, the more points you got in that game. Obstacles include skeletons, traps, etc.
A deck in which Door to Nothingness is always considered in play, and if you ever generate 2 of each color mana you have to kill yourself with it. The deck would be filled with all kinds of mana producers and the goal would be to get rid of them without generating enough mana to kill yourself.
Alright, this comment has gone on more than long enough, so I'll end it here.
February 21, 2017 9:51 p.m.
Thanks for the advice! My idea so far was just the basic "remove all cards" format, but I like how the win-requirement of Mana Maze is so mutable that you can redefine how to win with each Mana Maze deck. I also wanted to keep it simple for now, and just start off with maybe a small (40-card) deck, and use the "square" or traditional solitaire layout.
I also had an idea for a lifelink kinda deck, where you start with 1-5 Life Points, the deck is full of lifelink and lifegain, and you have to tap creatures to make them attack yourself, while staying above 0 life until you clear the board. (But that's more of a theme/gimmick, and I like how your ideas have actual flavor to them. ...Maybe the flavor for the lifelink deck could be you're a planeswalker with a mortal enemy, but you infiltrated their organization and are now sabotaging their plans--hence why you have to make creatures attack yourself. ...Hmmm.)
Anyway, I'll try to get around to it soon, and I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, if you make any more solitaire decks, let me know and I'll link them in my list of lists. =)
Gattison says... #1
Hey, I noticed you built a 2nd solitaire deck, so I'm gonna add it to my list. =)
Also, I want to make a solitaire deck myself soon. I think I got a decent idea of how to go about it, but if you have any advice you think might help me get started, that'd be great!
February 21, 2017 6:15 p.m.