MtG: Some bugs and strange AI decisions

[Torsten John]

Wheww, after beating all of the five wizards I finally had the chance
to keep the evil planeswalker Arzakon(sp) from entering the plane of
Shandalar for the next few centuries, or so. (It was something like 1560
+ 10 years per damage done to him...)
After bringing him down to 254 life (he started at 300) I finally had to
yield to his 2 Triskelions. (My red-green Channelball*-Vise-Deck had a
very bad draw :-(

*Yes, I know it´s cheesy, but this is about survival of an entire plane
with beautiful villages bla bla bla. BTW, keep dueling against those Mind
Stealers with Mind Control because they will duplicate any card of your
collection (well at least 8 out of 13 times) and it never
hurts to have 4 Black Loti or 3 Wheel of Fortunes...

After the duel came a very short animation sequence followed by the final
screen with these words:

You have protected the plane of Shandalar for the next 0 years.
The people rejoice!
Life is good!

Well, and I thought I was bad at math ;-)

Some more bugs or quirks:

1. Never ever let your collection get up to 500 cards!!! If you do so and
after that acquire at least one more card, you get a GPF every time you
enter the Edit/Sell Screen. You have to back up to an earlier saved game.

2. If you leave a dungeon before you found all the cool OOPs it had to
offer, you never get the chance to try again. The dungeon just vanishes
from the plane of Shandalar...

3. I had a minor problem with the status screen: it ignored every single
duel after the first 42 and never updated my "kill" statistics.

Strange AI:

1. Casts Instill Energy on my tapped Shanodin Dryads (the only creature
in play) and after that actives it to untap my Dryads. Well, thanks.

2. My Black Knight attacks, he activates his Mishras Factory and blocks.
But he doesn´t pump his Assembly Worker and so the Factory is toast.

3. My lonely Hill Giant is the only creature in play. The AI has some
suicidal tendencies and casts a Holy Strength on my Giant, making it
bolt-proof.

4. In his main phase he casts two Spirit Shackles, but both on my Vampire
Bats and not a single one on my Bog Imp. (I only have these two
creatures in play.)

5. Without any threat (Black Vise, Discarding, or such) he casts a
Psychic Venom on a land of mine, but interrupts (and counters) it with
his Spell Blast.

6. He is down to four lives. I attack with a Yotian Soldier and have no
usable mana. He blocks with his last creature, a Time Elemental!!,
practically committing suicide.

7. More on suicide: he´s down to 2 and lays down a land with Ankh of
Mishra in play.

8. He summons a Ball Lightning. I only have a tiny Vampire Bat in play
and no black mana to pump. But he doesn´t attack!

9. Well, o.k., let´s stop here (have I mentioned the Drain Life for zero
without any threat?) before this get´s out of hand.

Despite these (minor) problems I still like the game, even if it is quite
slow (P133, 64MB, 4MB Mill.) and only with the basic set. I hope to see a
patch soon.

Keep on dueling

Torsten John
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