Part 15

Pay a man enough, and he'll walk barefoot into hell
(In this case, the price is Mind Twist.)

So, when we left off, I was getting ready to venture into the Ruins of Su-Chan in search of Mind Twist. This hellish dungeon both features power Struggle and also prohibits Instants, Interrupts, and Dark Ritual.

At first I thought I'd go with this deck:



Then I realized that with Power Struggle in play, there was no way I'd be allowed to keep the Urzatron. Power Struggle!!!

So I decided to tweak the Black deck instead to be able to work without Rituals. (Note that this deck has no lifegain. I wanted to prove it could be done.)



The ruins really didn't want to make it easy on me.



Look at all those fuckers!

Imagine this part as being filled with about 10,000 images of me being deeply frustrated that the damn thing keeps stealing all my black mana sources.

There was still never really any danger, since Power Struggle also makes it impossible for the computer to play many cards. If only I could mod the dungeon start cards...



Eventually, I claimed the Mind Twist! (If you really want a better idea of the frustration of this dungeon, go through a couple hours of your day forcing yourself to roll a 20 on a twenty-sided die before you can do any mundane and easy activity.)

Now, when you're down to just one Wizard, they basically send out sieges constantly, and I was out of white amulets. (This is why you shouldn't start killing wizards beyond the first or second until you're ready to kill them all.) So I changed the deck back to the dark ritual/contract/hippie/landkill monstrosity and tromped back to the blue castle while the Wizardess was attacking the last town she needed for dominion. Whew.

Basically, no one in the blue castle can win against this deck, because I'll destroy their lands, and they'll sacrifice the first two islands they get to untap Leviathan. (The AI always thinks sacrificing to Leviathan is a good idea, and does it ASAP.)





They each start with some creature in play, but I have four Paralyze and with all the contracts, I always draw one before I have to worry.

The blue wizard really likes Leviathan apparently, and can't figure out it will never attack.



No, I mean she really likes Leviathan.

I, on the other hand, like Hypnotic Specter.



It turns out my choice is wiser.



You know the end of Final Fantasy IX where  you beat the guy you thought was the big bad guy all game, and then some random UFO you've never heard of appears and says "hahaha I want to destroy the universe, face me" and is the last boss? Yeah, this guy is like that.  I have no idea where this dude came from, seriously. In any case, apparently we need to kill his ass so Shandalar can know peace. Sounds good.

He has a huge deck and a billion life, so decking is a concern. I bring in blue before the game (you get a last-minute deck edit) for Timetwisters and ridiculous power cards.



The game starts off according to plan:



His deck is really random.



I mostly see cards through discards, but it seems like he's playing a full set of Fourth Edition, plus some power. I haven't figured out how I want to change this guy's deck yet, but it definitely needs something.

A lot of Specters show up!



Unfortunately, in the process of arranging all those guys, I ante a Timetwister with Contract. The other is in the bottom six cards, I'm just waiting to draw it...

When he casts Wheel of Fortune, decking me. Fuuuuuck.



Like hell, 104 years fly past when you're being molested by giant slugs. We can do better than that.

Unfortunately there's no save point, so I need to rape my way through the blue castle again. Not pictured, because it is incapable of putting up a fight, just being a pain in my ass.

Also not pictured: I got up to him twice and mulliganed no-land hands into no-land hands. At that point I left for a while for the safety of my screen.

When I got back, I fought through the blue castle one last time. I decided to take Mind Twist out of the deck, as it was too slow to be worth casting (!!!).



This one got retarded in a hurry. Note the number of cards left in my deck.



Eventually I drew into the Timetwister and was able to keep going off without fear of decking.



There was a lot of specter beating and the occasional instance of me getting bored and casting another one/playing Contract. I like to think these are the ghosts of his countless victims returned to haunt him for his no doubt egregious crimes.



Note his graveyard. I wasn't kidding when I said his deck was awful!

Also, I cast Contract a lot that game.



Anyway, eventually he dies, as tends to happen to players without lands or cards in hand.

Because I actually killed him, I get a snazzy animation!









The statue of the evil (if unexpected) guy shatters, revealing a happy castle! Yay!

Ok, I've got a save from before the green wizard. I'm glad to go back and build some fun decks if there are any that people want to see in action, and maybe go at the last guy with a couple of worse builds if people want to see that.

I could just be done here, work on the modified decks, and play Galactic Civilizations II, which I just got. You all have the power. But in any case...