Magic The Gathering Dreamcast Edition FAQ and Strategy Guide Introduction ========= Ok, I am gonna give you the ho-down of how I beat the Dreamcast Version of the Magic The Gathering. I am sure you have many other ways to do it or say my way sucks. That is fine. Do as you like, and may you have fun doing so. I will get in a discussion of what colours work well well where at the end of this FAQ. First of all, I chose to play white, since I normally play white anyway and since it is the top option on the list of 5 colours you can play with. There are three basic deck types in Magic; combo, beat down and control. I will use these terms to help categorize the decks against you. Getting Started =========== Ok, first things first, you get a real basic 40 card deck, even worse than a starter pak because it is almost all commons and uncommons. You start off with a rather random and probably pretty sucky deck. In order to get more cards, you gotta play against someone. It really doesn't matter if you win or lose against that person but it you win, you better stuff than if you lost. One of the people you can play against is the inn-keeper which is option 4 at Magic Heart. He is easier to play against than the coloured teams. However, his hands are done at random so you don't know what you are going to be fighting or even what color you are fighting. I guess that is the disadvantage since you would probably want to go to Sanctuary since that is white and you will win white cards. (duh!) With the new cards you get you can upgrade your deck. At first, you will probably lose a lot of times but little by little you will get more cards to work with and you can build a functional deck. Most likely with this random assortment, you aren't going to be able to make any good combo decks, and it will be unlikely you will have the cards for any control decks either. What you probably will have is lots of common creatures with a few various spells, so you have most of a beat down deck. I was fortunate and got a pretty good white weenie deck. Lots of little guys no crusades or anything but it was good enough to swarm and beat down my first few opponents. Now if you really want good cards, you have to go to the other magic sectors and beat the bosses. Obviously, a person playing white will want to go to the white area to try his luck and hope to get some better cards (win or lose). White Sector - Sanctuary ================== What is needed to beat white with white? Good question. One is not to use "Crusade", or "Exile". Haha! The sectors are broken up into two front decks and the main boss will have two decks he will challenge you with. The choice of the front two dink boys are a "Soldier" (uses an "Animate Wall" deck) and a griffin (uses a "lock down "Millstone" deck). If you beat these two decks down, you get to go against the Archangel herself. She uses two decks, an Angel Deck (duh!) and a new improved "Millstone" deck. 1. White vs Animate Wall Combo --------------------------------------- a) If you choose soldier, you will be fighting a white "Animate Wall" deck. This is a combo deck which basically revolves around the 4 "Animate Wall", with 4 "Wall of Swords" and 4 "Sunweb" walls. The computer will use the walls for defense and then when you are not expecting it, he will animate them and smack you. Also note that both "Wall Of Swords" and the "Sunweb" are both flying too. I used two methods to beat this deck. You can either incapacitate the animated walls using "Pacifism" or "Disenchant" the "Animate Wall" spells. Once you have knocked out 4 of the "Animate Wall" then the rest of the deck is a push over. The second way I did it, is to use a cheap weenie deck full of 1/1's and 2/2's with power up spells like "Divine Transformation" (+3/+3) and "Hero's Resolve" (+1/+5) so they will survive getting hit by the walls. 2. White vs Millstone/Winter Orb Combo ------------------------------------------------ b) If you choose the Griffin, you will be fighting a type of control deck called, a "Millstone" deck. It uses, a "Winter Orb" to freeze up your mana and then he will use artifact mana to Millstone your library away. A quick low casting cost weenie deck should do it since this deck is slow. It also helps to have a large library so you can survive for a while even though you are getting milled. Your limit is 80 cards. This is the toned down version of this deck. Future versions you will see, will be more efficent, more creatures, and will have more "Armageddon", "Wrath Of God" and "Neveryal's Disk". 3. Beating the White Boss with White. -------------------------------------------- Ok. now that you beat up the two minions, you get to go against the big angel herself. She is using, of course, an angel deck. The big surprise is that it is not just one deck you face, you have to face another one afterwards. c) Angel decks are pretty similar in most respects. Angels are stinkingly huge and heavy casting cost. So you would figure he would get mana screwed and the deck wouldn't work. Ahhh.. We wish... The Dreamcast has two evil combos going in this deck which makes it really ugly. First it uses a "Thawing Glaciers" (1, tap : search library for basic land and put it in play, return glaciers back into your hand) to get all the mana it needs. Secondly, it has a new "D'avenant Angel" special card for the Dreamcast. It is a (4/4) flying angel that has a 1/4 chance each turn to return from the graveyard during your upkeep. She has 4 of these things so near the end of the game, she will have 4 of these things cycling in and out of the graveyard. So, the way to beat this is you gotta keep the angels in play and incapacitated. Easiest way is to "Pacify" or to "Spiritlink" them. The other way to fight this deck is to use a wall deck since white has lots of big flying walls. Since this deck uses the "Thawing Glaciers" you can also deck this guy out if you have a "Millstone" to help burn out his library. However, if you accidentally throw one of the "D'avenant Angels" into the graveyard, you are helping her... Oh did I forget? She has two Archangels (5/5 flying, doesn't tap when it attacks) as well to boot.... I would have to say this is one of the longer decks it took me to beat. b) The second deck the she has you fight is a rather slow lock down deck in blue and white. The combo uses lots of artifacts like "Winter Orb", "Millstone" and "Howling Mine" to burn out your library. He has lots of mana diamonds for artifact mana so he is prepared for the "Armageddon". He also is stocked on "Wrath of Gods" too. A fast low casting cost weenie deck should have no problem killing this deck. 2. Black - Moog ============= Depending on what you win, white can really go any direction it likes. Now because white normally has anti-black cards like the "Diamru Griffon" (sacrifice to bury black creature), it is only logical to build up on the anti black stuff and go against black. It also has anti-red cards but unfortunately those cards are rare so chances are you won't have won them before you get the easier to get black ones. Black has two types of sub-bosses : the soldier and the zombie. The soldier deck is a red-black pinger / direct damage deck and the zombie deck is a zombie deck (duh!). The Main Boss has two decks, they are both hand destruction decks. Step 1 : Going against the Pingers -------------------------------------- Ok, the first black deck is probably the easiest to get around once you figure out the combo and take care of it. Nice thing about combo type decks is that once you get rid of the combo, the rest of the deck should be easier. The deck consists of a lot of black guys who can deal damage to other creatures or players like the "Abysal Hunter" (tap to cause damage equal to the hunter's power) and "Hyloon Shaman" (minotaur pinger), and the "Reckless Shaman" (2/2 : deals one point of damage to target and deals one point of damage to itself). This is not so bad until he casts the "Death Pits of Rath" (creatures damaged this turn are buried at the end of the turn). He also has a few "Necrosavant" (5/5 : pay 5 to bring it out of the graveyard). He also has the special Dreamcast black card "Murgish Cemetery" (3b : discard a card from hand and put an x/x token into play where x is a random number between 0 and 6). So not only does he already have a bad pinging deck, he doesn't have to ping for the full damage to kill something, plus he has things that come back out of the graveyard and he has stuff that he can sacrifice. Yup, real ugly.... The easiest way again to take on this type of deck is quick weenies since nothing on his side flies. Use incapication spells like "pacify" and "spirit link" on the big guys. The use of "castle" and "crusade" will deal with the pinger problem, as well as having some healers handy do undo the pinger damage. Once you disenchant those two ugly black spells, then your guys can relax. Step 2 : Going against Zombies ----------------------------------- This is a fast classic example of a beat down deck! It is quick casting cost, with a ramp for more mana and more stronger creatures. The creatures support each other as well as a boss that gives all creatures bonuses. White normally has a soldier deck so black has a zombie deck. It only takes 3 black to do most of the zombies and 4 for some of the bigger things and of course 2 to do the "bad moon". This deck is real fast so get some quick weenies for protection. The other thing I noticed about this deck the monsters get big real fast and they regenerate so they are hard to kill. However, Black also needs a lot of mana to function (all those summons, and regeneration) so, the way I decided to use to fight this deck is by using an efficent weenie deck with a mana and creature lock down. Black also has the inability to fight enchantments or artifacts, so use this against them. "Meekstone" and "Kismet" with "Winter Orb" totally shut down this deck when he had a bad moon in play. Those "Scathe Zombies" (2/2) and the "Zombie Master" (3/2) are both useless when they attack or regenerate and tap. The "Kismet" helped later on, so they come into play tapped. If he has the "Bad Moon" in play, it makes it just that much bigger. Step 3 : Going Against Hand Destruction ---------------------------------------------- Ok, the big boss will try use a hand destruction deck on you. This is a type of control deck but it lacks some of the good support artifacts like the "Rack" since it doesn't do a good job damaging you. It has your normal "Abysal Spectre" (flying, knock card out of hand) creature, but other than that every thing else is sorceries like "Stupor" and "Agonizing Memories" to knock cards out of your hand. This guy also has the help of three "Neveryl's Disk" to clear the board. Other than that, it is pretty useless. To fight this deck, all you really need is a few good flyers or flying walls, couple of "Disenchants". I used the "Meekstone" and "Kismet" combo since that "Abysal Spectre" will tap and never untap if it attacks once. Step 4 : Going Against Hand Destruction Enhanced with Direct Damage --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The second deck the wizard has is a modifed version of the hand destruction deck. As I mentioned, the previous version has troubles dealing damage. So what better way to do damage but with red? He has added things like "Blaze" (do x damage), "Earthquake" (do x damage to all ground creatures and players), and "Pestilence" (do x damage to all creatures and players) and "Shock" (do 2 damage to target). The only real creatures he has is the "Necrosavant" and the "Abysal Spectre" because he will just end up Earthquaking the board. Note the spectre is the only thing that flies. He also as a "Neveral's Disk" just in case. I used the same strategy to deal with this deck but I added some more defense for my creatures like a "Castle" and "Hero's Resolve" to keep my guys alive. Phase III : Going Against Green ======================= Ok, there is only blue, red and green left and you are playing white. What would you choose? Hmm.... Blue is one of those colours that can work with white. Also there are nothing really anti-blue in your deck. Red would be the better choice there. However, none of the protection from red creatures or any of the red mana screw cards are in this game. That would only leave green. Green usually has some big creatures, and a good defense against enchantments but most importantly, they have anti-blue cards that I want. So, that is how I decided to go after the green gems. Ok the two front green decks are not so bad. The tree guy is playing with a walker deck and the elf guy is playing an enchantress deck. The boss is playing a basic big creature deck and a land destruction deck. Step 1: White vs the Walking deck --------------------------------------- Ok, you are probably wondering what is a walking deck. It is a deck which combo uses the creatures that can forestwalk, islandwalk and swampwalk. Which just by chance, green has all these and white has next to none. He will use "River Boa" (island walk), "Unseen Walker" (forestwalks, gives forestwalking ability), "Warthog" (swampwalk), and "Shaolin Dryads" (forestwalks). So it is not the great of an idea to use these colours against this deck. So playing red or white is better. However, the trick up the dreamcast sleeve is the special DC card called the "Lydari Druid" (2/2). When this loser comes into play, he PERMENANTLY changes ALL (his, yours, and special) lands to RANDOM basic lands. So in one moment you may have 5 plains and he has no plainswalkers to probably one of each of the 5 basic lands (chances are 1 in 5). Can you now say, oh shit? Now, you are not only mana screwed but your creatures you can't block. Now, you are probably thinking, that it will take a long time for this combo to come out since he only has 4 of those stupid druids. He also has a couple of ""Mystic Compass" (tap to change target land to basic land of your choice) to screw around with your mana. He also has the "Worldly Tutor" (go through library and put a summon card (like the druid) into your hand). Now playing white, there is really nothing you can do to stop that druid from coming out and once he is out, he has done his damage so no point trying to "pacify" him since that won't accomplish anything since he is only regular (2/2) dink boy. Your deck needs to be quick and have things that fly since green is not good against flying guys generally. You need creature incapicators like "pacify" and "spiritlink" to take care of the walkers that can get through. If you are worried about mana problems, add a few "white diamonds" artifacts for mana or use the "Celestial Dawn" (all your lands produce white). I have also found that those "D'Avenant Archers" ( 1/2, ping attacking or defending creatures) are useful to have since most of the walkers are less than 2 toughness. Step 2: White Vs Volderren Enchantress --------------------------------------------- Ok, as the title would have you believe, this is a combo deck that works off the special ability of the Enchantress, which is drawing a card when you cast a enchantment spell. The result is a powered up monster that that has spells like "regeneration" and "spirit link". He also has "Maro" which also depends on how many cards he has in the hand. If an enchantment is used, then another card is drawn so the "Maro" doesn't get weaker. He has four of these things which can be a pain. In this game, it is not easy to have creature removal spells. White does has "Swords to Plowshares" but that is a rare; "Exile" but he probably won't attack with a (0/2); and "Reprisal" but it is unlikely he will pump the enchantress to over 4 power. So in this situation, we just gotta let the combo work. The trick then becomes, can we stop what ever comes out of this deck? What comes out are a lot of hard to kill ugly creatures. Like the black zombie deck, a "Meekstone" can be used to keep the big guys tapped. Your standard "pacify" and "spirit link" are always good for that job. It would help if you had some walls to handle the big guys. A few of those "Hero's Resolve" to give you (+1/+5) should do the trick. Of course, the all powerful "disenchant" and "serenity" will keep the key enchantment spells in check. With a bit of luck, he will most likely deck out before you due to the speed he will be burning through his library. Step 3: White vs Traditional Green ----------------------------------------- This guy is really playing an all out wack'em green creature deck. He makes uses of green's natural abilities of coming up with lots of mana quick in the game and the quick cheap casting cost of some disgusting creatures all to make this deck hard to deal with at the beginning of the game. Traditional green monster decks, will start with mana guys like "Birds Of Paradise" and "Lanwar elves" and "Wild Growth" (land produces an extra green). With that little jump in mana they are summoning out bigger guys than you are at the beginning. Hard to attack him right away since he will probably have more stuff out and bigger stuff out that you do so you will be playing catch up. He will probably have 3/3 elephants and maybe 3/2 "Warhogs" and maybe 4/4 "Maros" out in play when you are still working on 2/2 losers. This is where all those creature incompacitators come in handy. The other way is if you have creature power ups like "Hero's Resolve" (+1/+5), you could have a (2/6) "Resistance Fighter" on the playing field by turn 2. The key behind this deck is holding off his creatures just long enough until you get your opening to attack. Good to have a "Wrath of God" (bury all creatures) in your deck in case you get overwhelmed. A "Meekstone" could help but it would slow the boss down at the beginning but it will begin to slow you down later in the game unless you are playing a "Serra's Blessing" (creatures don't tap when they attack) deck. Step 4: White vs Land Destruction --------------------------------------- Ok, this particular land destruction deck works off of green and red and white. It is really annoying and quite effective even with the three colours. The green supplies the quick mana with the "Lanwar Elves" and the mana birds. It also does the "Creeping Doom" (destroy land, enchantment, artifact) to get rid of things including land, and "fallow earth" which just slows your deck down by putting target land back on the top of the library. White is an unusual color to put in here but it uses white for a few anti-creature things and the "D'venant Angel". Red is obvious, it is the one that usually has things like "Pillage", "Conquer Land", and "Stone Rain". It does use "Earthquake" and "Blaze" and "Shock" for direct damage. The way to beat it is to keep really mana efficient things maybe 1 or 2 casting cost only. I have found the deck that works most consistantly against this deck was a white weenie deck full of 2 casting cost flyers, and "Hero's Resolve" to do the damage. Use "Spirit link" and "Pacify" on the big guys when the come out. You can use "spirit link" on your creatures to gain life. In this match up with red, it is very very important that you have more hit points than he does because late in the game, he will just "earthquake" you to death. As a note, I have also tried a green-white version of the walking deck as used by the Dreamcast in step 1 against this deck. It fairs not too bad when things like "Enlightened Tutor" (look through library for enchantment), "Pacify" and "Spirit link" to help out the deck. Phase IV : Going Against Red ====================== Well, here I am building up a deck to go against blue using green and white. However, the real clincher would be red and green. Thus to go against red, white and blue would be best. Ahhhh, the catch 22 of it all. So what would do better white vs red or green vs blue. Obviously white vs red would be a better choice, so red would be the next one and this should give me good ammo to go against blue. Red has two front decks. The minotaur is using a basic direct damage deck. The man is using a land destruction with big creature deck. The boss Dragon is using two decks: goblin deck and a red and black ugly dragon deck. Step 1: White Vs Direct Damage ------------------------------------- Ok, I knew I was going to come across direct damage and land destruction so I was ready for this. Load up white with fast casting cost, and fast build up enchantment deck. Sure enough, right from the get go, I was getting "Shocked" (2 points of damage), "Blazed" (x points), "Earthquake" (x points), and "Pyrotechnics" ( 4 points). Yea yea yea, how unoriginal. Just get your creatures out there, put like the "Hero's Resolve" on it so he can't "Shock" it to death. Then use that to pound him. For extra fun, "Spiritlink" it so you stay ahead of him for hit points otherwise, he will just "Earthquake" you to death. I knew pretty much how this deck worked and I could kill him really easily with my fliers but for the good of this FAQ, I wanted to deck him out rather than just kill him in order to see if there was anything more to this deck. This was hard to do since I knew I had to keep more life than he did mana or I would have got "Blaze" or "Earthquaked" to death. Good thing I did because late in the game he does have a "Jokoholps" in the deck. So good idea to keep a land and a creature in your hand just in case of this. Otherwise, basic swarm techniques will do the job here. Step 2: White vs Big creature Red ----------------------------------------- Alright, this deck is pretty much handled the same way you do the fast green creature or fast black creature decks. You will be encountering lots of direct damage as usual with land destruction. The only big key addition to the same old same old is that there is the addition of four "Balduvian Hordes" (5/5). For white, this should be a piece of cake to build a deck full of little flying guys, some "pacify" or "spiritlinks". The other strategy of using larger guys is ok, but chances are, you won't have the mana cast them because of all the land bombing... Step 3: White vs Goblin Deck ------------------------------------ Ok, another one of the fastest beat down decks in Magic is the red Goblin deck with the "Goblin King" with lots of "goblins". The power up spell for it them was "Giant Strength" (+2/+2). Those things get kinda big with a couple of those guys being dropped down. For white is a bit tricky since creature removal for things less than 4 toughness is rare since "swords to plowshares" and "reprisal" and "exile" are your only choices which are all kinda rare. So the trick will be to try attacking or defending to knock them out. By using "Standing Soldiers" (1/4, doesn't tap when it attacks) and the "Warrior's Resolve" (+1/+5) to power him up. Using pingers and healers to make sure the right guys die and survive. If you don't have the soldiers, you can also use "Serra's Blessing" (your creatures don't tap when they attack) should take care of the trick. Step 4: White vs the Regeneration & Dragon ---------------------------------------------------- One of the most disgusting red decks to fight against is a "Shivivan Dragon" deck. This one is like that kind. This Dreamcast deck uses one called "Maltusian Dragon" (5/5, flying, when it attacks it gains +x/+0 where x is a random number between 0 and 7). Geez.. Free "Firebreathing" pumping, how could you go wrong with this? Of course being red, he also has lots of direct damage spells. He does have the annoying "Hammer Of Bogardan" (3 points of damage, bring it out of your graveyard). This deck also has black in it primarily for the regenerating "Drudge Skeletons" (1/1, regeneration) and "terror" (bury creature). There is some green in the deck as well, mainly for the two regenerating guys the "River Boa" (2/1) and the "Gorrilla Master" (3/3). I will go over this deck in a little detail since it took me over 50 games to beat this deck down. First core to the deck is full of regenerating monsters like "Drudge Skeletons" (1/1) and "River Boas" (2/1), "Gorilla Masters" (3/3) and "Phantom Feral" (2/2). Now White on the Dreamcast as a real problem removing these guys. You have "Pacify" but you only have four and I am sure you want to save them up for the dragons in this deck. "Swords to Plowshares" is good but it is a rare card in the game. "Reprisal" is only effective against the "Dragon" since the toughness has to be at least 4 and "exile" is good but it is also rare. So if we concentrate on not removing them and just containing them, then the options are a little better. These particular regeneration guys fortunately don't have first strike which white does have a lot. Since their damage is done first, the regenerating guys will die first thus needs to regenerate first. Load the deck up with "Timber Wolves" and "Longbow Archers" to be your defense against some of the regenerators. You can also lock down the "Gorilla Master" and the Dragon by using a "Meekstone". The other guys are easier to block with a "Crusade" in play to make blocking and healing easier thus your creatures will continue to survive after his attacks. Ok, the next part of this deck contains lots of instant and sorcery direct damage. You really can't do anything about this except prevent or gain life afterwards. I used a "fountain of youth" and "spirit link" in my deck. The "spiritlink" is great for offense and defense against those regenerating guys. The other useful thing for your creatures is some easy casting cost power up spells like "Crusade" or "Hero's Resolve", just so they don't die with just a bit of direct damage. My favourite combo is to place "Hero's Resolve" and "Spiritlink" on one of the first strike guys. If you can get about 5 to 10 more hit points, that should be enough to counteract his direct damage aimed at you. That is, before you can lock down his mana. Now as most direct damage decks go, you need lots of mana for things like "Blaze", "Inferno" and "Pyrotechnics" and "Hammer of Bogardan". So the solution to make him stop doing this is by tie up his mana. This is hard to do, since he is using the "Thawing Glaciers" to continually pull mana out of his draw pile but a simple "Winter's Orb" will at least shut down the "Hammer of Bogardan"/graveyard combo and will stop those big "Blaze" spells. This incidently will also shut down some of his regeneration ability since he won't have the mana to continually regenerate more than one creature a round. Miscellaneous removal spells has saved the computer a many a times. The computer has hidden up his sleeve at least two "Neveryal's Disks". The trick is to make the Dreamcast think he has the upper hand so he doesn't detonate the disk until you are ready with new creatures in your hand. But of course, you are playing white, so "Disenchant" is not hard to come by. Step 5 Add Blue to Supplement The Deck ----------------------------------------------- As a tail end note, white is of course not the only colour you can play. In trying to beat the big boss, I have tried other colours and other themes. One of the ones that worked well, and will work against the bosses later on is a big defense, counterspell deck. It is a blue and white deck designed to hold out until the right moment to strike back. It has creatures that offer good defensive value for their casting cost like walls, and flyers. It also has quite a few creature incapacitate like "Gaseous Form" and "Pacify". The key is the extra spells to take control of enemy creatures like "Abduction" and "Desertion". After all, what better way to fight a big ugly creature deck when you are one that has the big ugly creatures? The rest of the deck is poised ready for the direct damage, so lots of "Counter Spells", "Power Sink", and the best one "Deflection". You could also add "Reverse Damage" if you don't have enough. Phase V: Going Against Blue Well, with all these times I went against Green for the easy beat down and all those times I went against red to get that last gem, I have a good number of red and green cards to go against blue. Blue has two rather basic decks up front to go against, the first one is your basic beat down deck consisting of merfolks and the "Lord of Atlantis" guy to do the power up. Step 1: Direct Damage Vs the Merfolk I was using a basic direct damage deck with a touch of green for extra mana and for the "River Boa" for the islandwalking. This deck was really no problem, just directly bomb the lord when he comes out and "Earthquake" the rest of the losers. As for the other player, you can kill him with direct damage. Step 2: Direct Damage Vs. The second deck is much the same and the same strategy can be used. Step 3: White Vs Counterspell Deck The first boss deck is a bit tough. A little too tough for a strictly direct damage type of deck. He is using a basic counterspell deck. I tried a few times with direct damage but I was not getting anywhere, so I switched back to my fast white deck like the one I used for red. He will end up "abducting" your stupid weenies which will return to play on your side if they die. Later in the game, when things get really bad, blue will have problems deciding what to counterspell since your deck is so simple in concept. He will end up counterspelling stupid things like 1/1 "Timber Wolves" which is fine with you. He only has 12 of those things and 4 "abduction". He also has a "neveryal's disk" which he may detonate. If it is like most games and strategies with white, this is a good thing. What will happen is that you will have your creatures that he might have casted "abduction" on. You can neutralize those guys by putting "spirit link" on them. All the other guys, throw "pacify" on. You will be putting out your weenies to stop his guys too. What will end up is a huge stock pile of creatures on both sides but of course, the computer keeps getting all the useful attackers "pacified" and "spiritlinked". If he detonates, everyone dies, but your guys who he put the "abduction" on, will come back into play back on to your side. So you can beat him down the very next turn... The second blue boss deck was ever a bitch. Not hard like the second red boss "dragon" deck but hard like the second white boss "Angel" deck. The two themes of these two hard decks revolves around the concept of a special creature combo. This deck is just like that, and it took me to the end to deck him out to win. This deck is a blue, black and white; "Tradewind Rider" (return permanents to your hand) deck. The combo basically involves getting a lot of creatures out, then basically using them and the rider to force permanents in play back into your hand. This obviously will make it hard for you to stop his creatures from walking in and bobo'ing you. The big problem matic thing for white of course is getting rid of the "Tradewind Rider" (1/4). Sure you can "pacify" him or "spiritlink" him but that won't stop his special ability. Again you have "swords to plowshares" but that is rare. He will also hardly attack with it so you probably won't have a chance to "exile" it. Besides he has 4 of them so you really can't stop his combo using white. So what can you do? Get lots of quick casting cost creatures to use as blockers and a crusade helps a little and a few "samite healers" to help defray the damage of the guys you missed. This will deal with the creatures attacking you problem. Note, crusade helps if used with the meekstone since he uses "ardent militia" and "longbow archers" which will have a power of 3 with the crusade in play. He will attack or tap once and he will be done for. Unfortunately he does have "standing soldiers" and "ardent militia" which don't tap when they attack. You will just have to do some good gang blocking. He also has 4 flying "phantom spirits" (2/2, flying) but you can stop them with your "longbow archers" and he as 4 of those "air elementals" (4/4, flying) which will tap out if you got the meekstone in play. For tapable creatures, he has a few "walls of Air" and a few "Sengir Aristocrats" (tokens) so he will have lots of creatures to power the "tradewind Rider". Now here is the trick, your deck really doesn't remove permanents to the graveyard, and his deck just keeps putting back in your hand. An unexpected problem occurred. Around 100 cards, neither side can put down any more permanents. I am sure this is a small overseen bug in the Dreamcast version but with these two decks in play there is a chance you will have this problem. Well, relax, he does have one real evil card in the background, he has an "armageddon" which will certainly remove a lot of permenants. Your window of opporunity is very short and small. Basically, every time the "tradewind rider" taps to return a permanent back into your hand he has to tap 2 other creatures. So if you "pacify" or "spiritlink" the rest of his blockers, you can use this chance to do some damage. Just keep a careful eye on what you have incompacitated and what can still block you. Big Boss Guy 1 ------------------ Boss one guy is big fat ugly with a stick. His deck is a nasty winter orb deck. You are pretty much guaranteed a second turn winter's orb. So one of the easiest way I found to beat down such a deck is your standard white weenie deck. Add a few disenchants, lots of Pacifism and Spiritlinks since those are great 2 and 1 mana spells. Add a few mana artifacts like the Mox Diamond so you can cast 2 mana spells each turn. Big Boss Guy 2 -------------- This guy is the weirdo in the wheelchair. His deck is a nasty number of cards in the hand deck. His deck uses the Glacial Chasm Land to bring lots of land into play. With this he can also draw 8 cards and throw the D'varant Angel into the graveyard. He also uses the Maro (*/*, where * is the number of cards in the hand) with the Inspiration spell. He also has the black spell, Murgish Cementary (discard a card, and summon a A/B black creature token where A/B are random numbers between 1 and 5. So as you can see, some pretty nasty monsters are coming your way. But that is not all, with all that land in play, he also has a few Earthquakes and Blaze direct damage spells waiting for you. And if that didn't make it hard enough, he is armed to the teeth with counterspells and Powersinks and Desertions. He also has a few Nervynal's Disks just to help clean up the crap he missed counterspelling. So a very versatile deck with lots of shit to deal with. Well, I again choose white to deal with it. The ever cheap and underhanded COP deck. I choose COP Red, White and Green. This will stop the direct damage stuff like Blaze and Earthquake. It will stop the D'vengent Angel, Maro, Otabi Orangatans and river boas. Now, it plays black so, I choose "Light of Day" to shut down the black creature threat. Of course, I need the full compliment of Pacifism and spiritlink too to make sure I can stop everyone of his baddies. But the real key to stopping everything is some artifacts. The key one, the Ankh of Mishra. Once you have 3 or 4 land in play, that is all you need to run the COPs. But for him, if he can't bring the land into play, he can't do his big Blaze and Big Earthquakes. He can't do his Glacial Chasm trick anymore, so his deck will be hurting for mana. Also with his limited mana, he tends not to have enough blue available to run his counterspell deck properly, so you can get away with more stuff. Other useful artifacts, Howling Mine to burn his library faster, Meekstone to stop his big bad creatures. If you grab a few disenchants to kill off his Neveryl's Disk when he brings them out. I would say millstone but he really hates that one and will counterspell that one. He also really hates Wrath Of God spell. Fountain of Youth is also a good artifact since I choose not to fight this deck with any creatures. It will mostly be done with Enchantments and Artifacts. Big Boss Guy 3 --------------- The third guy is the multi-headed hydra. His deck is pretty much the same as the boss guy 1. However, he doesn't have the winter orb, instead he has bigger creatures like Staunch Defenders and Air Elementals. Still a very fast deck and the creatures seem to pour out of his deck constantly. You need a deck that can keep up with all the monsters coming out. I again choose a creature heavy white deck with a few wrath of gods or Neveryls Disks to level the playing field. A meekstone is also good to slow his deck down but you will still need something to tap the creatures. He does have disenchant and a otabi orangatan so a meekstone might not hold him for very long. A castle might help your side a bit. Strategies In General You have three deck theories to build with: Beatdown, Combo, and Control. It is easy enough to build a beat down deck. Lots of small casting cost guys with a few power up cards. Every colour has their little guys and their big ones and their power ups. Bosses tend to give bonuses to all the other units.