Opening Challenge

[LiNK4g]

AHHH!! *hides*

[WildfireCEO]

sweet combo Q

[tirus]

queue said:

[glow=red,2,300]Sunken Battlefield + Hydra[/glow]

fperkins said:

It was Tirius who evented this combo.

1, you added an extra I, no biggie.
2, Azurin malkarie also gets credit for this. He pointed out that he could use it on himself to get a tactical advantage (he had a deck with lots of flyers). Then after some talk we relised we could pull an inf. combo with it. I never tried it, not sure if Azurin pulled it off or not.

[Deleted]

Yea, I couldn't remember who brought this to me before, it was Tirus though now that you remind me, so Kudos. That was back before Gencon, and he wasn't sure if it worked. He brought it to us judges at the time, namely me, and I brought it to Chris Norton aka Arashi back then. We had no intention of copying it or using it, and if we had we even discussed naming it after Cali or something back then, lol. We looked at it and about making it work, but the metagame was bonkers then. Finally one weekend post Gencon we were having a tourney and I thought, meh, let's try it. It worked well.

So giving credit, thanks West Coast! I don't know if you guys ever tried to use it, but I incorporated it into a Grimus stall deck, but instead of having Sudden Illness or Slow Death as a win condition, I used this. Very explosive at the time...but right now it's a little tougher...sigh...

[Deleted]

Oh, and about the draft and Tree Ent/Corpse Explosion thing, I didn't like rub it in or anything. The guy really threw his deck, but he always does crazy stuff like that, like over the top reactions. He doesn't hate us or ME, and infact still plays.

But I'm with TK, I'll aim for the jugular. lol

[gamerjeff]

Could someone please explain the infinite actions idea behind Sunken Battlefield and Hydra? (And I assume that it is supposed to be Sinking Battlefield, right? I couldn't find Sunken on the spoiler lists anywhere.)
I get the fact that when Hydra comes in you sac all your creatures for X amount of actions, but what difference does Sinking Battlefield make? Once Hydra has used all of it's actions, you do not get them back by untapping it, right?

Thanks in advance!

[JChadbourne]

Hydra allows you to sac "X" amount of creatures and gains that many actions. Hydra does not have flying so you have to use an action by your character to disengage it. Once it is disengaged you will be able to use its actions to disengage other creatures, all you have to do is keep one creature disengaged to keep Hydra disengaged and then you have infinite actions.

I know thats not the best explanation but thats what I can think of this early.

[gamerjeff]

Okay, color me dense, but that doesn't make sense (at least not yet!)

Let's say we have 20 creatures out, and we sacrifice 10 of them to Hydra. Hydra has 10 actions. We use an action from our Character to disengage Hydra, then use an action from Hydra (leaving it with 9) to disengage creature 1, then use creature 1 (now with 0 actions) to disengage Hydra. Hydra still only has 9 actions left, right?

[Nosferatu]

Close. 10-action Hydra disengages 10 Creatures. One of those creatures disengages Hydra, while the other 9 attack. Now, Hydra disengages 10 Creatures again.

This works because when you disengage a fully engaged creature with multiple actions, you gain back all actions.

[Deleted]

Right. And actually, this combo went a lot smoother in the sense that I only really sacrifice 2 creatures to Hydra. Now if you were already on the fence about this, get ready for this mind-trip...

1) Hydra with 2 actions (although you can use any 2 action creature)

2) Use the first action to disengage whichever creature you wish or do whatever you can with Hydra, even attack.

3) Use your second action from Hydra to disengage itself....(yea, I know, I'll give you a sec...)

....1....







....2....





....3! Ok, like Nos has said, in this game, disengaging a creature has the same effect as disengage it at the beginning of your turn in that it restores all of their set actions. Thus, Hydra uses his 2nd action to give himself 2 actions again. As long as you are being productive in any way, shape or form with that first action, you should win the game that turn. The possibilities of what you could be doing is totally deck dependent. In the deck I played I could do it all, from playing every creature in my deck to milling my opponent to dealing infinity direct damage.

[plmrelm]

Okay, I offically don't like that combo. Too easy to pull off and this isn't a game of solitaire. Maybe a ruling about a creature cannot disengage itself?

[Deleted]

Well, it's not that easy to pull off, and it's even harder right now. Remember that Sinking Battlefield is a curse, and you have to target your own deck and find some way to get it out or just wait 4 turns (since it's curse 5).

I have faster ways of pulling it out, but one has been taken away currently in the erratas. Even still, you have to draw it all, and cast the effect which isn't that cheap, and survive long enough to do it all. It's a very powerful combo, if not the strongest in the game currently, but isn't too competitive nonetheless in current metagames. At least not in my opinion, but of course we should all keep on eye on this and all combo since metas always change and thus are always threatened.