Hello,
everyone. I’m Jeff Hodgkinson, AKA the Pojo card-of-the-day reviewer known as
Aardvark. Yeah, I’m the one who’s
always passing out the lowest ratings. Although giving you all my opinions on
which cards are worth playing should be a help to you in playing the game, it
leaves out an important process – just how do you go about building a deck?
Well, boys and girls, pull up a chair. I’m going to show you.
I’ll
explain the deck concept, show you how I worked out my first build, talk a
little about how it played in actual games, and show you the tuning I did to
the deck to try to cover up its weaknesses and highlight its strengths. In its
current state, the deck is a little rough around the edges. With the start of
the new soccer season, my attention has shifted to that, cutting back on my
time to fine-tune this. But I’ll talk enough about the deck that you should get
a good idea of how it works and where to go with it, if you want to.
Now,
this is not a tier –one deck. Such
decks come only in four types, in my opinion: creature decks with splashes of
blue and red, Potion Class Disaster decks, red-based lesson denial decks, and
blue/yellow spell decks. I’ve done them all. They’re all quite good. But the
local denizens were getting annoyed with these lethal and boring deck types.
They wanted me to back off on the power a bit, so that they could at least have
a chance at winning every now and then. Fair enough.
First,
I tried to be different by making a green/blue items deck, led by Draco. This
turned out to be way stronger than I would have guessed, and the locals weren’t
amused. OK. I have to come up with an idea that is much more aberrant.
Fortunately, my card review “job” provided the idea. One of the cards we were
asked to review was a neat location named Forbidden Corridor. As I sat down to
write my review, I kept coming up with interesting ideas that interacted with
it. This was a cool card! One card that combos well with it is one of my all
time favorite Harry Potter cards – Hannah Abbott. I can only recall seeing her
played against me twice in my entire HP career (not counting decks that I
designed). She’s a fixture in my decks, however. She has the one-time-only
ability to trade any two cards in my hand for any two non-healing cards in my
discard pile. But her uniqueness restriction meant that I always had to confine
myself to putting just one of her in my decks. That’s just not enough for
someone who has a Hannah fixation like I do. My sons will tell you that I can
be quite nauseating talking about how great she is. It must be the pigtails.
My review mentions the “core cards” for my deck idea. Ron Weasley is the starter, and the deck presumably carries four copies each of Hannah, Forbidden Corridor, Lost Notes, Picking on Neville, Griphook, and Professor Quirrell. So how does this deck work? Ron allows me to play character cards for half price. That is, one action, instead of two. This deck will be jam-packed with characters, many of which are unique. Usually, this means you shouldn’t put more than one or two of any particular character in your deck. However, Forbidden Corridor will help us weasel (thanks, Ron) out of that. It requires each player to discard a card of his or hers in play at the beginning of his or her turn. Now we can get rid of our unique characters so that we can play more of them. But why would we want to get rid of our characters? Well, because many of the best ones are one-use characters. You play them, you use them, but then they stay in play, blocking you from playing more of them. How frustrating! But now, with the Corridor out, we can use our precious Hannah (getting her “sister” out of the discard pile, and one other card), wave her a fond farewell at the start of our next turn, and then play her sister and use that one to get the original back. The other action in our turn will usually be devoted to playing that “other” card we grabbed when we last used Hannah. Got it?
The
Forbidden Corridor not only helps us get rid of our own unwanted characters, it
also stymies our opponent, as they are forced to discard cards in play. They
are left with the unenviable choice of discarding a threat card or a
development card, such as a lesson. If they choose to discard the latter, their
development will stall, as they will inevitably draw cards they can no longer
play, due to lack of lessons. Thus their hand will fill up, allowing us to kill
them with another core card in our deck – Griphook. He makes a player discard
their hand and draw that many cards. He’s one of only two characters that can be
used to kill an opponent. The other one, Crabbe&Goyle, doesn’t fit well
into the deck concept. But Grippy fits great, and he’s a goblin, so he’s fun.
The
Forbidden Corridor goes away if either player has no lessons at the end of
their turn. Hopefully, if you’ve reduced your opponent to no lessons, it will
take them time to recover. After being cleared out, they usually spend the next
turn playing two lessons. That’s a good time for you to lay down another
Corridor. You want to keep your opponent clamped down tight, and your deck
works best when the Corridor is sweeping away your used characters, so don’t be
merciful. Savvy players will note that the deck is going to need some card
drawing mechanism that doesn’t require actions. Otherwise, you’ll draw one card
a turn and play two until you run out. The other thing to note about the core
concept is that your Corridor can only get rid of one character a turn, and
often you’d like to have more than that go away. Frequently, your opponent will
be surprised by this deck and not know how to play against it. They could
easily make a mistake like playing Picking on Neville against you. If they are
so foolish as to do this, discard two used characters instead of whatever it
was they were targeting. Make sure you thank them sweetly for their assistance.
They’ll probably only make that mistake once.
Most
decks feature predominance of creatures, spells, and to a lesser extent, items.
The core of this deck features one location and a bunch of characters. That’s
strange. Many decks aren’t going to be well prepared to face this. Also, many
players will get flustered and make mistakes, not knowing how to stop you.
You’ll need all the help you can get, as you’re going to have trouble staying
alive long enough to get the win. Professor Quirrell is your main man for
disrupting your opponent. He bounces back all creatures and items to their
owner’s hand. We won’t have any creatures, and we’ll try to keep the number of
items to a minimum, so this will hopefully hurt them much more than us. Do you
see the synergy with Griphook? You bounce with Quirrell, and then follow with
Griphook. Ouch.
We’ll
probably need some search cards to get the elements of our combo, meaning the
deck will have blue in it. Forbidden Corridor is red, so we need that color
too. Our starter, Ron Weasley, doesn’t provide us with a color, so the deck’s
consistency will be a concern. We might be able to add a third color, but four
is definitely pressing our luck. If we are concerned that Griphook can’t get
the job done by himself, we could supplement him with adventure damage, or use
such cards to assist in filling up our opponent’s hand. We’ll also need
supplemental control. Picking on Neville is an obvious choice. We could also
assist the lesson denial of the Corridor with cards like Lost Notes. Another possibility is to come up with
alternative cards for dumping our used characters if we have problems getting
Forbidden Corridor out. Those are the things we will be looking for when we
make a first pass of candidate cards for our deck.
Before
I get to that step, let me back up a bit. How did I come up with the idea for
this deck to begin with? Well, as I said, in this case it came from thinking
about a single card and what would work in combination with it. A favorite ploy
of mine is to try to turn a card’s weakness into a strength. Forbidden Corridor
has the weakness of forcing you to discard cards along with your opponent.
After thinking about it, I came up with a way of turning that drawback into an
advantage. Now, if you are having trouble coming up with ideas of your own, you
can always start reading the Pojo card reviews or visit one of our chat
boards. This particular deck idea leans
heavily on rare cards. All characters are rare cards. But there are some deck
ideas that are quite interesting that are based primarily on commons and
uncommons. But not this one. If you want to try out this idea without first
spending a lot of money, I suggest you participate in the Harry Potter
Apprentice league, which you can find on Pojo’s website. That on-line game will
allow you to make your deck from any Harry Potter card in the game. If you like
how it plays, you can then try to trade for and buy the cards that compose a
deck like this.
We
are now ready to make up a list of candidate cards for our deck. For doing
this, I’ve printed out a spoiler list of every set in the Harry Potter game.
These spoilers can be found off of Pojo’s website (aren’t we helpful?). My own
personal experience is that it is easier to work off of spoiler sheets rather
than looking through the actual cards. To speed the process along, we won’t
look at creatures or locations. You can only have one location in play at a
time, and our deck is committed to using the Corridor. We want to place extra
emphasis on characters, as our starter let’s us play them for half cost. When
composing your candidate list, it’s best not to be too judgmental early.
Instead, try to be inclusive and then weed out on your second pass. Don’t be
surprised if you leave off a card the first time around that becomes more
obvious when you’re in the tuning stage. That happens. So here we go.
Core
cards:
Hannah,
Forbidden Corridor, Ron Weasley, Griphook, Quirrell, Lost Notes, Pick-Neville
Card
drawing:
Photo
Album (An item, which is bad)
The
Famous Harry Potter (Only works if you have 4 or less cards in hand)
Help
get rid of our characters:
Vanishing
Referee (Cheap, being only 4 lessons, but forces us into yellow)
Dumbledore’s
Watch (Expensive, at 9 lessons, but intriguing)
Mid-Air
Collision (10 lessons and yellow, but also an alternate win condition)
Good
Night’s Sleep (10 lessons. Bleah. Not promising.)
Search
cards:
Chocolate
Frogs (Cheap, but only gets wizards and witches, not all characters)
Alohomora
(4 lessons, gets locations or adventures)
Gringott’s
Vault Key (6 lessons, and gets everything)
The
Fat Lady (I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one)
Adventures
help:
Through
the Arch (No spells for you!)
Diagon
Alley (Try to sucker them into drawing a lot of cards)
Pep
Talk (Forces them to draw with an action. Reward: more drawing. But solving
easy)
Hagrid
Needs Help (Cuts their actions, and reward is draws. Solve is an alternate win)
Riding
the Centaur (Stops creature damage. Bounces creatures. Reward is a draw)
Non-character
help:
Borrowed
Wand (An item, but we don’t want to wait to get to 6 lessons)
Comet
260 (An item that needs yellow, but provides a lesson and damage prevention)
Fouled
(Cheap, but yellow. Slows them down and is alternate win condition)
Stream
of Flames (Kill them critters and poke them in the eye)
Mice
to Snuffleboxes (Bounce critters so Griphook can get them)
Spiral
Dive (Yellow. Alternate win condition)
Sloth
Grip (Yellow. Stall)
Jawbind
Potion (Green. Slows them down and is alternate win condition)
Scribblifors
(7 lessons, but bounces one thing and discards another)
Diffindo
(8 lessons. Scribblifors seems to be a better fit)
Other
character help:
McGonagall
(A lesson with an adventure zapper attached)
Hooch
(Can get a broom for quick lesson acceleration)
Flitwick
(If desperate, I can get a search card)
Snape
(A 7 point heal. This is worth it, even if I don’t play green)
Pomfrey
(A really big heal. A no-brainer)
Argus
Filch (To dispose of annoying adventures. Frogs can’t get him though)
Hermione
(Not promising)
Hermione,
Top Student (If we are short one or two colors, this gets them)
Fred
and George (I don’t have time to spend two actions to play an adventure)
Peeves
(Technically, also a card drawer)
Neville
(Bleah)
Hagrid
(Bleah II)
Oliver
Wood (Bleah III)
That’s
a fair number of choices! As for me, I would prefer to play a deck without
resorting to proxies, so some of my choices will be limited by my card
collection. I also promised the local crowd that my next deck would be
substantially different from past ones. That means I can’t dip too deeply into
the lesson denial, as I’ve overused that before. So my first design decision is
to stray away from lesson denial (other than the Forbidden Corridor), which
means the deck will not contain Lost Notes. Much of the deck should be composed
of characters, which have no lesson requirements. The most “expensive” core
card is Forbidden Corridor, which needs 6 lessons to get out. I’d like to try
to keep it that way, just in case my opponent is running a lesson denial deck.
So my initial design will be limited to cards costing 6 or less.
All
of my candidate adventures are great against specific deck types. Which one is
best will depend a lot on whom I play. Unfortunately, I can’t predict that. The
best all-around card of the bunch, however, is Through the Arch. So I’m going
to start with that, so I have something to stop spells. This deck is capable of
keeping a Through the Arch active on the table, once I have all my set-up cards
in play. To avoid paying two actions for those adventures, I’m going to need
Fred&George. Pomfrey, Filch, and McGonagall all go in. They are
no-brainers. For my 3rd color, yellow looks more promising at the
moment, as I can add Hooch, Comet 260, Vanishing Referee, and perhaps Fouled. I
put in Borrowed Wand to speed up the deck. Picking on Neville will provide spot
removal of annoying cards. I don’t like waiting until I’m down to just four
cards to get draws, so I’ll choose Photo Album over Famous Harry. I have
several choices on search cards. I’ll take a little of everything at first and
see how it goes.
That’s
my plan. Here’s my first build:
(Ron
Weasley)
4
Hannah
4
Griphook
4
Quirrell
4
Forbidden Corridor
4
Through the Arch
4
Picking on Neville
3
Borrowed Wand
2
Vanishing Referee
2
Photo Album
2
Chocolate Frogs
1
Fred&George
1
Filch
1
Pomfrey
1
McGonagall
1
Gringott’s Vault Key
1
Hooch
1
Comet 260
3
Quidditch
8
Transfiguration
9
Charms
Wow.
This looks bad, doesn’t it? Oh well, the locals should be happy. As I play
games, I’m going to look for cards that I draw that I’m unhappy with, so I can
see what elements of this design are most in need of replacement. So I come to
Harry Potter league and play this deck for several hours. I win every game
against players whose last name is not Hodgkinson. I don’t fare nearly as well
against my fellow family members, who are playing stronger decks. In one game,
I face an old Draco, a horrible match up for me. It should be an auto-loss, as
he can discard to keep his hand size down, and pick off my
Hannahs
in hand to disrupt my cycling. But he doesn’t figure this out. I make numerous
observations about the deck design:
1)
I
need more search cards – add one
2)
I
have trouble getting my splash color to appear in the early game
3)
Vanishing
Referee just isn’t working – drop them
4)
My
items are getting in the way of my Quirrells – try to lessen the item presence
5)
I
need more card drawing – add one
6)
Griphook
is only needed late, when everything is in place, so I don’t need 4
7)
Through
the Arch is a major disappointment – try another adventure
8)
I
wish I had more healing
As
I’m tossing the only yellow card in the deck, I’m free to try another color.
Since I’m not happy with my spell defense card, Through the Arch, it makes
sense to switch to green as my 3rd color, to gain access to Jawbind.
Recursive Jawbinds become a (painfully slow) alternate win method against
creatureless decks. I’ll try Pep Talk as my adventure of choice to try to fill
up my opponent’s hand faster. The Hooch gets replaced by Snape, which gives me
more healing. The Comet 260 leaves for a lesson, cutting down on items. To aid
getting whatever color lesson I need at the moment, I’ll try Hermione, Top
Student. She replaces a Borrowed Wand, dropping the number of items in the deck
again. But I have to add a Photo Album to increase my card drawing, so the
number of items in the deck only declines by one. I’ll remove one adventure to
make room for it. That is what I would
try during league play the following week. Or so I thought. At the last minute,
I decide I’m not being experimental enough. I drop one Charms lesson for a
Flitwick, and drop two Photo Albums for a Peeves and a Famous Harry Potter.
This way, I can try out the other card drawing alternatives and reduce my
reliance on items. So the real Version II becomes:
(Ron
Weasley)
4
Hannah
3
Griphook
4
Quirrell
4
Forbidden Corridor
3
Pep Talk
4
Picking on Neville
2
Borrowed Wand
2
Jawbind
1
Photo Album
3
Chocolate Frogs
1
Gringott’s Vault Key
1
Pomfrey
1
Hermione, Top Student
1
Fred&George
1
Peeves
1 The
Famous Harry Potter
1
Snape
1
Flitwick
1
McGonagall
4
Potion
8
Transfiguration
8
Charms
Once
again, this deck beat all non-Hodgkinson competition. It clearly performed
better, indicating that my changes were on the right track. In one game, I was
able to crush a creatureless deck through recursive Jawbinds. That was fun. I
wasn’t thrilled to draw Peeves in any of my games, but the experiment in
choosing The Famous Harry was a big success. I had earlier worried about only
having a hand size of 4 or less, but it turned out that this wasn’t really a
problem. I had the bad luck to run into several Hermione decks, and was unable
to keep them under control, but somehow eked out the win anyway. I played many
games against my brother, who had a blue/yellow spell deck. I wanted to see how
the deck fared against someone who was familiar with it. Greg’s deck featured
Wand Shop, Nimbus 2000, and Phoenix Feather Wand, amongst other things. Through
Wand Shop, he kept managing to get out a wand and broom against me. He would
discard his lessons to make my Forbidden Corridor go away, and still have
enough learning on hand via the broom and wand to hit me with spells at all
times. I decided that I needed a spot removal card to eliminate this problem.
The obvious choice, Scribblifors, is more expensive than any other card in the
deck, at seven lessons. The element of the deck that just wasn’t working was
the adventure portion. It was too clunky. I didn’t want to spend two actions to
get out an adventure, and my opponent usually put enough pressure on me that I
didn’t have time to use a Chocolate Frogs to get Fred&George first.
So
I dumped the three Pep Talks and Fred&George, to make room for two
Scribblifors, a lesson, and a 3rd Jawbind. Famous Harry replaces
Peeves. I gave serious thought about taking out my one Photo Album for a 3rd
Harry Potter, but left it in, just in case I faced a deck led by Harry Potter.
Version III of the deck thus became:
(Ron
Weasley)
4
Hannah
4
Quirrell
4
Forbidden Corridor
4
Picking on Neville
3 Griphook
3
Chocolate Frogs
3
Jawbind
2
Famous Harry
2
Borrowed Wand
2
Scribblifors
1
Photo Album
1
Gringott’s Vault Key
1
Filch
1
Pomfrey
1
Hermione, Top Student
1
Flitwick
1
McGonagall
1
Snape
4
Potion
8
Transfiguration
9
Charm
I
played this deck the following week, and again it did better. Amusingly, I ran
into another Ron Weasley deck, although it was very different than mine.
Scribblifors was a nice addition. I’m still having trouble getting a Corridor
when I want one, which is probably an indication that I need one more Key. I’m
also continuing to have problems with Quirrell bouncing my items, even though
only three are in the deck. I am convinced that the last Photo Album must go.
Given that both Frogs and Keys can get Harry, it makes sense to swap the Album
for the Key. I’m going to try to replace the two Borrowed Wands with lessons.
I’ll need to watch to see if this slows down my development to an unacceptable
level. I’m very tempted to find a way to make room for a second Pomfrey. There
have been quite a few games against strong decks that I was able to stabilize
the board and lock down my opponent, but I ran out of time before I could
finish them. Given the nature of this deck, it isn’t a concern to draw two
Pomfreys. But this deck is getting very
tight. To put her in, I’d have to take something else out, and nothing leaps to
mind as being easy to sacrifice.
In
looking at the current product, I’m rather disappointed with the reliance on
spells. I had hoped I would develop a deck that was resistant to adventure
attacks that tried to shut down spells. I found it was problematical that each
of my candidate adventures were only effective against relatively narrow deck
types. I pondered for a while the possibility of including one of each of
several types of adventure, and an Alohomora or two to get the card that fit
the best. But there simply wasn’t enough space in the deck to do this, without
the whole thing becoming inconsistent. On the other hand, this deck concept
competed better than I expected, defeating most weak decks, and gaining a fair
number of wins against the strong ones as well, even when my opponent knew my
deck and how to beat it. This deck is very subtle, and thus complicated to
play. You have to keep in mind little things. For example, when healing, always
keep one copy of Hannah, Quirrell, and Jawbind in the discard pile. You have to
know which character you should get when you draw an early Frogs, and the right
one varies each game. If you are worried about discard attacks, keep your opponent
under Jawbind, and make sure you always have Griphook out so they can’t play
one.
For
anyone trying to extend this concept, I suggest a look at supplementing the
lesson destruction sub theme. A heavier variant that tries to use Mid Air
Collision as the kill card also appears promising. Another path I’d like to travel is including Dumbledore's Watch.
My instinct tells me that ultimately such a path would morph the concept into a
Watch deck, and not a Corridor deck. But you can’t tell unless you try, so good
luck with it.
-Jeff