King of the Wasteland

[MmmLilith]

Dang it!
I just typed an awesome strategy that could earn 12 medals at once. Unfortunately I auto-logged off and lost it all.
Because it was extremely long, I will repost another time.

[MmmLilith]

Okay, let me try this again.

My goal here was to obtain two medals, inparticular. First and primarily, I set out to get the 'King of the Wasteland' medal. And since I was still missing it, the 'Mechanical Duke' medal seemed easy to get too.

Let me reveal the deck to use:
2 - Battle Gear alpha
2 - Battle Gear beta
1 - Brass Idol
1 - Leoknight
1 - Alga Sphere
2 - Anubias
1 - Charon
1 - Kelpie
2 - Shell Creeper
1 - Wall of Ice
1 - Dark Master
1 - Dragon Zombie
1 - T'ao T'ieh
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1 - Air Slasher
2 - Claw of the Ghoul
1 - Counter Amulet
1 - Gaseous Form
1 - Heart Fibula
1 - Icicle
1 - Iksear
1 - Prismatic Wand
2 - Water Shield
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1 - Banishing Ray
1 - Camouflage
1 - Changeling
1 - Death Cloud
2 - Disease
1 - Earth Shaker
1 - Evil Blast
1 - Gravity
1 - Holy Word 0
1 - Holy Word 1
1 - Ice Storm
1 - Land Trasfer
2 - Meteor
2 - Mutation
1 - Senility
2 - Simulacrum
1 - Sink
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Opponent: Zagol
Goal: 20,000 magic
Map: Cratos 2
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[glow=red,2,300]DECK[/glow]
You will see that this deck consists mostly of creatures that either parry off Fire & Wind attacks or have high MHP.

[glow=red,2,300]Strategy[/glow]
As in most games, start by laying foundation creatures on key spots. Try to secure one water creature solidly by the Castle and one Earth Creature by the Fort. Focus on making the creatures you own strong by getting their MHP up to 80 or higher. Level your land up to level 3, but NOT higher. Meanwhile Zagol will be leveling up his land. If you come across your Meteor spell, don't use/waste it until he has leveled up his land to level 3 or higher. That's right, let Zagol spend his magic on his land before you eliminate it.
In order to spin through your deck faster, place the Brass Idol off the beaten path and slap a Simulacrum spell on it. You don't want to use Simulacrum too often as it may cost you magic in the long run with all of Zagol's attacks.
Use Senility and Disease on the creatures you plan on attacking.

[glow=jgreen,2,300]Regarding Attacking[/glow]:
Because Zagol is NOT the brightest bulb on the tree, he will not move or swap out creatures that are damage-free AND have been leveled up to level 2 or higher. For that reason, make sure not to add Senility to any level 1 creature. Similarily, use the 'Sink' spell to change Zagol's land only on level 2 or higher lands. This way Zagol rarely moves his creature to an adjacent land. Slowly pluck away at Zagol's lands.

[glow=orange,2,300]Regarding Kelpie[/glow]:
Because of Brass Idol, only one Kelpie is needed in the deck. Try to get 2 Kelpie's placed. THEY SHOULD BE LOCATED ONE ON EACH SIDE OF THE CASTLE. Don't go beyond the 1st and 2nd square. THIS IS KEY! Go ahead and level each Kelpie to level 5. Zagol will eventually lose his magic due to avoiding your Kelpie and missing laps bonuses, or by running into Kelpie himself. Take this opportunity to occupy ALL THE LAND with your creatures. Once both Kelpies are placed, Zagol will get stuck at the Castle and be unable to play for the rest of the game; giving you rent on his every turn.
Now you can fill the ENTIRE REST OF THE BOARD and level EVERYTHING to level 3. [Hopefully you have obtained 3 or more Bundlegears by now for the Mechanical Duke medal.] As you are occupying each land, your magic will go up fast. Buy plenty of water and earth symbols to retain your magic. Remember, you eventually want to get all lands down to level 1 before finishing your goal. [Remember to not go to the Castle in order ot to meed the goal too soon.]

[glow=purple,2,300]The Finishing Blows[/glow]
Collect 2 Earth Shaker Spells and 2 Meteor spells. Once you have those, prepare yourself for the BIG finish. Use 1 Earth Shaker to bring the lands down to Level 2. Zagol should still be caught between your Kelpies. Then use the other Earth Shaker to bring the majority of the remaining lands to level 1. You should see that every land, besides the Kelpie occupied land, is at level 1; good!! Now use 1 Meteor spell on each of the remaining Kelpies. Zagol has probably survived your Kelpie onslaught since the land rent was lowered, but you should still own all the lands @ level 1. If Zagol managed to own a land, you are still okay as long as it is a level 1 land (except you miss out on the Unifer medal).
Congrats, you just won the 'King of the Wasteland' medal.

[glow=beige,2,300]Other probable Medals won in the fight:[/glow]
2) Unifier
3) Mechanical Duke
4) Roaring Flame
5) Destroyer of Land (just add a Quake Beast)
6) Exiler of Existence (just add Death Gaze)
7) Fortune Bearer !
8) Avaricious Smile (just add Gnome, or get Shrine lucky)
9) Explorer of the Swamps
10) Lucky Scale
11) Omnious Fang
12) Merciless Breath
13) Scythe of Insanity !
14) Solid Defense !
15) The Infinite Shield !

Wow! That is 15 medals that could be won at once !!
One medal you won't get is 'Wings of Swiftness'.
It took me 158 rounds to finish this match. That is quicker than my longest match to date however. That one happened to be 231 rounds and 4+ hours.

[s6]

This is helpful information...glad you took the time to repost it. I don't have 3) Mechanical Duke or 6) Exhiler of Existence (can this be accomplished with only one Death Gaze? - that's all I have now) yet so I'll let ya know if I discover a new twist. Think I have 3 of each of the Battlegears now. I don't have King of Wasteland, either. Sound strategy. Thank you!

[MmmLilith]

Thanks for taking time to read it.

As for the 'Exiler of Existence' medal. Using only one Death Gaze will take a long time; however, it's do-able. You would need things like Lightcraft, Brass Idol, and other spells that refresh your hand. I personally used 3 Death Gaze's on the Shuriken map. See the post under the 'Exiler of Existence' medal hunt.

[Nykkel]

If you want the Roaring Fame medal, you'll need to set that board limit to 90,000 rather than 20,000... unless you don't plan to hit the Castle at all after you've passed 20K.

[WhoseYerLilith]

I won King of the Wasteland on my second time through story mode, just fighting against Ryvern in Dunnan who almost never levels up in the beginning- I included a meteor/locust just in case. I won 9 medals at once while doing the Roaring Fame, it really is easy to get a lot of things done when you're magic goal is set to that high.

[s6]

Ah, thanks for the tip. As soon as I beat Devil May Cry, I'll check out that strategy (or win a couple more Death Gazes first) for winning this medal.

[davemcmillen]

Thanks for posting this, it's a great strategy, and fascinating to see it so well laid out.

One thing I'm trying to figure out as I attempt to apply it: How are you preventing Zagol from busting out through those Kelpies? He gets 450 or 500 G after each magic depletion, so he has enough to use items, and he perpetually has The Hand in stock. With a Lava Worm (penetration to water creatures) and some kind of item-destroying item (Gremlin amulet or The Hand), he can break free of the trap - I now know this from harsh experience.

OK, so you can thwart The Hand with Gaseous Form - if he steals it, he turns gaseous and can't do anything to you. But there's only one in your deck, and if it works one turn, next turn Zagol is going to do it *again*! He's relentless about attacking, so how do you keep enough defensive items around to pen him in? Especially while trying to accumulate those Earth Shaker and Meteor spells?

(Though in the end, that wasn't my biggest problem, when I tried this earlier today. I underestimated the size of the lap bonus, and accidentally met the goal when I thought I could sneak in one more lap. D'oh!)

[WhoseYerLilith]

Yeah I tended to agree with your analysis David- it's a lot of work for a really easy medal. I tried something grand and complex the first time, then just played Ryvern in story mode who just levels up maybe once or twice, I had Meteor's, Locusts and Subsidence ready for those. It took 15 minutes, 24 rounds.

[WhoseYerLilith]

My computer double posted and won't let me delete one, so this space will now be alloted to thanking you all for some great conversations on this board.

:-P.

[davemcmillen]

OK, my apologies -- I later realized my mistake with the Kelpies. Turns out that I had them only levelled up to Level 3, and at that level Zagol would keep trying to break out, and eventually succeed. Bringing them up to Level 5 kept him from even trying to attack -- though if he'd been smart, he would have: he has nothing to lose, and could eventually exhaust my defensive items and break out. But "smart" and "Zagol" don't coexist comfortably in the same sentence.

So thanks, I did implement this strategy and get the medal, and one or two others at the same time -- nothing like the 15 theoretically possible! I could have obtained more, but I already had, for example, Roaring Fame and a bunch of the others, but I'd have gotten them if I hadn't. There should be a meta-medal for how medals you get in a single match!

And by the way, I just used this same essential idea to get the three-on-one medal (Solitary Swordsman?): I boxed the castle with two Old Willows, and played against non-invaders (Selena, Mullyn, and Zagol -- who is an invader, but his relentless foolishness and lack of spells makes up for it) on the Heavenly Altar map. Worked like a charm, though it took a long time to get this trap set up and catch up after the alliance initially had pulled far ahead.