AotP 500 point army and deck (Good for Gencon)

[lefton4ya]

Gencon Magic: Arena of the Planeswalkers Tourney
6-round, 16-player tournament. Bring a pre-drafted army and spell deck (500 point limit).

What are some good 500 point armies/decks. Also note Shadows Over Innistrad will be out August 1, so it may change if people brought armies/decks with that as well.

 

[Kajoq]

Crossposting this from planeswalker-arena since it's incredibly topical. Here's a run down of every 500 point team available for the current figures:

http://planeswalker-arena.boards.net/thread/204/all-army-combinations-500-points?page=1&scrollTo=1549

 

[TREX]

Innistrad is out now, I would count on it getting played at Gencon.

 

[lefton4ya]

Played a game with Arlinn Kord, Goldnight Outcast/Moon-Blessed (but in a 550 point game), and am definitely leaning towards using that in the tourney, if only because it is super flexable both in the Planeswalker itself having range or a high attack/defense melee, as well using both the green and red creatures and decks. Not sure who to take with her though. Probably Mad Prophet and either Pummelroot Elementals or Kessig Ravagers/Rangers. Thanks @Kajoq for posting that list.
The spell deck will be a lot harder as I haven't even looked at the cards besides the first master set, and there is about 60 cards I need to go through to pick the best 12 for 200.
I still think most people will be bringing

and

armies, as that is my guess on the meta.

 

[William099]

So then for the tourney do I get 500 points figures plus 200 points cards for 700 points total basically? Or do I have to purchase cards and figures with the same 500 point pool?

 

[lefton4ya]

Yeah, its 500 point army + 200 point spell deck. The Gencon description was confusing, but the 200 point deck is laid out in the rulebook and I got confirmation here. Check out the thread linked on the second post here for the armies you can make, but the spells are harder for me to figure out.

 

[Nukatha]

Its a given, but wow, the multicolored planeswalkers really have the advantage in team building. Lots of options there.

 

[weebaer]

I'd be interested in seeing future rule updates stating that if your army is 465 and the point total is 500 you may have an extra 35 points for your spell deck. This would change the current meta a lot.

 

[lefton4ya]

@weebaer I posted a similar idea I had:

... I think to spice it up I would go with random army sizes as I don't want to be forced into something. I might go with a modified version of what I normally do in home games for Heroscape which is roll a D20, multiply that by 10 and add to 400 to determine the army size each time before drafting (so 410 - 600 point armies).

For AotP I would either do 450 + D20 result *10 (460-650), or do 500 + D20 result * 5 (505-600). Variety is the spice of life. However, with a currently limited amount of creature choices, some point totals are hard to get to for multiple armies. I was also thinking of being able to "donate" 25 point of magic deck to or from your army. So for example instead of set 500 point army + 200 point deck, you could do anywhere between 475 army + 225 deck to 525 army + 175 deck, as long as the point total doesn't exceed 700, although you still are limited to exactly 12 cards. That leeway would definitely help in the random army size with a D20 as well, especially if you are drafting from a common figure pool and the low point creatures such as the colorless Eldrazi Scions will get drafted first.

 

[igelkott]

I know this was talked about a while ago but has anyone actually done any playtesting that indicates that spell points and figure points are equivalent in power?

As of now, I consider the 3 point values as non-interchangeable. So AOTP unit points, AOTP spell points and Heroscape unit points are on different scales and shouldn't be interchanged. Certainly there are some that seem to be seeing that AOTP unit points are comparable to HS unit points but there are also some that are seeing that AOTP unit points are more powerful than HS unit points. I certainly would like to hear more from people about actual experience as to how balanced the various point scales are.

 

[caps]

I know this was talked about a while ago but has anyone actually done any playtesting that indicates that spell points and figure points are equivalent in power?

As of now, I consider the 3 point values as non-interchangeable. So AOTP unit points, AOTP spell points and Heroscape unit points are on different scales and shouldn't be interchanged. Certainly there are some that seem to be seeing that AOTP unit points are comparable to HS unit points but there are also some that are seeing that AOTP unit points are more powerful than HS unit points. I certainly would like to hear more from people about actual experience as to how balanced the various point scales are.

They're equivalent to HS unit points in the same way that the 4th Mass are equivalent in unit points to the Capuan Gladiators.