nvm . . . Dragonspyre, Yer Gearz Don't Matta None

Last weekend I had a pretty humiliating string of defeats against Malistaire with Angus. This weekend? *wipes hands clean* Here's your video proof:



This was Angus's winning deck against Malistaire:

Doesn't seem like much, does it? It's not. It made for a long drawn out hour and 20 minute long fight. (Much different than playing Kyle, my son's storm wizzie, in a full group where the whole thing wraps up in a few rounds LOL)

Here was the basic strategy I had to pull off to win against Malistaire with Angus:

1- The first thing that needed to happen was a lucky two strikes of Insane Bolt treasure cards to take care of two of Malistaire's minions. Why not three Friendly? Hey, it's hard enough getting two lucky strikes of Insane Bolt out in a row as it is! I probably could have pushed my luck and swapped out one of the minion cards for an Insane Bolt card, but knowing the way the Damage flies out of Malistaire, I kind of figured I'd need an extra minion card. And at 2,000 gold a piece, Insane Bolt cards could have made me run into a monetary wall pretty fast.

2- The next thing that NEEDED to happen was to get my storm minion up and taunting, then do my best to dance a line between protecting the minion and taking out Malistaire's final minion. As you can see from the video it was a difficult dance, and though I took out Malistaire's buddy, he also took out mine. Good thing I had a back up minion card, eh? SMARTZ!!1!

3- Treasure card of Darkwind was definitely the most economical way to get a boost to my damage for the entire fight. What you don't see from this video is . . . the failed attempt against Malistaire that happened right before where I made a lame decision to use Supercharge instead of Darkwind and a regular Stormblade and RAN OUT OF MANA! I definitely had to play more economically than say someone sporting 400 mana. Yup.

4- Shield, shield, shield, and shield some more. I cannot say how important it was to cast every single shield in my deck before Reshuffle. The easiest way to play these was to cast all of the 80% Death Shields on myself and all of the 70% death shields from Life School's Legend Shield card on my minion.

5- One more fizzle and a bad roll on the damage output of Triton, and I would have been toast. It was incredibly close and intense, and I liked that. :) It made the victory all the finer. I think Uber Wife was pretty done with me as I screamed at the top of my lungs a few times, NO I FIZZLED! or TAUNT ALREADY! or GET ME SOME CHICKEN! Ok, I never yelled get me some chicken.

So, there you have it. The big long drawn out story of Angus that started out in December of 2010 has finally (sort of) come to a conclusion. Quoting that original post, "He hopes to see you in Celestia . . . with nothing but the robe on his back, hopefully, soloing the majority of the way--no outside help from other characters or anything." For me that's mission accomplished, he's in Celestia.

I HIGHLY doubt Angus will survive too long in Celestia . . . the whole world is one giant gear check with crit gear and enemies beginning fights with a slew of power pips . . . and not to mention the cheating bosses, but HEY, how about those cheating bosses? Although I really was just aiming to beat Dragonspyre, my plan has always been to test out the limits of Moon Magic and Star Magic here since MOST of the Polymorphs have built in statistics like Crit Block and resistance and the Auras are helpful, but I guess time will tell!

Happy Dueling!

Angus Says Ding 49 -- Welcome to the Wall

Welcome to the Wall . . .

This weekend I spent a lot of time on Angus. In fact, I dinged 49th and sailed through The Crystal Grove, The Secure House, and The Forum without hardly any problems. Chronius and Valeska gave me a little bit of trouble, but nothing else really provided this angry-looking no-clothes storm wizzy much of a challenge.

I gotta say though, standing in front of Malistaire's Lair felt pretty epic yesterday.

Opening the back dungeon door was difficult. These days you're up against two back to back 3 vs. 1 fights with tower shield-casting and weakness-casting ice wizard draconians. There's really no time limit like there used to be, now you just have to win both battles. I was defeated several times until a successful insane bolt treasure card at the very beginning of each fight made it a 2 vs. 1 encounter instead of a 3 vs. 1 encounter.

The door opened and there I was staring right at Malistaire.

The 4 vs. 1 evil spirit fight was next, and I was defeated many times there as well until a perfectly timed fortitude card coupled with a minion that quickly taunted the heat off me, and tripled with a lucky streak of power pips that allowed me to cast a bladed tempest took care of the four evil spirits.

Then there I was, and Malistaire was casting dark pixies at me like the mad man he is.

Actually if that's all he did that would be wonderful, but his dps is evil. I had hopes that if I took out one of Malistaire's minions that it wouldn't reappear as had been the case with Big Ben.

Nope. If you take out one of Malistaire's minions and are defeated, they just reappear next time you zone in.

Finally after bashing my head against Malistaire a number of times, I simply ran out of time . . . it was time for me to log off Wizard101 and join my Sunday Night Static group for our weekly Diablo 3 game.

Angus was soundly defeated by Malistaire.

This time.

If I've learned anything from Angus, it is this . . . determination, patience, dumb luck, and creative strategy are the keys to winning when the odds are stacked against you every time.

Eventually I think I could either get two insane bolts to fire off back to back to make the final Malistaire fight be a 2 vs. 1 affair instead of the 4 vs. 1 slaughter that it is solo. Or perhaps I could have Angus take up gardening and get some death ninja pig polymorph cards for the fight in the hopes that the death spell resistance on the death ninja pig polymorph is astounding. Those probably have a level restriction, so I'd have to go back through the game and finish all my side quests to pad my level, which would also help in surviving the fight (every 50 hitpoints counts). /shrug **EDIT: Apparently that Death Ninja Pig idea won't work due to the polymorph having no death resists . . . dang, thanks readers! **EDIT** Perhaps I could cast a vengance aura and somehow score a lucky critical on a tempest to wash away the three minions. There's lots I could still try.

For now . . . I defintely can't say the words "Dragonspyre your clothes don't matter none." I do believe If I was wearing a full set of awesome gear and had a deeper deck with a wand that gave me an extra power pip to start, I could take Malistaire solo as a level 49 storm wizard. Even though these fights are designed to be a group affair . . . I think I could solo him with that advantage . . . even just adding one more wizard to my party would do the trick . . . but that isn't what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to see how far I can solo through the game with a Storm Wizard with no clothes on, a starter deck, a starter wand, no pet, and no nothin' but his treasure cards and strategy--so far that's level 49 and right up to Malistaire.

Happy Dueling!

Angus vs. The Labyrinth -- Ding 48

It's true! Angus bested The Labyrinth! He also dinged 48 out of the whole business as well.Woot! Stormlord here I come!

Was it easy? HECKHOUND NO! The Labyrinth alone for a regular character is a tedious experience. Any dungeon that warns you it's going to be a two-hour experience at the get-go is basically telling you to clear your schedule--this is going to be a while. Well solo on a no clothing storm wizard was . . . extremely long and, yes, painful. I think it took me a total of 3-4 hours to complete. I was sitting on the ground playing on a laptop for the entire time, and I was ready to be done by the end. MORE than ready to be done. Here's a quick breakout of how the instance played out:

I wasn't having too much difficulty at first. The Silver Sentinel went down easy, and I crossed the lava with no difficulty.

The next duel with Zora seemed likewise just as easy, which is strange. I figured her balance minion would give me more issues with shields, weakness, and traps, but my Storm minion played exactly as I wanted it to and life was easy.

Then came Andor Bristleback . . . let me tell you, he was truly a jerk to Angus. Look at him, thinking he's all super suave and stormy!

He didn't take it easy on me, and it took me four tries until I could finally overcome him. I totally felt like Ash getting rejected and made fun of by a Pokemon Connoisseusse (Burgundy is so sassy). Painful.

Since Andor is storm and he's paired with a myth minion, it's an insanely difficult fight for Angus due to the shields and damage output. He was relentless as well with his damage. What finally saved the day was a fortify treasure card played at exactly the right time after a lucky streak of pips helped me take out Andor's sidekick before he could play a storm shield. Fortify helped me withstand the relentless onslaught of storm spells from Andor until my storm minion buddy could grab agro. In essence, it was almost the fight that stopped Angus in his tracks.

BUT THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

Devora was a pushover (as always).

The Property master . . . made me fight him twice. A storm boss paired with a balance minion. yeesh.

The Gallium Paladin . . . made me fight him twice in two long battles. He plays defensively (like Angus) and is also paired with a myth minion, so the shields made for a battle that by the end had Angus earning 240ish experience points just for casting so many cards. LOL.

The Dean . . . made me fight him twice. I shouldn't have had as many problems with this fight as I did, but he has a surprisingly high damage output for a death boss, and at 8k hit points, it's a long fight. I can attest that his natural attack is pretty painful, and especially for a character sporting 1100 health.

It was worth it though because he dropped a Boss Banshee for me WOOT!

That'll go nicely in the shared bank!

I was so exhausted by the whole experience that I'm going to have to probably recruit uber wife's help to get back in to the instance to get the chest for Ashley's follow-on quest. I usually have someone sit in the instance and hold it open so I can finish grabbing that obsidian chest in the Dean's cell, but Angus takes too long to get things done, and I was done for the day. I'll make it happen :)

So this seems crazy, but Malistaire truly is just a couple zones away now! Will that finally be the instance Angus can't overcome? I don't know . . . Angus always seems to have a treasure card up his sleeve that makes the difference. :)

Happy dueling!

TFN Jaguar Mount Giveaway!

Hey again gang,

It's Bailey Skystaff, and KingsIsle has been kind enough to pass along some codes for a shiny new Jaguar mount! Did you get a chance to see these on the test realm? They're awesome!

It's like I'm riding a BMW with Jaguar interior ... only it's Jaguar exterior!

Wanna know something about Jaguars? Jaguars have a strong enough jaw they can bite through a human's skull. (Um, Amber told us that. She's a master of useless factoid knowledge.)

All you have to do is enter the Rafflecopter entry below (which includes tweeting a special message to get you entered into the contest) by Monday and we'll pick the winners on Tuesday!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Thanks everyone!

Happy dueling!

Angus -- Ding 47

Angus dinged 47 this morning!

Yeah, I've been playing him again. :) Angus is currently hanging out in the Cruicible in Dragonspyre . . . still no clothes on . . . still holding a starter wand and starter deck . . . still throwing out hits like this:

Back in March I was playing Angus a lot and he got put on the shelf while I started my new job and played through Avalon. Now that we're in between projects (tons has happened btw . . . Purreau's Plentiful Pet Provisions Pack, Mega Pets, new PVP arenas, etc . . . jus' sayin'), and I have a little bit of time. I think I'll be playing just a touch more of Angus. (Although, GuildWars 2 is really wanting to suck away all my time like a Vampire bat spell on a mander in Krokotopia--thanks, I just came up with that one.)

Oh Dragonspyre . . . your towers are grueling--even though they were gimped a bit a couple years ago; here in 2012, Angus likes that they were gimped a bit. ;)

I still have a few nasty fights ahead of me in the Labyrinth that I'm not looking forward to, and that will definitely be the next newsworthy blog post you'll hear from me about Angus.

Wish me luck!

I'm gonna need it.

Happy dueling!