Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

Welcome to my second Card of the Week! - In the Stands

This time I would like to look at the power of the adventure cards, and which ones should be considered when creating your deck.  Also, you must consider these powerful adventures when making the rest of your deck, because you don’t want to be crippled by having your opponent play a certain adventure!

So my card of the week is one of the new power adventures from the quiddich set:

In the stands

Adventure

Effect: Your opponent can’t play creature cards.  To solve: Your opponent chooses 4 Creature Cards in his or her hand and discard them.

Opponent’s Reward: Your opponent may draw a card

Yet again, we have another POWERFUL adventure card.  Adventures are the power cards of Harry Potter, and this is an amazing one.

Basically, its like 4 Privet Drive but for creatures  If your opponent’s deck depends on creatures for the kill, it just destroys them!  Now, we must always keep in mind that we can only have one adventure in play.  (If there was a card that would let us have more, that would be one of the most amazing cards in the game).  So when we play an adventure, it has to be so horrible, that our opponent MUST deal with it.  Otherwise they will just sit there and let you have it and then all the other adventures you draw are wasted.  But if they just have to destroy it or else the will lose, then they will pay a heavy price (in this case, discarding 4 creatures, and saving you a lot of pain), and then you just get to play another adventure!

That is our goal in the use of adventures.  They must be SO BAD that our opponent is FORCED to get rid of them, and then we play another, and another.  Then when they spend all their time and resources destroying our adventures, we hopefully will have time to defeat our opponent.  The adventures that I consider to be in this category for a CONTROL-TYPE deck are the following:

1)   4 Privet Drive  (if they are a deck which kills by direct damage, not creatures)

2)   Gaze into the Mirror (quiddich set): During your opponent’s turns, prevent all Spells damage done to you by Spell cards.

To Solve:  Opponent chooses 5 Spell cards in hand and discards them.

Reward:  Opponent gets 1 more Action

Again, this is against the direct damage decks.  And it, like 4 Privet, kills them, but the penalty to get rid of it is even harsher, they have to get rid of 5 of their spell cards!  If they do that, chances are, they wont have enough business spells left to win the game.

3)   In the Stands:  (shown above)

This is killer against the creature decks, probably even worse than unusual pets!

They can’t win without their creatures, so they have to discard 4 creatures to destroy(solve) it.  And then they wont have enough creatures left to defeat you!  It will take them some time to draw some more creatures to start playing.

I would drop this card down as soon as I saw my opponent play a single COMC lesson, if I had it.

Generally, I would wait to see what my opponent is playing before playing an adventure (unless I knew).  If I see COMC lessons, you drop the anti-creature adventure.  If a potions lesson, you drop the anti-spells adventure.  The goal of playing with these adventures is that you will play the ones corresponding to the type of deck you are playing against, and they will be forced to destroy the adventure in order to be able to do anything against you.    And in order to do this they must cripple themselves, by discarding lots of cards, so they don’t have much left to do anything to you anyways Note I said these are the adventures I would use in a CONTROL deckthat is, a deck whose goal is to control the game and win over time, being able to deal with their opponents threats, and then using a few, powerful threats of their own to win the game.

Now there is another type of adventure which I would use in a “BEATDOWN” type deck.that is, a deck which goes for quick kills, trying to defeat (or seriously weaken) their opponent before he or she can get going.  These are the adventures which can do large amounts of damage (and therefore must be dealt with), and which have a painful cost to get rid of.

These are the following:

1)          Unusual Pets

This card is wonderful against creature decks, and the cost of sacrificing two creatures is painful.  I consider 4 damage a turn to be the amount which “must be deal with”.  If you use your adventure to do 2 damage a turn to me, I will probably just sit there and take it and try to kill you before it kills me.  But 4 damage a turn, combined with other damage sources, is very threatening.

2)          Hagrid Needs Help

Effect: Opponent gets one less Action per turn (never to zero Actions

though). Solve: Take 8 damage. Opponent’s Reward: draw 3 cards

The one less action a turn is crippling, an effect which much be dealt with.  And it effectively deals 11 damage (counting the draws as a damage too).  If you are doing lots of damage fast, and then drop this, your opponent will be facing the painful predicament of either taking a lot more damage, or playing with only one action a turn.

3)          Sticking Up for Neville

Effect: Before each of your turns, your opponent takes 4 damage.  To solve: Your opponent discards his or her hand.  Opponent’s Reward: Your opponent may put up to 4 non-Healing cards from his or her discard pile on the bottom of his or her deck (in any order).

Again, that 4 damage a turn is powerful, and this card doesn’t have to be played against a creature deck!  If you play this quickly, like in the first couple turns, your opponent will have to either discard their hand to get rid of it, thus crippling them in the early game, or else take a lot of damage before they can get their cards out so that discarding their hand is not so painful.

I consider these six adventures to be the most powerful, though there are others which could be great in certain decks or certain circumstances (of course).  Generally, when playing adventures, consider whether your opponent could simply allow you to keep the adventure in play, and suffer through it, since it isn’t TOO bad, or whether it is just too crippling or destructive to allow it to exist, and they MUST kill it.  It is the second type which you want to play.  That way, your opponent will have to go out of their way to get rid of it, and then you will simply play another.  (You don’t want to draw lots of adventures and not be able to play them!)

Now, remember last week I was talking about the new character Professor Minerva McGonagall (whose name I misspelled last week.I blame this on the fact that I was in such disbelief of how good this card is, that my brain just stopped working)...

Anyways, doesn’t that ability to get rid of your opponents adventure look even better now, after having looked at some of the new powerful adventure cards from the quiddich set!

Think about it!  If you are playing a creature deck, and your opponent drops an In The Stands on the first or second turn, (which I would do if I had it and I saw my opponent drop a COMC lesson), then you are pretty much stuck!  You have to discard four creatures to get rid of it, or else you cant do much of anything!  But if you have Professor McGonagall, you just tell them to put that adventure right in their discard pile and you start putting out your creatures.  Or think if you have a potions deck.  Your goal is to throw big potions in your opponent’s face like Draughts of Living Death and Dogbreath Potions.  And your opponent plays a Gaze into the Mirror before you get the chance!  You are sitting there with five wonderful potions in your hand just ready to throw them all at your opponent for the kill, and suddenly you have to discard them all, or else you’ll never be able to do any damage.  But if you are playing McGonagall?  No problem at all.at least, for the first one.  And if they had two, you at least only have to pay to get rid of one!  Then you might still be able to find enough potions or creatures to go for the kill.  And she provides a transfiguration lesson too.  How amazing is that?  You can play transfigure spells without even putting a single transfiguration lesson in your deck.  And look at the new great transfigure spell.

Diffindo

8T - Spell

Choose 1 of your opponent’s cards in play (other than his or her starting Character). Your opponent discards that card.

You can destroy an adventure, a fluffy (or other creature), an item, a character other than their starter, basically, whatever card is giving you pain, it is gone.  (Except a 4 Privet Drivethat one you have to use McGonagall to get rid of, or lose 6 cards).

It is an incredibly versatile spell, and you should be able to get up to 8 lessons, especially with some sort of wand or broom or cauldron, and Minerva here giving you a free lesson to start.  With all the powerful adventures out there, I consider Minerva McGonagall pretty much a must for a starter.  Don’t expect to play her as a backup against me.  I’ll be playing her as my starter every time...

Well, time to look at a deck.  My goal here is to be versatile in my method of defeating my opponent, and being able to deal with whatever type of adventure my opponent throws at me.  That way, no matter what they do, the game’s not over.

Starter:  Minerva McGonagall (the ABSOLUTE best)

Adventures: (10)

3 4 Privet Drive
3 Gaze into the Mirror
4 In the Stands

Creatures: (14)

4 Vicious Wolf
4 Guard Dog
4 Mountain Troll  (put in fluffy if you really want, I expect your opponent will just bounce him back to your hand or kill him, and then you will have sacrificed 2 COMC lessons.)
2 Unicorn

Items: (5)

3 Borrowed Wand

2 Cage

Spells: (12)

4 Diffindo
4 Stream of Flames (3 to opponent and 3 to a creature, cost 5C)
2 Halloween feast (put 4 creatures from discard to hand, cost 4C)

Lessons: (21)

10 Charms
11 Control of Magical Creatures  

In this deck, you will kill with some powerful creatures, using your adventures to greatly hamper your opponent, and your spells for defense.  Near the end, Halloween Feast can be used to get those creatures which were killed or discarded due to damage.  Or, it even gets back 4 creatures you discarded to solve an In The Stands!

Now, this deck is unplayed (and you have to get the quiddich cards to play it, anyway), its untested, and will need work, but it’s a start!  Working on decks is one of the best parts of any collectible card game.  I’ll leave that part to you.

I think that a creature deck, with ‘halloween feast’s to help avoid the ‘in the stands’ adventure and the ‘unusual pets’ adventure, would be a good choice too.  As far as potions decks go, I think that you ahd BETTER play Minerva McGonagall, or you will just lose to adventures.

Thanks for reading,

Until next week.