How to deal with Sphinx’s Decree?!?

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest MtGPQ General Discussion
1

One of my team members just lost an HoD match to a freeze because the opponent included Sphinx’s Decree in the deck.

My teammate took a screenshot of the final battle log and we found it’s very helpful as a warning in case we are matched against that players’ deck. There are some useful discard spells that we can try to add to our decks in case we know we are going against a deck with this damned card.

Is there a way we can all help compile and share such information to help warn other people here? Are we allowed to mention their names? Share screenshots of battle log with their names on?

if not, can we find a common place to share the info somewhere else?

2

Unfortunately I don’t believe we CAN name names, but obviously the real resolution would be for Oktagon to fix the tinykitty card or at the very leadt, just disable it if someone DOES have it in their hand and the ai uses it…

3

[MOD MIC ON] “Naming names”, even by screenshot is a violation of forum rule 7. [//MOD MIC]

If you come across the Sphinx’s Decree bug you should take a screenshot, report it and post in the existing forum thread (without using names of course).

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/75331/sphinxs-decree-causes-game-to-soft-lock-investigating

4

So… as we know the card does not work, can this be considered cheating by using and exploit to burn others? It’s not that the person/people using these decks are unaware of their own games freezing due to it.

5

Based on the conversations I’ve seen around this for a while: NO

Since there are no in game rules that expressly prohibit using cards that do not function properly it isn’t cheating to do it. (note this is just what the consensus seems to be to me based on the conversation here: Sphinx's Decree causes game to soft lock [Fix in 3.0] - MtGPQ Bugs & Technical Issues - 505 Go! Official Forums)

6

Is it considered cheating no?

However the bug occurs 100% of the time so if someone has it in their deck, it’s there to troll others, and that’s poor form and bad sportsmanship.

7

Eh. MtG has always been just as much about forcing the other player to lose as it has been about winning.

There’s a long and rich history of “troll decks” in both paper and PQ.

Is it nice? No. It is not. But unsportsmanlike? I wouldn’t go that far.

In fact, since a card like Solemnity exists, one could make a very good argument that the devs intended trolling to exist in the meta. Solemnity did me absolutely no good in my deck but I usually included when cycling was a thing.

Am I playing with Sphinx’s Decree? No. I think it’s too risky to use. But it’s not a players fault if they want the opposition to lose… and it’s not their fault that the card is broken. Blame the devs it you’re feeling salty.

8

There’s a pretty big difference in using a card designed to interrupt a dominant meta and a card that’s broken and forces people to lose matches due to bad coding.

The latter I would say is teetering on cheating. If you’re running it explicitly to force other people’s games to freeze and lose points, then I would say that’s a method of cheating not entirely unlike exploiting the code to include illegal cards. You’re creating an advantage for yourself by using faulty code.

9

My biggest worry with labeling it “cheating” is that, without an in-game announcement about the bug, many players may actually be unaware of the problem.

I’m almost certain that it’s still in a couple of my white starfield decks simply because I haven’t used those walkers lately and haven’t changed them yet.

While matchmaking is meant to be restricted to decks entered into the specific event, who knows if that bit of code has been broken too? Goodness knows that plenty of other bits of code are wonky.

10

You won’t be facing random unused decks, though. In order to face it out in the wild, your opponent had to register and play with the deck.

Its possible you played the deck, and didn’t pull the card to cast it. But that’s the difference the devs can track like they did with people intentionally using the legacy card exploit, and people who stumbled across it accidentally.

11

In paper magic there is nothing like game crash. So, troll decks are just anti--decks.

In Mtgpq there are crashes for such cards. So fix it or put on ban list until fix it.

12

What would the game be like if everyone used the card? It’s worth thinking about that for yourself, but my guess is it’d turn away new players and demoralise old players. It’d shrink the game’s customer base and bring a bad experience to everyone. Each and every person using the card is nudging the game experience slider another notch towards terrible.

So if you know about the bug and use the card anyway, you are bringing everyone down, at small advantage to yourself, in a way not intended to be possible within the competitive scope of the game. I don’t see how any action having those characteristics could possibly be considered sportsmanlike.

13

Who benefits from this debate over what is and isn’t sporting? The players? No. The devs.

Every time we start blaming each other, it removes focus from the devs putting out a bad product. It’s unfair to shift the burden of responsibility for each other’s enjoyment to the players when we have no control over the game itself.

Until there is a bug list accessible in game detailing these unintended negative interactions, it is a waste of time to feel bad about this stuff.

14

Just to clarify - my comment above had nothing to do with blame. As far as that goes, the bug is clearly the responsibility of the devs to address.

My comment just explains my own thoughts on how to decide what to do, given the existence of the bug. Each of us faces that decision currently, and it’s a decision with consequences and impacts on the game we all enjoy. So, while I cannot recommend feeling bad about it, I respectfully believe it’s an absolutely valuable discussion to have.

15

I completely disagree with you here. While there is a glitch. In every single case in which a glitch is abused or intentionally triggered through steps by a player… that is not on the Devs. That is solely the action of that player. By even suggesting this insults the purpose, sportsmanship and sense of community that coalitions work hard to maintain and abide by. You know very well that the mega coalitions have done what they can to crack down on cheaters or those that abuse the game glitches in such a way that it creates an unsportsmanlike match, and in many cases the event.

I agree that the devs have a responsibility to fix these errors, but by god, we as honest players also share a responsibility to the gaming community to be fair and sportsmanlike in our conduct with each other during matches.

16

Are we blaming each other or are we coming to a consensus as a community about what we view as sportsmanlike conduct?

Of course the devs are to blame for it not being fixed, but it doesn’t take away the personal responsibility we have as players to not intentionally damage our opponents by using bugged cards.

However, I think this is a much needed conversation and I’m personally proud to be part of a game and community where almost all of you hold yourself to a high standard and don’t condone intentionally using bugged cards to troll other players.

17

This! Well said @Volrak

18

Hmm. Actually if everyone use this card I have no doubt that soon everyone plays some discard strategy or hiper aggro to counter this meta. (dispossess I’m looking at you). Or as far as I remember decree only freeze if have spell on hand, so creatures/support only deck should be safe. Vryn Wingmare should also see play.

19

Problem with that is it still means a spell in hand… regardless of what that spell does.

20

First off, as a speculative method of “solving” Sphinx’s Decree, running a deck with no spells when facing a white PW may be a way to avoid the risk of a freeze entirely.(Edit: This possibility seems to have already been addressed in the posts above since I began writing this post, so it admittedly no longer contains entirely original material)

Naturally, this hypothesis is difficult to verify conclusively, but based on limited testing in Story Mode and other players’ experiences posted on various external platforms, there’s a non-trivial possibility that the freeze conditions are twofold, and therefore are not necessarily (as seems to be widely believed) exclusively limited to factors outside of a player’s control should the opponent be using Sphinx’s Decree:

  1. One player casts (or otherwise controls on the board, e.g. via Whir of Invention or Refurbish) Sphinx’s Decree
  2. The other player has a spell in hand (this second aspect may be easy to overlook in many cases)

Given the frequency with which (2) occurs in a typical game and the difficulty of determining with certainty the exact contents of the AI’s hand at any given time, I don’t know how to reliably reproduce the situations needed to inarguably confirm or refute this idea, but I can confirm at the least that some additional condition is needed to induce a freeze beyond simply casting Sphinx’s Decree, as I was able to cast it in Story Mode after emptying the AI’s hand and continue the game normally for 2-3 turns before ultimately encountering a freeze later on during the AI’s turn (which occurred immediately after it drew a card with Decree still in play at that point). There may be other possibilities to consider as well, but as an operative assumption, exiling all spells from hand (and attempting to fill a hand with 6 creatures and supports) would help during any game against an opponent using Sphinx’s Decree if this hypothesis is correct, and using a deck without any spells would preclude the second condition from arising entirely in that case as well.

For those who wish to refrain from any speculation and would prefer deckbuilding solutions instead, here’s a list of potential ideas for reducing the odds of losing to Sphinx’s Decree without inordinately compromising a deck against other matchups. All of the examples range (subjectively) from strong cards and strategies to marginally playable ones (listed in no particular order), with varying levels of dependency on the surrounding deck archetype for optimal efficiency.
This is not an exhaustive list, and it’s entirely possible that other options may also prove effective for many players, but most of the omitted cards in these categories fall below the threshold of what I’d personally tend to consider playing as an answer to Decree even if I were certain to be facing a deck that included it in a given game, assuming the other 9 cards in the opposing deck weren’t also known in advance.

1. Discard or similar - Transgress the Mind, Whispers of Emrakul, Infinite Obliteration, Divest, Day’s Undoing, possibly Lost Legacy

2. “Counterspells” - Insidious Will, Pact of Negation

3. Mana denial - Sphinx’s Tutelage, Psychic Corrosion, Millstone, Overwhelming Splendor, Emrakul, the Promised End, Quarantine Field, Vryn Wingmare, Scatter to the Winds, Spell Swindle, Censor, Countervailing Winds

4. Hyperaggressive decks - There are various templates for this approach, but as a catch-all solution, often the best option for proactive defense is to abandon most attempts at reactive cards or a control strategy and instead aim to overload a deck with threats in order to win before the opponent has an opportunity to cast any problematic cards. Secondary objectives generally disincentivize this strategy as a default tactic, but playtesting may prove it to be the most efficient answer to a difficult problem in certain cases, and the very best decks (especially in Legacy) may incorporate extremely fast wins involving minimal interaction as an incidental reflection of their overall dominance rather than as a compromise made in lieu of access to better options.

Hopefully some of these possibilities will help as a temporary solution until the underlying problem can be addressed by the developers; in the meantime, good luck to anyone encountering Sphinx’s Decree in the wild, and sympathies to those who have been or may yet become unwitting victims of the freeze either when using or facing it during the normal course of play.