Planning your turn (Guide to avoiding simple mistakes)

[Flycheung]

You do NOT get the draw. Its the same as Portal leaving play; the card is technically not being destroyed. It's just being sent to the graveyard. IGG will not trigger from traps being spung.

From Kyle himself in here.
Kyle Poole added a comment - 20/Feb/12 11:34 AM
Fixed in v1.501. Used traps will trigger Ill-Gotten Gains

[Warr Byrd]

You do NOT get the draw. Its the same as Portal leaving play; the card is technically not being destroyed. It's just being sent to the graveyard. IGG will not trigger from traps being spung.

Actually, you DO get the draw, I just tested it against the AI. I drew a Kris as my normal draw (the only one in my hand), played it against a Death Trap, and proceeded to draw another Kris.

[MistahBoweh]

Eh. I raised the question on the stream when Portal didn't trigger it and am pretty sure people answered otherwise. Whatever. My b.

[psychobabble]

A lot of good tips here. While I realise that it's meant to be a general guide and not go into evey possible interraction, I just wanted to elaborate on a decision that's actually quite a bit more complicated than you give credit for.

Unnecessary Sacrifices

In the 1st 5 turns, it is highly likely that you would want to sacrifice every turn. After which, it comes to a point where you may be able to play anything you want that turn without having to sacrifice.

There are two things I'd like to point out here. First is the situations where you don't want to sacrifice for the first five turns. Even putting aside rush/weenie decks that don't really need to go over 4 or even sometimes 3 resources to win, there are definitely situations where you will want to 'pause' at 3 or 4 resources. This is particularly if you are on the play (going first) and so aren't giving up a two-resource advantage to your opponent. There are a few reasons that you might want to 'pause' in this way, including that your only sacrifice options are cards that you know will be absolutely essential in the coming turns (eg. playing zaladar vs moonstalker with a hand of DMT and shadow font x3, it would be perfectly legitimate to pause on 3 or 4 resources). I should also note that you only want to do this provided that doing so doesn't deprive you of being able to use your resources on a particular turn - it's no point pausing on 4 resources when all of the remaining cards in your hand are 5cc+; just suck it up and sac one of your awesome 5cc cards in that situation.

As for the point to stop saccing - there is more to consider than just whether you can afford what's in your hand now. You want to think about whether there'll be a possible two-card play that you might want to do a turn or two down the track that would be impossible to do if you don't sacrifice an extra one now. This is obviously only really going to be relevant in a deck which has some draw potential, but pausing on 5 might stop you from doing that blowout IGG+haste jas or DMT+shadow font 7cc move on a later turn; and there's a whole lotta awesome plays you can do with 8cc which will potentially require some painful saccing (and foresight) while sitting on 6cc.

Something else to consider with late game saccing is that as the game gets nearer to the end, the chance of you getting full value out of all the high CC cards you're holding gets less and less, especially if you don't get to a resource level where you can play 2 cards in a single turn for a big blowout play.

Anyway, imo late game saccing is a highly nuanced decision, particularly in a deck with a draw engine (which all good decks have) and the factors you have to consider go well beyond just whether you have enough to play what is in your hand on that turn.

[pyrogene]

@psychobabble, I did use the qualifiers 'likely' and 'may' but clarified it again anyway. For more on sacrificing, there is an excellent guide by NinjaDucky which goes into much more detail: http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....to-Sacrificing

Updated with the point on multiple draw engines and sacrificing.

[glencocoe]

Oh btw, for rogues, I noticed 2 other things:

Playing as Rogues:

- when reserve weapon is used, IGG activates when it's put into the graveyard. Upon hindsight it seems obvious, but it's something I didn't know since It's shelf life usually spans a mere few seconds.
- IGG counts as an item. Not support or artifact. It has kept item status after the update, so if playing against item destruction like mages and you have an extra lily, you can use it to retrieve IGG...though it might mess up tempo...but then again, sometimes IGG destruction hurts so much, it doesn't matter lol.

[Morettos]

I. ROGUES

--- Playing as rogues: to my knowledge, when traps Are sprung, you do get draw from IGG. if not, sorry, but I believe they do. Initially I thought they didn't. Also, just something insignificant: for those Who want to use nightstalker (stripping armor) with a weapon's ability together, the discarding goes first...THEN the stealing. So if your opponent only has one card, and ability is used, you will NOT steal anything.

Congrats Glencocoe, your post was simply amazing, those lots of tips you wrote definitely helps many players to improve their gamplay, and not only new players, but older ones (like me lol). your post definitely deserves its own thread! thank you for your tips. I didn't know about this tip neither!

Playing as Rogues:

- IGG counts as an item. Not support or artifact. It has kept item status after the update, so if playing against item destruction like mages and you have an extra lily, you can use it to retrieve IGG...though it might mess up tempo...but then again, sometimes IGG destruction hurts so much, it doesn't matter lol.

[Morettos]

Pyrogene deserves congrats too

Your thread is excellent, one of the best i have readed so far, it is a complete guide of many advices people usually forgets or dont take in mind when facing a match, and this tips can make the diference between winning or loosing everything. I hope you continue posting amazing articles like this one.

[Harakhte]

Re: IGG - I've developed the habit of simply holding extras when possible. It is a wonderful turn-about when it gets Shriek'd and it shows up again without a pause, but of course this falls into the whole 'what to sac?' question that we all know so well. I mean, if their board is clear, but they blew up my IGG, I don't play it immediately if I have allies in play still, I wait for a nice ally or item to drop (and at 8 resources, which to me equals Aeon+Retreat, or IGG+ST! or Raven+Aldon or AB+Jas) I can IGG, then kill the ally or Stop, Thief! the item.

[MistahBoweh]

Even if you get zero cards out of IGG, if it gets shrieked you have +1 card advantage. Most of the time though, you'll be getting at least one trigger off it the turn it's played. Even without ANY draw, it still does its job when shrieked, which is to generate card advantage. For that reason, holding onto extra copies isn't at all a priority.

If I spend not one, but TWO turns to play IGG, AND because I didn't sac the extra I sacced a threat instead, I both have LESS cards than I would otherwise, NO control of the board, and thus NO way to start racking up IGG triggers. I mean, if you don't have a particular reason to sac your 7th or 8th resource, you might as well hold that IGG. But I won't hesitate to pitch it for fear of a Shriek.