Challenge Completion Guide + Expansion Challenges!

Following this quick and simple guide will allow you to easily complete all of the challenges in SIngle Player! It also includes a few tips and explanations on how each strategy works that will help you get better at playing magic. Now updated with Expansion Challenges! Sorry it took me so long to do them, I just never got around to it.

Introduction

Hello and thanks for reading my guide! I play Magic on an almost daily basis with friends, and am an avid fan of coming up with silly combos and deck building strategies. I play on the hardest difficulty and only have to restart about twice during most duels do to a bad start. While Duels is meant as an introduction to Magic, the challenges felt like a good test of my abilities, so keep that in mind going forward. While I do go through how to beat each challenge step by step, I do reccomend you try them on your own first, because that's half the fun!

But that said, some of them are devious, espcially to someone who doesn't play magic on a daily basis. Here's some tips.

• Don't be afraid to restart. Sometimes you mess up, and have to do it all over again.
  
• Before doing anything, take the time to read every card in the field, and in your hand. If you don't know what an ability means, ask a friend who does, or look it up online.
  
• The later challenges have some advanced stack based play and what a lot of players call 'cheaty' combos. Don't feel bad if the answer wouldn't have occured to you, that's why I've written this guide.

Do note that there are other ways to beat these challenges than the ways I've outlined here! I'll be updating the guide as I become aware of different possible solutions.

Thanks again and please enjoy playing Magic!

Challenge One - Command the Dead

There's actually a couple of different ways you can do this challenge. Both however start with thus.

Cast Lightning Blast on one of the Runeclaw Bears, leave the green mana open.

Then, you have two options. The first option is to cast Unnatural Predation on your Grave Titan, this gives it Trample. They have two bears, with 2 toughness each. However, since the Grave TItan has Deathtouch, it only needs to assign one damage to each bear in order to move to the next blocker in line. Even if you hadn't killed the first bear, the titan would only have to assign 3 out of the 7 power it had to killing the bears, allowing four to trample through, which with the zombies, would be enough to win.

Your other option is to go right to combat, and attack with all. You have three creatures and they have two blockers. You can cast titanic growth on whichever creature is unblocked.

As a note, there are a lot of different ways to do this one. You could for example, just give your titan trample, then use lightning blast on the enemy. So try and find as many ways to do this one as you can, it's good practice.

Challenge Two - Gird For War

This Challenge is one of the trickier ones, if you miss something important in one of the cards on your hand.

You start with six equipment in your hand, and 9 mana.

You have four Sliverclaw Lions, 2/2s and the enemy has Walking Corpses, also 2/2s.

To start with, play three equipment from your hand. Golem-Skin Gauntlets, O-Naginata, and Trusty Machete.

Equip all three of these onto one single lion. You will have to equip either the machete or the gauntlets first, because the naginata requires the creature to have 3 or greater power.

The important part which makes this work is that hte O-Naginata grants the equipped creature trample. With the Golem-Skin Gauntlets giving it +3 power (+1 From the Gauntlets, +1 From the Naginata, and +1 from the Machete) it brings the power up to 10.

Go to combat, and attack with everything. You are attacking with a total of 16 power, and they have four defenders. The reason it works is because your big creature has trample, and the rest of your creatures equal trade. If all four zombies blocked the 10 power lion, 2 damage still tramples through and each of the unblocked lions does 2 damage, for a total of 8. If they block the lions, then more of the trample damage goes through.

Challenge Three - Battle Tactics

If you look at your hand, you'll notice you have a kill spell. While this spell is tempting, you don't want to use it. Even if you take out a blocker, you don't have enough power to deal the 9 damage required to win. The answer is actually the Might of Oaks card in your hand. At first the +7 power doesn't seem like it would work, because they could simply block the creature.

However, Might of Oaks is an instant, which means you can cast it during combat. Go to combat and turn your army sideways, swinging all out. Two of your creatures will be blocked, cast might of oaks on whichever creature is unblocked. Because your lowest power creature is 2, +7 will make it a 9 power, which is enough to win.

Challenge Four - Blood is Life

This challenge starts with you being attacked. Overall it's pretty easy, assign both of your untapped vampires to block, making sure you block the 4/4. You will take 5 or 6 from the trampler, depending on how you blocked, but will gain 5 from the lifelink.

During your next turn, attack with your flying bat. They can't block it, so they take the 2 and lose.

Challenge Five - Defeat the Troll

This challenge is also pretty simple. The troll can regenerate, but when a creature regenerates, it taps. A tapped creature cannot block.

Use your doom blade on the troll, it will be regenerated, but it will be tapped. Your Barony Vampire can now attack unimpeeded, dealing the 3 damage required to win.

Challenge Six - Sliver Strike Team

Ah, finally, the Advanced Challenges. These are quite a bit trickier than the initial ones.

You start with a Blur Sliver (Haste), Battle Sliver (+2/+0), and a Steelform Sliver (+0/+1) in play.

In your hand, you have a variety of slivers, but the two you are going to want to play are Bonescythe (Double Strike) And Predatory (+1/+1)

After you play both of those, you will have five creatures, to the enemies three. Your newest slivers can attack because blur sliver gives them haste. Your weakest creature will have 4 power. They can only block three creatures. two creatures with 4 power, double strike, deals 4x4=16 damage, which is enough to win since the enemy only has 14 life.

Swing out for victory.

Challenge Seven - Go Beserk

When you start this challenge, it seems like it's pretty simple! You have a massive board advantage and can simply attack the enemies empty board!

Of course, it's not so simple, your opponent here has snare traps, which he can use to tap your creatures. Which this might not stop you, it will hinder you if you want to get the achivement (Deal 200+(!) damage)

But, all is not lost, and I will tell you how to deal that massive damage!

Note: If you're having trouble after reading the basic strategy, there is a step by step at the end of this section.

There's a lot going on here, so I'm just going to cover the basics. The first thing you want to do is play your land. Then, find Mossbridge Troll in your hand, and play that, then Quirion Ranger, and play him. Now, you have 8 Green Creatures on the battlefield, allowing you to play the Hydra in your hand for free! The last thing you have to make sure to do is to cast Instill Energy, enchanting your Troll with it.

Now, you're going to want to click continue. Why? Because your enemy is going to try to start tapping things.

If they try to tap your mossbridge troll, let them, just remember that you're going to need to untap it using Instill Energy before the combat stage arrives. If they try to tap out another creature, use the ability of the Troll in respone. If they tried tapping a big creature, simply tap that, to give the troll +20 power. The reason this works is because you're tapping it before they tap it. This lets your troll power up, without letting the tap go to waste. After they use all four traps, use your Quirion Ranger to untap one of your 10+ power creatures, return a tapped forest to your hand.

After you have tapped out every creature you can to make your troll large, cast beserk, to double it's power. If you did everything properly, it should have 250(!!) power, allowing you to easily smash the 200 required for the achivement!

Step By Step
This is a step by step of the way this challange plays out when I play it. It is possible that it won't play out exactly the same when you do it.

• Play Forest From Hand
  
• Play Mossbridge Troll
  
• Play Instill Energy, targeting Mossbridge Troll
  
• Play Quirion Ranger
  
• Play Khalni Hydra. It is free because of the number of green creatures in play.
  
• Continue to Combat
  
• AI activates Trip Noose targeting Primalcrux. Stop the timer, use Mossbridge Troll's ability to tap Primalcrux. Mossbridge is now a 25/25
  
• AI activates second Trip Noose targeting Mossbridge Troll. Allow this to resolve.
  
• AI activates third Trip Noose targeting Khali Hydra. Stop the timer, use Mossbridge Troll's ability to tap Khali Hydra and Heedless One. Mossbridge is now a 45/45
  
• AI activates fourth Trip Noose targeting Baloth Woodcrusher. Stop the timer, use Mossbridge Troll's ability to tap Baloth Woodcrusher and Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. Mossbridge is now a 65/65
  
• Before the Combat Phase arrives, do the follwing. Use Mossbridge Troll's ability to tap: Drove of Elves; Dungrove Elder. Mossbridge is now a 105/105 Then use Quirion Ranger's ability to untap any of the following: Dungrove Elder, Drove of Elves, or Primalcrux. Return one of your tapped forests to your hand. Use Mossbridge Troll's ability to retap whichever creature you untapped. If you untapped Dungrove Elder, you will need to tap the Quirion Ranger with it. Mossbridge is now a 125/125. Lastly, use Instill Energy to Untap Mossbridge and play Beserk from your hand targeting Mossbridge. Mossbridge is now a 250/125.
  
• Combat Step Arrives: Attack with Mossbridge.

Challenge Eight - Near Death

In this challenge you start off beign attacked again, like you did in Challenge Four. It's very similar, requiring you to use lifelink to win yourself the day. However, it's different in that you want to gain a very specific amount of life.

You start with an enchantment called Near-Death Experience on the field. This enchantment grants you victory if you have exactly one life at your upkeep!

Looking at the rest of your field, you have three creatures, two of which are enchanted. This gives your angel lifelink and firebreathing, and one of your Glory Seekers lifelink.

Winning this match requires nothing more than math. You are going to take X damage, you have Y toughness to block with, and can gain Z life with lifelink. The trick is that your angel can gain your extra life with firebreathing, each +1 power will give you one more life.

So all you have to do is figure out how much you need to fire breath!

The answer is once. Use the firebreathing power on your angel once, and block as much as you can. You will take 11 damage, and gain 10 life, resulting in a total change of -1. Since you have have 2 life, this will leave you at 1 during your turn, winning you the game.

Note: It's possible depending on how you block that you'll take a different amount of damage. Make sure to double check the math before commiting your blockers!

Challenge Nine - Get a Grip

This challenge is relatively easy, as long as you understand a rule which is important, but never explained in this version of the game! (At least, I haven't seen it, it might be.) If a creature has gains protection from a color while enchanted by an aura of that color, the aura will fall off.

In short, if you use Stave Off to give your pacified Vulshok Refugee protection from white, the pacifism falls off, leaving it free to attack.

Your creature also has protection from red, which is important because which it means the giants can't block it, though the memnites can.

However, the menites have one toughness, and pyroclasm does 2 damage to each creature. While at first you might think this would kill your Vulshok (which only has a toughness of 2), worry not because it has protection from red! Meaning it won't take the damage.

After you cast pyroclasm, the field will be clear for your Vulshok to attack. So move to combat, turn sideways, and check one more under your belt.

Challenge Ten - Sliver Infiltration

Alright. This one is tricky. Let me give you some step by steps, then I'll talk about what each thing means.

• Cast Brainstorm, put Crib Swap and Blightsteel back on top of your deck.
  
• Use Quicksilver amulet to put Protean Hulk onto the battlefield. Leave at least one blue and two green mana open.
  
• Use Culling Dais to Sacrifice your freshly played Protean Hulk. You want to grab the follow cards from your library. Virulent Sliver, Virulent Sliver, Heart Sliver, and Muscle Sliver.
  
• Play the two Virulant Slivers in your hand.
  
• Use Tidal Surge to Tap Three of their Blockers
  
• Swing out.

Alright, this one took me a long time to figure out. This challenge must be ludicriously difficult to anyone who hasn't encountered Virulent Slivers before. They have an ability called Poisionous, which a value of 1. What this means is that whever it does damage to a player, that player also gets a poison counter. What are poison counters you ask? Well they're an alternative lose condition. When a player has 10 or more of them, they lose.

Also, poisonous stacks. So with all four Virulent Slivers, each sliver has Poisonous 1, four times. Each time they do damage to a player, that player will gain four poison counters. After tapping out their blockers, you have six attacking slivers to their three defenders. Since you grabbed a heart sliver from your deck, all your slivers have haste. This means at least three slivers will get through, and since each sliver does 4 poison when it attacks a player, they will end up with 12 poison counters, causing them to lose.

Expansion Challenge One - Mountain Assault

So, we're on the expansion. The challenges here are more difficult than the base game, but I wouldn't say they're harder than Sliver Infiltration...at least until the last one. As always, carefully read your cards, and carefully read your opponents cards. Your creature can attack and it has mountainwalk. That means that if hte opponent controls a mountain, they can't block it. The opponent here doesn't control a mountain, but they do control non-basic lands. Your Blood Moon turns non-basic lands into mountains. So, by playing that, you'll make your goblin unblockable.

Slight problem is that it can only do one damage, and the opponent here has two life. The opponent has a creature called Kird Ape. It gets a bonus +1/+2 if you control a forest. They don't, but you do. You also have the mana left over after Blood Moon to cast Cytroshape, a card in your hand. Cytroshape causes a creature to become a copy of a non-legendary creature that's already on the battlefield. If you make your goblin a copy of the ape, it will get the bonus +1/+2, enough to kill the opponent. Of course, if you use it, then it loses mountainwalk. However, with the way that combat plays out, you can declare your goblin as an attack. Then, during the declare blocking phases, the opponent has to declare no blockers, since they can't block. After the opponent decalres no blockers, you have a chance to cast instants, like Cytoshape. Convoluted, right?

Here's a step by step.

• Cast Blood Moon
  
• Go to the combat step, declare your goblin as an attacker.
  
• Wait for the timer to finish once, then pause it before it finishes again.
  
• Cast Cytroshape. Target your goblin, and then target the Kird Ape to become a copy of it.
  
• Your GoblinApe will do two damage, causing you to win.

Expansion Challenge Two - Beat the Angel

As always, look over the field and look over your cards. I'll provide you with basic talk on cards as they become revelent. In this situation, many magic players would cry, asking how the game state was allowed to get to such a situation. To others, they would cry because they could only dream of having such a seemingly perfect combination of cards on the field. They'd think 'No way I can lose!' But there is, and I'll be showing you how.

First, look at your board. You control two creatures. Magus of the Tabernacle, and Frost Titan. Both are incredibly good creatures. Frost Titan says that when it attacks, you may tap target permanent and that it won't untap during its controllers next untap step. Magus of the Tabernacle says that 'All creatures have 'At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice this creature unless you pay 1''. The one in this case being one mana. Looking at the field, you will see your opponent only has three lands. Maybe that's workable. Look to your hand, and you see two spells which will let you win. Vindicate, which is 'Destroy target permanent.' And Demolish 'Destroy target artifact or land.' You may or may not be aware that lands are permanents, and that you can target them as long as a card doesn't say you can't. With this in mind, cast both Vindicate and Demolish, to destroy two of the opponents lands. Then move to attack phase, attack with both your creatures. (The AI won't block anyways, but if it was smarter and you only attacked with one, it could block to save itself for a turn.) Using the tap ability on your frost titan, target the last land the opponent controls. It's already tapped, but the second effect means that it won't untap next turn. You will do damage, bringing it to -6 HP.

They won't lose because platinum angel is on the field, but that won't last long. End the turn. At the start of their turn, they're forced to sacrifice the angel, because they can't pay one mana to keep it on the field. They will then lose immediately afterwards as state based actions are checked, due to a change in game state, because they have 0 or less life.

Step by Step

• Cast Vindicate, target one of the opponents lands.
  
• Cast Demolish, target another land.
  
• Attack with both creatures, use the Frost Titan's triggered ability targetting the last land.
  
• End the turn.

Expansion Challenge Three - Unleash the Beast

I would say that this is where the challenges start getting really tricky. At this point I mostly had to figure out the situations with trial and error, because of the different possibilites of what you could do. Anyways, your opponent has a lot of small creatures, and one rather large one. You have a pretty big creature yourself, with a fairly portent ability. I'll give a step by step first and go over reasons under it.

Step by Step

• Cast Earthquake, X equal to two.
  
• Cast Twisted Image, target your opponents last living creature, the Nemisis of Reason
  
• Attack with your creature.
  
• The Lure Enchantment that is enchanting your best will force the Nemisis of Reason to block.
  
• Wait for the stack to clear, you'll have one life, and your opponent will have none.

Your Earthquake will defeat all of the small guys, and also cause four damage to you and your opponent. It causes four and not two because your creature repeats the two damage it took. Twisted imagine on the Nemisis of Reason means that it is now three toughness, with two damage marked. That means a trampling creature only needs to assign one damage before the rest goes to the player. It also has seven power. When it blocks your creature, which it has to, because your creature is enchanted with lure, seven damage tramples over to the opponent. Normally, in a situation like that, you very much wouldn't want to block, but lure forces the AI to. After your creature dies, the triggered ability deals another seven damage. You're left with one life, and the opponent with zero. Victory.

Expansion Challenge Four - Riddle of Steel

This ons is tickier to explain, I can't exactly do a step by step because the challenge itself includes both drawing cards, and library shuffling effects. Here's my advice though.

I've been told that this portion of the guide isn't so helpful. If you're having trouble with it, another user down in the comment linked a youtube video which I take no credit for. This is one of the challenges that doesn't always turn out the same because of draw mechanics and shuffle mechanics. So it might turn out a little different each time, but it's likely possible that you can easily win without having to rely on drawing into specific things.

Bullet Point Advice

• Play Puresteel Paladin First
  
• Play all the cheap equipment to draw cards.
  
• Play Stoneforge mystic, get the Sword of Vengence.
  
• Play the Sword of Vengence, equip it for free to Stoneforge, and use Stoneforge to play Argentum Armor
  
• Play Auriok Salvagers, getting the Hedron Matrix.
  
• Attack with everything, enough should get through to cause a win.

How exactly you win this one might change. You might draw into three or four one drop pieces of equipment, if you do you can play that. You might not. Make use of what you have to get as much power on the field as you can. Remember also that you can attack with the Giant and then use his ability to search for another piece of equipment after declaring him as an attacker. Overall this challenge isn't all that tricky, so you should be able to finish it off without to much trouble.

Expansion Challenge Five - Spellstorm

This challange.

I'm not even going to bother trying to explain the thought process behind this.

Here's a step by step.

I gave on up this challenge for a week and had to come back to it, don't feel bad.

• Cast Demonic Collusion twice with buyback, discard your original hand to get Great Whale and Past In Flames.
  
• Use Sneak Attack to place Great Whale on the battlefield. Untap seven of your lands.
  
• Cast Demonic Collusion again, no buyback. Get Snap.
  
• Continue into combat, attack with your Great Whale
  
• Snap Great Whale back into your hand, untap lands again.
  
• Cast Past in Flames.
  
• Sneak Attack Great Whale back into play.
  
• Your hand is now empty, zoom into your graveyard and cast Infernal Tutor from your graveyard with Flashback. Get Hoodwink.
  
• Cast Hoodwink, return his Leyline of Scantity to his hand.
  
• Cast one of the Demonic Collusions from your graveyard using flashback. Get Spitting Image.
  
• Use Spitting Image to make a copy of great whale.
  
• You need some more open mana, use Snap from the graveyard to put Great Whale back in your hand. Again.
  
• Okay, Demonic Collusion again. Get Tendrils of Agony
  
• Guess what? Sneak Attack! Whale back in play. Untap your lands again.
  
• Back Into the Graveyard. Use Brainspoil to kill your Great Whale
  
• Okay, I didn't mean it Great Whale. Cast Betrayel of Flesh to get it back.
  
• Coercion from the graveyard.
  
• Nothing left but Tendrils of Agony. Cast it.
  
• Not quite enough, right? Flashback Past in Flames Make sure to leave two swamps untapped.
  
• You can Hoodwink if you want.
  
• Cast Tendrils of Agony again from the graveyard.
  
• Wait for that massive Storm stack to finish again.
  
• Rejoice and hope you never have to play such a stupid turn ever again.

Alright! This challenge was...tricky. It took me a long time to figure it out, and I challenge everyone else to find out better ways to complete this. I remember the first time I did it I didn't cast the spells in the exact same order. The trick is figuring out the best way to make use of Great Whale to keep your mana open.

I didn't use it during this step by step, but Retrace is an ability that lets you cast a card from the graveyard, if you discard a land card and pay its mana cost. I haven't actually done it but I do believe it's possible to get another spitting image of great whale, followed by a flashback, for every more great whales! Try it out if you want.

[#night|Semmel]

And WTF is wrong with the last challenge? Who comes up with such a shitty logic?

[#night|Semmel]

I salute you, Raven. Beating the Sliver challenge without any (or almost none) slivers. Kudos!

[Aloha Dude (Raven)]

Oh, so that's how Sliver Infiltration was "supposed to" work! I didn't really use slivers to beat it so I was confused by the Title!

Basically, I followed the same formula as above, except that before I sacrificed Protean Hulk, I cast the two Virulent Slivers in my hand and also nullified my opponent's flyer into a 1/1 Changeling. With Hulk, I tutored for the 4/4 Dragon with Flying, Haste, and Devour 2. I then Devoured the 2 slivers to get +4/+4, giving me an 8/8 Flyer with Haste and the 6/6 Flyer that I started with. Swung for 14 damage to win. Took me many many times to figure that one out, and was like "Huh? That had nothing to do with slivers!"..... lol. Very satisfying to finally solve it, though! Developers could have prevented my win scenario by giving the opponent 15 life instead of 14, but perhaps they intended for players to find multiple ways to win. :)

[Pablo 0rk0bar]

Thanks. This was helpful - A LOT.

[Narcissistic Cannibal]

Thanks. The final expansion challenge was sick.

[♡ Gr1ff1n ♡]

Thank you so much. This really helped.

[RCouto_]

So good. These challenges have a grave problem, it accepts only one solution. On the expansion challenge 1, I find other solution, but game shows I lost. It happened other times in normal challenges.

[76561193729963434]

Thanks for the guide. I don't think i could find the last challenge of the expansion

[OG Sw!fty]

thank you for this guide

[Caxa]

(Y)