User:Fishysua/Clock

GOLDFISH

A goldfish is a fictive opponent with 20 lives that never casts or controls anything during a game.

It was invented during a time where people were starting to ask themselves how fast their deck were.

The term goldfish is connected to the art of building manacurves. (something that is performed more and more with simulations)

Active goldfishes

It later became clear that a passive opponent is a very bad test. This made the way for other decktests, some more advanced than others. One of the best known of these had no name on it's own, it let the opponent control a 2/2 flying creature with "0:regenerate" and a 3/3 trample creature. Both must attack you each turn. A test like that puts a player in a more active situation, but at some time in magic people stopped using tests even though some tests were actually very advanced.

Specific tests

Some people made specific tests that were designed to test certain decks to their fullest. If a deck had problems with counterspells the test would have counterspells. If the deck had problems with weenies it would have to face weenies. These tests would often take the shape of a card that the opponent would start with in play. For example "The swarm lord" a white 2/4 creature that each turn put a 1/1 white creature into play. Castingcost were irrelevant because it started in play. A standart was to use two such cards to reflect a certain decktype that you wanted to play against.

Random tests

From creating 2 cards to repressent an opponent there wasnt far to shuffle random cards together to reppressent rogue decks. As a general rule there were two sets of cards, one where all cards could deal 2 damage or more each turn and one where they deal 3 damage. All cards would have abilities that made them repressent one half of a known and feared deck, and by fighting against two random testcards your deck would face a solid challenge.

No more

In the early days of magic many players embraced tests, there were no larger communities where people could go and test their creations against solid opponents, so they had to invent their own opponents. Later communities grew strong and magic is now usually growing new players in social networks that have also been made over the years. Why spend time on imaginary opponents when there are enough of the real ones ???