While I fiddled with my settings, the Aquarist’s turn began with a tragedy. He dramatically —as one ought to— flipped a card in his hand, revealing it to me. Its print revealed a dog drooling acid over a litter of smoking puppies. A grim image. Currosive.
Summon a Cur from your deck with cost 3 or less. Deal its attack as damage spread among all the enemy units equally, if possible. Otherwise, spread it randomly.
“Curmudgeon, here here, good boy!” he called, and the card popped out of the middle of his deck, falling face up over the table, landing without a single tumble. It was another mangy dog, rather big, wrinkled and old, with a chalk circle drawn around it. it was a 3/6 cost 3 with the following text.
Cur-mudgeon cannot attack. Stay OFF his lawn. Or circle. His real name is Garnet.
“Is it much to ask for cards to have consistent locations for flavor text?”
“Yes,” Blacky and the Aquarist answered at the same time, both seemingly offended at my question.
All my units took one damage from the effect, so I placed my Pugfessor and the little free pug on the discard pile, because I am not calling it Rainbow Bridge every fucking time. It doesn’t go with me. It fails the vibe check with flying colors.
The effect of Pugilist activated twice, which dealt a pair of damages to the ugly creature in front of me.
AQUARIST: 17
CARDS IN HAND: 4
MAURO: 26
CARDS IN HAND: 4
This wasn’t good. Even if Pugilist was, for all intent and purposes, a very powerful aggressive tool, it would not help me get over the wall my opponent had erected. 3/6 was a good statline for turn 4, premium for something that came attached to a board clear. As for not attacking… it was inconsequential. That thing was not meant to go for my face: you cannot race an Aggro deck being control or combo. And last but not least: Garnet? Really?
He drew from his kibble deck and passed the turn.
I had four units of omnikibble, and I had Gather the grumble to refill my hand. I also had a pug fetching pug and an expugcialist on my hand. Pugilist would soon die due to breathing issues, but his effect would bring him back. That’s when I realized I could use Gather the grumble to avoid a removal on Pugilist, as triggering his breathing issues would cause him to revive, but remove the original target of the enemy spell at the same time, making it fizzle. Plus, doing two damage in the process. That made Gather the Grumble a conditional burn, draw and counterspelling tool. And… I guess… premium removal against pugs. The sole mention of it makes me shudder. My inner goblin says units are not meant to be killed: they are not the face.
I slammed Pug fetching Pug on the table and before I could reach for my deck to do a manual search (my idea to randomize the pug draw was to remove all pugs from the deck, make a pure pug deck with them, shuffle it, draw from that deck, and then mix it with my real deck once again. Not a …simple process, really) the card drawn jumped to my hand. I could get used to such levels of automation for tabletop games.
It was a 1 cost. Propugator. On a walkies effect, this unassuming 2/1 let me grant breathing issues to any unit on the table. Really slow removal on its own, but if I paired it with Gather the Grumble, it was a very strong, albeit a little clunky for an aggressive deck, combo. Yet, it was not for this round. Dropping him on its own would clue the Aquarist in about my plan for the next turn. So I just dropped Expugsive, with his chonky 2/3 body for 2, onto the table, drew from my kibble deck, and passed. Next turn, my Pugilist would die due to breathing issues, and then revive. Maybe I had a way to win this by force of pure, degenerate burn effects.
The Aquarist pored over his hand. “You are running out of resources, but you are going for five kibble next turn. Five mana on an agro deck. This could mean God left the door open preparation, which is bad for me, or that you want to play a 1 drop the same turn you drop Gather the Grumble. So…” He slid a card across the table for me to read. Dis-can-non. It was a 3 cost card that had a five-parted symbol depicting all 3 dog breed sizes, feral dogs and non-dogs factions, which meant it could be played by any of them without penalty. The image was a cartoonish depiction of a wide mouthed dog with his maws wide open, and a beagle loading the big dog’s mouth with a bag of cards.
Discard a card to deal three damage to a unit. Repeat this effect up to three more times if you want.
Then he sent Eggsecution to the rainbow bridge, which I didn’t bother to read, and two copies of another card that he let me read before discarding. The card was an overpriced draw spell that simply drew 2, but it had a very, very important clause to make up for being dead on the hand most of the time: “If you discard this card, draw 2”. So he was going down 4… and drawing 4.
I swoop my side of the table and sent all my pugs to the rainbow bridge while the Aquarist went over his new hand. “This is interesting.” He mused as his deep blue eyes inspected the freshly drawn resources. To conclude his turn, he played his kibble card, Invested and drew from his main deck. The burn effects of my cards activated, dropping his health by a whooping 5 points.
AQUARIST: 12
CARDS IN HAND: 4
MAURO: 26
CARDS IN HAND: 4
“A single one of my attacks connected and you are already half dead.” I patted my deck without lustful intentions. “This baby packs loads of burn damage.”
“You may find some dogs are all bite, no bark. Besides, you have no board now. It looks to me that, unless you play God Left the Door Open, you already lost.”
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Maybe he was right. But I had a way to go +1 while removing his unit next turn. Plus a chance of one of those 3 pugs being the 0 cost generated from the kibble card. That would regenerate my board, two turns down the line. He still had one spare kibble, maybe a cheap deny, or a cheap removal. I was betting on the second, because, judging by what I had seen, this thing he was piloting was a removal pile.
Anyway, it was my turn, and I had to play it hoping he wasn’t holding a deny capable of stopping my combo.
I played the kibble card in silence, and then announced my play. “Propugator targeting your cur.”
“It resolves.”
“And then, Gather the grumble targeting him, too.”
“I want him dead, so let it resolve!” The Aquarist giggled like a little girl holding a not-so-little knife.
Three cards drew themselves to my deck and got shoved into my hand by some invisible force. I was feeling quite the Jedi.
So I did what was natural in such a situation: I gestured with my hand and tried to pull the famous mind trick. “You will concede.”
“What? No.”
“Dammit.”
I took a peek at what I had drawn: a Pug fetching pug, another Propugator, and A card I had never seen. It was a 3/4, 3 cost pug called Propugnator (Very different name from propugator, I know. This one has an n.) The sorry creature was holding a shield in his mouth, looking confused as he drooled all over it. It had a keyword I hadn’t seen before: Vetproof. It made him impossible to target with enemy spells. To have a considerably bulky unit that was hard to remove seemed like a clunky addition, but it could help against certain decks. For example, against removal piles…
I took a moment to think from where to draw. I didn’t need another point of kibble, not yet. I drew from my normal deck, ending my turn.
The turns thnat followed are a blur in my memory. I summoned things, my things got killed, I summoned more things, did some damage, he killed more things, healed a bit. Drew. Drew again. This went on until he had 10 kibble units and a single point of HP. There were several pugs in my side, including an expugsive that would die come my turn.
“Heal or lose, Aquarist. You have a single card in your hand. If it is a heal, my board will beat you down If it isn’t, my expugsive will take you out. Tic toc.” I boasted, crossing my arms smugly.
That’s when the sax started playing. The catchy tune flooded the room, infusing the glass walls of the tanks with a healthy dose of vibration. The rays seemed to be okay with it, and stopped their slow drifting to the waters to stare at us.
“Goddess, he’s going to drop it,” Blacky uttered, his beard trembling with emotion.
“Drop what?”
The aquarist hardcast the card upon the table, with such force that it caused a little quake on the playing field. The card had a divided image, where a mixed breed dog worked in several unrelated jobs: police, dog, dragging a sled, guiding a blind man, barking at a bull for reasons, and keeping the souls a psychopomp led to the underworld in line. It had cost 10, 5/7 in stats, and a walkies effect. “Read it. Read it out loud!” my opponent demanted, and I carefully picked up the card,
“If you have thirty curs or spells (cur spells count twice) in your rainbow Bridge, and at least half of those were payed, I play random spells with random valid targets until one of the players loses due to the spell effect or the effects of units summoned by the spells. Bow before the dog of Death.”
Sweat pearls invaded my pristine forehead, budding on it like doubts of one’s sexuality upon a man’s soul while beholding a particularly androgynous person of Korean descent. It coulddn’t be. “I am being yogged!” I exclaimed, horror obvious in my face as I stared into Blacky’s moustache.
“Pretty much, Master, pretty much.”
“It…it resolves.” I accepted my fate, heart in hand, ready to face whatever could come my way. The cur’s figure crawled out of the card, the ugly black dog staring at me with wide, psychotic eyes before raising his little paws, as if praising some deity in the heavens.
A card Manifested over him, and a heal spell shot straight for my face.
AQUARIST: 1
CARDS IN HAND: 0
MAURO: 29
CARDS IN HAND: 0
He cast a draw spell, and the aquarist drew 3 cards. Then he cast a spell that made all units return to the decks, shuffling into them without triggering any death effects. He cast a board clear, hitting nothing— for his card, too, had been shuffled into the deck. Then he cast god left the door open, and the Aquarists board filled with units (all the three he had played so far!). Subsequently, the thing cast seven buff spells on each of the units, in a row. Then he cast a board clear, sending them back to the rainbow bridge, but this time swole as hell.
An effect healed everyone and everything by a whooping 2 points.
AQUARIST: 3
CARDS IN HAND: 3
MAURO: 31
CARDS IN HAND: 0
We both were forced to discard five cards from the top of our decks, and then a damage spell raced straight for my face.
AQUARIST: 3
CARDS IN HAND: 3
MAURO: 28
CARDS IN HAND: 0
The sax music intensified as another and another damage spell sook my ass, including one with Lick Wounds.
AQUARIST: 6
CARDS IN HAND: 3
MAURO: 21
CARDS IN HAND: 0
A Cur for Everything kept casting spells left and right, some of them fizzling due to having no valid targets. He eventually churned out a spell that summoned a random Cur and drew a card. This, in turn, summoned “Curina, Lil’ Princess”. The image on the card was that of a mixed-breed dog with some Golden Retriever and sighthound features in her, gleefully singing with a standing microphone, and her textbox said as following:
Whenever your opponent plays a spell, Call heads or tails, THEN AND ONLY THEN toss a coin. If you called it correctly, cast a copy of the spell.
I pay in coin. A single coin. Always the same coin. You wretch.
Three spells later, she was dead. Seven spells and three mates later, another copy of the Cur-summoning spell was played, and it summoned A Cur for Everything, which made a sort of Russian doll effect, where the second cur’s effect began resolving while the first one remained on hold. It was technically the same as a single Cur running at a time, but fun to watch anyway.
“This will take a while.” The aquarist said, pouring another mate and offering it to me.
A spell got cast that added a random player to the game. A chair appeared out of thin air and fell at one of the unoccupied sides of the table and an unsuspecting, slightly chubby girl teleported onto it in a flash of white light. She had big eyes, wore old Jeans, and looked at the fish like a deer at a set of RGB headlights.
AQUARIST: 13
CARDS IN HAND: 3
MAURO: 22.8
CARDS IN HAND: 0
CLARA: 26
CARDS IN HAND: 5
Another layer of A Cur for Everything came up as a copy spell was cast on the second one, creating two more copies of itself upon the table. These copies began casting spells, and Clara seemed to behave like a burn magnet, losing after several damage spells in a row landed straight upon her confused visage.
She drank a single Mate before poofing back to her place, or out of existence. I don’t know for certain. Her loss fulfilled the condition to stop the last two curs from enacting their effects, letting the second layer continue.
“Do you want to read a book? I have books. Lorebooks. Tons of them. I am friends with The Librarian.”
I raised a finger to forward a question.
“No, The Librarian isn’t an orangutan,” he answered before the first word even came out of my mouth.
“Fine, hum… how long does this generally goes on for?”
“Not this long. This is an exceptional case of nested A.C.F.Es. Sadly, it is only likely that the card stops its effects.”
We let the thing go on for a while while we drank mate in silence.
AQUARIST: 42
CARDS IN HAND: 19
MAURO: 47.1212121212121
CARDS IN HAND: -3
I swallowed another sip of the drink and put forward another question. “Is Deck of Dogs Turing Complete?”
He shook his head with gravity. “No. It’s Turing DLCd.”
“Dear Lord, that’s even worse.”
The Aquarist pulled out a deck of Spanish-suited cards from between the silver threads of his mane. “Want to play something else while it resolves?”
A smile creeped on my face. “TEG,” I quipped, expecting it to be a request impossible to fulfill.
Of course, fate wasn’t on my side, and he pulled a box with all the components necessary to play the damn game out of his mane. “Hope I get Kamchatka.”
And so we played TEG while the Cur resolved, and, what would you know: it actually made me wish to be dead.