I recently found my old Shandalar install discs when moving, and it inspired me to check if there was a speedrunning community around this game.

It seems there is, but everyone is using this version of the game from archive.org that's been patched to run on 32 or 64-bit systems.

I thought it would be fun to use PCem to set up an emulated PC and install Windows 95 + the original game to do some speedrunning.

However, I'm curious if that would be allowed for me to submit a run or would it be considered a different version of the game? Also, does anyone here know if the patched app has been modified in any way that would impact speedrunning? I assume the game everyone is using in the videos I've seen is not the original Shandalar, because the original game doesn't have the option to disable the coin flip (that option has only existed since the Spells of the Ancients expansion). I've also observed that on my copy of the game, I almost always get at least one copy of Eternal Warrior in my red deck when playing the original Shandalar or Shandalar + Spells of the Ancients, but if I install the Duels of the Planeswalkers version, I tried like 10 times and I never got a single Eternal Warrior in my deck, which seems like it is a fairly important card to avoid getting raced by the opponent in some of the runs I've seen.

Has anyone done much research into the amount of variance in randomly generated decks or noticed differences in the RNG between versions?

Also is there a discord for this game, or would people be interested in one? It'd be nice to have a place to discuss the game if anyone else is still playing it.

I dont know of any variance in starting deck for different versions; I do know that different difficulties result in different decks. I do know that my version, which I believe came from the guides post in here, always starts with eternal warrior and colossus of sardia.

As for a discord, I dont think there's one out there and the community is likely too small to support one.

Thanks for the info.

Yeah its interesting this game doesn't have many runs submitted to the leaderboard so I'm trying to watch them all and get a sense for the amount of variance between them. For a game that seems very RNG dependent, I could easily imagine it takes possibly dozens of runs before you get a favorable starting deck + world map generated that leads to a fast time.

But since there aren't really people grinding the game, its hard to know for sure. I've been trying to learn the speedrun strats recently in my free time and found it interesting because I never seem to get quite the same starting decks that the runs I've watched get. Though I think if I install just OG Shandalar + the expansion disk in my emulated Windows 95 environment, that seems to get pretty close. At least with those two apps installed I seem to get eternal warrior in a fairly high percentage of red decks on apprentice difficulty. Not that its a deal breaker to have that card in my deck but it seems like it definitely helps.

Anyways I have also noticed that its rare, but some starter red apprentice decks actually have shivan dragon in the starting deck, which seems like it could potentially lead to some much faster runs. Though what has happened to me in literally every playthrough is eventually one of the castle bosses just casts a turn 1 swords to plowshares on my creature and wrecks my whole gameplan. Again, that's one of those things where I'm not sure if the original non-patched version of the game just behaves differently which causes a lot more opponents to have STP or if this is a thing that happens a lot in runs and you just have to get lucky and hope they never have removal when you're trying to kill a boss using the shivan dragon strat.

I'll definitely continue to share anything interesting that I observe as I continue to practice the game.

If your version starts with shivan sometimes, I'd say that's probably not something that would fall in the same category as what everyone else has run; red apprentice decks in my version are always identical; you may want to see if you can get that version installed; I think I used this tutorial: https://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7342

Also, i still run shandalar when I have enough time there's just been no time lately with dragon warrior and zelda 2 randomizer tourneys running concurrently.

Yeah doesn't sound like that would be able to be used for the any% run. Basically for the same reasons slammu said.

Ok I just grabbed the version from your link Big_slammu

Looks like in this version (Shandalar 2012) the starter red apprentice deck is always the same: 13 Mountain 1 Wall of Stone 1 Sisters of the Flame 1 Mons's Goblin Raiders 1 Hurloon Minotaur 1 Goblin Balloon 1 Goblin Rock Sled 1 Fire Elemental 1 Earth Elemental 1 Dwarven Warriors 1 Bird Maiden 1 The Brute 2 Immolation 2 Giant Strength 2 Firebreathing 2 Eternal Warrior 1 Burrowing 1 Urza's Avenger 1 Clay Statue 1 Black Vise

However, I'm a bit confused here, because I've seen some vids where Colossus of Sardia + Eternal Warrior is used early in the game out of the starting deck before picking up a Shivan. I can confirm in my version of the game, Colossus of Sardia can definitely randomly appear in starting red apprentice decks, but I think that implies that different runners are not all on the same version.

I'm using the original Shandalar + Spells of the Ancients discs running on 86Box. If anyone is interested in playing that version I'm happy to share ISOs + instructions on how to set up an 86box environment, and I would hope that y'all would accept my runs to the leaderboard if I run using the original version of the game, since it seems to play pretty similar to the updated versions everyone else is playing and its already evident that not everyone on this leaderboard is playing the exact same version. I fired up this game for the nostalgia of my childhood and I like playing the originals and seeing the OG art on cards like Shivan Dragon.

FWIW I've only ever seen a Shivan in my starting deck one time and its possible I accidentally clicked a different difficulty or something. I'm happy to just reset / not submit my run if I get a Shivan in my starting deck if that levels the playing field. I've been following some of the tutorials and other run vids posted here and it seems the game plays the same for the most part. Hard to know for sure how the AI is different, but seems just as clueless as in the videos I've watched on the leaderboard. Red deck definitely still contains mostly the same cards, but the big difference is that in the original game some relevant cards like Immolation and Eternal Warrior will have random quantities somewhere between 0 and 2 and the artifact cards will be random one-ofs from a larger pool of possible starter artifacts.

Anyways I haven't even streamed any runs yet so maybe this is all moot discussion, but I have been enjoying learning the game and I'd like to be able to shoot for a low time after I get a bit more practice in. Thanks everyone for all of your replies!