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Messages - jcox2820

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1
Rules Discussion / Flying, LoS, and the definition of "Ignore"
« on: February 25, 2013, 01:36:51 PM »
Do walls block LoS of a flying creature?

The rules say that flying creatures "ignore walls," which obviously means they can move past them and cannot take damage from them. Does this mean they can see past them as well?

The rule book defines the word "ignored," but only in the context of ignored creatures, and walls are not creatures.

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Player Feedback and Suggestions / Re: A variant that plays faster
« on: February 07, 2013, 01:24:39 PM »
A few things I have considered to speed things up:

- Each mage starts the game with whatever equipment they wish up to a certain mana cost pre-game.
- Each mage has one side of the arena in which to deploy whatever zone-exclusive conjurations they wish up to a certain mana cost pre-game.
- "Kill Box" mode, where every zone touching a wall instantly kills a mage if they are in them after a certain period of time. In this case, mages do not die from being pushed/teleported/whatever into the kill zones, but must use their next available standard action to move away from the zone or die.
- Victory can be achieved by victory points, which are scored by achieving certain things such as destroying spawn points, doing a certain amount of damage, killing creatures, etc.

Obviously not perfect, but these could be mixed and matched to speed things up.

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General Discussion / Re: Upcoming Release: Forcemaster Vs. Warlord!!!
« on: February 07, 2013, 12:27:53 PM »
Two new books will be most welcome.

One concern I have is that the arena has already been kind of nebulous. How big are these "temples" my priestess summons? And now were adding "towers" and such to the mix?

But I can deal with it.

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Rules Discussion / Re: Attacking to remove sleep
« on: February 05, 2013, 08:23:31 PM »
PVE especially sounds interesting, as does Archmage, provided that it will be easy to use them as a diversion from the normal game with the stuff we will already own.

5
Strategy and Tactics / Re: 4 hour + game!
« on: February 05, 2013, 12:57:38 PM »
Quote from: "Sausageman" post=7069
Quote from: "Badmojojojo" post=7067
For Wizard, what spells should I adjust for more control?  I think I need walls and bigger damage options?  Is there a way to get an 8-9 dice attack?

Plenty. With walls, I can't think of any without convoluted methods (like a Jet Stream plus successful push through a wall) - I actually highly rate the Wall of Thorns for damage. Against an unarmed Mage is devastating. In fact, I got a kill when on the ropes using this tactic: quick cast a Jet Stream for 2 dice damage, push was successful and moved him through the Wall of Thorns for a further 10 dice of damage (five lots of 2 dice). And then as my action I repeated it and killed him ;) And remember, pushing them into the arena walls do 3 dice damage when pushed into them. Oh, and teleport trap/hellfire trap trigger when you push an opponent into them too ;)

As for bolstering damage options, there are attack spells (fire and lightning being the heaviest damage options currently). Add Hawkeye and applicable 'plus damage' ring for two extra dice.  As for creatures, many of the Arcane school creatures are worth a go, and pretty dangerous to boot.


For Beastmaster, I am fond of getting my gate out and increasing it's channling. This brings it up to 3, which makes foxes cost only 2 mana. Make a fox your pet, give it bear strength, get it in the same square as Beastmaster and Redclaw, and watch your opponent develop an irrational fear of small canines.

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Rules Discussion / Re: Attacking to remove sleep
« on: February 05, 2013, 12:28:08 PM »
Quote from: "Arcanus" post=7125
Thank you DarthDadaD20.  

Mage Wars is truly a labor of love.  We made the game to satisfy our own need/desire to play a realistic Mage combat game. I have 3 older sons and we worked on it together.  After we had about 20 college age guys hooked and playing regularly, we knew we had something we should bring to market.

Understood Sausageman! Trust me, all the playtesters, like Heatstryke above, are always pushing to remove excess mechanics, and keep the game streamlined.

We've been working on Mage Wars for over 5 years, and we have a lot of great stuff planned.  We will be careful to not overwhelm too much at once, keeping new mechanics to a minimum.  Here are a few tidbits of things to come:

We will have SWARM creatures (like swarms of bees, ants, and plague rats), which are interesting because when you attack them it only kills one creature in the swarm.  SO they are very tough, except vs. zone attacks which are devastating.

The Illusionist uses face-down markers to track his creatures.  Are they real or Illusionary? Her stronger illusions can fight and behave like a real creature.  Should you waste a turn disbelieving the illusion? Her weaker Illusions just disappear the instant they take damage, but still provide a great decoy.

Some of the Necromancer's creatures feed off the dead, hatching new creatures inside the corpse, or turning them into Undead as well.

The upcoming Paladin has a suit of armor. The individual pieces are great, but it gains extra powers once he has the full suit in place.  And yes, it is extra hard to destroy once its in place. He is an amazing front line fighter.

An Archmage may make it in time for Christmas this year - we'll see. He is powerful enough to take on 3 other Mages at one time.

A dungeon adventure mode where 3-4 Mages work together against the game, with multiple scenarios.

Thanks again for the wonderful support!


Those sound... beautiful. I'm crying.

Sounds like a lot of people who aspire to make games (<- like this guy) could benefit from learning about how you came to publish this game. Ever thought about maybe a series of videos or something on that?

7
Rules Discussion / Re: Attacking to remove sleep
« on: February 04, 2013, 10:22:16 PM »
Quote from: "Arcanus" post=7098
Great discussion guys.

We went through a process of general streamlining - removing everything that was not essential or had little impact on game play, in order to make the rules more concise, and the game easier to grasp.  

Removing the ability to roll fewer dice was one of those things. As a designer note - Along with this we removed other things like archer suppression (attacking a creature with a melee attack prevents that creature from making a ranged attack that same round), LoF (Line of Fire - a wall could block LoS but not necessarily LoF, or visa versa, which made for some interesting tactics), and others. I'd like to state for the record that I fought kicking and screaming to keep these things in the game!   :)  (I am expecting hate emails from the playtesters later tonight!)

I must concede that it is certainly quite realistic and feasible to roll fewer attack dice, but currently it is not in the rules.  For whatever it is worth, Sleep was priced with this in mind (that only a small creature or attack can effectively be used to wake creatures up).  Sleep would be a tad cheaper mana-wise if you could voluntarily roll fewer dice.


I love the fact that devs respond on this forum.

I find it hard to argue against streamlining the game, or doing anything to make the game more newb-friendly. LoF and Archer suppression sound really cool, but I can see how it could increase the learning curb pretty significantly, and frustrate a new player when their opponent uses it to ignore their wall.

One of the things that is apparent in the design process of this game is the desire to make everything as intuitive as possible. Choosing to roll fewer dice seems pretty intuitive to me, but then again I haven't playtested the game for hours on end, and have only seen hardcore gamers play the game for the first time. Ultimately, I imagine it is difficult to determine exactly what mechanics players will grasp quickly and which they wont, so I suppose there is no wrong answer to the question of what mechanics to remove to make a game accessible. It sounds like I would fall on Arcanus' side, but Dreallin's answer reveals a flaw in our arguments, because a larger portion of text would have to be inserted in the rulebook explain how lowering attack dice works when effects modify the amount of attack dice normally rolled. Even if the barest of explanation was put in, which implicitly deals with Drealin's point, I imagine there would still be some confusion.

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General Discussion / Re: Removing effects
« on: February 04, 2013, 08:21:18 PM »
Quote from: "Locusshifter" post=6954
Quote from: "jcox2820" post=6950
Thanks, that makes sense. I never really looked at too many healing-oriented cards in general, which sounds like it would have answered my question.


Well, as others have said, there appears to be more coming, especially in the way of multitaskers, that would probably have gotten your attention any way. Since there is so little right now it's no surprise that you missed it. :)


Yup. I do have to say, though, this has been the only rule I haven't been able to figure out on my own, which is pretty impressive on AW's part.

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Rules Discussion / Re: Drafting Rules
« on: February 04, 2013, 08:19:03 PM »
Quote from: "residualshade" post=6958
to be fair LCG is becoming a common term used for a fixed distribution card game. it is not like we have another term to use atm unless someone standardizes one.


Precisely. I love this game, but one of the draws was that I could play with two people out of the box and have all the cards I need. Unfortunately this is not the case, at least to a certain extent, because some cards do not have duplicates, or not enough duplicates.

Still, I am eternally grateful to Arcane Wonders.

10
Rules Discussion / Re: Attacking to remove sleep
« on: February 04, 2013, 08:15:29 PM »
Quote from: "Koy" post=6969
I have found Huginn to be my Sleep breaking specialist.  Man do my opponent's seem to hate that little guy... no clue why.  *evade, evade, evade, Dispell, evade, evade, break Sleep, evade*


He is a truly great card, especially in a control book.

While it's true that this would increase the complexity to *some* degree, I think it would be pretty minimal. Both allowing you to choose the exact number of dice, or one dice + any modifier would be great mechanics that I can see being justified within the theme.

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Mages / Re: Mages that you would like to see in the game
« on: January 31, 2013, 12:55:39 PM »
Quote from: "Sausageman" post=6833
Quote from: "jcox2820" post=6814
"I'm not playing it, there's no Necromancer." - My Roomate.

But seriously, I would love to see gender variants of the mage cards. Also, I've thought it would be cool to have official, option miniatures to use on the battlefield in the place of the mage card.

I'm not sure why they didn't make the mages double sided - with a male on one side and a female on the other.  It would have fixed a lot of issues for those that like one gender over another.


To be fair, this game is quite cheap when you consider how many high-quality components there are. That probably would have increased their printing costs a bit.

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General Discussion / Re: Removing effects
« on: January 31, 2013, 12:26:04 PM »
Thanks, that makes sense. I never really looked at too many healing-oriented cards in general, which sounds like it would have answered my question.

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General Discussion / Removing effects
« on: January 30, 2013, 03:51:20 PM »
How exactly does removing an effect by paying the mana cost work? Does it require an action or quickcast, or do you ust pay the mana when you feel like and be done with it?

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Rules Discussion / Re: Drafting Rules
« on: January 29, 2013, 05:29:35 PM »
A huge part of the draw of this game is making your own decks. All solutions but buying more cards would diminish that to some degree. Most LCGs have some sort of drafting rules, so it just seems weird that this game does not.

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Rules Discussion / Re: Counterstrike
« on: January 28, 2013, 10:35:23 PM »
What predator said. However, I'm not quite sure how your question could have come into play, since I would think you would have to have activated your creature in order for it to guard as a quick action.

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