I was just thinking about mordok's tome. it seems that if you're trying to be super aggressive and win really early in the game, one of the problems is that it takes a lot of prediction. if you mispredict your opponent ever so slightly it will cost you the match. A lot of people have talked about attack spell rushes not being viable in tournaments, just a good training tool. I suspect however, that if you have more spell choices (not necessarily more spell actions, but more spell choices) you'll be able to do exactly what you need to do each round to foil your opponent's attempts to stop your rush. I'm thinkinig maybe r1 wizard's tower and mordok's tome, then r2 or r3 start attacking.

Another fun idea might be a slightly slower more controlling attack spell "rush". Throw down a wizard's tower and a mordok's tome, but instead of trying to kill the enemy mage as fast as possible with fireballs and hurl boulders, use lightning bolts on them over and over again, as well as jinxes to make it harder for them to fight back.

Thoughts?

AN: just a plot bunny that was in my head. Not entirely sure where I'm going with it so bear with me.

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“O People of the Dawn. Will you rise to the morning Sun? Or will you fall back to the mud whence you came? None to guide you. None to save you. No Gods. No heroes. No justice. No second chances. Only you.”
The young forcemaster smiled a bitter smile. It was time to begin his work.
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In another world so near and yet so far away, things were different. Gods roamed the land, magic ran wild and the world was filled with otherworldly creatures. Gods were a double edged sword. They were old and experienced and full of secret lore, which allowed them to accelerate the evolution of mortal beings at a far greater pace than they otherwise would be able to reach. But they also fought against each other using mortal beings as their pawns, to be discarded after use.
But in this world, things were different. The Elemental Lords had fought a great battle against each other near the dawn of time, far more fiercely and violently than in that other world. At the end of the battle, there was a great explosion as their attacks collided, and all four Elemental Lords were blasted to smithereens. Their remains spread across the universe to form stars and planets. However, without the Lords' conscious guidance, it was almost impossible for life to form. For many eons there was no life at all. Then one day, it mysteriously began to spontaneously replicate itself into existence, on a tiny little speck of a world called “Terrenia”.
This is a story about the beings who lived on that world. It is a tale of adventure, heroes and villains,  love and friendship, loss and hardship. But more than that, it is a tale of endless never ending horror and boredom, in a beautiful and ugly world where the stakes are high and the odds are poor, where the heroes often lose and the villains don’t fare much better, where the greatest minds are often astoundingly foolish, the most powerful are almost powerless to do anything in the end, and where everyone else just gives up without even trying or pretends that things are not as grim as they truly are. It is a tale of magic and mundanity, of bloody wars and damn bureaucracy and endless paperwork and people going hungry and the endless search for answers.
Welcome to Terrenia.


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So it seems the gate to hell is still unusable and unsalvageable even after errata. How did that happen? It would be really cool if the gate could work because the warlock would love an arena wide attack.

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Needs a way to deal with Siren' s call
=either multiple big creatures or psychic immune or no creatures
Needs a way to deal with psychic conditions and enchantments
=dispel and priestess's ability or use psychic immune or no creatures
Needs a way to remove armor
=dissolve and dispel

The only psychic immune creatures in the core set are skeletal sentries, and they're kind of frail. They die really fast without reassemble and there's only two of then in the core set. Which means you would need them to do as much damage as possible to the mage or to a big threat before they died. Problem is they can't gain elusive, so the only they can handle enemy guards using only core set is if you use knockdown or tanglevine/force hold. This is fine if there's only one enemy guards. If there's two or more you're going to have a hard time constantly reapplying knockdown, you don't have astral anchor to stop them teleporting out of your tanglevines, and you dont have enchanter's wardstones not arcane wards to protect your force holds. And before you suggest just including more copies, more copies takes more spellppints to include in your book and more actions to keep putting them back on after earlier copies get dispelled. Not to mention thr core set only has two copies of force hold anyway.

With the core set you can get up to 7 armor if you invest the spellppints. It only takes a rust and three acid balls to whittle it down to 0, and that's if you even have the actions to get that much armor. A battle forge in your corner is still very vulnerable to bring being destroyed early if you're not putting pressure on the enemy especially if you're facing druid or siren and you dont have any creatures to reliably protect it because only the sentries are psychic immune and you dont have intercepting creatures and you dont have mind shield. Against forcemaster you need unavoidable attacks or to restrain her so she gets lower def rolls. If you try restraining her with tanglevine shell teleport out because you dont have astral anchor nor a way to protect it if you did and shell also dispel your force holds easily enough for same reasons. The only way to get unavoidable attacks in core set x1 only is perfect strike or brogan bloodstone or flameblast. There are only two flameblasts in the core set and if you put on an elemental wand it will just get dissolved because flameblast is range 0-1. you try to use priestess's ability to deal with psychic conditions on brogan and to remove corrodes and weaks while using dissolve and dispel it get rid of enemy armor and a combination of evade on a mage wand and Mongoose agility to get past guards , and minor heals to keep him alive he while he attacks, that could possibly work as a tanky  rush deck against everyone except the siren because siren' s call has no removal cost.  Summoning multiple big creatures that aren't psychic immune could work if you could give them all elusive to get past guards. There are only two monoose agilities in the core set, so you would need one of your creatures to have innate elusive. That basically just means cervere. But cervere is expensive since he costs 15 mana. And if they dispel any of your Mongoose agility you could be in trouble. Not to mention you have no way to deal with swamp except to push or teleport both your threats and the enemy mage out of it. As soon as they have a swamp with astral anchor and an arcane ward, that's basically gg.

So how to stay viable while buying the minimal number of expansions?

That depends on what you're doing. If you want to rush with a buddy that isn't psychic immune, you need mind shields. That would mean forcemaster vs warlord.

If you want to do a solo rush with attack spells you need acid balls to deal with armor. Dissolve is range 0-1 and the majority of lasting mage armor is equipment which means if you try to get rid of their armor first you often won't be attacking until at least round 4.
That means druid vs necromancer.

If you want to tank the enemy out with dot, you need things that do dot the majority of which comes from enchantmentst. Ghoul rot and magebane are in the core set but they're often not enough. You either need to get force crush (forcemaster vs warlord) or you need astral anchor and stranglevine (druid vs necromancer and battlegrounds: domination). In either of these two cases you would need enchanter's wardstones to protect your enchantments, so you would need conquest of kumanjaro.

The list goes on. Core set x1 only spellbooks are no longer viable in competitive play. The last potentially viable core x1 only book after druid vs Necromancer was likely some kind of priestess book, and with Siren's ability such a book has become unviable.

Test your reflexes!

No rounds. No turns. Everything can happen simultaneously, except that if there's a timing conflict between opposing player's effects the player who begun to declare their effect first gets to decide the order.

Mage channeling = 1 mana / second
A creature has a charge time of 4 seconds before it can be activated for the first time in the game, and then 2 seconds before it can be activated again. Your mage's quickcast action can be used without charging it.

(1 second = about 2 human-perceived instants).

Hope you like!

https://www.reddit.com/r/octgn/comments/69u0qy/cant_open_octgn/?st=J34IMEMV&sh=6292e5e9

So I'm curious on the community's thoughts on lightning attack spells. Not counting buffs, they tend to have higher damage output and lower daze/stun chance than light attacks, and lower damage out put than earth and fire attack spells. Additionally lightning can deal dazes/stuns (like light attacks) as opposed to earth which can deal daze/slam instead.

Lightning attacks seem weird. Why would you use them for damage output when boulders and fire attacks tend to do more damage? And if you're going for effects, then why not just use light attacks?

The best I can figure out is that lightning attacks are intended to be able to do both the things that earth/fire and light attacks do, but just not as well as either. A relatively high dice attack with a kinda decent chance of daze/stun is still pretty useful. With lightning attack spells you aren't trying to kill an enemy creature as quickly or efficiently as possible like a rock, boulder, fireball or firestream. And your main reason for casting them isn't the daze/stun like it often would be with light attacks. Rather, the daze/stun is a secondary benefit. Having one or two less dice in the attack is compensated for by the daze/stun chance. (Of course you could be casting something like lightning jolt in which case the effect is your main reason for casting it (stagger).

Comparing arc lightning with flameblast, we see that arc only has 3 dice and flameblast has 4. In addition, flameblast has a good burn chance. So flameblast has close to an equivalent of 5 dice and unavoidable for 5 mana. Arc lightning has only 3 dice, but it does have a good daze/stun chance in addition to also having unavoidable, also all for 5 mana.

As stated earlier, lightning attacks are not for killing the Mage as quickly as possible. Here is the kind of situation where I suspect lightning attacks would shine. It is the end of one of your actions. There is a powerful active creature in your zone that will maul you as soon as it has the chance. (If might be the enemy Mage it might be something else.)
However it has already taken some fairly decent damage. You throw a lightning attack spell at it in the hopes that either the attack spell will kill it or daze/stun it. If it doesn't die but gets dazed or stunned, you will be able to finish it off later. And if it dies than you don't have to worry about it anymore. Throwing two lightning attacks in a row increases the chances that you'll land a daze/stun and it probably will do more damage. And if you successfully land a condition the first time you can wait until after that creature uses its action and the daze/stun goes away and then cast the other one after that.

In summary, lightning attacks are probably best used either:

-As a way to finish off a creature when it is sufficiently low on health with a decent chance to delay it from attacking again if it survives.

OR

-When you're casting them at least a couple of times on the same target so as to increase expected damage output and the chance of landing a condition.

In contrast, fire attacks are for doing as much damage as possible to a target as quickly as possible.

Technically since a burn deals about 1.5 damage on average and a lot of fire attacks have a small chance of dealing two burns instead of just one, fire attack spells probably tend to have about 2 more expected damage output than earth attack spells. But earth attack spells often have daze or slam chance.

Hurl rock has a worse chance of daze than all light attack spells currently in the game, and it's got a better chance of dealing a condition than arc lightning, but since arc lightning has a decent but still small chance of dealing a stun condition which is more powerful than daze, that probably makes up for having a 1/6 lower chance of landing a condition.

Hurl boulder has a slightly lower chance of landing a condition then lightning bolt has, and slam is less powerful than stun but more powerful than daze. Meanwhile lightning bolt has a higher chance of daze and lower chance of stun than boulder's chance of slam is. Hurl boulder does 2 more dice than lightning bolt, but notice that lightning bolt's stun chance is one of the best in the game and also has ethereal. The excess chance of stun compared to other attacks which can deal stuns makes up for the two less dice.

As stated earlier, earth attack spells do not have as much expected damage output as fire attack spells. While earth attacks tend to have one more die than their Fire counterparts, fire attacks have a good chance of dealing burns which always gets past armor and rolls more net damage on average than a die rolled in an attack.

This concludes my analysis for now. I might write about wind vs hydro vs earth attack spells later on, but no promises! If someone else wants to write that article first feel free.

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