Let me paint a picture for you:
Imagine a coil of snakes, not vicious as in normal life, but sickly, gray, and dying. Instead of snapping out in angst of being attached to such a hideous creature, they can barely open their jaws enough to let their decaying teeth show. Venom from the snakes’ fangs is dripping down to the base of this tangle of creatures, which only gets more disgusting as the viewer looks further down the disgraced Gorgon body.
This is the view I want to give my opponent as they take down this menace. wait, did I read that right? You sure did. I want my opponent to destroy this archer, because it is, indeed, bait.
WHAT?
At sixteen cost, this monster with regenerate two, an attack that devastates the opposing mage, why would I want you to kill it? The answer is simple. It gets you on my side of the board, it sets me up to destroy you. You can move in to kill the Archer, fine. But you will die in the process.
But why the archer? Why not choose something cheaper? Doesn’t efficiency and tempo play any sort of role when you play? Well, the answer is not so simple. I want the Archer for a few reasons. The first is that it is an instant threat that opponent must deal with, or they will lose the game. The second is that while they waste time getting to the creature itself, the archer can hit them with those weak conditions, which can completely deter an aggressive mage into attacking me, or at least hold them off while they purify. The third, and not so obvious reason, is that the best way to stop the Archer from attacking is to be in the same zone as her You’ll notice that the range on the Gorgon’s stone arrow attack is 1-2. Hence, if the mage is in the same zone, the creature loses much of it’s power. The fourth reason is that it is hard to kill. With 16 life and regen 2, it is going to take a least two rounds with some powerful attacks for the mage to kill the archer. These four reasons alone are reason enough to spend sixteen mana. You are playing a sente threat that they HAVE to respond to, and they have to use up a lot of action, card, and mana resources in order to deal with her. All the while, you can be doing any number of things, like attacking the mage with ranged spells, setting your creatures up to do major damage, throwing walls to stop the mage from getting away.
The Bait is a powerful tool the control player can use to defeat the aggressive player, and I think that the archer is the best option, as it’s inherent weakness is actually is most amazing strength. Sure, you can use other creatures to bait the opponent, but a lot of the other creatures out there are either not enough of a sente threat by themselves, or they can be easily dealt with by other means. For the Warlord, using the sniper is a good tactic, and obviously Lord of Fire is bait on a stick for the Warlock, but I don’t think the Priestess and the Beastmaster have as many baiting options, other than using the Archer herself.
This Bait tool can also be used to different effect as well. You can use the bait to get swarms in position to AoE them to death. This will take patience, and persistence to play correctly, but I believe it can be done.
When is the best time to bait out the opponent? Well, for my Earth Wizard build, I usually want to have my two iron golems out before I cast the Archer. This allows me to set the Golems up in position to smash the opposing mage. This is around round 6-7, so this is incredibly early for the control player to begin taking control, but I feel that any later, and the bait loses some of it’s attention getting. You also want to be mindful of where your threats are in relation to the bait. You want to have your threats far enough away that they won’t be considered threatening to the opponent, but close enough for you to use your tricks in order to get your threats to where they need to be in order to strike when they take that bait.
So, how can a swarm player use bait to his advantage? Well, another tactic to employ is to use your mage as bait. You want to have a mage with a higher life total to really use this tool without putting yourself in to much danger, but against a big creature/solo build, you can oft use yourself to bait the opposition into going into just the right zone for your swarm to attack. This is much harder than it sounds, and it is suggested that you start by using bait in a non swarm setting, but if set up correctly, it can be used to great effect.
What about the Priestess? She has a terrible starting life total, and not many holy creatures are threats enough to be sente. So what can you do? Well, there is the amazing Divine intervention/Vampiress opening, but that has been discussed, and there are many counter attacks that are usually planned out in more experienced players builds. So, if you don’t want to use 12 spell points for that dark creature, why not try baiting yourself, and when shit hits the fan, intervening yourself out of the situation at hand? This is probably the most difficult of all the ways to utilize the bait tool, but I think it can be devastating if used in the right book.
So, that’s the bait method. I think it is an incredibly powerful method the mage can use in the arena, and I hope you folks are able to use this in your games, to winning effect! As always, questions, criticisms, comments, and ways to expand upon this idea are welcome!
