Unless AW formally withdraw support for the game, and give it to teh community then I'm afraid that I'm very against these ideas. All you will do is fragment the playerbase even further - those playing canon rules, and those play community rules.

If they do draw a line under it, then sure you can continue. As of yet they haven't though.

They already HAVE withdrawn most of their support for this game. I won't name names, but I've also spoken to experienced mage wars playtesters and there are some serious issues going on which Arcane Wonders is failing to address and is unlikely to fix any time soon if ever. This game itself isn't dying. But if I'm understanding what the playtesters told me correctly, it is struggling, and the long term health of the competitive play scene is in jeopardy, even though not everyone knows enough about the situation to realize it. If we continue waiting for Arcane Wonders to give more attention to this game when they probably aren't going to, if we only use official arcane wonders sanctioned rulings, then the metagame will likely suffer badly for a very long time.

At this point the consequences of splitting the community between admw house rules and official arcane wonders rules pales in comparison to the consequences of not doing that. And by the way, that split already exists. Most octgn mage wars players use the admw rules rather than the official rules. What I'm proposing is that we as a community stick to admw house rules and setting those as the standard for unofficial competitive play, a category which as far as I know includes basically all competitive mage wars tournaments except gen con. This means that if we ever encounter an imbalance, inconsistency or other problem in the rules, we would just need to update the admw rules rather than waiting forever for a ruling from Arcane Wonders which may never come.

Furthermore if I may be blunt, the more experienced mage wars players understand this game significantly better than arcane wonders does at this point.

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There are some overpowered or useless cards that need fixing, in that order. Since most competitive mage wars tournaments are hosted by the community and not by Arcane Wonders, that means that we get to decide how we want to do things.

This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

To start with, here are the unofficial errata that are currently used in the ADMW tournaments:

Disciple of Radiance Text Change
Once per round, whenever your Mage casts or reveals a healing spell, Disciple of Radiance may deal 1 direct light damage to a target creature in her zone

Casting a Spell - Change to the end of the Pay Costs Step
Previous wording - If you cannot pay all of the costs, the spell is cancelled and discarded, and you have lost the action.
New wording -If you cannot pay all of the costs, the spell is cancelled and obliterated, and you have lost the action.
Everything else remains unchanged about the step

Steep Hill
Steep hill will block Line of Sight if you cast a spell and it goes through two diagonal sections of the zone.

Force Pull
Once per round, the Forcemaster may cast this quick Force spell. Target creature is Pushed 1 zone towards the source of this spell. Will not Push a creature through a wall with the Passage Attacks trait.

Trample
- If a Flying creature makes a Trample attack against a non-Flying object, it loses Flying until the end of the attack.
- Elusive Creatures can ignore guards when making a Trample Attack.
- Defenses that do not work against Melee attacks cannot be used during the Avoid Attack step, however all other types may be (choosing one during the step following normal rules).


We also need to do something about the Druid. In particular, if you're facing a competent Druid player it virtually always puts you behind on mana and actions to destroy the treebond, yet it is nigh impossible to kill the druid without destroying her tree first.

Goblin builder and Gate to Hell would benefit from errata that improves their usability, but that doesn't need to be done right away.

The Bloodwave warlord's ability card is basically useless since all it does it increase the attack dice or armor of his creatures. The veterans ability in particular is designed to improve the power and endurance of a creature after it kills an enemy creature. 1 armor and 1 melee is not enough for this, because a creature has often taken damage by the time they've killed something. One possibility is to make stronger veteran tokens that have dissipate x, as a sort of blood rage or berserker sort of thing. Like, when a soldier of the bloodwave kills an enemy creature they go into a frenzy where they get better at killing things and are harder to take down. So like, instead of armor +1 melee +1, make it bloodthirsty +2 and armor +2 or something. Also that way it isn't just a worse version of Paladin's valor enchantment.

Anything else you think needs an errata? Post your suggestions below.

----

EDIT: okay, so after reading a few more comments i've somewhat changed my mind about card errata. we probably don't need any errata for broken cards at the present time, just for cards that are worded badly or break rules as intended, or which are worded confusingly and need to be made more clear. The only exception to this is probably the disciple of radiance.

The game might be more fun and diverse with single purpose wands instead of mage wands/elemental wands, but i'm not sure that's actually necessary for game balance, so that idea's not a good one right now. We don't need to get rid of spellbind.

As for the druid being nigh unkillable without killing her tree, i suppose that one way to think of it is that the druid's tree is like a part of her mage abilities which doesn't become active until after the game starts and she spends mana and actions on it. if you think of the druid as a 34 life 10 channeling mage, and the tree as a 9 mana spawnpoint with 1 channeling and regen 2 and the ability to transfer damage to the controlling mage to make it more surivvable.... barkskin compensates for this, but barkskin has upkeep +2. so basically if your running a druid with a vine tree bonded thats' 34 life and 10 channeling on your mage, minus 10 starting mana and one quick action, and if opponent starts attacking tree and the tree needs to transfer damage to mage, barkskin is needed to compensate for that, which has upkeep 2 so thats like lowering druid down to 8 channeling effectively
So basically, the druid actually starts the game off at a mana and action disadvantage. She isn't overpowered, but maybe it would be a good idea to start attacking the tree sooner even if you don't expect to destroy it. the damage will be transferred to mage, then if she puts barkskin on it will be easier to gain a mana advantage on her until she removes it, which may give you more time to setup on her.

I talked with sharkbait and he explained to me that this game is in dire need of some improvements that Arcane Wonders is unlikely to make, so we as a community need to do it ourselves. I've been kinda thinking that near the back of my mind for quite a while, so I've decided to take it upon myself to get this ball rolling.

In particular we need the following in order of priority:

1. Rules Cleanup
There are a number of messy or broken rules interactions that need fixing, and all of the rules need to be better organized in one place.

2. Card Errata
there are some overpowered or useless cards that need fixing, in that order.
EDIT: there are no overpowered cards in the game currently, but there could be in the future. Some errata may still be necessary however. This is explained in more detail in an edit to the original post.
This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

3. Separate unofficial set-release schedules for Academy and Arena
We need to make separate unofficial release schedules for sets in both Academy and Arena, so that the balance of one game's metagame doesn't interfere with the balance of the other.
EDIT: This might become necessary in the future, not sure it's actually necessary right now. The game isn't THAT old yet, so perhaps it isn't time to worry about large imbalances of card support just yet. If it becomes necessary later I will open a thread for this.
This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

Henry u can add me to list also only have few decks been teaching my 7 year old son to play

Added you, thanks!


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Quote from: EricTheGreat12 on July 17, 2018, 08:50:54 AM

Any kind of minor adjustments would only serve to please current Mage Wars players- it's not enough to attract new players to the game.

Or piss off current players - I think more of us are happy than not.

Realistically, it's not going to get a big fanbase now, 2.0 or not. It's a fantastic game, but that doesn't translate to a commercial game. It's also an old game and whatever window of opportunity it might have had and missed (if any)  will never be regained.

It won't ever be as big as mtg, but they could definitely be doing better than they are now. I mean as far as I can tell, they're successful enough that they're not ever going to have to sell the game, but they're not successful enough to grow the playerbase much. I think the only way at this point to get this game more attention would be something involving social status. Feature the game in important or presitigious public charity events, for instance. Especially the kind with a lot of nerdy gamer people. Like "free mw demos to everyone who donates $5 to the cause!"

The question is, what sorts of charities are tabletop gamer nerds likely to give to? I'm gonna have to ask silverclaw for advice on this I think.

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Fact is folks, i take pride in my books and spend a considerable amount of time constructing and then perfecting each one to do exactly what i want it to do and when. Many of us feel the same pride in our creations. So let me use a parallel from my mtg days. If a friend of mine wanted to play some magic but didn't have his or her decks with them, or had none at all, i would of course allow them to play using one of mine. But those games are always more oinds sided then they needed to be imo, as i knew what possible in each situation leaving me more likely to win, amd that's less fun for both players. Win or lose i receive no satisfaction from either game because im nor surprised by anything and am essentially matching wits against myself. This removes much of my fun.
In mage wars (or really any other competitive game) i tend to keep my secrets to myself or close friends, as i for one can't stand losing to my own book.
To some netdecking is a way to get new ideas and improve upon them, to others a way to get into the mind of the creator and discover new interactions. But to many its just a way to not think hard enough to build a book, and i dont wanna add to the fuel for any of those fires. That may make me selfish, and i understand that, but its just how i feel.

 I heartily enjoy the act of book building. And for what it's worth i often begin with the same template of my power cards before a mage is even choosen. It helps me not forget them while diving into combos and combat tricks later, and i am pretty much always satisfied when i have the teleport i need when i need it. 100 Sp would not change the number of cards in the template, though the number of copies each would rise and fall witg the sp gap for sure.

Nobody's forcing you to share decks if you don't want to. If you don't want to share your decks, don't.

And for the record I will point out that mage wars is NOT mtg. In mtg most of the skill involved is in building a deck rather than in playing the game. And in mtg building new decks is hella expensive, and not everyone likes to play online, and that's the only way to test a deck before you buy the cards, short of using tons of paper and ink to print proxies.

Mage Wars is not like that. In mage wars cards are much more affordable and there is a lot of skill involved in the gameplay rather than just deck building.
Unlike in mtg, increasing the number of decks available to netdeck in mage wars likely will not eliminate and might not even reduce the amount of creative spellbook building overall. Those who prefer to build their own decks will continue to do so regardless. Because you see, netdecking in mage wars isn't like netdecking in mtg.

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You were just complaining that there is not enough diversity in this game and now you want to encourage people to use a deck from the forum instead of building their own and using their own imagination, reducing the potential diversity further.
I do not understand you, Sir.

It's really simple. Those people who weren't going to build their own decks much in the first place, those who were *already* relying almost exclusively on netdecking need more variety. I'm not encouraging more people to netdeck more often. I'm encouraging people to post more decks so that those who already prefer netdecking or who don't enjoy deck building quite as often as I do will have more options.

Also, I suspect there are a lot of older deck archetypes that would be nice to see again but aren't being played because those who designed them moved on to other new ideas.

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