Quote from: IndyPendant on November 02, 2013, 01:21:32 PM

tl/dr: Use the pathetic Warlord against total newbies, to play with a deliberate handicap.  Finally, a use for him! ; )

Ouch, and they didn't do much of anything to help him out with this release either. So yah this looks like the best use for Warloard at this point.

Even worse than that; they instead put in the incredibly useless Meditation Amulet as opposed to something someone would actually use...

Promo lets you pay 1-2 spell points, 1 quick action, 4 mana and neck slot for no payback, just the ability to spend 1 full action for +3 mana.

We are assuming the officially released Meditation Amulet is the promo. I know we had a Director saying promos aren't beta-testing and will be released exactly as is. But Ballista, Iron Guard, Akiro's Favour etc suggest that they will make changes before release.

The Druid is best placed to use it as she has vines, 2 Tree spawnpoints, 6 Pods and Felella. She does not need to move as she has vine range QC spells, her spawnpoints and Pixie enchantments. But it limits her to plant spells only, there is no plant Dispel or plant Teleport.

The Necromancer has his 2 spawnpoints too so he could use it for a creature build. Perhaps a Skeleton Fort which is very sedentary with Knight guards and Archers adjacent to Altar of Skulls in the centre of a corner "L" (where Mort and Acolytes are also placed, surrounded by 2 Wall of Bones). But the set-up time for that Fort is so long.

We are getting excited about new cards but they are spawnpoint-driven. We all know an aggressive Warlock, Forcemaster or Beastmaster can currently shred a spawnpoint opening. There has been no new tech spoilt to make spawnpoints more viable. The only hope from the list is a beefed-up Meditation Amulet.

The promo is simply strictly worse than Moonglow's no action +1 mana per turn. If they raised the ability to 5 per full action then it would be played in mid range spawnpoint builds. But as it is? I just can't see it being preferred.

I really hope they've improved it significantly. One full action is not worth +2 mana over moonglow.

I was pretty sad when I saw this listed over another new water attack. =\

I recently beat the force forcemaster simply because I had enough dispels to disrupt his enchantments. Since I normally  play with the beastmaster [and therefore run a lot of enchantments] I think that an opponent might just use dispel to destroy all of my buffs. Is there a way to defend against this or should I just stop depending on my enchantments so much?

I use a lot of enchantments as well. Recently I've been putting down 2x Enchanter's Wardstone quickly. You still lose some enchantments (so include duplicates of your important stuff) but it really helps a lot (especially if you're putting a lot of pressure on them; make sure their choice is between getting rid of your enchantment and defending themselves against you that turn).

Is there a rule I missed that doesn't allow for more than one type of tree out? Seems like most people are saying the Samara Tree or the Vine tree, I just don't understand why you wouldn't run both.

You can have as many trees out as you want afaik. The problem is that it isn't easily justifiable to cast more than 1 early, and it usually isn't worth it to cast a spawnpoint in the mid or late game.

If you cast both trees by turn 2 (making the first one your Treebond) you've spent a total of 17 mana on spawnpoints. In order to use Samara tree you'll need to pay 2 mana into it every turn (or harmonize it and pay 1 every turn from the information we have available right now). If the Samara was your first tree, by turn 5 you've put 25 mana into spawnpoints. In return you've made 4 mana from lifebond, 3 mana from your first mature pod, and 3 mana from the Vine tree (totaling 10). On turn 3 you've spent 21 mana on spawnpoints and only made 2 from channeling and 1 from the Vine tree (none of the pods are mature yet). This puts you incredibly behind your opponent in terms of mana, not really allowing you to take advantage of your deployments in the early game. If your opponent attacks early (and most competent opponents would after you've spent so much on spawnpoints) you'll be fighting an uphill battle just to remain even. A 9 channeling mage on turn 3 can come after you with 37 mana worth of stuff, but you'll only have 19 mana with which to mount a defense.  It's suicide.

If you wait to cast one of the trees however your buy-in cost is unchanged, but your benefit from it is decreased (less time to get returns on your investment). Spawnpoints generally aren't a good idea to cast after the first few turns of the game unless you have a significant lead.

Quote from: AylinIsAwesome on October 27, 2013, 09:32:58 PM

Ok, but even in your scenario (assuming a Harmonized Samara Tree) you'd still need to wait 4 turns in order to get the full 3 mana (4 mana off the price of whatever you cast -1 for the mana you spent when Samara Tree casted the pod in the first place). Even then that's only 1 more mana saved than if you had casted it from the Vine Tree and you don't need to wait 4 turns for it then. Now I get that there's probably something I'm missing here, but what is it? Perhaps I'm underestimating the Seedling Pods.

Yes in a one round comparison vine tree will generally be > Samara.

Extrapolate that into a game wide effect and it can look something like this.

Druid cast a Samara tree.

Next turn Samara tree casts a seed pod A.
Next turn Samara casts pod B. A is at 1.
Next turn Samara casts pod C. Pod A is at 2, pod B is at 1 mana.
Next turn Pod A becomes anything you want it to be, Samara tree remakes pod A, Pod B is at 2, Pod C is at 1.

This cycle never ends. The Samara tree lets you spend 2 mana to get 3 in a few rounds, and that 3 mana is 100% versatile.

Also one of the biggest things to note here is that all of those pods, and subsequent actions, are a byproduct of the tree. The druid spent ZERO actions to make the pods. The only action was placing the tree. Free mana and free actions. I know Vine tree is more appealing but Samara has always been my favorite tree in this set. The sleeper hit IMO.

Alright, so (assuming Samara on turn 1) on turn 5 your tree will start "generating" a net of one mana for you per turn (2 if you harmonize the Samara on turn 1 as well).  With the Vine Tree you start generating 1 (or 2 mana if Harmonized) on turn 2 with no wait time at all. Samara tree doesn't give you a mana advantage over Vine Tree unless you're cycling at least 4 Pods (in which case you start seeing returns on turn 6). The main advantage I can see over Vine Tree in this case is that you can cast any plant out of the pods instead of just vines, though that card-pool looks a little thin (mana flower, trees, wall of thorns iirc). I'm just not seeing a 3 turn delay being worth that without beatdown falling out of favour in the meta. On the other hand, the Vine Tree can also give some extra utility (1 mana for an extra vine marker).

I suppose a secondary advantage could be to cause your opponent to spend actions on the pods, though I can think of better ways of delaying an opponent (tanglevine, bloodspine wall, etc). At the same time though, there is a slight disadvantage since your opponent knows in which spaces you can cast spells, and when.
 

So what do you do? Rush in to beat down the samara tree? That is a lot of mana and investment for a turn 1 decision. Kill the pods? Well they have cantrip so have fun. I can spend 2 mana to make you waste an action or two killing pods that come back next turn. An Etherian Life tree, which a pod can become, makes them all 7 health to boot.

Would rushing the Samara Tree (or Vine Tree) really be a bad thing? It's likely to have Treebond, so destroying it not only gets rid of a deployment ability, but lowers the Druid's life by 4, channeling by 1, and she also loses the benefit of Lifebond +2. Seems like pressing the attack against her and her lifebond tree quickly would be the way to go. This is the major problem I have with waiting until turn 5 to get a return on your investment with the Samara tree. Actually, on turn 5 (with no Harmonize on Samara) you've spend 8 on the tree and 8 more casting Pods. In the same amount of time you'd made 4 mana from Treebond and have 3 mana on a Pod you can spend. Even ignoring the cost of the Samara in the first place you're still down 1 mana. So in essence you've spent a 1 mana and 1 quick action turn 1 for 1 quick action on turn 5. (It's even worse if you harmonize; the mana difference is the same but now you've spent two actions to get 1 back.) In an attack, the Vine tree can start defending you from turn 2. (For comparison, on turn 5 a non-harmonized Vine Tree would cost 9 mana but generate 4 and give you an extra 4 from lifebond, net =-1 [or +8 from the Samara tree scenario]. Additionally it would have given you 3 more possible deployments.)

Of course, the longer you wait to deploy using the pods the more your mana returns increase...but the early tempo and mana costs for that plan seem like they would outweigh any benefit. And the loss of a 4+ mana Pod would be painful to your economy.

Pods not popping fast enough? Use a shift enchantment wand

Are you suggesting that one should spend additional actions and mana to boost the pods? O_o



As a playtester you have more knowledge of the other cards than I do, so there may be something there that increases the effectiveness of the Samara Tree/Seedling Pod (such as a tree that increases the channeling of all other living creatures and conjurations by 1), but with the information I have right now the Samara Tree/Seedling Pod strategy looks inferior to the Vine Tree strategy due to the loss in tempo, especially since it doesn't offer a mana benefit unless you trade even more tempo for it. I really do hope there is something else that boosts it though.

Quote from: HomelessJoe on October 25, 2013, 03:49:06 PM

For the Druids sake i'm hoping they include 5+ Bloodspine Walls rather than the usual 2 as they did with the Warlock. With her reaching vines her seedling pods could really creature quite the barrier fairly quickly for a rather cheap mana investment. Another gain in her ever increasing defensiveness.

Not only can you extend through a vine marker, but you can also cast from a seed pod for a 3 mana discount. That is a total of 6 mana for two bloodspine walls

Except you have to pay 3 mana in the first place for that Seedling Pod. It only saves you mana if you let it sit 4+ turns or you cast it with Samara Tree (but so far nothing I've seen would make me choose it over Vine Tree).

the hydra is one of those creatures I want to love because in a straight up fight no creature can beat him (based on average dice rolls). but nobody would ever stay in same zone as hydra and even worse attack the hydra (free counter strike). and currently there are no spells that would compel people to attack hydra (possibly a taunt or guard enchantment).

Not entirely true; if its damaged then any Bloodthirsty creature will have to attack it if it's in the same zone (assuming that you don't have another creature guarding which seems a safe assumption).

In a game I played last year I was forced to attack a Hydra a few times with Goran due to that reason.

I am thinking that a Mana denial deck will do in a FM quickly especially with no Mana buffs in the default deck.

...why would a Forcemaster use the default spellbook?