So ends another year of 3-way Domination matches. And after 38 matches, we're growing a little bit bored of the few 3-way maps included in the rule book, along with the handful of maps and custom scenarios we've been able to come up with. One driver for our lack of creativity is related to the challenges of making "fair" 3-way maps from 4-sided tiles. There really aren't many options of having mages start at range 3-4 from each other and equidistant from orbs when using squares. Starting in 2019, we'll be dabbling with hexagonal Domination tiles. Paper prototypes below (please excuse the terrible initial attempt at colour matching; these are just a mock-up).

"My Lord, a Swarm of Killer Bees and a Woolly Rhino are in the next zone!"

"No problem. My Force Wave will send them packing!"

*woowoowoowoo*

"What? The Bees are still there? The Rhino went tumbling head of heels, but the *Bees* are still there! Well, this will sort them out. Fireball!"

Ok, finally have my copy in hand. Can someone explain why Force a Wave, which targets a zone, affect swarms? Aren’t swarms affected by anything that would, for example, affect an invisible creature, e.g. Teleport Trap, Force Wave, etc?

Quote from: Kelanen on December 09, 2018, 05:34:09 PM

Also remember anything can walk out of the swamp and act normally...

Swamp would see a lot more use if Steep Hill didn't exist. It's not a bad card at all, but it needs specific combos, the hill is generally better to slow offense.

So the Slow only lasts while in the Swamp... I don't get how this works.

If a non-Fast creature moves into the Swamp, it's turn ends (e.g. can't take a quick action after movement). But a creature can double-move into a Swamp, whereas it can't double-move into Steep Hill. (Also a Fast creature can't move into a Steep Hill and follow up with a Quick action, whereas it could into a Swamp since it would merely lose Fast). Similarly, a creature can get Pushed into a Swamp, but not out of it.

Now my druid gets new cards. In Berlin the game came yesterday

Druid arrived here too. But no Elementalist yet...

While the lack of enthusiasm and generally the lack of information from official Arcane Wonders employees is concerning, we do at least know that a Monk and a Necromancer are coming to Academy very soon, since it would seem to have been a last-minute decision to release Druid and Elementalist ahead of these other two Academy mages as evidenced by the misprinted menu of pre-release product available at GenCon 2018.

After that, there has been nothing official or even hinted at, to my knowledge, and there has been quite a bit of pessimism regarding the likelihood of any future product made specifically for Arena. At this point, it is unlikely we'll see a new mage, let alone the long-promised "RPG-like" play mode and/or the Archmage Battlegrounds expansion that had some art spoiled a couple years ago.

Er, I may have misunderstood. Are you saying there are 4 Academy prereleases at Gen Con 2018?

It's been over 2 weeks. No comment from any official AW employee or Arcane Duels ambassador, etc. No card spoilers. No confirmation (nor denial) regarding the sets available for preorder.

Surely it couldn't be harmful to reveal a card or two at this point.

...

Right?

...

[crickets]