Hello all!

I haven't actually played Academy yet but I've seen a fair number of the cards online and while a lot of them feel underpowered for Arena, I imagine there are a few that are great additions to Arena as well. What Academy spells do you use in your spellbooks?

Can the Paladin use cards that say "War Mage Only?" I see that Paladin is trained in Level 2 War spells, but does that mean that the Paladin can equip Harshforge Plate? It says "War Mage Only" as opposed to "Warlord Only." Does the Paladin count as a war mage? Thanks!

I've heard whispers here and there about certain mages being too weak to be viable against top-tier players/spellbooks (so far). I am wondering what people feel are the top tier mages and which mages are currently struggling to be viable in top-tier play.

From what I've heard, it seems that both Warlords are struggling, Priest is potentially the weakest at the moment, and that Arraxian Crown Warlock is not in a great spot either. I know that Hanma mentioned on Mage Wars Mondays that making Ballista Warlord Only could potentially bridge the gap for Warlord.

From what I can tell, it seems that Wizard, Forcemaster, and Priestess are the strongest. That's basically just cobbled together from reading forum posts and seeing conversations on octgn. What are your opinions of what's viable and what's not? More importantly, why or why not?

Hello all!

I've been struggling a lot against various Druid builds that use Vine Tree. I am somewhat new, and I am often not sure how to approach this spellbook. On the one hand, there is the option of trying to go straight for the vine tree right off the bat. However, it has 12 health after treebond, 1 armor, regen 2, and the ability to transfer damage away from it. Recently I played a game where I got it to 11 damage twice in a row only to have it heal back to safe damage and overwhelm me with creatures.

On the other hand if I try not to focus the tree and instead focus on creatures, I find that I get overwhelmed very quickly. The creatures are very strong and their regen is very difficult to deal with. While the vine tree is casting all sorts of creatures at greater and greater distances, the druid is free to hang back and fire incantations and enchantments to either buff the creatures or barrage me with tanglevines, jinxes and all other manner of spells.

I know that Druid is far from unbeatable, but I think I just need to learn a good way to approach this problem and exploit the weaknesses of the druid. The inclusion of the Nightshade Orchid and Corrosive Orchid means lots and lots of actions, an easy way to sleep large minions, the ability to trash equipment without spending a mage action, and small attacks to wake up any sleeps I may cast on the Druid's creatures.

Anyway, I could use some help learning to combat this strategy. I have mainly played either Araxian Crown Warlock or Necromancer with a focus on curses. I have had some victories, but I find that the Vine Tree spellbooks tend to snowball quickly if not handled correctly early. Any tips? Thanks!

It would be great to have watermarks on cards showing which set they are a part of. I think this would add a lot of clarity for new players when building decks and researching cards. It would be nice to know instantly whether or not a card is from a set you currently own or not without having to go and look it up every time (similar to the way that spell types now have the name of the spell type written below the icon in academy).

I suppose the only question then would be what to do with the core set cards that are included in other sets. My vote would be to put both or put some kind of qualifier like "core (DvN)" or (if you went the path of icons) you could just put both icons. Essentially the first icon would be the set that the card originally appeared in and the second would be the set that it was actually unboxed from.

Thoughts?