Arcane Wonders Forum
Mage Wars => General Discussion => Topic started by: jacksmack on January 06, 2014, 11:34:31 AM
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With DvsN introducing a new class that specializes in non-living creatures plus being poisen immune himself other traits goes down in value.
Creatures like:
Stonegaze Basilisk
Screech Harpy
Giant Wolf Spider
Dire Wolf
Emerald Tegu
Goran Werewolf
Psylok
Most of these were close to being viable, but with DvsN release these actually got a tad worse.
All of them are cool and unique creatures that i WANT to play... but i want to win more than i want to play cool creatures, so i always go with other choices.
There are more creatures being unusable than these - like the 4 goblins - but they did not get a downgrade with the DvsN release OR they will get obvious fixes with new expansions (Makunda getting more cats)
How to get cool but unused creatures (back) in the game?
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I disagree about Dire Wolf, Gorgan Werewolf, and Giant Wolf Spider being "bad" creatures. Sure, they aren't effective against non-living, but these creatures are still strong against mages that utilize living creatures. If you are expecting spells to always be effective you are missing out on the role that strengths and weaknesses play in both the strategy and balance of the game. Non-living creatures have their own set of weaknesses. And are we going to start calling non-living creatures useless when more light spells (with +2 against undead) get released? I don't think so.
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Even against non living creatures, the Spider can still be useful as a ranged "stuck" turret. Helpful for stumbling oncoming creatures, getting fliers out of the air or getting around guards, and making the opponent spend a few teleports even if you cannot take advantage of the taint chance.
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So are you actually seeing these creatures being played?
I have seen Giant Wolf spider in a total of 1 game so far.
I have seen Goran and Dire wolfs more than that, but its becoming more and more rare.
Basilisk only once since CoK.
Tegu very rarely.
Screech Harpy and Psylok never.
mr saucy... there is a difference on creatures having a weakness:
- undead suffers more damage from light attacks -
and creatures loosing their potential:
Dire wolfs not getting bloodthirsty and no bleed vs undead creatures.
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I so agree with jacksmack here.
ALL IS FLESH
Epic Dark 2 Living Conjuration
Cost ~8 Armour 0 Life ~12
Regeneration 2
All Corporeal Nonliving creatures and conjurations lose Nonliving and gain Living.
It would need clarification to check for status legality (condition markers and attachments) on arrival and removal.
But this grotesque bulbous fleshy living monolith would shake up Jokhtari, Necromancer, Earth Wizard, light defence etc.
I think it is so important that AW do their best to resurrect unplayables instead of confining them to the obsolete bin.
This is what I have been pushing for because it is elegant, all the pieces make sense and adds variety.
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ALL IS FLESH would probably break the necromancer. Living zombies are terrifying, since they suddenly have access to countless nature buffs, healing/vampirism, benefits from etherian lifetree, etc. in addition to their natural resilience.
I agree about finding ways to make underused cards more useful by releasing new ones that make them more appealing.
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Yeah, very good point, ACG, it was just the first thing that came to mind.
Living buffs "slip off" the moment it's removed so maybe just make it Life 8?
You could weaken it with "and retains Finite Life" but that feels so clunky.
"Loses Poison Immunity" does not help Bloodthirsty, Bleed, Wounded Prey.
You could make it localised like Gravikor but more limited, within 1 zone?
While I like the Lovecraftian Horror feel of the idea, it's probably too much.
My problem is I really like the Jokhtari (the whole savage huntress shaman concept).
Unfortunately this includes
* Bleed (Dire Wolf, Makunda, Hunting Bow, Bloodspine Walls)
* Bloodthirsty (Dire Wolf)
* Wounded Prey
* non-Animal with Taint (Giant Wolf Spider!)
* Emeral Tegu also feels very Jokhtari
Maybe what is needed is...
NATURE'S RECLAIM
Cost 2+X Enchant Corporeal Nonliving Creature, Nature 1
X = removal cost of all condition markers on this creature
This creature loses its Nonliving trait
It's best revealed just before Damage Effects or just before Declare Attack to use Bloodthirsty.
Note the indirect mana taxation of subsequent condition markers (as it increases Dispel cost).
Because Dispelling the enchantment would obviously make all those condition markers slip off.
It would make Traditional Jokhtari playable against Nonliving and create some new strategies.
There needs to be blurring of this growing Living Book vs. Nonliving Book schism in the game.
Else it feels like match-up lottery. And turning Living to Nonliving is too much like Purge Magic.
Therefore the solution is surely to transform Nonliving into Living for all those obsolete cards?
I am so with you, ACG, on making existing neglected cards more playable, increasing book variety.
From Goblins, Garrisons, Barracks, Pentagram, even Gate to Hell, I've tried to make them playable.
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I so agree with jacksmack here.
ALL IS FLESH
Epic Dark 2 Living Conjuration
Cost ~8 Armour 0 Life ~12
Regeneration 2
All Corporeal Nonliving creatures and conjurations lose Nonliving and gain Living.
It would need clarification to check for status legality (condition markers and attachments) on arrival and removal.
But this grotesque bulbous fleshy living monolith would shake up Jokhtari, Necromancer, Earth Wizard, light defence etc.
I think it is so important that AW do their best to resurrect unplayables instead of confining them to the obsolete bin.
This is what I have been pushing for because it is elegant, all the pieces make sense and adds variety.
I think that conjuration should be a combination of Dark and Holy
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Hmm, how about another conjuration instead that breaks only some of the nonliving issues? (Of course, the values are adjustable for balance purposes, it's the concept I'm shooting for here.)
Acidic Infusion
Conjuration, Epic, Zone Exclusive
Cost 7 Armour 2 Life 8
All Creatures lose and cannot gain Poison Immunity. Bleed loses the condition "Bleed can only affect living non-plant creatures".
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Hmm, how about another conjuration instead that breaks only some of the nonliving issues? (Of course, the values are adjustable for balance purposes, it's the concept I'm shooting for here.)
Acidic Infusion
Conjuration, Epic, Zone Exclusive
Cost 7 Armour 2 Life 8
All Creatures lose and cannot gain Poison Immunity. Bleed loses the condition "Bleed can only affect living non-plant creatures".
But what is the thematic justification? Note that you are making the following creatures vulnerable to poison:
- Iron Golems and Earth Elementals (maybe a little plausible, but still not much)
- incorporeal creatures (no way. ever.)
Also, be careful with the wording of the bleed condition; as it currently stands you are allowing anything (including conjurations) to bleed. A bleeding mana crystal or barracks is a little odd. In general, I would be cautious when designing cards that change the definitions of traits and conditions.
Basically, we have to consider theme when making cards, or we will have the "I can't water my plants" problem all over again (which I believe could have been avoided with some initial thematic consideration - there is no good thematic reason why plants should be any less vulnerable to water than creatures, much less immune. Lightning vulnerability for things like the iron golem and the steel wall also bothers me - as a conductor, metal should be less vulnerable to being damaged by electricity, not more. People don't generally complain about this inconsistency, though)
The challenge here is to make bleed and poison more effective against nonliving creatures, right? Here are my proposals:
(http://s28.postimg.org/e3luphjuh/Caustic_Venom.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/e3luphjuh/)
This is building off your acidic infusion idea, which I believe is intended to suggest that poison becomes acidic. It does this by changing poison into acid. I don't think it causes any weird thematic inconsistencies..
As for bleeding, the easiest way to do that is a rule change that you can forgo a bleed marker to give the attack piercing +1 instead. This requires no card erratas, makes bleed more useful, still gives some nonliving creatures an advantage, and I don't think it causes any thematic inconsistencies. Note that this is still irrelevant for many creatures, such as spirits, zombies, and armor 0 skeletons.
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I'm with Mr. Saucy on this. Just cause a creature isn't as powerful against the undead as it would be against the living doesn't make it useless. Goran actually is really cool against zombies as his Double strike gives him two shots at damaging them. The Tegu has done well for me on a number of occasions, and Dire Wolves are just cool.
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I'm with Mr. Saucy on this. Just cause a creature isn't as powerful against the undead as it would be against the living doesn't make it useless. Goran actually is really cool against zombies as his Double strike gives him two shots at damaging them. The Tegu has done well for me on a number of occasions, and Dire Wolves are just cool.
The thing with Dire Wolves is that against undead, they are less effective than the cheaper Timber Wolves are.
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I'm with Mr. Saucy on this. Just cause a creature isn't as powerful against the undead as it would be against the living doesn't make it useless. Goran actually is really cool against zombies as his Double strike gives him two shots at damaging them. The Tegu has done well for me on a number of occasions, and Dire Wolves are just cool.
The thing with Dire Wolves is that against undead, they are less effective than the cheaper Timber Wolves are.
This is true as the Timber Wolf has a higher base attack(and is usually made into my pet.) Dire Wolves are as you say best used for the living.
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You can still focus on the mage (Necromancer in this case) with the dire wolves and let other creatures fight the undead horde.
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No one's saying that creatures are useless in general if they can't stand up to nonliving creatures. Let's remember that the power levels of cards don't exist in a vacuum, their usefulness is defined by their interactions with other cards. The problem here is that the Johktari Beastmaster as she is, while she's pretty good in living matchups, she's at a HUGE disadvantage against nonliving. While it might not be entirely accurate to say that you can NEVER win against a Necromancer as the Johktari Beastmaster, it seems likely to me with her current spells and abilites that if someone plays her against a necromancer of equal skill, the necromancer will almost always win.
I think Deckbuilder's right, we have the beginnings of a schism on our hands between living and non living mage wars. I doubt it will stay that way for long though, since a lot of people have already noticed it. And I think ACG's right on the money with spells and effects that turn poison to acid. That is possibly the most obvious and sensible solution.
Of course, something else to keep in mind is that in the long run there will likely be far more living creatures than nonliving. (at least IMO--The rules say that all creatures are assumed to be living unless they have the non-living trait, which seems to imply the living trait as the norm.)
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The one good thing the Johktari really has going for her is there is A LOT to be said for an always Fast Mage. Moongoose Agility her up and you can track down and beat the enemy Necromancer to death pretty fast. Either use to bow or if things get crowded then Bears Strength her up and go bash skulls. Her best friend in this case is Cervere.
I acknowledge the undead are a problem for her, but she's still got an ace up her sleeve.
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Hmm, how about another conjuration instead that breaks only some of the nonliving issues? (Of course, the values are adjustable for balance purposes, it's the concept I'm shooting for here.)
Acidic Infusion
Conjuration, Epic, Zone Exclusive
Cost 7 Armour 2 Life 8
All Creatures lose and cannot gain Poison Immunity. Bleed loses the condition "Bleed can only affect living non-plant creatures".
But what is the thematic justification? Note that you are making the following creatures vulnerable to poison:
- Iron Golems and Earth Elementals (maybe a little plausible, but still not much)
- incorporeal creatures (no way. ever.)
As I understand it, an incorporeal creature affected by that spell still would not be affected by the loss of poison immunity unless the attack it was attached to was ethereal. Poison enchantments on the other hand would be a different story.
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On a similar theme, I wouldn't object to a mind-mage only epic conjuration that negates psychic immunity across the arena. Right now there are a lot of interesting, thematic forcemaster builds that lean on mind control, charm, and sleep that get no play at all because they auto-lose to wizards and necromancers.
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What would that look like thematically? A spell that gives the "sentience" trait to all creatures?
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What would that look like thematically? A spell that gives the "sentience" trait to all creatures?
Well, the mage who control these creatures are controlling them somehow... The arena wide spell would make psychic spell to affect that "controlling link".
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I can think of several ways, but I'm not that concerned about the fluff since there are probably multiple satisfactory ways of doing it. I just find it disappointing that the entire "psychic" subclass of mind spells are generally ignored because so many builds negate them completely.
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I agree that negating psychic immunity doesn't really make much sense thematically. Rather than removing psychic immunity (which seems a little heavy handed anyway), why not make spells that make psychic immunity into a disadvantage? For instance,
- Global psychic buffs, which would benefit all creatures without psychic immunity. This means that a living-creature mage fighting a nonliving-creature mage would be able to gain a significant advantage.
- Bad effects that can only be used on creatures with psychic immunity. Thematically a little more challenging than the above, but certainly not as much as psychic immune creatures losing their immunity.
The main thing to remember is that there are many possible explanations for why a creature is psychic-immune, and it might not necessarily imply that it is mindless. I'll try to post some specific examples of cards following the above ideas later, when I have more time.
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I personally don't think that would work as well because a heavily-invested psychic mage would have to take some cards for psychic immune creatures (useless against many mages) and other cards for non psychic immunes (useless against the rest of the mages), and no one has the book resources for that. That being said, though, I'm not invested in my particular solution, as a Forcemaster enthusiast I'd just like to see psychic rehabilitated.
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The cards don't have to be solely useful against psychic immune creatures, though. For instance, consider a global effect that gives all creatures without psychic immunity the elusive trait. It gives you an advantage over a mage with psychic-immune creatures because your creatures can guard and theirs cannot, but it could also be used by a solo forcemaster who doesn't really care about having guards to protect her and wants a non-dispel-able source of elusiveness (presumably a cheap one, since it can benefit your opponent as well).
Or consider an 'altar of rage' that gives all non-psychic immune creatures bloodthirsty +1 and rage +1. You could use it to buff or hinder non-psychic immune creatures, depending on the circumstances.
The more I think about it, the more I think global buffs are the way to go. They key is to make sure that (unlike Mind Shield) the cards have uses other than purely against psychic immune creatures.
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I don't think those are uninteresting cards, but they still leave mind control and charm out in the cold.
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Sorry, let me restate because I guess I wasn't clear earlier. What I'd like to see is the rehabilitation of the puppet master type psychic mage that is possible given the current set of psychic cards but which won't work in the current state of the game.
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I like ACG's answer to combating psychic immunity. Yes, charm and mind control will continue to be situational, but I get the feeling you won't be happy unless those spells are made able to affect psychic immune creatures and I strongly disagree with that approach. Those are not spells that need to affect everything. Having things that are immune to them is a good thing. Perhaps the current meta is flooded with immune creatures, but then the solution is to make more creatures, not to weaken the ones that exist.
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Well, it's not just about mind control and charm, though those are the examples I'm using. It also applies to any future control effects produced, and I'm sure there will be more. Here's how I see the future of psychic effects: option 1: psychic effects remain highly situational, such that the creatures played by 1/4 of the mages in the game are completely immune to them. Result: psychic control effects will rarely get played. I think that's uninteresting and results in a less vibrant game. Option 2: the current batch of psychic immune creatures fall out of favor, so psychic control effects become more useful. Result: The game is still less interesting because there aren't as many oddball creature running around. Option 3: A method of applying psychic control effects to psychic immune creatures is introduced, even if it's awkward or expensive for the mind mage. Result: the game becomes more vibrant as undead and golems proliferate alongside psychic control effects. That's what I'd like to see.
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How does making those spells universal make the game more vibrant? I feel option 2 would be the best solution. Having psychic spells as relevant but still stoppable by psychic immune seems like the best option, option 2.
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Well, let me define some terms to make sure we're not talking at cross-purposes. When I say I want the game to be "vibrant" I mean that at mid-level* play I have the maximum number of build types that are effective, so for a vibrant game I want to be able to have the option of playing as (or playing against) a psychic heavy forcemaster or a necromancer or a golem-based wizard or a lot of other things. I want them all to be viable options. In option 1 (above) the psychic heavy forcemaster isn't viable because he just won't be able to play against the necromancer or the golem wizard, and I feel like that's a loss. In option 2, the necromancer and golem wizard have faded from play in favor of possibly-less-wonky-creature builds, and I feel like that's also a loss. Option 3 is the only option in which the number of viable builds (and, hence, "vibrancy") is maximized.
*I'll define this term, too. I think of mid-level games as the kind where all the players are competent, but no one is getting ready for a tournament or anything, and I don't know which mage I'm getting ready to play against so I haven't tailored my book for anything in particular. These are the kinds of games I spend most of my time playing and I suspect the same is true of others as well.
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Well, let me define some terms to make sure we're not talking at cross-purposes. When I say I want the game to be "vibrant" I mean that at mid-level* play I have the maximum number of build types that are effective, so for a vibrant game I want to be able to have the option of playing as (or playing against) a psychic heavy forcemaster or a necromancer or a golem-based wizard or a lot of other things. I want them all to be viable options. In option 1 (above) the psychic heavy forcemaster isn't viable because he just won't be able to play against the necromancer or the golem wizard, and I feel like that's a loss. In option 2, the necromancer and golem wizard have faded from play in favor of possibly-less-wonky-creature builds, and I feel like that's also a loss. Option 3 is the only option in which the number of viable builds (and, hence, "vibrancy") is maximized.
*I'll define this term, too. I think of mid-level games as the kind where all the players are competent, but no one is getting ready for a tournament or anything, and I don't know which mage I'm getting ready to play against so I haven't tailored my book for anything in particular. These are the kinds of games I spend most of my time playing and I suspect the same is true of others as well.
Great topic for another thread. Type of players and how they fit into MW community.
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I don't think there's anything inherent in option 2 that says necromancer and golem wizard aren't still viable. Less common, yes, but in turn psychic control becomes more common and other builds as well. Overall the game remains quite diverse. Ideally every mage would be equally popular, which would give you currently a 1/10 chance of facing any given mage. Not all wizards go with golems or jellies, so your chances of a poor match up would be around 1/7. That's decent enough to still go with psychic control, though you will indeed be frustrated when you find yourself up against such a build. If this is too frequent a match up for you, then it can be reduced by adding new mages and creatures, increasing the diversity and vibrancy while making poor match ups for you less common.
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Well, I guess we've just reached the agree-to-disagree part of the discussion.
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No one's saying that creatures are useless in general if they can't stand up to nonliving creatures. Let's remember that the power levels of cards don't exist in a vacuum, their usefulness is defined by their interactions with other cards. The problem here is that the Johktari Beastmaster as she is, while she's pretty good in living matchups, she's at a HUGE disadvantage against nonliving. While it might not be entirely accurate to say that you can NEVER win against a Necromancer as the Johktari Beastmaster, it seems likely to me with her current spells and abilites that if someone plays her against a necromancer of equal skill, the necromancer will almost always win.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I think it's worth saying that one of the good things about Mage Wars is that it allows you to balance out your weaknesses. I don't have DvN yet, but my Jokhtari already has a handful of holy attack spells, precisely to balance her weakness against non-living. Obviously covering weaknesses carries a price, but it's not impossible, and the challenge is finding the balance between exploiting strengths and covering weaknesses.
As I said, no experience of fighting the necromancer. I suppose the best approach would be a straightforward attempt to assassinate the necromancer themselves. Obviously Wounded Prey would be wasted, but at least the Dire Wolves aren't forced by bloodthirst to munch on the cheap, hard-to-kill zombies and can focus on killing the necromancer.