Another idea:

The AirWizard may cast a zone exclusive arcane or air conjuration in a zone where she already controls a zone exclusive arcane or air conjuration. When she does so, the new conjuration is placed on top of the previous one (temporarily banishing it from the arena). During upkeep, the AirWizard may choose which zone exclusive conjuration will be active during the round and which is/are banished. When a zone exclusive conjuration is destroyed and another (temporarily banished) zone exclusive conjuration is underneath that card, it returns to the arena.

This AirWizard should play and feel somewhat different with conjuration builds/combos that define a strategy, but which can be changed into another strategy/build.

Stuff she would probably want:

* Zone exclusive arcane and air conjurations (Right now there is mostly mana-sapping conjurations. She might want some teleportation/movement conjurations, damage conjurations, creature (arcane/air creature only?) buffing/debuffing conjurations??)
===> Teleportal (unique): mage can teleport a creature from anywhere in the arena to this zone for 2 x Lv of the creature.
===> Creature canon: shoots a non-mage (non-restrained and non-unmovable) friendly creature one or two zones away ignoring walls. Creatures shot this way take one or two dice damage.
===> Tesla coils: Two towers that shoot lightning between them and damage everything in every zone (or just one creature/zone) that it crosses. Once per round. Spend mana per zone (or per creature => if you cant spend mana for them all, they don't shoot).
===> Buff/debuff obilisk: giving a trait to ALL creatures in the arena (Like Mordok's obilisk)
===> Buff:debuff spire: giving a trait to friendly/unfriendly/all creatures in this zone (invisible, fly or fast when starting in this zone...)
* A ring or other equipment that grands discounts when casting conjurations (Mana discount equal to the level of the existing conjuration(s)?)
* An incorporeal familiar which can cast only incorporeal conjurations (to suplement her goblin builder)

Stuff to consider:
* Can corporeal conjurations only banish/replace corporeal conjurations (and ditto for incorporeal conjurations)
* Are damage, mana and conditions moved to new zone excluve conjuration when it banishes the previous one? ("repairing" a vital conjuration by casting a 4 mana (minus discount) wardstone on it seems very strong... I'd advise against it.)

Not sure how usefull this would be and how many "AirWizardess Only" cards there would be in this set...

Last night a situation nearly came up (but didn't) presenting this choice and it spawned a small conversation and this question in the forums.

Thanks a bunch!

Id like to have 14 swarm books , one for each mage.

I'd like to see that forcemasterswarm....
(Psylocks  buffed by thoughtspores and some of the academy cards??)
:-)

Quote from: Kelanen on August 28, 2016, 06:00:35 AM

Quote from: Gogolski on August 27, 2016, 05:38:32 PM

For those who don't like the timer element of domination, why not play with the sole objective of killing the other mage?

You can still use the orbs as small mana/healing generators and use the V'tar to power some spells. Maybe you should remove the Sslaks/Usslaks, to get an even advantage between players who want to ignore the orbs and players who want to use them...

In which case the time taking orbs is inefficient, and you are better just ignoring them. You are now just playing Arena on a slightly different board.

without sslak, the orb is 1 chanel, and you gain 2 mana, and you use 0 book points... better than a mana flower!

That's exactly why I posted to leave the Sslaks out. If you don't have to commit to slaying the guardians, the orbs provide a multitude of bonuses and if you control some of them, your oponent will be forced to take some away from you. That will provide players with the flavour domination brings without the timer of playing for V'tar points. If you gather them, you can use them for the spels that require you to sacrifice V'tar points for an effect, or to use the V'torrak-zone-artifact-thing.

The benefits the orbs can give are quite big if you simply have to tag them. You could also have some orbs guarded and some orbs unguarded. (Or songle orbs in a zone without a guard and dual obs guarded by a Sslak/Usslak.) Healin/mana and spell/effect-empowerment might make a serious difference...

The way I interpret "moving away from the caster" is that every subsequent zone the tsunami enters must be one zone further away from the caster.

So if you mage is standing in the lower right corner and casts tsunami in the zone left of him (one zone away), the next zone can be a zone upward as that is two zones away from the caster. (It could have been one more zone to the left too) The next zone the tsunami enters could also go up and and then one to the left (or up). Going to the right would make the tsunami enter a zone closer to the caster and thus "turning back on the caster" in stead of moving away...

I might be wrong, but as long as it moves one zone further away from the caster, it moves away, even if it is not in a straight horizontal or vertical line.

Flying spaghetti monster has a quick attack that deals 1 die of damage and gives an equal amount of mana to the creature attacking (if it has channeling) or the controling mge (if it has no channeling)
It also has grappling.

...sounds about right for his holy noodliness...

The six alternate mages would appear in 'themed expansion sets' if Arcane Wonders follows the same format as before. As for pairings of the mages... don't know...

* Paladin - Necromancer (with a dark vs holy theme)
* Druid - Siren (with anature/water swamp-theme)
* Forcemaster - Air Wizard (with a control and denial theme ...and a fear-condition)

I want a swamp druid and someone who got the PvS set mentioned a "swamp"-spell today on these forums...
If they plan to introduce the frost-condition, the might be pairing the Air Wizard with the Siren (Air and Water seems fitting for frost, no??), wich pairs the Forcemaster with the Druid in a control vs. very different control set...

...
More academy mages
I don't know if AW wants to make an academy version of every mage, but it is possible. Some mages however really seem horrible for academy. I don't see how a druid, forcemaster or even warlord could function in academy. I could see a necromancer work however.

- A forcemaster needs movement and very strong mind spells. There is no movement in academy
- A druid needs board control and rooted plants for balance. Without rooted, she is simply a better beastmaster.
- A Warlord needs his conjurations for his armies. You could have solo/buddy warlords, but then you lose most of the flavor of the warlords.

I don't know if they would want to expand academy for every mage. This will be extremely hard to balance and to keep the power creep reasonable.

I think I remember Laddin or someone else stating that for now there are no conjurations in academy, but that they might be introduced in later sets... They might be few and mage-only to not skew the balance and still make certain academy mages playable.

The Archmage set is a given, I think. It will probably include new ability cards for these 'epic' mages. I'm curious to see wich mages will be in the box, as there are 10 mage-classes to choose from. They set will have a bunch of cards of course and rules to build a 640 spellpoint archmage book. Extra terrain tiles would be nice too...

But realy...
I don't know. With all the stuff that will have been released in the second half of 2016, a bunch of people will need to digest all the new cards/combos/strategies/tactics...