Fortified Position vs. Sacred Ground

[lettucemode]

[mwcard=FWE06]Fortified Position[/mwcard]

[mwcard=MW1E37]Sacred Ground[/mwcard]


I have seen a couple of recommendations for Druid or Necromancer books to include Fortified Position to aid their armor-less creatures (Plants and Skeletons), but I never see any recommendations for Sacred Ground.

Aegis 1 is flat out better than +2 armor. Armor can be crit through, but you can't crit on a die you never roll. The only other difference between these spells is school. War is triple for the Druid, so she should always choose Sacred Ground. Holy is triple for the Necromancer, however the guaranteed reduced damage might be worth that 2 extra spellbook points over Fortified Position. Depends on the book though.

Every other mage should choose Sacred Ground, hands down, with the exception of the Warlord because the Ring of Command lets him reveal Fortified Position for one less mana and it's in-school for him. Doesn't change the fact that Sacred Ground has a better effect, though.

Has Sacred Ground been generally forgotten, or is there something else I'm missing?

[jacksmack]

This again?


The last time we found out that +1 melee/ranged is better than +1 pierce.
(though there were scenarios where pierce was better, but only so slightly that it was easier to go with +X melee is always equal or better than +X pierce in situations where pierce is applicable and have an effect)


This is extremely scenario based, but saying "Aegis 1 is flat out better than +2 armor." is just plain wrong.

If the scenario is about a zombie then armor is useless.

If its about a mage with 0 armor that gets a 8 dice attack with 0 pierce then the armor +2 is far better than the aegis 1.

[Laddinfance]

Another thing to keep in mind is that [mwcard=MW1E37] Sacred Ground[/mwcard] only affects living creatures.

Also, as Jack pointed out the more dice rolled the more likely you'll be able to prevent all of the damage your armor is capable of. At that point Aegis has the possibility of being equal. On smaller attacks, Aegis is almost assuredly better than Armor +2.

One last thing to think about is Corrode. Fortified Position helps against corrode, while Aegis will not.

[Death-from-above]

If its about a mage with 0 armor that gets a 8 dice attack with 0 pierce then the armor +2 is far better than the aegis 1.

Could you explain to me how aegis 1 wouldn't be better in that situation? I am just curious. I'm relatively new to Mage Wars and if I am using these spells wrong, please tell me.

One last thing to think about is Corrode. Fortified Position helps against corrode, while Aegis will not.

Ahh I did not think about corrode.

[lettucemode]

Missed the part about living on Sacred Ground, whoops. So both Necromancer and Warlord are pretty much forced into Fortified Position.

So Armor +2 is better against lots of dice because you may get multiple non-crit ones? But even at 8 dice, the chances of getting two non-crit 1s is worse than the chances of getting a crit 2 somewhere in there. I'd rather cancel out the crit 2, especially if the defending creature already has some armor.

I agree that Fortified Position works well against Corrode because you can just move the creature in and out of the zone to drop the markers off (if there are more markers on the creature than their base armor value, that is). But I don't think there's any reason to use a Corrode spell against an armor-less creature like a plant, so the Aegis 1 still seems better for the Druid.

[Laddinfance]

If its about a mage with 0 armor that gets a 8 dice attack with 0 pierce then the armor +2 is far better than the aegis 1.

Could you explain to me how aegis 1 wouldn't be better in that situation? I am just curious. I'm relatively new to Mage Wars and if I am using these spells wrong, please tell me.

One last thing to think about is Corrode. Fortified Position helps against corrode, while Aegis will not.

Ahh I did not think about corrode.

At 8 dice the odds of your rolling 2 non-critical damage are greatly increased. Since a die could roll a 1 or a 2 in that scenario you have the possibility of preventing the damage from 2 dice. Aegis will only prevent the damage from 1 die, and you do not know if that die would have rolled a blank. It's an odd situation, but armor is more likely to be used completely by larger attacks than smaller ones. So at that point, you're only preventing damage of something that has rolled damage instead of removing the "possibility" of damage.

I realized I rambled out there, Hopefully it makes sense.

The biggest difference in Armor and Aegis is one of perception. Armor cancels some damage, Aegis eliminates the possibility of some damage.

[Death-from-above]

That makes sense. I hadn't pictured it like that before. I was looking at it purely by a numbers stand point a figured completely canceling a possible 2 damage would have been better then having the chance to maybe block 2 damage. But now I can see that the aegis could have potentially blocked a die that may not of rolled anything and the armor has better coverage over the dice that are being rolled, if there is a lot of dice being rolled in the attack, that is.

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

[Laddinfance]

One more thing to keep in mind, Aegis goes really well on people who already have high armor. One of the first enchants I put on Brogan Bloodstone is Divine Protection, because removing a die is removing their chances of rolling crits which are the only thing he fears.

End of the day they're both damage mitigation and pretty solid at it.

[jacksmack]

when you roll 8 dice you will almost always get 2 or more normal damage.

This means a creature with 0 armor in the zone with Fortified Pos. Will almost always get the full benefit from Fortified position.
Because of this I will (slightly wrong) put the damage reduction from Fortified position on average to be 2.

Dice roll 1 damage on average. So if a creature with 0 armor and aegis 1 gets attacked with X dice it will take 1 less damage than the same creature with 0 armor and aegis 0 on average.

But like I said - its extremely situational.

For instance:
Fortified position has 0 effect when an iron golem is attacked by 2 dice while giving that iron golem (not currently possible due to living restriction on divine prot and sacr ground) it will reduce the average damage taken by the golem by 0.5.


When all this is said I used to like the cards a lot more when I began playing MW than I do now.

Generally they are very good if your opponent is spreading out damage on multiple creatures.
Since spreading out damage on multiple creature is a very bad strategy because 2 damaged wolfs deals double the damage of a full HP wolf not many players bothers doing this.
Rather you want to either focus on the mage, or take down key creatures 1 at a time.

Very often getting to focus your damage involves forcepushing guards or teleporting guards.
This means the prepared Force push can be used on the enemy creature you want to kill - thus getting out of of protecting from a guard AND out of the zone with Forti pos or Sacr Ground.

Now... If you handle guards with tanglevine, sleep or other means, then you will still not have solved the forti Pos or Sacr Ground issue.

If swarm because viable and the green Warlord can play guard strategy then these cards indeed will help a lot.

[ringkichard]

Hmm. The expected value of Aegis 1 is 1 damage. The epected value of +2 armor depends on the armor already on the creature and the size of the attack. It's anywhere from 0 to 2.

This requires more math.

[lettucemode]

Okay so I thought about it a little bit more after considering Aaron's and jacksmack's responses more. Seems like armor is better against an even spread of damage and Aegis is better against unlucky spikes of damage (i.e. crits). Putting Aegis on a creature that already has some armor is a great idea, but with armor-less creatures you probably want to get some armor on first, that way you are statistically safer.

when you roll 8 dice you will almost always get 2 or more normal damage.

Yea but in the case you roll a non-crit 2, the Aegis 1 will cancel that out anyway. Armor is strictly better when many non-crit 1s are rolled, which is less likely than rolling one crit 2 or normal 2.

[jacksmack]

Hmm. The expected value of Aegis 1 is 1 damage.

Before armor is applied.



After armor it can be down to 0.5 damage vs resilient targets or an iron golem with 9 armor facing a 4 dice attack.

And to be honost the value of aegis can be very close to 0 as well.

[Wise fool]

Hmm. The expected value of Aegis 1 is 1 damage.

Before armor is applied.



After armor it can be down to 0.5 damage vs resilient targets or an iron golem with 9 armor facing a 4 dice attack.

And to be honost the value of aegis can be very close to 0 as well.

When would Aegis be targetting a resilient creature?  Aren't they all non-living?  Granted I can only think of zombies and jellies off the top of my head.  Golem is also non-living, so not a target for Sacred Ground anyway.  Probably not a target for fortified either, since it already has spectacular armor.

[jacksmack]

You missed my point.
Anyway, if its important replace golem with brogan and reduce his possible armor to 8.

[Zuberi]

I like using fas's dice vs armor chart. As others have mentioned, Aegis will reduce the damage you take by 1 on average at most. Looking at the chart, we see that two armor is better for an unarmored creature against any attack rolling 3+ dice. If the critter already has armor, the the comparison gets more complicated. Thus, as others have said, the more armor a creature already has, the more appealing Aegis becomes. The exact point that it becomes more appealing than the bonus two armor depends on how big of an attack you are facing.

In general, I would say that if the creature has 3+ armor already, I would rather put Aegis on it.