Arcane Wonders Forum
Mage Wars => General Discussion => Topic started by: Koz on June 18, 2013, 09:13:14 AM
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I'm curious as to the results of the tournament at Origins. I'm assuming that Origins will have been the biggest official tournament to date and should give us a better picture of the current environment than we've had so far. Based on the other thread about Origins it seems like a good number of people competed so we should have a good sample of what people are playing.
I'm curious to see if, as some people have stated, that aggro-beat-down is the be-all-end-all of the game, or if control builds won the day (i.e. Priestess or Wizard).
I'm bummed that I couldn't attend, I really wanted to try my Priestess control vs a larger field, but hopefully I can make Gen Con.
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According to piousflea's comment (http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=12486.msg15171#msg15171), at least 2/3 of the Tournament of Champions builds ran large numbers of Hands of Bimshalla plus Temple of Light, and the undefeated winning build (Steve Walters priestess) used 6x Hand and 3x Temple.
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I don't know if this meta shift is a response to piousflea's own success at bashcon with agro Warlock, or if it's a genuine move toward power.
It seems like new players might progress through the meta like this:
1. Control vs. Control, both playing sim city.
2. Agro vs. Control, one player decides to go for the throat.
3. Agro vs. Agro, everyone learns the tricks to agro.
4. Control vs. Agro, new control decks develop to defeat the middle skill agro decks.
5. Control vs. Control?
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Oh, didn't see that post, but I wasn't looking in places like that for Origins updates. Thanks for the heads up.
So Priestess control won eh? I'd be interested in hearing some statistics about the trournament, such as breakdown of the mages played, as well as specifics regarding the winning build (actual cards and strategy employed) and the match ups that the winner faced.
Looking at that thread you linked too, Temples were the flavor of the day apparently. I'm not surprised, Hands are crazy good, and when you back them with the ToL you have a powerful engine. I've been saying that since last year.
I'd like to hear how many aggro-beat-down builds the winner faced and how the specifics of the matches went. I know how my matches go against those builds, but I have not played in a large tournament.
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I don't know if this meta shift is a response to piousflea's own success at bashcon with agro Warlock, or if it's a genuine move toward power.
It seems like new players might progress through the meta like this:
1. Control vs. Control, both playing sim city.
2. Agro vs. Control, one player decides to go for the throat.
3. Agro vs. Agro, everyone learns the tricks to agro.
4. Control vs. Agro, new control decks develop to defeat the middle skill agro decks.
5. Control vs. Control?
That seems like a logical progression. I think some people were having trouble adjusting to the aggro-beat-down builds at first, but the tools to deal with them were there. This game is pretty balanced, so now it will be interesting to see how the aggro-beat-down builds deal with these control builds.
What was the final match? Was it control vs control? Or was there an aggro build in the finals?
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My Priestess won Origins. I did have 6 Hands and 3 Temple of Lights and I also ran the Temple of Asyra. The first 3 turns normally went like the following.
Turn 1:
Drop Temple of Asyra and Mana Necklace and move closer to opponent
Turn 2:
Drop Hand and Temple of light attack with hand for 3 dice and move closer to opponent
Turn 3:
Drop Hand and Hand and attack with 5 dice with Temple of Light. Move closer if I need to, add armor, heal or maybe only drop 1 hand and attack for 5 dice with priestess as well...
On turn 3 I also try to drop my first cleric out of the spawn point if I can, but this depends on what the opponent is doing and if I decided to drop 2 hands.
From Turn 4 on it is very aggressive, while at the same time slowly pumping out creatures from the spawnpoint. I use the Hands to pump melee in the Priestess and attack with the Temple of Light.
I do not usually go after the Mage right away though. Since I have the spawn point also doing some of the work for me I will take out their creatures to limit their actions while I start to pump out some creatures of my own. The Priestess also ran a good amount of meta cards and some hurl boulders and battle fury's to help finish.
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My Priestess won Origins. I did have 6 Hands and 3 Temple of Lights and I also ran the Temple of Asyra. The first 3 turns normally went like the following.
Turn 1:
Drop Temple of Asyra and Mana Necklace and move closer to opponent
Turn 2:
Drop Hand and Temple of light attack with hand for 3 dice and move closer to opponent
Turn 3:
Drop Hand and Hand and attack with 5 dice with Temple of Light. Move closer if I need to, add armor, heal or maybe only drop 1 hand and attack for 5 dice with priestess as well...
On turn 3 I also try to drop my first cleric out of the spawn point if I can, but this depends on what the opponent is doing and if I decided to drop 2 hands.
From Turn 4 on it is very aggressive, while at the same time slowly pumping out creatures from the spawnpoint. I use the Hands to pump melee in the Priestess and attack with the Temple of Light.
I do not usually go after the Mage right away though. Since I have the spawn point also doing some of the work for me I will take out their creatures to limit their actions while I start to pump out some creatures of my own. The Priestess also ran a good amount of meta cards and some hurl boulders and battle fury's to help finish.
Thank you for the info, that's very interesting stuff. Can you give us a breakdown of how many matches you played and what kinds of mages/builds you faced? What did you play against in the finals?
Also, is it possible for you to post your build?
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The finals on Sunday was four rounds and I went undefeated. First round I played against Alec who played the Warlord who got 3rd place. 2nd round I played against John who played a Beast Master (he got 2nd at Bashcon). 3rd Round I played against Dave (Pious Flea), he played his Warlock and got 2nd. In the Final round I played my friend Tim McCurry who brought his ForceMaster that also ran 6 Hands and 2 Temple of Lights. I will post more on the build I brought later. 8)
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The build seems pretty cheesy, I just don't see it working vs. people dropping big creature threats to guard/attack. I also imagine that intercept shuts this build down completely now, along with blocks and reverse attacks.
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The build seems pretty cheesy, I just don't see it working vs. people dropping big creature threats to guard/attack. I also imagine that intercept shuts this build down completely now.
I would agree this build is pretty cheesy, however it works just fine against big creatures. The ToL drops them fast and dazes/stuns them at the same time. I have seen alot of big creatures not even get off an attack before they are dropped.
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Again, Tol Is easily played around if you play correctly, it's more of a defensive than offensive card when played against better players, or tighter builds. Sweet beats though, congrats man.
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The build seems pretty cheesy, I just don't see it working vs. people dropping big creature threats to guard/attack. I also imagine that intercept shuts this build down completely now.
I would agree this build is pretty cheesy, however it works just fine against big creatures. The ToL drops them fast and dazes/stuns them at the same time. I have seen alot of big creatures not even get off an attack before they are dropped.
I don't really see a 5 dice attack dropping Thorg/Adramelech fast, especially with damage/attack mitigation on them. Any chance at a battle report (video even)?
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I would wager that the nearly 60% chance of daze each round with another 16% chance of stun were worth was worth as much as the actual damage in terms of shutting down those big creatures. All told that ends up being about a 46% chance of not being able to make an attack each round, and that's assuming that there aren't any other daze or stun effects being thrown around. :P
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At the end of Round 3, I had a dark pact slayer and a flaming hellion in the zone adjacent to Temple of Light. ToL attacked the same round it entered play and rolled 7 critical damage + a stun on my Dark Pact.
Fourth round, pillar of light dazed my hellion, it rolled and failed to attack. Dark pact was still stunned. My warlock summoned an imp and put on some armor. Priestess meleed for 6 dice and left my Darkpact with 1 HP. At this point, I hadn't been able to get a single attack off.
Fifth round, priestess finished off Darkpact with a 4 dice melee (1 hand for damage, 2 for armor). Temple of light rolled and stunned my flaming hellion and did a lot of damage. Flaming imp and warlock each got a melee off.
Sixth round, priestess finished off Hellion with a 6 dice melee and Temple one-shot imp.
So I lost 31 mana worth of creatures and got a single attack off. It was pretty disgusting.
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At the end of Round 3, I had a dark pact slayer and a flaming hellion in the zone adjacent to Temple of Light. ToL attacked the same round it entered play and rolled 7 critical damage + a stun on my Dark Pact.
Fourth round, pillar of light dazed my hellion, it rolled and failed to attack. Dark pact was still stunned. My warlock summoned an imp and put on some armor. Priestess meleed for 6 dice and left my Darkpact with 1 HP. At this point, I hadn't been able to get a single attack off.
Fifth round, priestess finished off Darkpact with a 4 dice melee (1 hand for damage, 2 for armor). Temple of light rolled and stunned my flaming hellion and did a lot of damage. Flaming imp and warlock each got a melee off.
Sixth round, priestess finished off Hellion with a 6 dice melee and Temple one-shot imp.
So I lost 31 mana worth of creatures and got a single attack off. It was pretty disgusting.
Holy crap, 7 crit dice on a 5 dice attack?? Strong luck, not to mention landing the 16% chance on stun.
Anyway, thanks for the report. My original opinion of the build still stands, probably reinforced at this point.
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It sounds like people are arguing that the priestess build shouldn't have won, or that it got lucky, or that it can be outplayed, or whatever.
Well, maybe. But it sounds kinda like trying to argue away the tournament results and replace experience with theory.
Hypotheses are crucial. But results are why we do science.
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So then take this kind of build and play style and insert the new priest.
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So then take this kind of build and play style and insert the new priest.
Texan this was the plan well before he played it. In fact Hellkite and I talked about it on Thursday night. I told him I was glad to see somebody else running a temple build.
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At the end of Round 3, I had a dark pact slayer and a flaming hellion in the zone adjacent to Temple of Light. ToL attacked the same round it entered play and rolled 7 critical damage + a stun on my Dark Pact.
Fourth round, pillar of light dazed my hellion, it rolled and failed to attack. Dark pact was still stunned. My warlock summoned an imp and put on some armor. Priestess meleed for 6 dice and left my Darkpact with 1 HP. At this point, I hadn't been able to get a single attack off.
Fifth round, priestess finished off Darkpact with a 4 dice melee (1 hand for damage, 2 for armor). Temple of light rolled and stunned my flaming hellion and did a lot of damage. Flaming imp and warlock each got a melee off.
Sixth round, priestess finished off Hellion with a 6 dice melee and Temple one-shot imp.
So I lost 31 mana worth of creatures and got a single attack off. It was pretty disgusting.
Holy crap, 7 crit dice on a 5 dice attack?? Strong luck, not to mention landing the 16% chance on stun.
Anyway, thanks for the report. My original opinion of the build still stands, probably reinforced at this point.
Obviously a 7 crit damage attack was lucky, but the build itself doesn't run on luck, it runs on math. As I've been saying for quite some time, Daze/Stun builds are very strong and it's all about stacking Daze/Stun and Defenses to the point where your opponent can't hit anything.
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So then take this kind of build and play style and insert the new priest.
Texan this was the plan well before he played it. In fact Hellkite and I talked about it on Thursday night. I told him I was glad to see somebody else running a temple build.
That's exactly what I said when I saw the Priest. Now my Staff of Asyra and Pillar of Light's can set you on fire? Yes please! 8)
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Two words for this "Laser-Tower is OP" groupthink:
Teleport More.
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Your disdain is evident but your assertion is unsupported.
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Two words for this "Laser-Tower is OP" groupthink:
Teleport More.
Try it against a few interceptors and it will not be OP
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It sounds like people are arguing that the priestess build shouldn't have won, or that it got lucky, or that it can be outplayed, or whatever.
Well, maybe. But it sounds kinda like trying to argue away the tournament results and replace experience with theory.
Hypotheses are crucial. But results are why we do science.
Hence, why I wanted to know what the warlock played. Now that I know, it makes complete sense what the results were. You really can't make 20-24mana (not sure what armor he played) of sub-optimal/wasteful plays and expect to win. I've lost games from half that amount of waste.
The warlock would've been better off with another Darkpact instead of the Hellion (or stop floating mana and use Adramelech; a Darkpact and Adramelech is possible by turn 3), block(s) for the obvious incoming ToL attack each turn, and fireball(s) instead of wasting 5 mana and a full action on an imp that was obviously going to get one-shot by ToL.
I am in no way saying the build shouldn't have won, but knowing why it won is more important than the fact that it did. Instead of concluding that the ToL is "too strong" or "overpowered", like some others on here have, to me it is more obviously just a build that punishes loose play.
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It sounds like people are arguing that the priestess build shouldn't have won, or that it got lucky, or that it can be outplayed, or whatever.
Well, maybe. But it sounds kinda like trying to argue away the tournament results and replace experience with theory.
Hypotheses are crucial. But results are why we do science.
Hence, why I wanted to know what the warlock played. Now that I know, it makes complete sense what the results were. You really can't make 20-24mana (not sure what armor he played) of sub-optimal/wasteful plays and expect to win. I've lost games from half that amount of waste.
The warlock would've been better off with another Darkpact instead of the Hellion (or stop floating mana and use Adramelech; a Darkpact and Adramelech is possible by turn 3), block(s) for the obvious incoming ToL attack each turn, and fireball(s) instead of wasting 5 mana and a full action on an imp that was obviously going to get one-shot by ToL.
I am in no way saying the build shouldn't have won, but knowing why it won is more important than the fact that it did. Instead of concluding that the ToL is "too strong" or "overpowered", like some others on here have, to me it is more obviously just a build that punishes loose play.
Why is everyone just focused on what "the warlock" played? Was that the finals of the tournament? If not, I'm not sure why that particular match is so significant. I'm very interested in hearing a better break down of the different matches that the winning build played against. Did he play against a Forcemaster? Another Priestess? A Beastmaster swarm? A Wizard control? Did he lose any matches in swiss, and if so, what did he lose to? What did he face in the finals?
These are the questions that will give us an idea of what is happening in the meta game and what I am most interested. That and seeing the actual breakdown of the two builds in the finals (top 4 would be better).
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I have posted what I wish to post on the subject. Break it down however you like, but I would ask you not judge so harshly unless you were actually there. I hope to see you at GenCon!
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I would have done a breakdown but like I said before Patrick has all the datas :P
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From my knowledge, the indications from the playtesters were that there were a lot of new players there trying out the game and that the tournament wasn't representative of the actual metagame. It was more of a fun kind of thing. I mean, c'mon, MW doesn't really have an actual tournament scene, and 14 players isn't exactly a Grand Prix.
I don't even really know if there IS a MW metagame, now that we're on that topic. It's not like the people who went there trolled the forums for "pro" builds or something like at a MTG tournament. From the playtester input and the photos on the Facebook page, it just looked like a bunch of people having a good time rather than hard-nosed PTQ-grinders looking to make the invitationals.
And that's ok. Really. Let those people have their fun and enjoy the moment. Humble beginnings are to be expected.
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I have posted what I wish to post on the subject. Break it down however you like, but I would ask you not judge so harshly unless you were actually there. I hope to see you at GenCon!
Was that referring to my post? If so, I'm not judging anything, just looking for information. Not sure how any of my posts seemed like "harsh judgement". I've been a fan of Priestess Temple builds for a long time and knew they were good (look at my numerous posts talking about such). So, again, I wasn't passing judgement on anything, just looking for a breakdown of how things played out so I can get a picture of the meta-game.
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It sounds like people are arguing that the priestess build shouldn't have won, or that it got lucky, or that it can be outplayed, or whatever.
Well, maybe. But it sounds kinda like trying to argue away the tournament results and replace experience with theory.
Hypotheses are crucial. But results are why we do science.
Hence, why I wanted to know what the warlock played. Now that I know, it makes complete sense what the results were. You really can't make 20-24mana (not sure what armor he played) of sub-optimal/wasteful plays and expect to win. I've lost games from half that amount of waste.
The warlock would've been better off with another Darkpact instead of the Hellion (or stop floating mana and use Adramelech; a Darkpact and Adramelech is possible by turn 3), block(s) for the obvious incoming ToL attack each turn, and fireball(s) instead of wasting 5 mana and a full action on an imp that was obviously going to get one-shot by ToL.
I am in no way saying the build shouldn't have won, but knowing why it won is more important than the fact that it did. Instead of concluding that the ToL is "too strong" or "overpowered", like some others on here have, to me it is more obviously just a build that punishes loose play.
Why is everyone just focused on what "the warlock" played? Was that the finals of the tournament? If not, I'm not sure why that particular match is so significant. I'm very interested in hearing a better break down of the different matches that the winning build played against. Did he play against a Forcemaster? Another Priestess? A Beastmaster swarm? A Wizard control? Did he lose any matches in swiss, and if so, what did he lose to? What did he face in the finals?
These are the questions that will give us an idea of what is happening in the meta game and what I am most interested. That and seeing the actual breakdown of the two builds in the finals (top 4 would be better).
The reasons I focused on the Warlock:
1) He's the only one who provided a report.
2) He placed 2nd ( or tied for it) so logic dictates he was one of the best players there.
I didn't really mean to focus entirely on the Warlock, but that match is the most info we have on a particular match so far, and he placed well, so I figured it was a good start.
Also, I didn't mean to sound harsh, but facts are facts. He was good enough to get to 2nd (or tie for 2nd) and I respect that, but when I hear people saying a build is overpowered and then hear of a lot of wasteful play against said build I get skeptical (especially when playtesters also state it's not OP). I wish I could've been there, though me being there or not is irrelevant to the plays made.
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So piousflea took 2nd? I hadn't seen that posted, just a report he made regarding his match vs the winner. Didn't see that it was the finals. Is that confirmed?
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The finals on Sunday was four rounds and I went undefeated. First round I played against Alec who played the Warlord who got 3rd place. 2nd round I played against John who played a Beast Master (he got 2nd at Bashcon). 3rd Round I played against Dave (Pious Flea), he played his Warlock and got 2nd. In the Final round I played my friend Tim McCurry who brought his ForceMaster that also ran 6 Hands and 2 Temple of Lights. I will post more on the build I brought later. 8)
This.
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That's so weird that I somehow missed that. Thanks for reposting and sorry about missing it
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Congrats to all those that placed. Double congrats to the winner.
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The finals on Sunday was four rounds and I went undefeated. First round I played against Alec who played the Warlord who got 3rd place. 2nd round I played against John who played a Beast Master (he got 2nd at Bashcon). 3rd Round I played against Dave (Pious Flea), he played his Warlock and got 2nd. In the Final round I played my friend Tim McCurry who brought his ForceMaster that also ran 6 Hands and 2 Temple of Lights. I will post more on the build I brought later. 8)
Congrats Hellkite! Awesome to see the priestess take the gold...also glad to see her spawn point in action. Any chance you could post your build and maybe some battle reports from your final round. ;D
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I'm amazed there were only 14 participants, but I guarantee there will be more next year. I'm curious how the spellbook building was handled in the tournament. Did participants build and submit a single book to use throughout the tournament?
Also, I agree that teleporting is a fantastically effective tactic against a temple strategy. Attach a teleport to a mage wand and make your friends pay if they don't have enough dissolves
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I'm amazed there were only 14 participants ...
It isn't really a gaming convention, it is more focused on retailers and publishers.
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Yeah if it was a GenCon tourney and there were only 14 players, I might be worried...
I think it's more that we're all hungry for the "competitive play" avenues. AW teased at it in their April OP kit, so let's hope it comes soon.
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Talking of participation, I went to a brand new gaming Con, BBB Con, in Southend, a very small town in South East England. A very informal affair. Imagine my surprise to find five players turn up with Mage Wars sets.
I had a cracking game of Air Wizard vs Aggro Warlock.
Is Southend the new hotbed of global MW activity?
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I'm very interested in the deck build (like a lot of other players). I also want to learn more about the strategy used: what opening moves, what to do against a type of play (swarm, big creature, ...).
Please enlighten us with your knowledge :)
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I had about 3-5 people each night says hey would have played but they forgot to bring a spellbook.