Who said only creature based plants are susceptible to poison's? If a conjuration has the Living trait, it no longer has Poison Immunity, right?

An example: Suppose the target of jet stream is in the middle zone of a short board edge, my mage is in the close centre zone and the effect die comes up with a push, can I choose to push the creature into the wall rather than one of the corners even though the creature doesn't actually end up further away?

Unless the effect says otherwise, the Pushed creature must move one zone away in the opposite direction from the source of the Push.

In your example you would HAVE to bash the target into the wall, as you have to push it directly opposite from the source of the Push (your mage). The only time you get a choice in direction is:
a) The card says so
b) You are in the same zone as the target
c) You are standing diagonal from the target

What's stopping you?

Yeah, vampirism on Corazin is a no-brainer.

Actually, I've found Vampirism to be less than thrilling on Corazin. Remember, you only get the healing from Vampirism on the first attack. You don't get it on the second attack when you do a double strike or sweeping, so nearly half of Sir Corazin's damage doesn't count towards it.

Even if you put Bear Strength on him, against an opponent with a couple of points of armor you're only doing ~4 damage on your first attack, and thus only healing a couple points of damage. Regrowth accomplishes the same healing for less mana and usually takes up fewer Spell Points.

Problem one is not a problem. It is realistic. Once in the arena, you are not next to your team mate to whisper in its ear. You can set up a strategy before the fight, but once in the arena, no time for chit-chatting, you are fighting for your life.

You sound like you've never played a team game. Even in the rule book it points out that you HAVE to share information with your team mate. The game just does not work unless you know both what your team mate is planning to do and what they are actually doing. But this is difficult when you're as far away from them as possible with enemy player's in between you.

Problem two, you should use a percent of the life, not just reduce it by a fixed number because that way it advantage mages with higher life. 10 life is bigger percent for a 32 life mage than a 38 hp mage.

You are entirely correct on this point and I considered using a Percentage system. However, in the end I opted for simple addition and subtraction because it is easier. When we sit down for a game we don't want to break out a calculator, we want to get into the action. As mentioned, I also considered just proclaiming a fixed amount of 50 life per team for a two player team. Personally I would like to keep the variation in Life totals as a component of game play rather than chucking it out the window, but I can see the advantages of a fixed system. Would that be preferable to people?

I think you should not reduce the the life. Just add the life togheter and it would work. No reason to reduce the life if there gonna be twice the firepower to shoot at it.

Really need playtesting to determine this. Currently our team games tend to run twice as long as a normal game even with us ending the game after a single death. Sure you have twice the fire power, but having a friend available to support you and bail you out of trouble is a huge benefit as well. Most of our games sees one mage per team in an aggressive role and one mage per team in a support/defensive role and they tend to cancel out the progress made overall so that the fight is kinda drug out.

Increased life is necessary and thematic, I think, but simply combining the life totals would make the game incredibly long I fear. As I said though, the only way to know for sure is through playtesting.

Shared turn is a very bad idea. First, it might make a player to not play at all which is not fun but it is also unrealistic... Why would a mage stand there whole time doing nothing.

I don't see how it would make a player to not play at all. I do worry about the "Alpha Gamer" problem where one person tries to control his entire team, but isn't that a problem that any team game has to face? I know it has cropped up in our team games of Mage Wars already, as well as team games of Magic the Gathering, and pretty much any Cooperative game we play. In the end its kinda up to you not to let your teammate pull your strings.

It sounds to me kind of like Capture the Flag. To that end, I think the Emblem should be able to change hands. Whenever two Mages of the same team are in the same zone, they may switch the cards attached to their Mage before or after their action phase.

Emblems and Bluffems should not be normal cards. They should have completely different back designs to tell them apart from enchantments. That way you make sure the two Mages aren't secretly exchanging enchants.

I would like to introduce to everyone, my faithful and humble servant of the Dice Gods, my Priest. I don't know what it is that first brought me to the temple of these fickle deities. I've always preferred aggressive builds, and the Priest was originally sold to me as a more aggressive Priestess. However it came to pass, I was eventually drawn into their service and am now ready to spread word of their gospel.


34 Life: Adherents to the faith can enjoy an average life expectancy. They are neither fragile nor exceptionally resilient.

9 Channeling: Service to the Dice Gods is very taxing. In addition to a reduced channeling rate, Priest's will want to leave 1 Mana available to activate Malakai's Fire (see below) almost every round. This leaves you with only 8 Mana to spend per round usually, the lowest of any Mage.

Hand of Purification: In addition to giving our Melee Basic Attack a fancy name, the Dice Gods have transformed it in the following ways as well. It is now Ethereal, giving it a boost in certain situations. As is typical of their benefits, the gods also give a random benefit in the form of a 33% chance to Daze. Finally it's damage has been increased.

Wait, you say I only deal 2 dice of damage compared to your Mage's 3 dice? Silly heathen, you are not looking at the big picture. My Hand of Purification deals Light damage and will Burn your Mage with the righteous wrath of Malakai's Fire!

Malakai's Fire: Possibly the biggest benefits to adherents of the faith are the purifying flames of Malakai's Fire. Each time our Mage deals Light damage they may pay 1 mana to Burn their enemies. Again, like most benefits of our Lords, this provides a random benefit of possibly doing more damage. Displease the Dice Gods and you will never see anything come from these Burns. However, if they show you their favor, you may enjoy infinite damage! Some have calculated the benefit of each Burn to be a little over 2 points of Direct Damage on average, but one should never expect their Gods to play according to the rule of averages.

Holy Avenger: Finally, if you so choose, the Dice Gods shall bless you with a Holy companion, ready to unleash their wrath upon your enemies. This Avenger is primarily a defensive buff, set in place to make your enemies regret attacking. It gives them the difficult choice of attacking a creature that is now much harder to kill with +5 Life, or suffering 2 extra dice of damage with Piercing +1.


I originally approached the Priest with the idea of doing a Beatdown build as a Holy counterpart to the Lord of Terror Warlock. He did very well against slower Mages. His Burns stacked up and they were sacrificed to his deities. However, against other aggressive Mages, he found out that he just could not compete. While Malakai's Fire is better than Battle Skill on average, and Holy Avenger is a really nice buff, the Priest's magical training just wasn't intended for an ultra aggressive approach.

He is trained in Holy magic and weak in Dark magic. Holy spells tend to be defensive in nature and prolong the game, while Dark magic tends to be much more aggressive and punishing. With this setup, he just is not as efficient at dishing out damage as quickly as other aggressive mages.

So, if he's not as aggressive as other mages, and not as defensive as the Priestess, what then is his role in the Arena? Well, as far as I can tell, the Priest is intended to favor the Mid Game and walk the line between offense and defense. When facing aggressive opponents, he wants to utilize his defensive abilities to slow the game down to a pace he's comfortable with and they're not. Meanwhile, against slower more defensive opponents, he can pile on the hurt and end the game before they pull off their plans. He just has to figure out what he's up against and play accordingly.

To that end, I'd like to call my final build "Disruptive Aggro." It still focuses more on the offensive side of things, but has some key defensive abilities meant to slow down other aggressive mages. In keeping with the favor of the Dice Gods, I'm relying on random luck to be on my side with these abilities as well. Daze and Defense rolls are his bread and butter when it comes to controlling an aggressive foe, with the occassional Stun thrown in.

After all my games, and scouring the forums to try and improve, I have to be honest that I'm still a bit weak in coming up with an actual game plan and adapting to my opponent. Though I would appreciate advice on changes to my spellbook, I'd appreciate even more getting advice on how to RUN my spellbook, lol. With that said, here are my current Tactics.

Opener
(10 Mana) Round 1 (+9)
(19 Mana) Cast Enchanter's Ring (-2)
(17 Mana) Cast an Enchantment (-1)

This is generally my opener every game. Mainly because it's cheap and I need all the mana I can get in the next few rounds. It's also adaptable. If I think I'm going up against a defensive player, I put on Cheetah Speed or Bear Strength to ensure I'm dishing out the damage (or Falcon Precision vs Forcemaster). If I judge them to be an offensive player or I'm not certain what to expect then I put on Forcesword or Regrowth. I also normally move 1 zone to get out of the corner, though not always.

I then have 2 different routes that I go down, and I'm not sure which is better. They basically differ in how I utilize Holy Avenger.

Holy Templar
(16 Mana) Round Two (+9)
(25 Mana) Cast Knight of Westlocke and make Holy Avenger (-17)
(8 Mana) Enchant Knight (-1)

(7 Mana) Round Three (+9)
(16 Mana) Cast Staff of Asyra (-9)
(7 Mana) Cast/Reveal Enchant or Burn???

The point of this strategy is to turn both my Knight and my Priest into a threat so that my opponent is punished whichever one he decides to ignore. If he attacks me, he's taking a 7 Dice attack with Piercing +1. Possibly 9 Dice with Bear Strength. Meanwhile, if he attacks the Knight he is fighting through 3 Armor and 15 Life with a 42% Miss chance, one of the hardiest creatures possible. His one weakness is the Lightning +2, more because of it applying Daze/Stun than the damage it deals.

Speaking of Daze/Stun, Staff of Asyra is really an amazing weapon. It's almost as good as Galvitar in my oppinion, at least with a Priest wielding it. Against someone with no armor I'm doing an average of over 6 damage (Including Burn Damage) +67% chance to Daze/Stun with it (Galvatar does an average of 8 Damage with no Effect). If my foe has 2+ armor, then I'm dealing about the same damage as Galvitar (Since >2 of my damage is direct damage with Burn) and I still have the 67% chance to Daze/Stun. The only reason Galvitar wins out for best weapon in the game atm is because it's a Cantrip and has the Sweeping option to break guards.

Thus
Staff < Galvitar against Multiple Targets (No multi-target option)
Staff = Galvitar against Unarmored Single Target? (I'll trade less than 2 damage for a Stun/Daze)
Staff > Galvitar against Armored Single Target. (Same Damage + Daze/Stun)

Archangel
(16 Mana) Round Two (+9)
(25 Mana) Cast Samandriel, Angel of Light (-21)
(4 Mana) Enchant Samandriel (-1)

(3 Mana) Round Three (+9)
(12 Mana) Cast Asyran Cleric and make Holy Avenger (-7)
(5 Mana) Reveal Enchant or Pillar of Light???

The plan for this route is similar to the first one, I have a big baddie in Samandriel coupled with buffing my Priest up. I choose to delay equipment and further buffs on the Priest though in favor of a really cheap and efficient Holy Avenger. Unfortunately the Holy Avenger buff is not enough to keep the little guy alive for ever in this case, and my foes know it. Thus they usually attack the Cleric and he's little better than a speed bump. I still think he's worth it though. that is 11+ damage that I'm not taking. And if I really want to, I can set Samandriel to guard to provoke BOTH a counter attack and extra damage from my Holy Avenger Cleric.

Not having my staff equipped right away kinda sucks, especially since I might have to focus on Defense for a little while if my opponent is aggressive, but Samandriel's attack can also Daze/Stun which makes up for it. Once I do get the Staff out, it's a 84% chance I'm Dazing/Stunning somebody each round which is really sweet.

Although Samandriel is not vulnerable to any kind of damage like Brogan is, and she has flying keeping her out of danger most times, she does have one glaring flaw. If she is put to sleep, my priest can NOT wake her up short of a Fireball. All of his damage is light damage. That's another reason for the Holy Avenger Cleric as back up.

Both Builds
As of Round 3 my goal becomes the same for both builds. I want to attack with my Priest every round and apply as much burn as possible (One of the reasons for the Pillar of Light in the Archangel route is that I otherwise can't attack round 3; it gives me the ability to Burn and a 75% chance to Daze/Stun). Each round I either prepare 1 spell aimed at buffing myself or my big baddie, or a Pillar of Light to help ensure Daze/Stun gets applied. My second spell is an "oh no" spell to deal with whatever I think my opponent will do.

As I said earlier, I'm still not sure about my general strategy, but it so far it's been fun to play. I've been playing the Priest exclusively for a couple weeks now, and this final build has won 2 out of 3 games (all 3 against the same opponent). It is a very random and chaotic build that relies heavily on chance, but with the odds in your favor I think. Between Burn Rolls, Daze Rolls, and Defense Rolls, you will be praying to the Dice Gods quite often. I now invite the community to give me feedback and criticism.