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Messages - piousflea

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1
Spells / Re: How essential is teleport?
« on: February 14, 2014, 07:25:31 AM »
Teleport was always strong, but I think it only became "overpowered" in the DvN era. So many creatures are Slow, Lumbering or Rooted, being able to move things with Teleport is vital.

2
Strategy and Tactics / Re: The efficacy of corrosive orchid
« on: February 04, 2014, 05:08:09 PM »
Interesting. I have never run as many as 4 dissolves in a deck, because I have a hard time justifying spending so many actions on equipment removal. If my opponent spends that much mana on equipment, it is often easier just to overpower him with more creatures+Conjurations instead of trying to remove Equipment.

The one time where removal is absolutely necessary is Mage Wand + Teleport. Everything else can be played around or brute forced through, but repeated Teleports are pretty close to GG against Druid.

One huge advantage that Orchids provide is that they don't have to use one of your Mages actions. Orchids can be deployed via seedpod or Vinetree, freeing your other two actions for other things.

3
Strategy and Tactics / Re: The efficacy of corrosive orchid
« on: February 04, 2014, 02:06:35 PM »
IMO, the best counter to Corrosive dissolve is to maintain a tempo advantage, such that it is painful for your opponent to spend Mana dissolving your (Wand, Armor, etc).

Corrosive shares a "problem" with Explode in that you have to spend extra mana over a straight Dissolve. In the case of Explode, the 6 Mana buys a decent Unavoidable attack. In the case of Orchid, the 8 Mana buys an attack and a persistent (though fragile) Orchid. However, it's still Mana that your opponent can't spend on other things, like Raptor Vines that hit much harder than Orchids.

Even though your opponent dissolves your wand or Armor or weapon, if you have enough of a tempo advantage, you will get further and further ahead every round because he used his Mana on equipment destruction instead of reclaiming tempo.

4
Basic internet gaming common sense:

1) No "pseudo random number generator" (PRNG) is truly random. With sufficient information about the programming of any given PRNG code, you could predict the pattern of random numbers rolled. This principle has been used repeatedly to steal money from online poker sites. (Therefore, in the modern day they take great efforts to use good PRNG algorithms and difficult to predict seeding)

2) That said, the probability of encountering a "strange" roll is extremely high. Anyone who's played enough tabletop games with real dice knows that you see really weird/frustrating rolls all the time. Randomness is random, and that means that you see "uncommon" results quite often. For example, the probability of getting one specific "strange" rolls may be 1:100 million against, but if there are a million different rolls that the human brain interprets as "strange", then you'll see a strange roll every 100 rolls.

3) Given #1 and #2, when you see a weird online dice roll it is impossible to tell whether it is a bug in the code, or simply a "strange" outcome (that would have happened with truly random dice). Most of the time it is probably #2, but this can never be 100% proven.

5
So right now we have:
Arcane - Wizards Tower
Dark - Drain Life/Soul
FM - Forcefield, Charm
Holy - Divine Intervention

But the War and Nature schools lack any similarly awesome spell. (Akiro's is too late game to count) BMs are fairly strong but Warlord needs the help.

What about:
BM - can feel vulnerable to early rushes, especially Jokhtari. So he needs a defensive spell, how about the equivalent of "Fog":
Dense Mists, Quick Incantation, 0-1 Zone, 5 Mana, Level 2 Nature
Until end of round, No attacks may be declared to or from objects in this zone.

Warlord - he needs a way to reach enemies that are dancing around at range, especially when he is enfeebled or held. (Hard for him to dispel) I think a Mortal Kombat style Scorpion harpoon would be great.
Bloodwave Harpoon, Quick Attack, 0-2, 8 Mana, Level 2 War
5 dice, 1-7 Pull, 8+ 2 Pull
Target is pulled one or two zones toward the caster, depending on effect dice roll. This may not Pull a target through Passage Attacks. If Bloodwave Harpoon rolls effect dice against an Unmovable target, caster may choose to Pull himself toward the target instead.

6
Spellbook Design and Construction / Re: The wizzly Grizard
« on: August 19, 2013, 10:06:18 AM »
Having seen it in action I can attest that the Grizzly Wizard is in fact a VERY strong build. However, it tends to have more mana issues than other Wizards, which became an issue in my game against Nick's grizzly wizard. Also, with lots of points spent in out of school cards, you can run out of cards in the late game. Ideally, you want to win the game quickly with the bear. In longer games, a higher-channeling Wizard build or a curse-heavy Warlock build can fare very well against this one.

7
Events / Re: Gencon Tournament News-Is Any Available?
« on: August 19, 2013, 09:56:40 AM »
There was a Priest and a Priestess, a Beastmaster and a Beastmistress, and IIRC a second Warlock and a fourth Wizard.

8
Events / Re: Gencon Tournament News-Is Any Available
« on: August 18, 2013, 03:05:20 PM »
#1: Steve Walters Earth Wizard - slow paced control build with Wizard Tower and Gorgon Archer, used wall of thorns + force push for major damage, but was very heavily defensive, won multiple rounds on tiebreakers
#2: Dave Chang (me) Curse Warlock - mid-paced debuff build, heavily reliant on enchantment and incantation damage instead of attacks.
#3: Tim McCurry (Zot) Air Wizard - slow paced control build with Wizard Tower and Gorgon Archer, used wall of thorns + force push plus thunderbolt wand for massive stun chance. Very defensive, reached tiebreakers several times.
#4: Nick Tinko Earth Wizard - double-bear (bear strengthed bear) Beatdown in early game followed by hurl boulders and stuff. Used turn to stone to prevent opponents from fighting bear with other high level creatures.

9
If you're building up 4 more channeling than your opponent, but he is rolling 8 more damage dice per round for free, he is way ahead.

Never forget that the objective of the game is to kill the other guy. Mana is only useful because it can produce damage or prevent damage. Damage is the endpoint.

10
Spells / Re: Quicksand VS Spiked Pit
« on: August 08, 2013, 09:29:26 AM »
Quicksand is (in most circumstances) vastly more efficient against creatures, but it cannot be played on Mages. Spike Pit is amazing against Mages, especially if you get the opportunity to Push an enemy Mage into your spike pit.

Also, Spike Pit's positional nature is sometimes really nice.

11
Player Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Making the Warlord more viable
« on: August 08, 2013, 09:26:41 AM »
In my experience, ever since Conquest was released (Enchanter's stones) everyone runs exceptionally Enchant-heavy, far more than in pre-Conquest play.

This is a problem for the Warlord because he simply cannot carry enough Dispels to deal with hostile enchants. Enchanter's stone may make dispels mana-inefficient, but often times there is That One Enchant that you absolutely have to deal with or you lose. (your Mage is Enfeebled! your Thorg is Charmed!)

With other beatdown decks, it's completely reasonable to run 2 seeking dispels and 3-4 dispels, or 2 dispels and a Purge. The Warlord gives up a ton of spellpoints to do so. (a minimum of 15 points for 2 seeking and 3 dispel)

12
Player Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Creature keywording for animals.
« on: August 08, 2013, 09:21:41 AM »
The "animal" keyword really seems to mean "creatures that can be turned into a BM Pet". They are animals that are sufficiently warm and fuzzy to fall in love with a Mage, as opposed to a heartless monster like the spider or hydra.

13
Strategy and Tactics / Re: A Word of Encouragement
« on: August 08, 2013, 09:16:56 AM »
Like any other game, learning the concepts behind MW can help you to win, but only in-game experience can give you a "feel" for when any given concept is relevant.

You can think about mana efficiency, action efficiency, positional play, timing, and damage threshold all day long; it will just give you analysis paralysis until you've got enough experience to know when to use what concept.

14
Twilight Struggle is already a board game!
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12333/twilight-struggle

I like Vampiresses and I have both played, and played against buffed-vampiress Warlock strategies. The main problem (which you already stated in the OP) is any sort of creature-control heavy deck. Each round that your Vamp spends Charmed or Force Held or Banished is a round where your opponent can swing a helluva lot more damage dice than you can. By spending all your mana summoning and supporting Vamps, you will have less of an equipment-enchantment stack on yourself, compared to most other Warlock builds.

Forcemasters can be a problem for any Warlock build. In the early game you don't float enough mana to toss multiple Drain Souls. I would strongly consider including an Enfeeble to lock down the FM while you and your Vamp walk around killing her battleforge, hand of bimshalla, and any other conjurations she has in play. Actually, Enfeeble is such a mana-efficient counter to any melee-heavy build in the game, that I try to run at least 2 of them in every Warlock deck that I play. (and if the other guy uses all of his dispels on enfeeble, now my ghoul rots and agonies are sticking)

15
Rules Discussion / Re: Game plan and "cheat sheets"
« on: August 08, 2013, 08:50:21 AM »
I've seen several tournament players take notes during a game and I don't have a problem with it. If you want a separate sheet to keep track of how many minor heals or force pushes are left in your deck, or how many dispels I've used up, that's fine with me.

That said, I expect that note sheet to be blank at the beginning of the match. If you walk into a Saturday/Sunday tourney match with a sheet full of words and numbers, I can only assume that you've spied on Thursday/Friday games and taken notes on everyone else's spellbook construction. While it's practically a given that some highly motivated tournament players will spectate other people's matches and use this as an unfair advantage, I sure as hell don't want to see them refer to a page of notes on my spellbook.

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