If you could quick action + move, it would be far too easy to melee someone and then move to another square. Right now, if you do a melee attack you commit yourself to being in the same square as your opponent. Combined with the Hindrance mechanics, this makes melee feel like a true engagement, you're not just swinging at someone as you pass by, they are tying you down in close quarters combat.

From a spellcast perspective - curse+kiting strats are already strong enough as it is, can you imagine how ludicrous it would be if I could throw a curse from 2 range, step away to 3 range, and still have a quickcast marker that I can use for nasty things?

While the OP's description of rolling 18 dice with Hand+Battle Fury has since been nerfed, the concent of a "kill threshold" remains one of the most important concepts in the game.

When my Mage is running around the board with 18 damage out of 32 health, that health number (14 hp remaining) helps to tell me how easily I can be killed.

• If I have no Armor, no Aegis, and no facedown enchants, you can throw Hurl Boulder x 2 with a ~56% chance of killing me in a single round.
• If I have Armor +4, Aegis 1, and a facedown Healing Charm, you cannot kill me in one round with Boulders alone.
• If you have three Butchers and a Sniper all in range to hit me, and you have the mana for two Boulders, I am still within the "kill threshold" despite Armor and Aegis.

The existence of a "kill threshold" really limits my tactical options. If you are also within "kill threshold", the advantage goes to whoever has initiative or is able to kill in the least # of actions. However, if only one player is within "kill threshold", he's playing at an incredible disadvantage. All of his moves must be defensive in nature, or else he will probably lose the game this round.

Because of this, getting your opponent within the "kill threshold" while being far away from it yourself, is the next best thing to killing him outright. This is a crucially important concept for the early game. If both players have 32+ health, it is impossible to do that much damage in one round. However, every point of damage you do, every Rot and Burn and Ghoul Rot, and every creature within attack range puts that Mage closer to the "kill threshold".

Ultimately, the first 31 damage don't really matter - a Mage with 1 health can still hit you just as hard as a Mage with 32 health. However, the first 20-ish damage force the Mage to change his gameplay (from not being afraid of death, to being very afraid of death) and this gets you in position to finish him off.


Kill threshold also matters for individual creatures, especially the expensive ones. If you are rolling 5+4+3 dice against Brogan (4 AC, 11 HP) it is very unlikely to kill him in a single round of attacks (~6.3 damage per round), but very likely to kill him in two rounds of attacks. This means that an opponent who wants to keep Brogan alive will need to heal him every round - for either 5 or 9 mana depending on how well you rolled last round. That's a huge mana investment to offset free melee attacks.

On the other hand, a Steelclaw Grizzly (3 AC, 15 HP) is likely to take 3 rounds to kill, which gives your opponent time to take other actions instead of constantly healing his big creature.

Hand of Bim-Shalla is still very effective as a Unique, I see lots of people running with 2-3 in their deck. (so they can replace it if it gets destroyed)

Temple of Light does not seem very usable post-nerf.

Death Link makes it a bit confusing to resolve the upkeep effect.

It creates two separate effects on two different creatures (the warlock and the enemy creature) - it heals the warlock and only then deals damage to the creature according to the amount healed.

If I understand it correctly, then the result depends on who is has initiative.

If the warlock has initiative:
1) Warlock at 1 hp, enemy creature at 1 hp
2) Death Link resolves: Warlock at 3 hp, enemy creature dies
3) IoP resolves: Warlock at 2 hp

If the opponent has initiative:
1) Warlock at 1 hp, enemy creature at 1 hp
2) IoP resolves: Warlock dies, enemy creature dies

Based on the rulebook wording I believe you are correct.

While it's hard to imagine a scenario where binding an uncastable spell to a wand would actually give you an advantage, it's simply poor sportsmanship.

The intent of the rules is that you have to bluff with appropriate cards. Preparing Huginn with a face-down incantation that you don't intend to cast is okay. Preparing Huginn with a face-down Darkfenne Hydra is not.

In the specific case of Wizard Tower - which always has a bound spell - if you thought wizard tower was about to die you could cheat by binding a low-value card instead of a precious attack spell. However, this would be immediately detected when the Wizard Tower dies, so it would not be a very effective way to cheat.

I think that's a serious over-exaggeration.  75-90 minutes is plenty of time for a more defensive, control-oriented opening if you are familiar with your book (which you should be in a tournament situation, it's pretty similar to piloting decks in other games).  MTG has a far more established tournament scene, and you can still get DQ-ed for taking too long or drawing out the game, but control decks have no problem winning pro tours. 

Just because the objective is to kill the opposing Mage/Player doesn't mean control book somehow loose out; properly piloted and constructed, they have more than enough ability to kill the opposing mage.  I've played aggro vs control in MW enough times to see that there is always a point in which aggro needs to finish off the opponent, but if it doesn't and you are playing against a competent control player, you will be overwhelmed and die very soon after that point.

M:TG is not relevant, as the pace of MW is completely different from M:TG.

During Origins, I played a highly aggressive deck. The only piece of channeling I had in my entire deck was a battleforge. Yet I managed to run up against the 75 minute limit twice, both times defeating my opponent after the timer rung.

Here's the thing: in both games I was down a bunch of health and creatures early on, but I switched to a more defensive/evasive playstyle. Despite not having a defensively-built deck, I turned the corner and won both games. Skilled players are more than capable of making a comeback despite being down in channeling/health/creatures/etc, but it takes a whole bunch of rounds to do so. In both game my opponents were good sports and avoided any intentional slow play. All it would have taken to turn 2 of my wins into draws are a little more hemming and hawing during the preparation phase, and taking a little longer to figure out which creature to activate.

And this is with super-aggressive aggro build vs. super-aggressive aggro build.

There is an immense amount of positional play in high-level MW, and such play tends to draw out the game as both players jockey to get their mages/creatures in the right zones instead of going straight in.

Dallas is correct in that casting the wand and using the wand are two separate actions. 5 mana to cast it, and however much mana to use the bound spell.

Dissolve + Reverse works like this:
1) Cast Spell step: Enemy player targets your Mage. He intends to dissolve your Storm Drake Hide, so he pays 6 mana during the Cast Spell step.

2) Counter Spell step: You reveal Reverse Magic. The dissolve is countered, and now you control it and use it on your opponent.

NEW SPELL CAST SEQUENCE
1) Cast Spell step: You now target the enemy Mage. (you have no choice, due to the wording of Reverse Magic) Your opponent has already invested 6 mana into the Dissolve. So if you wanted to dissolve a wand (5 mana) you don't need to invest any more Mana. However, let's say you want to dissolve Reflex Boots (9 mana). You will need to pay 3 mana to make up the difference.

2) Counter Spell step: At this point your opponent could use a nullify or his own Reverse, if applicable. But let's say he doesn't have any face down cards.

3) Resolve Spell step: Dissolve resolves. At this point, it has 9 mana invested. You can choose to dissolve any piece of equipment on your opponent so long as its mana cost is 9 or less. Since the only reason you invested mana into it was to dissolve Reflex Boots, you choose to dissolve Reflex Boots.

Wands are a luxury item. If you have the quick action (or battleforge) and 5 mana to cast a wand, it is really nice to be able to cast a spell more than once. Just make sure you actually CAST the spell. Nothing sucks more than equipping a wand with a hurl boulder only to get it dissolved before you actually cast the hurl boulder.

On the other hand, if you are sufficiently short on mana you may not be able to afford 5 mana. And if you are short on actions and don't have a battleforge, you DEFINITELY can't afford the quick action.

This definitely isn't Harry Potter wandcraft. I'd say that in the majority of my games I never bring out a wand. It's a personal playstyle though, some people almost always bring out wands. It's very well balanced actually.