Now I'm no movie player, but the druid and me don't mix. Any tips for running her effectively. Thanks!

Earlier today I updated the first post with our group's win/loss/draw records for each mage in 3-way Domination (ignoring team play and other player counts).  Skill obviously plays a big factor, so there's certainly some bias towards "favourite" mages of our top players... but that said, the results sort of make sense.  Keep in mind, in 3-way free-for-alls, an average mage would expect to win 1/3 of its matches on average.

The Necromancer comes in right on average with a 33% win rate (2-4-0), although one of his losses was running zombies and trying to kill the other mages via DoT... which didn't work too well.

The Druid is very popular, and is well above average with as many wins as losses (3-3-1), which is impressive in 3-way competition.

The Bloodwave Warlord is our top mage, going 4-2-1 so far!

Straywood Beastmaster is our most played mage and is also well below average right now, with a 2-8-1 record.

Both Warlocks are winless (0-2-0 each), with each having a "kill everybody" attempt and a failed V'tar attempt.  They struggle to keep up with the more swarmy mages and often end up playing kingmaker.

We haven't tried a Holy mage or Forcemaster in multiplayer Domination yet, and the Wizard needs more plays to really get an idea of where he stands.

Quote from: Ravepig on June 28, 2016, 07:25:47 AM

Thanks for your post- your strategies for building a domination spellbook were great. Each person in my group *finally* each got a copy of domination, so we are looking to play our first game of domination next Tuesday. I'd be interested in seeing your beastmaster book in preparation for that game.

Thanks again! I'll post here on how our first Domination game turns out.

I haven't run a Beastmaster myself because he's popular among our other players. But as you can parse out from the opening post, you can't really go wrong if you start with the following and go from there:

Straywood Beastmaster
Lair
6x Thunderrift Falcon
1x Cervere, Forest Shadow
Maybe 1 of Tarraki or Rajah or Tarok
1-2x Panther Stealth
2x Battle Fury
1x Whirling Strike
4x Tanglevine
Lots of Walls of your choice
Some combination of multiple Force Push, Force Wave, Repulse, Teleport
A few attack spells (maybe Surging Wave and Force Hammer)
As many Rouse the Beast as you can afford
Packleader's Cowl (or Altar of the Iron Guard if you think you can get it out first)
Some armor (but not as much as you'd run in Arena)
At least one of each of Dispel (or Disperse), Dissolve (or Crumble), Seeking Dispel
Group Heal
Maybe some passive healing, like Raincloud or Renewing Spring or Mohktari or Highland Unicorn
Maybe ways to add Piercing (e.g. Lion Savagery, Wolf Fury or Tooth and Nail).
Consider a few Foxes or higher level creatures if you expect a longer game or are playing to a higher V'tar goal
Perhaps a Mage Wand so you can bind your most useful Incantation in a given match (might be Rouse or Group Mend or a Push or Battle Fury or a Dispel/Dissolve/Seeking Dispel).
If you have room, throw in an Eagle Wings for Cervere (!) or Mongoose Agility for your mage.  Or maybe a Guard Dog, since your creatures tend to be weak in that department (although your primary strategy should be to steal orbs and win through action economy, not necessarily to Guard your orbs).

You need a plan to deal with Idol of Pestilence / Altar of Skulls.  And maybe Burns. 

From there, you can try tricks like Giant Size (to cast either on your own creature or on a Sslak an enemy is going for) or Tangleroot (to weaken a creature your opponent is using to kill a Sslak, or on a Usslak you want to take out if you don't want its counterstrike to hurt so much).  But you're probably better off just strengthening your main strategy of swarming and stealing as many orbs as possible with your highly elusive and fast creatures.

Today I would like to explain to you how and why the enchantment "second chance" is going to have a big positive impact on the balance of Mage Wars Academy. For those who don't know, Mage Wars Academy does not have a planning phase nor a quickcast phase. This is a problem in the core only academy metagame because it means that players can do two quickcast sand two activations consecutively without the opponent being able to interrupt it with anything but enchantment reveals. If we count a full action as being  worth two quick actions, then the cumulative of converted quick actions over the course of an academy game with only the core set is as follows:

Player1: 3
Player2: 0

Player1: 3
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 12

Player1: 15
Player2: 12

Player: 15
Player2: 18

Player1: 21
Player2: 18

Player1 is the player with initiative round 1. As you can see, by the middle of round 7, Player1 has had the chance to use 3 more of his mage's converted quick actions than his opponent. This means that if the game lasts until round 7, player 1 has a better chance of winning simply due to having 3 more converted  quick actions than his opponent without the opponent being able to respond until after those quick actions have been used. It also is not good for the game when players are able to do strings of 6 consecutive converted quick actions without the opponent being able to respond.

Except that you can respond with enchantments, but it doesn't usually help much because that doesn't put you any less behind in actions than your opponent. It would be much better if you could use quickcast phases right?

But if there was an enchantment that could give you a net increase of one converted mage quick action when you reveal it, with the same timing as a quickcast phase, that would be functionally the same thing as using a quickcast phase in Academy.

That's where "Second Chance" comes in.

Second Chance is a holy enchantment that has a reveal cost equal to the casting cost of the creature it's attached to. When the enchanted creature dies, you can pay the reveal cost to bring the creature back to life as a free action.

If player2 includes two copies of second chance, then by the middle of round 7 Player1 will only be one converted quick action ahead of player 2.

Unfortunately, second chance is a level 2 holy spell, which means that the wizard will need to pay double spellbook points for it. The warlock and the beastmaster probably don't need it though considering that they are more aggressive mages and therefore will prefer to have initiative round 1 anyways.

Yes. On the discount rings they will say when they apply to spawnpoints.