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You'll be seeing more about Priestess and Warlock very soon. I know that the last few weeks, the previews got spotty. My plate is about to become less full, and I want to show you all exactly what we've been working on. So I guess, there are more than just Priestess and Warlock previews coming.
Also, I get what everyone is saying about the deathshroud Staff and agree- the only reason I kept it in is because my one buddy loves to play the enchantment that provides a zone Aegis 1 minimizing my attacks. So, the deathshroud was an attempt at countering that card hoping to keep my melee creatures to their base attack. Thoughts?
Dispel works. Also moving out of that zone works - hence Push effects, Teleport, Tanglevine, Astral Anchor, basically anything to keep the opposing mage away from his [mwcard=MW1E37] Sacred Ground[/mwcard]/[mwcard=FWE06] Fortified Position[/mwcard], etc). As mentioned, [mwcard=MWSTX2FFJ04] Armory[/mwcard] is better than any of these, as it works for the whole arena, so you can choose where (not) to engage to your advantage. And it's hard to get rid of; e.g. aside from [mwcard=MWSTX2FFI02]Conquer[/mwcard], you'd have to destroy an Armory, whereas the enchantments or equipments can be Dispelled/Dispersed/Crumbled/Dissolved.
You can try the Staff if you want, but I think you'll find that it isn't worth the mana (mostly up front) plus quick-cast actions (every time you want to benefit from it!) that it takes to keep getting that +1 attack for a zone worth of Skelies.
yeah, 4 archers is a lot to attempt to get out! but an archers watchtower is not a bad idea!
Also, I love the graveyard especially since it can summon the wraith! But with a necro, I have found the libro to be much more efficient over the graveyard. 1 less sbp and 4 less mana. This helps you off to a good start by having the extra mana early and you can still harmonize it if you feel so inclined. Libro is also better against big buddy builds. Graveyard is excellent for enemy swarms if you can keep knocking them out and getting the extra mana on it. But the libro gives you the same function, it's mobile, and will not be affected by how many creatures your opponent has. just curious why you chose that over libro?
I also agree that the bats could be taken out for something since they cant be deployed and your main actions are so crucial.
Also, vampirism and drain life are great but are you going to use both before dropping a deathlock? or are they used in case of an early rush?
As mentioned before, teleport, force push, and tanglevines are great! espeially when you want to deal loads of damage and not have them run away. One nice thing I have found, though, is to use a force wave - I use it mainly with zombies to get them in a better position - but it would be nice here to move all of the archers 1 zone closer to the enemy with your qc so that they could all use their full actions to shoot instead of moving.
It looks good, though. I'm not a big fan of skelly necros so I always like seeing them posted on here
As requested here is a breakdown of last night's game. At the table we had a Warlord, Priestess, Warlock and the Necro (me). We did wind up playing 2v2, which to be honest, I was a little disappointed. I would have changed some things in my book had I known that we were going to do that. Still, it was fun and we did well. The Warlock and necro worked together to basically wall off the warlord while we ganged up against the priestess. After four hours of play we basically had the priestess down to 9 health, Warlock with only 7 damage, and my necro with only 2 damage, and the warlord at full health. I think the challenge we had was the guy who played the warlock (my teammate) is very inexperienced (not that I'm a master by any means), but he made some really poor decisions early on in my opinion. Had he been more aggressive in the beginning, I think we would have had the priestess out of the game much earlier. Still, it was a long game, and I think it wet some appetites for Domination. I know some think 4 hours is a long game, but after gaming for 12 hours on Saturday and gearing up for a 1V1 game of Axis and Allies Global next weekend (about 15 hours of playtime), 4 hours of Mage Wars is nothing to me so long as everybody is having fun.
We finally decided to call it a night at 10:00 since everybody has this stupid thing called work the next morning. We agreed to a draw. Even though the Priestess had the most damage, she refused to concede no matter what time it was, thus in the interest of sanity- a draw it was. Still, the necro deck is pretty nasty. I threw out 4 archers along with the armory and a Fortified Position enchantment to secure my mage's spot while sending melee creatures to the front-lines.
If you'd had more time and the Priestess was knocked out first, would you have called the game at that point, or would it have been 2-on-1 against the fresh Warlord? i.e. Was your win condition the first kill or annihilation of both members of the opposing team? I think the former is preferable to the latter, as 2-on-1 is hard to come back from. But if playing to the first kill, then some sort of lifebond between teammates might be a good idea.
T1: Death Ring and Graveyard
T2: Harmonize (graveyard) and Skeletal Archer
T3: Harmonize (mage) and meditation amulet
From there, basically try to summon and swarm with as many creatures as I can get on the board.
I'd highly recommend dropping a Harmonize and trying this instead:
T1: Death Ring and Graveyard
T2: Deploy Skeletal Archer; Harmonize (graveyard) and do something else useful.
T3: Deploy a cheap Skeleton; quick-cast Meditation amulet; Meditate.
Otherwise you're paying 6 more mana to hopefully get more mana 9 turns from now. I'd rather have the mana advantage earlier than later. If you feel you really must have channeling of 11, then a Mana Crystal or Flower costs less than Harmonize on your mage.
Other comments:
- Drain Soul >> Drain Life.
- Deathshroud Staff is expensive for what it does (even with Death Ring). Besides, you don't really want to be close to the action, and you won't have many actions to spare when Meditating. You need to make every quick-cast count, and spending one to put on a weapon, then another to give melee +1 to creatures in the neighboring zone may not be the most effective use of your actions.
- Personally, I like to take full advantage of the poison immunity of the Necromancer and his undead horde; e.g. Idol of Pestilence, Plagued, even Poison Gas Cloud. This might mean dropping the bats and some of the more expensive skeletons... but your spawn point can't summon bats anyway (and you'll want to be Meditating, not summoning bats).
- Armory is better than Fortified Position, especially if you're Meditating; e.g. want as much bang for your buck out of those few quick-casts. Besides, you expect to be action deprived, not mana deprived, so you can afford quick-action conjurations in the 9-10 mana range (like Idol / Deathlock / Armory).
- Regrowth >> Vampirism (for your mage).
- I'm not convinced that you'll ever get 4x Skeletal Archers in play (not to mention 4x Skeletal Sentries and 2x Skeletal Knights and a Deathfang and Mort - that's a lot of expensive Skelies!), but if you plan to focus on the ranged attackers as your primary strategy, you'll seriously want to consider an Archer's Watchtower or two. The ranged +1 is always good, and Indirect can be invaluable to ensure they can get an unobstructed shot.
- Teleports and Force Pushes and Tanglevines are as fundamental to a swarm strategy as any other staples. Find room for multiples of these. Seriously.
A Canadian online gaming store has an estimated release date as May 27 for both the Priestess and Warlock Academy expansions, and the "Lost Grimoire volume 1" for Arena. I'd take that date with a grain of salt; for instance, I could envision the release getting delayed a couple weeks for a more spectacular release at Origins. Or it might arrive early and go on sale immediately (iirc, Domination came out ahead of the initial ETA). But in any case, we shouldn't be waiting much longer.
With 4 people of whom 2-3 are new, I'd go with two parallel 1-on-1 Apprentice mode matches followed by a second pair of the same (first round winners play winners, losers play losers, like a mini Swiss tournament), rather than a chaotic 4-way free-for-all. A team match could work, though, especially if beginners team with experienced players - but if you're the only experienced player, I think I'd stick to 1-on-1 until everybody grasps the basics.
The first game didnt finish due to length. Second time it was Warlock.. but it cannot be stated enough that like 50% of the game was played wrong since it was a learn as you go thing.The very first 2 games of mage wars we ever played were both 4 way games..so we ended up having to teach ourselves the game while also managing a mass melee.
it was pretty chaotic.
And the winning mage was ...?
Four-player Arena free-for-all? It can be done, but I fear (a) long game length, especially if (b) a player gets knocked out early and has nothing to do for the next 2 hours while the other guys play it out, and (c) various possible king-maker scenarios and/or inevitability in the late game (e.g. some degree of runaway leader).
Why not 2-vs-2 team play, or *gasp* Domination?
