All right, well...it doesn't look like an understanding is forthcoming here between the two sides of this debate. As much as I like arguing, and as curious as I am about the short-term benefit claim that several have made (because I still do not understand it), this is pretty much it for me here.

I agree that concrete examples would definitely put this discussion to rest.  I have been watching this conversation since it began struggling to find a simple viable example.  There are none.  The secondary benefit is mostly reactionary to the game tempo and there are too many possible scenarios to keep it simple.

If no scenario exists in which having a mana crystal is better than not having it within 5 turns of casting, how can the crystal be said to provide a benefit during those 5 turns? For an action to provide a benefit, it must be better than doing nothing (the status quo)

In your fictitious conjuration example, Mana Crystal is certainly better than that conjuration, but this does not mean that it is better than doing nothing in the first 5 turns after casting (A>B does not imply A>0). This is why we say that there is no benefit in the first 5 turns; it is not that the crystal does nothing, but rather that the costs of the crystal (-5 mana, -1 action) unequivocally outweigh the benefits (+1 mana per round) until the 6th round. Perhaps it might clear things up if we say that there is no net benefit to mana crystal in the first 5 rounds? Maybe this has been the point of confusion between those who think there is an early payoff and those who do not.

So the idea is to use the Priestess' ability along with the amulet to offset the 2 life loss per turn? Not sure the disadvantages to this build are worth it, but if you have your heart set on it, I recommend finding space for 6 purifies. That way, if you ever find yourself lacking for a good holy incantation to cast, you can purify yourself for free to gain 1 life. Pretty wasteful of spellpoints, but that doesn't seem like a concern for this book, and it will save you mana.

I think offsetting the life loss is a waste of resources though. Far better to play Sardonyx with a dark mage and to go for the kill as quickly as possible.

Quote

Counterexample:

With crystal:
Turn 1 (10): Crystal + Move Twice (5)
Turn 2 (16) : Dwarf (0) + enchanters ring (3)
Turn 3 (14) : Dwarf (0) + Arbitrary enchantment (2)

Without crystal:
Turn 1 (10): Enchanter's Ring + Move twice (
Turn 2 (18): Dwarf + Arbitrary Enchantment (6)
Turn 3 (16): Dwarf + Arbitrary Enchantment (4)

Try again.

I feel like we are spinning in circles and just coming up with examples that each mage is using less and less mana to show an advantage. So this isn't going to go anywhere because it's getting too hung up on the actual cards being cast. The point is that if a card requires payment in mana equal to that of its action potential then mana crystal, I believe, is a good choice due to it's enhanced ability to summon the larger cards faster.

On the contrary; these examples are extremely important to this discussion. I claim that anything you can do with a mana crystal, you can do better without it prior to the 5th turn after casting. You claim that there is a unique benefit to a mana crystal before the 5th turn after it is cast. Disproving my claim is simple; find a single counterexample. Show me a game state in the first 5 turns that you can achieve only with a mana crystal. Without a concrete example, your argument is not persuasive, because if there truly is an advantage to any strategy, it will be made clear in the state of the game. To prove your point, post an example to which I cannot find a counterexample.

Any good hypothesis is falsifiable. I have told you what evidence will convince me that I am wrong. If you want to discuss this on your terms, then please tell me; what evidence would convince you that the early crystal payoff hypothesis is false?

You are still disregarding the fact that in the last example when you have both mages cast 4 dwarves that the mage without mana crystal used "saved mana" to summon all her dwarves where the Mage with mana crytal didn't. You have proven my point further because in that case the other mage did indeed keep pace with the mana crystal mage but had to sacrifice action potential on the first turn to do so.
As far as the value of moves are concerned, those are much trickier in converting it to value because movement is rather arbitrary in the game as a whole since the game is more about the pacing mana usage anyway. I don't concider movement as extremely relevant as moving toward the enemy might mean you can attack him but will also mean he can attack you. It's an even win-loss situation in my perception. But I don't want to get too off track here as we are talking about casting and speed of casting. I'm not trying to devalue your point of the moving because you are correct that moving does have value, but it's a separate entity that has its pros and cons as well that cannot be included into my current equation.

In the example I gave, what I showed was that the mage without the mana crystal can do everything the mage with the mana crystal can do and more. Both mages are casting the same cards on the same turn - turn 1, they both get caltrops. Turn 2, they both get a dwarf. Turn 3, they both get a dwarf. They are taking all of the exact same actions at the same time except that the non-crystal user is able to do more. No matter how you are defining action potential, if your opponent is able to play all the same cards on the same turns as you plus extra cards that you are not playing and still ends up with at least as much mana as you, they are unambiguously ahead of you - there is no aspect of the game in which you are ahead of them. It doesn't matter how you value moves, or anything else - on every turn the non-crystal player has everything the crystal player has, and more.

Look:

Unique resources
Resources common to both sides

With crystal:
Turn 1 (10): Crystal + Caltrops + Move Once (0)
Turn 2 (11) : Dwarf (0)
Turn 3 (11) : Dwarf (0)

Without crystal:
Turn 1 (10): Mangler caltrops + Move twice (5)
Turn 2 (15): Dwarf + Enchanter's Ring (2)
Turn 3 (12): Dwarf + Arbitrary Enchantment (0)

With the exception of the crystal (which has no benefit besides the channeling, and whose payoff we are evaluating), the crystal mage has literally nothing that the non-crystal mage does not have, at any point. If you want to talk about wasting action potential, notice that the crystal mage wastes 2 quickcasts that the non-crystal mage makes use of (though I still do not think this metric is well defined enough to make an analysis based on that).

When evaluating a game state, how you got there isn't relevant. If the Lord of Fire is swinging his scythe in my face, I don't care if I roll 5 damage or fifteen, if both results kill him. Similarly, it doesn't matter where mana or any other resource comes from; all that matters in evaluating the state of the game on a given turn is the sum total of the resources that each side has. Mana is mana, whether it was channeled this turn or last turn.

First of all, your video is very clean and well put together, so kudos for that. That being said, I think you kind of shoot yourself in the foot with the examples you give. The forcemaster seems to have a better position in the video, since she has significantly more creatures, especially early on (partially due to summoning 2 per turn), even if they are slightly weaker.

Despite your explanation of mana potential, I am still very unclear on how it is measured. Sometimes, it seems to simply be the mana a mage can spend on their turn but other times - maybe I just can't wrap my mind around it. My failure to understand your metric prevents me from understanding your argument, so you would do well to explain your point in other terms.

I strongly encourage you to consider my suggestion for how to make your point more clear: demonstrate a clear example of a strategy with a payoff in the first 5 turns (where the mana crystal itself is not included in that payoff) that absolutely requires mana crystal (or an equivalent spell like mana flower) to work. To give you an example, here is a strategy that proves that the Lair has a unique payoff at most 2 turns after it is cast:

Beastmaster:
Turn 1 (19) : Lair + Ring of Beasts + <Move Mage> (2)
Turn 2 (11+2) : Fox + Fox + <Move mage> + Harmonize Lair (0)
Turn 3 (9+3) : Fox + Fox + <Double Move Mage> (3)

Now your mage has 4 foxes and a ring of beasts on turn 3 and has moved 4 zones. This is impossible to achieve with any other strategy - if you do not cast the lair, you can only summon 1 fox per turn if you are moving. This means that Lair has a unique advantage over the status quo 2 turns after it is cast, since it allows you to achieve a combination of resources (excluding the lair itself) that are impossible without it. The closest you could get is Teleporting twice:

Turn 1 (19) : Fox + Teleport twice ( 8 )
Turn 2 (17) : Fox + Teleport twice (6)
Turn 3 (15) : Fox + Fox (5)

You have 2 more mana, but you don't have the ring of beasts (or harmonize, though that is attached to the lair so it is difficult to account for it precisely) (also, you just used up 8 spellpoints worth of teleports, which seems a little wasteful...), so the lair strategy still has a unique advantage over this. (Note that this is not claiming that the lair has paid for itself, merely that you can do something with the lair by turn 3 that you cannot do by turn 3 without it) In other words, I am not asking you to show that the strategy you demonstrate with the mana crystal is superior to similar strategies, just that it provides a combination of resources (excluding the crystal from the list of resources, of course) by turn X that is impossible to achieve any other way. I think this is a fair test of whether the mana crystal really does have any advantage over the status quo before turn 6, and (more importantly) one that can be easily understood by everybody.

I cannot tell you how cool her burst thorns incantation is. If you are deploying 3 vines a turn the range on that attack is incredible.

I too love the druid. Minor note: the range on burst of thorns is always 0-2; it cannot be extended using vine markers, as it is not a spell with the vine subtype. Still a good spell, though.

Thanks for your feedback! Some replies:

Xof: I feel like he should be an living illusion(rather than a "sees the future" type creature; otherwise he would  protect himself when he knows an attack is coming rather than gaining attack. knowing you arent getting attacked should make you ), who gets more powerful the more attention you give him. Based on that, I would make him a mind spell, and gain the illusion subtype(but meh, you can throw that out).

Card text could be cleaned up a bit, so i did that. I altered his function slightly to make wording easier. Yes, I hurt him by making him invisible, so you cant give him enchantments or such, but invisible is an easy to understand condition. Note that he doesn't lose invisible by attacking unlike [mwcard=FWC08]Invisible Stalker[/mwcard]. Yes, Vigilant may have some unintended effects, and it can give him 2 counterattacks a turn.

---- (this took me like 10 mins;I worry what the upcoming "true sight" paladin will do to this wording.)
Xof
Has Invisible Trait, Vigilant trait, and a 4 dice melee attack.
Xof has melee-2 while invisible. During the upkeep phase, an opponent may give him a visible marker.
"I've heard of animals feeding on attention, but this is something else..."
----

That does make the text considerably more concise, and accomplishes more or less the same effect. But as you say, there may be some unintended consequences if cards that interact with the Invisible trait come out (vigilant is fine; it makes a lot of sense for this creature). Thematically, it is not invisible, just prescient of coming danger, so I don't know if I want to give it the invisible trait (for similar reasons, one should be hesitant to call on teleport when doing something that is definitely not a teleport, which is why my Tentacle of the Kraken is worded the way it is).

The reason he gains melee when an attack is coming isn't so much a thematic concern (although you can certainly justify it with the Xof becoming aggressive), but rather to stop the opponent from simply placing a Warning marker every turn, which would defeat the point of the card. Since warning the Xof makes it stronger, your opponent is only likely to do it right before an attack.

Also note that the Xof is currently only warned against attacks, whereas Invisible would warn it against everything.

As far as being a living illusion - well, that is theme. I personally prefer to reserve illusion status for creatures like the Illusory Tormentor, where the unreality of it is reflected in its attacks as well as its intangibility.

Voltaric rift: make it block line of sight? it seems all sight-blocky from the picture, but that would require making it cost more than wall of fog...

I considered blocking LOS, but as you say, it would increase the cost. Think of it as a rift on the ground, that you can step across or into. If it's too expensive, it won't be used, so I can't really allow much overlap with fog bank.

Voltaric beacon: I worry that someone could spam Voltaric Beacons to make a telepit strategy impossible. Or they could use it to retreat back across the board too easily.

Seems to me that Voltaric beacon should destroy itself at the end of the round like Brace Yourself. I assume it means "when subject to a teleport effect" so that this enchantment can prevent a [mwcard=MW1I01]Banish[/mwcard]. seems too strong if a facedown enchantment across the board can block a banish. Here comes another rewording from me:
--------
Voltaric Beacon
Unique, Arcane 1
2 mana to cast. 2 mana to reveal.

The following applies to any friendly creature within 2 zones: Counter any teleport spell or effect which targets or teleports this creature.  If a spell or effect is countered this way, teleport this creature to Voltaric Beacon's zone. Destroy Voltaric beacon at the end of the round.
-------

But I would make it work similarly to [mwcard=MWSTX2FFJ06]Rolling Fog[/mwcard] in how it functions.
--------
Voltaric Beacon 2
Epic, Arcane 2 Conjuration
7 mana. Incorporeal, Indestructible, Dissipate 3
teleport subtype.

Counter every other teleport spell and effect in the arena. Any creature targeted by a teleport spell or effect is teleported to this zone unless its controller pays 2 mana.

The primary reason I created Voltaric Beacon was to counter telepit strategies. The problem is, simply making an object immune to teleport is only useful if your opponent uses teleport, so the card is wasted otherwise, hence the dual use (to retreat, as you say). I think your point about it destroying itself is a good one; I may just add that in. I prefer not to go the Epic route, since as a counter or escape spell it works best as a surprise. I don't think it should have a maximum range, though.

Magisbane Lily: I am concerned that the Magisbane lily is too awesome. Seems to me that it should be similarly priced(in mana and spellpoints) to [mwcard=DNJ02]Corrosive Orchid[/mwcard] since it has a similar effect.

Well, in general the consensus seems to be that equipment is stronger than enchantments; it is harder to remove and is not subject to mass removal. The Magisbane Lily will allow you to remove 1 enchantment (and only once), whereas the Corrosive Orchid removes 1 piece of equipment, so if you accept that equipment is more valuable, I think the lower cost (in mana and level) is justified. Note also, that its attack is less useful; the Orchid can potentially strip away armor, whereas the lily just has the chance to drain mana.

The reason I created it was to give the Warlord a more reasonably priced dispel option (also, I love conjurations with attacks). The only potential problem might be the level (6 cheap conjurations with attacks could be quite powerful), but as it stands I am not terribly worried. If you test it and find otherwise, let me know.



Regarding card counts, my main concern was to fill the sheets evenly so as not to waste space. I considered putting 2 Lazy apprentices, but it would have necessitated another sheet. I might need to review how many of each I put in, but I am more concerned about how the cards play than the distribution.


If you print these out and try them (any of them), I would love to hear a battle report. Unfortunately, I have been too busy lately to do much design, so it may be a while before I update these.