I thought you were asking for feedback on the variants you had already thought of, not ideas for new ones. Sorry if I misunderstood.

From the sound of it, you haven't tested these variants yet, so to an extent whatever I say could just be educated guesswork. I gave you my honest opinion. I might be wrong. That does not mean that I'm bashing you or devaluing your ideas, it simply means I disagree.

Seriously, if you're really that interested in this endeavor, why not just try it out and see how it goes? Even though I don't think it will be as fun as regular mage wars, it doesn't hurt to experiment. I doubt blank d6s are really that expensive.

This looks awesome. I think I'll try this at my next board game club meeting. I'll let you know how it goes!

So then it wouldn't always be tangible ingredients or ingredients that go directly into the ink. Like say, a beastmaster would use different magical hairs and feathers and bones to write his spells with, and a priestess would bless her ink in an Asyran temple, while a forcemaster would use a symbolic/sentimental object to charge the spells she writes with power.

I guess that makes more sense. And this way anyone who claims that the wild beastmaster is unschooled can say he learned a rudimentary form of writing thorough a combination of instinct and interaction with other humans.

I mean, different animals often have different forms of communication, like dancing, or making lights or sounds. The beastmaster could see writing as originating from the wild, rather than civilization.

Since I don't know where to buy the new pieces, I think I'll have to put stickers on Go stones that already exist. But since I just started playing the game, I should probably wait until I have a better grasp of it.

So I've been wondering about ways to present Mage Wars to people so that they will be willing to try it and won't be scared away. There are several things about the game that could cause people to run away without giving Mage Wars a chance, including its complexity, steep learning curve, time investment, and the fact that the core set costs sixty dollars alone if you buy it from the main site, which makes the game as a whole appear far more expensive then it actually is.

So how do we overcome these barriers and convince our friends and neighbors to play their first game of Mage Wars? I have a few thoughts, but I haven't had the chance to test them yet.

A lot of people, at least in my culture, have a double standard when it comes to what games are "too complex". To them, "too complex" does NOT include chess, or stratego, or scrabble or anything that's either a sport or already well marketed, with the exception of CCG's, which either are "too complex" or not, depending largely on (IMO) multiple cultural factors such as age. For some reason, these complex games are accepted and don't scare people away, while newer games with the same or relatively similar levels of complexity appear overwhelming to most people.

So far I've only thought of three ways for Mage Wars to overcome this bias. Firstly, if more people try the game, they will see that it is far more intuitive and fun and far less of a chore than they thought. However, since the bias in question prevents so many people from being willing to try the game in the first place, merely saying that more people should give Mage Wars a chance doesn't solve the problem.

The second way we could overcome this bias and convince people to give Mage Wars a chance would be giving them information about the game. Providing knowledge about the game and what sets it apart from other games and makes it so great could get people to be more willing to try it.

Or they might not really listen because of a gut reaction caused by their strong bias against learning new complex games because they believe it would take too much effort and time. In which case, I think the only way would be the third option: comparing Mage Wars to another well-known/well-established/well-marketed game of equal or similar complexity.

While it's important to stress that Mage Wars is its own unique game, I think comparing it to other games gives people a better context for beginning to understand what kind of game it is before they decide to try it. However, I do not think that we should be comparing it to CCG's very much at all. The similarities between games like Magic the Gathering and Mage Wars are usually superficial in terms of game play, even though they have several significant thematic similarities.

Instead, I think we should be comparing Mage Wars to Miniatures games, Tabletop RPG's, and Deckbuilding games, in that order. Chess, Go, Stratego, Warmachine/Iron Kingdoms, Dungeons and Dragons, Dominion, Ascension, Thunderstone, etc.

Especially miniatures games. Having all your cards out in front of you and not having to depend on lucky draws might seem like a very big innovation for card games, but in miniatures games it's not so much of a big deal. For example, Chess. Out of all the pieces in your army, you can move any of them that you want. You decide which one to move, where to move it, and then do so, without having to worry about "luck of the draw". In Mage Wars, out of all the spells in your spellbook, you can choose any two of them to cast during that round. You decide which of your prepared spells to cast, plan where you're going to cast them (limited by range of course, like how chess pieces are limited by their movement abilities), and then you can cast them. Sounds very familiar, doesn't it?

While it sounds great to say that Mage Wars is half card, half miniatures game and is combining the best of both worlds, the truth is that Mage Wars plays more like a minis game then a card game. If I were to succinctly describe what kind of game Mage Wars is, I think I would say,

"Its an extremely fun miniature wargame that uses cards instead of miniatures, in which two magic users fight to the death in a gladiator style battle. It's a very unique game, but I would say it plays kind of like a mix between 'Go' and 'Dungeons and Dragons'."

In terms of price, Mage Wars also more closely resembles Minis games then CCGs. CCG's have a low cost to get into, but a very high cost to stay into. Minis games have a higher cost to get into, but a lower cost to stay into.
The Mage Wars core set costs $40-60, depending on where you buy it. Each expansion after the core set costs a lot less. In Magic the gathering, a starter kit costs around $30, while a competitive deck usually costs around $300. In Warmachine, different starter sets vary a lot, between around $50 to over $100 or so, but then individual models cost somewhere around $5-$20 each.

The Mage Wars Core set costs $40-60 depending on where you buy it, but each expansion after that costs around $20-$30. Naturally, this is far less expensive then collectible miniature games like Warmachine/Hordes. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that using cards instead of miniatures might be one of the major reasons that Mage Wars is so much less expensive then other miniatures games.

Anyways, I'm hoping to try to eventually start a Mage Wars club at my university, so I need to be able to convince people that it's worth their time, in spite of the cultural bias against learning new complex games. How have other people's experiences been in this endeavor? What's worked and what hasn't? Since school is starting in less than a week, some advice/feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

A problem with apprentice mode is that it only teaches you the very basics. It doesn't teach you as much about the different kinds of cards and mechanics in the game since its only two mages playing it at a time, and without their ability cards, and the game only uses half the cards of a normal game anyway.

Perhaps more important to note: While Mage Wars is very intuitive, you can't expect new players to know that right away. The reason for this is that there are a lot of things to keep track of in the game. So even though nearly everything is intuitive once you think about it, a new player that isn't used to multi-tasking in this game is going to be focusing a lot more of their thoughts on just trying to keep track of everything going on in the arena—remembering to pay upkeep costs, turning over markers, keeping track of ranges between different objects, etc.

Just last night both my opponent and I each forgot to reveal our nullifies at vital moments. My opponent when I cast a spellbound drain power, and me when I was force pushed without armor through a wall of thorns. And perhaps surprisingly, that game was the closest I've ever come to winning. I've lost count of how many games I've played and I'm bad at estimating, but I joined this forum nearly two months ago and have been playing a lot more frequently since my summer classes ended a couple weeks ago, and I even taught one of my friends how to play in real life.

I haven't won a single game yet, and I still keep coming back for more. While having a steep learning curve is daunting to most new players, Mage Wars isn't like other games in that losing doesn't make it any less fun. It's is a 1-3 hour game—quite a time commitment for someone who doesn't love it.

In other games, if you lose your first ten games then you're too frustrated and discouraged to continue. in Mage Wars, if you've even played enough to feel like you're constantly losing, that probably means you already love the game. Mage Wars is such an enriching experience that even if you mess up a lot and lose your first many games consecutively, it's still fun.

I think the problem is that people see the learning curve and are scared away because they wrongly assume the game is too difficult to enjoy. Strategy guides would probably be helpful, but I think in their introductions they should emphasize that

1. Mage Wars is dynamic and evolving; no two games are likely to be exactly alike and there are always more strategies to discover. Be adventurous and creative!
And
2. The main point of playing is to have fun, and winning/losing is secondary to that. (In fact if you're willing to play a 90 minute game a second time at all it's kind of expected that you'd like it.) So don't be afraid of making mistakes and messing up A LOT in the beginning.


One more thing: a strategy guide is a guide, not a manual. It shouldn't be taken as a be all end all authority on the game.

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