I find the thought of drafting an interesting idea, though it would take away the very best part of the game (to me). I love the deep thinking and planning part before I ever sit down to play the game.

I think both of your proposals are viable solutions to those would like to draft.

That's what this variation tries to immolate, just with a different way of critical thinking! Whereas when you are constructing a normal spellbook, you have this gigantic card pool to think about. Drafting tries to constrain that, to limit your options, and turns the cards themselves into valuable resources. So, instead of you having 4 nullifys to cushion you, or 3 dispels and 2 dissolves, with drafting, you know that you will only have maybe one or two of this cards into your entire deck. It changes the way we think, but it doesn't simplify it. Dig?

I have posted a lot on just how MW and MTG are NOT related, nor comparable. This varient was to show how elements from other games could be used to create a realistic draft environment in MW. What makes it interesting is just how similar the drafting dynamic feels in two vastly different games. I do think MW is a tactical miniatures game more than a card game, but it still has TCG/card elements, and a lot of them. From resource generation to bluffing, MW offers a lot to the card game field. MW is not a better MTG, because they are two completely different games. Yes, MW has a lot more theme, but so does Modernized Magic, with planeswalkers and a push for a bigger playing field for creatures, and yet drafting still is a very strong element of gameplay. It allows you to look at the cards past theme, and to see what the cards are when they are stripped of all thematic elements. I think that in order to WIN at Mage Wars, you also have to deny that thematic element in the cards while you are spell book building. This drafting varient gives players an opportunity to do that while having fun.

And, as a further note to the MW image, I don't think it's drafting that will hurt it. From the few gamers that I have talked to about MW that didn't actually like it, the reason they didn't like it wasn't from the comparable game play to MTG. It was the fact that the sales staff said it was a better MTG. So, if players were actually able to play the game without the comparisons to MTG, they would be able to make an unbiased opinion enough to decide for themselves that they are two completely different games.

There is drafting in Ascension?

Thank you for the thoughts, though, mate, I often read your posts and just nod my head in agreement, so it's always interesting to read what you have to say!

To draft in Mage Wars would be a brilliant concept, would it not? But, there are a lot of cards to go through, and building spellbooks can oft take a while. So, what is my solution? Well, I have two, but both encompass the same creating a "cube". Perhaps let's explain what a "cube" is before we go off explaining how we can use that concept. A cube is a set of cards, usually 360, that have specifically for use while drafting. In other words, you are drafting a fixed set of cards every single time. So far I have just been using a third core as my "cube", but I am working on shortening the card list, altering it to make it all the better.

So, let's say you have got a set of cards together all ready for drafting.

What now?

Well, these two solutions are a little strange, but they seem to really really work so far with 2 people. Before starting anything, take out the four mage cards, shuffle them throughly together, and each of you will choose a face down mage. Set the remaining two cards aside without looking at them, and each player then looks at their mage. this is the mage they will be building their spellbook around. Sort all your cards into Attacks, Creatures, Conjurations, Equipment, Incantations, and Enchantments. shuffle each of these six piles throughly, and then deal out 15 Attack spells to each player, putting the rest away. Each player will pick up their pile of fifteen cards, choose one, and pass their pile to their opponent. Each player will then choose one card from that new pile and then passes that pile to their opponent. You are going to keep picking and passing until all piles are exhausted. Next, deal out 15 equipment cards to each player, and repeat this picking and passing procedure. After equipment, you are going to deal out 20 creatures to each player (giving them a few more options), and then you are going to repeat the picking and packing procedure. And then you are going to deal out 24 incantations to each player, drafting in the same way as before. And then you will do the same (dealing out 24 cards to each player) for enchantments, repeating the same procedure. Now, what is interesting about drafting just the core set, is that players will each have a different mage to choose from, in most cases. As far as building spellbooks go, players still have 120 points to spend in anyway they want to, using all of the same stipulations that normally go into spellbook building.

For the second method, you are going to use that same method for choosing mages, but instead of sorting and shuffling separately, you are going to shuffle the entirety of the cube, and then deal 50 cards to each player. Next, each player will deal two cards in front of each other, forming a tableau of 4 cards, two in front of each player. Now, the player who chose their mage second will pick one of those piles, place it beside him, and then each player will deal one card on top of each of their respective piles. The next player will then choose a pile, place it near him, and then all players deal one card onto each of their piles. The next player will then choose a pile, place it on top of the first pile he had chosen, and then each player will deal one card onto each of their two piles. Repeat until all 100 cards have been drafted. Players have 80 points to spend on their spellbooks.


Well, try these out! Tell me what you all think, any improvements, suggestions, what have you...

We have spoken on both Mobility and Tempo, which are  important when you consider the final part of this tactical puzzle, which is Strength. Why is strength important, and what exactly is strength, as well as how we can use tempo and Mobility to create a greater Strength than just from cards alone. These questions are going to be the focal points of this penultimate article in this series on the importance of Tempo. So, without further ado, let us begin.

What is Strength?

Strength, in the most fundamental sense of the word as it relates to Mage Wars, is the average amount of damage a creature can do a turn. How can we figure out what the average amount of damage a creature can do per round of attacking? Well, Let us add up all the sides of the dice, ignoring critical damage: 0+0+1+1+2+2=6. Let's divide that by the number of faces on the die: 6/6= 1. So, on average, you will deal 1 damage per die. Remember, this is the average. The boon and bane of dice is that ofttimes you will either go under or over the average, but if we can judge them specifically on statistics alone, we can start to give a numeric value in regards to the strength of the card. Now, let's factor in armor. A creature with a single armor has the ability to block one die of damage. So, whereas a creature that does 2 die of damage will do on average 2 damage, it will only do one damage to a creature with 1 armor. Now, this really does change things in the grand scheme of things. You end up paying a lot more to deal damage. So, armor ALSO plays a huge factor in the strength of a creature, because it makes opponents pay more in mana and actions in order to deal with a creature that should be a lot easier to get rid of.

So, again, I will ask the question, why is strength important? Why not just jam all the creatures that deal the most damage and call it a day? As we all know, this game is not that simple. This will seem like a strange concept to some, but the fact of the matter is that there are better creatures than others. You, as the player, need to evaluate creatures based on four criteria:

1. Mana cost

This is where Tempo comes into play. Paying 15 mana for a creature that has 1 armor , 13 life, and 5 damage average is worse than a creature that costs 16 mana, has 2 armor, 15 life, and has vampirism. Figuring out what is better is an intuitive and studious task that can only be honed through trial and error. You need to play the most efficient damage creators with the least amount of mana possible. This will allow you to save mana to buff and support those creatures to keep them in play.

2. Damage average

A vanilla creature that does 2 average damage is strictly worse than a vanilla creature that does 3 average damage. This basis is incredibly important to figuring out what creatures should be played over others. We also need to realize that a creature that does 2 average damage and has a 25 percent chance to rot is better than a creature that does 2 average damage with a 50 percent chance to burn. Why is that? Because rot does not go away. It is a static effect that deals one damage at the beginning of each upkeep. So, a creature that deals two rot effects to the enemy mage will kill him in 16-20 rounds on it's own. This is completely different than a creature that can deal burns, because burns have a random chance of damage, therefore it does have a 33 percent chance to deal 2 damage. It also has a 33 percent chance to deal 1 damage. It also has a 33 percent chance to deal zero damage and be removed. 66 percent is not as good as a hundred percent, 3 grade maths will tell you.

3. Armor

 This is important when thinking about what creatures you should and shouldn't pump armor into. Having those creatures that deal a large percentage of your damage should have more armor than those creatures you use to help mobilize and increase your tempo while decreasing your opponents. Having your opponent sink spell after spell into your heavily armored creatures is what you WANT them to do. It denies them mana and actions, while netting you the same. Think about it. If you both had a static ten channelling, and you had a LoF out to his timber wolf, you have each paid 24 and 9 mana, respectively. Now, He casts a Thunderbolt on your LoF. He has now paid 19 mana and 2 actions to your 24 and one action. You ignore the timber wolf and attack the mage. He casts a second thunderbolt on your LoF, spending a total of 29 mana and 3 actions to your 24 and 1. You have gained a tempo advantage of 5 mana by offsetting your supply at first to threaten your opponent and frighten him into dealing with that huge threat.

4. What effects it can do

Finally, examining what effects a creature has is our final criteria for determining if a creature is playable in our deck or not. I have come up with kind of a quick list to the kinds of effects you want your creatures to have:

Flying, Channeling (free actions), Rot, Stun, Daze, Defense, Direct Damage, Incorporeal, Push, Ranged Attack, Weak, Taunt, Sweeping, Vampiric, Piercing, Unavoidable, Fast.

All of these effects will help you to gain tempo and hurt the opponent's tactics and strategy while setting you up to win.

Now, How can we use Tempo and mobility to help make our creatures stronger than just printed stats? Well, we can use cards like Force Push on creatures with slow to help get them into position to make their incredibly strong attack. Or we can use charge, or call of the wild even. I recently used two Rajan's Fury to turn two bitterwood foxes into attacking machines, forcing my opponent to lose tempo by dealing with these creatures and allowing me to take advantage of board position to send out two bobcats to really give him a hard time. You want to use the THREAT of dealing a lot a damage to help hinder your opponent into making subpar moves. Push your opponent into corners by using your strong creatures to force your opponent away from you and into retreat. You do not want to rely on a big creature to win the game on it's own. For the most part, I only win games when I use those big fatties to push my board position from almost winning to winning, and not as a means to an end. This is why understanding Tempo and Mobility is so vital to winning the game. Because the only way to win the game is through damage, and the only way to do that is through strength. Understanding when and how to use strength to your advantage is probably the largest learning curve in the game, and therefore it is one of the most important.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to tell me. As I am newer to the article writing scene, I am but gaining experience on how to write and think critically as it applies to game theory. Again, thank you and I hope you enjoy!

I completely agree with this article with the exception of one comment made during the beginning, and that was that Aggro was a simpler deck to play, and this is simply not so (pun intended). While the actually strategy of the deck may seem simpler (smash face fast), play itself involves adding lots of stats of monsters together, along with what spells well help achieve the smash face strategy. You want to plan out your mana spending well in advance of using that mana in order to most efficiently use that mana for max amounts of damage. In an aggro deck, you need to win the game before the first action marker is flipped, and that is not an easy thing to do at all. If you look at the greatest aggro players in mtg, they will agree that aggro is a very difficult deck to play well. I am comparing archetypes in games, not the game itself.

What is the simplest deck, then? The deck that most people start off building: Mid range. Why is it easier, though? Because you don't have to plan as much. Sure you may have an opening strategy, but nothing as planned out as a good aggro deck is. You don't have to mid-range, because you are more reactive. You play the creatures that will most fit the job, instead of playing all the creatures.

But, other than that, I really enjoy this article, and I am jealous that you got this out first! I was planning a series on Deck Archetypes, but now that you have that covered, I will stick with my tempo wanderings. Thank you for contributing to this community in a great way!

no I totally agree, I just mean as an escape card, if your opponent is playing the tempo to his advantage, it will hinder his tempo, not destroy it. IT's not an easy card to play correctly...

There is only one way to gain tempo advantage in Mage Wars, and that is through forcing your opponent to react. A good way to gauge if you have tempo advantage is to see what spells the opponent is playing. If they are spending both their mage’s actions on dissolve/heal/ face down enchants on themselves, go on the attack! It is the only way to win.

   But what is the best way to attack? Well, there is two true ways that I have found that have worked, and that is to damage and to choke. An efficient mage is doing both of these things at once in an effort to bottleneck enemy movement into a force that they cannot avoid. You can do 3 different things to bottleneck:

1.   Walls
2.   Creatures (preferably bigger)
3.   Traps

Let’s look at an example:

   The warlord has just spent his actions dispelling the wizard’s hawkeye and throwing a fireball in an attempt to force a retreat from the wizard. The warlock is in the upper left corner and the wizard is in the zone next to him. The wizard has both of his actions remaining. He uses the quickcast to cast a stone wall directly underneath the warlock, and then casts thunderbolt, stunning the Warlock, dealing six damage, and trapping him. While this is a simple example, it shows the power of choking out an opponent. If the mage does not have a free range of movement, that mage cannot efficiently attack without some consequence. This brings us to out topic of the day: Mobility.

   Now, you may be thinking: “What the hell does mobility have to do with tempo?” And the answer is that to most efficiently use the spells you need to win, you must be able to use them in the zone that will get the most use and be able to to move that zone in the least amount of actions possible. This may seems like an obvious concept, bet it’s nuanced application is not so obvious. I have lost many games simply because I could not get to where I needed to go when I needed to get there.  But, we will talk about about what you can do to mobilize you and your creatures in a moment.  What we will talk about now is how to stop the opponent from moving. If they cannot move, it will be nigh impossible for them to gain tempo, much less tempo advantage.

   The best way to do this is by stunning your opponent. This not only completely stops movement, but it also makes them lose all of their actions for a round. This gives you a full round to gain tempo advantage and is useful in aggressive,  mid-range, and control strategies.  For aggressive players, stun your opponent the round before you are going to deal the most damage as this dictates the moment you gain the tempo advantage. For midrange strategies, stun the opponent the round before you are going to move and attack with your biggest creatures and strongest spells. For control strategies, you want to stun your opponent as often as possible in order to build without consequence. Of course, you always want to stun your opponent AFTER they have acted for the turn. This provides the most efficiency for the mana you have used on the spell.

   Another effective way to stop enemy movement, and one that occurs the most frequently is the hindrance keyword . Hindering enemy movement can set you up for massive turns, but there is, in fact, a most efficient way to hinder. You want your opponent to have to choose between a rock and a hard place: either stay and fight a difficult threat, or move and fight a potentially more difficult threat. For this reason, hindering is most effective in aggressive and midrange strategy. With aggressive strategies, you want to be able to lead them (through hindrance) into a bigger creature pack, or damage mass, than before. For midrange strategies, hindering them into traps is an awesome idea, as it will oft act as a wall to the opponent, as most of them do not want to waste a seeking dispel on it, nor do they want to trigger it’s potentially harmful effect.

   The final way of slowing and stopping movement actually has two parts: enchantments, such as turn to stone and force hold, and walls. They are grouped this way because they are most effective in a control and midrange build. You can use these to stop movement, and allow you to build that engine that allows you to win the game. Using walls later as you start to gain the tempo edge will help you dominate the board, as well as using turn to stone and force hold to stop opposing midrange strategies from using big creatures while they, too, build.

   Often I use creatures as sort of walls for my opponents.  This the main use for huge fatties such as the hydra or the Earth Elemental. They are terrible for movement, but your opponent cannot rest in that zone any longer without much risk.  Strategic placement of creatures to use as walls can be just as effective as the walls themselves.

   But how can you maximize mobility for yourself and your creatures? Keywords.  Flying, elusive, pest, fast. These are all great abilities that will allow you to move your creatures with as little trouble as possible. And for your mage? Teleport and elusive with fast will make your mage as slippery as a mongoose.  Yes, that is a perfect scenario, but in it contains a point: any one of those are great abilities to give your mage. On a quick side note: most enemies will not use purge magic. It simply costs too much. Unless they are the wizard, of course. But to be certain, I usually beef up two creatures with a bunch of enchantments that will bait the mage into purging them. This may seem like a tempo loss, but removing that threat from their spellbook will allow you to beef your mage without consequence. This concept of baiting is still in it’s premature stages, but once I learn more, I will share. But, I digress. Destroy enemy walls. It is worth the mana spent to make them lose what could hinder you later in the game.  Set a path through the arena and keep that path clear. IT doesn’t have to be the entire board, but it should lead from one side of the board to another, going through the middle. This  will help in mobility for yourself and your creatures.
   
        We have covers two incredible topics: Mobility and tempo. Next time I will cover the final piece to this puzzle….