Quote from: Fateful on August 19, 2013, 07:58:38 AM

The hydra is quite punishing with its 3x3 attack, especially against unarmored mages (which I tend to be, because he likes to dissolve armor). It is hard to put up blocking creatures because he will drop essence drain on it. The hydra itself is difficult to kill with its high health, regen, and COUNTERSTRIKE.

The combination is not unbeatable, and the hydra is particularly weak against a mage with lots of strong attack spells or a finite life enchant. But hydras do well against swarms (because of counterstrike and regen) and hit hard if teleported into position.

Though it isn't the best creature by far, I still rate it as an excellent spell because it is one of the best creatures for what it does (hit hard when not required to move).

...Agony completely destroys the Hydra's power. One curse and he's now rolling 1 die three times... on the flip side bear strength only adds to the first attack.

Its getting so old with the "agony destroys hydra"

Who runs hydras? Wizards.
Who has close to unlimited access to metamagics that handles enchantments? wizards.
How many rounds are you gonna let your hydra do 1x1x1? 1 maybe 2 if your pressured.
If you play grizzly with your wizbro and it gets an agony are you gonna get rid of agony? yes - so why not remove it from hydra also?

The only difference is that grizzlys 1 round attack with agony will actually still do damage, where is the hydras 1 round with agony will do close to 0.
But then again.... the Hydra servers another purpose than the grizzly.

Its like the good old Gorgon... Because Gorgons are no longer the new black, alot of spellbooks dont even run purify anymore. I wouldnt be surprised if alot of spellbooks dont run agony either.

Tbh i think they are hestitant to make an official stand point on this matter.

I believe they are somehow monitoring this and are probaly running ongoing evaluation on the impact they feel OCTGN has on their product.

I think you will be torn apart by any opening that opens with 0 or 1 mana crystal / flower.

Simply because you start spending 26 - 28 mana without putting any creatures Down.

I consider most offensive equipment terribly expensive and very ineffective.
I would any day of the week prefer to save up an additional 6 mana and cast a grizzly instead of that bow.

And tbh... offensive equipment syngerizes best with spawnpoints so you can actually spend your mages Action marker to attack rather than summoning. But a spawnpoint + a weapon is just too much of a manasink in most circumstances.

Quote from: jacksmack on August 14, 2013, 08:51:19 AM

The Promos will take up signifigant space in the strategy threads - threads i cannot participate in or learn from because i dont have access to discussed promos.

Okay. This point I 100% agree with. I theorycraft and theorycraft and find a flaw or a opening in a build on the forums and mention it and the response is a lot of times. "Well just use gravikor or another promo" ahahah.

So yes, the above point I agree with. However I still think it's not a big deal AT ALL to just play without promos. The decks I build are all built without even considering promos. Unless they are officially available to everyone I don't give them much thought.

Well i probaly forgot that it kinda annoys me to have the feeling of not having access to it all.

And its probaly because cant avoid thinking about that sexy ballista (atleast on paper it looks sexy), and i cant use it... having to wait an unknown potientially infinite amount of time before its released is just annoying for me.
I understand other people dont care and you probaly have the right approach... but i honostly feel like im missing out in something. Also i want to add that wanna of the key describtions of MW that made me buy core, tome 1, tome 2 and FvsWL all at once just after discovering it on BGG and then seeing all the vids hyping myself to the moon and back more than once was the NON collectiable part... TBH i would probaly still play MtG if it wasnt such a money sink.

I realize that my feelings on this subject might seem silly to some, but never the less thats how it is.

i HATE promos

I completely agree with OP.

For me the current promos take the game 1 step in the direction of a CCG
Lately i have been annoyed by the promos and CoK and it has actually made me step away from the game for more than 2 months.

Here is why.

The Promos will take up signifigant space in the strategy threads - threads i cannot participate in or learn from because i dont have access to discussed promos.
Also - as OP has explained - the promos are not balanced because they counter cards have not been released, which is why i would never play with promos unless BOTH me and my opponent had access to ALL promos, and still i would prefer to play without.

The CoK was more than 1 month later released where i live, and i bought it as soon as i realized it was available -which is what I believe is  2 or 3 days after it actually WAS available due to me getting tired of checking stores homepages every day.
Anyway... As it takes quite some time for me to build a spellbook i didnt really feel like doing this 1 month before release in the US... add this that it was available almost 1.5 month later and the result for me was no spellbook making in 2.5 months.

I realize that there probaly aint much you can do about the CoK release not being released at the same time in different regions of the world but that, and for me seeing more and more promos released that i dont have access to just took away my inspiration.

Another reason why the angel is harder to kill then the panzer dude is because it has flying.

After the first attack vs the angel, only ranged and flyers can hit her because she stops guarding and gains flying back.


And btw the panzer dudes defense is +6 when guarding - or equal to.
I realize you use unavoidable in your example to stun it, but in the cases where it only gets dazed it has better defense than the angel.

So i got to play Charmyna's described spellbook today.

First of all. Thanks for teaching me the few not so obvious Things about MW on OCTGN - and thanks for a good match.

I played a non-standard FM build pre CoK release and without any promos.
Its focused on Grimson deadeye turn 1 + mana crytal start zone. Round 2:Archers Tower 1 zone to the left of my starting zone and a potential pull (which happened this game) on grimson because my enemy moved out of his starting zone resulting in a 5 dice attack round 2.
From here on i have the option of walling in Grimson letting him snipe outside walls with Archers Tower, or summening the royal Archers.
Unfortunately i mis-played round 3 by summening the royal Archer and my grimson was teleported 3 zones away into the vampiress and the guardin angel.

The vampire stroke hard and left my grimson without hope (2 hp left or perhaps 3), and i was now facing a serious setback even though he payed 9 mana to port the sniper.

Hereafter Charmyna only ran those 2 creatures while spending either his QC or Quickaction from the action marker to buff himself with the following:
Leather gloves, Rhino hide, Dragon scale hauberk, Boots of standground (no push / pull) and my thought spore only got off 3 dissolves. He also managed to purge magic my bearstrength AND my forcefield.

Meanwhile my thought spore was taking Down so the invisible stalker i had summoned was rendered half useless because the time i had initiative he would save his QC to arcane zap (ethereal), so i had to stay invis in those rounds.
After necro vamp got bear strengthed my royal Archer died which didnt matter much because i faced bad rolls so his wizard hardly had to use volt shield after all the armor buffed and 0 crits rolled.
Now my stalker with quite alot damage taken was forced to stay invis all the time because i had the fewest action markers.

Charmyna also dropped a wizard Tower (which in imo never repayed itself), that i sacrifised my stalker on to finish on after i double striked it with my FM equipped with galvatar.

Now my FM is alone without forcefield, and the wizard still have clawboots equipped and 1 zone away from me.
Because of the necro vamp hindering my FM and the fact i had to get rid of boots and THEN pulling , we decided that the game was over.


My deck was build pre CoK and intercept seriously screws it over - which is fine.

However... the guardian angel seems broke beyond repair. (incredibly strong)
Seriously... it cannot die, and its either gonna prevent alot of damage or force you opponent to spend a massive amount of ressources to get rid of its  guard.
Im still very unexperienced, and i realize i could have done some thing different, but only 2 Things would have mattered much:
1)
i could have focused on the vamp while it was 3 zones away = no healing from vampiric for a while.
2)
Cast walls straight away Thus sticking to original opening (i got greedy in this game because of his opening with 1 big 1 medium - with original opening i would delay royal 1 round).


The opening Charmyna has come up with is incredibly powerful because its extremely hard to do anything of the following:

1)
focus on the enemy wizard. Volt shield and the ever living angel will TREMENDIOUSLY reduce the damage on the wizard with all the armor (5 when maxed this game i played).
2)
Focus on the angel... good luck: 3 armor? (not sure of the armor), aegis 1, 12 hp?, heal 2 every guard action, and ofcourse a defense as well....
3)
Kill the vampiress. It has vampiric and soon enough a bear strength. It has 3 armor and 15 hp (you need serious hard hitters and good rolls to take this Down) AND.... angel of doom protects it when possible.