Out of interest, how long did it take? Guess you have to account for 2 new players etc but roughly?

Like I said, I'm not saying randomness in a game is bad, far from it - but I like to be able to mitigate randmoness where possible...

I think this is why things work much more than they should in MW, you can mitigate that randomness to quite a large degree with extra dice on attack, armour and a hundred other effects.

My issue really is that despite this, you can and do still get completely hobbled by dice rolls through no tactical or strategic fault of your own. Hate that.

Luck certainly plays a role in MW, but skill plays a much larger role. When we're sitting around dissecting our moves in a post-game analysis, we usually find that positioning and spell selection count for much more than any lucky or unlucky roll. Luck plays a much smaller factor in winning games compared to a typical "CCG" where your hand is randomly drawn.

Guess I'm not comparing to CCGs here, perhaps MW is more of a boardgame or at least somewhere between LCG, CCG and BG for me and I certainly value less randomness is boardgames.

As I say, I think my experience is different from yours, does player skill come into it at all? New players etc? I've played a fair few games now where there's not been too many mistakes at all and then it really does come down to luck more often than not.

Another (slightly disturbing) aspect to the luck thing we've not mentioned is the surprise (for me anyway) post on here from one of the designers saying that the direction was very much the stone/paper/scissors school of design, at least in part. ie. X mage type counters Y mage type more often than not.

I find the randomness of the game to in the right location. I do not like most of the LCG because of the random nature from the draw of the cards. Here it feels very much like the randomness of battle. Yes even an arrow to the heel of the mighty Achilles has a good bit of randomness to it. Which I feel the game implements quite well.

Unlike Piousflea, I feel that the randomness of the dice smooth out over games not during (one game I am hot the other my opponent is, many times I cannot roll that damn 6+ to get the stun etc). Within the game the dice can really determine the outcome quickly.

I think at one point I posted about in one game I was hit by a reverse attack with 9 dice which cause 14 points of damage and then the LOH hit me for 8 dice of damage for 10 points of damage. In one round 24 points of damage after armor 18 points of damage were applied! Oh yeah and two burns and a stun. Very very unhappy camper.

With all of that said, the randomness can be a bit frustrating but I think mechanically it is in the right place within the game itself.

That's well said and I agree, over games it'll probably even out but again, that's frustrating and *personally* I find the randomness of battle perhaps one notch too much for my own tastes.

A gentleman over on BGG was asking about Mage Wars and was worried about these three areas. I shared my experience so far (limited) and thought I might post it over here too...

steep learning curve
My 11 year old son wandered in whilst I was doing a solo match. He is more into rugby and PC games than boardgames, but he immediately had a good grasp of Mage Wars by simply looking at the board, cards and spell book.

'Ok, so the Beastmaster has brought out loads of animals to kill the Priestess.'

'The Priestess has a couple of good guys there - are they defending her from the foxes?'

He watched me playing solo for about five minutes and quickly understood the game flow. To the extent that he joined in, playing together, taking best options for each mage. He called the spells for each round and made sensible choices. He was also able to figure out the best creatures to cast spells on and so on.

It's not a complex game. In fact it feels very intuitive.

analysis paralysis
Definitely possible for this to happen. Early games are all about figuring out what spells do, and access to all spells means that AP can happen. Apprentice (half size) spell books help, but definitely a concern. My son had no trouble with this, and chose within a few minutes each turn, and he is a bit of a thinker.

Choice and randomness
There is a HECK of a lot of choice given all the options for your spellbook then all the options during play. BUT it doesn't feel random at all. Quite the reverse. Access to all spells means you are actively choosing tactics ecah turn, not randomly drawing cards. There IS randomness in the dice rolls, but the combat mechanisms seem to give 'average' results most of the time. i.e. it's a high peaked bell curve and even the outliers are not usually significant enough to 'kill' the game. The one bit of randomness that does feel pretty binary and significant is the DEFENCE mechanic which gives a straight % chance to completely avoid an entire attack. Even that can be ameliorated by multiple attackers and so on.

It's a great game to me, and your specific concerns may be addressed. There is an excellent series of gamelapy videos on BGG by Tox. Watch those and see what you think.

I agree with your points aside from the randomness issue I will go into in a minute. Firstly though I think it has a fairly steep-ish learning curve for kids, it is also very intuitive and once you know the spells and some of the main 'options' and strategies in a given book it becomes a lot quicker and you get quite a bit less AP. My 10 yr old lad loves it and plays at a quite high level now.

On to the randomness... More and more in games these days I seek as little randomness as possible, it just doesn't fill me with love, at all. You're right on with your MW random elements and for me they *almost* spoil a great game to the point of knocking it down a point or two in an out of ten score. I adore the non-random card choice and the tactics it opens up for you to explore and the hard choices it makes you take but I've had a fair few games now where dice rolls, be it damage dice or defence dice have decided the outcome despite a really strong buildup and strategy from the losing player.

Now don't get me wrong here, I get that it's gladiator style combat and that 'random' things are going to happen but for me personally, I would have much preferred a diceless system of combat and before you ask, yes I am fine with auto-lose and auto win situations  B)

Perhaps some middle(er) ground would have been my overall best case scenario as even though the dice are custom and as you say are statistically likely to give a close to average score, they often don't in my (painful) experience and going back to your point about kids, this is a hard one to sell for multiple plays if it keeps happening.

Hello isel,

Unfortunately there is no such rule at this time.  

However, you inspired us! We are looking for abilities for our new alternate Wizard, and I will add this to the her list of abilities we are testing. It will allow her to transport her owl or raven familiair with her when she teleports.

Noooooooo    I/we were hoping for some slightly more useful abilities! Stick to the previous list, nothing to see here.

Whilst this one is a no go, you might try Eagle Wings on GA. A similar effect and makes her a real PITA to take down and a very good (if a little expensive) aerial defender capable of moving over those walls you mention.

1. The FM doesn't have proper creatures to defend those conjurations, unlike the Priestess, and won't get the full value from them as they will thus die much more quickly.  I'd much rather have a Mana Crystal than a Hand anyway, since it pays for Deflect (or other initial upkeep things) over the course of the game whereas Hand doesn't do anything for the first couple turns.

2.  Seems more feasible conceptually, but based on the forming metagame I'm not really convinced.  The Beastmaster has such a good early game (second only to the Warlock, by a small margin) that I wouldn't usually try for a longer game in which most other mages have the advantage.  There are also in-school options that while less "flexible," are most powerful and less expensive, especially with the Enchanter's Ring.


The problem with your choices is that both of those mages are pretty aggressive, and I don't think that's where these conjurations shine.  I think they're much better with their intended mage, the Priestess, who already has the most mana-efficient dazing/stunning spells in the game with which to really cut down on an opposing mage's early action advantage.  An exception could be the Wizard, who has the defensive creatures, powerful late-game, and action-sapping spells  to really see a cumulative effect from those conjurations.

I don't agree on most of your FM points there. If you're worried about upkeep costs (of which there could be a few), I'd much rather have the Force Orb at 2 more mana than a Mana Crystal, let's face it you're gunna play the Forcefield so that Orb is going to pay for itself even with only FF and innate Defence used. I prefer more proactive tactics myself and tend not to use the mana boosters too much unless the deck really calls for them and if there's no other option. Again, I'm a more aggressive and proactive player so not sure defending the temples is high on my agenda; if my opponent is taking time destroying the temple of light, they are taking hits from it and other sources and getting distracted, all of which I like. A lot.

[edit: minor point but remembered innate defence isn't 'Upkeep']

I think the 'best' FM book looks to get into the opposing mages face pretty quickly and I like the thought of dropping Hands down (behind you) as you go in the early phases to then use all game in the 1 to 1 and then dropping the Temple down mid game to really seal the game or up your damage and board control.  

I like certainty and longevity where possible in a game where there are a fair few horrible random possibilities and as such prefer things like the +1 melee on HoBS for 'most' of the game on a creature, rather than say a Bear Strength on a creature that might die quite quickly (in the BM swarm book we are talking about). It's very much about the likelihood of something getting used for me too and I *always* use HoBS where single card enchants can be a little harder to actually get on target in my experience.

Yep, I was thinking the BM might not be the best example but haven't tried the module in that book yet. His conjurations and stuff like Call of the Wild do suit that swarm build better but I know a lot of folk like the BM beatdown build too so...

Well, as I said I like more proactive effects in the game and really don't agree that HoBS and Temple of Light necessarily sit best with the Priestess who often really struggles to get melee damage on target and actually do the dice damage needed to defeat the enemy mage. That said, Priestess Temple is a strong book as we all know but one that wins tournaments of the future? I don't think so personally.

Oddly I don't see much use here for the Wizard at all! Just goes to show you how differently we look at the game eh  B)  He doesn't much use the melee bonus in most books but I guess the Temple is pretty damn useful where and whenever it comes out.