Here's what I would cut. Tooth and Nail(Tends to be a win-more card), 2x Retaliate(Better off using guard if anything, unneeded imo though), Agony(Really only strong against 1-big, which isn't really viable anyway), 2x Piercing Strike(Ew, command spells), Bitterwood Fox(Birds are just better), Geyser(0-1 is meh), Enchanters Ring(Rings aren't worth the action without forge) and Shift Enchantment(Might as well run transfusion, but you have 2 of those anyway).

Here's what you need to find room for: 3-4x Acid Ball, 2x Surging Wave, Mana Crystal, 1-2x Bull's Endurance(For Fellella and Cervere), 1x Bearskin, Leather Boots, and Leather Gloves. I might consider 1x Reverse Attack or Block for Cervere/Fellella even. With the rest of the points, I might consider going Lair with more creatures but if you want to stick more with the buff Cervere strategy then that's probably not optimal. I'd put in more things to get there at the end to erk out the final damage like Hurl Rock.

I haven't playtested with academy yet to be honest, I could see this being right. Without academy though I favor Druid.

Quote from: Hanma on September 24, 2015, 08:55:14 PM

Quote from: Ophidimancer on September 24, 2015, 12:50:27 PM

Wow, great post, very exciting to read! How do you think your Jinx strategy would translate to one of the Nature mages using [mwcard=MW1C13] Fellella, Pixie Familiar[/mwcard] to Jinx?

Thanks! I love using it on Druid actually, it's even more devastating than Huginn. As a player, I wish Fellella was Arcane sooooo bad. But that would be horribly imbalanced.

I know we have talked about it before Hanma, but Beastmaster is the way to go.

Dropping Falcons, Asps, hounds, and cubs while and keeping the jinx lock down is pound for pound the best action swing IMO. Animal Kinship lets you double dip on buffing yourself while keeping the creature train rolling.

I really wish we had more notice on this, considering all the matches will be streamed, it can be a pretty big advantage for people that have to play each other in the future for one of them to be able to watch the others game the opponent may not have been able to.

I'll watch for sure! I'll also jump on to play a game if you need an opponent.

I thought this was pretty relevant to the Wizard discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=381&v=e31OSVZF77w

And if you made such a thing, unless you wanted to make one for each non-Arcane school/Mage and make it School/Mage Only it would just be added into his tool and kill the Lair/Ballista/Temples/Mana Crystals/Renewing Spring/Gate to Hell and so on and so forth. If we want to balance out mage with cards, we are going to need to make a butt load of them and we are going to have keep the Wizard from having access to them. With 30-40 per release this is going to take alot of time and really move us away from the mages being able to dip into other schools.

It should be War School only, let war mages focus on destroying conjurations. They already have awesome tools to do it and it suits their theme. Other mages could get reductions such as -1 cost rings but better, etc.

The Beastmaster isn't as good an example of a strong late game mage as a Priestess because his defenses aren't nearly as strong, and it's harder for him to keep his investments alive long enough to reach a dominating late game position. Although just a bear and multiple wolves is hardly a late game position anyway. You can reach that state by turn 3-4, although you might have to accept an unhealthy lack of defense in order to pull it off depending on what your opponent is doing.

Turn 1 (19): Ring of Beasts -> Steelclaw Grizzly (1)
Turn 2 (10): Enchanter's Ring -> Timber Wolf (0)
Turn 3 (9): FD Brace Yourself -> Timber Wolf (0)

A dominating late game position might be something like 2 Guardian Angels, Samandriel, Brogan, and a Knight of Westlock. Playing that much total creature strength is completely unnecessary against a solo rush build, but can be absolutely vital in an attrition mirror match. It really depends on the matchup.

3 Knights of Westlock is more like a midgame position than a late game position unless they had a lot of enchantments boosting them or something.

As to whether attrition strategies are viable in a competitive environment, I don't know. I haven't heard of many in tournaments, but the tournament sample size is so small that it's hard to draw firm conclusions about the relative strengths of different strategies from the data I've seen anyway.

I'm also not sure how long most people that play at tournaments would take to win with an attrition strategy, which could impact tournament viability. It shouldn't hurt the Attrition Priestess too much due to her tools for gaining a life advantage, but I can see it hurting other attrition mages.

Agreed, Priestess is for sure stronger. The problem with attrition strategies in tournaments(specifically Priestess) is that they can't stand up to attack spell Wizard, such as my opening or a better example is Tim's book. This is why I say playstyles like this rely on non-interactive games. If your opponent let you turtle all game to win then they probably would have lost anyway. Time also becomes a factor because if your control does happen to come online, it might do so too late.

That sounds like it would work pretty well, though it's 12 mana.

I've been playing around in my head with a 2 Guardian Angels + 2 Steelclaw Grizzlies setup for a Priestess. The Guardian Angels would let me spread damage around, so it would be hard to focus me or my bears down, the bears would do a ton of damage, and the high base stats on all of my creatures would make my healing incredibly efficient.

The main thing I worry about when playing a Steelclaw with another mage is having it corroded and focused down, which the Priestess is really good at preventing. It would be a little weaker against flyers than angel spam, but it would be little less vulnerable to mana denial.

The problem with this is that you're looking at a Grizzly and Guardian Angel on turn 2 followed by another Grizzly at turn 4 and an Angel at turn 6. This is assuming you are casting almost nothing aside from those. Meanwhile I get to sit back and let my investments win me the game. Guardian Angel would only be used for guard I assume, so all I would have to do is kill Grizzlys to win. It could be annoying, that's for sure. But by the time you have your Angel/Grizzly ready to do something on turn 5 I will have killed one of those creatures already.

I've had some interesting early results with Gray Angel spam. Throw in a Guardian Angel or two for defense, and just spend the first 6 turns casting Angels if you can. 13 mana for a 4die attack flyer isn't a bad deal. Don't even bother with her terrible spawnpoint, though.

The more I look at it the more it seems that intercept and creature spam are the way to go.

You're probably looking at the same problem as sdougla2 but the creatures do come out a bit faster, so that's a plus. Less offensive power though. I'm going to put about as much mana into them as you are putting them out but I'll end up winning out because I have the investments(Mostly Gate) that you wouldn't have.