Conquering works normally, but to recast it,  you need to also control an orb in an adjacent zone as stated on the card. Also, i imagine it can be hard to get rid of guards/creatures in a zone with an orb, so conquering is not as easy.

The problem I see when playing two (creature) spawn points:

• slow setup (takes lots of actions)
• expensive setup (lots of mana)
• expensive if you want to use it every round
• if you use all spawn points every round, your mage has limited mana to act flexible

Now, that holds for every mage. The Necro is special, since he has two creature spawn points. A zombie Necro is even more special, because he has no reliable guards  and interceptors(since bloodthirsty and/or pest) plus the Necro has no inherent defense (well he is immune to poison) which makes him weak to direct attacks. So you have to spend actions to brace yourself (hehe). In my opinion you simply can not achieve that properly with a two spawn point setup since you don't have the mana. What i  can see working is a forge/creature spawn point and a meditation amulet.

I know you know this, but it is Mage Wars! I have seen this comment above raised as an issue or  complaint about the game multiple times. I am never sure what/how players want AW to change things when the goal of 100% of the games is to kill the opposing Mage.

Well, i wouldn't have a problem with that but it renders things like Veteran or Wounded Prey completly useless since - AHA - you will not kill creatures anyways. You either ignore them, make your enemy pay for them or get a guard and/or defense.

Come out on OCTGN and play there you will see almost all of the Mages played to win there. I am not saying that some are not weaker than the others (like my poor Priest) but even then, when well played, he can win and yes the dice then matter more but it sure beats rolling through a deck waiting to draw that one card that will win me game.

I play on OCTGN so that's part of the experience i am talking about. I also like rolling dice more than having to depend on drawing a card (in the end it is the same - playing with probability, it is part of deckbuilding). But it is frustrating if you want to make some mages work and in the end they can only win if you roll better or the other player makes mistakes. As negative as this may sound, I enjoy playing the game a lot, but i think criticism (when constructive) should be offered and is a good thing.

Well, there are strategies which certainly are more dependent on dice rolls than others and games can therefore be decided by rolls (imagine an "all in" style like e.g. Rushmaster, rolling blanks on two boulders). But that is part of the strategy and you have to be aware of the probability to fail with this kind of play.

But some points the reddit OP mentions i do share (and i played a lot of MW games). If you play for fun in the sense that you play thematic books, without putting too much thoughts into your books and try to optimize - briefly speaking without any competitive ambitions - MW is perfectly fine. Now, if you try build maximized books you'll find a huge number of cards every mage absolutely has to have. For some cards, there are no alternatives, which makes some mages intrinsically inferior compared to others (because the pay more for these cards or have less of them) which can be a source of frustration. Did you ever try to make a cool strategy on a lesser played mage work and then recognized that the other mage is just better in almost every aspect? Happens to me a lot.

It's leading to a small pool of mages being played and a small variety of cards being used and finally in a small variety of strategies. For example, I can safely say that over 90% of our games are finished without more than one or two creatures being killed, since focusing the mage is just more efficient. I think the game would profit - and that is a point the reddit OP also states - from more mage exclusive solutions to common threads/problems (e.g. getting rid of armor, dispelling/countering enchantments, gain/deny mobility).

Therefore, I can understand some points mentioned in the reddit post, but I'm optimistic - I think some points exist because the card pool is simply not big enough yet.

Well, pumping out creatures from the Druid herself is very action inefficient. You lose so many advantages whitout Vine Tree:

• you can't move the round you play a creature
• you need an action to spawn a creature
• you need an action to play the discount ring
• you don't have the option to create multiple Vine markers (hinder!)
• no options to Tanglevine/Stranglevine/Orchid/... from Vine Tree

So when going Plant heavy, I see no reason not to play Vine Tree.

Let me clarify on Regenerations and what i meant with "overkill". I don't think you need so many regernation sources in your spellbook, since Barkskin has the Cantrip trait. There is no creature besides your mage on which you want to cast Regrowth. Via Tree Bond, your mage has "2 regeneration" anyways. If you need more, because you are under heavy fire, you want to keep Barkskin up anyways. Regeneration does not stack and the enemy cannot get rid of your Barkskin, hence putting in so much regeneration is spellpoint ineffective. One belt or a single regrowth is more than enough.

 

I already have 3x dispel so think it would be a waste off spellpoints.

3 dispel can be enough, in my local group though, you would be plain dead if you have only 3 of them (Curselock, Forcemaster, Fellella BM or Druid, Priestess) either because you die to curses and Poisoned Blood or you can't handle huge buffed Creatures (esp. flyers).

Personally I think orchid and lotus are awesome because it gives me free action, ranged attacks with unavoidable trait and there is many creatures out there that might come in very handy.

Since you don't have a Vine Tree to deploy them, I think casting one of these sets you behind even more. Your play will be so static and using one or two Walls blocking away your Plants will leave half of your army standing around useless.

I didn't include minor heal or wand of healing because regrowth is a cheaper also I have geyser.

Geyser only removes burns. Tainted, bleeding (with poisoned blood), Stun, Cripple ... how do remove them?

The only time agony is really useful is against forcemasters but as the Druid I do not fear any.

Ok... (Hydra, Adramelech, Corazin,...)

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to talk down your book. But my experience (~15 Druid games) let me move away from a book in the style of yours.

Regards, Gerni

@Coshade: I don't know if Charmyna is active at the moment. If you want to get a glimpse of how his general games go, I'd recommend his Twitch.tv channel. There are plenty of full games with commentary.

You will notice that lots of games (which also happens in my local meta) come down to dispell and dissolve wars. 4 of both - dispell and dissolve - is the minimum amount I have in EVERY book. The druid gets cheap dissolves, that is why it's easy to implement 6.

Let me also say somethink about the other points you asked, allthough I don't have the competence of Charmyna

Do you have an ideal armor pont you like to get too? I am looking at the leather boots and gloves and am unsure of when you are going to be able to cast it. Do you find time to cast it in the later end of the game? How many turns do you usually see when playing this build?

The natural way to get armor in this book is via enchantments, since you can move them around and you can use felella to cast them. I'm quite sure that an early Rhino Hide is the way to go before casting boots and gloves.

I am wondering if you took out some for more nullifys it would help defend your enchantments more, especially with 5 enchantment transfusions.

Well, one aspect of this book is certainly to trade actions efficiently. If the enemy invests in destroying you enchantments, you trade your familiars actions vs their mages, which is fine. Also, transfusion can be used to save enchantments (and again, it is an action felella can do for you).

How do you deal with high armor things? I guess the piercing just doesn't seem like enough to me.....

The times I played this book (style), I went for the mage only. And you have plenty stuff to get rid of armor on the mage (dissolve x6, dispell x 4).

I was wondering what you thought about heals? I know you have healing charm and regrowth and that combos with saving mana. Is the heal spell not worth it?

You can transfer health via treebond, you have armor and regeneration via enchantments and you can cast healing charm via felella or with enchanters ring discount from the mage...

... Its the cheap creature mana cost + high dice + regeneration that makes the Druid so hard to kill.

That's true for the early game. But plants die fast if you don't commit to keep them alive. Also, plants don't offer a lot of mobility. I have no experience as Warlord but I'd either try to get my own walls up vs 'snatch pit' and use  [mwcard=FWC10]Ludwig Boltstorm[/mwcard] or other range attacks with the Archer's Watchtower, or I'd use an intercepting guard to cover my range if i don't have a wall myself. Also, there are some creatures with tough trait which also could be considered versus snatch. And there is also [mwcard=FWC09]Iron Golem[/mwcard] (I used him last time i played a druid).

In general Druids suffer versus flying creatures (esp. Guardian Angel) and mobile creatures (with defense). In my group, most of the books have a distinct gameplan vs. 'pit plays' which is why I completly went away from playing the snatchgame (as primary gameplan). Don't get me wrong, the strategy is nice but it is very predictable.

At first glance (didn't dive too much in FiF) the Warlord to me seems better without a Barracks. But that might just be my playstile. I am slowly moving away from creature spawnpoints with other mages too. Even the Vine Tree I use more and more to just control Guards with Tanglevines and additional Vinemarkers instead of creatures.