Why not go ALL IN?

A weekend long battle of 3v3 or 5v5 mages on a custom LoL themed board?

Soooooooooo many possibilitys, I just had to draw a the map(hope upload works)

It has 32 spaces, not very much for 6-10 Mages and all distances are still short.
Movement rules in magewars work very well for non-squared fields.
Midlane is short for some ranged ap-carry action while top and bot have an extra space for trading blows.

Some additional rules for Summoners Rift Mage Wars:
-The huge base zone can hold multiple zone exclusive conjurations. it contains the nexus corporeal conjuration.
- The stars mark walls with the passage blocked trait, also indestructible
- borders of Jungle spaces block line of sigth (white marks) so you have to step into lane to put spells on your opponent/gank
- Base zone spawns a goblin grunt and a goblin slinger each turn for each lane(they just move and attack).
-Channeling of Mages is reduced to 3 for mages with channel 9 and 4 (channel 10 mages). Lasthitting enemy goblins gives a reward of 5 mana (melee+1 trait is very good)
- Kills reward lots of mana
- spawn neutral bobcats/other beasts in jungle for 5 mana reward as well
- some form of respawn and healing at base
- Vinesnapper as turrets?
- Supports can build mana flowers/crystals and enchant/heal/buff the carry who gets the lasthits
- good to have a tp to gank
- to many ideas...need to stop writing...

Most importent rule then: Dead Mages can not receive any king of healing <-> remain dead.
Without this finite?life the mode would be hilariously broken. 

For the sole purpose of keeping it simple I like this idea, there is sti9ll the strategic value of focus fire without the resulting frustration of early player elimination. Thunbs up!

It's not ike I want to replace the game with this idea, just have something for a few epic matches. Let me try another spin and see if that sounds better:

The Headmaster's Duel!

Every spell can only be used once during the match. Only one-offs in a spellbook. If your opponent uses a spell you can not use yours.
(Mirror matches are discouraged so mage specific spells shine).

It is a gentleman's duell of the most versatie teachers of their respective art, elegant and full of suprises. A good lesson for the novices as well.

about this topic. it's interesting idea, but i would rather not mixing two solutions (static rolls and  dice rolls). i would go one way or another. you can assume that one die is 1 hit, and every 2 dices are critical hit. so if your attack would be 3 dices you have 2 normal + 1 critical damage, and if you have 4 dices attack it will be 2 normal + 2 critical dmg. i think it's more solid solution than mixing rolling dices with not rolling. i know it can change value of some cards, but if you want to reduce randomness you can think about something like that. I'm going to stay with Akiro's favour!

Problem is it dosn't work with incorporea at all, each die does damage? It would be fine for zombies though.
For incorporeal every 3rd dice should do 1 damage so it had to be 0 - 1- 0 - 0 - 1 - 0 - 0- 1 - 0 ...that would make 5 dice attackers good versus ethereal but I could live with that.

Maybe I have to restore my trust into Akiro's judgements in the arena or buy some of the new fancy colored dice so I can retire the cursed, wicked and treacherous red ones 

What are you talking about? Armor stops normal damage. Blanks have nothing to do with armor. Whether you roll 9 blanks in 5 3-dice attacks, or you roll 9 blanks in 3 5-dice attacks, you still rolled 9 blanks. That's still 9 damage you didn't roll, regardless of armor. I did not say that 3 5-dice attacks are the equivalent of 5 3-dice attacks overall. I was talking specifically about blanks.

Sorry I didn't want to sound so harsh. My point was more that you have paid significantly more mana to roll 3 5-dice attacks than the other way around...
and my main problem lies is exactly that some heavy mana investments can be nullified by bad rolls(instead of smart countermessures such as nullify). And it is not like horribe gamechanging rolls happen once in a lifetime, more like every other game.

Mage wars is a game of strategy, taktik and luck. I love the first two and understand the need for the third

BUT...playing a match is a huge investment of time so usually I'm not playing often enough to avarage out the cases of extreme luck. And it dosn't feel good to win a game because your opponent rolled horrible and neither to loose one because a diceroll destroyed your "solid" strategy.

There have been threads about this before but they are very old and I would like to present one idea of mine and like to hear some feedback or even better ideas.

Swings of luck are most prominent when many dice are rolled. I would reduce this by giving players the option to trade dice in sets of 3. By rolling 3 dice less they automaticaly inflict 2 regular damage and 1 critical damage.
This is on avarage a tiny bit worse than rolling as you would expect 1.5 regular and 1.5 crit damage but you are save from all blanks and the enemy from all crit 2's. It also works with incorporeal objects and zombies both taking at least some damage but less than one would expect with a decent roll.

This idea could include a rule where at least one die would have to be rolled so it can ony be used with 4+ attack dice and used twice with 7+. It is meant for those heavy investments like forcehammer, drain life/mana, steelclaw attack after teleporting him...

Forged in Fire is out, what was the amazing card you guys necroe'd the thread for, like I do now? I can't seem to find something in FiF making poor misunderstood Ichthelid any better 

Anyway I jus removed the Insect from my necromancer book after not summoning her in a few consecutive matches. Unless I build him specifically against beastmaster or maybe warlord there seems to be no way for him to proliferate.
All other mages have either
-to few creatures
-creatures who fly or are undead
-creatures or spells that oneshot these insects before their first attack

If one could at least use rouse the beast on them to have a little suprise...And since his coppys need to be in spellbook/graveyard too there is no use in playing only a few in case of some easy to impregnate beasts.

Please help, I love this card for its theme, how can I make them work WITHOUT handycapping myself (by paying so much mana and spellbookpoints on block's, teleport's, one or many much more powerfull creature could have been summoned instead) ?

Edit: "Defend" and "Brace yourself" in FiF would both be great to stay alive long enough to pass the egg but they are "living creature only"

There is already a Lifebond mechanik in the game so I think shared life fits the games theme well enough.
Three possible lore explenations how to achive this much stronger Mage-Bond:
1. A very powerfull enchantment cast in preparationb for the batte (to strong to disenchant with the limited mana available during battle)
2. A set of two very personal items, maybe Earrings(for item slot conveniance). The active Bond would protect the item from destruction so a dissolve would cost as much as the mages have combined life left->destruction impractical.
My favorite:
3. It is a very common preparation ritual known to almost any mage since training to become a mage is difficult and very very very dangerous (failed to controll that hydra you just summoned?). As one of the first practical techniques every apprentice learns to bond with his teacher/master there is no difficulty to utilise it when figthing as a team with another fully trained mage.

Anyway I love the suggested modifications, shared life and team initiative and will work them into our next 2v2.

I would love for Arcane Wonders to release those stones that hinder teleportation soon but until then I will also houserule no offensive teleports in 2v2. Undeniably they add tactical debth but they also make many defensive strategys much less viable especialy vs. up to 4 teleports/seeking dispells/decoys per turn. We play with 2 gameboards making such displacement even more devasting and if the victim gets frustrated by such shenanigans a 2v2 will last much longer making the unpleasent experience much worse.