Well they mentioned something about Barbarians so I assumed that they come from the cold frosty north.   

But yeah Bearskin and other Frost-2's were really???

Hmm yeah.  I think I'm not too imaginative with the potential of the Warlord.  I should've clarified that I use the base Warlord more often because I find him easier to show new players the game by playing him instead of Anvil Throne where I have to explain all my runes whenever I cast them.

I try to set up an outpost economy but often I just settle for a barracks + one garrison (at MOST two).  Mana flower seems way more stable  for me because it's more flexible for your options.  I did forget that the Warlord gets better access to Wall of Earth, imo superior to the war options that the Pallie has to rely on.

I also tend to find most of my turn sequence be to set up a t1-2 econ while inching forward to drop either a pair of Orc butchers or a single bridge troll depending on the situation.  Then it's just buff with the rhino hide/akiros/bear strength while supporting with incantations.  With the paladin, I'd be able to center the banner and get a pair of Knights of Westlock or drop Alandell which seems just way more preferable, especially since the support spells from Paladin is more preferable from my exp, though, I lose out on overextend.

I haven't dabbled with steep hill but I have a REALLY hard time with doing a swarm build with the Warlord.  The goblins are so flimsy and Orc Butcher doesn't feel very swarmy.  Anyone who has a successful swarm build or a "build a fort" style warlord book that works out?  I'd like to try out something with archer outposts, etc but the mana/turn investment for setting up one seems very hard to justify.

It's also interesting that some find the Paladin and the Priest more similar or the Paladin perhaps as Priest 2.0 because I find they play much more differently than Warlord/Paladin.  As the Priest, the bow changes the dynamic of your game since it is a very efficient damage source so you tend to have a bit more mana to play with mid game for dropping bigger spells.  Holy avenger also allows you to be a bit more defensive, your smaller creatures are more efficient and you can bow + radiant breastplate to get a holy avenger proc.

Often feels like it's a bit of grinding down on a beaten opponent.  Unlike traditional boardgames or CCG's, my biggest issue with getting people to stick with Mage Wars is, it seems to "lead with your best".  Your first 5-6 turns feel really epic because you got the wind up and the pitch.  The last three turns on the other hand ... not so much.  Aside from very close matches, most of the time, the last few turns feel like busy work to me.  This was especially so when I'm watching some of the competitive streams of OCTGN tourney matches, etc.  Often, halfway through, it's fairly predictable who's going to win and it's literally the next thirty minutes is just going through the motions.  The only exceptions are when a player makes a MAJOR mistake (one that comes to mind is the Priestess match vs Necro where the Necro decided to charge with his unarmored mage despite having Deathlock + Idol opening).

Has anyone had similar experiences and if so, do you recommend having a concede threshold in Mage Wars?  One of the more recent matches I've watched for example was Sharkbait vs drmambo.
To me, I thought the game was over around this point:
https://youtu.be/fM9lhctsdug?t=2416
When drmambo missed the timing window on chant of rage to attempt to combo kill Alandell.  This effectively costed him a tempo hit of an entire turn and imo, it made it nearly impossible to come back from.  You'll notice, the game continues on for another hour and a half!  By the end, the Paladin unsurprisingly had zero damage taken while the Druid lost everything on the board.  If I put a new player through that, they'd drop the game so fast because who wants to just sit around while you roll dice for an hour one shotting their new summons as they run away?

I agree that Mage Wars is not particularly friendly to new players.

However, I don't find my spellbooks being half staples that I put in everything. Maybe a quarter or so, but certainly not half. On the other hand, I agree that the card distribution in the core set is badly done.

I would like to see more counterplay options against Teleport, which would put it more on par with Force Push, but I still feel like Teleport doesn't matter as much as it did on initial release.

There already are alternatives to Dissolve. You can use Disarm, Explode, Steal Equipment, or Corrosive Orchid to deal with equipment and various acid attacks to deal with armor. Aside from Disarm, the rest are more expensive, and you should run at least 1 Dissolve anyway, but there are alternatives.

It would be nice to see a non-arcane method of destroying enchantments.

Yeah 1/2 was an exaggeration but I also did count things like bear strength, dragonscale, regrowth belt, as those are "always good".  As for dissolve's alternatives, I'll agree there are alternatives but dissolve's cheap price point and flexibility is just too good compared to it's alternatives (though corrosive orchid is nifty).  I like disarm though and I think it's a nice step in the direction of diversifying choices.

Definitely double agree on needing more non-arcane methods of destroying enchantments and more counterplay to teleports so that I'm not running two tele's a book. 

Hmm so far I designed four decks and tbh some of them may be more complicated than they should.  I actually did make a warlord outpost deck for one of them (basically just a bunch of archers and buffs for archers), the other is just a pure fire oriented warlock deck, etc.  I also put a lot  more creatures per deck than normal simply because I feel incantations would confuse the heck out of players but I'm not sure if that's been anyone's experience.  (Enchantments also have this issue as well, I haven't even bothered trying to explain nullify & enchantment transfusion, etc).

Hey all,

I've bought a core set of Mage Wars and own every expansion set as well.  Sadly I've only managed to get three games out of it simply because despite my fondness of the game, it's incredibly difficult to teach new players the game.  Turns take forever because they're looking through a ton of cards in their spell book every time to plan out their moves.  Unfortunately, when the game takes three hours+ because of players going through the rules then learning every card to know how to play cards, they never want to touch the game again!

Are there any decks that do a good job of teaching beginners the game without overloading them on the variety of cards/mechanics?

Thanks!