Hello all!

I haven't actually played Academy yet but I've seen a fair number of the cards online and while a lot of them feel underpowered for Arena, I imagine there are a few that are great additions to Arena as well. What Academy spells do you use in your spellbooks?

Thanks for the reply, I'm really happy to hear that about the SBB! I wish there was an alternative to OCTGN for Mac, but having an up-to-date spellbook builder would help so much in making it easy to play with the new sets and make exciting spellbooks in the meantime!

Can the Paladin use cards that say "War Mage Only?" I see that Paladin is trained in Level 2 War spells, but does that mean that the Paladin can equip Harshforge Plate? It says "War Mage Only" as opposed to "Warlord Only." Does the Paladin count as a war mage? Thanks!

These have been sold out for quite a long time and I've been wanting some ever since I saw them in the store! Will I ever have the chance to buy some of these? Please say yes!

Any chance we might be able to get a breakdown from gdieckhaus? I'd love to hear his strategy behind this book and how he played it!

Hello all!

I've been struggling a lot against various Druid builds that use Vine Tree. I am somewhat new, and I am often not sure how to approach this spellbook. On the one hand, there is the option of trying to go straight for the vine tree right off the bat. However, it has 12 health after treebond, 1 armor, regen 2, and the ability to transfer damage away from it. Recently I played a game where I got it to 11 damage twice in a row only to have it heal back to safe damage and overwhelm me with creatures.

On the other hand if I try not to focus the tree and instead focus on creatures, I find that I get overwhelmed very quickly. The creatures are very strong and their regen is very difficult to deal with. While the vine tree is casting all sorts of creatures at greater and greater distances, the druid is free to hang back and fire incantations and enchantments to either buff the creatures or barrage me with tanglevines, jinxes and all other manner of spells.

I know that Druid is far from unbeatable, but I think I just need to learn a good way to approach this problem and exploit the weaknesses of the druid. The inclusion of the Nightshade Orchid and Corrosive Orchid means lots and lots of actions, an easy way to sleep large minions, the ability to trash equipment without spending a mage action, and small attacks to wake up any sleeps I may cast on the Druid's creatures.

Anyway, I could use some help learning to combat this strategy. I have mainly played either Araxian Crown Warlock or Necromancer with a focus on curses. I have had some victories, but I find that the Vine Tree spellbooks tend to snowball quickly if not handled correctly early. Any tips? Thanks!

Ooh, very good points all around! I hadn't thought of some of these things. Really good arguments!

I'm not quite sold on Force Hammer. There are some books that I include one or even two, but mostly in Forcemaster-books. For the same amount of spellbookpoints (or even less) I can include a Hurl Boulder, which has the same Slam-chance, but one die more against creatures. It has one fewer die against conjurations, but I believe that a Force Hammer always comes short against conjurations that really matter. 8 dice of damage versus a Wizard's Tower? That's 7 health and 3 armor. Probably won't kill it. I just wasted 9 mana and 7 dice on the enemy mage. Battleforge? 6 crits on 8 dice? May work. But it could not work as well. When it's really important to bring a Battleforge down, I'd rather use 2 Geysers for 8 mana and 12 dice. They'll probably give me my 6 crits.

You make a really good point about Hurl Boulder. Eight mana and it rolls seven against creatures and conjurations alike. It is slightly more versatile, and I see what you mean about not being able to kill conjurations. It's a bit risky to count on Force Hammer to roll well enough to one-shot conjurations.

I agree that some conjurations can be a nuisance, and while others have suggested casting two attack spells and other options, often the conjuration you need to take out isn't susceptible to that damage type (e.g. while 2 Geysers work great against Battleforge or a Wall of Fire, they won't help you against pretty much anything else) or you can't afford the actions to cast two attack spells.

I also agree with this. I feel very torn about surging wave, for example, as an answer to battle forge. In general a lot of attack spells that are there to deal with specific conjurations just feel like dead weight once the conjuration is dead or if for some reason you have to fight through some creatures or walls to get to the conjuration. That's one of the things I love about Mage Wars, there really is no cut and dry solution for a problem. There are many effective spells, but often there is no "hard counter."

This definitely changes my thinking about Force Hammer and I can definitely see why some people don't run one in every deck.

I can see why this would be a big boost for the Necro. I have played a curse necro recently and Mage Bane and Ghoul Rot are really the workhorses of the deck. Having one more pesky DoT spell plus a wardstone or two is pretty hard to deal with and the mana sink required to deal with all of it is very stifling. Harshforge Plate would be a good answer, but for a lot of mages this will be very hard to deal with. If it becomes common in the meta Purge Magic will probably have to go into more spellbooks.