My favorite two player games are Neuroshima Hex, Chess, Go, Babel and Hive. Neuroshima Hex could be said to be a little on the heavy side. Chess and Go certainly so. Of these, Go has the least direct resource denial.

I think Babel and Hive work wonderfully with their denial mechanics--I think at the very least, it's not that denial exists, it's how the denial is implemented, how easily you can avoid it, and how much patience you as a player have for not knowing what to do or not getting your way. In Babel, a clever player can pull off absurd combos stripping you of combo power and points while also protecting themselves as well as can be. But that's just it--a clever player who knows the game can do this. A player who understands what's in front of them and knows how to use it well can destroy your ability to act productively.

And as per my earlier post, to an extent I think that's how competition works. Smaller, lighter, shorter games aren't necessarily less brutal. Tokaido is one of the most cut-throat games in my collection, and it's about taking a nice little walk from Edo to Tokyo. But it's a game of trying to race to opportunities and pace yourself and guess what other players will do, and because of that everything you do denies someone opportunities, denies yourself opportunities, guarantees some third party yet other opportunities you've permanently passed up ... it's a game of one-way maneuvers in which you try to back yourselves into a tiny space, bashing your heads against a wall of arithmetic all while trying to ensure no one else is squeezing themselves into your spot. But it is by no means heavy or particularly long, and it has been a hit every time I've brought it to the table. It's not for everyone but, well, neither is Mage Wars or Magic. I say this without judgement--if you can't take the heat, you shouldn't spend your recreational time around a bonfire of competition and fiddly rules and economic management like Mage Wars, Magic the Gathering, heavy euro games, Tokaido ... it's not good for your sanity! There are so many games out there. Not everyone has to like all of them.

Casual play is casual play regardless of the intensity of the game. You can play Fire in the Lake with a casual attitude and fudge the rules when you forget them or don't like them and give people mulligans and do-overs or go easy on other players or just sit back and generally focus on telling a cool story with your game rather than fighting a hard fight. Competitive play is always going to find the pressure points in a game and I don't think it makes sense to make resource denial out to be the issue. Again, it's incredibly easy to shift the bounds on what's considered a "resource" and turn all sorts of classic game mechanics into "resource denial"--and that's not just a word game. It's a reality of tactical play.

I find it frustrating in games like Magic that players look down upon entire genres of play as poor sportsmanship or bad form. Or when fighting game players--casual or otherwise--look down on you for using the mechanics at your disposal. It's one thing if you start the game and clearly lay out "These are my preferences, I'm only willing to play if we don't allow these cards/play-styles/what-have-you" in the manner of clear house-rules and such. It's another thing when you take the rules you made up in your head and then judge people for not following them. Rules like "you can't use control" or "you can't stop me from playing my powerful spells that I like" or "you can't use the same rapid attack combo 10 times in a row when I don't understand how to stop you."

That's poor sportsmanship--expecting people to follow arbitrary rules about what you personally think is fair or fun or interesting without telling them those rules first and without seeking explicit consent to play by rules different from those printed on the page. We've all met players who make the experience less pleasant because of their attitude ... but I find those players are just as likely to not be highly tactical players with annoying, fiddly, precise, and knowledgeable play styles! I find those players are just as likely to be grumpy that you've found a loophole that means they can't beat you their way while you're just having fun messing with an interesting system while in the company of friends. Sportsmanship is about attitude, graciousness, and communication. It's not about the Unspoken Laws Forbidding "Unfair" But Legal Strategy.

I guess that's part of where I'm coming from. There may well be something wrong with Mage Wars! But I just feel like I want something better than NPE. Card art that isn't to taste can be an NPE. A bad slew of dice rolls can be an NPE. Encountering spiders in a game as an arachnaphobe can be an NPE. But being an NPE isn't enough. Sure, you can stop people from playing cards they want to play if they don't understand that you can do that and work so as to prevent it. I can't escape feeling that that sounds like ... a game that requires learning. On a sliding scale from Tic Tac Toe to Go, I'm pretty sure even the lighter, faster, simpler version of Mage Wars isn't supposed to be particularly pick-up-and-grok ... just more pick-up-and-play than Arena is. And it sounds like in that it is a rousing success.

Maybe you could explain more why the shorter time frame and simpler setup makes resource denial so much more grievous a problem? How denying mana fundamentally different from forging a better creature economy and beating up all your opponent's creatures as soon as they can cast them? Is there anything that could be done to make it work better without removing mana-related card effects? What is it that makes the specific mana drain mechanics so insidious and unbalanced in your perspective? How could the cards be changed to improve the situation?

Obviously I don't speak for everyone, but I don't really come to a relatively complex game about dueling wizards with the expectation that no one is going to disrupt my plans. So many euro games rely on the same sorts of concepts--restricting you opponent's resource flow while improving yours--and that's even in games that don't feature direct conflict! And yet I so rarely here this kind of complaint in those circles. Mage wars DOES feature direct conflict. Mage Wars does. This is a wizardly brawl. Surely someone here for that thematic space can be reasonably expected to accept that there will be some sneaky "mean" tactics they have to plan around and watch out for?

What's different here? I'm quite tempted by the above statement about showy-ness. Maybe it's that simple--a lot of players in these sorts of games what to play their coolest cards and their most interesting combos and they aren't really that interested in the rest of the mechanics so when they're locked into trying to work with lower level utilities or trying to carefully outwit specific manipulative strategies ... they get bored and frustrated. But I would caution that mana drain is merely the most explicit trigger of this sentiment! Removing mana drain mechanics might help these players enjoy the game more, but that kinda just postpones the inevitable. They need a complete retrofit, I think. A game that doesn't have tight economic systems and certainly dice-related combat. A game that lets them try all of the cool tricks in their sleeve relatively uninhibited by their opponent's actions whether or not they're still interacting with their opponent heavily in other ways. I think fixing that Mage Wars isn't actually about playing your coolest spells and combos would take WAY more work than just removing mana denial. That sounds like a whole new game design.