Wrote you half a novel on the survey, hope someone's gonna get paid to read through it all 

Thanks for putting all that effort into the game. I think I can speak for the whole community when I say it means a lot to us.

Please don't forget this is a niche game for a fantasy-experienced playerbase. I know it's tempting to "branch out" and capture more casual players, but this is the wrong game to do it with.

I always wanted to make a bleed-stacker Johktari with the bow and some direwolves (shooting the bow saves mana so the lair can spam more wolves). Add bloodspine walls and Wolverines and Crocodiles and Pblood and Darkfenne owls and Deathlock to keep the bleeds on.

It's fucking expensive though, you scew yourself over with deathlock, the bow is ridiculously hard to use and necros just giggle at the sight of you.

They's still be competitive. Heck, I'm convinced that Priestess, Wizard and Necro would be in almost the same situation they're in right now, even if they'd been 9-channel mages all along.

1 channel is basically worth one action and 5 mana.

This won't make or break a match. The reason our top mages are top mages is only to a very small degree their channeling. It's their abilities.

So no, they will still be competitive. I just don't like playing them.

The dragonclaw wolverine just looks radical.

Don't you mean in over 21 months? 

So in 5-6 hours from now?

I meant to say I'm free right now for about four hours. With different timezones, saying "X hours from now" has proven to be a reliable way to make appointments.

Hit me up on discord and we could play.

Two Bags of Fortune

Sajic

Courage fled Sajic as he stood before the cliff. Heights had long since lost their terror for him, at least he’d thought so. Turns out there’s a difference between flying just below the clouds and the prospect of plummeting down alongside a mountain’s face.
“I’m not sure I wanna do this any more.”
“Tough luck.” Uncle Uric could sometimes be nice. If he was drunk and in a good mood. He hadn’t had a drink in two days. “Might be Skeena can still carry both of us for a few months, but I’d rather not wait until she suddenly can’t any more. If you’re anything like your Father’n me, you’re just about to stumble into a rapid growth spurt. So get on with it. Or if you prefer to stay here and make a life among the dwarves, be my guest. I’ll just tell your mum you ran away, next time we’re at War’s. She’d probably even believe it.”
There’d never been any question about it before. He couldn’t stay at the fortress, father couldn’t take him to Galiria and the only other place for him was with the Sons of War, unless he wanted to live a beggar’s life somewhere as an outcast. He’d resolved himself to this over the last few weeks. Staying with them required him to fly though. And he couldn’t do that without jumping here.
“If you close your eyes, I’ll kick you over.”
The notion of getting kicked made his heart skip a beat or two.
“How about you stay fucking exactly where you are?”
“How about I don’t? You’ll find me at Marzyk’s. If I don’t see you until tomorrow midday, I’ll fly back on my own.”
Sajik was about to ask him to stay but his pride stopped him. Having Uric behind him wasn’t exactly helpful anyway. He suddenly thought of the opposite, about how he would just tell Uric later that he was the reason he couldn’t do it! And then, using spite instead of courage, he actually jumped.

He’d expected his body to not fully understand what’s happening. He’d thought the shock would only come after a few seconds. Instead, against his will, he began screaming the moment his feet left safe ground. Panic immediately overcame him and he tried to grab the empty air around him for some support. To his luck, anything solid was far out of reach. After a few seconds, he managed to stop his screaming and regained enough composure to look around.
The jumping point had been somewhat of an outstretched bit, like a needle that stretched away from the rest of the mountain. That way, he was in no danger of getting blown against the rock. The ground below still looked very far away, barely even growing as he came closer, almost as if he was falling very slowly. Looking back at the wall next to him shattered that illusion. The rocks passed by him so quickly, he could barely make out any details. As panic rose in his throat again, the stone suddenly gave way to an enormous cave.
Hundreds, no, thousands of gryphons were either flying somewhere in there or sitting in a nest on the walls. A big flock was down by a river that came from inside the mountain, drinking or just dozing in the shadow of some trees growing there. Marveling at the sight, Sajic now remembered all the advice for what he was about to do. “Get their attention, look helpless but not panicked,” Kijen had said. “Try not to look too tasty, you want one to save you, not to hunt you,” Sharbat had said with a huge grin. Sajic just hoped that one was a joke. “Scream too loud and they’ll be appalled. Don’t scream at all and they will think you’re fine. You need to awaken their protector’s instinct without chasing them away.” Cadosh’s advice had sounded more practical while on the ground. Not knowing how much of his voice could be heard through the wind, Sajic tried something he thought would be a loud but composed wailing.
None of the beasts reacted.
He tried some appealing shouting, also to no avail. Hopeful yelling just echoed back from somewhere and whenever he tried to actually get words across, the echo sounded so distorted that he might as well not articulate. When nothing helped and the end of the cave was already close, he was out of ideas and just howled like a wolf.
That actually made two of the closer gryphons turn their heads away. Then, suddenly, he was past the cave, back to seeing nothing but rock rushing by him, the animals vanishing out of sight above. His body tried panicked screaming again, as the ground visibly rushed towards him. There was a small lake at the landing point, but he’d heard that water, at this speed, behaved very similar to rock at the point of impact. As he realized how close death was, he frantically looked around whether there were any gryphons straying away from the big cave, but he couldn’t spot a single feather.
Unable to do any more for his survival, he resigned himself to hope and prayer, closed his eyes and, while yelling at the top of his lungs, waited for death or rescue.

Rescue finally came in the form of two huge bird claws, one of which caught almost his whole body, with the other one stabilizing his head, as to not break his neck in the process. Sajic opened his eyes again, happy to be safe and immediately let out one more screech when he saw that the lake’s surface was only an arm’s length away.
“Gnirfskn!”
That reply came from the back of the Gryphon and it immediately took all the happiness out of getting saved. He hadn’t been saved by a wild beast, ready to be tamed. He’d been taken by a dwarven gryphonrider looking for a reward. When they finally landed near the shore, the animal dropped him in the grass, sunk onto its legs and stared at him with those golden eyes behind the beak. A small person jumped off its back, armor and accessories tinkling as he walked towards Sajic.
Even without understanding all of the deep-dwarven he spoke, it was obvious that he was making fun of him and asking for a reward. When Sajic took some silver coins out, the dwarf got angry, or at least pretended as much. He immediately got friendly again when Sajic pulled out one of his dwarfcoins and even stayed friendly when he repeatedly pointed at the gryphon, the mountain and said “Marzyk’s” a few times.

So I played against Freeborn’s Forcemaster with my Warlock yesterday. It was a highly interesting match, for various reasons.

I was playing my “Lordlock” again that tries to lead two or three of the following big-bads into battle: Dark Pact Slayer, Dark Pact Slayer, Goran, Malacoda, Magma Golem.

 First turn, I opened with a step toward him and two mana flowers. He played a forge and an enchant and decided to stay in his corner. My second turn saw me equipping a hawkeye and placing a forward forge into his center tile. I wanted to start hardcasting the next turn.
He got Moonglow out of the forge, that turn, then Summoned a brute and enchanted it.

Change of plans, then. No creatures. Dark Pact pierce is useless against Brutes, as is the bloodthirst from Goran and a Bloodreaper. I’m not dumb enough to summon a Magma Golem or Malacoda against a force master. I summoned my second forge and tried to gear up for a) cheap curses with moloch and b) more dice on my fire attacks and rerolls for range. I gave myself regrowth and kept chains of Agony for final QC because it’s a pretty neat curse against zombies. He got a force-snake out and revealed redistributed power on his brute.

Next turn, he deployed a dispel-wand and immediately got rid of the Chains of Agony. Wary of a forcepush into a melee-buffed brute, I changed my forge-plan into some defense. Little did the brute care, because it rolled a six-crit attack, ignoring whatever armor I build up. That’s when I started retreating. I put enfeeble onto his mage, without revealing it and I threw an Agony onto the brute to save one of my forges. He attacked, it survived. Then he dispelled the agony. When he was in the left center-tile, together with my first forge and I was in C3, right next to my spawn corner and below my second forge, he halted his charge and refused to walk into my waiting crumble for two turns. I really wanted to get rid of his Wand.

After I shot an 8-dice Fireball into his brute, dealing 4 normal and 2 crit damage and then rerolled that into 7 normal damage (At least I got two burns), he exclaimed “ah, now I see why they’re broken” and proceeded to summon another one. That one also got some power redistributed from a force-snake, as well as the mage.
When his mage and one of the brutes finally destroyed my first forge, I had two leathers, a shadow cloak, and a vet belt. I also had both Warlock rings, precision gloves and Moloch. I felt battle-ready. One of the brutes obliged and walked into my zone.
To hit me with a roll that dealt 11 damage.
I had a guard ready and a firestream, leaving that brute with 8 dmg and 2 burns. I then walked into the right center zone to be with my remaining forge, as well as the forcemaster and the second brute, dissolving the wand.

The burns killed that first brute, now I had to face the second one, as well as a melee+5 Galvitar-Equipped Forcemaster. I’d saved some mana, so I equipped a demonhide armor, played a debilitate onto the forcemaster and, after getting tanglevined in QC, blasted the zone with a ring of fire. Tangle took 6 dmg and two burns,
Forcemaster took 4 dmg and two burns, brute took some normal damage and no burns. At least I rerolled that into a bit of critting. The forcemaster then proceeded to enchant me, instead of hitting me with a debilitated doublestrike into 4 armor and a vet belt, then hit me with the brute, bringing me up to around 21 damage. The demonhide did some work and put 2 more damage onto the brute.

The next turn, I finally activated my regrowth and teleported into my spawn corner, two tiles away from the enfeebled mage and the lumbering brute, thus dropping the tanglevine and guaranteeing that no melee would hit me that turn.

I spent a bit of damage to kill the brute, he spent some mana to de-curse himself with dispels and to try pulling me towards the brute. During all this time, one of the burns from the ring of fire stayed on him. The brute died and we found ourselves back in the forge zone, my demonhide dispelled and my movement somewhat restricted by a force crush. Since I didn’t really fancy getting hit by 9+4 dice, I’d spent my dispels on his bear strength and his Distributed power, and also gave him an Agony. He poisoned my blood and ate a flameblast in return, bringing him to around 15 dmg and a second burn.

Seeing as his melee attacks were rather useless, he summoned a stalker. Stalker got one attack in, got a friendly enchant and brought me to a dangerous point, since poisoned blood and force crush were ticking just as the burns on the forcemaster were. I decided to throw my other two flameblasts into his face, then gave him a ghoul rot and lesser teleported out of the zone in final QC, his ini. At this point, he had Ghoul rot, Moloch damage and two burns to fear in his upkeep, with only a regrowth to help him survive. He was at 29 dmg

In the end, after all automated dmg was applied, he had one hp remaining. My plan had been to use another lesser teleport in order to get out of range (forcecrush preventing a pull) and then just betting my luck on a fireball against his dodge.
Screw the plan though, I killed him with Moloch instead.

Well played, freeborn. That was an enjoyable match.

Things of note:
If all of your creatures either get countered by forcemaster or feel rather useless against brutes, you’re gonna scratch your head a bit when a forcemaster starts summoning brutes against you.

I usually name it a weakness for brutes that it’s hard to buff them. Distributed power kinda circumvents that. Then again, one of the big strengths of a brute is that he doesn’t really need buffs anyway. So while the book idea is an interesting one, I’m not quite sold on it being a smart one yet.

Personally, I’d have tried to use force pulling a bit earlier. In Freeborn’s defense, I usually expected a pull and positioned in ways where one pull would not be enough to get me into real danger. When I finally gave him a chance to pull me, it would have put him out of his forge range to do it and cost him an action because he was already enfeebled.

While his defense protected him from me even attempting a fireball, it didn’t help against my flameblasts. I had three of those, with 2 additional dice, 1 pierce and a reroll. He really needed an answer to that, but once he forcecrushed me, there wasn’t really any mana for a forcefield.

Generally the most fun thing about the match was the way he forced me to completely abandon the plan I had for my book and go back my curselock-roots. I wouldn't confidently say that I can beat that Forcemaster with my other books.