Anyone want to help me test some of these? it's for academy except on a 2x3 zone arena.

Force Nudge
costs 2 mana
range 0-1
lv 1 mind
force subtype
incantation
target minor creature
target creature is pushed one zone in direction of your choice

Force Peel
lv1 mind
type enchant
range 0-2
target zone
subtype force, illusion, trap
costs 2 mana, 3 to reveal

when a creature enters this zone, reveal Force Peel. That creature gains the stagger condition and cannot take any more move actions this round. Destroy Force Peel.

Gust
lv1 air
range 0-1
attack spell
1 dice, 5+ push

Divine Coincidence
range 0-2
enchant
cost 2, reveal 5
lv3 holy
target: non-mage creature
Holy mage only
Epic
When this creature is attacked by a non-spell attack, cancel the attack and teleport this creature up to 2 zones away. Then flip the attacker's action marker face up. If the attack had any costs, refund them all. Skip your next creature activation. Destroy Divine Coincidence.

Burrowing
lv2 war or lv 2 nature
target living creature
incantation
costs 3, one less if target is lv1
until the end of this round, when target creature makes a move action, it can instead burrow to an adjacent zone, ignoring enemy creatures and walls.

Trench
conjuration-- wall
costs 5 mana
lv1 earth lv1 war
target: zone border
range 0-1
life 6
does not block passage or los, nor does any passage attacks
This wall hinders creatures that move through it.

Sticky Mud
conjuration: terrain
lv2 earth
range 0-1
target: zone
costs 4 mana
Sticky Mud hinders every creature that enters or start its activation in this zone, unless its controlling mage pays 1 mana.

Ordinary Rope
cost 4 mana
conjuration
2 life
lv1 nature
target: corporeal creature
target creature is restrained

Dimensional Shift
Enchantment
lv2 arcane
subtype: teleport
range 0-2
target: non-mage creature
dissipate 2

This creature gains the phased-out trait. (It treats all objects that do not have the phased-out trait as if they are not in play, and all objects that do not have the phased-out trait treat it as if it is not in play.) Revealing this enchantment counts as a teleport.

Infernal Chains
Conjuration
target: non-mage creature
cost 5 mana
life 2
armor 3
target creature is restrained and gains the anchored trait

Tiger Leap
lv1 nature
target: minor living creature
type enchantment
range 0-2
costs 2 reveal 2 (1 less if target is lv1)
This creature gains the flying trait at the start of each move action it takes. it loses the flying trait at the end of each move action it takes.

There are some overpowered or useless cards that need fixing, in that order. Since most competitive mage wars tournaments are hosted by the community and not by Arcane Wonders, that means that we get to decide how we want to do things.

This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

To start with, here are the unofficial errata that are currently used in the ADMW tournaments:

Disciple of Radiance Text Change
Once per round, whenever your Mage casts or reveals a healing spell, Disciple of Radiance may deal 1 direct light damage to a target creature in her zone

Casting a Spell - Change to the end of the Pay Costs Step
Previous wording - If you cannot pay all of the costs, the spell is cancelled and discarded, and you have lost the action.
New wording -If you cannot pay all of the costs, the spell is cancelled and obliterated, and you have lost the action.
Everything else remains unchanged about the step

Steep Hill
Steep hill will block Line of Sight if you cast a spell and it goes through two diagonal sections of the zone.

Force Pull
Once per round, the Forcemaster may cast this quick Force spell. Target creature is Pushed 1 zone towards the source of this spell. Will not Push a creature through a wall with the Passage Attacks trait.

Trample
- If a Flying creature makes a Trample attack against a non-Flying object, it loses Flying until the end of the attack.
- Elusive Creatures can ignore guards when making a Trample Attack.
- Defenses that do not work against Melee attacks cannot be used during the Avoid Attack step, however all other types may be (choosing one during the step following normal rules).


We also need to do something about the Druid. In particular, if you're facing a competent Druid player it virtually always puts you behind on mana and actions to destroy the treebond, yet it is nigh impossible to kill the druid without destroying her tree first.

Goblin builder and Gate to Hell would benefit from errata that improves their usability, but that doesn't need to be done right away.

The Bloodwave warlord's ability card is basically useless since all it does it increase the attack dice or armor of his creatures. The veterans ability in particular is designed to improve the power and endurance of a creature after it kills an enemy creature. 1 armor and 1 melee is not enough for this, because a creature has often taken damage by the time they've killed something. One possibility is to make stronger veteran tokens that have dissipate x, as a sort of blood rage or berserker sort of thing. Like, when a soldier of the bloodwave kills an enemy creature they go into a frenzy where they get better at killing things and are harder to take down. So like, instead of armor +1 melee +1, make it bloodthirsty +2 and armor +2 or something. Also that way it isn't just a worse version of Paladin's valor enchantment.

Anything else you think needs an errata? Post your suggestions below.

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EDIT: okay, so after reading a few more comments i've somewhat changed my mind about card errata. we probably don't need any errata for broken cards at the present time, just for cards that are worded badly or break rules as intended, or which are worded confusingly and need to be made more clear. The only exception to this is probably the disciple of radiance.

The game might be more fun and diverse with single purpose wands instead of mage wands/elemental wands, but i'm not sure that's actually necessary for game balance, so that idea's not a good one right now. We don't need to get rid of spellbind.

As for the druid being nigh unkillable without killing her tree, i suppose that one way to think of it is that the druid's tree is like a part of her mage abilities which doesn't become active until after the game starts and she spends mana and actions on it. if you think of the druid as a 34 life 10 channeling mage, and the tree as a 9 mana spawnpoint with 1 channeling and regen 2 and the ability to transfer damage to the controlling mage to make it more surivvable.... barkskin compensates for this, but barkskin has upkeep +2. so basically if your running a druid with a vine tree bonded thats' 34 life and 10 channeling on your mage, minus 10 starting mana and one quick action, and if opponent starts attacking tree and the tree needs to transfer damage to mage, barkskin is needed to compensate for that, which has upkeep 2 so thats like lowering druid down to 8 channeling effectively
So basically, the druid actually starts the game off at a mana and action disadvantage. She isn't overpowered, but maybe it would be a good idea to start attacking the tree sooner even if you don't expect to destroy it. the damage will be transferred to mage, then if she puts barkskin on it will be easier to gain a mana advantage on her until she removes it, which may give you more time to setup on her.

I talked with sharkbait and he explained to me that this game is in dire need of some improvements that Arcane Wonders is unlikely to make, so we as a community need to do it ourselves. I've been kinda thinking that near the back of my mind for quite a while, so I've decided to take it upon myself to get this ball rolling.

In particular we need the following in order of priority:

1. Rules Cleanup
There are a number of messy or broken rules interactions that need fixing, and all of the rules need to be better organized in one place.

2. Card Errata
there are some overpowered or useless cards that need fixing, in that order.
EDIT: there are no overpowered cards in the game currently, but there could be in the future. Some errata may still be necessary however. This is explained in more detail in an edit to the original post.
This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

3. Separate unofficial set-release schedules for Academy and Arena
We need to make separate unofficial release schedules for sets in both Academy and Arena, so that the balance of one game's metagame doesn't interfere with the balance of the other.
EDIT: This might become necessary in the future, not sure it's actually necessary right now. The game isn't THAT old yet, so perhaps it isn't time to worry about large imbalances of card support just yet. If it becomes necessary later I will open a thread for this.
This thread is for experienced mage wars players only, preferably those with ~2+ years of play. Obviously I can't prove who's been playing 2+ years and who hasn't, so we're using an honor system here.

So I've noticed that Arena's metagame isn't as diverse as it seems like it ought to be given the size of the card pool and the sheer modularity of the game. A lot of competitive books I face on OCTGN feel a bit samey, and that's something I've noticed for a long time. When the wizard was errrated that increased deck building innovation quite a bit, and there seemed to be so many possibilities. As we got more expansions, mages got more options and more ways to play, and yet the total variety of the metagame doesn't feel like it's increased all that much correspondingly. Somehow as more tools became available to our toolboxes, the total number and uniqueness of the different possible toolboxes we could make went down.

When people on the forums talk about tiers they never talk about particular deck archetypes like Falcon swarm, or Forge and Galvitar Rush. Instead they always talk about the Mage classes. This seems to me to be a symptom of the greater problem of insufficient variety in the metagame. Individual spellbooks aren't standing out enough. Rather than seeing a falcon swarm straywood beastmaster and a grizzly buddy straywood beastmaster and a so on and so forth, people just see the straywood beastmaster.

While mages are creatures with their own power levels like any other card, there's a lot more to a deck than which mage is used in it.

So why is there such insufficient variety in the metagame, and how could that problem be resolved? Discuss.

Kind of like 3D chess. Two layers of zones, one on top of the other. Range, Los and movement treat corresponding zones on each layer as adjacent to each other.

Have fun!

Kind of like 3D chess. Two layers of zones, one on top of the other. Range, Los and movement treat corresponding zones on each layer as adjacent to each other.

Have fun!

Hi. I've decided to host a Mage Wars Academy tournament at Origins this year. It will be an unofficial, round robin tournament with no time limits. The winner will get a magical college diploma (trophy shaped like a scroll).

Spellbook list submission deadline is before the tournament starts. Only Academy sets released at least a month before the tournament will be legal.

If you would like to attend, let me know by pm, email or facebook and what days or times you would prefer for the tournament to be held.

I'm thinking the tournament will most likely be held in the early to mid afternoon on Wednesday June 13th (day 1/5 of the con) in the mage wars section of the open gaming hall.

This is because that way it will be out of the way quickly for those of you who want to have as much time as you can to practice for Arena afterwards, and you won't have any less time to practice on site than other years. (Since origins was previously 4 days long instead of 5).

Let's make it happen!