Any more Mage Wars players in the area? There is a growing circle in Surrey/Hampshire, and keen to expand.

Weekly games in the Mulberry pub in Farnham, early week days. There are an increasing number of players in the Board2Death group, which meets weekly alternately in the Black Heath and Aldershot.

More players are getting into this from the excellent Epsom Games Club - venues established both in Epsom and in a pub in Abinger. Come along! All welcome! Reply here or send me a message to get involved.

I wonder if anyone has tried the old gate to hell with the Adramlech warlock?

Seems that a fire attack against every non flying enemy creature in the game, plus wildfire imps, and the new synergies from Forged in Fire could be pretty fantastic.

It's still a huge cost - 24 mana - but it seems more viable now, especially against a swarm deck. (Of course to make it really good vs the druid, adding its attack to plant conjurations would be awesome and feel entirely thematic, but perhaps make warlock too strong against the druid.)

On an aside, can a demon summoned from a Pentagram also appear at the gate to hell?

I remember reading that a garrison post couldn't be used to summon a capture from a barracks.

But seriously, that's exactly what this card is crying out for to be useful. I find it irritating it doesn't specify this is possible.

Reading again, I think it could be ambiguous... Ultimately, a mage is summoning even if using a spawnpoint, no?

Surely the garrison post should work with the barracks. I can see no reason why it should't and it would actually make the card useful.

I'm assuming walls affect your own creatures as well as enemy creatures, correct?

Also, re replacing walls with different walls, the rulebook says you have to destroy the old wall first. Can the mage who cast it simply remove it, or does he have to send his creatures to tear it down?

The more I read here, the more it seems that any mage without a heavy selection of arcane spells (teleports, dispels etc) will always be subpar. All skills being equal, a mage which has a lot of arcane utility spells will beat a mage without lots of arcane.

This - from what I glean - is because arcane offers the key to rushing (both in executing it, and defending against it), and from what I see, rushing is the dominant strategy. (ie There is no time to build up a beautiful array of defences and outposts). It also appears to be the primary means of countering or fizzling opponents' spells, which is always important, and in getting your big creatures, or mage, out of any tricks and traps.

Of course it's possible for someone to win without arcane, and obviously this is only really relevant once people delve deep into min maxing their mages. Personally, I am never likely to progress much beyond casual play, so it probably doesn't matter.

But this sits uncomfortably with me.

The fact that triple arcane cost effectively rules the warlord out of the game (on top of the fact that a mage built around spawning lots of soldiers and buffingis very bad at spawning lots of soldiers and buffing them), and that any mage without a heavy selection of arcane spells will necessarily be subpar.

My ideal of mage wars is that mages from different schools of magic pits their wits against each other, and all stand a good chance of competing. There should be an opportunity for mages which don't stuff their spellbooks with arcane to win the game.

Of course, there will always be dominant strategies in any game like this; it is almost impossible to have this much variety and keep it balanced. There will almost always some schools that are better than others.

But for one school to be so dominant seems a curious design decision.

I hope I have misunderstood, and that I am wrong in this!

I have finally gone 'all in' by getting all the expansions for this game, though I don't think I'll get the extra spell tomes, as they seem to be a bit of a waste.

To help me in my familiarization and to offer fellow beginners a choice of balanced battles, I would love to hear any suggestions of good x vs y matches, including decks, which offer an even chance of either side winning.

Happy to be linked to any other suggestions here, but what I'd really like to hear about are any great even matches, which didn't rely on excess gaminess (exploiting some broken combo, obsessive min maxing etc), that can offer a good time for both players.

(Edit: by preconstructed, I don't necessarily mean those constructed by arcane wonders, but any spell books that people have made. Have edited the title).

Can I assume it's not ok to decide not to spend the extra mana with force push, and to slam against a passage attacks wall instead?

As a matter of interest, what was the reason they introduced the extra cost? Was it because it was being abused?