So there is this new strategy to have 4 thoughtspores sitting in the corner with 4 minds eyes flying around to let them all be in range all the time. Borg postet his book in this thread:
http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=17826.0

I run a slightly different one and was quite successful with it. Now I hear voices calling "overpowered" very fast... but is true? Maybe there is a strategy to counter this before that just has to be found.

Everything from here on is pure theorie since I was just playing FM myself, never against it.


Minds eye itself is just a helper in belongings of range. It is flying incorporeal with 7 life. Tough to get rid of.
4 Minds eyes on the field can completely be ignored if there are not enough sources of spells to use them. In my opinion it is wasted energy to go for the eyes. It's the source for spells you want to bring down.


So basically you want to stop spores (and the mage) from casting spells.

A spore is 8 Mana 2 sbp And minds eye is 6/2.
If your goal is to get into range quickly (rush) those 8 sbp are wasted for the fm anyway, setting you in a good position.
As mentioned before eyes without spores are useless. So to bring one spore down you can more or less spend 14 mana, 4 sbp, one full and one quick action to make it a wash. (I know it is a misleading calculation, but you need to start somewehre). That should be quite easy with. 2 hurl boulder for example is 2 more expensive but only 2 qc. Also a hurl meteor can do the job. Or drain life. And so on. The BIG Advantage for the FM is his control over positioning. You have to get in range somehow.

Whatever you do is better if it is done quickly. The toolbox in the book is large and all spells (if bound to a spore) can be used many times. All your damage can be countered if the job is not finished!
That is incredibly strong but it is also a weakness if you look at it.
Since a max of 4 spores is possible in a book they are very limited. The choice of spells to bind on them are the most important for the FM. His toolbox is large and not redundant. If you kill the sleep spore there is no more sleep around. If you kill the teleport spore the FM will no longer teleport.
The most important choice to counter the book is to find out what spore is making you the bigest problems (and this should mean in killing the spores) and also what spore is most important for the FM not to lose.
Well the dissolve spore is pretty annoying but you can bet its one of those few spells FM has more then one copy. Hard choice.

There is also the possibility of DOT on the spores. But as metioned only one mendspore will make that useless, and time is working for the FM. Another weakness of for example idol / deathlock is, that the eyes are flying, making walls to hide the idol useless.


Some cards that are also pretty helpful in my opinion are:

Gravikor: making spores much more vulnerable and reachable for melee attacks

Falcon (swarm) (I know that was mentioned before)

lesser teleport, divine intervention (and also all kinds of quick movement) to get in range.

All weapons with reach + arcane ward

exile (to buy some time)

jinx

chant of rage (making spores move instead of casting and making them come to you)

the force wave / Pillar combo


What I am not talking about is, that on top of all problems there is a vampiress (could be a different buddy) and some enchentments and the FM with bearstrength/galvitar saving the spores from getting attacked.


Summary:

All plans above want to be fast. That makes me think slow books have a hard time against this kind of FM.

I think it is hardly ever good to kill an eye. An errata on it could change this, but I guess asking for this is way to early and the meta too unexplored.

Range 3 one-shot kills can be gamechangers here I guess.


What do you all think?

I would love to have something like that:

Force plug
enchentment, mind-school, subtype: force
cost 2+1 (?)
target: object with channeling

"This object loses and cannot gain its channeling trait as long as force plug is attached to it".



It would be an interesting counter to familiars and spawnpoits, leaving them alive but more cost-intense.
Should be a FM card, and I think force plug is thematically cool

What do you think?

Since PvS we have terrain conjurations. They can only be countered through another terrain. And they are limited.

Right now we have:
- Consecrated ground. Good for holy. Regen + aegis. cheap
- shallow sea. Good for water. Regen + melee + kind-of-aegis. Cheap
- steep hill. Good for ranged shooters. Propably good for war. Expensive
- swamp. Good for aqua. Expensive
- elephant grass. Good for nature survivability and can generally hide stuff. Expensive

So when playing a forcemaster or warlock or necro or wizard none of all terrain will help you. If you face a holy, water or nature mage you have to live with the fact, that the whole enemy team will get big bonuses, or regenerate away whatever you do. Also you will play with less dice.

What can you do?
- You can pick elephant grass or steep hill and pay 4 sbp just to pay about 13 mana just as a counter maybe even without own advantage... Bad idea.
- deathlock/poisoned blood. That will work at least against regeneration, but after some rounds could be gone. Will get focused.
- tweak your strategy to get your enemy out of its safety zone.
- ignore it

In my experience the last two or 3 are probably the way to go at the moment. It is manageable to stop everything from healing, to get damage through aegis and to ignore some problems, but it is always a fight uphill.

How do you feel?
I personally don't like that terrain can not be countered and that there is no useful terrain for a fm or warlock. Especially fm who often goes solo now has big issues against aegis/regen (making his galvitar + scimitar 3+3+2=8-regen1 instead of 4+4+3=11. Cutting of 1/4 of dice)

How do you all handle this?

P.s. I really hope to see some fire-terrain, force-terrain and poison-terrain soon. Then everything will be fine again!

A crusade banner summons 2 creatures during deployment phase. Ehren and broken wing angel. Can Ehren be in the zone first and by this get the healing bonus from the angel who gets summoned second, or are both creatures summoned exactly parallel and no interaction is possible?

To replace a terrain fir another you have to pay
- the existing terrains casting cost
- the new terrains casting cost
- casting cost of all conjurations attached to this terrain. An example in RAW is whirlpool.

To understand it right: is any conjuration that targets a zone that is also targeted by an existing terrain attached to that terrain?

I just want to tell the world how awesome hunting spear is for Johktari!
Fast walk 2 and throw 1 as quick action with 6 dice with hawkeye. Nicey
I took out ballista 1 shot and battle forge 1 shot the first 3 rounds of a game thanks to piercing. That was insane! Later I got enemy mage restrained in a danger zone.
Really fun to play Joktari right now!

[spellbook]
[spellbookheader]
[spellbookname]Seal Breaker[/spellbookname]
[mage]A Warlock Spellbook[/mage]
[mage]built by the OCTGN SBB[/mage]
[/spellbookheader]
[spells]
[spellclass]Attack[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MW1A06]1 x Flameblast[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Conjuration[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MW1J17]1 x Pentagram[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1J20]2 x Sacrificial Altar[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKJ01]1 x Enchanter's Wardstone[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Creature[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MWAWLC08]1 x Naraka Vampiress[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFC02]1 x Blood Demon[/mwcard]
[mwcard=DNC11]1 x Ravenous Ghoul[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWAWLC07]4 x Mhegedden, Sealed Demon[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1C03]1 x Dark Pact Slayer[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Enchantment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MW1E20]1 x Harmonize[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKE04]2 x Enchantment Transfusion[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWA01E02]1 x Arcane Ward[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E05]1 x Cheetah Speed[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWAWLE03]1 x Demonic Link[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E29]2 x Nullify[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWAPRE04]1 x Gator Toughness[/mwcard]
[mwcard=FWE03]2 x Falcon Precision[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E36]2 x Rhino Hide[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWA01E13]1 x Panther Stealth[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E28]1 x Mongoose Agility[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E01]2 x Bear Strength[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX2FFE07]1 x Rust[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E14]2 x Enfeeble[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E31]2 x Poisoned Blood[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E23]2 x Jinx[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1E08]1 x Death Link[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Equipment[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MW1Q09]1 x Enchanter's Ring[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWA01Q04]1 x Leather Chausses[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ06]1 x Eagleclaw Boots[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1Q06]2 x Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWA01Q10]1 x Wychwood Ironvine[/mwcard]
[spellclass]Incantation[/spellclass]
[mwcard=MW1I20]1 x Purify[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1I28]2 x Teleport[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1I12]2 x Force Push[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1I24]1 x Seeking Dispel[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1I07]2 x Dissolve[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MW1I06]2 x Dispel[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWPROMO6]1 x Clear Mind[/mwcard]
[mwcard=MWAWLI03]1 x Siphon Life[/mwcard]
[/spells]
[cost]Total cost: 120 pts[/cost]
[/spellbook]

I wanted to share a book I am working on with you. After reading about mhegeden in another thread I thought it's the right time to post this.

The main idea is to spawn mheggeden for and sacrifice him the same round before you lose life at upkeep. Ravenous ghoul eats his bones to grow.

The fast opening is:
1) 19 Naraka (8 ), QC ench.Ring (2) - 9
2) 18 Ghoul (13), QC FD ench (1) - 4 ..... Naraka double move
3) 13 Mhegg.. (6), QC Altar (4) ..... go and sacrifice him

This opening is very unsecure. You have to hardcast mheggeden yourself and are completely naked. There is only 1 enchentment under Naraka and she is very easy to kill. But depending on how you read your oponent it is a possibility that puts heavy pressure on the board.

The very slow but full opening is:
1) 19 Naraka (8 ), QC Ring (2) - 9
2) 18 FD (1), FD (2) - 15 (... or leather)
3) 24 QC FD (1), Ghoul (13) -10
4) 19 Pentagram (14), harmonize (1+2) - 1
5) 10+2 deploy mheggeden (4) .... 6 mana to play with

The good thing is, that till round 3 it looks like a buddy build with ghoul. But it takes a while.

Healing is via demonic link, death link, belt and after narakas dead a bloodreaper.
The two bigger demons are backup.
I would only sacrifice mheggeden since 6 life are precious. But at least one of them can be used as backup as well.

cheetah is anti-slow
elusive very important for this tactic. Unavoidible as well. Both double for that reason.
ET, ring and Wardstone support those many enchantments.
Jinx to stop counterideas of enemy mage.

16 SBP are a lot for 4x mheggedon, but after the setup you want to get many dice really going through. So much piercing that enemy armor doesn't matter. Rust is for the case that setup fails for any reason and you or your buddies go punching as usual. Anyway I had to cut cards I really miss....

I only played this book twice with success and like the idea. What do you think?
Feedback heavily appreciated!

A long time ago i have spent $5 to support the great work AW has shown by releasing a nice spellbookbuilder app. There were bugs, but I had hope.

Now these days the app is as outdated as possible and no bug has been fixed. Nothing has changed at all. As I understand it, the development has endet and there seems to be no future. Correct me if I am wrong!

Now there is a also an outdated sbb on the website and and external one getting developed by some fan (awsome!). And there is octgn where the the support is switching from sIKE to arcane duals.

I guess arcane wonders has successfully paid their invoice for app-development and own its code. As it is (and without further input will be) it is useless and overprized. That is such a waste and a shame!

I propose to open the sourcecode of the app! Share its github! There is nothing to lose roght now!

But there is a wide base of players who invest time and energie to create a sbb and the app is a solid point to start.

Sadly I have to admit I am not talking about myself. I am no programmer at all. Just a player who liked the app and would love to see it been continued. Maybe the croation guy or arcane duals can put all those pieces of half-complete sbbs together and present one really great for all platforms (including mobile phones)...