Oh, another reason you might swap a spell for another copy of itself: you need to trigger a Jinx, and you want to save both your prepared spells so that you have options later. Swapping the bound spell is a Quick Spell, and will trigger the Jinx.

Specifically, during the upkeep phase, you control the order of the effects that affect the objects you control. If an effect affects multiple objects controlled by different players or an object that isn't controlled by a player like an orb, (or -- I assume -- if an effect occurs that doesn't effect any objects but instead does something to a zone or whatever) the player with Initiative choses the order in which things happen.

Outside of the Upkeep phase, I was under the impression that the player with Initiative just decided everything regardless.

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There's a bit of a rules issue with cards like Teleport Trap. The effect teleports the creature, but it also destroys the trap. So even if the creature somehow triggered Teleport Trap during the Upkeep, hypertechnically it's possible that the player with Initiative would always decide when the trap ability happened.

Every time the playtesters get a new set, several people, myself sometimes included, miss a relevant target line. Everyone makes this mistake with new cards.

There's a relevant story I didn't tell in the Forged In Fire preview article. We testers very nearly missed that Defend lacked the word "Friendly" in the target bar. Laddinfance gave us an 8pm deadline for final notes, and that one was found at 7:30.

I'm sure that the final AW internal review would have caught it, but that would have been embarrassing. : )

Yep, that's reasonable.

If it did, you wouldn't be able to...
Release The Kraken!

Quote from: Kelanen on October 16, 2016, 12:42:29 PM

Quote from: SharkBait on October 15, 2016, 05:11:54 PM

Side note for kelanen: i would take an AC warlock to a tournament over 3/4 of the existing mages. You guys put way too much of a match's result on the mage instead of on the player, in my opinion.

Not meaning to shoot anyone down here,  but i don't think you guys are giving players enough credit

Not at all - I completely agree that a good player with a bad mage will beat a bad player with a good mage. But with two equal players the better mage will win - why handicap yourself? I go into a tournament taking the best I possibly can, so even the 2nd best is not good enough, let alone the 25th percentile, even if I agreed with that.

But there is no such thing as "equal" players, just as there is no such mage that is better than every other mage in each situation that can arise. Taking the best you can just means taking the mage that you personally play best with, not that it's better across the board. Inherently, that comes down to the player, not the mage.

Lets not get carried away here.

You and I both have been at fault, a couple times at least, for making some mage either stronger or weaker. There have definetly been mages that have allowed me to beat much stronger players.

I think you're maybe looking at this from the perspective of a very strong tactical player, with excellent predictive judgement and attention to detail.

I'm a B level player at best (occasional small tournament wins, etc), so I know that if I'm stomping a top tier opponent it's not my play skill that's carrying the day. It was probably my spellbook and mage choice.

There have, in the past, been mages that were just plain better than the alternative. There's a reason Forcemaster and Wizard got errata.

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Having said that, I have a message for anyone who thinks they've solved the current metagame. Buckle up, buttercup.

Crown of protection is very weak?

That's reasonable. I have to say, though, that one reason for an invitational would be that we have two apparently contradictory issues: a desire to increase the number of people in the tournament, and the incredible cost of actually doing so at Gencon. An invitational system that was working correctly would probably give very heavy weight to the fact that you're the ambassador from Saint Louis, the city that took 5 of the 12 seats this year.