Starving the opponent.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I read an article somewhere on these forums about resources. According to the article, a Mage's mana is one of the highest order resources, since it is converted into every other resource in the game, ultimately in the end being converted into the final resource, damage on the opposing mage. I'm not sure you need to really control 2 out of 3, per say. Since if you control their mana supply, it's a lot harder for them to cast things, so the other two resources would also be controlled indirectly.

Maybe it's possible to focus on defensive strategies and mana denial, without thinking so much about controlling action advantage or damage output directly. Instead of using defensive creatures and familiars and stuff to protect yourself and generate action advantage, maybe one could try using things like mongoose agility, cheetah speed and a couple of teleports to be used on the mage, and probably a defense or two. That way you can get within range of the opposing mage and start the mana denial earlier. It would be a sort of "hit and run" mana denial strategy. Perhaps some familiars would be useful after all in a build like that for taking care of threats, such as having goblin builders cast things like tanglevine and quicksand, or using huggin to cast incantations like force push and to know when to seeking dispel a threatening enchantment. But for the most part I think those creatures would only need to be used earlier in the game to take care of threats, rather than for action advantage or to threaten the opposing mage with more damage, or for trying to control how much damage  you receive by choosing to guard from certain attacks.

[reddawn]

Passive healing is fine, if you can actually afford to wait several turns to actually get the value you payed for upfront.  Passive healing is also a lot easier to stop with various dispel effects.

To not put any "active" way of healing yourself or your creatures in your book seems pretty odd to me, and to say that you rarely use healing at all makes that even harder to believe.  Unless you're playing against a vegetable, you should be taking a good amount of damage every turn.

And it wouldn't make sense to re-summon the creatures that actually have a decent impact on the game.  A majority of the best creatures in the game cost upwards of 15 to 24 mana, which for pretty much any mage is unreasonable to pay later in the game when you could just heal it.  Summoning also costs full actions, which become exponentionally harder to reliably execute after the first few turns, so active healing is far more action and mana efficient than posts here would have you believe.

Idk, lots here I disagree with.

[The Dude]

To clarify, what do you disagree with? If it's something I have spoken about in this particular article, I would love some feedback.

[cbalian]

I think Red is disagreeing with my post about active vs passive healing.

Red correct me if I'm wrong you are in favor of active healing I'm on the passive healing side of the fence?  And I just am interested in the conversation from a learning perspective so I can understand.

Perhaps my disinterest in active healing (meaning casting a direct heal spell) has been because I have crappy rolls so I could spend that mana and get VERY little benefit from it, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

I'm no math wizard I am sure someone has the statistics, but with an equal chance per dice of getting a 0, 1, or 2 lets average that to 1 per dice so a minor heal gets you 5 point heal and major gets 8.  Give or take, I've landed a crappy heal for 2 and good heals of 10, anyways going with 5-8 heal.

So now we've casted that heal, it lands and you think cool, I just saved my creature.  But unless it is a heavily armored creature and your opponent has nothing else around you really only bought that creature 1-2 turns.  Which can be valuable in the right situation I agree.

However lets say it is a big creature of say 15 life, you just healed 5 life.  What's to say that creature isn't just going to die?  Now you spent mana on a heal and you are still out the creature.  Maybe my main point is that summoning a creature vs healing a creature still puts more pressure on your opponent.  A wounded creature + a fresh beast seems better than a single half life creature, you will just have to heal again to keep alive.

Do you want to spend 8 mana to heal 8 points or spend 15 mana to get a new creature?  When I "think" unless I'm wrong you will have to summon that other creature anyways, so it seems more expensive but really you saved yourself the mana from the heal (that you didn't cast) so can get more creatures out faster.

That is the mana cost of it.  Spell book cost, (unless I am a preist) that heal is going to cost me 2-4 spell book points when for 3 spell book points I could add another decent creature.  I guess I'm saying push comes to shove I'd rather add another creature to my book than a heal. 

But again that might be me, and my bad rolling might be making me think a heal spell isn't as good as a new creature.  For me the new creature comes into play FULL HEALTH, a heal is only going to heal partial health maybe so I like my guarantee'd full health creature over trusting the luck of the dice.

Oh and on passive healing I do agree there are methods to get rid of them.  Fortunately those are rarely needed and only come out at the end game when most methods to remove them have been exhausted.  Like I keep a regrowth belt in the book but rarely ever put it on, but if I have its been late in the game so it does its job.  I guess against an agressive forcemaster though that certainly isn't going to save me against 10 dice of dmg per round (but I try to avoid those situations with armor and defenses so I don't get into the situation of needing direct healing). 

The only passive healing I do pull out early is Vamparism, it is just too tempting to swing at a creature or mage and heal up from swinging.  As good as a heal spell and you can use it over and over.  I'd toss an extra vamp in my deck over an extra heal any day.

[sIKE]

I agree with cbalian most of the way, the only thing is many times I have the 8 mana for the quick action for the heal and would have to give up an action plus the full cast for the creature. Sure the creature will benefit from being full health, but will my mage benefit from the mana and action cost?

[reddawn]

1. Perhaps my disinterest in active healing (meaning casting a direct heal spell) has been because I have crappy rolls so I could spend that mana and get VERY little benefit from it, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

2. However lets say it is a big creature of say 15 life, you just healed 5 life.  What's to say that creature isn't just going to die?  Now you spent mana on a heal and you are still out the creature.  Maybe my main point is that summoning a creature vs healing a creature still puts more pressure on your opponent.  A wounded creature + a fresh beast seems better than a single half life creature, you will just have to heal again to keep alive.

3. Do you want to spend 8 mana to heal 8 points or spend 15 mana to get a new creature?  When I "think" unless I'm wrong you will have to summon that other creature anyways, so it seems more expensive but really you saved yourself the mana from the heal (that you didn't cast) so can get more creatures out faster.

1. Well, I'm not sure you can really complain about crappy rolls.  Most heal spells I have played, I have got what I should have.  Yes there are times when you get higher/lower, but you getting consistently low rolls doesn't really reflect that heal spells are inferior (especially because they're more cost-efficient than attack spells).  It just reflects that you probably broke more than your fair share of mirrors .

2&3. This is a more legitimate argument.  The thing is, creatures enter the arena inactive, so you don't actually start gaining from them until the turn after you actually summon them.  That isn't a big deal early on in turns 3-4 when you aren't being attacked/attacking yet , but it could be a very big deal in the midgame when you may not be able to afford (mana or action-wise) to stay in one zone and summon something and have that be the only thing you do that turn.

You also have to consider that you're usually not just healing a creature.  Creatures, at least the powerful ones, are often pretty good targets for buffs, and in that context, they become very efficient to heal in every respect.  Healing starts to sound a lot better when youre healing an ape with Eagle Wings and Bear Strength, rather than just the ape.

[reddawn]

@Padawn: I wasn't disagreeing with your write up.  I was disagreeing with other posters ideas on "active" healing (i.e., cards like Heal, Minor Heal, etc) that heal you up front rather than over time.  At least in my experience, any kind of healing is pretty essential to control, or even aggro for that matter (though it's less important there).  That doesn't mean I think you should heal every turn, that just means that pretty much every book, but especially control ones, should have some way of healing.

Now that you mention it, though, I do have some comments on your post:

1. This is more of a critique of the entire strategy forum, but I think players and particularly playtesters (everyone, not just you) need to be more specific and/or clear on what they mean by "tempo," because as of right now that term is largely used too ambiguously in this game. 

When players say "tempo" they almost always actually mean, or at least should mean, "mana advantage."  Which makes sense, because while there are other types of "advantage" in Mage Wars, the core advantage you want to gain is mana.  Mana is directly proportional to a card's power in Mage Wars, and everyone who plays knows this because it's a natural feature of the game.  Higher level spells are more powerful, lower level spells are less powerful, and if you cast more higher level spells than your opponent, 9 times out of 10 you will win.

So, playing control sounds complicated when players start talking about tempo, but it really isnt; all you really have to do at a basic level are 3 things:

1. Mana (Have more mana than your opponent via Channeling, Rings, etc)
2. Survive (until mid-late game, with a combination of killing enemy creatures and healing)
3. Overwhelm (with lots of high level, expensive spells, usually creatures)

Those 3 points are the goals of control.  Sure, individual tactics matter on a game-by-game basis, but you won't have to agonize about how to out-think your opponent if you can just overwhelm him with expensive, superior spells instead.  You alluded to this in your post, but I just thought I'd clarify it.

2. I don't think Suppression Orb and Mordok's Obelisk are necessarily control cards.  In fact, they're more anti-control cards if anything, since a good way to win/build advantage with a control build is to swarm the arena with more and more meaty creatures.  Aggro builds can't really afford much in the way of creatures past the starting 3-4 turns and usually rely on a couple/few very powerful ones that are very action-efficient so the aggro player doesn't have to spend as much time summoning when he or she could be using attack spells, buffing creatures, etc. 

This is a somewhat different case if you're playing Straywood BM, but overall I usually cast more creatures in a control build than I do in an aggro one.

3. On that note, I do think that creatures hold a higher value than most other things in terms of "action advantage."  You aren't wrong that Deployment is generally used more in control builds, I just think emphasizing creatures as the simplest way to gain more actions is important. 

Other than those two points, I don't disagree with pretty much anything else, and point 2&3 are pretty minor really.  My main concern is making the strategy forums as approachable as possible to newcomers and veteran gamers alike, and to that end, clarity is the most important goal. 

[The Dude]

Hmm. I am in complete agreement with what you are saying. IT is to note that I think Active healing is much, much better in control builds where, as you said, one of the key goals is to survive, and that is made much, much harder with the current passive healing in the game, and to an extent, where I think Healing charm will have most of it's use. Aggressive builds can rely much more on passive healing, and my reasoning for this is either:

A) They are dealing insane amounts of melee, hence Vampirism is useful, or

B) They are not taking as much damage due to the reactiveness (for lack of a better made up word ) of the opponent because of sheer amount of damage they can deal in a turn.

On Tempo:

One of my articles I wrote on here was "Tempo: an in depth look". I was kind of chastised about it, the most notable criticism being that tempo is a common term, and should be looked at as a general concept, rather than a lesson in and of itself. While this is true of more experienced players, where tempo to them is basically controlling how long the game will last, as well as a massive proliferation of resources through the use of that time or by some other means, and to use those resources to either shorten or lengthen the game, whichever is necessary. It is a largely ambiguous term, but I think that can be said about much of the "strategy" in Mage Wars. A lot of it comes down to concepts which I feel do need to be defined and elaborated on. For example, many people use the term "Big creature", but what defines said creature to be big? I personally believe the mana cost to be the factor, but that can vary greatly from player to player.

As well, I don't think mana advantage is such a key concern to tempo as much as what you can do with that mana. Therefore, I think it is strength of actions that designates strength of tempo. For example, many FM builds simply do not use a lot of mana. You often seem them with 20-30 mana by the time the game ends. But, they are very viable builds. Granted, they may not always win, but they are viable. As well, I don't think I agree with the "Better spells equals better win percentage". I do believe it is what you do with those spells that will see you winning or losing, as well as the synergistic value of one spell to another. As time goes on, it seems that the more your spells work together, no matter how powerful the spell is, the better you will do. It seems like we have so many builds that have scattered strategies, books that want to do too many things without focusing on one particular thing to win with. This is partly due to the fact that there are so many options in the game, as well as so many opponents, you, naturally, would want to bring in different strategies depending on the match up. This de-synergy approach is good for a newer meta, as you can learn what each of the cards do in real time, instead of on paper. But as you become more experienced, you will find that if you do something more powerful than the opponent, you will win. This is not power level of spell, but power level of synergy as it relates to your overall strategy.

As to your point about Orb and Obelisk, it seems you are going back on what you are saying in the first place. Those two cards are incredible for widening the mana gap between you and your opponent. This is not to say that these cards are ALWAYS useful, but if my opponent has 3-4 creatures out, suddenly they are paying 9-12 mana turn just to use them. Top that with a pacify and a cloak, and that's 21-25 mana a turn. It is these cards in combination that are good as a control option, not by themselves.

And I do think that you are correct in that creatures are the simplest, most direct way towards action advantage. I just don't want people to fall into the same trap that I did in thinking that they are the only form of action advantage, as they can be relatively slow to get going, as it takes 2 actions plus X mana just to cast them (1 full action from the mage, 1 full action from the creature as it comes into play face down). Deployment usually means that you are saving mana as well as actions.

Very thought provoking post; Thank you.

Dude.

[Mohobie]

Ha, I just finished a post of my game plan in regards to this very topic. I called it Wizards power flux strategy. Seems very effective to me.

[Charmyna]

I really enjoyed reading your article! Im a big fan of control builds myself, because it feels a bit like playing fantasy chess . Some of my builds are aggressive, but even those aim at controlling the board not damaging the opponent quickly.
As you wrote, if this game ends up in rushing versus rushing its all about dice rolls and not about player skill. IMO one of the strength of MW is that you can plan your opening and your next rounds during the game. It allows and rewards anticipating your opponents moves. I really hope the tournament rules wont change that and will still allow builds that are not focused on damaging the opponents mage quickly to perform well.