The Art of (Mage) Wars

[The Dude]

The Art of (Mage) Wars

There is a reason intelligence is great among a gaming group, and it is less obvious than you might first think. Besides the increased sense of logic and creativity, gamers are also mostly well read. Yes, you read me right, the chances are that any person of modest intelligence reads a lot, but I think the likeness for books is especially so with gamers. I me think about it, gamers have to read incredibly complex rulebooks, read paragraphs of text on cards, of which there might be hundreds, and finally, many gamers read about their game, be it strategy articles, FAQs, deck lists, variants, etc. Reading is a huge part of gaming culture. So, where does this tie in? Well, there is a certain famous book call The Art of War by Sun Tzu. In it, it gives all the important rules for competitive success. Today, I will be applying some of he wrote to our favorite game. Specifically, I will be discussing Tzu's Warrior rules, which are basically rules used to advance position in competition without using that oh so weak fight or flight complex.

The Rules

So what are these rules for the uninitiated? Well, they are as follows:

1. Understanding positions

2. Developing perspective

3. Identifying opportunities

4. Leveraging probability.

5. Minimizing mistakes.

6. Responding to situations.

7. Creating momentum.

8. Winning rewards.

9. Defending vulnerabilities.

Following these nine rules, any player in Mage Wars, or any gamer in particular, will greatly increase their winning percentage, and ultimately become a more decision oriented, priority driven person. Is this a bad thing? Well, if you’re a dude, more specifically THE dude, you may not want to apply these rules to real life. But for most people who crave success, applying these will win you games outright. So, how do we apply these rules?

Understanding Positions

Positioning in Mage Wars is arguably the most important part of winning the game. If you have a terrible position, you will lose the game outright. But how do we understand and take advantage of our position, and when do we need to reevaluate our position to not lose the game? Well, in order to do this, we need to look at certain aspects of the game board, and the player board.

The first and most important is the number of creatures on the board in relation to you and your life total - damage. When looking at these creatures, evaluate attack strength by looking at the number of dice they roll to attack compared to your defenses (meant in the general, not literal, sense), and the effects that they can dish out. Also, look at any enchantments they may have on themselves, as well as looking at any conditions they might be affected by, their relative life total compared to how damage they have, and finally, look at their sustainability rate (the amount of time they will likely stay on the board due to healing effects/life total). Now, compare that to what you have out on the board. You don't need to have more creatures on the board than your opponent, but you do need to have more mobile creatures, and more sustainable creatures. Why is this? Because the less sustainable the opponent's creatures are, the worse they are going to have to position themselves for either more summoning, or support of said creature. The more we (and our creatures) can get around the board, the more we can kill sustainable and mobile threats, the worse we will make our opponent's position look, and make our position that much more superior.

The next obstacle we need to worry about it is where we are on the board in comparison to the enemy mage. Why is this so important? Because where the enemy is, we need our forces to be, and the longer it takes to get there, the harder it will be for us to get there. For that reason, we want ourselves to be in the center of the board as much as can to get as much of a positioning advantage as we can. Think of the board as a hill, with the sides being the bottom and side of the hill, and the two center squares being at the top of the board. With this position, as the attacker, we can see and fight any opposition that tries to obtain the top of the hill. This is if we are the attacker.

If we are defending, we need to be as far away from the opposition as possible. This is why Teleport is such a strong card. It is both a defensive and offensive card. We can use both to get ourselves out of a sticky situation, and to place creatures in a position that will attack the opponent effectively.

The final bullet on this list is looking at your conjurations. If they are spawn points, where are they in relation to the "action"? Usually, we want to place spawn points as close to, or in the center, as possible. This gives them the greatest range of attack, and allows us to better place the creatures with that spawn point. This is especially so with Battle forge, as we always want to be within 2 range of battle forge as long as we are using it. For this reason, stronger players will commit their battle forges to vulnerability in exchange for greater positioning by placing their battle forges in the near center (one of the two center squares) of the board.

Developing Perspective

This is one of the more confusing of the rules, because it challenges us to first understand WHAT our perspective is, before we can understand the direction we want that perspective to go. So, what as a player in Mage Wars do we want do be doing? Killing the enemy mage. There is our perspective. How to achieve what we perceive is another matter entirely however, and it starts in the spell book.

When you are building your spell book for the first time, you want to first stop and think: "How can I win with the mage I want to use?” In order to do this, you first need to look at the abilities you have as a mage, and compare them to what you have naturally at your disposal in the form of cards. Relying on a swarm strategy may not be the most effective for the priestess. We can see this through her abilities, which reward enchantment and incantation casting, as well as providing a support role, which can be wasted if perspective is lost and we go for a losing strategy. Going solo may not be the best option for the Wizard. This is for multiple reasons, with the first being that he does not contain the "Battle skill" Keyword. The second is that he only has 32 life. 16 damage can almost kill him, which, for 8 mana, is a possibility. This would not be so bad if he had the inherent ability to defend against large attacks, but the voltaric shield is only good for one attack, and it's ability is most effective against a single attack a turn, which cannot happen if he is going solo. His abilities are more suited for control, which is, making the opponent not able to cast very many creatures, or punishing the mage for over extending and trying to swarm the wizard. WE can also see this through the inherent cards the Wizard possesses, such as nullify, and suppression cloak. All of these tend to lead toward a powerful control strategy, but not so with a solo strategy. Please note that this is not always the case. Some mages may have the option to go solo, or the option to swarm. But looking for the most effective strategy is what we are doing here.

The next thing we need to do after examining WHAT we want our mage to do, we to examine HOW we can get there with the current card pool. This consists of three stages:

Defense

Offense

Meta

We will handle Defense first, because it the easier of the three topics to explain. By defense, I mean cards that are hard counters to any potentially threatening cards your opponent may try to play. Cards like seeking dispel, Dispel, and dissolve all fill these roles as defensive cards, although they may be used aggressively under certain circumstances. These three cards in particular are usually a 2 of in most spell books, and that's a good starting number. Understand that these are Worst-case scenario cards. You do not want to cast these unless you have no other way around the card, as they are extreme tempo set backs, and can lose you the game if you don't cast them carefully. This is all we will talk about until after we have covered both Offensive and Meta plans.

With the offensive, we need to compare what we want to do with our mage with the best way to go about that. AS an example, let's take a simple Fire Wizard. Looking at his abilities, we can see that he would be really good for a controlling/midrange strategy based on controlling the board and attacking with a few creatures, but using those creatures to keep the opponents from attacking. From this point, we can look at our options for the proactive offensive, that is, what we are going to do to control the board, and what we are going to do to attack the mage. For this, a mana denial strategy may be a good one to adopt, so we add in a Suppression Orb and a Mordok's Obelisk. We then see that Suppression cloak is a fantastic card! We instantly add two to our potential spell pool, as it is wise to assume that this may be a card the opponent dissolves. Next, we see that Pacify is an excellent enchantment that goes with the strategy we have planned out, so we start out with three... why not!? We can trim these down later when we trim our spell book. We also notice a card called Essence Drain, which will go great with Mordok's obelisk. Let's add four for now. (Usually I add an exorbitant amount of copies to my card pool at first, because I am lazy, and do not want to search for more copies of a card, making the whole process slightly more efficient!).

This seems to be enough for our mana denial strategy, so now let's look at big creatures that may be good to attack with. For this, you may need to go out of faction to find the most damaging creature, but often, paying 8 or ten spell book points for a powerful creature that will surprise your opponent and put him out of his own perspective will be worth the price. For this, I see two creatures in particular. The Gorgon can play a fantastic role as a defensive creature, weakening the creatures the opponent can attack with, and doing a decent amount of damage with them as well. But what about the creature that CAN get through for a decent amount of dice? Iron Golem seems like a fine guarding card, as he can counter attack for 6 dice worth of damage! At 6 points, he does seem a little expensive though... are there any other cheaper options? We could switch our Wizard all together to avoid the three points, but I don't think this is hurtful enough to consider that option. We do a powerful attacking creature, who is relatively mobile... Hmm... Well... we are the Fire Mage. Let's invoke Adremalich. For a mighty 1/12 of our spell book, he may seem like too much of a threat, but I do think he is powerful enough to really swing the game in our favor as soon as we have gained the slightest edge.

Let's look at other equipment that may help us with attacking, of which I see only card in particular, and that is fire shaper ring, which will help us immensely to attack the Mage when we can. Elemental wand is a must, too, now that we thing about it. Two of those are also a must if we assume the opponent will dissolve one. Oh, and Moonglow amulet, to help us cast and keep our three creatures alive and kicking! But do we want any offensive enchantments? Bear strength might be good, and so might cheetah speed, and these are all cards you may want to look at when deciding what you want to include. For offensive incantations, teleport is a four of, as we can have 4 for 8 spell points, and this card is so powerful with our strategy. As far as attack spells? Let's try a two of for all the fire attack spells, and we can trim that number up quite a bit during later stages.

Four pieces of equipment so far, and not even a scratch in the defensive plan? We may want to include battle forge. What other conjurations might we want to include? Hmm.. Mana crystals are a must, as they help cast these expensive creatures, and we will add four for right now. Fire walls might be good to help block our opponent from supporting his creatures or retreating effectively, let's add two. I think that's all we need as far as conjurations go for right now.

Now it's time for defense (Again, of course). After adding our package of 2 dissolve, 2 Dispel, 2 Seeking Dispel, let's look at what else we can add to help solidify our defenses. Looking at our card pool, we can see that a block can be could here, and as the goal is to let the opponent attack with no more than one creature a turn, we can just add one, as this will be for incoming big attacks. Other enchantments? Well, Regrowth can help us heal a bit, as when it comes to the mid game, we may be on 16 damage, and if we slow the game down to a crawl, this can help drastically with getting us back to enough health to attack. Nullify is a great card for us, as it allows to us to cancel enchantments on the opposition for cards they place on their creatures, as well as dissolves they try to pull on us if they see something they don't like. As far as incantations go, force push is a card I like to add one of, as it combos well with our wall, and we can use it defensively to get players out of our zone, or better position out cards. Purify as a one of it not bad here, as it allows us to get rid of any poison conditions and enchantments any aggro solo enemy may try to throw on us.

Defensive equipment will really shine here because of our Battle Forge, and for that, let's add a Dragonscale Hauberk, as that defends readily against a Warlock opponent, as well as giving us two armor. Leather boots and Gloves are great additions, as they allow us to almost freely get a lot of armor early. Arcane ring will be good as we are casting a lot of meta and mana spells. A mage wand or two to help us with teleports, as well as allowing the opponent to think we only have one teleport, and trying to max out it's usage. If we add a minor heal, it will also be a great target for the wand. A regrowth belt will be good here as well.

Meta means that you are adding certain cards to fight again current match-ups that you expect to face. These cards are usually a one or two of, and are much better if they have a dual purpose, as most of the cards in here, save armor, have dual purposes, having your meta cards do that is great as well. Note that this is not what spell type Meta in Mage Wars stands for, that particular spell type stands for spells that almost every mage will use.

I will not refine any picks here, as I believe we have spent long enough on spell book building, but I do think that this is the best example of gaining perspective, and illustrates perfectly that if you do not have a well thought out spell book that does not hone in on the perspective you have, you have lost game before you have even begun to play. This we be a key element in understanding the rest of the discussion.

[The Dude]

Identifying Opportunities

This, too, can be a tricky subject to discuss, but it is incredibly important nonetheless. We can redefine this as "seizing the tempo gain". If you are a newer player, Tempo is the pace of the game. IF your opponent is acting faster than you can react, chances are he is winning. If you are making him react to your actions, chances are you are winning. But how do we know WHEN to take advantage of his reactions? The answer, again, first begins with knowledge of the card pool.

   If you opponent spends his quick action dispelling an enchantment you have placed on him or one of his creatures, you have gained a tempi (single unit of tempo, as seen in chess). If he spends a full action running two spaces away from you, you have gained two tempi. Now, where knowledge of the card pool comes in, is to know when he is using a card as a reaction, and when he using a card as an action. This can only come with playing game, but it is important part of learning the game, and should not be taken lightly.

After you have figured out if you are ahead in Tempo, or at a loss in Tempo, is how you will decide to react. It is tricky to get this timing just right, and if you can't, there are certain cards you can to ensure that you will be at a tempo gain. One of these cards, of course, is Teleport, as it allows you free actions with your creature without having to move him into position. Another grand card is Tangle vine, and undervalued card that can really punish the Mage for not having any more teleports, or staying in the wrong place at the wrong time for too long. You can also use walls to help you stop the opponent's movement to or from you.

But where this whole rule applies is when you do have the Tempo. Identifying Opportunities simply means identifying how you can best damage and stop the enemy’s movement through opponent's own play. A trick I like to do is keep the mage close mid way through the game and start holding battle fury in hand every round, so when I do get the opportunity to strike with 10 dice, I take that as fast as I can. Punish the mage for not moving out of a dangerous zone, or making a hasty attack. These are free hits, and will only do more to push the tempo gain in your favor. Identifying mistakes in opponent's play is relatively easy as well. Look at what they are doing. Does it coincide with what their perspective is? No? Seize that. These small, advantageous opportunities may not seem like much, but they mean the difference between winning and losing a game of Mage Wars.

Leveraging Probability

It seems unlikely that you can use probability to your advantage when playing this game, as the only "random" factors in the game are dice, but this term applies to the human psyche as well, using basic sociology, you can determine with some amount of accuracy, what the opponent has in their spell book in regards to meta and defense, and how you can use that in your favor.

Look at the opposing mage, and think to what they specialize in. Chances are they will have more of that particular card in their spell book than the other mages. Now, look at what threat you are trying to pose on that mage. Examine all possible defenses to that card, and weigh out those options according to spell point cost. The more the spell point cost is, the less likely they will have an answer to the problem. This may not always be the case, so, you can also look at the number of copies they have played of a particular card. For example, I will often save my regrowth belt until I have seen at least one copy of dissolve out the opponent. This will let me know that in all likelihood that they will only have one more copy, and wasting it on the belt will ensure victory. Another tactic you can employ in regards to figuring out the opponent's defense is examining the number of spell points your opponent has used throughout the game. This will help you in figuring out if they can defend well against your threat or not.

This, consequently, also means that you should preemptively put different answers than typical ones in your own spell book that will come as a surprise to the opponent. Remember, keeping the opponent out of their own thought out game as much as possible is an incredibly strong strategy, as it forces them to react without knowing the outcome.

I do not want to simply blow off looking at probabilities of dice, but there will be no tables here to pull apart different attacks and their effectiveness. Instead, I want to talk about the effects die. You want to put that die in as much your favor as possible. For this reason, including cards that don't proactively deal out the effect you hope to hit will not help your spell book in any way, it will only hinder it. Stun is a great example. Having one attack card that may stun your opponent will do nothing but play a 1/6th chance in your success. I aim to have at least 8 cards that stun if I want to go that route, and I will build my strategy around proactively taking advantage of stunning as possible. This is taking full advantage of the Bell curve as it applies to the dice roll, and gives me every opportunity in the world to stun the opponent and grab the tempo from it.

Minimizing Mistakes

What a loaded rule! It automatically assumes that you will make mistakes, which can be a terrible blow to the egotistical or competitive person, but every gamer will have to face this fact one day or another. You will make mistakes, and you will lose. There is no way around it. The World Champion of Chess in 1997 was Garry Kasparov, and in a game deciding mistake, he lost the second game in deciding 6 round match between him and a computer entitled Deep Blue, which ultimately lost him the match. Even the best players in the world make mistakes, and minimizing those is your only hope to not making enough of them to lose you the game outright.

How do we do this, though? By thinking. A lot of newer players (and veterans, even) make the mistake of playing the first move they see, the first attack they can make, or the first defense they think of. This often leads to disastrous results. By simply out thinking the opponent, Go masters, for example, can win games with up to an 18 point handicap! We need a systematic and logical approach to thinking that we can always follow if we how to minimize the mistakes made when playing.

   When planning during the ready phase, do more than just pick out two cards that you can cast. First, think about the board position. What two cards are the best cards in your spell book for that particular board position against that particular opponent? After thinking and picking those two cards, do it again. And then, after you have done that, think about how the opponent would react to those cards, and if they would keep an answer in hand. If not, then you have the two cards you were looking for. If so, pick two different cards. After you have done that, think about what the opponent will do on his turn. Do you need to react? Do you have the cards in hand to react appropriately with? If not, go and get those cards, and add them to the two cards you have now. Pick two of those, and then reevaluate the board position. If they are not the best picks, repeat the process. Next, plan out exactly what you are going to do on your turn. EXACTLY. Move for move. This will make up for the lost time you had while thinking, but it will also allow you to better react to what the opponent does, as we get caught changing our minds too often when shouldn't while making tactical moves during gameplay. IF your reaction is not better than your planned out move, DON'T MAKE THAT MOVE. I put this in all caps so that hopefully your brain doesn't trick you into making the mistake anyways. Any reaction you have to the opponent's move must be a better move than the one you had planned out, or it is a mistake, and they can capitalize on it. Don't give them the pleasure; think about what you are going to do before you do it.

   As well, think about your spell book. A lot of times, players will make mistakes when spell book building, and not have the correct reaction cards during gameplay. Part of this can only come through gameplay, but part of it can come from simple application of logic when spell book building. Don't have a lot of nasty friendly enchantments? Do you really need that shift enchantment? Don't plan on having a lot of mana? Then why the 1 dispel and 1 destroy magic? These may seem like beginner's mistakes, but they are surprisingly common, and there are simple steps to avoid taking them. Gold fish your deck against another typical build. This may seem like a lot of work, but it can reveal some inherent flaws you have made in the spell booking process. Write your deck down on paper. This can be the most revealing, as you examine card numbers, and you go huh? This refining of the spell book will only help you to win. As well, another mistake new players make is by going out of school for nonsensical reasons. Only go out of school when you absolutely have to. This will capitalize your left over points, so that you may add a few more threats or defenses against unknowns, to your deck. Don't limit yourself by not thinking about your play. It's as important, if not more so, than the gameplay itself, as gameplay if nothing more than thought put into action. Make yours superior. You will win.

Responding to Situations

Well, if you have stuck with us this long, first of all I want to thank you for reading what I have poured my thought into! Second, I want to you to go back and read all I have written about responding to opponent's actions. This all applies here, but I want to delve further than just the surface, as most of Mage Wars revolves around responding to what the opponent does.

First of all, we need to examine what the opponent does during his quick action. Think about what this could possibly mean. Definitely think about it if he decides to hold his quick action, as it is a likely indicator that he has something nasty planned for our mage. Second, decide if what you planned to do with your quick action accurately and fully responds to what the opponent does. If not, sometimes it's better to hold your quick action for better things we can do during the Action phase.

Now, look at the board position and assess the initiative advantage you may, or may not have. Do this during your quick cast action, as you may not have time to before the opponent acts if he has initiative. If you do have initiative, go through all the actions you can take in your head, and think about how your opponent may respond. This is important, as you want to be able to correctly act when the opponent does decide to make his move. This will be a good time for you think about potential mistakes both you and the opponent can make, and to think what you can do to stop yours. Don't waste time thinking about what your opponent can do to stop his own mistakes, as you wish to capitalize on this.

Another situation you might encounter is when to use defenses. This may seem like an easy choice, but thinking about when to use defenses can mean the difference between life and death. First off, assess if the opponent has any cards in hand. If not, you may be in the clear to defend the hardest hitting monster. If not, you may want to think about what attack tricks the opponent may have. Defend the enemy that will hinder your plans the most, not the enemy that will hurt you the most. This is counterintuitive and tricky to put into practice, but I believe this is an important decision you as a player will have to make. As well, knowing when you put your creatures on guard is an important aspect that should not be taken lightly. Know what your opponent might do, and guard accordingly. Usually, we try to save guarding for near the end of the action phase, so that we potentially guard against a bigger attack, but you only want to guard as a last source defense. Never waste an action if you don't have to.

Knowing when to drop your mandatory reveals can be important, too. Drop them when they will hinder your plan the most, not at the first opportunity. If you see a defense your opponent could take to gain him tempo, try and stop that with a mandatory enchantment. As said before, this can often be stronger than casting a hard counter such as dispel or dissolve, so don't hesitate when you have the correct opportunity.

As such, knowing when to cast hard counters is just as important. Cast them when it will do the least to lose you tempo. Often we try to leave large non-creature threats on the board until we have the tempo, if possible, before removing the threat. This balances the loss of tempo you create by casting the hard counter, as well as stopping the enemy plan by a fraction.

Finally, I cannot stress enough that knowing when to retreat from an opponent's attack is the difference between living and dying in Mage Wars. If you look ahead and find that the opponent's attack will hinder your plans enough to kill you, retreat. In any other case, fight until you notice a mistake. If the opponent is using a spell based attack method, wait until he has little to no mana. Another option I like to take with me is the Drain power option, as it can really stop an attack from any angle long enough for you to retreat. It is not an attacking card by any means, and should not be seen that way, because if you are using it to attack, chances are you are already winning, and win more cards can be seen as an inefficient mistake, and not a way to win. Let them try and defend themselves, wasting their own time and resources. You should mount an attack high enough that they can not respond effectively to the situation, and you will win because of those mistakes. Patience, you must have, my young Padawan.

Creating Momentum

But how do you most effectively mount an attack in which they cannot respond? There are a few ways you can do this:

1. String smaller attacks into larger and larger attacks. You do this by either buffing weak creatures or attacking sparingly with one large creature/attack spell. This is a great tactic for swarm builds. In this way, you are slowly dealing damage onto the opponent, while waiting for them to go on the back foot, in which case you can start to drop larger creatures and attacks to hinder the opponents progress, until they eventually wither away.

2. Attacking support conjurations. Some builds will most effectively build momentum by destroying the resources the mage has worked so hard to create. By doing this, you are slowing taking away options from the opponent, until slowly, his defenses are nil compared to your offenses. By destroying his conjurations, you have left him nothing to hide behind, and therefore, nothing to attack with. This is most effectively done WHILE attacking the opposing mage, as you do not want to lose sight of your main plan: killing the mage. As well, you want to focus on the most effect conjurations first, and then assess your position. If destroying that conjuration puts you in a place to attack, do it. If not, in the words of the great Jerry Garcia, Keep Truckin.

3. Mounting for one ginormous, multi-round attack. This is where positioning is key. The placement of your monsters in the most effective attack range in order to unleash one big attack on the mage is the way big-creature builds will tend to build momentum. Use cards like force push, charge, and teleport to build momentum through positioning and corner the opponent into making an attack that he knows will not do much. And then counterstrike, and counterstrike hard.

Create momentum whenever you can. When an opponent makes a mistake, find a way to build momentum from that. When an opponent must react to a threat they cannot handle, again, build momentum. It is the only way you can win the game with any amount of consistency.

Winning Rewards

Do not think that any attack that has gone through has won you the game. You must always assume that the opponent has something else that can help him comeback, no matter what you may think. IF you killed a creature, it has not won you the game. If you have put the opponent to one life and you do not have initiative the next turn, you have not won the game (by any means). Never assume you have won, because it is in that assumption that you will lose. The opponent is a lot trickier than you think, because after all, he or she has the advantage of being a human, too.

Defending Vulnerabilities

The final rule I want to discuss is how to defend against potential weaknesses your build may have. The best way to do this, by far, is to preemptively prevent them in the spell book building step. You should have at least one way to deal with every single threat you come across in game. Testing will help you make sure this happens, but also, writing a list of all possible threats in the game will help you ensure your success. This may seem like a huge task, but in all reality, it's as simple as reading through the codex, and identifying threatening keywords such as flying and effects such as stun. In this way, you can stop the opponent's from taking advantage of your weaknesses, and start taking advantage of theirs.

Another potential set of vulnerabilities you may have is not mechanically based at all. They might be completely in the way you play. For example, you may have a habit of always dropping a block on your mage at the first opportunity you get. These sorts of ticks can only be cured by having a friendly opponent play with you, as well, you can start actively changing up what you do every game, that way you do develop a habit of becoming predictable. Predictability is a weakness, not a strength in this game, and you want to do all you can to avoid it. Note that I am not talking about openings here. Openings should be the first time the opponent sees what you are planning to do, as such; they are the time where the least amount of interactivity is possible. During that time, you want to be looking at what the opponent is doing, and look for weaknesses in both his game and yours.


Wow. What a journey this has been. I know that I have learned quite a bit from just writing this, and I do believe it will help those who do take the time to read it. If you do follow these rules, and they do not lead you to success, please share that with me, so that I can either help, or alter the rules as such that they will. Again, I want to thank you all for taking the time to read this wall of text. It's taken three full actions and 34 mana to write, so with that, I am passing on the quick cast, with the only hope that you all have enjoyed this trip as much as I have.

Cheers!
Padawan

P.S. If any of you all are going to Origins 2013, let me know! I'll be there at the MW booth, and at the tournament, come by! We'll get a game in!