Subtlety is a word for strategy; brutality, for tactics.

[ringkichard]

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. - Sun Tzu, misattributed

I’ve been thinking lately about the difference between strategic play and tactical play, and the different sorts of cards that help both, especially the extra spell action cards like familiars and spawn points.  I’m still working out the details, but here’s what I’ve got so far.

Consider the two best extra-action conjurations in the game as of Summer 2013: Battle Forge and Wizard’s Tower.




These are the best both on paper (they’re the lowest mana cost, and can be used turn after turn) and in practice (Grizzly Wizard did very well at GenCon). But they aren’t very much alike.

Battle Forge gives its extra action during Deployment, and because it’s restricted to casting Equipment it’s of limited tactical value: the best it can do to influence an immediate combat is to provide Armor for your Mage. It doesn’t push or stun or anything else. During the actions phase of play, it just kinda sits there.

Wizard’s Tower, on the other hand, is limited to quick action attack spells, and is therefore of very little strategic value. A Wizard’s Tower can cast a Fireball, but so could the Wizard himself. The Wizard is even capable of casting 2 fireballs a turn. The Strategic option of casting three fireballs in one turn is generally poor: it would cost 24 mana, and that would be better spent casting large legendary Angels which can hit turn after turn.

To hear me discribe these cards just now, you might think they’re useless, but remember that I just finished saying that they’re the best extra-action conjurations in the game. Maybe I’m not giving the full story? Lets try this again:

Battle Forge gives an extra action during Deployment for casting strategic Equipment. Because Equipment cannot be wiped away by Destroy Magic or Purge Magic the way that Enchantments can be, a Mage using Battle Forge can accumulate a strategic defensive advantage that can not be easily disassembled without spending costly tactical resources. Any attempt to attack that strategic defensive position is opperating at 67% speed at best, and will be easy to resist.

Wizard’s tower, on the other hand, grants exceptional tactical speed and flexibility. A Wizard with a Tower can string together triple-action-combos, and do tremendous spike damage that can either end the game immediately or push the opponent into sudden crisis. Even if the opponent is prepared for that, Wizard’s tower, unlike creatures, is ready immediately when cast and can reverse a tempo disadvantage and can easily help divide and conquer an opposing force through attack spells with reliable proc effects like Jet Stream, Surging Wave, and Arc Lightning.

There, that sounds better, doesn’t it?
The key to understanding these cards lies in appreciating their different roles.

I’ve still got lots more I want to say about this, but I’ve got to go to work. Next time I hope to talk about the bubble, and crisis. And maybe a little about that Balista promo everyone's talking about.

[Fentum]

 I love you ringkichard.

'chain multiple free actions to cause mayhem'.

We need to stamp that out.

[ringkichard]

Unlike some other card games, a game of Mage Wars starts with a grace period for the defender. Even the most dedicated teleport–assisted ago books don't attack on the first turn.* If the defender stays in his starting zone, the soonest a summoned creature is likely to attack the defender is on turn 4.** In order to start combat early, the attacker must spend actions to reduce this defensive distance.

I'm going to call the number of actions the attacker must spend to start combat the bubble. You can see it in action in the first Bashcon winning Warlock + Lord of Fire build:

Assuming that the opponent moves out of the starting zone:
1st turn, move 2 zones, cast Cheetah Speed face down.
2nd turn, cast Lord of Fire.
3rd turn, reveal Cheetah Speed, move 2, attack, Shift Enchantment to Lord of Fire,  it moves 2 and attacks.

The Warlock's goal is to shrink the bubble as soon as possible. The Warlock spends one action to move a second time, and another two actions casting and moving Cheetah Speed. In this opening, the bubble is three actions wide.

If the Defender had one in the spellbook, he or she could also cast a Lord of Fire, but could then spend those other three actions strategically, not tactically trying to get through the bubble.

Notice also that the defender does not have to alter his or her strategic play until turn 3, when the attacker can force interaction. It would probably be a good idea, of course, but the defender will not lose other strategic or tactical assets until the bubble is depleted.

Once the bubble is gone, however, the defender faces a moment of crisis: the attacker is able to interact with the defender for the first time and force the defender to trade resources, including such vital assets as remaining life points!

The definition I have in mind for Crisis is that it is a moment where the balance between strategy and tactics shift and one player (or both) must change their plan of play to prioritize one more heavily.

Some other examples: The moment when one player loses sufficient life to be in danger of losing on the following turn. The losing player may have to give up on strategy completely and devote all their actions to tactical healing.

The moment when a defender has sufficient guards that an attacker can no longer cause damage to the opponent with creatures, and must instead play curses or attack spells.

The moment when a Mage is teleported into a kill zone filled with Iron Golem that were previously harmlessly two zones away.

I want to be clear that I don't mean that every sudden bad thing is a crisis; getting your Hurl Meteor Reverse Attacked is bad, but it's not what I mean by crisis unless it causes such tactical damage that now a previously unworkable strategy now becomes viable. Rolling all blanks on a 7 die attack is bad, but it's not a crisis unless it means that you need to switch strategies.

And not all crisis points are bad for the player affected,  though usually you'd call a "good crisis" something else, like a strategy's culmination or a tactic's ultimate purpose. If your strategy is to summon efficient defenders until you have total creature superiority, and then to attack, the moment you summon your 4th Iron Golem is probably going to mark a shift from strategic play to tactical play that you very much want.

A final word about that fake Sun Tzu quote I started this thread with: generally, strategies are not good at causing crisis. Winning by strategy alone is so slow because it is difficult to force your opponent to adjust. To cause a crisis requires at least some tactical play.
On the other hand, tactical play alone is unlikely to force the opponent's hand: a brilliant swarm tactic combined with stun and Marked For Death might let you kill an Earth Elemental, but a better strategy would have killed the opponent instead.

I just typed all this on my phone. Next installment I'll finally talk about Balista.

*Has anyone tried Priest solo rush with first turn Divine Intervention? Bad against a lot of books, but maybe very funny against a Lair+Harmonize opening?

**Yes, Straywood beastmaster can attack earlier with a fast level one animal, especially with Rouse The Beast, but that's a parlor trick, not a winning strategy.

[Wiz-Pig]

If you are playing with promos the Johktari beastmaster can attack with a Direwolf on round 2 employing summoning circle and rouse the beast and still have enough mana on round 3 do do something interesting. 

[The Dude]

I'm not sure I follow your line of thought here. You go from explaining action advantage through free actions to your concept of crisis. While Crisis is an interesting concept, I'm not sure I agree here. Causing a shift in tempo from one player to another is not always a bad thing. For example, I like to think of Muhammad Ali's famous game against George Forman in which he employed the rope a dope strategy. He took so many hits from the opponent that the opponent was worn down, tired out from a massive exertion, and Ali utilized this weakness to his advantage.

As well, what exactly is a crisis? From your definition, it seems that anything that goes wrong with your strategy could be a crisis. This is unavoidable with any strategy, as the winds of change are strong and unpredictable. Strategy shouldn't be used to win games. Because it won't. What strategic planning does is it sets you up for the strongest tactical advantages possible. Therefore if I have poor strategic planning but high tactical positioning and attacking, I would be better off than the general who excels in strategy, but not in tactics. This isn't to say strategy is not important, simply that it isn't as important as playing the game. Or, tactics.

This is also the falling point of most books. Most spell books have an excellent overall idea of a strategy. They have one special way of dealing with the opponent, so they create a book around it. What they fail to realize and focus on is that strategy alone will not win you the game. This is the reason teleport and walls are so critical to most books. They allow you to reposition yourself or your opponent in such a way that they then have to incorporate that into their overall strategy. You shouldn't really ever have 2-3 different strategies in your book. It leads to too many different paths that won't be complete because another path gets in the way. You should have one, versatile strategy so that when a "crisis" comes up, instead of using a different, less supported, weaker strategy to back up tactical play, you can stick to your original play and simply utilize the tactical positioning your singular, stronger strategy to get you out of your pickle.

As to the numbers you put up about "bubble", I'm going to have to disagree here too. The earliest a creature can attack is the second round. This is excluding promos. The defender can't ever think "I have X turns to do what I want before I react." This was another common mistake that I see players make. Sticking to your opening for too long. Only open for as long as you can afford to. And then go on the offensive. The play would offends first has a clear advantage of making the opponent waste actions and resources to stop your threat as well as rebuilding and attacking with a force of their own. You should only be the defender if you have no other choice but to react. I think of my life total not as a resource but as a clock. I have this much time to kill my opponent. Sure I can add to the clock, but if I don't kill you by the end of my time, I've lost the game.

Interesting thoughts that sure have gotten me thinking.

Free actions are fine. Just don't let your opponent get to a point where they can take too much advantage from them. Make them start reacting with those free actions instead of acting.

cheers!

Dude

[Fentum]

Wise words all.

My latest thinking on this stuff is to have a general strategy to a book, with 'burst packages' to take advantage of tactical opportunities should they come up.

E.g. In my Air Wizard Assassin / Big Few / Position deck, the strategy is pretty much described as the title.

In a vacuum, I will start with a few turns which end with a Grizzly and a Nec Vamp out.

However, if the enemy are careless, I am very happy to drop a tactical package of Wall of Thorns plus Push.

But still the strategic route to victory is damage to the mage from the big few. Very little indeed will make me move away from Assassin. I.e. ignore the creatures and kill the Mage.

[ringkichard]

I'm not sure I follow your line of thought here. You go from explaining action advantage through free actions to your concept of crisis. While Crisis is an interesting concept, I'm not sure I agree here. Causing a shift in tempo from one player to another is not always a bad thing. For example, I like to think of Muhammad Ali's famous game against George Forman in which he employed the rope a dope strategy. He took so many hits from the opponent that the opponent was worn down, tired out from a massive exertion, and Ali utilized this weakness to his advantage.

Yes! The Rumble in the Jungle is pretty much the perfect example of enduring a tactical disadvantage (Forman's superior strength and younger age) with a superior strategy (Rope-a-Dope). Forman scored a lot of hits, but Ali's strategy meant that those hits didn't matter in any strategic sense, and then came the moment of crisis for Forman: Ali turned on him, and using his accumulated strategic advantage (Forman's exhaustion) tactically ending the match with a knockdown combination that wouldn't have been possible against Forman in the first round.

To quote Wikipedia:

"After several rounds of this, Foreman began to tire. His face became increasingly damaged by hard, fast jabs and crosses by Ali. The effects were visible as Foreman was staggered by an Ali combination at the start of the fourth round, and again several times near the end of the fifth, after Foreman had seemed to dominate that round. Although Foreman kept throwing punches and coming forward, after the fifth round he looked increasingly worn out. Ali continued to taunt him by saying, "They told me you could punch, George!" and "They told me you could punch as hard as Joe Louis." According to Foreman, near the end of the fight, Foreman slammed Ali with a thundering body blow, and Ali whispered to him "Is that all you got, George?" to which Foreman thought "Yep...that's about it." After that, Ali began to dominate Foreman." [emphasis mine]

That moment where Ali took control of the fight was the moment of Crisis: Whatever tactical Advantage Forman had was superseded by Ali's strategic advantage. This then allowed Ali to knock down Forman, ending the match (and a good thing, too, because if it had gone to tiebreakers--the Judge's scorecards--it sure sounds like Forman scored more points).

As well, what exactly is a crisis? From your definition, it seems that anything that goes wrong with your strategy could be a crisis. This is unavoidable with any strategy, as the winds of change are strong and unpredictable. Strategy shouldn't be used to win games. Because it won't. What strategic planning does is it sets you up for the strongest tactical advantages possible. Therefore if I have poor strategic planning but high tactical positioning and attacking, I would be better off than the general who excels in strategy, but not in tactics. This isn't to say strategy is not important, simply that it isn't as important as playing the game. Or, tactics.

Maybe I'll make more sense if I explain my mental model here: I see Strategy and Tactics as two ideals, with all actual Mage Wars plays somewhere on a continuum between "Purely Strategic" and "Purely Tactical".

Moonglow Amulet, to my way of thinking, prioritizes Strategy: increasing your channeling is a major strategic good, but the Amulet doesn't really interact with your opponent's game position at all. It doesn't even absorb attacks like a Mana Crystal might, and your opponent is very unlikely to dissolve it.

On the other hand, Hurl Rock is much more Tactical. It causes damage, but it's not a repeatable source. Unless it kills a creature or pushes the opponent's life total past a crisis point (more on this later) the opponent can carry on just as before with no strategic change.

To make a tactical spell like Hurl Rock matter, the damage must reach a strategic threshold. In the case of a creature, usually that threshold is the creature's life total. I've said before that there are two ways to waste damage to a creature: do less damage to the creature than its health, or do more damage to the creature than its health. This is because it's only the last damage point that kills the creature that's strategically important. The rest is just noise.

Of course, in the case of hitting the opponent's mage with Hurl Rock, there are other thresholds that matter. If killing the opponent is "Checkmate", there is also "Check" when you injure the mage to the point where one single turn of damage could kill him or her. At that point, your tactical play is dictating your opponent's new strategy which is probably going to be, "Heal at any cost!" I think it was Piousflea that first pointed this out on the forums.

(I suppose that in books with healing incantations, a similar threshold holds true for damage to large creatures: healing a Grizzly as it nears death seems like a good idea.)

To use a different analogy, by Crisis I mean the inflection point in the balance between Strategy and Tactics. It's the moment when a strategy yields a tactical advantage greater than the results of pursuing tactical advantage only. It's present the first time a mana flower pays for an action (over and above its own cost) instead of the free action the mage could take instead.

Or it's the moment when a tactic yields a strategic advantage greater than the pure pursuit of Strategy. Anyone who has lost a spawnpoint to a rush knows what this is like: the rusher made only tactical plays, but is now in a superior strategic position, too!

(Btw, I use a spawnpoint in the above example because generally they're strategically wonderful, but they're tactically rubbish.)

This is also the falling point of most books. Most spell books have an excellent overall idea of a strategy. They have one special way of dealing with the opponent, so they create a book around it. What they fail to realize and focus on is that strategy alone will not win you the game. This is the reason teleport and walls are so critical to most books. They allow you to reposition yourself or your opponent in such a way that they then have to incorporate that into their overall strategy. You shouldn't really ever have 2-3 different strategies in your book. It leads to too many different paths that won't be complete because another path gets in the way. You should have one, versatile strategy so that when a "crisis" comes up, instead of using a different, less supported, weaker strategy to back up tactical play, you can stick to your original play and simply utilize the tactical positioning your singular, stronger strategy to get you out of your pickle.

I absolutely agree that too many books fall in love with their strategy and don't give enough thought to the brass tacks tactical support that will make it work. This is one reason playtesting new books is so important: strategy is easy to devise at a desk, but tactics are best practiced against a resisting opponent.

As to the numbers you put up about "bubble", I'm going to have to disagree here too. The earliest a creature can attack is the second round. This is excluding promos. The defender can't ever think "I have X turns to do what I want before I react." This was another common mistake that I see players make. Sticking to your opening for too long. Only open for as long as you can afford to. And then go on the offensive. The play would offends first has a clear advantage of making the opponent waste actions and resources to stop your threat as well as rebuilding and attacking with a force of their own. You should only be the defender if you have no other choice but to react. I think of my life total not as a resource but as a clock. I have this much time to kill my opponent. Sure I can add to the clock, but if I don't kill you by the end of my time, I've lost the game.

I definitely have to disagree with you on this one. Even if 2nd round agro strategies worked well enough to be part of the competitive environment, then that would only mean there was a 1 action bubble. The best play against a Divine Intervention + Necropian Vamp spellbook is your own Necropian Vamp + Bear Strength. The opponent spent 1 action (and 12 mana) crossing the bubble. Of course, the bubble is a function of what strategies and tactics are played in the metagame. When Summoning Circle is printed, it will shrink the bubble and speed up books other than Priestess/Priest.

As it is, in the current metagame, the bubble does seem to be about 3 actions wide, depending on the opponent's strategy. This is enough time that it's usually a viable strategy to cast double mana conjurations before summoning a creature and some armor. Those mana conjurations will pay off strategically, but their tactical effect won't be felt probably for another ten turns.

A defensive book wants to make 1 more tactical play than the opponent, and spend the rest of its actions on strategic plays. This lets it play against the offense at a small advantage that will grow over time. It's the bubble that makes this possible.

Interesting thoughts that sure have gotten me thinking.

Free actions are fine. Just don't let your opponent get to a point where they can take too much advantage from them. Make them start reacting with those free actions instead of acting.

cheers!

Dude

Thanks for taking the time to write out a detailed response. I mean that sincerely: I'd much rather be told my ideas are terrible--and why!--than have them ignored.

Anyway, I've been teasing that I was going to talk about Ballista, so I guess I better do that.
(squint if you can't read it)
Strategically, Ballista looks like a Goblin Slinger that only attacks on odd numbered turns, and can't move.
thanks for the site, Fyst)

In 2 turns, Goblin Slinger makes two three die ranged attacks. Every 2nd turn, Ballista makes a 5 die ranged attack. The Ballista is a little tougher, and has piercing which is nice, but it's not like Goblin Slinger is setting the world on fire. Why in the world are people talking about Ballista like its printing will break the game?

Because while strategically Ballista is kinda lackluster (it costs one more mana than a Goblin for less damage dice/turn) tactically it's vastly, vastly superior. For starters, it can be cast with a quick action instead of a full action, and can be cast at range. Casting creatures a little bit rubbish, really, because you can't move the turn you do it, you can only do it once per turn, and unless you spend more mana and another action for Rouse the Beast you have to wait a long while before you can actually use what you cast. Ballista, on the other hand, can be cast two at a time, while on the move. Tactically, Ballista lets you put down the hammer while Goblins are still getting off the ground.

But there's another issue, too. Strategically, Ballista looks like it does 5 dice every 2 turns, but tactically it keeps up with Goblin Slinger's attack rate just fine, in the short run:

1st turn. Goblin is cast. Ballista is cast with a load token.
2nd turn. Goblin attacks. Ballista gets 2nd load token and attacks.

Lets stop right there. Turns out that in a short term tactical engagement, Ballista actually does nearly twice the damage of the Slinger, especially if you consider the Ballista's 3 piercing. Over the long term, Ballista will see its strategic damage/turn drop significantly, but the long term isn't what matters here. The goal of tactical play is to cause strategic damage. As soon as that Ballista kills something the Ballista player has a strategic advantage that more than makes up for Ballista's potentially low damage/turn.

When you take this tactical advantage, with its other tactical strengths, to its logical conclusion, what you get is the 4 Ballista spellbook. Strategically, 4 Ballistas sound like a terrible idea, though most opponents would look at that opening and immediately grasp the tactical problem: Because of the way ready markers work (they're faster than action markers) those Ballistas are ready to do 20 combined dice of damage right out of the gate as soon as the Ballista player is allowed to activate his or her first creature.

Sure, over the long term, 4 actions and 32 mana should probably buy you more than 10 damage a turn. A Ring of Beasts and two Steelclaw Grizzles is 14 dice of damage for 34 mana, and it leaves you an action to spare. A Cervere, Forest Shadow with Bear Strength, Lion's Savagery, Akiro's Favor, and Hand of Bim-Shalla would be better, too. Heck, 16 mana will buy you 4 Goblin Grunts, if all that matters is total dice per turn. But the tactical details of the ranged attack, the +3 Piercing, and the spike damage make Ballista a savagely efficient murder machine.

So that’s my argument: Balista is balanced strategically. It’s good for shooting down Wall of Steel over several turns. The same way that Akiro’s Hammer is balanced strategically. But tactically, these cards are like night and day, and they’re actually a very good argument for one of The Dude’s points about Tactics vs. Strategy. If you haven’t got the tactics covered in this game, you’re just gonna die.

 Finally, I want to say just a couple of words about Wizard’s Tower, which is my current nominee for second best card in the game.* Strategically, Wizard’s Tower is a beast: it’s cheep, it produces mana, it produces free actions, and it’s durable. Also tactically, it’s fantastic: it uses the ready marker mechanic, spells can be changed without action cost, it can’t be teleported, and casting it barely takes an action because you can assign it a spell when it comes into play, which it can use immediately. Because Wizard’s tower is so strategically strong, it’s likely to advance your strategy quickly and effectively. And because it’s so tactically strong, you’re very likely to see immediate tactical use for it. And because it’s so strong in both areas you’re quite likely to get self-synergistic effects between the two: its strategic advantages will likely pay off as tactical edges, and its tactical strengths will hurt your opponent’s strategy quickly and surely. It’s a good card in part because it’s such a good card!


*Current list, subject to wild revision, tournament legal only:

• Teleport
• Wizard’s Tower
• Hand of Bim-Shalla (post nerf)
• Force Hold
• Battle Forge
• Ghoul Rot
• Dragonscale Hauberk
• Forcepush
• Steelclaw Grizzly
• Iron Golem
• Gargoyle Sentry
• Gorgon Archer
• Dispell
• Nullify
• Regrowth Belt