Nobody beats the WIZ

[The Archivist]

Thanks to everyone for the excellent responses thus far!

It certainly does appear that corrode effects and piercing may be effective tactics against the problematic conjurations. Vorpal Blade and Critical Strike, if included in Forged in Fire (FiF), present a mana efficient opportunity to take out Wizard's Tower or Gate. With few exceptions (mainly Brogan) we have not had this to date. Ballista may also provide a breath of hope for the war school by encouraging mages to set up shop in the middle of the board and pound bolts at guys and conjurations alike. 

How do I (try to) beat the Wizard? At the moment, it's by taking advantage of the Druid's access to excessive equipment and armor destruction effects that do not sacrifice spellbook points. 6x Dissolve, 4x Acid Ball, and several Corrosive Orchid's allow me to burn wands and melt armor all day long. The Druid can also hem in the teleporting to some effect by establishing efficient threats (Raptor Vine) on the board that may not be anywhere near herself. A treebonded Druid has good channeling and a great spawnpoint in Vine Tree that lets you wrap around the board very quickly and free up actions.

Provided that I can exhaust my opponent's teleport effects and wands through attrition and not die in the process, I outrun the slow guys with Elusive, neuter them with Agony, and slap on Barkskin or Regrowth Belt mid to late game if needed to regain health. Raptor Vines or Grizzly usually do the heavy hitting. At all costs, you cannot let a Hydra get to your Treebond, so pack Teleport accordingly and keep the Wizard skittering around at the other end of the board. Devouring Jelly is also great for tree defense if needed.

   

       

[Aylin]

Thanks to everyone for the excellent responses thus far!

It certainly does appear that corrode effects and piercing may be effective tactics against the problematic conjurations. Vorpal Blade and Critical Strike, if included in Forged in Fire (FiF), present a mana efficient opportunity to take out Wizard's Tower or Gate. With few exceptions (mainly Brogan) we have not had this to date. Ballista may also provide a breath of hope for the war school by encouraging mages to set up shop in the middle of the board and pound bolts at guys and conjurations alike. 

How do I (try to) beat the Wizard? At the moment, it's by taking advantage of the Druid's access to excessive equipment and armor destruction effects that do not sacrifice spellbook points. 6x Dissolve, 4x Acid Ball, and several Corrosive Orchid's allow me to burn wands and melt armor all day long. The Druid can also hem in the teleporting to some effect by establishing efficient threats (Raptor Vine) on the board that may not be anywhere near herself. A treebonded Druid has good channeling and a great spawnpoint in Vine Tree that lets you wrap around the board very quickly and free up actions.

Provided that I can exhaust my opponent's teleport effects and wands through attrition and not die in the process, I outrun the slow guys with Elusive, neuter them with Agony, and slap on Barkskin or Regrowth Belt mid to late game if needed to regain health. Raptor Vines or Grizzly usually do the heavy hitting. At all costs, you cannot let a Hydra get to your Treebond, so pack Teleport accordingly and keep the Wizard skittering around at the other end of the board. Devouring Jelly is also great for tree defense if needed.     

So far I've been using Kralathor, Galador, and Tarok as my "giant" creatures, with Raptor Vines and Thornlashers. How are the Grizzlies treating you as a Druid? That's not something I've played around with yet.

I'd think you'd be more concerned about a Devouring Jelly or an Iron Golem at your tree though. A Bonded Vine Tree has 2 Armour so a 3 die attack with no piercing, even repeated three times, isn't exactly that impressive.

[Alexander West]

To me it seems that people have trouble beating the Wizard because they try to fight the Wizard on his own terms.

What I mean by this is that the Wizard has a few strengths:
1) A deeper spellbook (due to a flexible elemental school, no enemy school, popular spells in school)
2) Excellent mana generation (starts at 10, good access to Spawnpoints, Crystals, Harmonize)
3) Good utilities for extra mana (voltaic shield, arcane zap)

When an opponent tries to outchannel a wizard in a long game or trade spell for spell they are fundamentally playing into the Wizard's strength.  Particularly, a lot of people seem to contest the Wizard by trying to beat them at the Nullify/Teleport/Seeking Dispel/Dispel/Jinx subgame, which is a losing proposition because the wizard is paying less for these both in spellbook points but also in mana (assuming they're wearing the right ring).

Instead, it seems plans that ignore a Wizard's strengths while playing to their own strategies' strength seem best positioned.  That is to say that the more a strategy uses aggression (to ignore mana generation and book depth) obviates opportunities for metamagic (to ignore mana efficiencies and book depth), and has good mobility (to reduce the utility of defensive teleportation) the more likely it is to succeed.  (I am not at all surprised to hear a Forcemaster taking aggressive action with two awesome summons met this criteria.)

[silverclawgrizzly]

Thank you Alexander you put into words better what I was thinking.

[jacksmack]

I could be wrong here but to my knowledge:

The Double grizzly FM beat the Water gate once... to my knowledge the gate won later games.

Its rather important that back then all FM's were running a variation of a solo build. Having no experience vs this sort of encounter will leave you at a great disadvantage.
Its hard to fully understand the impact of defense and forcepull for both 1 mana in combination with the beefed up grizzlys - and especially how to play around it when you the first 2 rounds expect a standard FM.

Also Charmyna mentioned that he overextended his build up channeling wise - which he tend to do (no pun intended) in "test" games - pushing it to the limit FTW.


Im pretty sure back then the build would not reliably kill a gate wizard.

[The Archivist]

So far I've been using Kralathor, Galador, and Tarok as my "giant" creatures, with Raptor Vines and Thornlashers. How are the Grizzlies treating you as a Druid? That's not something I've played around with yet.

I'd think you'd be more concerned about a Devouring Jelly or an Iron Golem at your tree though. A Bonded Vine Tree has 2 Armour so a 3 die attack with no piercing, even repeated three times, isn't exactly that impressive.

Agreed. Jelly is definitely a much larger threat than Hydra. I got a bit lazy in my post and just used Hydra as a generic stand-in for "huge dude in zone with your bonded tree." As for Grizzly, he's worked well for me in the past by doubling as harassment and tree zone protection. I always seem to get more mileage out of him than Kralathor, especially against Wizards. I run Galador and Tarok as well. Galador's lightning attack against armored buffoons is quite the stones.   

[sIKE]

To me it seems that people have trouble beating the Wizard because they try to fight the Wizard on his own terms.

What I mean by this is that the Wizard has a few strengths:
1) A deeper spellbook (due to a flexible elemental school, no enemy school, popular spells in school)
2) Excellent mana generation (starts at 10, good access to Spawnpoints and Crystals)
3) Good utilities for extra mana (voltaic shield, arcane zap)

When an opponent tries to outchannel a wizard in a long game or trade spell for spell they are fundamentally playing into the Wizard's strength.  Particularly, a lot of people seem to contest the Wizard by trying to beat them at the Nullify/Teleport/Seeking Dispel/Dispel/Jinx subgame, which is a losing proposition because the wizard is paying less for these both in spellbook points but also in mana (assuming they're wearing the right ring).

Instead, it sees plans that ignore a Wizard's strengths while playing to your own strategies strength seems best positioned.  That is to say that the more a strategy uses aggression (to ignore mana generation and book depth) obviates opportunities for metamagic (to ignore mana efficiencies and book depth), and has good mobility (to reduce the utility of defensive teleportation) the more likely it is to succeed.  (I am not at all surprised to hear a Forcemaster taking aggressive action with two awesome summons met this criteria.)

All fine and dandy in theory, but in reality the ability to choose a particular element and build a strategy around it and the fact that no opposing school spell point penalties gobbles a lot of ground before the game is even started. Add in a highly skilled player and it is quite difficult to beat the Wiz. The reason Charmyna moved to high armor type of build was due to players targeting the weaknesses in his earlier builds, mainly the fact that he didn't run armor and if you could catch him you could beat his mage up quite easily. He almost lost several matches to me in this manner. We didn't play for a week or two and next time I got the honor of getting spanked by the Griz Wiz running a BF and bunches of armor.

Meta changing all of this as I have stated several times will be Piercing (hopefully sometime in 2014) and more armor killing capabilities which DvN has brilliantly provided.

[tarkin84]

I'm very happy to read all these replies and all your insight. Thank you, guys!

So it's time to share my latests experiences.

I have played some games with my aggressive Druid against the Watergate Wizard lately, some solo (yeah, I do play solo MW games although I rarely make it to the end because of table complexity and stop playing when one mage seems to be the winner) and some against real opponents. So far I've got 2 wins and 3 losses.

The Druid starts by running to the Wizard's corner while summoning Raptor vines and Vine snappers and rousing them to take the spawnpoint while the Wizard tries to protect it and make the most of it until it is eventually destroyed. Depending on the rolls this will happen sooner or later and there'll be less or more Jellies for the Druid to worry, respectively. Jellies and Hydra are tough opponents for the plants because of their Resilient-Reconstruct-Corrode/Triplestrike vs No armor; one of these monsters won't bother the Druid as it can be taken down, but 2-3 will kill all the rooted plants quickly. Wizard's tower enters the game at some point, throwing lethal Fireballs against the plants. Another tough card. If the spawnpoint is destroyed quickly the Druid will be able to handle the situation and maybe take the game if played properly (once I was outplayed by my girlfriend and lost even though she only used the spawnpoint twice for two Jellies). If not, the no-armor plants will eventually be all destroyed and the mage will follow.

The last modifications I made to the spellbook (one being a Force hammer to cut the number of rounds needed to destroy Gate by one) have improved the attack plan so I need more testing to see if I can also improve the record. I'll share my results with you.

By the way, Deck, I'll definitely try the Necro build you suggested with Altar and cleric. Sounds fun!

[silverclawgrizzly]

Those Force Hammers are a good idea. Can't wait to see how further testing goes.

[Laddinfance]

Force Hammer is one of those odd cards I tend to work into all of my books.