Is there really no way to balance free-for-all properly? The official win condition of free for all is "last mage standing". This gives a big advantage to control builds.
On the other hand, if the win condition was "first to kill an enemy mage" that would give a big advantage to aggro builds. Of course, then there's the issue of kill-stealing, meanining swoop in and grab someone else's kill without having to do anything yourself.
Is there really no way to rectify this? I mean, I suppose you could make a grand melee format where both of those are win conditions, plus a third win condition of "killed the most mages". But that depends on having a lot more players. In a free for all game with only four players, it doesn't really make sense to have 2-3 winners and only 1-2 losers.
Because of the potential problem of kill-stealing, we basically seem to be stuck with a win condition for free-for-all that heavily favors control mages. It seems really hard (if not downright impossible) to figure out how to play aggro in free-for-all. By the time an aggro mage has killed ONE enemy control mage, all the other control mages have built up enough to clobber them. If the aggro mage fights another aggro mage, the control mages will have time to build up completely unimpeded while they're wasting resources against each other. And if the aggro mage tries to take on more than one enemy at once, they just get torn apart on both fronts because they can never gain enough resources to kill more than one enemy control mage. If the aggro mages make a non-aggression alliance and seek out individual control mages and try to beat them first, then that's like having a two or more separate 1v1s and that's not enough player interaction, not to mention there might not even be another aggro player participating.
So let's start brainstorming ways to make aggro mages work in free for all, either through clever strategic deckbuilding, or if that doesn't work, some sort of rules editing.
First of all, aggro mages want to win more quickly. since they can't focus all their firepower on one mage and leave the others to build up and kill them, they would probably need spells and objects that could affect a wide area of the arena. For instance, rolling fog and gate to hell. Force wave, cascading force wave, and sandstorm would also help deal with multiple opponents. Walls would be useful against other aggro mages, but beware using them against control since it allows them more time to build up unimpeded. Many aggro mages, like the arraxian crown warlock or the straywood beastmaster probably will want to focus most of their aggression on one enemy at a time, while letting a buddy or familiar or spawnpoint take care of other enemies. Fortunately, many mages well-suited for aggro have battle skill, giving them melee +1.
Another good strategy is for a warlord to summon two battle forges, or a battle forge and a barracks, along with some soldiers, and use diplomacy to make themself too valuable to all of his opponents for them to want to kill him. With bloodwave you could try sending creatures to aid your opponents using garrison posts, thereby also increasing your channeling, and then using battle forge to build up your mage in the meantime. Or with anvil throne you could try the reverse, having a forge to help your opponents and using the barracks for yourself.
As for the forcemaster, you could use a combination of stranglevines, force crushes, astral anchors and maybe a wall of force or two to keep most of the control mages at bay while you whale on one particular mage, and then when you're ready to move on to the next one, they're already weakened and each mage kill will require a little less to kill than the last one. Should open with 2 enchanter's wardstones, since you're facing mulitple mages who probably won't like being trapped in a stranglevine AND a force crush without being able to teleport out because of astral anchor, and someone will almost certainly have at least one dispel. Then round 2 bring out galvitar and dancing scimitar and go to town. Whenever it seems like another mage is about to approach you and interrupt the pounding, cast force crush/stranglevine and astral anchor on them. (it likely is a good idea to bait their dispels with force holds first, although then you don't get to damage them that way. Of course if they use their dispels on your attempts to restrain them and DoT them, you can then use forcefields and mind controls etc.
Hopefully this gets everybody thinking about how to make aggro spellbooks for free-for-all that can actually win. Merely porting over aggro spellbooks from 1v1 will put you at a big disadvantage against control spellbooks, especially when you don't have any aggro opponents to cooperate with ingame.
