Official Preconstructed Arena tournaments?

[Sailor Vulcan]

Will there ever be any official MW Arena tournaments where everyone uses the premade spellbook lists only? I would love to participate in such a tournament if it ever exists!

Thanks!

[wtcannonjr]

I use this format for Round 1 in the WBC tournament. We just use the Apprentice mode to help new players learn the game.

The later rounds add the advance rules and let players customize a spellbook. It might be fun to just continue with fixed books in the later rounds too.

[Mystery]

why?

[Sailor Vulcan]

why?

 Because in preconstructed formats the spellbook lists are all publicly available and can't be customized, which means that game outcomes are determined pretty much entirely by player skill and not by deck-building skill, and as a result it would have a rather different style of gameplay than the standard Arena format.

Yesterday I played a preconstructed game on Octgn. I was using Malakai Priest he was using Forcemaster. He had two mind controls, three charms and one forcefield in his deck, but I only had one dispel. He had no sleeps. However I had enough holy creatures to overwhelm his forcefield charms and mind controls. He had a force crush, which I would have needed to dispel. I lost because I wasted the dispel on one of his mind controls instead, and hadn't protected my temple of Asyra well enough nor tried to destroy his thoughtspores.

The starter spellbooks seem to be a lot more balanced and strategic than people realize. I suspect that new starter spellbooks are all playtested against all the starter spellbooks that already exist, before an expansion is released. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong about that.

[Puddnhead]

Pretty sure that pre-constructed books are built to show off what's in the set and not to be a balanced fight with other starter books.  For instance, I'm convinced that the Siren start book is superior to the Paladin start book primarily because neither of them have any cards exterior to the set and the Paladin needs to have some of those other Holy spells to be competitive.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Pretty sure that pre-constructed books are built to show off what's in the set and not to be a balanced fight with other starter books.  For instance, I'm convinced that the Siren start book is superior to the Paladin start book primarily because neither of them have any cards exterior to the set and the Paladin needs to have some of those other Holy spells to be competitive.

How many times have you used the PvS starter books? Also did the Malakai priest starter book only include cards from his set?

[Puddnhead]

I played with the Paladin starter book several times at GenCon against different kinds of books and, sure I'm not the world's best Paladin (yet ), but there are some serious holes that would be very easy to shore up given just the core set.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I played with the Paladin starter book several times at GenCon against different kinds of books and, sure I'm not the world's best Paladin (yet ), but there are some serious holes that would be very easy to shore up given just the core set.

Just to be clear I meant how many times have you used the paladin or siren starter spellbooks against other starter spellbooks?


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[Puddnhead]

Maybe twice?  I'm fairly certain you're not going to get any rigorous statistical facts since the set isn't even officially released yet.

Just think about it, though.  The Siren has about 60-70% of the cards in the set In School because of songs training and the heavy expansion of the Water school.  The Paladin is building off of the Core set, two War expansions and a Holy expansion.  I'm surprised he can actually have 40% of the spells in his school with this set.

Now, the designers (rightly so) want to show off a lot of the cool stuff in the set with just the pre-made books.  The Siren has a lot more options within the set to make a viable book because (just like the Druid and Necromancer) this set is how she is even able to be competitive.

[Brian VanAlstyne]

I would never want to play with the starter books. I've spent so much time and energy building, testing, dismantling, rebuilding, testing, tweaking, and finally being satisfied with my built books that I'd never want to go back. Hell, I get "annoyed" anytime a new set comes out that I have to figure out what cards I can eliminate from a deck just to add all the new fancy ones.

[Halewijn]

I would never want to play with the starter books. I've spent so much time and energy building, testing, dismantling, rebuilding, testing, tweaking, and finally being satisfied with my built books that I'd never want to go back. Hell, I get "annoyed" anytime a new set comes out that I have to figure out what cards I can eliminate from a deck just to add all the new fancy ones.

I agree.

The starter spellbooks are meant to show off to people that don't know mage wars. They are absurdly badly designed. I never want to play them.

[Tyrnan]

I also agree that the starter books are not build to be competitive. A tournament just with starter books will be biased, because there are arguably starter books that are better than other starter books.

I like to use the starter books in casual play to "get to know" a new mage and test some of his options in order to decide which I like best. The starter books are good for this because they usually contain the whole variety of that mage's card pool (at least for the new cards). That's at the same time the reason why they cannot be competitive because a competitive book needs to focus on few options and not provide every possible option.