PBEM Mage Wars

[Alexander West]

My brother and I have been playing Mage Wars by email.  It requires that we trust each other on card planning (though we could both make blind emails to a third email address and verify after if that were an issue) and dice rolling (though we could use a dice roller to cover that if it were an issue).  We just keep a short text file to describe the game state, and it works quite well.  Here's an example from the end of the first game we finished:

Turn 7 (Planning)
Initiative: Andrew

Warlord (Alexander - Green) : Channeling 9, Mana Supply 12, Damage 18 / Life 36
(Meditation Amulet) (Regrowth Belt) (Dragonscale Hauberk)

Warlord (Andrew - Blue) : Channeling 9, Mana Supply 15, Damage 3 / Life 36
(Ring of Command) (Leather Gloves) (Warhammer)

A4: (B) Grimson Deadeye (A+) (D:6)
B2: (G) Knight of Westlock (A+)
B3: (G) Knight of Westlock (A+)
B3: (B) Akiro's Hammer (L:2) (D:5)
C3: (B) Warlord (Andrew) (A+) (QC+)
C3: (G) Warlord (Alexander) (A+) (QC+)

[jacksmack]

How do you handle enchantment revealling - especially tranfusion combos, enfeeble or stumble, nullify, jinx, forcefield which seriously changes the outcome of the opponents turn.

How do you handle Defense. Waiting for another email to see if you can actually land an attack sounds tiresome.
An if the attacker has a daze condition you have to see if the attacker succeds this attack before the defendeer decides if he uses defense.

Deploying from spawnpoints takes time too.

There are probaly tons of scenarios i havent thought of. But especially F/D enchantments can be very hard to handle.


If it works for you guys - nice. But i cant ever see myself be playing this way.

[Alexander West]

@Jack:  Good questions!

If the defender handles all the dice rolls, it all goes pretty smoothly since they can roll the daze die, then any defenses they choose, then the damage dice.  (And then take their next action, usually.)

Depolyment requires a pass back and forth, but isn't complicated in any way.  Just one more email. 

I'm not sure about enchantments, we haven't used them very heavily.  I'll let you know how we end up handling that.  It could be a problem, we'll see. 

[Sailor Vulcan]

That game would probably take at least a month to finish. Not to mention every time you send an attack email you have to wait for your opponent to say whether they want to respond with a defense or healing or intercept etc. Why not just use Facebook chat/skype?

[Zuberi]

Attacks wouldn't really be an issue. As he stated, the defender handles all calculations and then proceeds with his own turn. The problems would arise from wanting to use a quick cast marker, conjuration attack, enchantment, or anything else that alters the normal course of a turn.

[Sailor Vulcan]

And I do think you'll need a referee to keep track of planned cards and hidden enchantments. Even if you trust your opponent not to cheat on purpose, that won't stop him from forgetting what enchantment he cast.

And you should each have some sort of visual representation of the board. Saying knight to B3 works in chess because you can only have one creature per zone in chess. Not so in mage wars. If you only described their location in text, you would have to memorize where everything is.

I really think you should have an arena map in front of each of you so that when your opponent says knight of Westlock to B3 you can move card proxies accordingly.