Blocks and Reverse Attacks...Am I Really The Only One Who Does Not Use Them?

[Obsidian Soul]

So, I have a fair amount of experience in Mage Wars (1 year with 5-7 games a week) and I stopped using Blocks and Reverse Attacks after the first three months.  If you are a Forcemaster, they may be worth it, but there are just too many ways for people to pop them with small creatures, unavoidable attacks, seeking dispels or simply waiting for you to run out of mana.  Of course, I tend to play characters that have massive amounts of healing, but I was wondering if anyone else avoids using Blocks and Reverse Attacks?

[silverclawgrizzly]

No blocks in your books eh? Good to know......

Obsidian is my roommate and apparently I've been fretting over nothing a few times.....good to know.....

[sdougla2]

I don't like to use many in most spellbooks. I tend to think of Block and Reverse Attack as better to threaten than actually use in many situations. If your opponent plays an unavoidable attack spell on you when they don't need to in order to try and pop a Reverse Attack, and it turns out to be a Rhino Hide, you should come out slightly ahead. However, if they Flameblast your Reverse Attack, you're pretty far behind in spellbook points unless you're playing a Forcemaster. Of course, if they run a full attack from a Steelclaw Grizzly into that Reverse Attack, you come out massively ahead. Both cards tend to be better against a few big threats than against swarms or midrange. I like to use a couple of Blocks in my Necromancer build to help with how squishy he is. I like to run a few Reverse Attacks in my Forcemaster build in order to win damage races and keep my opponent leery of attacking my creatures (since I can't run many anyway). Otherwise I mostly avoid them, though I can certainly see running a single Reverse Attack in an aggressive spellbook or a Block or two in a more economically focused spellbook.