Who's the hardest Mage to get right?

[Sirscott13]

I love the Druid. Here is my basic strategy with her.

First get out that Vine tree and tree bond it in your corner. Next get out some blood spine walls to protect yourself.
Then get out some mana flowers and Tartaree to put mana on your tree. (also harmonize tree)
Get your Vine-whip staff and meditation amulet

After this stay in your corner with your tree and deploy the 3 vine markers for 2 mana each turn. Then keep the conjuration flowers with attacks and other vine creatures popping up from your vine markers many zones away from you. Use blood spine walls and use your meditation amulet every full action.

There should be no shortage of mana for you. Channeling of 10 plus a couple mana flowers to 12, using meditation amulet every round now were at 15 channeling. Your tree has channeling of 2 now plus your tartaree mana drops.
This gives you a base of 18 mana a turn minus 2 for deploying 3 vines (you can counter this with moon glow amulet and harmonize). Your tree will deploy all your creatures and conjurations, you can add more during your quick cast if needed, but here is the next strategy to use with the Druid.

I cannot tell you how cool her burst thorns incantation is. If you are deploying 3 vines a turn the range on that attack is incredible. Plus it offers a good chance to cause bleed conditions. This just helps keep all your vines dangerous to the enemy mage. use this during her quick casts via mage wand.

OR- you can use her quick cast to cause her vine markers to burst and give creatures the stuck condition. Great when all your creatures are rooted. This is done with vine whip staff.

OR- you can use renewing rain to heal your creatures and remove burns (handy when fighting warlock but why would you use Druid vs Warlock?) again mage wand works great here.

As for some creature tactics. Raptor Vines can be uprooted which is nice to chase enemies down and get a vampiric bite. Vine snatchers are great when behind bloodspine walls because you have a great chance to pull them through it giving them an additional attack and possibly bleed conditions. Your conjurations can attack too which is good because you basically get two actions per action phase here plus putting creatures to sleep or dissolving your opponents armor is awesome. Lastly use your level six Ent of Destruction. He is costly to move around, but I prefer to keep him in my corner because of his Intercept ability.

Basically to wrap it up. The druid has one of the greatest span points (no not that stupid samara tree) because it can also cast conjurations and it can use the vine markers to get ranged spawning. Get up a good channeling through the strategies I listed and deploy vines and creatures everywhere!

I wouldn't call it swarm strategy because most of the creatures are rooted (Great for fighting force master) but rather its a strategy of board domination. Your druid (when equipped with bark skin) can basically heal 4 damage every turn thanks to Life Bond +2. Mana conservation and constant deployment. Your mage will be safe and secure while your opponent will be forced to trudge through your jungle of death...

[ACG]

I cannot tell you how cool her burst thorns incantation is. If you are deploying 3 vines a turn the range on that attack is incredible.

I too love the druid. Minor note: the range on burst of thorns is always 0-2; it cannot be extended using vine markers, as it is not a spell with the vine subtype. Still a good spell, though.

[Sirscott13]

Woops played it a little wrong then, but usually I get out there and hurl acid balls because I get bored.

[V10lentray]

After this stay in your corner with your tree and deploy the 3 vine markers for 2 mana each turn.

How are you playing 3 markers per turn?

Druid only can play one. The tree allows an additional 1, for 2 markers per turn.

[Schwenkgott]

[mwcard=DNQ08]Vinewhip Staff[/mwcard]

[V10lentray]

yeah.... i never use that card

[Sirscott13]

That card is great because again get another vine market but also giving your enemy the stuck condition is great. Especially when your creatures are rooted

[Battlehamster]

It took me 3 different spell book builds with the druid before I got it how I wanted it to play. I normally find spend 2 rounds prepping, dropping mana crystals, lairs, ect. then by round 3 you should be able to cast a high lvl spell or big creature.

Or you can do what my warlock build does and mana starve yourself round 1 so round 2 you can bring at adramalech.

Mmmm, tasty druids. Galvitar hungers!! 

[Sailor Vulcan]

Btw, speaking of what zuberi said in regards to the priest, I suspect he plays a bit less offensively than that. He has a lot of access to healing spells, a low dice attack with a chance of daze, and the ability to burn things that get damaged by his light attacks. His holy avenger ability activates when a friendly creature or holy conjuration gets attacked. That means you want your opponent to be the one aggressing. Holy avenger punishes them for attacking your stuff. The priest dazes the enemy to make them less likely to land a successful attack. Every time they hurt you, you hurt them back worse. Every time they fail to hurt you they're still taking some burn damage. And every time they manage to do more damage to you than you do to them, you use healing spells.

I recently played against a really awesome priest that used 2 guardian angels and an asyran defender as the holy avenger. If I tried to attack the angels, they'd defend and guard again really fast. If I tried to attack the asyran cleric, I couldn't because angels have intercept and were guarding. And I couldn't attack the mage either for the same reason. I should have cast tanglevine on the angels while they were guarding, but I forgot to, lol. Was playing a johktari beastmaster.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Of course, I think the johktari beastmaster is the hardest mage to get right in general. It's really hard to figure out how her abilities synergize with each other. As far as I know, Schwenkgott was the first person to figure her out, and he didn't start playing her on OCTGN and talking about how good she is on the forums until recently, even though she was released about two years ago. Before then, very few people were able to successfully play her how she was designed to be played, if anyone.

[sdougla2]

I tried a Johktari Beastmaster Lair build over a year ago. I don't know if that build met your criteria for a Johktari Beastmaster that plays the way she was designed to be played. I didn't talk about it as much as I could have on here, and the thread started with a Straywood Beastmaster build that I transitioned into a Johktari Beastmaster build.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I tried a Johktari Beastmaster Lair build over a year ago. I don't know if that build met your criteria for a Johktari Beastmaster that plays the way she was designed to be played. I didn't talk about it as much as I could have on here, and the thread started with a Straywood Beastmaster build that I transitioned into a Johktari Beastmaster build.

I don't think I've ever seen it, and if I have I totally forgot. It was over a year ago, after all. Maybe you can play it next time we duel.