What would make a forcemaster tank worth it?

[Sailor Vulcan]

The forcemaster has the potential to be one of the best tanking mages in the game, but I'm having trouble figuring out why she'd ever want to tank instead of rushing. Force crush does damage over time, but I don't see why the forcemaster would want to use it, since it's so expensive for her to use if she's rushing. It seems to be a waste to not rush when you have access to Galvitar, since it's spinning slash attack always either has sweeping to get past guards or double strike to deal 8 dice on the enemy mage.

But she has access to a lot of other spells that feel like they'd be really useful tanking. Forcefield, force orb, force sword, dancing scimitar, force crush, position control via spells like force push, force wave and repulse, and she's great with zone attacks because she usually has few to no creatures. She could do a lot of things to make her opponents' choices less useful or useless, such as block, reverse attack, steal equipment, fumble, suppression orb, wall of force (in front of a spawnpoint or something), stumble, force hold, charm, mind control, etc. a lot of the out of school choices she already uses could also lend themselves well to a tank strategy: mongoose agility, cheetah speed, hand of bim-shalla, armor, regen, etc. She even has a built in defense that would be really great with temple of the dawnbreaker!

There's just one problem. Forcemaster is usually so much better rushing (with or without a buddy) because of Galvitar. As far as I can recall, I have only seen two possibly viable forcemasters that could take sufficient advantage of Galvitar without rushing: a swarm build murphy made a while back that was similar to falcon swarm but might have been rather weak to aggression (though it's been a long time since I've played against it) using max spores and psyloks, and a forcemaster I made that turtles against rushes and rushes against turtles.

I'm thinking in order for a forcemaster tank to be worth it, you would need some sort of alternative to Galvitar. Maybe something that has a ranged attack, so she could kite. A forcebow or something like that.

What do you think?

[Puddnhead]

Tank Forcemaster would go very well with a 2v2 scenario.  I would suggest gearing her up to be disruptive in addition to being an unkillable tank with a large percentage of her book being full of position control.  A Forcemaster could keep a lot of things off of a glass cannon Adramelech warlock or an extreme sniper Johktari or Bloodwave Warlord (he can order Ranged +1).

An intangible shade has told me that we might see a 2v2 Domination (that includes a forcemaster) on the internet in the not too distant future.

[ringkichard]

Tactically, a tank Forcemaster should work fine, but strategically she'd have a problem: how does she win? Tanks slow the game down, but a long game isn't in the Forcemaster's interest unless she can channel more than her opponent or produce more creatures or gain some other kind of incremental compounding advantage. Forcemaster's very good at something she doesn't want to do.

[Myrddin]

I think the best way for a forcemaster tank to actually win would probably be spellbook attrition. I.e. pack lots of force crushes (for them) forcefields (for you), plus mana siphons, dissolves, dispels etc. You might actually pretend to solo rush at first so they use dispels etc. inefficiently, but also build up defences so that later in the game they're force crushed, you're forcefielded and they're out of dispels. Even if they've got lots of creatures, they'd use most of the effort getting through your defences.

Would suffer against another mage designed for a similar role (particularly wizards or death mages focused on direct damage/poison) but could be pretty effective against other builds.

In this context, Galvitar is great because of being a cantrip: you're guaranteed access to a weapon that remains useful when you start running low on mana. Ditto on force pull (particularly useful if you're elusive as you can pull an enemy into your square and then sprint out of charge range)


I'd find this fun to build/use, but probably never would, as it sounds dull/frustrating for your opponent unless they're into this sort of meta book-building. Same reason I retired my 'you can't kill me' priestess after a couple of games

[Sailor Vulcan]

You had a "you can't kill me" priestess! I'd love the chance to play against that!

[Myrddin]

You had a "you can't kill me" priestess! I'd love the chance to play against that!

Somewhat outdated by cards released since and local meta. She just had lots of cheap healing/protection, lots of armour, a couple of veteran's belts and a few other things designed to give her the advantage if the game was in a stalemate-type position. But getting through defences, aegis and armour to cause a few damage and then having her heal easily and cheaply was just a bit depressing for my foes. With acid ball/rust and a few other more recent things, she'd be less strong.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Did they try to use dot, piercing and tanglevines/force holds?