Book Archetype Primer: Aggro

[Shad0w]

This is good enough that I am going to sticky it.

BTW: Banana Sticker +3 to the OP

[sdougla2]

Back on topic. I'm still not completely happy with the section on buffing big vs small creatures, so I thought I'd elaborate on my position:

It's not clear to me that it's better in general to use Power Strike on a small creature than on a big one, and I'd rather use Charge on a big creature than a small one (although not Earth Elemental, since it doesn't have any quick attacks).

Small creatures benefit more from AoE buffs like Tooth and Nail or Fortified Position (since you can have more small creatures), and long term single target buffs are less efficient on small creatures. That doesn't mean that one shot bonuses like Power Strike become more efficient for them, but if you're going to buff them, it makes sense to use one shots, since it's cheaper, and you probably wouldn't get many uses out of the enchantment on a small creature. This means enchantments buffs are less efficient on small creatures, but not that orders are more efficient.

If you have both large and small creatures, it makes more sense to buff the larger creatures than the smaller creatures, since they're harder to destroy and a bigger investment.

Playing a Bear Strength on a Necropian Vampiress makes her a powerful and resilient threat. Playing Bear Strength on a Bitterwood Fox doubles your investment. It makes the Fox a bit scarier, but it's still 1-2 attacks from being dead, so it would have been better to just play another Fox in most circumstances. Is it worth it to buff the Fox with Power Strike? It's more efficient than Bear Strength on the Fox, but that doesn't necessarily make it any more efficient than using Power Strike on a Steelclaw Grizzly or Necropian Vampiress. It's certainly less efficient than a Bear Strength on a Necropian Vampiress.

What I'd generally say is that the bigger an investment a creature is, the more it makes sense to buff and support them, particularly if they're resilient. Buffing individual members of a swarm is weak, but buffing the swarm as a whole (Rajan's Fury or Tooth and Nail) is strong. It might make sense to buff an individual small creature in individual cases, but that's my general rule of thumb.

As for the Warlord, it still costs actions and mana to cast the order from his Helm of Command, so you still need to consider the efficiency. You don't lose the card, but that's less of a concern in a sense (assuming you made your book optimally so that you had the exact 120 points of cards you wanted within a given game) than the action/mana cost.

That's actually a big part of my problem with the Warlord. Orders just aren't as efficient as enchantments on big creatures, and orders on small creatures aren't any more efficient than orders on big creatures. He has AoE buffs, but they're transitory. I'd much rather play a pair of Tooth and Nails at some point and have all of my creatures be better for the rest of the game than spend an action and 3 mana to give all of my creatures a one shot bonus every turn. I'm hoping when you write about the Warlord I can get a better sense of how he's supposed to operate, but so far I'd just rather play the Beastmaster for creature heavy plays or the Wizard for earth spells.

[reddawn]

Back on topic. I'm still not completely happy with the section on buffing big vs small creatures, so I thought I'd elaborate on my position:

It's not clear to me that it's better in general to use Power Strike on a small creature than on a big one, and I'd rather use Charge on a big creature than a small one (although not Earth Elemental, since it doesn't have any quick attacks).

Small creatures benefit more from AoE buffs like Tooth and Nail or Fortified Position (since you can have more small creatures), and long term single target buffs are less efficient on small creatures. That doesn't mean that one shot bonuses like Power Strike become more efficient for them, but if you're going to buff them, it makes sense to use one shots, since it's cheaper, and you probably wouldn't get many uses out of the enchantment on a small creature. This means enchantments buffs are less efficient on small creatures, but not that orders are more efficient.

If you have both large and small creatures, it makes more sense to buff the larger creatures than the smaller creatures, since they're harder to destroy and a bigger investment.

Playing a Bear Strength on a Necropian Vampiress makes her a powerful and resilient threat. Playing Bear Strength on a Bitterwood Fox doubles your investment. It makes the Fox a bit scarier, but it's still 1-2 attacks from being dead, so it would have been better to just play another Fox in most circumstances. Is it worth it to buff the Fox with Power Strike? It's more efficient than Bear Strength on the Fox, but that doesn't necessarily make it any more efficient than using Power Strike on a Steelclaw Grizzly or Necropian Vampiress. It's certainly less efficient than a Bear Strength on a Necropian Vampiress.

What I'd generally say is that the bigger an investment a creature is, the more it makes sense to buff and support them, particularly if they're resilient. Buffing individual members of a swarm is weak, but buffing the swarm as a whole (Rajan's Fury or Tooth and Nail) is strong. It might make sense to buff an individual small creature in individual cases, but that's my general rule of thumb.

As for the Warlord, it still costs actions and mana to cast the order from his Helm of Command, so you still need to consider the efficiency. You don't lose the card, but that's less of a concern in a sense (assuming you made your book optimally so that you had the exact 120 points of cards you wanted within a given game) than the action/mana cost.

That's actually a big part of my problem with the Warlord. Orders just aren't as efficient as enchantments on big creatures, and orders on small creatures aren't any more efficient than orders on big creatures. He has AoE buffs, but they're transitory. I'd much rather play a pair of Tooth and Nails at some point and have all of my creatures be better for the rest of the game than spend an action and 3 mana to give all of my creatures a one shot bonus every turn. I'm hoping when you write about the Warlord I can get a better sense of how he's supposed to operate, but so far I'd just rather play the Beastmaster for creature heavy plays or the Wizard for earth spells.

While I understand your concerns about the Warlord, the article at this moment is meant to be a foundation for getting into how exactly an aggro book works at a fundamental, general level, with an attempt to be as concise as possible.  The Warlord is admittedly more complicated to play than say the Beastmaster due to how each plays, so he brings in more exceptions that deserve individual attention.  This will be addressed in time, once I get enough experience on if and how each mage can execute an aggro strategy and what exactly that would look like.  Currently, I'm pretty experienced with the Warlock, Forcemaster, and Beastmaster so I'm still working at the Warlord, Priestess, and Wizard.  Once I have those down, I'll write individual segments on what an aggro book looks like for each mage.

Suffice to say that I suspect the primary difference between how Beastmaster aggro differs from Warlord aggro comes down to how easy it is to interact with each of their books.  The Beastmaster relies very heavily on permanents (a term I'm borrowing from MTG that means cards that stay on the board, such as enchantments, creatures and conjurations) that provide his opponent an easier time to interact with and stop his strategy, while the Warlord is more difficult to interact with due to his reliance on non-permanent buffing with command-subtype incantations.  Conjurations like Rajan's Fury and Tooth and Nail are pretty excellent, but they are rather expensive compared to incantations that do similar, if weaker things, and may at times require you to either spend resources defending those conjurations or spending lots of mana to re-cast them when they get destroyed.

I'll also try to reword the section on buffing to better reflect what I mean.  I think the general idea is there, I just need to be clearer.  Thanks for the input though, I'll be sure to address your points in more detail soon.

[sdougla2]

I didn't mean that the Warlord specifics belonged in this article, I just mentioned my concerns because you talked a bit about the differences for the Warlord in one of your responses. Mostly I wanted you to look more closely at the wording in the melee +X section.

[Tacullu64]

As you revisit and edit your article are you going to touch upon flying? I kinda of like articles like yours that finish up by talking about how to counter the strategy. In can also be insightful for the aggro player to see what they can expect their opponents to use against them.

[piousflea]

I disagree with the statement that fire and lightning are the best attacks. Earth (Hurl Boulder) is the most mana efficient from a pure attack dice standpoint, and it cannot be resisted by Elemental Cloak.

Iron Golems on guard are extremely devastating vs aggro because they have so much armor and attack dice. Nonflying aggro creatures will be quickly smashed by the golem, and flying creatures cannot get around his Guard without an Elusive. If you cannot get an Elusive flyer (such as Lord of Fire with Mongoose), you need some other way to deal with the Golem. Arc Lightning is insanely mana efficient against iron golems, not just for damage but for rolling stun/daze. Teleports can move the iron golem away, but are very expensive for an aggro build.

When running an aggro build it is 100% certain that you will put your own Mage within range of your opponents attacks. This means you have to be very careful not to let your Mage die. Running an aggro Beatdown with only offensive enchantments means that your opponent may be able to kill your Mage before you kill his. Often times, an extremely offensive aggro deck actually works better when you throw on a 6-mana armor early. (Dragonscale or storm drake)

[reddawn]

1. I disagree with the statement that fire and lightning are the best attacks. Earth (Hurl Boulder) is the most mana efficient from a pure attack dice standpoint, and it cannot be resisted by Elemental Cloak.

2. Iron Golems on guard are extremely devastating vs aggro because they have so much armor and attack dice. Nonflying aggro creatures will be quickly smashed by the golem, and flying creatures cannot get around his Guard without an Elusive. If you cannot get an Elusive flyer (such as Lord of Fire with Mongoose), you need some other way to deal with the Golem.

3. Arc Lightning is insanely mana efficient against iron golems, not just for damage but for rolling stun/daze. Teleports can move the iron golem away, but are very expensive for an aggro build.

4. When running an aggro build it is 100% certain that you will put your own Mage within range of your opponents attacks. This means you have to be very careful not to let your Mage die. Running an aggro Beatdown with only offensive enchantments means that your opponent may be able to kill your Mage before you kill his. Often times, an extremely offensive aggro deck actually works better when you throw on a 6-mana armor early. (Dragonscale or storm drake)

1.  Even without a Ring, Fireball has a 75% chance to roll just as many dice as Hurl Boulder, but with a good chance to roll more, with the added caveat that each die past the first 6 rolls unavoidable critical damage.  With a Ring, Fireball is obviously the better choice, whereas Earth attacks have no such ring.  Sure you could introduce armor, but I already mentioned how armor plays into the picture.  Plus, earth attacks don't have efficient low cost attacks like Fire or Lightning does; you're committing a lot of mana when you use any Earth attack, so it really needs to pay off or you could be set back more than you'd like mana-wise.

2.  Iron Golem guards aren't too big of a deal.  Any aggro book worth its salt is going to have Mongoose Agility or Evade or some combination with Elusive creatures as you imply.  A piece of armor and an Agony is also a pretty cost-efficient way to deal with them, since they don't have any piercing and can't effectively pursue you.

3.  Yup, I mention lightning being good exactly in that situation.  And I disagree about Teleport; the lowest channeling a mage can have is 9, and if you teleport a Golem 2 zones away (6 mana), that's a good way to buy yourself 3 turns of that Golem being pretty useless, so you're at most spending one turn of mana to buy quite a long time.  Teleport is also very useful for efficiently removing conjurations that Restrain such as Tanglevine and Quicksand, which are in my opinion, much more problematic for aggro builds.

4.  Yes, it is a concern that your mage is going to take a beating, but that's why I recommend the Vampiric trait as a way to heal your damage as you apply pressure.  It ensures that you either get much more mileage than a simple healing spell, or that your opponent uses actions dispelling it.  In either case, you're going to be staying alive much easier.

I do understand your point that Aggro strategies need to provide disruption, and I agree.  I myself play the Warlock a lot, and he leans very aggro-control.  I'll be talking about aggro-combo and aggro-control very soon, and I think that will address the concerns you're having.  Aggro cannot usually be executed very effectively without some kind of disruption, like Mind Shields, Nullifies, curses, Jinxes, etc.  Some books will have more disruption, like the Warlock, and some will have less, like the Beastmaster.

[sIKE]

If you only teleport the Iron Golem two zones,  you are being silly (IMHO) as my Mage (my assumption here is that Golem was Guarding when he was teleported) can run back to him in the same Round or the next round. If it is the same round the you have cause the mage two actions but the Golem will be on guard. I know this is a bit more tactical than strategy but still. If you are Agro and spent six mana to move Golem two zones to beat up on my mage (who probably is running more creatures than you plan too and therefore have more actions)  can afford the actions where as you can't.

[sdougla2]

Position control is strong against slow melee creatures. Sure, Teleporting your Iron Golem 2 zones doesn't prevent you from running back over to it, but hindering might. Whether that's worth the action and mana is highly board state dependent. I think you're making too many assumptions about the matchup and are undervaluing position control.

In order to get much use out of slow melee creatures, you need to use position control and/or many creatures. Otherwise your opponent can maneuver around your creatures and use position control to fight you away from them. In my games, Darkfenne Hydra, Iron Golem, and Earth Elemental have been awesome when supported by strong position control, but without that support the other mage just forces the combat to other zones or moves your slow creatures out of position.

[The Dude]

I completely agree with this article with the exception of one comment made during the beginning, and that was that Aggro was a simpler deck to play, and this is simply not so (pun intended). While the actually strategy of the deck may seem simpler (smash face fast), play itself involves adding lots of stats of monsters together, along with what spells well help achieve the smash face strategy. You want to plan out your mana spending well in advance of using that mana in order to most efficiently use that mana for max amounts of damage. In an aggro deck, you need to win the game before the first action marker is flipped, and that is not an easy thing to do at all. If you look at the greatest aggro players in mtg, they will agree that aggro is a very difficult deck to play well. I am comparing archetypes in games, not the game itself.

What is the simplest deck, then? The deck that most people start off building: Mid range. Why is it easier, though? Because you don't have to plan as much. Sure you may have an opening strategy, but nothing as planned out as a good aggro deck is. You don't have to mid-range, because you are more reactive. You play the creatures that will most fit the job, instead of playing all the creatures.

But, other than that, I really enjoy this article, and I am jealous that you got this out first! I was planning a series on Deck Archetypes, but now that you have that covered, I will stick with my tempo wanderings. Thank you for contributing to this community in a great way!

[reddawn]

I completely agree with this article with the exception of one comment made during the beginning, and that was that Aggro was a simpler deck to play, and this is simply not so (pun intended). While the actually strategy of the deck may seem simpler (smash face fast), play itself involves adding lots of stats of monsters together, along with what spells well help achieve the smash face strategy. You want to plan out your mana spending well in advance of using that mana in order to most efficiently use that mana for max amounts of damage. In an aggro deck, you need to win the game before the first action marker is flipped, and that is not an easy thing to do at all. If you look at the greatest aggro players in mtg, they will agree that aggro is a very difficult deck to play well. I am comparing archetypes in games, not the game itself.

What is the simplest deck, then? The deck that most people start off building: Mid range. Why is it easier, though? Because you don't have to plan as much. Sure you may have an opening strategy, but nothing as planned out as a good aggro deck is. You don't have to mid-range, because you are more reactive. You play the creatures that will most fit the job, instead of playing all the creatures.

But, other than that, I really enjoy this article, and I am jealous that you got this out first! I was planning a series on Deck Archetypes, but now that you have that covered, I will stick with my tempo wanderings. Thank you for contributing to this community in a great way!

Thanks very much for the kind words!  Mage Wars and its community deserve a strong competitive foundation and I'm glad to see that's what I'm providing here.  I tried to be as concrete as possible, so that people can directly take what they learn here and apply it to gameplay, though there is still a lot left to improve on what I said.  And this is by no means an exclusive pursuit; I may have wrote the article, but anyone can help with feedback.  Still, the banana stickers are solid source of motivation  :cheer: (thanks again Shadow!).

And what I meant when I said straightforward was in terms of the concept of the aggro book type (I'll edit this to be clearer when I add in all the other requested/needed edits).  My favorite book type is indeed aggro (more specifically aggro-control with the Warlock and Forcemaster) and I certainly agree that it is not simplistic or a "dumbed-down" way to play the game at all; there's a lot to manage in terms of actions especially, and knowing what to do about guards and when and how to deal what damage, how to best take advantage of initiative to deal the most damage, etc.  I merely meant that, when someone thinks about playing aggro, their foremost concern is killing the opposing mage (i.e., winning the game) as opposed to say in control where you instead need to immediately think about building up your mana (winning the game is a later concern).  

(If you're curious, I actually played lots of aggro, aggro-control, and control decks when I used to play MTG competitively, and when I joined the EDH scene that I recently left.  Mage Wars > Magic and its not even close.)

I also agree that midrange is pretty much the go-to book type for MW, as you say.  I think this is because the rulebook introduces players with very balanced, midrange-y starter books that kinda do a bit of everything.  They give each mage his/her dedicated spawnpoint, along with one or so mana crystals, which is very indicative of a midrange/midrange control book.

Overall, I think that conceptually, not gameplay-wise, aggro is the most straightforward, then control, then midrange.  It really just comes down to how immediately important winning is to each book type.

[reddawn]

As you revisit and edit your article are you going to touch upon flying? I kinda of like articles like yours that finish up by talking about how to counter the strategy. In can also be insightful for the aggro player to see what they can expect their opponents to use against them.

Yes I will touch upon flying, for sure.  Variety in fliers is kind of harder to come by in MW thus far, which is why I initially didn't give it its own section.  Aggro is really looking for cheap fliers, but the only aggressive options at the moment are Darfenne Bats and Thunderift Falcons (Moonglow Faeries might have an application for the odd aggro Wizard book, but that's not something I have experience to speak on), though they're both very good and suffice for the needs of most books.

(I like the name btw.  Summoner Wars is a good game, my favorite is Sneeks and Sunderved.)

[The Dude]

As a side note, it's really funny you mention summoner wars, because the people over on the plaid hat forums bash Mage Wars, calling it a more complicated version of SW. Funny, right?

Thank you for such a quick reply, and I do understand what you mean now, I just think it is important for newer players to realize that aggro is not easy, but it IS really fun. Building an aggro spellbook is really enjoyable, because your entire creature suite will be around twenty points, so what I usually do is build an aggro opener with a midrange transition. That way, if I do lose tempo in the first part of the game, I can gain it by the middle. No, that's not taking into account the Rouse the Beasts or battle furies, but with all that in there, at MOST I use 40 points. Twenty points of reaction and 60 for a midrange strategy? Count me in!

[reddawn]

Position control is strong against slow melee creatures. Sure, Teleporting your Iron Golem 2 zones doesn't prevent you from running back over to it, but hindering might. Whether that's worth the action and mana is highly board state dependent. I think you're making too many assumptions about the matchup and are undervaluing position control.

In order to get much use out of slow melee creatures, you need to use position control and/or many creatures. Otherwise your opponent can maneuver around your creatures and use position control to fight you away from them. In my games, Darkfenne Hydra, Iron Golem, and Earth Elemental have been awesome when supported by strong position control, but without that support the other mage just forces the combat to other zones or moves your slow creatures out of position.

Very much agree, especially about hindering.  Hindering is pretty integral to every book archetype and managing your creatures such that they are a position to hinder, or evade hindering, is a crucial consideration to getting better at the game.  It's a pretty ingenious mechanic if you ask me.

[reddawn]

As a side note, it's really funny you mention summoner wars, because the people over on the plaid hat forums bash Mage Wars, calling it a more complicated version of SW. Funny, right?

Thank you for such a quick reply, and I do understand what you mean now, I just think it is important for newer players to realize that aggro is not easy, but it IS really fun. Building an aggro spellbook is really enjoyable, because your entire creature suite will be around twenty points, so what I usually do is build an aggro opener with a midrange transition. That way, if I do lose tempo in the first part of the game, I can gain it by the middle. No, that's not taking into account the Rouse the Beasts or battle furies, but with all that in there, at MOST I use 40 points. Twenty points of reaction and 60 for a midrange strategy? Count me in!

The first book I ever made was midrange-aggro.  It was fun; used the Pentagram, which I think is an underrated card and perfectly legitimate.  I find midrange-aggro to be a bit more difficult to play, for me, because I have to pick up on tempo swings.  Gotta know how to read the board to make sure you aren't going to lose too much of your position before your spawnpoint starts paying off.  Pentagram in particular leans midrange-aggro, since you pretty much already have to have a solid early board for it to work well.