After maybe a dozen plays with a few different mages I won my first game of Mage Wars last night. Most games played out roughly the same for me, I come out strong, pressure my opponent and then fail to seal the deal at a critical moment allowing him to get his strategy coming and defeat me in the end. This happened regardless of which mage I was using, whether it was a deck of my own design or one of the spell books, whether it was someone who played before or was their first time. I was getting convinced it wasn't him, but me.
Maybe I'm just not good at this game.
The last number of plays I've been tweaking a Warlord build. I'm not that into creatures and like the idea of suiting up and burning my opponent to the ground. But still, I never quite got it to work. A few times I knew what I did wrong. I changed my plan at the last minute. Things like, "Hmm, instead of suiting up and charging why don't I spent two turns getting out whassname, the 24 point demon to put on some pressure while I get all my armor and buffs on?" Not a horrible plan, but not one the book was put together around.
But last night... it worked. It was honed.Curses, a Battle Forge, and a supply of utility spells including my much beloved Teleport.
First turn I pop out the Battle Forge, drop a Harmonize on it and advance. With the extra action and mana boost I soon had my Lash and armor on. Instead of dicking around or getting distracted by what the Warlord was up to I brought out Bear Strength and Vampirism. My opponent helped me out by camping out in his corner with a line of Spear Walls to defend himself. His Iron Golem came out and that gave me a moment's pause. A huge, burnproof, poison proof, nonliving collosus should give any fire mage a bit of a pause. But the golem is slow, and I had two copies of teleport... and two mage wands.
I beat up a couple of his goblins while letting the golem cross the spear walls and get to me. Then out comes the mage wand, a teleport into the Warlord's corner and started beating the hell out of him. No pun intended.
I was further helped by a number of bad rolls on his part. His hurled boulder which should have given me some real grief turned up blank. Litterally blank. No armor needed, but I was slammed which slowed me down a little. Not enough, but a little. The Helm of Fear kept some of his goblins from harrassing me, but even when I got hit, being able to vampirise 9 dice of attack took most of the sting off.
When we first started playing this game, the guy I was playing last night expressed disbelief that you could finish a game in under three hours. Well, an hour and a half in last night I put an end to that as I drained the last of his life, and won my first freaking game of Mage Wars.
I have to play a couple more times with a couple other guys to prove to myself that it wasn't just the bad die rolls that got me this game, but... I did it. I finally did it.
Maybe I should stop playing now.
Nah...
I love this game.
