Cursing Warlock

[Paleblue]

Contrary to forum belief, the Warlord is a perfectly good mage.  Just don't play him like an inferior BM.

The problem is a lot of people think this how you play the Warlord because that is how he came packaged.

I think the vassel promo cards make a huge difference to the Warlord game. I don't own then, no idea when they will come out, but would love to have them!

[paradox22]

Contrary to forum belief, the Warlord is a perfectly good mage.  Just don't play him like an inferior BM.

The problem is a lot of people think this how you play the Warlord because that is how he came packaged.

I think the vassel promo cards make a huge difference to the Warlord game. I don't own then, no idea when they will come out, but would love to have them!

Indeed.  This particular warlord build ran 4 ballista (a Vassel promo card)...  It is brutal.  I unknowingly played a temple build against it and got curb stomped!  Conjurations stand no chance against it.  IMO once the ballista is released it'll be an auto include in a lot of builds simply for cheap anti conjuration support.  If that's the case, the "temple build" will suffer greatly.  A Ballista can easily one shot a hand of bim shalla.  Just my opinion. 

[jmoodie]

I was totally caught off guard by the ballistas. He had three lines up against me. Every turn, at least one was shooting. I eventually got rid of them, but I had been hit several times by then.

[paradox22]

I know EXACTLY how ya feel.     He also ran the Ivarium longbow + Hawkeye for added ranged attacks and Sir Corizan for melee support.    So... while dealing with Sir Corizan's melee assault, he was shooting you with the bow, and began summoning Ballistas.  It was a very effective build.

[jmoodie]

I know EXACTLY how ya feel.     He also ran the Ivarium longbow + Hawkeye for added ranged attacks and Sir Corizan for melee support.    So... while dealing with Sir Corizan's melee assault, he was shooting you with the bow, and began summoning Ballistas.  It was a very effective build.

And the god forsaken f'ing tanglevines.

[paradox22]

Oh ya... How could I forget THOSE?!   

[Paleblue]

Sorry to keep off topic but that Ballista card looks awesome with its pierce 3, much better at nuking buildings than the stupid catapult!

[jmoodie]

Sorry to keep off topic but that Ballista card looks awesome with its pierce 3, much better at nuking buildings than the stupid catapult!

What makes the ballistas particularly brutal is that they are ready to fire the turn after they are summoned.  And it's a QC, so it can drop at the last moment.  Then boom.  And the next one drops.  And so on.  8 life and 3 armor.

The saving grace seems to be that they are weak against fire.  So if you blitz them with fire quickly, they will go down.

[baronzaltor]

A well timed Reverse Attack trashes Ballistas though, watch them shoot themselves for 5D and 3 pierce.  It pretty much destroys itself on a decent roll.

[MrSaucy]

Contrary to forum belief, the Warlord is a perfectly good mage.  Just don't play him like an inferior BM.

The problem is a lot of people think this how you play the Warlord because that is how he came packaged.

I think the vassel promo cards make a huge difference to the Warlord game. I don't own then, no idea when they will come out, but would love to have them!

Indeed.  This particular warlord build ran 4 ballista (a Vassel promo card)...  It is brutal.  I unknowingly played a temple build against it and got curb stomped!  Conjurations stand no chance against it.  IMO once the ballista is released it'll be an auto include in a lot of builds simply for cheap anti conjuration support.  If that's the case, the "temple build" will suffer greatly.  A Ballista can easily one shot a hand of bim shalla.  Just my opinion.

Good. People are complaining Temple builds are OP with the combination of Hand of Bim-Shalla and Temple of Light. Nice to see something to combat it.

[reddawn]

Contrary to forum belief, the Warlord is a perfectly good mage.  Just don't play him like an inferior BM.

The problem is a lot of people think this how you play the Warlord because that is how he came packaged.

I think the vassel promo cards make a huge difference to the Warlord game. I don't own then, no idea when they will come out, but would love to have them!

Indeed.  This particular warlord build ran 4 ballista (a Vassel promo card)...  It is brutal.  I unknowingly played a temple build against it and got curb stomped!  Conjurations stand no chance against it.  IMO once the ballista is released it'll be an auto include in a lot of builds simply for cheap anti conjuration support.  If that's the case, the "temple build" will suffer greatly.  A Ballista can easily one shot a hand of bim shalla.  Just my opinion.

Good. People are complaining Temple builds are OP with the combination of Hand of Bim-Shalla and Temple of Light. Nice to see something to combat it.

They could also just run Force Hammer.  It pretty much beats the crap out of anything, especially conjurations.

[sdougla2]

Force Hammer is not an efficient solution to temples. It is A solution, I'll grant you, but since it's inefficient, it won't necessarily result in beating the temple build depending on what else is going on.

[ringkichard]

Chain Lightning sounds interesting, though. If the mage has small creatures or some other way to back it up, hitting multiple targets in adjacent zones seems exactly right.

[sIKE]

Force Hammer is not an efficient solution to temples. It is A solution, I'll grant you, but since it's inefficient, it won't necessarily result in beating the temple build depending on what else is going on.

Rolling 8 Dice for a cost of 9 Mana is actually pretty good, now the 4 spellbook points for most mages is a bit expensive.

[ringkichard]

It's not about 8 dice for 9 mana, it's about the 9 mana Hammer for the 5 mana Hand. Repeat three times (Hand is used in bulk), and the Hammer mage is down a whole turn of channeling.

And that's setting aside the other problems: 3 Hands is 6 points (or 3!), 3 Hammers is 12 points. Most books just don't have room for that many attack spells. The Hand player can go to 6 Hands, too, which won't be answerable with Hammers without the additional cost of wands.

One bad possible scenario is that a Priestess spends the first three turns casting Hands and the opponent spends the first 3 turns casting Hammer from a Wand. The Priestess starts turn 4 at 20 mana, and opponent runs out of mana on turn 2.