3 Player Game

[Terrazas]

So just got a idea how to play a three person match. Instead of mages taking damage the game is based of a point system. Everytime you damage another mage instead of that mage taking damage the mage that did the damage would get that many points. So you could say the first one to 60 wins. This way you don't have to worry about two mages fighting it out and the third one sitting back then coming in and killing the other two mages. We are also thinking of making the arena into a giant triangle.

[Sailor Vulcan]

The arena in the triangle shape sounds good. However, I'm not sure how you'd be able to make the Points instead of damage system work. There are a lot of cards dedicated to life gain or direct damage as well as the strategies that use them that would become obsolete in such a format. Furthermore, having such a points system punishes slower playstyles, and therefore makes the game unbalanced in favor of aggressive mages like the beastmaster or the warlock.

Also, what's wrong with trying to hang back while your opponents fight each other? That's a perfectly fine thing to do for a player with a defensive playstyle, or a strategy that requires some preparation to set in motion. Also, part of the fun of 3+ player games is that it adds a new dimension of strategy, particularly psychological strategy. It's asking yourself questions like "Who's the bigger threat?" or "Will this bluff work against both of them?" or "should I deal with this threat myself, or let one of my other opponent's handle it?"

Aside from a differently shaped board, I don't think that there's anything else that would inherently impede a 3 player game of Mage Wars from working and being enjoyable, at least I can't think of any of the top of my head.



Note: if your intention is to discourage people in your playgroup from playing slowly or defensively, I strongly advise that you don't do that. Mage Wars is supposed to be a customizable strategy game. Part of what defines a customizable strategy game and makes it so fun is the great diversity of playstyles and the amazing level of customization. If you can customize your spellbook to suit your strategic preferences, then you should accept and respect that so will your opponents. The "third one" you described is not going to be happy with you for essentially telling them that they have to play like you do.

If you want to play a game where everyone plays aggro but there's still some gameplay diversity, I don't know of many options in board and card games, though there probably are quite a few. However, I can think of one that's a video game off the top of my head that I really like: Super Smash Bro Brawl. It's an amazing and addicting video game, and I've been playing it for several years. It's AWESOME.

[Wiz-Pig]

I think you are getting too hung up on what you think Mage Wars should be, Imaginator. This is an alternative style of play to provide some variety and I think it sounds fun. The point system might change the game quite a bit but, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be fun to explore that alternate strategic space!

Besides healing would still be useful for keeping your creatures alive. Also you could change the victory condition from 60 points (as represented by damage to either opponent mage), to at least 30 points to each opponent mage and now that you are tracking them separately you could use healing to reduce opponents point totals selectively adding a slightly different strategic element to healing.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Wiz is completely right, I apologize.

Not that it's an excuse, but the reason I reacted that way is that I've been picked on a lot both online and in real life for my strategic preferences in games. Ironically, that very reason I reacted so strongly should have been a reason to realize my bias and come back later with a clear head. Sorry I didn't respond with my apology for this sooner, I've been stressed with taking all the exams that I didn't get to take until close to the end of the summer semester. Anyways, now that that's out of the way...

I think your concept is actually quite interesting, and I'm upset at myself for practically bashing it earlier. In fact, I think this could make multiplayer work with minimal politics and still be just as dynamic and engaging as facing the same number of opponents normally would be in a regular multiplayer game. I think I might actually want to try this in real life for a four player game, once I have a playgroup that is, which hopefully will be soon.

For the three player version, I'm already imagining an awesome warlord idea in which I trap the other two players behind walls in their corners, and then use archer's watchtowers, one for Deadeye Sniper and one for my Ivarium Longbow equipped Mage. That's assuming that the format is still going to use a triangular board of course.

I'm thinking it would be ideal to use 10 triangular zones, but creatures can only move diagonally. I know this sounds weird, but I think it might be the only way for it to work with a triangular board. I drew a couple diagrams on a piece of paper, and the results for a 16 or a 9 zone triangle board where creatures move adjacently rather than diagonally, were not good.

If you have a 16 zone triangular board, the zone distance from one corner edge to the other is 7 zones. On top of that, there is one zone in the very center of the board by itself, and it is four zones away from any corner edge. There are three other zones that are diagonal from the center one that I would probably also consider center zones to a great extent, but then that would make about 4 center zones. The thing is, 16 triangular zones in a triangle shape is too big. However with 9 triangular zones, I noticed that there is no one center zone. Rather, there are "6 center" zones arranged like a wheel--more than there are corners, which since it is a triangle are half as many as the center zones are. However, if you arrange the same 16 zone board, but take out the 6 upward pointing ones and only allow creatures to move through the corners of each zone suddenly it looks a bit better. Each side of the triangle would now have 4 zones like in the regular rectangular board, which might be too small. Worse, this creates a center zone that is only 2 zones away from every zone on the board.

Then I drew a 25 triangle board, and excluded all 10 upward pointing triangles to leave 15 total zones, including 3 corners, 3 center zones and a maximum range of 4, so each side would be 5 zones long.

Now I've noticed a problem that all triangle-shaped boards share when movement is adjacent rather than diagonal: 3 triangular zones in the corners means that you can be walled off with just one wall in the corners, and 2 walls anywhere on the sides.

So instead, I propose a 12-agon shaped board. It would have a hexagon of 6 triangular zones in the center, and around that would be 6 adjacent square zones, and then between the squares would be 6 more triangular zones, for a total of 18 zones. The farthest range would be 5, a length of 6 zones between a square zone and an outer triangle. Each player would start in an outer triangle.

What do you think?