The Vampire and Angel Wizard Control Build

[cbalian]

Now if only a future mage was Dark/Holy.  That would make for some nice set ups.  Angels, Demons, Vampires etc all together.

[sIKE]

The cost is only 2x for a Wizard so though a bit on the expensive side, still decently affordable....

[Charmyna]

The cost is only 2x for a Wizard so though a bit on the expensive side, still decently affordable....

Actually the cost for the vampiress angel combo is nearly the same for every class except Forcemaster. Warlock has to pay 13 Spellpoints, Priest(ess) 15 Spellpoints and all others 14 Spellpoints.

[Wiz-Pig]

So what you are saying is: ironically it's cheapest for the Warlock to run this combo.

[jacksmack]

So i got to play Charmyna's described spellbook today.

First of all. Thanks for teaching me the few not so obvious Things about MW on OCTGN - and thanks for a good match.

I played a non-standard FM build pre CoK release and without any promos.
Its focused on Grimson deadeye turn 1 + mana crytal start zone. Round 2:Archers Tower 1 zone to the left of my starting zone and a potential pull (which happened this game) on grimson because my enemy moved out of his starting zone resulting in a 5 dice attack round 2.
From here on i have the option of walling in Grimson letting him snipe outside walls with Archers Tower, or summening the royal Archers.
Unfortunately i mis-played round 3 by summening the royal Archer and my grimson was teleported 3 zones away into the vampiress and the guardin angel.

The vampire stroke hard and left my grimson without hope (2 hp left or perhaps 3), and i was now facing a serious setback even though he payed 9 mana to port the sniper.

Hereafter Charmyna only ran those 2 creatures while spending either his QC or Quickaction from the action marker to buff himself with the following:
Leather gloves, Rhino hide, Dragon scale hauberk, Boots of standground (no push / pull) and my thought spore only got off 3 dissolves. He also managed to purge magic my bearstrength AND my forcefield.

Meanwhile my thought spore was taking Down so the invisible stalker i had summoned was rendered half useless because the time i had initiative he would save his QC to arcane zap (ethereal), so i had to stay invis in those rounds.
After necro vamp got bear strengthed my royal Archer died which didnt matter much because i faced bad rolls so his wizard hardly had to use volt shield after all the armor buffed and 0 crits rolled.
Now my stalker with quite alot damage taken was forced to stay invis all the time because i had the fewest action markers.

Charmyna also dropped a wizard Tower (which in imo never repayed itself), that i sacrifised my stalker on to finish on after i double striked it with my FM equipped with galvatar.

Now my FM is alone without forcefield, and the wizard still have clawboots equipped and 1 zone away from me.
Because of the necro vamp hindering my FM and the fact i had to get rid of boots and THEN pulling , we decided that the game was over.


My deck was build pre CoK and intercept seriously screws it over - which is fine.

However... the guardian angel seems broke beyond repair. (incredibly strong)
Seriously... it cannot die, and its either gonna prevent alot of damage or force you opponent to spend a massive amount of ressources to get rid of its  guard.
Im still very unexperienced, and i realize i could have done some thing different, but only 2 Things would have mattered much:
1)
i could have focused on the vamp while it was 3 zones away = no healing from vampiric for a while.
2)
Cast walls straight away Thus sticking to original opening (i got greedy in this game because of his opening with 1 big 1 medium - with original opening i would delay royal 1 round).


The opening Charmyna has come up with is incredibly powerful because its extremely hard to do anything of the following:

1)
focus on the enemy wizard. Volt shield and the ever living angel will TREMENDIOUSLY reduce the damage on the wizard with all the armor (5 when maxed this game i played).
2)
Focus on the angel... good luck: 3 armor? (not sure of the armor), aegis 1, 12 hp?, heal 2 every guard action, and ofcourse a defense as well....
3)
Kill the vampiress. It has vampiric and soon enough a bear strength. It has 3 armor and 15 hp (you need serious hard hitters and good rolls to take this Down) AND.... angel of doom protects it when possible.

[sIKE]

Welcome to the book I have been playing against, every time I came up with a counter to his book it would evolve to be even more deadly. Honestly the trick is to stay focus on his mage. On your initiative use Force Push/or Pull his Mage when all three are in the same zone and whack him. The next round Force Wave his creatures from you.

As for the WT, it might not of paid off in this game, but it is usually it builds on his action advantage, he uses Zap (1 mana) and then has the WT use the rest of his mana. Now he basically has four actions per round and it is quite brutal. You should of seen this build before the Nerfing done last week. ToL + 6 HoB, game over.

Believe it or not the best I have done against him is the with the Warlord and a bunch of Ballista's, that is why he is a Fire Wizard now...

[jacksmack]

Welcome to the book I have been playing against, every time I came up with a counter to his book it would evolve to be even more deadly. Honestly the trick is to stay focus on his mage. On your initiative use Force Push/or Pull his Mage when all three are in the same zone and whack him. The next round Force Wave his creatures from you.

As for the WT, it might not of paid off in this game, but it is usually it builds on his action advantage, he uses Zap (1 mana) and then has the WT use the rest of his mana. Now he basically has four actions per round and it is quite brutal. You should of seen this build before the Nerfing done last week. ToL + 6 HoB, game over.

Believe it or not the best I have done against him is the with the Warlord and a bunch of Ballista's, that is why he is a Fire Wizard now...

Ballista seems incredibly strong atm, and i do believe you could stand up against this combo with ballista, perhaps a FM running these would be strong? 10 channeling and the option to pull for 1 mana could seem to do well.  Anyway, its a promo though, so i dont consider it allowed.
Full action move, then forcepull and have 3-4 ballista shoot. this would pretty much kill anything due to the pierce.
I could imagine ballista wouldnt ever get released? - WHO would ever want to cast a fireball vs a ballista?

[sIKE]

The Ballista are strong but very slow and against an experienced player they "might" get off two shots. If you play them wrong they get taken out quickly.

They are Flame +2 so a Fireball is quite effective in taking one out. I typically use the QC to hit it with the Fireball and then if needed melee it to take it out.

If a mage leaves them alone and given enough rounds they can turn the game in your favor.

Play with them in OCTGN and you will quickly learn the ins/outs of them. They are no where as near as powerful as the old ToL+Hobs combo.

[Fentum]

Agreed ref ballistae. They look very scary on deployment, particularly if there are two of them, but they are nowhere near as good as the old ToL + 4-6 x HoB.

If you look at damage output, it is 5 dice every two turns per ballista, so only 2.5 dice per turn. Granted, that usually means 10 dice from two when they first shoot, but they tend to be one-shot wonders. Get in and melee them to death, or rush the mage and keep him in his own ballista zone such that it can't be used. If you can achieve that, then it ends up a mana sink.

I am far more worried about the Wizard's Tower and the flexibility it brings. Arc Lightning for the cheap stun, Surging Wave to remove a guard, Jet Stream to push mage, fire spells for the burns etc, etc.

Tower plus Necro Vamp plus Guardian Angel is a very nasty combo. I can see Guardian Angel being a great card for any sort of build.

[Charmyna]

So what you are saying is: ironically it's cheapest for the Warlock to run this combo.

Yeah it is, but only marginally. I still prefer the wizard, because of his flexibility and the wizards tower.

So i got to play Charmyna's described spellbook today.

First of all. Thanks for teaching me the few not so obvious Things about MW on OCTGN - and thanks for a good match.

I played a non-standard FM build pre CoK release and without any promos.
Its focused on Grimson deadeye turn 1 + mana crytal start zone. Round 2:Archers Tower 1 zone to the left of my starting zone and a potential pull (which happened this game) on grimson because my enemy moved out of his starting zone resulting in a 5 dice attack round 2.
From here on i have the option of walling in Grimson letting him snipe outside walls with Archers Tower, or summening the royal Archers.
Unfortunately i mis-played round 3 by summening the royal Archer and my grimson was teleported 3 zones away into the vampiress and the guardin angel.

The vampire stroke hard and left my grimson without hope (2 hp left or perhaps 3), and i was now facing a serious setback even though he payed 9 mana to port the sniper.

Hereafter Charmyna only ran those 2 creatures while spending either his QC or Quickaction from the action marker to buff himself with the following:
Leather gloves, Rhino hide, Dragon scale hauberk, Boots of standground (no push / pull) and my thought spore only got off 3 dissolves. He also managed to purge magic my bearstrength AND my forcefield.

Meanwhile my thought spore was taking Down so the invisible stalker i had summoned was rendered half useless because the time i had initiative he would save his QC to arcane zap (ethereal), so i had to stay invis in those rounds.
After necro vamp got bear strengthed my royal Archer died which didnt matter much because i faced bad rolls so his wizard hardly had to use volt shield after all the armor buffed and 0 crits rolled.
Now my stalker with quite alot damage taken was forced to stay invis all the time because i had the fewest action markers.

Charmyna also dropped a wizard Tower (which in imo never repayed itself), that i sacrifised my stalker on to finish on after i double striked it with my FM equipped with galvatar.

Now my FM is alone without forcefield, and the wizard still have clawboots equipped and 1 zone away from me.
Because of the necro vamp hindering my FM and the fact i had to get rid of boots and THEN pulling , we decided that the game was over.


My deck was build pre CoK and intercept seriously screws it over - which is fine.

However... the guardian angel seems broke beyond repair. (incredibly strong)
Seriously... it cannot die, and its either gonna prevent alot of damage or force you opponent to spend a massive amount of ressources to get rid of its  guard.
Im still very unexperienced, and i realize i could have done some thing different, but only 2 Things would have mattered much:
1)
i could have focused on the vamp while it was 3 zones away = no healing from vampiric for a while.
2)
Cast walls straight away Thus sticking to original opening (i got greedy in this game because of his opening with 1 big 1 medium - with original opening i would delay royal 1 round).


The opening Charmyna has come up with is incredibly powerful because its extremely hard to do anything of the following:

1)
focus on the enemy wizard. Volt shield and the ever living angel will TREMENDIOUSLY reduce the damage on the wizard with all the armor (5 when maxed this game i played).
2)
Focus on the angel... good luck: 3 armor? (not sure of the armor), aegis 1, 12 hp?, heal 2 every guard action, and ofcourse a defense as well....
3)
Kill the vampiress. It has vampiric and soon enough a bear strength. It has 3 armor and 15 hp (you need serious hard hitters and good rolls to take this Down) AND.... angel of doom protects it when possible.

Im glad you are playing in OCTGN now! That game was alot of fun .

The guardian angel is strong, but I dont think it needs repair. It does very low damage compared to other level 3 creatures. It is heavily focused on defensive stats, which is fine and was needed, since there is no such creature in the older packs. It helps to turn the game away from the rush meta. The other interceptors are good too, its just that the angel is a bit tougher if you ask me (which is fine too since its a holy creature and tough creatures is one of the strength of the holy ones).

@Ballistae:
They arent as powerful as the prenerf ToL+Hand combo, but I think they need some adjustments before they become legal. 1-2 ballistae are no problem, but 3-4 are (reminds me of the hands ). You can have 4 ballistae in round 3 which will instantkill even the strongest creature. So you just need to teleport whatever is annoying you and good bye.
One problem is that they use the ready-marker mechanic, which does not allow the opponent to react (e.g. move away the creature). IMO this ready marker mechanic is the core of the strength of ToL+hand, Wizard Tower and Ballista. If you just have 1-2 of those conjurations its fine, but if you stack them its deadly. So I would suggest to make ballista unique just as the hand.

[Fentum]

@Ballistae:
They arent as powerful as the prenerf ToL+Hand combo, but I think they need some adjustments before they become legal. 1-2 ballistae are no problem, but 3-4 are (reminds me of the hands ). You can have 4 ballistae in round 3 which will instantkill even the strongest creature. So you just need to teleport whatever is annoying you and good bye.
One problem is that they use the ready-marker mechanic, which does not allow the opponent to react (e.g. move away the creature). IMO this ready marker mechanic is the core of the strength of ToL+hand, Wizard Tower and Ballista. If you just have 1-2 of those conjurations its fine, but if you stack them its deadly. So I would suggest to make ballista unique just as the hand.

Agreed. A single ballista is a worry, but the worry grows geometrically (exponentially?!) with additional ballistae.

Unique would be good. The lack of mobility balances with the hitting power and action benefit when there is only one out.

You are bang on ref the ready mechanic. It seems a bit easy to stack up a bunch of combo's using Ballista, Wizard's Tower, Temple of Light, for example. Yes, you have limited your mobility by deployoing these, but it is tough to face.

[sIKE]

@Ballistae:
They arent as powerful as the prenerf ToL+Hand combo, but I think they need some adjustments before they become legal. 1-2 ballistae are no problem, but 3-4 are (reminds me of the hands ). You can have 4 ballistae in round 3 which will instantkill even the strongest creature. So you just need to teleport whatever is annoying you and good bye.
One problem is that they use the ready-marker mechanic, which does not allow the opponent to react (e.g. move away the creature). IMO this ready marker mechanic is the core of the strength of ToL+hand, Wizard Tower and Ballista. If you just have 1-2 of those conjurations its fine, but if you stack them its deadly. So I would suggest to make ballista unique just as the hand.

Agreed. A single ballista is a worry, but the worry grows geometrically (exponentially?!) with additional ballistae.

Unique would be good. The lack of mobility balances with the hitting power and action benefit when there is only one out.

You are bang on ref the ready mechanic. It seems a bit easy to stack up a bunch of combo's using Ballista, Wizard's Tower, Temple of Light, for example. Yes, you have limited your mobility by deployoing these, but it is tough to face.

I have been playing these quite a lot as you two know. Yes you can have 4 out by turn three but only two will fire in a given round.  unless you do not have a target on a certain round, then it would become quite nasty. I would see making these unique as quite a nerf with unique and would basically make "it" useless. As Fentum said they are quite a mana sink and typically do not last that long, do not fire that quickly, and as you well know are quite easy to counter. If AW does think they are over powered, I would think the best solution is to increase their mana cost. Power wise, I would much rather have one WT vs. two Ballistae any day.

[Charmyna]

@Ballistae:
They arent as powerful as the prenerf ToL+Hand combo, but I think they need some adjustments before they become legal. 1-2 ballistae are no problem, but 3-4 are (reminds me of the hands ). You can have 4 ballistae in round 3 which will instantkill even the strongest creature. So you just need to teleport whatever is annoying you and good bye.
One problem is that they use the ready-marker mechanic, which does not allow the opponent to react (e.g. move away the creature). IMO this ready marker mechanic is the core of the strength of ToL+hand, Wizard Tower and Ballista. If you just have 1-2 of those conjurations its fine, but if you stack them its deadly. So I would suggest to make ballista unique just as the hand.

Agreed. A single ballista is a worry, but the worry grows geometrically (exponentially?!) with additional ballistae.

Unique would be good. The lack of mobility balances with the hitting power and action benefit when there is only one out.

You are bang on ref the ready mechanic. It seems a bit easy to stack up a bunch of combo's using Ballista, Wizard's Tower, Temple of Light, for example. Yes, you have limited your mobility by deployoing these, but it is tough to face.

I have been playing these quite a lot as you two know. Yes you can have 4 out by turn three but only two will fire in a given round.  unless you do not have a target on a certain round, then it would become quite nasty. I would see making these unique as quite a nerf with unique and would basically make "it" useless. As Fentum said they are quite a mana sink and typically do not last that long, do not fire that quickly, and as you well know are quite easy to counter. If AW does think they are over powered, I would think the best solution is to increase their mana cost. Power wise, I would much rather have one WT vs. two Ballistae any day.

I havent used Ballistae for a while since many players dont play with promos atm. But, I used the 4 Ballistae in round 3 opening against my own ToL+Hand opening (prenerf), which was pretty strong as you know . And the Ballistae build easily won. Guess we need to play together with one of us using the 4 ballistae in round 3 opening to see how good it really is.
Btw I would take 2 ballistae over Wizards Tower. Sure, Wizard Tower is great, but 2 ballistae is so much focused damage if you add it to the attack of a creature. With vampiress+bear strength+2 ballistae you can oneshot nearly everything! I know positioning is a problem for ballistae, but still if you play a wizard and have a couple teleports and force pushes its not that bad.

[Fentum]

Hey Charmyna,

Youvoughtvto run on line strategy tutorials and charge for them !   

[Charmyna]

Hey Charmyna,

Youvoughtvto run on line strategy tutorials and charge for them !   

Cool idea!