1. Sure poisoned blood stops the self healing, but only for one round till it is dispelled. I know dispelling is reactive, thus not always a good choice. But the same applies to many other effects that make creatures less useful (tanglevine, force hold etc). So I count poisoned blood into the same category: It slows down the opponents strategy, but its not a full counter (unless you have more poisoned bloods than the opponent has dispels/seeking dispels, which I doubt).
2. Sure, there are creatures that build up more damage, but they cant self heal. So either you let them die or need an action to save them. The angel/vamp can survive often without the need of a mages action. Additionally both can attack flying units and fly over walls. And btw my goal is not to produce an anti-creature opening! There are openings that are better focused on that for sure. My goal is to produce an opening that performs well against a lot of build.
My build might not be focused as much on a special strategy as others, but its very versatile and allows me to react accordingly to many strategies, which in the end increases the chances of winning against most builds.
3. You need to play against a wizard which really makes use of voltaric shield, zap and arcane tower. The voltaric shield saved my mage in over 80+ damage races (i mostly play wizard), its just awesome. The wizard tower often is as helpful as a 2nd quick action marker! Actually, i wouldnt be surprised if the WT or the ready marker mechanic is nerfed after the next tournament.
Btw, since most meta cards that are neccessary in all builds are arcane, the wizard has more free spellpoints to put into stuff from other schools, like the various sorts of crowd control. Additonally, you need crowd control spells from different schools (nature for tanglevine; mind for block, force hold, foce push; arcane for teleport (trap). And btw sticking to only one of these schools isnt a good idea, because in many situations you wont have the correct answer to your opponents strategy. So why do you think another mage can perform better in crowd controlling stuff?
4. @interceptors: The angel has a much better set of traits against many types of attacks than gargoyle/dwarf. And as i wrote, it gets a benefit from guarding even if it doesnt get attacked. If I use surging wave on your dwarf, your action to guard is just wasted since the wave is unavoidable.
1. The point isn't that I have more Poisoned Bloods than my opponent has Dispels, it's that I certainly have enough enchantments that my opponent won't likely have enough Dispels to deal with them all. It's really not even a probability; I can't imagine that players only run 4 enchantments in a given book, which is the max number of Dispels you can even have.
And the other examples don't mean much because Restraining creatures is inherently a good move based on game mechanics. It's not like I can just throw a Poisoned Blood on something and expect it to be good like Tanglevine or Force Hold/Crush; it's a specific card for a specific situation that pretty well hard-counters healing, which is your opening's main strength. Healing happens every game, but having an entire opening that gets significantly worse if your opponent plays only one kind of card isn't a good sign of a strong build.
2. Healing is a secondary concern to dice count, really. You should protect your creatures, obviously, but base life, armor, and attack dice is most important. And the actions you say healing saves aren't really being saved, since you have to spend 2 additional actions and 10 mana for the couple to roll a relevant amount of dice. And even then, you aren't getting the dice counts you could be getting, especially if your opponent Dispels them early on.
I didn't really know how else to interpret "Vampire and Angel Wizard Control Build" other than what the name means; you are using an angel and vampire as the Wizard to control. Control builds usually focus on, well, controlling, most effectively in the form of destroying creatures because that is the best way to set your opponent back mana and actions.
3. I don't see what Arcane offers that others schools absolutely need other than Mana Crystals perhaps, but the Nature school has Flowers so it's whatever. It's not like builds need Reverse Magic or other marginally useful cards; the Mind and Dark school have plenty more to offer between curses and control enchants than Arcane's rather scant control card pool. Teleport/Teleport Trap are good cards, but they're hardly specific to control builds.
4. That seems like a pretty arbitrary opinion. I'm not sure which traits you're valuing so high (Aegis 1, I guess?), since they all accomplish the same goal of defense. Any differences they have are pretty minor, because their best trait is Intercept by far, which they all obviously have.
1. You are right that poisoned blood is a good spell if timed well, both against the vampiress and the opponents mage. But still, its not a counter to the vampiress. Even if not dispelled , the vampiress will be a 5 dice creature with 2 armor and 15 health for only 11 mana (if you substract the mana the opponent spent for the enchantment). Doesnt sound as an inefficent mana investment for me.
Anyway, most decks wont have more than 1-2 poisoned bloods and the opponent might want to save them for my mage instead of using it on a creature. Btw if they use it against the vampiress, steal enchantment is a nice way to remove it while gaining an action advantage.
2. Healing is secondary, but it helps to make sure the creatures stay on the board as long as possible and repay the invested mana. Sure, some creatures might do more damage per round. But, if they die early while the angel survives, they are a worse investment.
Btw, in many situations the bear strength on the angel is not needed. Often he will guard my mage or the vamp while the vamp does the damage. The bear strength on the angel is for those situations in which I am free to attack with the angel.
Btw, from my feeling defensive stats in MW cost less mana compared to agressive stats. Therefore, a defensive+agressive creature should win against two agressive creatures for the same amount of mana.
With control I mean using crowd control and guard to prevent the opponents creatures from doing alot of damge while attacking his mage or while focusing on his creatures (depends on board situation, equipments and enchantments casted etc).
3. Some spells that are really important metas in most spellbooks:
- dispel
- seeking dispel
- teleport
- nullify
- jinx
- enchantment transfusion (allows many cool combos, e.g. transfusion+jinx on one of your creatures which you can reveal during the counter spell step to counter any quick cast spell you wish whenever you want)
lesser important but really useful in many builds as well:
- purge magic (can win the game against builds which focus on many enchantments)
- dragonscale hauberk (ok its fire, but many wizards are fire)
- mage wand
- elemental cloak
- steal enchantment (gives you an action advantage and doesnt cost extra mana if the opponent casts wardstone, since you dont destroy the enchantment)
- teleport trap
even lesser important but still often included in decks to counter mana denial or to keep up with decks that are focused on increasing channeling early on:
- mana crystal
- harmonize
- moonglow amulet
So tell me any school that has as much important metas as the arcane school?
As a result of many important metas being arcane, the wizard has more spellpoints for his main strategy. Now add, that there is no school which costs triple. All this allows the wizard to play the costly vamp angel combo and still have enough points to include all other spells that help gaining and sustaining board control.
4. If all three creatures have a guard marker on them and are attacked without the unavoidable trait, you are right and the differences between their defensive stats are pretty minor. But, that rarely happens. Often the guard marker is removed (I cant stress enough how useful wizard tower+surging wave is or arc lightning against the dwarf for 50% chance to stun). Sure, you can say that the intention of those creatures is to guard, but on the board its not always like you planned it.
So lets compare the creatures if they have no guard marker on them:
Gargoyle has 14 life, 1 armor versus angel with 12 life, aegis 1, armor 1 and defence (if both used guard as their action and it got removed the angel still healed 2 damage). So tell me whats better?
The dwarf has a worse defence than the angel, but thats only marginal. He has 3 armor and lighting + 2 versus aegis 1 armor 1. I think thats pretty equal. So whats left? The angel has flying and the potential to heal himself even if he is crowd controlled! Flying is great btw because it prevents the angel from being targeted by surging wave (which is an awesome spell against defences since it slams the creature). So in the end, the angel is much more difficult to focus and you can decide to attack with him and still have nice defensive stats to make sure he survives being focused.
Maybe you argue that if the creatures get hit and soak up damage/actions, it doesnt matter which interceptor you summon, since all fullfill this job. But, the angel will soak up more damage/actions in the majority of games.
On the paper the three interceptors might look equally tough, but on the board the angel is much better suited in many situations.
