So remember when I posted a hypothesis about the different playstyle archetypes in mage wars and their matchups? In case you don't remember, here it is. I decided to rename some of them to be less confusing.
Swarm (offensive aggro)>Position control (defensive control)>Assassination (offensive combo)>Attrition (defensive aggro)>Few Big (offensive control)>Denial (defensive combo)>Swarm...
Swarm=Attrition
Few Big=Position control
Assasination=Denial
Before my hypothesis can be tested, the playstyles of the different mages need to be defined.
Here is my chart:
Beastmaster
His main strategy is Few Big, or offensive control. This usually involves summoning a few creatures and buffing them, while holding off enemy threats with their offensive power. The beastmaster can also do some swarming if he uses some position control via hindering, tanglevines, and his fox's taunt.
Priestess
Her main strategies are attrition (defensive aggro), and Few Big (offensive control) She summons defensive creatures with armor and defensive enchantments to outlast the enemy by being able to survive more damage than the enemy can. She's good at transitioning from an attrition strategy to a Few Big strategy with her powerful angels and knights.
Earth Wizard
Position control and Denial. These two strategies work really well together. Denial seeks to prevent your opponent from using their best spells or objects, often using things like conditions, counterspells, or mana denial. When you add in position control, you could be adding things like tanglevine, walls, force hold, and stun conditions, which not only helps control position, but it also can help a denial strategy a lot, since controlling creature positions helps lessen the effectiveness of those creatures' actions. You often don't need to deal with a bear strengthed creature directly with things like weak or daze when you can just prevent the enchanted creature from ever reaching you.
Fire Wizard
Few Big and Denial
Air Wizard
Position Control, Few Big and Denial
Warlock
Few Big and Assasination
Forcemaster
Position Control and Assasination
Warlord
Few Big, Attrition and Position Control
Necromancer
Swarm and Few Big?
Druid
Denial and attrition? Maybe with a bit of position control?
I strongly suspect it's safe to assume that hybrid builds are more competitive than non-hybrid builds. With that in mind, in order to test my hypothesized match ups, looking at the game outcomes are not enough. Since mages can use multiple different playstyle strategies in the same build, you would have to keep logs of a large quantity of games between players of relatively equal skill and try to figure out what strategies the players are using at any one time, as well as who has the advantage at that time.
Recording/logging competitive games and writing down our observations about the strategy in those games would probably be a long project, but I think it will be worth it for informing new players and improving spellbook construction and how we describe our strategies.
Thoughts?
