Meditation Amulet

[Shad0w]

If the playtesters didnt manage to find a use for the meditation amulet with 6 mana return on every FA spend, then they used it the wrong way.

6 mana return would be an absolute bomb!

This card is very different from mana crystal and moonglow amulet.
Both those cards give a better payoff in the long run if we assume that you stop meditating eventually.

Im not saying that the current amulet is worth playing - but its pretty damn close.

Putting down a spawnpoint to pump out creatures for you, while you meditate allows for a quicker recovery from the initial mana sink that putting a harmnonized spawnpoint into play is.

Problem is the value of a full actions. Often when the other player rushes you the number of full action you have to spare is almost 0. When being chased by a aggressive book stabilizing, and surviving should the your top priorities. Now the downside is if the other player lets you bide your time 5-6 mana extra mana a turn is will easily win you the game.

[ringkichard]

I haven't played with Meditation Amulet,and I didn't get a chance to test it (I'm going to try to limit my public analysis  to those cards on which I have no inside knowledge), but it's a tricky design with a very narrow sweet spot. I think it basically has to be balanced assuming that the mage that plays it doesn't care at all about the full actions it costs to use, only the mana payoff vs investment. That's because if any such "do nothing" strategy emerged, the Amulet could easily be a source of very strong mana advantage, and become a staple of the build.

So, for example, if turtle Warlord, Druid, or Wizard became viable, Amulet might go from "totally useless" to "gamebreaking" without any acceptable buffer between.

Given that, and the fact that it was already released as a promo, Amulet didn't have much wiggle room at all. Double Tree Druid seems like the best possible strategy for Amulet, so if it wasn't printed now, then when?

[sdougla2]

I agree with Ringkichard that setting the mana generation per action too high on Meditation Amulet could lead to significant problems.

My big issue with the amulet is not so much the amount of mana that it generates, but the initial cost. In order to come out ahead on mana, you need to spend a quick action and 2 full actions, which is way too high of an investment for most situations. Your opponent can see you play Meditation Amulet and rush you before you have a chance to take advantage of it, in which case it's a liability.

If it generated 6 mana per action, it seems like your opponent would be forced to rush you in response to Meditation Amulet (or play one of their own) so that you wouldn't generate an insurmountable mana advantage.

If Meditation Amulet only cost 1 or 2 mana, then you would come out ahead on mana with 1 quick and 1 full action, which would be a more acceptable return on investment. I don't think decreasing the mana cost by 2-3 would make it broken by any means, and it would be more viable for spawnpoint play. Moonglow Amulet takes 6 turns to pay back the initial mana investment, but it only costs 1 quick action, so the investment is actually smaller against a rush, where actions are more valuable than mana.

I'm not sure how much I would use it if it cost 1-2, but I would be tempted to try it for spawnpoint builds. As it is, I don't see a reason to ever play it over Moonglow Amulet.

[ChimpZilla]

Your garden-variety, +x channeling mana rock takes a quick action plus seven to eight rounds to generate the same profit from one quick and two full actions. And this is sans Battleforge or Arcane Ring. So there's that.

But the thing that gets overlooked IMO is that this investment return is instantaneous.  It isn't progressive, happens immediately, and as a result isn't an awful card to play past the early game. Also, it's not a stat boost, so oddly enough it can dodge stuff like mana siphon.

Spellbooks that have action replacement are the likely candidates for this. Aggressive mages won't tolerate the tempo loss. Not everyone wants it, but I don't think this is all that terrible.

[Aylin]

Your garden-variety, +x channeling mana rock takes a quick action plus seven to eight rounds to generate the same profit from one quick and two full actions. And this is sans Battleforge or Arcane Ring. So there's that.

But the thing that gets overlooked IMO is that this investment return is instantaneous.  It isn't progressive, happens immediately, and as a result isn't an awful card to play past the early game. Also, it's not a stat boost, so oddly enough it can dodge stuff like mana siphon.

Spellbooks that have action replacement are the likely candidates for this. Aggressive mages won't tolerate the tempo loss. Not everyone wants it, but I don't think this is all that terrible.

The problem with Meditation amulet isn't that you can theoretically get a lot of mana out of it and recover your initial investment in a few turns, it is that it takes up your full action every turn to do it.

First, say you're a Druid that uses Vine Tree, Druid's Leaf Ring, Taratree, and Mana Flower. Turn 1 Ring + Tree, Turn 2 Taratree + Flower. This costs you a total of 20 mana. Every turn after the first you make 1 from treebond and the Tree makes 1. Every turn after the second you man an additional 1 from the Flower and the tree makes an additional 1 from Taratree. If you cast at least 1 plant spell from turn 3 onwards you will recover your mana investment on turn 6 (gaining 2 mana out of it), and your action investment is recovered on turn 5.

Now, say you're a Druid who uses 2 trees and the Meditation amulet (and probably also Taratree). You spend 4 quick casts getting everything out for a total cost of 27 mana. Turn 1 both Trees, turn 2 amulet and Taratree. From turn 2 onwards you make 1 mana from Treebond and both trees make 1. From turn 3 onward one of the trees makes an additional mana. Without meditating your mana investment is returned on turn 8. Obviously you'd want to meditate enough to gain a mana advantage over the above scenario. So in order to recoup your mana investment by turn 5 would require you to meditate 4 times (which is actually impossible). So the soonest you can recoup your mana investment is turn 6 (the same as in the above scenario) by meditating 3 times (giving you a total of 28 mana, or -1 from the above scenario). So now you're spending 4 quick casts and 3 full actions, and your trees give you a total of 7 useable deployments (5 immediate from the Vine Tree [assuming you don't use it to cast Seedling Pods], and the Samara Tree gives you 2 pods that are ready by turn 6) so you more or less break even in terms of actions (though not being able to move for 3 turns could potentially put you at a positional disadvantage).

(Note: Taratree could be replaced by a harmonize or mana flower without causing any meaningful difference between the two scenarios).

So at 6 turns in without the amulet you've gotten +2 mana and +1 action. At 6 turns in with the amulet (and both trees to make up for the actions) you're only at +1 mana and +0 actions. This indicates that the earliest a Druid could see returns in either mana or actions while using the amulet would be turn 7. And the Druid is the one with the tools to best use this amulet so far! The only other mage who can use 2 spawnpoints with this amulet is the Necromancer (Battleforge does NOT synergize with Meditation Amulet at all), and his spawnpoints can only summon creatures as opposed to any vine/plant (not to mention the appeal of one of them is negated by being immobile while meditating). Plus the Druid is the only mage who can extend the reach of her spells, including spawnpoint deployments, without moving (with Spreading Vines).

Unfortunately having to wait seven turns for a benefit just paints a giant target on your back to come and kill you immediately. On turn 3 or 4 when an attack is likely to start you won't have the mana to respond. Now after the first turn you'd be unlikely to actually summon the Meditation Amulet if your opponent didn't play +channeling spells, though then you'd have trouble utilizing both of your trees. The problem is that even other slow builds would be significantly faster, and all they'd have to do is prevent you from being able to use your full action to meditate to shut you down. All around it's very very risky for limited benefit until the late game (which is assuming you even survive that long).

[The Dude]

Why do I like Amulet so much?

For one reason: Spawnpoints. In a big creature spawnpoint strategy, often times you are doing absolutely nothing with your full action. This can avoided by waiting longer to summon said creature, but time has become a very serious resource to consider when playing Mage Wars. Meditation amulet really cures a lot of the ache of wasting your actions. I mean think about it. Turn one I go all out and cast harm + Lair. I'm at zero mana. The next turn, I effectively have 12 mana, provided I summon a creature in the deployment phase. So what can I do? Summon a falcon, have 6 mana left over, and I can cast both amulet and Enchanter's ring. Next round, I can not only spend 12 mana on a creature by using my entire mana+ channeling. I can also gain 3 mana to use on the NEXT round. If I cast an enchant on myself or another friendly, I'm now effectively at 14 mana for the next round. I can drop another fatty, and still have mana left over.

It's a situational card, yes. But it's not a useless card by any means, can make others inefficient strategies a ton more efficient. Sure, it may not be worth the full action according to some chart, but what good is a full action if you have absolutely nothing to do with it? Amulet fills those gaps.

I thought it was worthless as well, until I really started playing with it. It makes me a lot happier after actually trying it.

[aquestrion]

I have used a warlock build using the amulet on turn 1 and building up mana until turn five then dual cast drain life and drain soul on opp mage with great effectiveness

Turn 1 QC med amulet and meditate 18 mana
Turn 2 27 mana meditate so 30 mana
Turn 3 39 mana meditate 42 mana
Turn 4 51 mana meditate 54 mana
Turn 5 63 mana meditate 66 mana

At this point you have enough to cast all 4 soul drains and QC drain soul with all your reg channeling.

I know people will say "against a skilled opponent that would never work" but I say it always works once. If they see you turtlihg the will either rush or turtle themselves.

If they rush then you can just wait till they send a big 1 or walk up and hit them hard with a drain soul and drain life combo. Average of 11 damage (6 guaranteed) bypassing every thing but nullify and jinx and as a bonus you gain 6 life.

I know its not well rounded but with some of the unused qcs you can armor up especially the cloak since they will have to come to you to target you I will put you in perfect range of 1.

[aquestrion]

Note this doesn't work on necro and I havent tried with the necro either I'm sure it would be better for him and using spider for extra taints

[DeckBuilder]

Why do I like Amulet so much?

For one reason: Spawnpoints. In a big creature spawnpoint strategy, often times you are doing absolutely nothing with your full action. This can avoided by waiting longer to summon said creature, but time has become a very serious resource to consider when playing Mage Wars. Meditation amulet really cures a lot of the ache of wasting your actions. I mean think about it. Turn one I go all out and cast harm + Lair. I'm at zero mana. The next turn, I effectively have 12 mana, provided I summon a creature in the deployment phase. So what can I do? Summon a falcon, have 6 mana left over, and I can cast both amulet and Enchanter's ring. Next round, I can not only spend 12 mana on a creature by using my entire mana+ channeling. I can also gain 3 mana to use on the NEXT round. If I cast an enchant on myself or another friendly, I'm now effectively at 14 mana for the next round. I can drop another fatty, and still have mana left over.

It's a situational card, yes. But it's not a useless card by any means, can make others inefficient strategies a ton more efficient. Sure, it may not be worth the full action according to some chart, but what good is a full action if you have absolutely nothing to do with it? Amulet fills those gaps.

I thought it was worthless as well, until I really started playing with it. It makes me a lot happier after actually trying it.

Thanks, Dude. I think the key insight you added here is the Time dimension. It gives 3 mana to put into Spawnpoint deployment next turn. If that gets you what you want, this earlier mana is worth more than 1 mana every turn, especially in the late game.

However the investment and actions spent to make profit seems steep. You commit yourself to a sedentary mage strategy. Meantime opponent can see and force this strategy to be flawed. Move within 2 and teleport your mage into my swarm? It's too telegraphed when cast and opponent will take counter-measures.

It's a shame it takes the same neck slot, not the often unused head slot (Meditating Hat, ha ha) as a substitute benefit. It needs to be used repeatedly to be better than Moonglow and opponent can foil this.

This also begs the question: why are you wasting the mage's full action doing nothing? Why not just bypass the Spawnpoint investment and cast that creature even earlier? (Time was the missed resource.) Aggro mages can leverage their +1 melee by kitting themselves out to be a threat themselves whilst Champion mages are better off just hard casting their Few Big. It commits you to Spawnpoint Swarm strategy, making destroying Epic Spawnpoint more attractive as crippling. You shouldn't be wasting what is normally your most valuable resource, your mage full action, doing nothing. The item rewards turtling and "I can't be bothered to synchronise all my pieces" attitude.

Now, as said in my first post in this thread, because of vine range and so many Spawnpoints (and Felella), the Druid is best placed to use this. The Necromancer also has 2 Spawnpoints and is even more swarm based but can't control the board as well without vine reach.

We have to re-evaluate Swarmpoint play. It just feels that facing Aggro Rush strategy (and many books that become more aggressive too), Meditation Amulet will be worthless. While Moonglow will always be useful.

As ring said, with 2 mages that are designed to be played with Spawnpoints, if not released now, then when?

[Shad0w]

It's a situational card, yes. But it's not a useless card by any means, can make others inefficient strategies a ton more efficient. Sure, it may not be worth the full action according to some chart, but what good is a full action if you have absolutely nothing to do with it? Amulet fills those gaps.

We have to re-evaluate Swarmpoint play. It just feels that facing Aggro Rush strategy (and many books that become more aggressive too), Meditation Amulet will be worthless. While Moonglow will always be useful.

As ring said, with 2 mages that are designed to be played with Spawnpoints, if not released now, then when?

This is what I was getting at when I posted. The balance of your FA to mana gained ratio. What you have think about is could you FA be better used on other aspects of the game. In a slower more build heavy style it will shine. In fact using it against a mana drain / suppression build can tip the balance in your favor. Games like that tend to not be the average.

When to look at your average tourney style build it tries to use any tick it can to gain advantage in the core MW areas of Action efficiency, Mana efficiency, Tempo, and Spell point efficiency. Yes, you can gain advantage in other areas of play but when people talk about the core MW strategy these are so of the first thing they look at.

[jacksmack]

Shadow would you care to elaborate how you playtested this card?

Did you play test it with 6 mana return?

How did you fit the card in the actual game play strategy after you saw your opponents opening?

What mages did you try this with?

What spawnpoints?

Did you move 1 zone or stay in corner?

How did you act if both you and your opponenent put down creature spawnpoint round 1?

[lettucemode]

The Dude's words make a lot of sense to me. Let's say you're in the scenario he gave, and you have 6 mana left after Lair-ing the Falcon. What can you do with a full + quick action on 6 mana? Not much. If you armor up at least one of your actions will be wasted. You can put an enchantment on the bird, but then you've only got 4 mana for your other action. Things are even more restrictive if you summoned something larger, like a Timber Wolf instead. This is probably one big reason spawnpoints don't see a lot of play - you're so mana-starved after putting them down that you can't use your actions efficiently.

But! Meditation Amulet gives you something to do with that extra action. It means you aren't left high and dry when you're low on mana from summoning something from a spawnpoint. In the above scenario WITH Meditation Amulet, the mage could cast a Dragonscale Haubrek, Meditate, and then have 15 mana for the next turn. As opposed to casting Dragonscale Haubrek, then simply passing on his other action - weren't spawnpoints supposed to help with action advantage?

3 mana for a full action ain't much in a vacuum, I agree. But if Meditation Amulet offers to help me do at least something on those turns when I would otherwise pass, I'll gladly give it a shot.

[lil_drag_n]

The full action is the problem, if it was a quick cast then It would see much more play. As mentioned the direct comparison to moonglow amulet really discourage medallion usage. Meditation hat would be better so u can stack it with the moonglow amulet. it would still only see limited play because there are some good headgear. Now if the it was a hat with quickcast for 3 mana, it would a good card. But its not.
  I would use the meditation amulet if it was not a full action. If your stun or daze, meditate.  I hope the errata this card or it wont see any play.

[Shad0w]

Shadow would you care to elaborate how you playtested this card?

Did you play test it with 6 mana return?

How did you fit the card in the actual game play strategy after you saw your opponents opening?

What mages did you try this with?

What spawnpoints?

Did you move 1 zone or stay in corner?

How did you act if both you and your opponenent put down creature spawnpoint round 1?

My group found like the dude it is a situational card (tested it from 3-6 mana full and/or quick gain) as a full it works best in build that have time to build or the use spawn points or other ways to cheat spells out. We even test it as a quick 1x a round gain 3 mana (this tended to be unbalancing in most games), but in the aggro vs aggro match it almost never came into play due to the fact you almost always have a mana surplus. We have been looking at this card for a long time now. In fact we have had MA in our test file since 2011. We tried it in aggro, combo, and control builds. We also looked at it with several powers and abilities. Most mages that the community gets we see 5-12 versions of. Sometimes we even mix and match powers for even more mage choices. We also noticed the other use was when a player would try to mana stave you MA became clutch. I find it hard to justify including MA it your average book due it it being so situational. When you looked at an average tourney style game between 2 skilled player MA at 3 mana per full was never what clutched the game.

[ChimpZilla]

The problem with Meditation amulet isn't that you can theoretically get a lot of mana out of it and recover your initial investment in a few turns, it is that it takes up your full action every turn to do it.

Right. I addressed this in my last sentence. Full actions are a bigger deal to builds that can't replace them with spawnpoints or familiars. I don't disagree with the risk, but I do on how ginormous that risk is.

First, say you're a Druid that uses Vine Tree, Druid's Leaf Ring, Taratree, and Mana Flower.... Now, say you're a Druid who uses 2 trees and the Meditation amulet (and probably also Taratree)....

You raise a valid point about evaluating cards in a vacuum, worrying less about the rate of return on an investment, and more about what to do with it.

But this scenario raises issues for me.

First, it would be better to have an actual apples to apples comparison. You're kinda moving  the goalposts  subbing in the amulet and another tree for the two most inexpensive components. Under the same conditions, Ring/Tree/Butterfly/Amulet is more fair, which I have at 6 rounds, -20 mana, -4 quick, and -2 full for +4 profit and +5 full/quick (assuming 2 full plants or less from druid). If you spam enough fulls from vine tree, you can counteract the downside enough to make the extra 4 mana worth it IMO, and if you milk more, that's gravy.

But secondly, none of this matters anyway.  Any build that spends two turns farming up will likely scoop to rush no matter what cards you use (unless you're Wizard). This is nothing more than a classic example of what we call, over in the MtG community, magicchristmasland, which is short for "this works only if your opponent does nothing". For example, I would never count on Butterfly, aka Flameblast bait, going past a round. And the same I-see-you-playing-cards-that-do-nothing-until-late-game-holy-crap-I-go-kill-you-now arguement against amulet applies here tenfold. You're way better off going spawnpoint/amulet, spawnpoint/mana rock, or spawnpoint/one finger discount and being done with it.