Druid vs Necro Spoilers

[Moonglow]

Have to say I am loving all the new mechanics and play concepts they are bringing out. ....

Bravo to the designers for these zombies and plants.

....Well done to the design team!

I've got to agree, I thought the core set was amazeballs, the next expansions were nice but didn't impress me as much - although to be fair I haven't played with them much yet either.  However, D vs N feels exciting and feels as clever as the whole base concept all over again, and designing a sequel half as good as the original is always impressive

[sdougla2]

Another Spawnpoint for the Druid is up.

https://www.facebook.com/MageWars

I'm not sure why I would want to run Samara Tree over Vine Tree. Vine Tree only costs 1 more, but gives a great deal more flexibility, and allows you to capitalize more quickly on the investment if necessary. You can spread Vine markers much more rapidly, you can still use it to cast Seedling Pods if you want, and it should be much better at holding off a rush and applying pressure (since you can immediately summon creatures with it, and you have flexibility in where they go from the Vine markers). It's not quite as mana efficient as Samara Tree and you lose Cantrip on the Seedling Pods, but those don't seem to be significant enough advantages to justify Samara Tree's lack of flexibility.

I suppose if your opponent doesn't put you under much pressure, you could cast both of them, but that would work much better if you had something to do with your mage's actions, such as attacking with an Ivarium Longbow. Also, I don't think anyone will be interested in letting the Druid build up for 5+ turns. That sounds like a good way to get overrun.

The real mana advantage from Samara Tree comes if you don't use the Seedling Pods as soon as you can, but that would mean taking even longer for the investment to pay off. If you only cast a plant spell out of a Seedling Pod when it's got 5+ mana, you are coming out significantly ahead in mana. Still, do you really need more than 6 Seedling Pods in a game?

I'm looking forward to trying these things out in game. A lot of this will depend on how good the Druid is at holding off the enemy.

Plants and zombies seem weak enough against fire that I will probably add Lash of Hellfire and Flaming Hellion back into my Warlock book, which will be a nice change, since I never use those cards now.

[Laddinfance]

The final Samara Tree, ended up being 7 mana. So, It's two mana less than the vine tree. It all boils down to how much you want to use pods. If you're not invested in the pod strategy then the Vine tree is much better.

[sdougla2]

That makes more sense than the 8 costed version on Facebook. Still, in the abstract I'd rather have the flexibility offered by Vine Tree, even for 2 more mana. I'll have to try both and see how I like Seedling Pod based play, but that's my reaction just from reading the cards.

[DeckBuilder]

That makes more sense than the 8 costed version on Facebook. Still, in the abstract I'd rather have the flexibility offered by Vine Tree, even for 2 more mana. I'll have to try both and see how I like Seedling Pod based play, but that's my reaction just from reading the cards.

Vine Tree only allows Vine creatures/conjurations. Seedling Pods allows Plant creatures/conjurations. Vines are a subset of Plants. So Vine Tree may give you greater penetration but what it produces is less flexible. If Tanglevine remains a Plant only etc.

I can also imagine there are some Plant synergies to leverage in the set as the 2 turn deferred arrival via Pods which actually have less penetration than Vine Tree's double vine growth. For example this "Renewing Rain" that Arcanus mentioned could be an incantation "for each Plant you control in the arena, you may do 1 of the following: remove 2 damage, remove 2 burn or add 2 mana on it if it can channel". With such a spell, the Pod strategy could be even better...

I gather Pods once allowed placement further distance than the "in its zone" version spoiled in the News section. I could have sworn I saw a version that allowed adjacent zones but I may have imagined it. If Pods, like Samara Tree, are not exactly as spoiled in final print, then that may explain the apparent disparity in benefit.

Without knowing just how much of a subset Vines are among Plants, it's hard to gauge. One thing is true. Only a Seedling Pod can use a vine marker to create a non-Vine Plant in a distant zone. Trees cannot be Vines (e.g. Togorah, Lifetree). I'm sure that's worth something.

Still, with the incomplete knowledge caveat, I tend to agree with you that I'm preferring the greater penetration and tempo of the Vine Tree to the slower, less penetrating Samara Tree. However, that's only out of the cards spoiled so far...

I think just as there are (at least) 2 Necromancer strategies so far, Zombie Semi-Recursion & Traditional Undead Army, this difference is highlighting divergent strategies for Druid, go fast encroaching Vines or slower Trees (and Vines). Obviously there should be other more esoteric builds.

It must be so frustrating being "in the know" reading our alarmist musings and being unable to spoil out of turn (unless you are Arcanus, can we guess who that is?). I've decided to just have a bit of faith all will become clear in time (Although I'm worried about current inability to leverage Poison Immunity with Plants not seeming to be hurt by the more obvious direct damage effects). So after "jumping the gun" with my worries, I think I will just analyse each new card, consider its ramifications on current builds as well as new set interactions, and wait for the climax when we finally get to see the whole set. And it couldn't come sooner.

[sdougla2]

My main point is that Seedling Pods are vine spells, so in taking Vine Tree over Samara Tree you don't lose the ability to cast them with your spawnpoint and (after a suitable waiting period) summon a non-vine plant. Samara Tree is more efficient if you are planning on spamming Seedling Pods, but you can't use it to summon a Vine Snapper or Kralathor, the Devourer immediately if you're under pressure.

[DeckBuilder]

My main point is that Seedling Pods are vine spells, so in taking Vine Tree over Samara Tree you don't lose the ability to cast them with your spawnpoint and (after a suitable waiting period) summon a non-vine plant. Samara Tree is more efficient if you are planning on spamming Seedling Pods, but you can't use it to summon a Vine Snapper or Kralathor, the Devourer immediately if you're under pressure.

I totally agree without effects that allow mana manipulation on Plants. Samara = Mid Range Tree Monsters, Vine Tree = Aggro Nippers?

Yes, dangerous to categorise like that. Bad habit.

[DeckBuilder]

My main point is that Seedling Pods are vine spells, so in taking Vine Tree over Samara Tree you don't lose the ability to cast them with your spawnpoint and (after a suitable waiting period) summon a non-vine plant. Samara Tree is more efficient if you are planning on spamming Seedling Pods, but you can't use it to summon a Vine Snapper or Kralathor, the Devourer immediately if you're under pressure.

Oh, I just got your point. Yeah, that does seem silly...

[DeckBuilder]

The trade-off seems to be Vine Tree: cost 9, +1 vine/turn vs. Samara: cost 7, limited to Pods although Cantrips.

Like you, I know which one I'd choose. It seems like, without some great support we haven't seen yet, Samara Tree's late nerf (Outposts anyone?) may consign it to being a cheap back-up (more limited) Spawnpoint. I truly hope not. This does seem disappointingly odd...

[DeckBuilder]

I have been trying to puzzle this out and I think I've come up with a possible epiphany....

You almost always plant Vine Tree first. Then, only if you are mid range or moving to mid range for advantage, you also plant your Samara Tree. Maybe this is your preferred Treebond (as it is less of a target than Vine Tree or Etherian Lifetree). This gives your Vine Tree's Pods the Cantrip quality whilst Samara can exploit your faster vine marker growth fron Vine Tree. Now you start planting Rooted Tree Monsters with your more widespread vine marker network.

Yeah, that seems to be it. We have been following the paradigm of Spawnpoint X or Spawnpoint Y. But look at their half cost in every way, one is simply an optional upgrade on the other. In reality it's more like motor racing: one pit stop or two?

So the committed Aggro weenier build gives up on Samara entirely, the versatile build hybridises and the committed Mid Range build will rely on Samara to blossom their large book presence of Tree Monsters. I would also assume there is a Druid and her buffed Tree Buddy build that gives up on both of them, just a Treebond for resilience, a buffed Grizzly or other mobile Big, water attacks and quick vine spells. That would make imminent sense as a viable build.

If that's correct. then this is all very clever, a paradigm shift from "Swarm needs 1 Spawnpoint" to choosing zero, one or two! Who knows, there may be other optional upgrades yet unspoilt? Such a modular "lego kit" swarm attributes idea will be very clever and original indeed!

Well. there's a bit of Magic's Slivers to the idea. But this is not the Swarm's attributes but rather the Swarm Generators' attributes that you modular add-on. Anyway, I'm just surmising one possible reason for the poor choice trade-off that you highlighted. I may be totally wrong...

[isel]

[ringkichard]

So much is going to depend on what keywords are attached to which cards. If your strategy is to go hard with pods, having cantrip on them seems important? They're really fragile. I think this is the sort of decision that's really only going to be possible in the full context of the set, and with play.

[Koz]

I like this spawnpoint quite a bit more than the Samara Tree, for all the reasons already mentioned.  The flexibility is the key here.  Going straight Seedling Pods seems way too slow, cumbersome, and restrictive.  If Seedling Pods didn't need to wait until they had three mana on them it might be different, but alas...

Still, there's lots we haven't seen yet.  Maybe the Druid will have some way of "watering her plants" to make them grow faster or gain mana faster, or whatever.  I guess we'll see

[Kharhaz]

The trade-off seems to be Vine Tree: cost 9, +1 vine/turn vs. Samara: cost 7, limited to Pods although Cantrips.

You're thinking tree -> pod.

Think pod -> tree.

Place a seedpod and in a few turns you can see what your opponent is doing and bam! desired tree up, or mana flower, or whatever you want.  There is no game where a 2 mana cost mana flower is a bad thing, fyi. You say one or the other, I say if both are on the board the opponent needs to do something quick before he is lost in the woods

[sIKE]

Here is an update on what I did a couple weeks ago. For those who are not keeping up and are interested with the DvN spoilers. Over the last 28 days we have seen 25 of the cards (not counting the mage cards). If you dig around a bit, you have seen 45% of the new cards in the set of 56 new cards. Spells broken down by Type:

Attack = 1 (5)
Conjurations = 7 (9)
Creatures = 13 (16)
Enchantments = 2 (9)
Equipment = 1 (11)
Incantations = 1 (10)

The last time I wrote this up, I put the numbers of each Type of Spell from the FvM release in parenthesis. This is so we can gauge where we are compared to the DvN release.