I've said this before, and I will say it again. What makes MW deckbuilding so special isn't the "mandatory" part of the building. Arguably every single "deckbuilding" game on the market today has elements that every deck will include as it makes them either playable, or better. From the ones I have played and love, there are a few examples I could give. If we look at one of the recently popular Android Netrunner, there are a few builds in particular, that, in order to be "competitive", need Account Siphon, as well as some amount of breakers, and economy. This is just one of many. You can't play Standard Magic the gathering without including lands in your deck, and you certainly can't be competitive without including "dual" lands. (Dada, I see your belcher and it is an exception, not a rule). As well, even if you look at minis games, which are closer to Mage Wars, have certain "necessities" that are required for tournament friendly builds.
Obviously every game has staples that go in pretty much every deck, no one has said otherwise. I've played A LOT of ccgs in my life including: Magic, L5R, Netrunner, Warlord, Spycraft, Doomtown, Shadowfist, Star Wars (both Decipher's and FFG's), Rage, VtES, Doomtrooper, Shadowrun and probably a couple others I'm forgetting off of the top of my head. I've been playing these games a long time as well. Hell, when I started playing Magic I was already old enough to drink...and The Dark was the new set. Yeah, I'm that old
Anyway, my point is that I'm familiar with the concept of staple cards. The fact that this game stands out as having many more staples than any card game I've ever played is kind of the point of the thread. You're talk of lands in Magic is a red herring and not at all the same as what is being discussed in this thread. If I sit down to play Mage Wars as the Priestess vs the Warlock, something like 25-30% or more of our builds will be the same. The day that I sit down for a game of Magic playing Blue/White against someone playing Green/Red and our decks are 30% identical, then you can compare Magic and Mage Wars. But that's not the case, and never will be.
Comparing miniature games isn’t really helpful either, because if you play Eldar vs Chaos, you aren’t going to have any similarities whatsoever. There may be some sameness between any two different Eldar players, but that’s not the point because you would expect to see similarities between two different Warlock builds as well. The problem is that you see the same similarities in builds when you compare a Warlock build and a Priestess build. That doesn’t happen in other games I’ve played, ccg OR miniature games.
Don't get me wrong, I love Mage Wars, but I think this is a legitimate criticism of the game. Everyone in this thread has been pretty constructive and just wants to see a great game be better, so just hand-waving away the issue with "all games have staples" seems rather dismissive.
For most of the last year I really had no issue with this aspect of the game. But the more I've played the more certain cards have been revealed as not worth competitive play (creature spawnpoints, familiars, etc), so the "sameness" of builds has increased. I don't think this problem will go away as the card pool expands either. For instance, the only card that is going to replace Dispel in builds is a card that does the same thing but more efficiently. So you just swap one staple for another.
The real problem (if it is indeed a problem) is that any Mage can include any card in their builds in any amount they wish to pay for. You can't do that in any other card game I've played. You brought up Netrunner and I kind of wish there was a limit to the amount of out of school cards you could include in your build just like Netrunner has. That would at least create more variability. Maybe something like, no more than 18 points (15%) can be spent on out of school spells. Or no more than one copy of any single out of school spell. Or
something. And those were just off the top of my head, not specific, well thought-out recommendations so don't take them super serious.
Anyway, obviously the most important part of Mage Wars is the tactical play, but it would be nice if there were fewer staples in the game so that such a large portion of your build wasn't predetermined as soon as you pick your mage.
