Team Play

[abyssalstalker]

So, I recently played a couple of games implementing these new strategies and have come to report my findings.

I absolutely love the team-based initiative. It promotes a more team-based approach that you can talk to your partner and decide who can go when. My only complaint is that you'll often hear "do you want to go, should I go?" etc. It does slow down the action phases when no one NEEDS it since they take a couple of seconds to be courteous to each other. That aside, I think it's near perfect and its here to stay. Thank you for resolving my woes with 2V2 initiative!

I told my group they could use their quick cast on another players creature action but no one utilized it. I suspect it's completely fine and balanced and has some occasional tactical use. I still do not allow two quick casts in a row, however even during the action stage. I will probably keep this as-is.

Regarding the pooled life, we had a lot of problems. Once a mage is damaged past their max life it seems unnatural to mark it lower on the status board. Also, there were a lot of rule issues. If there's bloodthirsty monsters but only one mage is damaged (past their max) how can that work? If a Warlock is played on a team we found that him charging at the enemies with his health plus the other mages seemed a bit peculiar. We also thought how would heal spells and regen work? If we cast a heal on a mage that is damaged by 5 and we roll a 10, does that extra 5 leak over? Does it apply to the other mage? This could affect something like bloodthirsty. If a mage has regen and the other doesnt, can he utilize the regen?

I'd love to combine health pools but we run into many, many issues. Can we possibly discuss this more and find a suitable solution? If not, I fear I'll have to revert.

Thanks!

[Zuberi]

With regards to the shared life, this is how we've been handling it.

- Only one person tracks Life and Damage for their team. We use dice to do this since the status board doesn't go up high enough. Paper and Pencil would also work. Thus, none of the mages have individual damage or life to keep track of. It's all pooled together as a team resource.

- If either mage has taken damage, both mages are considered to be damaged because they both share it. Thus bloodthirsty would work against both of them.

- The two mages sharing life while acting separately might indeed seem peculiar. This system does not accurately portray realism better than the default team rules. Instead it is simply meant to eliminate the player elimination aspect mechanically. You could justify it by saying they are linked magically if you would like.

- Casting a healing spell on either mage will heal their shared damage, so it applies equally to both mages.

- Regarding Regeneration, my play group has debated this mechanic and are somewhat divided on it. Some argue that you can stack regeneration by applying it individually to each mage, while others argue that it is affecting the same damage pool and thus can not be stacked. Both arguments have merit. Currently we are playing that it does stack if each mage has it individually.

I have a feeling that most of your issues arise from the fact that you are still having each mage track damage individually. Once you switch to having a single person track this information for their team, I think it will resolve most of your issues. It is no longer the mage taking damage, it is the team. No longer is the mage receiving healing, it is the team. It is a group endeavor.

[abyssalstalker]

What you propose does make the most sense and would be fairly easy to implement. This buffs bloodthirsty a bit, but that's fine.

My group did bring up a situation in which this may be abused, however. What if a warlock and priestess are on the same team. The warlock rushes forward and starts causing mayhem. The priestess can stay way in the back and heal herself, thus healing the warlock (the team). Is this fair? Yes, both mages can team up on the warlock but the priestess doesnt have to worry about jynx, nullify etc while she does her own thing removed from the battle. What counter argument can be made against this?

[jacksmack]

What you propose does make the most sense and would be fairly easy to implement. This buffs bloodthirsty a bit, but that's fine.

My group did bring up a situation in which this may be abused, however. What if a warlock and priestess are on the same team. The warlock rushes forward and starts causing mayhem. The priestess can stay way in the back and heal herself, thus healing the warlock (the team). Is this fair? Yes, both mages can team up on the warlock but the priestess doesnt have to worry about jynx, nullify etc while she does her own thing removed from the battle. What counter argument can be made against this?

Go for the priestess?

Summon twice as many creatures as the Warlock and destroy everything he summons?

Im not worried about such playstyle in 2vs2 (i have no experience in 2vs2 i should say).
But rather cheeze combos like malacoda Divine port an enemy into a wall corner.

I guess shared life solves that, but otherwise you could very quickly kill 1 mage:

A necromancer in a corner with malacoda poisen gas cloud bear strengths, force crush.
Divine port 1 enemy in there. Can be done in round 3.

Other cheese combos like tripple teleporting the same mage into a corner with 2 devouring jellys and 2 hydras.
Its gonna do TONS of damage in no time as well.
(nullify (to stop nullify), teleport to kill zone, he walks, .2 teleport to kill zone, he forcepush ( port) third teleport to kill zone).
Next round rinse and repeat. He will take 20 damage a turn if not more.

[Zuberi]

I don't think that plan would be overpowered. Therefore, I don't consider it abuse. I think having one mage play support while the other goes on offense is a valid strategy in a team game. If the priestess is really causing trouble, I don't think the Warlock could block your team from getting to her for too long.

Extreme scenario, she walls herself in with a Grimson Deadeye, Archer's Tower, and a Mage Wand with Heal attached. She may be able to get off one attack per round with Grimson, but otherwise her functionality is limited purely to healing. Meanwhile your team would be able to simply out produce them I expect. You could get out more enchantments, conjurations, creatures, etc than the Warlock could produce, and he wouldn't be able to deal with everything you pump out on his own. You'd eventually overwhelm them.

With that said, even though I don't think it would be a problem, it is something that should be playtested. I don't expect I'll have another game until after the holidays myself, but I will see if my group is willing to try out some kind of Warlock/Priestess strategy when next we do battle.

[jacksmack]

Or this badboy:

BM

19
ring of beasts -2
Redclaw -15
2

11
Fox -4
Fox -5
2

11
Fox -4
Fox -5
2

11
Fox -4
pet Fox -7
0

Round 5 - keeel time:
9
Call of the wild -4
Call of the wild -4
1


Priestess:

20
Enchanters ring -2
Cheetah speed -4
14

24
Marked for death -5
Wal of stone -7
12

22
Nullify -3
Wall of stone -7
12

22
Divine -11
Enchantment transfusion -5 (-2-3 DI MfD N)
6

16
Cheetah speed to get inside range of enemy with lowest armor and or fewest enchantments.
Acid ball -5
Acid ball -5
6
Enchantment transfuse Divine, nullify and marked for death inside wall of stone canine corner.

damage (hopefully vs 0 armor):
5xfox = 3B + 1M + 1R + 1C + 1C = 5x7dice
Redclaw = 5B + 1M + 1C + 1C = 1x8dice
Pet fox = 3B + 2P + 1M + 1R + 1C +1C = 1x9dice

35
 8
 9
= 52 dice

Plus a little from Acid Ball.

Bon appetite.

[Schwenkgott]

We did some 2on2 games on octgn these last days and i want to share with you our feedback.

First of all, we tried two different gameboards. The first one is the standard gameboard 4x3. It has provided good action from the start with not too many zones to spawn conjurations.

The second board we used is the double sized board 6x4. Here players had lots of time to build up and we had to wait some rounds for the action to start.

We used the rules proposed in this thread:

1) Shared life
2) Team initiative
3) Players of a Team may not cast 2 Quickcasts at a time without the other Team has the possibility to cast inbetween

The biggest problem on all games was the teleport spell. This problem is more crucial with the bigger board, but also with the standard board. One team always teleported one enemy mage to the horde of creatures to focus him down. Thats in fact very effective, but boring. That way the game does not resemble the original mage wars experience.
So we are thinking of adding annother rule to our ruleset.

4) No offensive use of Teleport on enemy Mages (creatures are allowed to teleport)

The fifth rule is not that crucial but can increase the fun in the game.

5) Teamplayers should not chose the same mage twice.

What do you think of these rules?
What is your experience with 2on2 matches?
Do you use additional/other rules?
What rules would you change?

[abyssalstalker]

Hi Schwenkgott,

How did you manage to use a 6X4 board via OCTGN? Did you use the alt board markers? I would love to use two game boards but haven't seen it implemented, yet.

As far as your teleporting is concerned - yeah, it does happen. In fact, I'd say teleport is one of the spells that usually swings the game one way or the other. However, the game is long (usually 3+ hours) with a 6X4 board (I love longer games though, but I'm just stating a fact) so removing the offensive teleport could really extend a game length. You can usually get a sense of when one is coming and in that instance just make sure to have a nullify or make sure your not in a position to get thrown into a bad position. Remember teleport has a certain range of 0-2 for target and destination!

As far as having two different mages on one team.... does that really matter? I haven't found any issues with people choosing the same mage. If they both go necro and swarm zombies they lose a lot of versatility. There are cards that could benefit both mages though like that one that buffs all friendly zombies but that is the trade off. I personally like to run a defensive and an offensive mage on a team. One who goes forward and initiates and the other to support. However, I've seen two aggressive mages, too. I think the 2v2 dynamic is great that it allows more variables like this.

[Schwenkgott]

I created a double sized gameboard with irfanview. Every player who attends the 2vs2 game simply has to change the gameboard.png and annother file and it works. For the future i hope Sike will manage to add the option to change the gameboard in 2vs2 matches. But i dont know if this is possible. Changing the background seems to be an option only for subscribers.

Here you can see the bigger gameboard, we've played on.

[sIKE]

I am hoping to make this available with the next release and one of the reasons we changed the board size with the 1.5.0.0 release to make this easier.

[Zuberi]

I'm really glad to hear you guys like my variant! Teleport can definitely be an issue. Separating a mage from his team mate can give you a huge advantage over them. This can also be accomplished with Walls. I have not seen it become a big enough issue to need an additional rule myself, but that may be because all of my games take place on a single game board. It can become cramped on occasion, but in general it works just fine for us and keeps the action flowing.

To answer your questions:
What do you think of these rules?
I disagree with the rule that team mates can't both play the same mage. That reduces the options and variation available to teams and I don't really see any reason for it. I certainly understand the desire to nerf teleport, especially on a bigger board. I really wish there was an official way to defend against teleport in the game. Personally, I will not be making such a rule for my games because it's not a big issue for us on a single board and I want to be minimally invasive with what I change about the game. But, I do see why you would make such a rule and hope it works out for you.

What is your experience with 2on2 matches?
I've had a lot of good experience with 2v2 Matches. They are quite common in my group. Just the other day I played Priest and Necromancer vs Warlock and Forcemaster. The Forcemaster managed to get my Priest away from my team mate early in the game and block him off with a wall. They got my team down to half life before we'd even scratched them. My team made a good recovery however and the last round was a real nail biter. We did lose, but we got them down to only 5 life left. Game took just a little over 90 minutes.

Do you use additional/other rules?
The only rules I use are the ones posted here. Shared Life and Team Initiative. Besides that, everything else is by the book as written. We used to allow a mage to make their team mate's creature into a Pet or Holy Avenger (as the rules just specify friendly creature, not necessarily one you control) until the forums told us we couldn't. A friend of mine actually suggested going back to that rule so we could make a Unicorn into both a Pet and a Holy Avenger at the same time. That actually made me realize why it might be a good idea to keep such abilities limited to your own creatures.

What rules would you change?
I can't think of anything else that I would change really. I've thought about modifying the board, and I am looking forward to the module boards they've announced. I think 4x4 might be better for team games, and 5x5 would be best for FFA games methinks. Could also experiment with more abstract shapes and designs. But otherwise the game seems to run fine and smooth as we have it now.

[abyssalstalker]

I am hoping to make this available with the next release and one of the reasons we changed the board size with the 1.5.0.0 release to make this easier.

This is awesome news. Can't wait to get into some sweet 2v2

[Schwenkgott]

Thanks for your feedback.

Here is annother update: Murphy showed me some other gameboards, that can be found online. They can provide new experience of the game, not only in 1on1 matchups, but especially in 2on2 matchups. We played yesterday on one of these new gameboards and it was very funny.

Packed in a nice little rar-file, you can now download these gameboards here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ogu7dm5vrzoll4/New%20Gameboards.rar

The readme in the rar-file should explain, what to do to get them working in octgn. Its absolutly not complicated.

The file contains the following maps:

Forest 4x5
Inferno 3x4
Slimy Rocks 4x4
Arena Standard 3x4
Arena Huge 4x6

[krj]

what about Finite Life? if one mage has it, the second still can cast healing on himself and heal team damages?

[Sailor Vulcan]

what about Finite Life? if one mage has it, the second still can cast healing on himself and heal team damages?

And what if both mages are wearing Regrowth belt? I think we should employ the same solution to this that mtg two headed giant uses: gaining and losing damage or life happens to individual players and then the result is applied to their team damage/life total.

I think it would be unfair if you only had to use one action and five mana to prevent the whole team from healing, rather than just one mage, since friendly mages occupy different positions and they are not designed for sharing traits or conditions, including healing traits.

Cast a finite life on a warlock on one side of the arena, and all of a sudden his priestess teammate can't use her ability. Or even worse, necromancers poison immunity could protect his teammates by proxy. How would you put rot conditions on the whole team if one of players on that team is a Necromancer? If you try to put a rot condition on a priestess, it should not be prevented by her teammate's poison immunity trait.