Is arcane too important?

[Mrmt]

The more I read here, the more it seems that any mage without a heavy selection of arcane spells (teleports, dispels etc) will always be subpar. All skills being equal, a mage which has a lot of arcane utility spells will beat a mage without lots of arcane.

This - from what I glean - is because arcane offers the key to rushing (both in executing it, and defending against it), and from what I see, rushing is the dominant strategy. (ie There is no time to build up a beautiful array of defences and outposts). It also appears to be the primary means of countering or fizzling opponents' spells, which is always important, and in getting your big creatures, or mage, out of any tricks and traps.

Of course it's possible for someone to win without arcane, and obviously this is only really relevant once people delve deep into min maxing their mages. Personally, I am never likely to progress much beyond casual play, so it probably doesn't matter.

But this sits uncomfortably with me.

The fact that triple arcane cost effectively rules the warlord out of the game (on top of the fact that a mage built around spawning lots of soldiers and buffingis very bad at spawning lots of soldiers and buffing them), and that any mage without a heavy selection of arcane spells will necessarily be subpar.

My ideal of mage wars is that mages from different schools of magic pits their wits against each other, and all stand a good chance of competing. There should be an opportunity for mages which don't stuff their spellbooks with arcane to win the game.

Of course, there will always be dominant strategies in any game like this; it is almost impossible to have this much variety and keep it balanced. There will almost always some schools that are better than others.

But for one school to be so dominant seems a curious design decision.

I hope I have misunderstood, and that I am wrong in this!

[sdougla2]

Teleport is mandatory because of how powerful and versatile it is. Dispel is mandatory because you need a solution to key enchantments, and all of the other options are more expensive. I don't really see the rest of the arcane school as mandatory. Mana Crystal and Moonglow Amulet are good cards if you want to improve channeling. Mage Staff can help with Incorporeal creatures and conjurations. Elemental Cloak can help against fire and lightning attacks. Nullify/Reverse Magic can help against enchantments and incantations. However, aside from Teleport and Dispel, you can do without any of those. Don't get me wrong. Arcane can be more self reliant than most schools, but you don't need access to very many arcane cards in order to come up with a worthwhile build.

I think the 3 key schools at present are arcane, dark, and nature. If you're using living creatures, you need access to nature for efficient buffs. If you want to use Teleport and powerful slow creatures, you need access to arcane. Dark has curses, undead, and Vampiric. None of the other schools are as versatile, and war in particular lacks a coherent game plan at present.

[Mrmt]

Yep... bowed to the inevitable and got one each of the core tomes.

I am a fish on a hook!

At least the hook tastes good...

[silverclawgrizzly]

I'd argue that an arcane mage who relies on nothing but arcane may be in trouble. Without some measure of healing you may end up in trouble. With out some buffs you're at a disadvantage. Curses are also VERY nice little presents as well. Also Arcane isn't much good that I've seen for dealing pure damage like the elemental schools(though of course a Wizard chooses one of those.)

That's not to say Arcane isn't important, because it is, but so are the other schools.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Yeah. I think the reason for that is that teleport, nullify and dispel are so vital to most builds. Even if you might be able to get away with not having one of them, it will still put you at a disadvantage. In the future there might be spells from other schools that can do similar things, so hopefully that will even out the playing field some.

Because of it's triple cost for arcane, the sole mage trained in war at present, the warlord is at a huge disadvantage. He needs something that can compensate for the weakness of severely reduced access to teleports, nullifies and dispels. ACG has come up with a lot of ideas for cards that can improve the war school, among which include things that have or can give some magic resistance, which would probably suit the warschool thematically. Things that could fit this could include a creature that could dig a pit to give friendly creatures in the same zone the obscured trait, or some sort of thick hide that makes it harder for certain spells to affect the mage (that makes all enchantments that target the wearer get magebind +1.)

It's also been proposed that teleport is overpowered, and that a solution to this would be to make it unable to target enemy mages.

[Hedge]

That's strange, I rarely teleport the opposing mage.