Forged in Fire Preview - Altar of Domination (and Talos)!

[Wildhorn]

Now I wonder what kind of opening would be good to get him as soon as possible.

19 mana - 4 (Garrison Post) - 7 Construction Yard = 8 mana
17 mana - 3 (Garrison Post) - 9 (Altar of Domination) = 5 mana
14 mana - 12 mana (a lvl 3 creature most likely) - 2 mana (Defend on the creature to save your ass or the GPs).

This would bring Talos on the 6th turn, but you might have hard time surviving up to that point unless you face a slow spellbook.

[Sailor Vulcan]

This looks awesome. Also 0 spellbook points creature with an altar to summon it is a clever way to avoid making a double-sided creature-conjuration thingy. I suppose the Mage Wars equivalent of "transform" effects is going to have different forms of an object on different cards? That's really awesome. Here's hoping we get some really cool shape shifting creatures (and perhaps mages too) in the future.

[Death-from-above]

Now I wonder what kind of opening would be good to get him as soon as possible.

19 mana - 4 (Garrison Post) - 7 Construction Yard = 8 mana
17 mana - 3 (Garrison Post) - 9 (Altar of Domination) = 5 mana
14 mana - 12 mana (a lvl 3 creature most likely) - 2 mana (Defend on the creature to save your ass or the GPs).

This would bring Talos on the 6th turn, but you might have hard time surviving up to that point unless you face a slow spellbook.

I like how this opening turn could go, but you are right about the slow spellbook statement. If you are facing an aggressive mage right from the start, I think by the time you had the alter out and tried to summon a creature, an outpost might go down. I think you would need to have a creature set up first for defense and slowly bring out the outposts. Talos is going to do best in the late game, just like syardonix ( I know I spelled that wrong). No matter how you look at it, its going to take 4 rounds to get all the tokens on the alter and Im fairly positive as soon as the opponent sees that come out, he will break out the big guns to bring it down. Im thinking an opening like this would be ok:

19 mana - QC 7(Construction Yard) - FC 11(Anvil Crossbowman) = 18
10 mana - QC 3(Garrison Post) - FC 4(Archers Tower) = 7
12 mana - QC 8(Alter) - FC (Nothing or attack if the opposing mage sent another creature)

At least that way you have an archer out that can potentially ward off a creature that the opponent might have opened with. This is just my opinion. A Warlord would really have some trouble against a LOF opening if his plan was to summon this. I think the first turn should at least be spent getting out an outpost or 2. By turn 2 you should be able to tell if you are going to have the time to summon a functioning alter or if the opponent wont give you enough time to set up.

[Wildhorn]

I would use maybe a Panzergard instead of a crossbowman to suck up the incoming Force Hammers/Fireballs

[jacksmack]

Oh man. Im starting to think the Warlord will be fixed after all.

The synergy between barracks, the warlord green warlord's abilities, construction yard and now this altar is just starting to look solid.

I believe this altar will be destroyed more often than not before it gets to summon Talos. But that doesn't worry me at all, because that just means the opponent spend a lot of resources doing so.

New best Battle Fury target in town. Great cards.

[lettucemode]

Usually swarms sort of peter out as the game goes on, but I think this will have great use as a game-ending punch for the Warlord's swarm build.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Oh boy this is gonna be fun. If nothing else it gives your opponent something else to have to worry about and maybe distracts them from the main goal of attacking you. Talos himself is impressive, life is a little low, but he's still an absolutel monster. I really like that he's for all intents and purposes free, doesn't cost anything to put in your book and you don't have to spend mana to get him out really. It will be very interesting to see how he effects things from now on.

[sdougla2]

Well, I guess I'll be including outposts in my Warlord build so I can get Talos going once FiF hits...

[Arlemus]

I think the power of this card will come from the threat of Talos, not from actually bringing him into play.  So Talos better be threatening...and he is.

There are certain implications made by this card.  First, I think this card was made for Bloodwave, more so than the AT Warlord. It seems that Arcane Wonders is splitting the playstyles of the Warlord along 2 lines.  One is battleforge build (Anvil Throne), and the other is barracks build (Bloodwave).  This seems like a safe assumption to make because the AT warlord has way too much synergy with battleforge (focusing on himself with equips) to build any other way, while the Bloodwave benefits from having more soldiers (vet) brought about by barracks.  This isn't to say you couldn't go battleforge with Bloodwave, or barracks with Anvile Throne, it just doesn't seem as effective.

To tie in with Altar of Domination, the card(s) seem to give the Bloodwave (barracks) warlord the next step in his progression and spread of outposts.  The progression towards Altar seems simple enough, and probably what you want to be doing anyway: bring out barracks and an outpost, another outpost soon, use the new errata to guard them if need be (and I'm sure you will), then drop Altar and proceed to end game.

Now, I definitely don't think this means the AT warlord won't use outposts, I'm sure he will.  However, I don't think AT Warlord will be in as good of a position to progress into AoD as Bloodwave due to the fact that his mana will be spent more on the solo build that he obviously excels at; and I don't think he needs AoD.  It seems  Arcane Wonders supports this, considering AoD is absent from AT's card list, though, we all know how bad card lists have been in the past so maybe its just a coincidence.

Also, it might be possible to have a build that includes both barracks and battleforge.  I had considered it for a while but came to the conclusion that its simply too mana intensive, sloppy, and too un-sygergistic (?) of a start to run both.  Though, if someone could figure out how to run a build that could recover from it (maybe using meditation amulet), I could be wrong about this whole thing.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts.  I've been working at the Warlord ever since his release and I'm glad this set is giving him a bunch of new options.

[sdougla2]

I can see a build running both Battleforge and Barracks. You could use Barracks to get some soldiers down, then drop Altar of Carnage. If your opponent destroys your Barracks, you need somewhere else to put that mana from Altar of Carnage anyway, and I'm not particularly excited about the new familiar. You might also consider opening Battleforge in the Warlock matchup in order to have a stronger early game and avoid playing lots of outposts with Flame +2.

Now playing both in the first 2 turns sounds like a horrible idea, I agree there.

It seems like the meta will shift more towards high creature count builds with the improvements to Warlord Barracks play and Warlock Pentagram play. This will tend to make Vet tokens more relevant, making the Bloodwave Warlord better. I'm more interested in the Anvil Throne Warlord at the moment, but we'll see how things shape up.

If you can ever get Talos out, he'll be a huge threat. If your opponent focuses on preventing that, particularly if you can keep your Barracks and Armory safe, that's good news for you, as that will give you time to build a strong mid game. I'll need to play around with openings for a while to find what works, but with Armory, Altar of Carnage, and Altar of Domination (plus the buff to Garrison Post), it finally looks worthwhile to build an outpost based Warlord.

[sIKE]

A [mwcard=FWC04]Goblin Builder[/mwcard] is very useful in combination with Construction Yard. He really shines when your mage is dealing with a few big kind of strategy or a solo wizard. Just keep your mage on one side of the board and him on the other. Double move one round, drop an Outpost the next. Archers Watchtowers and Garrison Post are good ones to carry. I dropped a Garrison Post on middle square of the opposing mages start side one game and then had my mage summon Grimson across the board as the very last action of the action phase and then had initiative the next and started him shooting right away the next round.

[Kharhaz]

It seems  Arcane Wonders supports this, considering AoD is absent from AT's card list, though, we all know how bad card lists have been in the past so maybe its just a coincidence.

I personally think that the Altar of Domination is not something I would attempt to run by a "first time player" of Mage Wars or the war school. The included spellbooks are an easy way to open the box and play with the new mages and get a general idea of how the new abilities flow with new and old cards, not have constructed tournament top tier books included in the box.

Talos only saw active play in a handful of my competitive playtesting matches. I would some 80% of those matches the Altar of Domination was under the cover of Rolling Fog during the incubation period.

[Wildhorn]

Oh yeah. Rolling Fog make a very good defense for both Altar of Domination and the outposts while it build up.

[Boocheck]

Is there any Lore about Talos? Is he something like Akiro but for dwarfs?

With all those cards, there are so many build i want to try!

[MageHorst]

Me too, Boocheck! How about a Warlord Week in the spellbook construction section? One spellbook per day for seven days, followed by a Warlock Week?