The Straywood Aviary (GenCon 2014 Championship Spellbook)

[Schwenkgott]

If it should happen, that you get bored and cannot find someone to play with, join us on Octgn. I'd like to play some games with you

[baronzaltor]

It seems like the stronger counter to the book is actually just in promo form, that being Gravikor.  Having everything in a 2 zone radius lose flying seems like a heavy knee capping.. suddenly everything is hindered and openly attackable.

I think Gravikor is epic though, so if you can burn it down fast enough it might not be as hard a hit.

[sIKE]

One other question: What kind of Zone Attacks did you see?

[silverclawgrizzly]

@SilverclawGrizzly:

To be successful, these books will have to overcome two hurdles that the Beastmaster doesn't face:  1)  They will have to figure out how to deal with the fact that summoning is a slow action.  Not being able to move and summon a creature means they will have to adopt at least slightly different strategy than Straywood.  2) They must pay either mana or actions for high mobility.  With falcons, there is no ongoing cost to keep forces mobile, but that isn't true of either Battle Orders or the Teleport powers on the various imps.  Mana in this game is often pretty tight, so there is some struggle.

Even if the other books can't make it work quite as well, I'm pretty sure Straywood based swarms are going to be a long term part of the metagame.  Though, it's certainly possible they will fall our of favor from time to time if players go overboard on playing tons of hate against them.

One of the ways the Warlord can make up for the slowness of summoning is with Garrison Posts. Yes it's still a full action to summon a creature but when you can have it summoned half way across the board that's a big help. They're fragile, and easily taken down, but also easy to replace. The Warlord will also really shine when Alter of the Iron Guard is legal.

Likewise I feel the Wizard is going to cut cartwheels when the Summoning Circle is brought out. Honestly anyone can cast these but I could see a "Wizard Delivery" book where last action you lay one of those down, next turn when you have initiative your Gate of Voltari brings out a Hydra, and you Rouse the Beast it in the other Mages face.

[Laddinfance]

Summoning Circle does not work with spawnpoints.

[Alexander West]

@sIKE:
One other question: What kind of Zone Attacks did you see?

Ring of Fire and Chain Lightning were the only ones cast.  After my match one of the Warlocks complimented the fact that I kept positioning my birds in a way that he couldn't get enough value out of a Firestorm to cast it.  In a similar vein, I saw both Circle of Fire, and Circle of Lightning, which I feel are both more effective than most of the area spells that do less than 5 damage in a burst.

I am curious about your questions... what's the hypothesis you're working on?

[sIKE]

I am just trying to get an understanding of your opponents and their lack of counter swarm play. Everything I have asked is typically what I have seen used to counter swarms.

Your use of the Lifetree to give the Innate Life +2 is quite impressive when you consider 6 birds. It takes them from a very squishy 5 Life to 7. Most Wizards I have seen use Zap + Hawkeye and Wizards Tower + Hurl Rock (5 mana cost) to take birds down. Your still spinning them up faster than he can kill them though, but as time goes on the kill power of the flock goes down, and of course you have bad rolls.

Damage Barriers was one that I forgot to ask, but with the Life Tree it is not quite as potent.

Saw the power of Akiro's today, quite the stinker for a control deck like I was playing. It could be quite devastating for and against swarm.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Summoning Circle does not work with spawnpoints.

Ah so it doesn't. Hmmm still you could full cast the creature into a good position and then Rouse the Beast. Not as cool but might still be devastating.

[Laddinfance]

Oh for a Wizard it's still a good card, but it's not earthshattering.

[sIKE]

Oh for a Wizard it's still a good card, but it's not earthshattering.

A turn 2 Gorgon / Iron Golem in the FC?

[Laddinfance]

Oh for a Wizard it's still a good card, but it's not earthshattering.

A turn 2 Gorgon / Iron Golem in the FC?

It's not too much different than people using Divine Intervention aggressively.

[Alexander West]

@sIKE:
I am just trying to get an understanding of your opponents and their lack of counter swarm play. Everything I have asked is typically what I have seen used to counter swarms.

I have a fair amount of experience with constructable game metagames, and have found there is almost always a rotating weakness in those metagames to some strategies while players focus on beating the top performing strategies.

Wizards have been dominating Mage Wars for a while, largely with their mana production, toolbox towers, and Battle Forge equipment stacks.  I imagine that players tried to bring more cards that were strong against this sort of play, and fewer that are good against other strategies.  It happens that the cards good against a Wizard are close to the opposite of the cards which are good against a swarm.  (I know I played around a dozen anti-Wizard cards, and only 1 anti-swarm card.)

I think a part of what happened is that people just didn't quite have enough gas vs. swarm because it's been underplayed for a while.  0-1 Wizard's Tower, 0-1 Hurl Rock, 0-1 Jet Stream, 0-2 Flameblast, 0-2 zone attacks, 0 ranged creatures, 0-1 flying creatures, 0-1 Mage Staff, 0-1 Lash of Flame are just not high enough counts of the critical cards for such a matchup.  Bump up those counts and the road gets a lot rockier.  (Though, I agree that Etherian Lifetree can be a real game changer, turning spells that deal the "perfect 5" into "not quite lethal".)

I did have plans to fight through more hate with wolves if a game went on for a while, but none of my games got to this stage.

[Cnoedel]

" I wish we would have something like this in Germany. " [2]

Besides, congratulations! Your book looks awesome!

[baronzaltor]

Oh for a Wizard it's still a good card, but it's not earthshattering.

Johktari BM is actually the mage who can make most aggressive use of it, she can get it into the opponents starting square on the first round.

[sdougla2]

I would rather use the Lair with the Johktari Beastmaster than Summoning Circle. And I would rather put it in either NC or FC rather than their starting corner.

The problem with putting something like that in their starting corner is that if they don't have any infrastructure in that area (read conjurations), they can just run away, and the ability to summon into that corner won't have much of an impact on the game anymore. Even if you can't put the enemy mage into as immediate pressure by placing a Spawnpoint/Summoning Circle in a central zone, it allows you to do a better job applying pressure over time. A Falcon summoned into one of the center zones can reach all but 2 zones on the board.

I need to experiment with more aggressive swarm options like the Aviary. I've often found that swarm plays can be largely blunted by simply focusing down the creatures individually even without specific anti-swarm tech. The trick against Falcons is to have ways to attack them.