Arcane Duels Episode 11 - Priestess vs the Fire Wizard

[Intangible0]

Me and my friend Harry Poppins (Nick) go at it again with the forces of light and arcane. This game was definitely interesting...

You can find the match Right Here

We'll post our builds soon too.

[Boocheck]

Nice! I just know, what i will watch tonight

[sdougla2]

Casting a face down enchantment is casting a spell, and that should have triggered the Gate to Voltari. You don't wait until the enchantment is revealed.

[Biblofilter]

Thanks for another awesome Arcana duels video! 

Priestress comments:

First: Roll better 

Second: I disliked your opening.

You wasted a Force Push on Brogan. Thats -3 mana, +1 on Gate and a wasted action. Divine Intervention on Brogan also seemed expensive - thats 11 mana and then a lot of healing actions afterwards to bring him back in the game.

I think i would drop the Sunfire Amulet and go all-in on the offensive, supporting Brogan better.

Brogan turn 2 and a Guardian Angel turn 3, support them with enchanments and a Hand of Bim-Shalla, seems like a much stronger offence. (and focusses on protecting your creatures rather than the Priestress early)

Fire Wizard comments:

Stonegaze Basilisk - a ~25% chance for actually crippling an opponent, does´nt seem worth it, with only 2 attack dice. With a 7+ effect roll on a creature, i would buff it with an Akiros Favor. Still im prefer Devouring Jelly or Gorgon Archer instead.

Anyway: Where and why did you try to teleport Brogan?

[BoomFrog]

Cripple is rolled to remove at the end of a creatures action so it always works for one round. Actually cripple immobilizes for an average of 2 rounds and with Akiro's favor the basilisk is essentially negating an average of more then one enemy per turn.

This all assumes you have ways to take advantage of superior mobility which the wizard should.

[Biblofilter]

Cripple is rolled to remove at the end of a creatures action so it always works for one round. Actually cripple immobilizes for an average of 2 rounds and with Akiro's favor the basilisk is essentially negating an average of more then one enemy per turn.

This all assumes you have ways to take advantage of superior mobility which the wizard should.

Yes im pretty sure i´ve underestimated Stonegaze Basilisk and cripple. With Akiros Favor it seems a good body with Gorgon Archer. Instead im using Wizard Tower with Jet Stream (vs flyers) and Surging Wave (vs non-flyers) to keep creatures away.

[sdougla2]

While the dice rolls did favor the Wizard pretty heavily, there was some key decision making by the Priestess that left you vulnerable: Enchanting a creature that is at low health with something that is not intended to keep the creature alive (Healing Charm, Block, Bull Endurance...) is a bad idea. The whole reason enchantments are generally more efficient than incantations is that you can get multiple uses out of them, but that whole line of reasoning falls apart if your opponent can kill the enchanted creature with a single efficient attack. Besides, you don't want to give your opponent any more reason to kill one of your low health creatures.

Divine Intervention on Brogan is a bigger investment than you probably should have made, but if you were going to do it, you should have dodged the Fireball. You don't want to wait until the last second and dodge the last little attack your opponent needs to kill your creature because you'll still need to spend a bunch of resources healing Brogan. Dodging the Fireball would have left you much closer to even on mana, and allowed you to continue pressuring your opponent much more quickly and efficiently.

Enchanter's Ring would have been a good investment with how heavily you invested in enchantmenting your creatures.

Divine Protection would have been a cheaper way to try to keep Brogan and Knight of Westlock alive.

There was no reason to cast Force Push to get Brogan into the zone with the Battle Forge.

You didn't get another creature down fast enough. If you had a Guardian Angel or a Knight of Westlock down soon after Brogan, you would have been in much better shape.

You needed to play some armor on your mage in order to make attacking you less efficient.

You needed to probe for Nullifies more efficiently. Running a Heal into a Nullify is awful. Minor Heal or Healing Charm are much more efficient ways to test for a Nullify.

There is no reason to reveal Brace Yourself in response to the declaration of an attack. You should always wait until right after the roll dice step, as you can see if the Brace Yourself will do anything before having to reveal it.

[kailas]

Thnx for the video! I like bilbo points. Always reveal defensive (bull strenght, brace yourself, DI, healing charm, armor) enchantments after the dice a rolled, but before applying them. It saves mana. Brogan goes well with divine protection, would have chosen that over bear strenght.

[sdougla2]

Honestly my ideal setup for Brogan is Divine Protection + Bear Strength.

[Intangible0]

I looked all over for whether the face down enchantments would count or not, the only thing I could find was that when you reveal an enchantment that is when you resolve it.
He admitted that he made that force push mistake, there were a number of things he could have done that would have worked better.
Also, I disagreed with the opening at first as well. But after an explanation his first two turns are really affective. If a spawn point comes down on turn one them he responds with brogan, otherwise it's a knight of westlock.
that's why he has such a "soft" opening at first, it ensures that be has enough mama for the creatures.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Over all I agree with the opinions on the basalisk. Even if I had rolled well on the affect die then I'm affective spending a creature to make sure another creature can't move, akiro's favor is too much commitment for a trick that can be countered with Teleport and pushing. I think it's gorgon archers from here out...

[sdougla2]

The effect of the enchantment is resolved when it is revealed, but the spell is resolved at the end of the casting sequence when you place the face down enchantment.

I'm not objecting to the stuff he did turn 1 or playing Brogan turn 2. I sometimes like to open with double Mana Flower/Mana Crystal because of the flexibility it offers. My contention is that the followup after playing Brogan was lacking.

The Basilisk is fairly inconsistent. Gorgon Archer is a much stronger choice in general, but both are weaker than normal against the Priestess.

[kailas]

Devouring jelly was impressive.
If I remember correctly only 3 cards deal critical damage of which for two jelly is immune? Harpy, psylok, demonhide armor. For priestess only staff of asyra looks reasonable card to leave a dent in the pile of ooze.
Any ideas how to hard counter counter it?

[Biblofilter]

Devouring Jelly is impressive!

But it is slow and full round attack meaning it can´t counterstrike. It can only be hit by crits and it reconstructs so its hard to kill.

Theres several ways to counter it - one is to move, forcing your opponent to use a teleport wand or similar, another is to attack it with flying creatures.

[reddawn]

The Holy school shouldn't have problems disrupting non-living creatures.  Pillar of Light becomes a 4 dice attack with a 9 out of 10 chance to daze and the Holy staff becomes very efficient for making multiple attacks.  Samandriel is particularly good against nonliving but she will probably need Nullify protection against a Wizard (not a big deal).

Jellies rely very heavily on attacking to get their value, so dazing them is a solid answer, especially since they can't heal if they aren't dealing damage.

[Coshade]

I've been thinking about Akiro's Favor recently as being more important in a deck like this Priestess. The bigger the creatures you cast the less creatures you will have in general. If you only have 1 or 2 creatures being your entire source of damage you want those to be good rolls. I think Akiro's favor is a necessary insurance in big creature build. Most of the moves I saw the priestess do I agreed with. But the dice were just not with you. Akiro's Favor would solve those unfortunate dice rolls.

Dawnbreaker Temple is also really good at making that big rolls turn into at least an average rolls. If you see a big creature get cast from your opponent I think a dawnbreaker temple is a great response!

The Temple of light is a soft way of dealing with the Ooze. I use it for my wizard and it works out pretty well! The extra chance to daze and stun is good.

I agree with everyone on using Akiro's Favor with the Stonegaze Basilisk. It's a good creature to use against big baddies like the priestess had. The Gorgan is probably the better choice overall though.

I would love to see the spellbooks to give further analysis. There's not much to critique since I'm not sure what your choices were. I know the Priestess played no armor the whole game (Except Rhino Hide).