Vampirism vs friendly attacks

[rodriguekhalil]

 
   So, here's a neat little trick. You have vampirism on you but can't or don't want to get close enough to the enemy to use it? Use it on one of your own living creatures. Include a small weak creature in your spellbook at the end and use it to heal yourself.  Good combo: use vampirism on your mage and attack a creature with vampirism or regen!

  Of course, you'd have to distract your opponent for a turn or two in order to do that, but it might just work!

 

 

[iNano78]

Neat trick, especially if you'd otherwise pay triple for [mwcard=FWJ08]Renewing Spring[/mwcard] or [mwcard=MW1I17]Minor Heal[/mwcard] or [mwcard=MW1E32]Regrowth[/mwcard] (although none of the existing mages pay triple for Nature spells). 

Remember Vampiric only heals half the amount of damage dealt, so your mage + creature have a net loss of life.  Generally you're better off putting Regrowth on yourself than wasting additional mana and actions to attack a friendly creature... but I can see situations where this might be worthwhile (e.g. as a timed match runs out and you're only down by a couple points in "life minus damage" and can't or don't want to attack the other mage directly for one of several possible reasons).

[ACG]

This tactic is too action intensive. Unless you are casting the creature with a spawnpoint (in which case you would still be wasting your spawnpoint's action), you will have to use one full action to cast it and a second to attack it. If you intend to play a mage that wants to stay out of combat, it would be better to just include a few heals/minor heals instead of vampirism/sacrificial creature. Vampirism is also an inefficient source of pure healing because it heals only half the damage inflicted. The advantage to Vampirism over healing spells is that it rewards you with healing for attacking enemy creatures, which you want to do anyway. If you take away that aspect, it is inferior to dedicated healing spells.

Suppose you have a bitterwood fox you want to drain, and a melee attack of 5 dice. At most, you will heal 3 points of damage. For the same price as the fox, and a quick (as opposed to full) action, you could play a [mwcard=MW1I17]Minor Heal[/mwcard] and heal an average of 5 damage.

Vampirism should be cast on a mage only if that mage intends to melee its targets. Attacking an enemy creature is almost always a better idea than attacking your own creature. There are very few situations where healing in this manner would be worth the waste of your mage's action alone.

[rodriguekhalil]

There are very few situations where healing in this manner would be worth the waste of your mage's action alone.

Agreed!  I would definitely not build an entire spellbook around that strategy, but I still find it to be an option to keep in mind.

Actually, I lost a game recently against somebody who used this strategy. She was close to death and could have died with a single ranged attack from me, and did not have any more healing spells. I was surrounded by creatures and was busy dealing with them, so she had an action or two to spend attacking one of her creatures. She won the game.   

Granted, this is an exceptional situation and will not come up very often... But it was still cool for her to end the game like that.