The Wizard discussion

[Nealo]

But do note that the designers do pay attention to these forums and take it all very seriously.

I suppose that is good in the sense that the players' voices are heard, but by definition, most of the players are not top-tier, so I hope that ultimately reason prevails when changing a card. That's one of the challenges, it seems, with a card with a small player-base. With larger games, there is no worry about people all migrating away from the game because it is a large enough and well-supported enough game that it wouldn't make much of a difference if a small group of people lost interest. With Mage Wars, there is still the challenge of enticing new players and if most of the players are led to believe they are playing an imbalanced game, that could be problematic for the overall health of Mage Wars.

Definitely a tricky problem!

[Hanma]

I thought this was pretty relevant to the Wizard discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=381&v=e31OSVZF77w

[Sailor Vulcan]

I thought this was pretty relevant to the Wizard discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=381&v=e31OSVZF77w

There are two things wrong with your argument in regard to Mage wars.

1. At some point they started substituting the word "asymmetry" with "imbalance" without ever explaining WHY. As far as I'm aware, a game having different game pieces with different abilities is NOT the same thing as having imbalanced game pieces.

2. The wizard is an entire Mage. He's more than just a single deck archetype. All the mages in Mage wars are more than just one deck archetype. For other mages we don't counter them outright, instead we counter some of their strategies or aspects of them. It's the difference between carrying counters to flying creatures because of the straywood aviary and carrying counters to all beastmasters in general. If the wizard is so powerful that the mage itself needs to be countered outright, which isn't the case for any other Mage as far as I'm aware, then something is wrong.

[Halewijn]

The only tactic that seems to work for me vs. wizards is pure agression. Kill them before all their vast advantages overwelm you. But many decks just can't go aggressive.

[Ganpot]

Wizard Tower is just a really really strong card, in an already potent school, that plays to the major strengths of the wizard's wheelhouse.

All that to say:
The complexity of this "issue" is two fold.  The wizard and the arcane school.

I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I think I agree with the above statements most.  The wizard by himself is good, but not overpowered.  The arcane school by itself is good but not overpowered.  And the Wizard's Tower by itself is good, but not overpowered.  By combining them, however, you get a really nasty and hard to beat opponent. 

I think the wizard's abilities themselves are fine.  They are powerful, but they cost mana to make up for it.  The wizard's main problem is that his deck-building flexibility is almost unlimited.  The easiest way to fix that would be to make the wizard pay triple for the element which opposes his chosen element (water = fire, air = earth), and for all War school cards.  Without the element restriction, the long-rumored elementalist mage would be unnecessary, since the wizard could simply do the job himself (with the added benefit of still having access to Arcane spells).  And the War restriction makes thematic sense. 

As for the Arcane school itself, the 3 main problems are Teleport, Dispel, and Nullify.  From what I understand, each of these cards is considered top tier in the meta, and have been for a long time.  This hasn't really happened with cards from other schools, at least to this extent.  In order to fix this, Arcane Wonders needs to design and release cards (from schools OTHER than Arcane) that directly counter these cards in order to reduce their popularity to manageable levels.  It should be perfectly viable to build a competitive deck with absolutely no copies of those spells at all.  Astral Anchor and Harshforge Plate are a good start, but it's not enough. 

Last is the Wizard's Tower.  I think the only things that should be changed are that it should cost a quick action to change out the tower's spells, and the tower itself should be epic.  Being able to bring out another tower as soon as the first one is destroyed is just silly, and the quick action to change spells would bring it more in line with other familiars. 

[Sailor Vulcan]

What would happen if the wizard's channeling was lowered to 9 and nothing else was changed? I mean, he already has access to a ton of meta magic and mana spells. What can the wizard do in the first two or three rounds with 20 mana at the start that he'll have more difficulty doing with only 19 mana starting out?

Right now it only takes him three casts to get him to 13 channeling. If he starts with 9 channeling it will require one extra cast. So if he opens with two crystals and the tower, he'd be at 11 channeling plus tower, rather than 12 channeling plus the tower. With that dissipating amulet coming out in academy he'll effectively be able to increase his channeling by 1 until round 6 for a really low cost.

But anyways, a few wiz openings but with 9 channeling...

R1: (19 mana) gate to voltari and harmonize (1 mana left)
R2: (10 mana +4 mana gate) deploy a creature. If gargoyle sentry your left with 3 mana, which prevents you from revealing a lot of good enchantments that you could cast. If mana leech you're left with 6 instead of 7, which means you won't be able to cast the tower that round. If gremlin you'll still be able to cast tower, but you won't have the 1 remaining mana for arcane zap.

Another opening:

R1: (19 mana) mana crystal, wiz tower (7 mana left, not enough for an immediate fireball or Boulder against any non turtles.

Considering that pure aggression is generally the best strategy against the wizard, with 10 channeling he can counter it very easily with early attack spells. As long as his opponent has initiative round 1, wizard will be able to cast a wizard tower and use fireball on enemy Mage in the first round, and he'll still have enough leftover for a crystal. This means he can both attack from effectively 3 zones away and effectively increase his channeling by 2 in the first round. All it takes is for the enemy Mage to move one zone round 1. With only 9 channeling he won't be able to do all that in the first round. Of course another way to prevent him from doing all that r1 could be to take away the tower's channeling.