About Immunity

[sIKE]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

I can see why, it'd be instantly awesome with minimal effort - I'll just walk around spreading death and taking no damage!

So when it will be released all that's needed is a change to its target bar: poison susceptible creature.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

And there is where things go off of the rails. No way will the needed dozen cards that would need to be errated ever happen. We have one card that is in desperate need to be changed and it hasn't happened yet.

[Sailor Vulcan]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

I can see why, it'd be instantly awesome with minimal effort - I'll just walk around spreading death and taking no damage!

So when it will be released all that's needed is a change to its target bar: poison susceptible creature.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

And there is where things go off of the rails. No way will the needed dozen cards that would need to be errated ever happen. We have one card that is in desperate need to be changed and it hasn't happened yet.

You mean wizard tower? That's overpowered, yes, but there are at least several ways to depower it without errata which have already been revealed without anyone even noticing.

Hidden tunnels makes conquer much easier to use. You can keep your walls around longer with reinforce, and you can protect reinforce with arcane ward. Blur can be revealed to cancel a conjuration's attack. Then force hold or enfeeble on that wizard, and protect the enchant with an arcane ward.

I'm really exited about arcane ward tbh. Enchantment mind games will be much more viable once it's released, and removal won't be so powerful.

[Borg]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

With that line it might still be possible to use Enchantment Transfusion and Shift Enchantment ?

Maybe the wording should be similar to the restriction on [mwcard=MWSTX2FFE05] Fumble[/mwcard]
 like "Plagued doesn't work when attached to a Poison Immune creature".

[Borg]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

I can see why, it'd be instantly awesome with minimal effort - I'll just walk around spreading death and taking no damage!

So when it will be released all that's needed is a change to its target bar: poison susceptible creature.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

And there is where things go off of the rails. No way will the needed dozen cards that would need to be errated ever happen. We have one card that is in desperate need to be changed and it hasn't happened yet.

You mean wizard tower? That's overpowered, yes, but there are at least several ways to depower it without errata which have already been revealed without anyone even noticing.

Hidden tunnels makes conquer much easier to use. You can keep your walls around longer with reinforce, and you can protect reinforce with arcane ward. Blur can be revealed to cancel a conjuration's attack. Then force hold or enfeeble on that wizard, and protect the enchant with an arcane ward.

I'm really exited about arcane ward tbh. Enchantment mind games will be much more viable once it's released, and removal won't be so powerful.

I'm afraid that releasing more cards to deal with WT changes nothing about the problem itself.
You just create more " staple cards" and reduce originality even further.
Whatever cards are released down the line, Wizards are still going to us WT's because they are still overpowered and thus can't be left out of a spellbook.

AW has to cure the illness, not the symptoms.
WT needs Epic and Zone Exclusive

Back to immunity

[Kaarin]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

With that line it might still be possible to use Enchantment Transfusion and Shift Enchantment ?

Maybe the wording should be similar to the restriction on [mwcard=MWSTX2FFE05] Fumble[/mwcard]
 like "Plagued doesn't work when attached to a Poison Immune creature".

No, SE and ET require that You move the enchantment to new legal target.

[Wildhorn]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

I can see why, it'd be instantly awesome with minimal effort - I'll just walk around spreading death and taking no damage!

So when it will be released all that's needed is a change to its target bar: poison susceptible creature.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

And there is where things go off of the rails. No way will the needed dozen cards that would need to be errated ever happen. We have one card that is in desperate need to be changed and it hasn't happened yet.

And this need to change. MW is an evolutive game and if an errata has to happen, it has to.

It is better to change Immunity wording now and errata 4 cards than to keep it that way and it gives more problems, more non-intuitive situations, more rule exceptions to remember in future (Defrost), etc.

[Sailor Vulcan]

You can add Plagued to your list of issues. That card is not meant to be attached to anything with poison immunity.

I can see why, it'd be instantly awesome with minimal effort - I'll just walk around spreading death and taking no damage!

So when it will be released all that's needed is a change to its target bar: poison susceptible creature.

Just kidding, targeting restriction is needed in its description. Something like 'this spell can't target creatures with poison immunity'.

And there is where things go off of the rails. No way will the needed dozen cards that would need to be errated ever happen. We have one card that is in desperate need to be changed and it hasn't happened yet.

You mean wizard tower? That's overpowered, yes, but there are at least several ways to depower it without errata which have already been revealed without anyone even noticing.

Hidden tunnels makes conquer much easier to use. You can keep your walls around longer with reinforce, and you can protect reinforce with arcane ward. Blur can be revealed to cancel a conjuration's attack. Then force hold or enfeeble on that wizard, and protect the enchant with an arcane ward.

I'm really exited about arcane ward tbh. Enchantment mind games will be much more viable once it's released, and removal won't be so powerful.

I'm afraid that releasing more cards to deal with WT changes nothing about the problem itself.
You just create more " staple cards" and reduce originality even further.
Whatever cards are released down the line, Wizards are still going to us WT's because they are still overpowered and thus can't be left out of a spellbook.

AW has to cure the illness, not the symptoms.
WT needs Epic and Zone Exclusive

Back to immunity

Maybe, but I'm not so sure of that. Wizard tower is not the first overpowered card we've gotten. Teleport also had the same problem. In the beginning, only nullify jinx, divine intervention or another teleport could counter a teleport. This was of course only so much of a problem when FvW came out and golem pit builds became possible. But now we have astral anchor and blur is on its way, and there will probably be more to come.

As for making more staple cards, I'm also a bit worried about that. The question is whether it's possible to stop overpowered cards from being overpowered without auto including certain cards in your spellbook.

As I see it the current staple spells are:

Acid ball (for armor)
Force hammer (for conjurations)
Geyser (for burns, not as necessary for holy mages)
Dispel (for enchantments, the only Mage atm who doesn't necessarily need it is the warlord)
Dissolve (the only one who doesn't necessarily need it is the Druid, but it's cheaper equipment removal than corrosive orchid so she has no reason not to include it.)
Teleport (Still necessary for buddy or solo rushes trying to get out of tanglevines sometimes, and astral anchor isn't as good if you don't want to stay still. Even so, this has resulted in several of my spellbooks reducing their teleport count to 1.

I'm not sure it's possible to construct a meta game with no staple cards. The number of staple cards does seem to have increased over time, but that doesn't necessarily mean the number of staple cards is going to increase whenever overpowered cards get counters instead of errata. However, don't forget that the power level of each card is relative to other cards. It isn't powerful in a vacuum. What I'm slightly worried about is that wizard tower only costs one quick action while putting up a reinforced wall costs two quick actions, and a third quick action to arcane ward a reinforce. You would need a way to decrease the wizard's action advantage, and I don't think enfeeble alone is going to cut it. Then again, using arcane ward on enfeeble night do a good job. If the wizard is turtling and doesn't want to move, then that might not work so well.

Hidden tunnels and Conquer should also be successful for the bloodwave warlord, though, since it lets you replace the destroyed conjuration with one of your own, and the zone control requirement goes well with the ability to give creatures veteran markers. The anvil throne warlord on the other hand is more likely to do other things. The anvil throne warlord has access to pretty powerful defenses. Cast wall of earth in front of the tower, beef him up with equipment for a while, give him a way to counter unavoidable attacks at close range, and reinforce his battle forge and he probably will be able to overcome the tower just fine. Alternatively, you could have your familiar cast power strike on you while your wielding a heart of gravikor. Suddenly you have 8 dice basic melee attack against corporeal conjurations, and with better value for your mana than using force hammer.

Anyways, the ruling on immunity really doesn't make sense. I should be able to attack a flame immune creature with a flame attack for no effect except for maybe removing a guard marker. Prohibiting that is unintuitive and unthematic and just doesn't make sense. Is immunity forcing mages to not even try to use flame attacks on a flame immune creature? Seems like a violation of "free will", don't think the gods of Etheria would like that.

[sIKE]

Yes you can do things as you have described here, cast Walls, blah blah blah, all the while I have dealing with an overpowered card and its action/mana advantage that I am trying to kill, you know what the Wizard is doing? Killing my mage, and if I manage to kill one there is typically at least 2 more behind it.

The card is broken, and cannot be fixed with other cards to make the repair. ZE + Epic would not change how it works at a basic level. It would make it much more valuable and harder to place. Meaning that it would probably not be placed at the top of the mountain, i.e. FC, and the Wizard would want to defend it now, unlike today who's thought process goes like:

Pfft, go ahead kill my WT, I will not prepare a spell on it this round during the planning phase, but I will prepare its replacement and stick it in the same spot it was in and cast a spell from it this round all the same. Win/Win for me.

Just saying....

[Sailor Vulcan]

Yes you can do things as you have described here, cast Walls, blah blah blah, all the while I have dealing with an overpowered card and its action/mana advantage that I am trying to kill, you know what the Wizard is doing? Killing my mage, and if I manage to kill one there is typically at least 2 more behind it.

The card is broken, and cannot be fixed with other cards to make the repair. ZE + Epic would not change how it works at a basic level. It would make it much more valuable and harder to place. Meaning that it would probably not be placed at the top of the mountain, i.e. FC, and the Wizard would want to defend it now, unlike today who's thought process goes like:

Pfft, go ahead kill my WT, I will not prepare a spell on it this round during the planning phase, but I will prepare its replacement and stick it in the same spot it was in and cast a spell from it this round all the same. Win/Win for me.

Just saying....

That's why I said that there should be some way of countering the action advantage. Conquer can bank an action off of destroying the tower, and it's a quick action to cast. Walls can be extended, which means you get two walls for only one quick action.

While you do need to quick cast hidden tunnels for conquer to be a viable counter to the tower, the zone control clause in conquer combos well with the bloodwave warlord's vet tokens.

Same kind of thing for reinforce on walls, except that you need two reinforces, one for each wall. But that's ok since the enemy wizard is probably going to try to destroy only one wall at a time, and you already banked an action by extending the wall. You just needed to get those walls to last a little longer to take advantage of the extra action advantage your wall extension gave you.

Of course I could be wrong, this is just how it seems to me now. If I'm wrong and wizard tower cannot be properly fixed without errata, then that probably applies to all broken cards that Mage wars ever gets.

Something to keep in mind is that in the standard arena format players build spellbooks for the current metagame, not past metagames. So if people start including good ways to counter the tower, it will not only be less OP, it won't be auto include because it won't be as powerful in whatever the present metagame is at that point in time.

I also think that some block formats are going to need a ban list. Blocks that include CoK but not BG-Dom would probably be better off with the tower banned. But for the full card pool, metagame I suspect this won't be necessary.

I'm starting to wonder if the advantage of buying more expansions is going to increase over time. It's not too big of an advantage right now except against a wizard using the tower. I suspect that as the game goes on we won't necessarily need more expansions at minimum to play competitively, but it might be a matter of having the right expansions for the current metagame. For instance, right now I would say the sets that you need most for the current metagame is the core set, battlegrounds: domination, and maybe also academy for arcane ward (official release in 6 days). And the last two you only need because of the tower. Of course, you might not need academy. The enchanter's wardstones in CoK might be enough to protect your reinforce enchantments on your walls.

Anyways, how long do you think it will be before we get a better ruling on immunity, if ever?

[Borg]

So if people start including good ways to counter the tower, it will not only be less OP, it won't be auto include because it won't be as powerful in whatever the present metagame is at that point in time.

See, that is what I seriously doubt.
Even if you have good counters, WT will just be as OP as before because the card hasn't changed.

And the worst part in this is that now "some must have counter to WT" is eating away at your sbp's while you may not want that card in your book in the first place but you have no choice if you want to match up well should you face a Wizard. That would be a terrible situation.

[Sailor Vulcan]

So if people start including good ways to counter the tower, it will not only be less OP, it won't be auto include because it won't be as powerful in whatever the present metagame is at that point in time.

See, that is what I seriously doubt.
Even if you have good counters, WT will just be as OP as before because the card hasn't changed.

And the worst part in this is that now "some must have counter to WT" is eating away at your sbp's while you may not want that card in your book in the first place but you have no choice if you want to match up well should you face a Wizard. That would be a terrible situation.

Okay then, replace the words "power" and "powerful" with "effective at increasing your chances of winning games". Cards that counter the tower could make the tower less effective at increasing the wizard's chances of winning. A card's power doesn't exist in a vacuum. It ONLY exists in relation to other cards. While the number of autoincludes does seem to have increased over time, that could just be because there are simply more cards in existence now, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the number of autoincludes will permanently increase every time an overpowered card is depowered without errata. And even if the number of autoincludes does increase, there might eventually be so many ways to deal with the tower that none of them are autoincludes.

And if you didn't bring up the the maybe potential risk of increasing the number of autoincludes (at least in the short term), your reasoning would basically boil down to "You can't depower the wizard tower without an errata because it didn't get an errata."

Of course, I might be wrong. All of this is just theorycrafting. However, it seems to make a lot of sense, and it makes it at least thinkable that it might be possible to fix the tower without errata. Actually, not just thinkable, but probable. I would be surprised if the wizard tower remained autoinclude forever even without an errata.

That being said, I think that this problem needs to be rectified quickly. If Academy and Domination don't fix the wizard tower, then I would say that if they don't find a way to fix it without errata within the next few months, they should just errata it, since the wizard's original trickstery playstyle has been subverted long enough.

Anyways, back to my last question? Might we get something to rectify this weird unintuitive immunity ruling sometime in the near future?

[ringkichard]

Ok, so I've re-read the thread and right now the parts that are about changing immunity seem unnecessary.

1. You can't attack someone immune to flame with a flame attack. This means that if they're guarding, you can't attack anything else in the zone either. Nothing here needs to change. Nor would you want it to, the alternative baffles the imagination.

2. You can't intercept an attack you're immune to. Currently, the only creature this would apply to would be Togorah, except that hydro immunity has an exception, so everything works fine right now.

The future of this issue is just that, the future. There are lots of rules that *could* be problems in the future. I've got a long list of them, in fact. But this isn't a problem now, and so figuring out a solution isn't going to change anything. And rule team attention is a limited resource. How long are you willing to delay PvS to solve a problem that can't currently be triggered in play?

3. You can't cast a Flame school buff on Adremelech. This doesn't break anything or unbalance the game. If you need a rationalization, he's immune to fire at a magical and integral level, so the spell doesn't work. Other than, "But I want to" is there any reason to change the rule? It doesn't cause any contradictions, and it's a restriction that has been used deliberately to balance cards like Plagued.

Finally, all the proposed changes I'm hearing are *really complicated*. As I have learned time and time again, simple is better than perfect.

[Wildhorn]

Ok, so I've re-read the thread and right now the parts that are about changing immunity seem unnecessary.

1. You can't attack someone immune to flame with a flame attack. This means that if they're guarding, you can't attack anything else in the zone either. Nothing here needs to change. Nor would you want it to, the alternative baffles the imagination.

2. You can't intercept an attack you're immune to. Currently, the only creature this would apply to would be Togorah, except that hydro immunity has an exception, so everything works fine right now.

The future of this issue is just that, the future. There are lots of rules that *could* be problems in the future. I've got a long list of them, in fact. But this isn't a problem now, and so figuring out a solution isn't going to change anything. And rule team attention is a limited resource. How long are you willing to delay PvS to solve a problem that can't currently be triggered in play?

3. You can't cast a Flame school buff on Adremelech. This doesn't break anything or unbalance the game. If you need a rationalization, he's immune to fire at a magical and integral level, so the spell doesn't work. Other than, "But I want to" is there any reason to change the rule? It doesn't cause any contradictions, and it's a restriction that has been used deliberately to balance cards like Plagued.

Finally, all the proposed changes I'm hearing are *really complicated*. As I have learned time and time again, simple is better than perfect.

1. The problem arise with Sweeping. The Sweeping should be able to attack both the immune guard and the other thing you want to attack.

2. Togorah can't intercept a Geyser. So not everything is working fine. And in future, when we get a creature immune to fire or acid and it has Intercept (or if an enchantment/incantation gives Intercept), we are still having a problem.

3. Why would he not be able to get a Circle Fire on him? Gives more fire to the firelord. Also, Plagued use the rule to be balanced, but it could still have been balanced with simple wording if the immunity rule was not spelled that way.

Finally, as I learned, the earlier you fix something, the better it is.

[ringkichard]

1. The problem arise with Sweeping. The Sweeping should be able to attack both the immune guard and the other thing you want to attack.

Why?

Melee Sweeping represents an attack with a wide arc. If you can't make the attack against the first guy, you don't get to make the attack against the 2nd.

From a rules perspective, to change this, it's not enough to permitting targeting. You'd also have to say that a Flame attack against a Flame immune target removes the guard marker. If it didn't, the Sweeping attack would still have to attack a guard, and since the immune creature is the only guard in the zone (or you'd have attacked the other guard) you still wouldn't be able to attack again.

If I'm totally immune to your attack, why should I lose my guard marker?

2. Togorah can't intercept a Geyser. So not everything is working fine. And in future, when we get a creature immune to fire or acid and it has Intercept (or if an enchantment/incantation gives Intercept), we are still having a problem.

Togorah can intercept Geyser.

Geyser
The ability to cancel the attack to remove Burn conditions is not optional. If the target has any Burn conditions, the effect must occur.
The Geyser attack spell may target an object with the Hydro Immunity trait. If it does, the attack deals no damage or effects to the object, other than to remove all Burn conditions. In this manner, a Geyser attack can be used to extinguish the fires of a burning plant object.

And since any such future flame or acid immune creature with intercept would have to go through play-testing, I assure you that when and if that happens, it'll be dealt with.

3. Why would he not be able to get a Circle Fire on him? Gives more fire to the firelord. Also, Plagued use the rule to be balanced, but it could still have been balanced with simple wording if the immunity rule was not spelled that way.

Why would he not be able to get a Circle of Fire? Because he's immune to fire; you can't cast fire spells on him. Immunity isn't "Takes no damage from fire and burns" it's more than that. Those are different abilities; why should they be the same?

You might argue that Adremelech shouldn't have Fire Immunity, and instead should have Immunity to Flame Damage like Magma Golem has, but that's not a reason to change the entire immunity rule.

Finally, as I learned, the earlier you fix something, the better it is.

This is true. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Halewijn]

I have to agree with Wildhorn here. I don't think this problem is urgent but still, maybe these rules should be on the list "fixing when we've got a calm week"

1) Because if you use a sweeping attack and you roll zero damage on the creature, you are still allowed to attack the second one. You should be able to target the first creature (0 damage) and move on.

2) Better to fix the rules a bit than to make an exception for everything in the future.

3) no offence, but that's kinda a stupid argument... You should be able to cast a circle of fire around your flaming Hellion because I'd want my opponent to be afraid of attacking him. Circle of fire is also less sbp than Circle of lightning AND you can get extra burns out of it which the adramelech warlock loves.