Have you run into any troubles or what are your current "problems" with the deck ?
If the enemy mage rushes you. Be careful they you are not wasting your actions setting up the big trap that he never tries to escape. Perhaps he is running few bigs and just use his actions and mana on hurting you faster than you can hurt him because you spend too many actions / mana on 'trapping'.
It could be a female warlock just nuking you down with flameblasts after a few curses and essentially putting more dice out than you are.
The way I look at it is we're facing two styles of opponents :
Mages who want to operate from the back and avoid direct or indirect contact as much as possible ( ex Necromancer or Druid ) and mages who will not mind being in direct or indirect contact ( ex Adramelech warlock, Forcemaster )
From what I've experienced so far, this book can be pretty brutal for those mages who want to avoid (in)direct contact as they can be pulled out of their defensive positions rather quickly and be placed in a very threatening situation which has to be dealt with immediately.
Buddy mages are also favourable match-ups afaik.
With all your positioning changing options it shouldn't be too hard to separate the mage from his buddy(s) and "park" the buddy somewhere outside his "stuck" mage's reach with a Force Hold or a sleep counter on it for example.
Stuck, Teleport Trap, Tanglevine and Stranglevine should all be useful in keeping an aggressive Melee mage off your back.
The mages to really look out for imo are those who want to take you down with attack spells eg Adramelech warlock. Sure, the FM has Deflect but that still leaves you vulnerable to unavoidable attack spells.
I've been searching for how to best counter this situation and the solution has come from an unexpected card :
[mwcard=MW1A11] Pillar of Light[/mwcard]
A 58.33% chance to Daze which makes even unavoidable attack spells have only a 50% chance to hit
and 16.66% chance to Stun which means
no attack spells nor full spells ( Summons ! ) allowed.
All in all a 75% chance for a "Defense/Block like" effect. Sure it rolls only two dice, but that is just a bonus in this situation, it's the effect we're looking for here.
This card can really mess up the opponent's plans, prevent some serious damage and buy you that 1 or 2 rounds you need to finish things off.
I haven't tried this yet but I think it might be a great idea to put a Pillar of Light on a Spore against this kind of match up. It can Daze or Stun from 2 zones away and it might not be so simple trying to knock out the Spore considering the enemy mage may be incapacitated, 2 zones away, dazed or Stunned and have to deal with a Brace Yourself or Block .
I'm quite happy that this underappreciated spell could possibly be very effective in this build.
I also added a Surging Wave as the Daze chance is even higher with this one but it's somewhat trickier to use because of the potential push effect you may
not want.
However, if the target is unmovable anyway or if there's a wall along a side of the zone your target is in Surging Wave may be even more effective ( higher Daze chance and potential unavoidable bash attack but no Stun chance )
The wizard tank. Call it blasting builder or whatever. Basicly a wizard with 6+ armor, veterans belt, voltaric shield, regrowth and aegis 1.
You will fight over actions and may have to handle his forge (perhaps with blur?). It will be hard to strip him from armor so he can take damage AND keep him trapped at the same time.
The new chithin armor is a pain in the neck and drastically reduces the power of jelly.
The Chitin Armor would certainly need to get Dissolved.
All other armor I wouldn't touch really as long as the Jelly can keep putting on Corrode markers, so keeping the Mage in the Jelly's zone or pulling the Jelly into the Wizard's zone would be key.
Blur is of course a must-add for this book ( as soon as it's legal ) but I don't want to use promo's as I like to keep the playing field level for everyone.
I could see a thoughspore (with dissolve) opening against defensive mages. It will also help you remove the nullifies for when he escapes and needs to be teleported 2 into the trap for a total of 4 zones.
Yes, so many great spells to put on the Spore, depending on what you're facing.
Dispel vs Curses
Sleep vs Living Buddy or few big
Disarm vs annoying Equipment like Galvitar for instance
Force Hammer vs Warlord's Conjurations ?
and of course Pillar of Light vs (unavoidable ) ranged attacks
not to mention Force Push and Teleport.
All range 0-2 spells.
I prefer Wall of Earth to Wall of Bones for simple reason. It's immune to lightning and flame. I once imprisoned Adramelech (went himself into corner and I removed his flying first) in Wall of Earth and enemy couldn't do anything about it (Adramelech Warlock whose demons had either Bloodthirsty or flame attacks only).
I like the Lightning and Flame immunity as well of course but I was less enthusiastic about the 8 life and Hydro+2 traits.
For this book I need a wall without a weakness, cheap manawise and sbp-wise and with as much as possible life as its primary function would be to block out a Wizard's Tower for at least two rounds.
I think the wall of bones delivers on all of these aspects. With wall of earth I fear it might be taken out within 1 round a bit too frequently.
This is essentially the spellbook that a friend of mine played against me last night. I was playing a warlord and had multiple creatures out. I could never arrange to have guards in the right zones. I was wrecked pretty easily as all of my important equipment was dissolved. It would have been nice to have had a purge magic but at triple cost... well, I'm considering adding one now anyway.
Hey Dave,
Sorry to hear about your loss but I guess you'll understand I was quite happy to hear the result
Thanks for mentioning it here.
