Modes of play (Academy, Domination, Arena)

[Crow]

So, I'm curious, do most posters here play all three modes ... or do you tend to focus on one or two?

It's no secret that I spend a lot of time on Domination, but I'm wondering about the other regulars.  I definitely see posts for Academy, so I know there is some variety out there.

How often do you play each?

[jhaelen]

I currently not playing at all - still waiting for the German version of Battlegrounds. I have zero interest in Academy and plan to play exclusively Domination mode in the future (or no Mage Wars at all).

[Halewijn]

both online and in real life I almost always play Arena/academy. I've played domination 5-10 times online but never in real life. To me, domination seems the better "multi-player" game, whilst Arena is the best for 2 persons.

[wtcannonjr]

I play Domination since it offers Arena plus other strategies to play. We don't use Academy cards in regular play.

I primarily teach Arena Apprentice mode to new players, but have taught Academy to those who want to learn it.

Currently working on a multiplayer Apprentice format using Domination to teach groups of players. I think having a basic 3 or 4 player version to play with a group will help expand the community.

[Halewijn]

Especially 2v2 domination games are pretty awesome. Maybe I'll get to it in the future more. But for 1v1 I just feel the simple "beating each other up" is more fun.

[wtcannonjr]

Especially 2v2 domination games are pretty awesome. Maybe I'll get to it in the future more. But for 1v1 I just feel the simple "beating each other up" is more fun.

Agreed but some of our Domination games go down this path still. I.e. one player will focus on a mage kill and the other player must respond. That is what makes it more fun for us. You never know going in to a match which victory condition will emerge as the Dominate one.

[Kelanen]

Strictly Arena.

Domination might see a game a year, and I have a dozen card games more fun to play than Academy - it's strictly an Arena expansion set with a poorer cardpool. Arena I play 10-20 games a month.

[Mystery]

Arena/domination

Academy has a too small cardpool for me, and without a planning phase the mindgames are just mutch less, and lower dice rolls have a higher variation relative to the mean and therefore is more luck depended.

[bigfatchef]

We only play Arena for 2 to 4 players with add-on cards from academy and domination and promos if someone gets them (looking forward to the spell tome for those).

Our whole group has no intention to even try academy. Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about.
Domination is an interesting variation, but with all possible matches and strategies we have enough content to play only arena for a while without getting bored.

I must say I would like to see new mages and cards come out faster, but on the other hand I am quite happy to have enough time to really get to know all existing cards first. One good extension a year would be a solid timetable in my eyes. Not talking about academy (aka 5-7 cards are good for arena in this box) here.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Our whole group has no intention to even try academy. Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about.

I wish everyone would stop making this assumption without actually trying it themselves, because it is not true. I have played both Academy and Arena, and I like Academy slightly more.

I still want to figure out whether there really is an imbalance with initiative or if people are just playing it wrong, like Laddinfance says. While it seems like going first gives an unfair advantage, there have been a lot of things I've noticed that seemed to be real problems with Academy at first that turned out to be non-issues once I had a better grasp of the game.

Whether such an imbalance with initiative is real or just the result of playing wrong, adding a quickcast phase makes it go away, regardless.

Academy is a great game and I wish people would stop saying bad things about it without having tried it much themselves.

But if experienced Arena players keep talking about how terrible Academy supposedly is, it might make it harder to get more people to play it.

The player base for Academy is ridiculously small. There seems to be less than 5 people on OCTGN who play Academy, including me. And I can't help but think that maybe it's because a bunch of experienced Arena players played Academy once or twice, didn't like it because they didn't know what they were doing, and then assumed the problem was with the game rather than their lack of experience with Academy. And then they started talking about how terrible Academy is, and everyone believed them.

And the way Arcane Wonders marketed Academy doesn't help either. The commercial basically describes Arena as an "upgrade" from Academy, which isn't exactly true, but the takeaway everyone got from that was that Academy is Arena-lite. But Academy is NOT Arena-lite, and if you had enough experience with Academy you would realize that.

[iNano78]

Our whole group has no intention to even try academy. Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about.

I wish everyone would stop making this assumption without actually trying it themselves, because it is not true. I have played both Academy and Arena, and I like Academy slightly more.

I still want to figure out whether there really is an imbalance with initiative or if people are just playing it wrong, like Laddinfance says. While it seems like going first gives an unfair advantage, there have been a lot of things I've noticed that seemed to be real problems with Academy at first that turned out to be non-issues once I had a better grasp of the game.

Whether such an imbalance with initiative is real or just the result of playing wrong, adding a quickcast phase makes it go away, regardless.

Academy is a great game and I wish people would stop saying bad things about it without having tried it much themselves.

But if experienced Arena players keep talking about how terrible Academy supposedly is, it might make it harder to get more people to play it.

The player base for Academy is ridiculously small. There seems to be less than 5 people on OCTGN who play Academy, including me. And I can't help but think that maybe it's because a bunch of experienced Arena players played Academy once or twice, didn't like it because they didn't know what they were doing, and then assumed the problem was with the game rather than their lack of experience with Academy. And then they started talking about how terrible Academy is, and everyone believed them.

And the way Arcane Wonders marketed Academy doesn't help either. The commercial basically describes Arena as an "upgrade" from Academy, which isn't exactly true, but the takeaway everyone got from that was that Academy is Arena-lite. But Academy is NOT Arena-lite, and if you had enough experience with Academy you would realize that.

Experience is subjective.

I've played Academy.  It's... OK.  I prefer Arena.  My favourite Mage Wars format is Domination (especially 3-4 player).  And just because I like Domination doesn't mean everyone has to like Domination.  I can understand why some prefer Arena or even Academy over Domination.

But in my opinion, Academy has more direct competition in other short card games like MtG, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, or even Epic: The Card Game.  And of those, frankly I'd rather play Ashes than Mage Wars Academy.  But I'd rather play Mage Wars Arena than Ashes - assuming I have the time to play Arena and have an experienced Mage Wars opponent - or have the opportunity to teach a player who might become an experienced opponent. :)

P.S.  Not everybody plays on OCTGN.  A lot of people play Academy.  Tom Vasel has probably done a lot for Academy (and a lot of damage to the would-be Arena community) by claiming that Academy >> Arena in his opinion, and replacing the latter with the former on his "top 100 games of all time" list.  There are a lot of "casual" board gamers  (or perhaps more accurately, "hard-core board gamers who play hundreds of different games per year rather than the same game hundreds of times") who will pick up and play Mage Wars a couple times per year, and they're more likely to enjoy the shorter, more streamlined play of Academy to the more rules-intensive (and keyword/codex/reference-heavy) Arena.  That doesn't make them "right" or "wrong" - just different.  And they're almost certainly not going to play on OCTGN.

[exid]

I play arena i like the movement (land strategie), il like the simple goal (kill).

I played 2vs2 arena once, it was bad balanced: when a team looses a mage it looses to much. I'm looking forward to play 2vs2 domination... but it's hard for me to bring 4 players together (and I have a lot of other games for 4-5-6-7 players!).

I don't like the special tiles of domination, i prefer to build the arena casting conjurations.

Saillor Vulcan is very positive about academy... but my co-player doesn't want to test it, it looks to simple.

[bigfatchef]

Our whole group has no intention to even try academy. Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about.

I wish everyone would stop making this assumption without actually trying it themselves, because it is not true. I have played both Academy and Arena, and I like Academy slightly more.

I still want to figure out whether there really is an imbalance with initiative or if people are just playing it wrong, like Laddinfance says. While it seems like going first gives an unfair advantage, there have been a lot of things I've noticed that seemed to be real problems with Academy at first that turned out to be non-issues once I had a better grasp of the game.

Whether such an imbalance with initiative is real or just the result of playing wrong, adding a quickcast phase makes it go away, regardless.

Academy is a great game and I wish people would stop saying bad things about it without having tried it much themselves.

But if experienced Arena players keep talking about how terrible Academy supposedly is, it might make it harder to get more people to play it.

The player base for Academy is ridiculously small. There seems to be less than 5 people on OCTGN who play Academy, including me. And I can't help but think that maybe it's because a bunch of experienced Arena players played Academy once or twice, didn't like it because they didn't know what they were doing, and then assumed the problem was with the game rather than their lack of experience with Academy. And then they started talking about how terrible Academy is, and everyone believed them.

And the way Arcane Wonders marketed Academy doesn't help either. The commercial basically describes Arena as an "upgrade" from Academy, which isn't exactly true, but the takeaway everyone got from that was that Academy is Arena-lite. But Academy is NOT Arena-lite, and if you had enough experience with Academy you would realize that.

I did not speak bad about academy. As I said our whole group didn't try it. And I don't tell people not to try.

In my eyes I simply have no need to learn a new game (academy) while still learning a lot in Arena and also still searching for Players for that. I must admit I don't play nearly any other games also. You could call me and this group non-standart-nerd-gamer who simply and only enjoy Arenanerdism.
I think a Tom Vasel Video brought me here.

The question of this thread is what we are playing, and that is Arena.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Our whole group has no intention to even try academy. Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about.

I wish everyone would stop making this assumption without actually trying it themselves, because it is not true. I have played both Academy and Arena, and I like Academy slightly more.

I still want to figure out whether there really is an imbalance with initiative or if people are just playing it wrong, like Laddinfance says. While it seems like going first gives an unfair advantage, there have been a lot of things I've noticed that seemed to be real problems with Academy at first that turned out to be non-issues once I had a better grasp of the game.

Whether such an imbalance with initiative is real or just the result of playing wrong, adding a quickcast phase makes it go away, regardless.

Academy is a great game and I wish people would stop saying bad things about it without having tried it much themselves.

But if experienced Arena players keep talking about how terrible Academy supposedly is, it might make it harder to get more people to play it.

The player base for Academy is ridiculously small. There seems to be less than 5 people on OCTGN who play Academy, including me. And I can't help but think that maybe it's because a bunch of experienced Arena players played Academy once or twice, didn't like it because they didn't know what they were doing, and then assumed the problem was with the game rather than their lack of experience with Academy. And then they started talking about how terrible Academy is, and everyone believed them.

And the way Arcane Wonders marketed Academy doesn't help either. The commercial basically describes Arena as an "upgrade" from Academy, which isn't exactly true, but the takeaway everyone got from that was that Academy is Arena-lite. But Academy is NOT Arena-lite, and if you had enough experience with Academy you would realize that.

I did not speak bad about academy.

"Without strategic movement it completely loses what mage wars is all about."

Huh?

[Mystery]

Mage wars has still the huge bonus either way of no topdecking!!!

But the strategic movement is missing in academy and makes it far less complex in the thinking.
The lower amount of dice increase the luck factor with the extreme values (no/max dmg) more likely and there for a lucky creature kill ... therefore of course as an overall game more luck reduces the portion and impact strategy can have.
and the huge thing of anticipation and reading the oponent is far less important without a planning phase. Your oponent just cast a mage wand with the spell that counters you (dissolve, dispel for example), but he has ini last round. Will he prepare a nullify and then use the wand or will he just use the wand knowing you will dissolve with a nullify fisher anyway. So will you now prepare that nullify fisher or not. In academy you see it can already react directly to it in some way.

Academy is a nice game in its own, but its much less complex and mainstreamed. Easier, less thinking, less strategic and tactical skill is required compared to Arena. Not saying it needs nothing.
For those who know it is kind of Descent first vs second edition. Epic totally deep long epic dungeon crawl where every move is dangerous vs a much lighter version. and still depending whom you ask both are loved