If you remade Mage Wars, what might you change?

[echephron]

Lets say you the player were making version 2.0 of mage wars. you can remake it from the ground up and aren't bound by old cards or rules. What might you change?

To start us off. I don't like how a player can chain a bunch of actions together. So:

1) Non-Creatures with attacks(wizards tower) use action markers.

2) Player with initiative can have last creature action of round(superseding the rule of having to take an action when opponent has same number of actions left; rather than having to have the most creatures to get the last action.)

[Sailor Vulcan]

Personally, I would have wanted to make the game shorter. Something between Academy and Arena, like a customizable apprentice mode, would have been great. Of course, this sort of Mage Wars would probably have very different gameplay from both Academy and Arena. Would also need its own Mage abilities and spells.

Another thing that bugs me is that despite the really high number of possible decks you can build in a particular metagame, new expansions will be introduced before you have the chance to explore them all. This wouldn't be a problem except that people don't seem to really play block formats much, at least not on OCTGN or at tournaments. If I made Mage Wars, I would find other ways to keep the gameplay fresh and exciting with the cards that already exist besides just introducing new cards to the card pool. For instance, when an expansion gets released, I would set up block-format events for it. Like, what if Druid vs Necromancer had come out before Forcemaster vs Warlord? What would the metagame have looked like? This way you could actually find that out. I would also be focusing more on the setting and story of Mage Wars. Nowadays if there is no expansion for a few months, interest at least on OCTGN dies off until the next release. Since the organized play results are supposed to have an impact on the story, producing and publishing the story material that results from organized play would provide more incentive for people to play more often because they want to find out what happens next.

I would also get a bunch of people to figure out what if anything is going wrong with the wizard by doing the tests that Wtcannonjr and I proposed in another thread.

Also, I would have designed the priestess to have a more combat ready stance instead of looking like she's performing a bit of dirty dancing. And I would create blank Mage cards so that artists could buy and sell custom Mage art to put on them. I mean, in miniatures games you can paint your minis, and since the mages are all different people (I.e., no two warlocks in the story look exactly the same unless they're twins), there's no reason not to be able to have custom Mage art.


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[Iudicium86]

I would make a neutral/grey sort of school. This would contain the must-have utility and toolbox spells any mage needs (what we currently consider the position of Dispel, teleport, nullify, etc), as well as what are basically the novice cards currently. This Neutral pool never costs more than face value for any mage drawing from it as it is a universal pool.

Other customization card games have this sort of equally shared pool for any deck build, so I was a bit puzzled when I first got into Mage Wars why it didn't, especially when it seems there might've been the idea there with the universally 1 cost novice cards in the main schools anyways.

[echephron]

@Sailor Vulcan
but -how- would you do these things, like make the game shorter? would it have less zones, lower life, damage over time, reduced healing, ect? Maybe you are saying tear it all down and try again, which would take time to figure out.

And meant more of rules/cards change than a change in promotional method. If I understand block format(which I dont since I had to google it), block format has nothing to do with the rules of the game.

[Sailor Vulcan]

@Sailor Vulcan
but -how- would you do these things, like make the game shorter? would it have less zones, lower life, damage over time, reduced healing, ect? Maybe you are saying tear it all down and try again, which would take time to figure out.

And meant more of rules/cards change than a change in promotional method. If I understand block format(which I dont since I had to google it), block format has nothing to do with the rules of the game.

Oh. Sorry I misread the question. Thought it said if I made mage wars, not if I *remade* it.

Basically the idea is customizable apprentice mode, with its own spells and its own mage abilities. You do know what apprentice mode is right? I didn't realize you meant specifically rules changes. I thought you meant ANY changes that I would make if I were the one who was making mage wars.

[Kaarin]

Damage dice would be 1-3 not 0-2. Stats would have to chance accordingly.
Piercing that's higher than target's armor deals critical damage equal to the difference between armor and piercing values.
Both changes come from the fact that in current version buffed [mwcard=MW1C06]Brogan Bloodstone[/mwcard] can deal 0 damage to incapacitated [mwcard=FWC05]Goblin Grunt[/mwcard] with his attack.

[echephron]

Yeah I know apprentice mode. An expanded apprentice mode. Got it. Like how miniature games have different Pointcaps. the smaller caps make for simpler shorter games.

Your apprentice would have its own spells not valid in academy or arena? That seems unusual. Or academy which can be used in apprentice|arena and apprentice can be used in arena. How would you decide which spells go where?

[echephron]

Damage dice would be 1-3 not 0-2. Stats would have to chance accordingly.
Piercing that's higher than target's armor deals critical damage equal to the difference between armor and piercing values.
Both changes come from the fact that in current version buffed [mwcard=MW1C06]Brogan Bloodstone[/mwcard] can deal 0 damage to incapacitated [mwcard=FWC05]Goblin Grunt[/mwcard] with his attack.

I'd also thought I'd mess around with the values on the dice to eliminate the extremes.

[Brian VanAlstyne]

Sometimes Brogan shows up to battle after a night of partying and misses his attack. I don't think I'd change anything with regards to dice or the way damage is dealt. My biggest change might be to make it even more thematic. I just had a match in the ADMW tournament where for the 3rd time in 4 matches against 3 different styles of mages, I had to deal with the same 3 exact spells beating me (Magebane, Ghoul Rot, & Poisoned Blood). If I had faced 2 warlocks and a necro, that's somewhat acceptable but to me a Priest, Beastmaster, and Druid shouldn't be running dark books.

The meta has them running it because it clearly works but it just feels wrong to me so I'd make it so each mage has their own actual strategy instead of everyone following a pack and all basically running the same books with minor tweaks. More mage specific stuff or even higher costs to run out of school. And I've mentioned my Wizard issues in another threat but that would be nerfed entirely.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Yeah I know apprentice mode. An expanded apprentice mode. Got it. Like how miniature games have different Pointcaps. the smaller caps make for simpler shorter games.

Your apprentice would have its own spells not valid in academy or arena? That seems unusual. Or academy which can be used in apprentice|arena and apprentice can be used in arena. How would you decide which spells go where?

The idea is that it would be between Academy and Arena. So Academy cards would be playable in the expanded apprentice mode as well as Arena. The expanded apprentice mode cards would be playable in the expanded apprentice mode and arena, but not Academy. Etc

[Kaarin]

Sometimes Brogan shows up to battle after a night of partying and misses his attack. I don't think I'd change anything with regards to dice or the way damage is dealt.

I would be okay with that if there was neither daze or defense roll to completely avoid an attack.

Damage dice would be 1-3 not 0-2. Stats would have to chance accordingly.
Piercing that's higher than target's armor deals critical damage equal to the difference between armor and piercing values.
Both changes come from the fact that in current version buffed [mwcard=MW1C06]Brogan Bloodstone[/mwcard] can deal 0 damage to incapacitated [mwcard=FWC05]Goblin Grunt[/mwcard] with his attack.

I'd also thought I'd mess around with the values on the dice to eliminate the extremes.

Another result of my change is that currently it takes anything between 15 to infinity of dice to defeat naked mage that's not healing himself. With dice without 0 damage there would be a maximum amount of dice needed to defeat enemy mage. This would also reduce the need for DOT curses for all mages.

[Iudicium86]

Well with the die I would just change one of the blanks to a normal 1, leaving just one blank side each die.

I guess 0,1,1,2,Crit1,Crit2

[exid]

i would make fewer conditions.
for example: burn, bleed, rot, etc. would be an "agravated damage" that gives damages every turn.
for example: stun, daze, stuck, etc. would be an "uncapacitate" that make you loose your actions.

i think having all these conditions make the game more complexe but not more interesting.

[Drefan]

These are my thoughts.

* I would probably make sure all Mages had an equal cost for mobility spells such as teleport, force push etc.

* Make sure all Mages have triple cost schools.

* Not being able to use duplicate armor equipment cards, so no one stacks Dragon scale hauberk cheap, they've to go out of their school to get another chest armor.

* Add +3 mana cost reveal on Mage Bane

* Add a decision timer: 5min in the planning phase, 2min/creature action. I hope this would speed up the game + add some extra pressure so that players will make more mistakes.

Overall I think Mage Wars is a fantastic game, I just feel that some mages are a lot stronger than the rest.

[Sailor Vulcan]

These are my thoughts.

* I would probably make sure all Mages had an equal cost for mobility spells such as teleport, force push etc.

* Make sure all Mages have triple cost schools.

* Not being able to use duplicate armor equipment cards, so no one stacks Dragon scale hauberk cheap, they've to go out of their school to get another chest armor.

* Add +3 mana cost reveal on Mage Bane

* Add a decision timer: 5min in the planning phase, 2min/creature action. I hope this would speed up the game + add some extra pressure so that players will make more mistakes.

Overall I think Mage Wars is a fantastic game, I just feel that some mages are a lot stronger than the rest.

That would be bad for the Forcemaster.

Forcemaster pays triple cost for non mind creatures not for a particular school. Would you change that then?

Giving epic to all armor equipment cards? What is the purpose of that? It sounds like an attempt to nerf armor stacking because the wizard uses armor stacking and he's OP. But that doesn't mean that armor stacking itself has anything to do with why the wizard is OP. I find it hard to believe that leather gloves would need the epic trait, for instance. Also, what about rhino hide and barkskin?

+3 mana to magebane's reveal cost? You think it should cost as much as or more than ghoul rot?

Please be honest, do you really believe that these "fixes" would actually improve the game in the long run? Please please don't take this the wrong way, but for a high level competitive player to suggest that those things would make Mage Wars better seriously is very very surprising to me. The only explanations for this that make even a bit of sense to me are either

1. I must still be an amateur at the game who has no idea what he's talking about. The kinds of things that I think would obviously cripple the game beyond repair might actually improve it instead.

2. You want the quickest and most efficient ways to balance the mages, even if it means errataing the hell out of a gajillion different cards and making the mages less specialized to the point where you almost might as well not have different mages at all. Not certain how nerfing armor equipments by giving them all the epic trait fits into that though.

3. None of us have any idea what we're talking about when it comes to the design of Mage Wars because we're all just relying on a combination of personal experience/intuition and abstract theory rather than systematically playtesting with our "fixes", recording the results and comparing it to how the regular game is. Perhaps personal experience/intuition and abstract theory are good enough for being able to play the game really well, but not for explaining why certain things about the game are the way they are and what it would be like if those things were different.