If you remade Mage Wars, what might you change?

[wtcannonjr]

I might add an optional rule to spellbook design called Advanced Training.

Each mage would have a training chart that listed schools (i.e. Holy, Dark, Air,  ...) by row and spell type (i.e.  Attack, Equipment, Incantation...) by column. Then the cell at the intersection of each school/spell type would contain the multiplier for spell point calculations. (x1, x2, x3, x4, ... X) Each cell could include multiple rows to account for level of training in a school like the Druid and Water school. An 'X' in the cell would mean that this mage could never learn that spell allowing the designer to tailor mages more specifically. This is similar to mage specific spells that we have in the current rules but would provide more options for expanding the spell pools for each school in future expansions. For example, Dark Enchantments could be much harder to learn for some mages and not available to others.

It would be for advanced players only and could even be issued as a Battlegrounds Expansion using the current card pool.

[exid]

* 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.

  that's the eternal question in all the games of all the univers! Some prefer quick games played under pressure, others love long games played with beer...

[echephron]

some posted ideas I like. All non-novice equipment effectively being epic sounds pretty cool. It would make them feel like powerful artefacts. counter balances would need to be done of course.

Something like a priestess being unable to use a dark school spell is something I've been thinking about. I'd like it to go well, but I'm not confident.

More theme reinforcement(like prohibited spells being inaccessible, costing more mana, or something like that. I don't know if the current extra sp cost does the job.) would be worth the decrease in customizability maybe. might actually increase the variety of books present.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I might add an optional rule to spellbook design called Advanced Training.

Each mage would have a training chart that listed schools (i.e. Holy, Dark, Air,  ...) by row and spell type (i.e.  Attack, Equipment, Incantation...) by column. Then the cell at the intersection of each school/spell type would contain the multiplier for spell point calculations. (x1, x2, x3, x4, ... X) Each cell could include multiple rows to account for level of training in a school like the Druid and Water school. An 'X' in the cell would mean that this mage could never learn that spell allowing the designer to tailor mages more specifically. This is similar to mage specific spells that we have in the current rules but would provide more options for expanding the spell pools for each school in future expansions. For example, Dark Enchantments could be much harder to learn for some mages and not available to others.

It would be for advanced players only and could even be issued as a Battlegrounds Expansion using the current card pool.

The Forcemaster already pays triple specifically for out of school creatures. Tbh I suspect that making the Mage training that specialized would require each Mage to have many different variants and each variant would have fewer options than the regular mages we already have.

[Wildhorn]

I would add a rule to reduce some of the randomness of the dices.

Something like:

You can convert 3 blank dice into a 1 hit and you can convert 3 hit into 1 crit.

[echephron]

man, nobody likes the dice.

[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.

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.

I wanted a faster-paced game where armor stacking in your spell book would be punished, and instead encourage you to use other cards to avoid this "armor meta-thinking". The epic trait would only be applied to chest pieces because of their armor + something bonus, another reason is to nerf the spell book efficiency of chest armor swapping to counter corrodes.

The reveal cost on Mage Bane is mainly to nerf the direct damage builds that I tend to see from Wizards and Necromancers who tend to casually cast one at the first chance and gain a huge momentum swing because of it.
They do this because when the spell is so cheap it gives you a huge benefit in the game. You either deny planned actions because they are scared of the damage starting to stack up, or get a value dispel from them.
Since most mages don't run a lot of dispels it's very beneficial to make them "waste" one on Mage Bane + even if they do you would've already "won" the trade just by making them take damage and react to you instead of you reacting to them.

However if you can afford to reveal Mage Bane it will also make it a lot harder to deal with since it would be 8 mana to dispel instead of 5, which might also make your opponent less likely to dispel it and giving you more "bang for mana" out of your mage bane that it would in other cases.

Regarding your concern about the Forcemaster.
I've seen a lot of builds with her; either you buddy up with the bear, play the invisible stalker or go at it alone.

However the force master I've seen with the most success in our group is the one that goes for channeling and thought spores.
The Thought Spores use utility spells and attack spells to help the mage control the board while she smashes things with her sword or by controlling the enemy with her abilities. This force master that uses creatures from her school has always been a huge pain to deal with regardless of which mage I've played, not counting the Wizard.

I do believe it's very hard to punish the mages who go for these "safe builds" with armor and direct damage. And by increasing the cost of these armors maybe the meta would change.

Also by trying to deal with the Wizard by increasing the other schools spell book point cost could be a way to make him less op. I do believe the Wizard Towers is an extremely strong card, but I don't think targeting that card alone would fix the Wizard. I think the issue is about the huge spell books they can create and how they almost always seem to have an answer to your game plan.

 

[Iudicium86]

man, nobody likes the dice.

I think it's the large prevalence of zeros. In an earlier post I would have made the die with only one blank side. But two (aka, 1/3rds) blank sides makes 5 blanks out of a 6 die roll more frequent than I'm comfortable with.

My die would be 0,1,1,2,crit1,crit2.

Could be fixed even now. They could release a new set of die as a stand-alone accessory, like the extra action markers packs, or spell book design packs. Or if they want it to be much more mandatory, in a major release they could include the new dice. Or if to cut costs, then they could just release in the upcoming packs a sticker sheet to stick onto the die's blank sides.

[Beldin]

-Employ a rules lawyer to pick apart wordings on each of the cards, down to the comma placement on text/effects.
-rejig costings on some of the cards. gate to hell costs 24 mana, in total, to cast and use?
-either every mage gets 10 channelling or those with more powerful abilities get channelling 9.
-wizard pays triple cost for every element that is not his.
-unmoveable means no pushes and no teleports.
-a variant format where creatures play a bigger role, as part of the main rules.
-make teleport epic and arcane only
-Label arena as a starter set only, release core tome 1+2 as upgrade sets, which with a few of these a full core set can be achieved. Make this very clear in the rulebook, as part of the spell building section. "This set is a starter set and contains the spells to make the four starter books listed on p. xx. To get a full set for maximum set coverage you can buy core tome expansion 1+2, which give you additional copies of spells to create a fully customisable set."

[Ravepig]

-rejig costings on some of the cards. gate to hell costs 24 mana, in total, to cast and use?
-wizard pays triple cost for every element that is not his.

Why 24 mana for Gate to Hell? I've not used this card yet, but from what I've seen others post about this card I get the impression it's not used often.

Wizard paying triple cost for every element other than his own is a brilliant idea in my opinion.

[exid]

man, nobody likes the dice.

this 0-1-2 system is allready a lot better than other systems!
I would make it more predictable by having only 1 or 2: with x dices you are sure to make x to 2x damages.

letting a 0 face opens the possibility of a big attack making 0 damage it's even more unluck than with two 0 faces!

[jhaelen]

1) Customizable Wizards:
Have a point-based system to add abilities to your basic mage: School Specialization, Base Mana, and a bunch of ability cards for the 'special' stuff.

2) Limited dice:
Have each spell do a guaranteed base damage and a fixed base effect. Instead of rolling many dice only ever roll  two dice to have some limited randomization.

3) Limited Spellbooks:
Basically, you can (or have to) put every spell only once into your spell book. Then add multiple ways to reuse spells that have already been cast. Extra-powerful spells would be exempt from reuse.

4) Limited game time:
Have one or several of the following:
- Limited number of game turns
- Limited number of creatures/enchantments that can be controlled at any one time
- Have different/additional victory conditions (e.g. not just 'kill the opponent mage)

[iNano78]

-rejig costings on some of the cards. gate to hell costs 24 mana, in total, to cast and use?
-wizard pays triple cost for every element that is not his.

Why 24 mana for Gate to Hell? I've not used this card yet, but from what I've seen others post about this card I get the impression it's not used often.

Wizard paying triple cost for every element other than his own is a brilliant idea in my opinion.

[mwcard=MW1J06]Gate to Hell[/mwcard] Is basically a totem (like [mwcard=MW1J03]Tooth & Nail[/mwcard] or [mwcard=MW1J01]Rajan's Fury[/mwcard], or half an [mwcard=MWSTX2FFJ04]Armory[/mwcard]) for 12 mana, then costs another 12 mana for what's about equivalent to a zone attack (that generally hits you and your creatures to, albeit most demons are either Flame Immune or Flame -X) and turns the Gate into a [mwcard=FWJ04]Garrison Post[/mwcard]... which is quite expensive given you may or may not need a Garrison Post by the time you've committed to spending all that mana. So... it's usually kind of like a totem + Firestorm that your opponent sees coming a mile away.

If it costed 8 to cast (totem) + 9 or 10 ([mwcard=MW1A05]Firestorm[/mwcard] with -1 die/Garrison Post), then it *might* be worth it in some sort of a Demon Swarm book... but then you have to figure out how you plan to summon all your demons, and Pentagram isn't exactly the best spawn point in the game.

[baronzaltor]

-rejig costings on some of the cards. gate to hell costs 24 mana, in total, to cast and use?
-wizard pays triple cost for every element that is not his.

Why 24 mana for Gate to Hell? I've not used this card yet, but from what I've seen others post about this card I get the impression it's not used often.

Wizard paying triple cost for every element other than his own is a brilliant idea in my opinion.

[mwcard=MW1J06]Gate to Hell[/mwcard] Is basically a totem (like [mwcard=MW1J03]Tooth & Nail[/mwcard] or [mwcard=MW1J01]Rajan's Fury[/mwcard], or half an [mwcard=MWSTX2FFJ04]Armory[/mwcard]) for 12 mana, then costs another 12 mana for what's about equivalent to a zone attack (that generally hits you and your creatures to, albeit most demons are either Flame Immune or Flame -X) and turns the Gate into a [mwcard=FWJ04]Garrison Post[/mwcard]... which is quite expensive given you may or may not need a Garrison Post by the time you've committed to spending all that mana. So... it's usually kind of like a totem + Firestorm that your opponent sees coming a mile away.

If it costed 8 to cast (totem) + 9 or 10 ([mwcard=MW1A05]Firestorm[/mwcard] with -1 die/Garrison Post), then it *might* be worth it in some sort of a Demon Swarm book... but then you have to figure out how you plan to summon all your demons, and Pentagram isn't exactly the best spawn point in the game.

Its also a level 6 spell, so its very spellpoint inefficient, and its the only conjuration in the game that is a 0-0 range full action to cast making it very action inefficient.

In all honestly, even in a Demon focused book, I feel like you get more mileage spending those spellpoints on 3x Bear Strengths.. its the same investment of spellpoints and 15 mana total, and generates +6 melee more efficiently and on your own terms (Youd need 6 demons on the table for Gate to produce the same +6 melee)

[wtcannonjr]

The Gate to Hell was changed in the latest printing. The attack now effects every zone in the arena. Still a steep cost but it is the only arena wide attack that exists at the moment. It works best in a Demon focused spellbook.