If you remade Mage Wars, what might you change?

[Drefan]

All equipment being Epic would be terrible for a lot of mages.  Want to beat a Priest? [mwcard=MW1I07]Dissolve[/mwcard] his ONLY [mwcard=MW1Q29]Staff of Asyra[/mwcard].  How about a Johktari Beastmaster?  Crumble her ONLY Kajarah or [mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ02]Hunting Bow[/mwcard].  Sure, it can be annoying to be a Warlock and come up against somebody running 3x [mwcard=MW1Q06]Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard] out-of-school... but then you just [mwcard=MW1I11]Explode[/mwcard] them and move on.  I could see a compromise, that maybe all chest armours should have been level 2... in which case a Beastmaster or Druid is paying 6 sbp for Dragonscale and most other mages are paying 4 (but Beastmasters/Druids will get cheap access to Chitin Armor if/when it ever comes out in a set, so it will balance out).  Unfortunately that means the Wizard gets a little better, but that's hard to avoid when manipulating spell point costs.

I didn't say all equipment would be epic, just the chest pieces.
And this is only to punish people who choose to stack chest pieces, and swap them to deal with corrodes. This would still be possible, but the armor pieces would cost more spellbook points. 

I must be missing something because I don't find Mage Bane or Ghoul Rot (or Plagued) to be too strong.  They're good, and they solve the problem of dealing with heavily armored opponents (which solves the armor-swap issue, by the way) but it only takes a Dispel or Disperse to get rid of them.  Oh, except against the Necromancer, since he's immune to them... so you have to deal with the armor on a Necromancer since you can't just Ghoul Rot him.

It's just me personally thinking Mage bane is stronger than the five mana cost it has.

[echephron]

RE: drefan

i said "All non-novice equipment effectively being epic sounds pretty cool" after you, so thats what he was addressing.

[sIKE]

All equipment being Epic would be terrible for a lot of mages.  Want to beat a Priest? [mwcard=MW1I07]Dissolve[/mwcard] his ONLY [mwcard=MW1Q29]Staff of Asyra[/mwcard].  How about a Johktari Beastmaster?  Crumble her ONLY Kajarah or [mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ02]Hunting Bow[/mwcard].  Sure, it can be annoying to be a Warlock and come up against somebody running 3x [mwcard=MW1Q06]Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard] out-of-school... but then you just [mwcard=MW1I11]Explode[/mwcard] them and move on.  I could see a compromise, that maybe all chest armours should have been level 2... in which case a Beastmaster or Druid is paying 6 sbp for Dragonscale and most other mages are paying 4 (but Beastmasters/Druids will get cheap access to Chitin Armor if/when it ever comes out in a set, so it will balance out).  Unfortunately that means the Wizard gets a little better, but that's hard to avoid when manipulating spell point costs.

I didn't say all equipment would be epic, just the chest pieces.
And this is only to punish people who choose to stack chest pieces, and swap them to deal with corrodes. This would still be possible, but the armor pieces would cost more spellbook points. 

I must be missing something because I don't find Mage Bane or Ghoul Rot (or Plagued) to be too strong.  They're good, and they solve the problem of dealing with heavily armored opponents (which solves the armor-swap issue, by the way) but it only takes a Dispel or Disperse to get rid of them.  Oh, except against the Necromancer, since he's immune to them... so you have to deal with the armor on a Necromancer since you can't just Ghoul Rot him.

It's just me personally thinking Mage bane is stronger than the five mana cost it has.

Honestly not being snide here, but that feels very unthematic to me. Might as well be playing another plain and boring CCG. Being Poisoned results in Poison based damage, Bleeding means your Bleeding out (damage). Just simplifying the game to genericisms is very dull to me, why do this?

[iNano78]

After failing to find a picture of it online, I've put a note on my to-do list to post a side-by-side image of the old and new Gate to Hell tonight.

So...

• Lost "Hydro +3" trait (e.g. isn't so susceptible to water damage)
• Hits everything in the arena (but still needs LoS to each creature it attacks)
• Also works as a Garrison Post for demons your Pentagram summons... which will presumably be nice when we get a bunch of cheap demons in the Academy Warlock expansion

[Drefan]

All equipment being Epic would be terrible for a lot of mages.  Want to beat a Priest? [mwcard=MW1I07]Dissolve[/mwcard] his ONLY [mwcard=MW1Q29]Staff of Asyra[/mwcard].  How about a Johktari Beastmaster?  Crumble her ONLY Kajarah or [mwcard=MWSTX1CKQ02]Hunting Bow[/mwcard].  Sure, it can be annoying to be a Warlock and come up against somebody running 3x [mwcard=MW1Q06]Dragonscale Hauberk[/mwcard] out-of-school... but then you just [mwcard=MW1I11]Explode[/mwcard] them and move on.  I could see a compromise, that maybe all chest armours should have been level 2... in which case a Beastmaster or Druid is paying 6 sbp for Dragonscale and most other mages are paying 4 (but Beastmasters/Druids will get cheap access to Chitin Armor if/when it ever comes out in a set, so it will balance out).  Unfortunately that means the Wizard gets a little better, but that's hard to avoid when manipulating spell point costs.

I didn't mean to say that all equipment would be epic, just the chest pieces that give +2 armor and X.
And this is only to punish people who choose to stack chest pieces and swap them to deal with corrodes. This would still be possible, but the armor pieces would cost more spellbook points. 

I must be missing something because I don't find Mage Bane or Ghoul Rot (or Plagued) to be too strong.  They're good, and they solve the problem of dealing with heavily armored opponents (which solves the armor-swap issue, by the way) but it only takes a Dispel or Disperse to get rid of them.  Oh, except against the Necromancer, since he's immune to them... so you have to deal with the armor on a Necromancer since you can't just Ghoul Rot him.

It's just me personally thinking Mage bane is stronger than the five mana cost it has.

Honestly not being snide here, but that feels very unthematic to me. Might as well be playing another plain and boring CCG. Being Poisoned results in Poison based damage, Bleeding means your Bleeding out (damage). Just simplifying the game to genericisms is very dull to me, why do this?

I can get that people disagree with mage bane being more expensive to cast. For me mage bane does two things; pressure by applying damage and the mind game aspect where you might get them to rethink their moves simply because the damage is starting to stack up. However, I don't see how it would make the game more plain and boring if you added +1 - 3 mana cost to that card, unless you're referring to the armor change?

And I guess here is where we disagree. I personally don't think stacking up on armor is very "creative" and that it hinders the progress you could see in tournament books.

Watching the Thunderdome tournament, pretty much everyone used the Wizard with a heavy armor spell book. I personally did not enjoy watching those game since they took hours even thought the participants would play very well.

When my group plays locally we've the most fun when we're not running these armor heavy books and still our matches can be very long.

[wtcannonjr]

After failing to find a picture of it online, I've put a note on my to-do list to post a side-by-side image of the old and new Gate to Hell tonight.

So...

• Lost "Hydro +3" trait (e.g. isn't so susceptible to water damage)
• Hits everything in the arena (but still needs LoS to each creature it attacks)
• Also works as a Garrison Post for demons your Pentagram summons... which will presumably be nice when we get a bunch of cheap demons in the Academy Warlock expansion

Is the requirement for LOS still present?

I recall this was discussed previously when the "2 zone" restriction was in the card text which implies a range to target calculation. However, it no longer references zones or a range and simply states EVERY creature in the arena receives an attack. The card would have more power if it did not have the LoS requirement.

Thoughts / ruling ?

[DaveW]

So...

• Lost "Hydro +3" trait (e.g. isn't so susceptible to water damage)
• Hits everything in the arena (but still needs LoS to each creature it attacks)
• Also works as a Garrison Post for demons your Pentagram summons... which will presumably be nice when we get a bunch of cheap demons in the Academy Warlock expansion

Is the requirement for LOS still present?

I recall this was discussed previously when the "2 zone" restriction was in the card text which implies a range to target calculation. However, it no longer references zones or a range and simply states EVERY creature in the arena receives an attack. The card would have more power if it did not have the LoS requirement.

Thoughts / ruling ?

Yes, I brought it up after the change. The ruling was something along the lines of 1) it's an attack, and 2) attacks always require LOS.

Kharhaz responded with the reasoning in this post.

I felt that it was odd that something like a Fog Bank could prevent the attack... but there is no such thing as a Line of Effect in this game... which is a good thing

[fas723]

I haven’t read the whole thread so I might repeat somethings already said, but here are my thoughts on the topic:

First I would have tried to make the game shorter. It is not only for new players the duration of one play is very intimidating, personally I would like the game to be half as long so that I could try out more Mages, strategies and play styles in the same time. As it is now I think mid game is not necessary. I’m not saying I have the solution for this but here are some ideas:
-   More attack dies and less armor and health. As it is now viable tactics are to muster tons of armor and just stall the game.
-   More efficient mana generators and channeling effects. The game always turn slow after turn 3.
-   Not as many counter options. In the last expansions I have felt that many enchantments and incantations are only there to counter a particular card, and later a second card appears that counter that card and so on.
[Edit] I'm not a big fan of Acadamy, and I don't want Arena to go towards that. If one game could be max 1h it would be great!


Second, I would make more vanilla creatures, or with just some basic traits like “lightning +2” etc. Yes it is cool with all abilities and effects but it also makes the game unnecessary complex. I would rather make more simple creatures and shift over all crazy effects to global conjurations and instant incantations. In that way you can control the difficult level by limiting the amount of conjurations or say “this is a level 2 conjuration game”. Same goes with all the effects and tokens. Right now it is too much, and many have basically the same effect like Bleed and Rot.

Third, I would make creatures degrade with damage. As it is now the last damage is so vital for a successful game. If you roll that last damage you don’t have to spend that extra action and mana for a later overkill (at a creature who might be able to act in between). My thinking is something like this: If a creature have X damage left its max amount of attack dice could only be X no matter what. So a Timber wolf with Bear Strength that only has one health left only roll one attack die. This is also thematic since a half dead creature could not possibly fight as well as a fresh one.

Just my 0,02 $.

[echephron]

Thanks for the ideas fas723. You didn't miss much in the thread . Unless you really like gate to hell.

[Ganpot]

I disagree with all the people saying that conditions should be (or should have been) simplified to reduce complexity.  While some conditions are similar, they aren't exactly the same, and eliminating the differences between them would seriously damage the theme of the game.  That strong sense of theme is a really important factor that contributes to my personal enjoyment of the game. 

As for what I would change, if given the chance?  Hmmm...... 

1. Replace effect roll die with something more consistent.  I'm not a huge fan of the variation in regular attack die either, but at least that doesn't usually lead to all-or-nothing situations that might single-handedly determine the game.  I strongly believe that most players avoid using a lot of utility-based attack spells solely because of this inconsistency.  People don't want to risk an entire game around whether [mwcard=MWSTX1CKA01]Surging Wave[/mwcard] will actually push a buffed [mwcard=MW1C06]Brogan Bloodstone[/mwcard] away from your mage.  So instead a lot of people just spam the highest damage attack cards (force hammer and hurl boulder) and ignore the effects.  There are other ways to balance out powerful effects like stun: you can either have extra target restrictions on the card itself or just make it cost more mana. 

2. Create a movement stat for creatures.  This would have gotten rid of the necessity for a couple of keywords (fast and slow) and also allowed for more creature variety as well as more effective kiting strategies.  Imagine a creature which had 4 movement (balanced out by low health, perhaps), allowing it to run around and pick off weakened creatures. 

3. A split online / tabletop focus.  Bear with me, this one's a bit weird.  I love playing Mage Wars in person, but a lot of the people who I would regularly play with either don't live near me all of the time or are too busy to drive to my house (or vice versa) just to play a board game.  So I would have added a way to keep track of exactly what cards players possessed, and let them use those cards to play online matches of the game (either with their friends or in ranked tournaments).  For example, Arcane Wonders could have included a serial code in each box of the game that would unlock the cards in that set on a player's online account.  Then players have the best of both worlds: they can play in person or online, whichever they prefer.  Creating such an online/offline system would also have had advantages for the game itself: the devs could set up playtesting events online to help balance cards before they officially come out (and are annoying to errata).  Yes, technically players can use the fan-supported OCTGN system, but that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. 

4. Double-sided Domination tiles that come standard with Arena.  In hindsight, the variable terrain introduced with Domination makes the game a lot more fun (as a semi-casual player).  Packing that into the base game instead of the traditional board could only have helped its initial popularity and portability.  What I still don't understand is why the new tiles aren't double-sided.  When everything else about the game from a component standpoint feels so polished, the waste inherent in only using 1 sided tiles is really bizarre.  Two-sided tiles would also have allowed the devs to make every tile have one unique effect side as well as a regular side.  That way players could choose to have an all normal board, complete chaos, or anything in between.  Sadly, I don't expect this to get rectified any time soon, since new Battlegrounds releases will probably need to be compatible with Domination tiles. 

5. Regular Release Schedule.  Yeah, I'm being a bit cheeky, but I also know that the long, LONG wait for Paladin vs Siren has seriously hampered my enjoyment of the game.  The smaller releases just haven't been the same, and the lack of new mages makes the game more boring.  There are still SOOO many possible mages that the game hasn't covered (*cough* frost mage *cough*), which makes it even more frustrating that we'll have been waiting 3 YEARS for new mages by the time PvS is roughly estimated to finally come out (DvN released Nov. 2013).  That should never have been allowed to happen.  At some point you just need to lock certain stuff down and move on to only minute balancing instead of constantly redesigning everything because it isn't absolutely perfect (which is what I'm betting has at least contributed to the delays).  I can't speak for others, but I'm not willing to wait another 3 years for Barbarian vs Sorcerer (or whatever it will end up being) to roll out.  I'm not asking for monthly releases or anything crazy like that, but getting a new set of Arena mages out the door at least once a year (along with 1-2 minor Academy releases and perhaps a Battlegrounds or other expansion) should be considered the bare minimum. 

[FruchtYogurt]

I disagree with all the people saying that conditions should be (or should have been) simplified to reduce complexity.  While some conditions are similar, they aren't exactly the same, and eliminating the differences between them would seriously damage the theme of the game.  That strong sense of theme is a really important factor that contributes to my personal enjoyment of the game. 

As for what I would change, if given the chance?  Hmmm...... 

1. Replace effect roll die with something more consistent.  I'm not a huge fan of the variation in regular attack die either, but at least that doesn't usually lead to all-or-nothing situations that might single-handedly determine the game.  I strongly believe that most players avoid using a lot of utility-based attack spells solely because of this inconsistency.  People don't want to risk an entire game around whether [mwcard=MWSTX1CKA01]Surging Wave[/mwcard] will actually push a buffed [mwcard=MW1C06]Brogan Bloodstone[/mwcard] away from your mage.  So instead a lot of people just spam the highest damage attack cards (force hammer and hurl boulder) and ignore the effects.  There are other ways to balance out powerful effects like stun: you can either have extra target restrictions on the card itself or just make it cost more mana. 

2. Create a movement stat for creatures.  This would have gotten rid of the necessity for a couple of keywords (fast and slow) and also allowed for more creature variety as well as more effective kiting strategies.  Imagine a creature which had 4 movement (balanced out by low health, perhaps), allowing it to run around and pick off weakened creatures. 

3. A split online / tabletop focus.  Bear with me, this one's a bit weird.  I love playing Mage Wars in person, but a lot of the people who I would regularly play with either don't live near me all of the time or are too busy to drive to my house (or vice versa) just to play a board game.  So I would have added a way to keep track of exactly what cards players possessed, and let them use those cards to play online matches of the game (either with their friends or in ranked tournaments).  For example, Arcane Wonders could have included a serial code in each box of the game that would unlock the cards in that set on a player's online account.  Then players have the best of both worlds: they can play in person or online, whichever they prefer.  Creating such an online/offline system would also have had advantages for the game itself: the devs could set up playtesting events online to help balance cards before they officially come out (and are annoying to errata).  Yes, technically players can use the fan-supported OCTGN system, but that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. 

4. Double-sided Domination tiles that come standard with Arena.  In hindsight, the variable terrain introduced with Domination makes the game a lot more fun (as a semi-casual player).  Packing that into the base game instead of the traditional board could only have helped its initial popularity and portability.  What I still don't understand is why the new tiles aren't double-sided.  When everything else about the game from a component standpoint feels so polished, the waste inherent in only using 1 sided tiles is really bizarre.  Two-sided tiles would also have allowed the devs to make every tile have one unique effect side as well as a regular side.  That way players could choose to have an all normal board, complete chaos, or anything in between.  Sadly, I don't expect this to get rectified any time soon, since new Battlegrounds releases will probably need to be compatible with Domination tiles. 

5. Regular Release Schedule.  Yeah, I'm being a bit cheeky, but I also know that the long, LONG wait for Paladin vs Siren has seriously hampered my enjoyment of the game.  The smaller releases just haven't been the same, and the lack of new mages makes the game more boring.  There are still SOOO many possible mages that the game hasn't covered (*cough* frost mage *cough*), which makes it even more frustrating that we'll have been waiting 3 YEARS for new mages by the time PvS is roughly estimated to finally come out (DvN released Nov. 2013).  That should never have been allowed to happen.  At some point you just need to lock certain stuff down and move on to only minute balancing instead of constantly redesigning everything because it isn't absolutely perfect (which is what I'm betting has at least contributed to the delays).  I can't speak for others, but I'm not willing to wait another 3 years for Barbarian vs Sorcerer (or whatever it will end up being) to roll out.  I'm not asking for monthly releases or anything crazy like that, but getting a new set of Arena mages out the door at least once a year (along with 1-2 minor Academy releases and perhaps a Battlegrounds or other expansion) should be considered the bare minimum. 

+1 for Ganpot's post.

[Beldin]

People realise that gate to hell was only one example of many crds which either require more stats or less cost. All the big angels fall under this category imo as well. They are far to weak for their mana cost and he inly big creature that warrants its casting cost is Adramelech Lord of Fire.

[exid]

People realise that gate to hell was only one example of many crds which either require more stats or less cost. All the big angels fall under this category imo as well. They are far to weak for their mana cost and he inly big creature that warrants its casting cost is Adramelech Lord of Fire.

right!
these angels are made of paper!

[bigfatchef]

And think about Sardonyx the poor dragon that never sees play. Losing 2 life each round for only a standart 5-die quick-melee-attack is hard but maybe okay at the right moment. But level 8 is just too expensive in a spellbook.

[jhaelen]

And think about Sardonyx the poor dragon that never sees play.

Sardonyx is nothing but a Timmy card. For everyone else, it's completely unplayable.