Is Mage wars about to fade out?

[Boocheck]

Organize events both online and offline that require working together with the other Mage Wars forum communities

I think that this could be a problem here in europe. I cannot imagine that one day, i will sit into my car, travel 6 hours to Innsbruck to met a player or attend there for a tournament. Also, it suprised me how hard was to communicate in english there. My germany is not that advanced, my spanish sux and i will rather not mention my ability to order beer in french And dont try to bring Bibliofilters trip into this discussion

Most people are shy when using other languages. Most Board Gamers are super shy when comes to other people out of their comfort zone

Also i live in impression, that nearly all Germans are able to speak english

[aridigas]

Organize events both online and offline that require working together with the other Mage Wars forum communities

I think that this could be a problem here in europe. I cannot imagine that one day, i will sit into my car, travel 6 hours to Innsbruck to met a player or attend there for a tournament. Also, it suprised me how hard was to communicate in english there. My germany is not that advanced, my spanish sux and i will rather not mention my ability to order beer in french And dont try to bring Bibliofilters trip into this discussion

Most people are shy when using other languages. Most Board Gamers are super shy when comes to other people out of their comfort zone

Also i live in impression, that nearly all Germans are able to speak english

Uhm... Un big cerveza, si vou plait? Or something like this.

I usually only visit local tournaments as well, 2h, maybe 3h away by train. For a 2 day event I'll perhaps travel further, but only once in a while. Like once a year.
Visiting another country just for a game of mage wars is not the way for me. And that's where other forum communities are, at least for me in germany.

I will admit that speaking a language that's not german makes me a little uncomfortable. Sitting there, looking for a translation or a phrase that you don't know is annoying. You know what you want to say, but you can't. Considering myself quite eloquent in german, I often feel like a stuttering idiot because I have to use the simplest words I know.


Every german student has to take english classes in school, with mixed results. But some people don't even speak proper german, which seems to be way more important here. Those may be exceptions, though, I didn't ask everyone.

[iNano78]

Not sure if it's different in France, but in Canada, the French word for beer is bière (similar to the German/English word).  Cerveza/cerveja is Spanish/Portugese.

Other than the local crew, would anybody be willing to travel to Ottawa, Canada for a Mage Wars tournament?
*edit* Or perhaps a little closer to the US border... perhaps somewhere near Prescott, ON (across a bridge from Ogdensburg, NY)?

[aridigas]

Yeah, I tried to merge as many languages as I could in that sentence.
Bière sounds about right.

Canada is a bit far from here...

[netzhuffle]

"the scene in europe isn't dying, there never was one" The german speeking part is growing a lot

If you want hard numbers for this for the German speaking part (Germany, Austria, Switzerland):

2014, half a year after Mage Wars came out, we had our first official Mage Wars tournament with 6 participants.
2015 we had our first German Championship with 16 participants.
2016, with 1 month to go for the German Championship, we are already at over 30 registered participants and I keep getting asked every few days if there are still available spots for the tournament (they are!).

[Biblofilter]

Not sure if it's different in France, but in Canada, the French word for beer is bière (similar to the German word).  Cerveza/cerveja is Spanish/Portugese.

Other than the local crew, would anybody be willing to travel to Ottawa, Canada for a Mage Wars tournament?
*edit* Or perhaps a little closer to the US border... perhaps somewhere near Prescott, ON (across a bridge from Ogdensburg, NY)?

Yes id travel to Canada.

Really wanted to go to Germany before Gen-Con -even tried to buy 4 core sets and 1+ of every expansion in german (even if i dont speak german) but the order wouldnt go through. Unfortunately i coudnt get more holliday leave so Germany is on hold to after Gen-con.

"I will admit that speaking a language that's not german makes me a little uncomfortable. Sitting there, looking for a translation or a phrase that you don't know is annoying. You know what you want to say, but you can't. Considering myself quite eloquent in german, I often feel like a stuttering idiot because I have to use the simplest words I know."   

I know this all to well 

Still ive been an competive bridge/chess player before mage wars. Both games are very stale - complex and have a large community in almost every country. But i found it a very good way to meet local people. Ive played chess in the street of Caracas and Las Palmas. Bridge in France, Spain and England.

Who wouldn't go to France, Spain, Germany or Canada (or anywhere) to play a game you love. Meet new people and maybe even make new friends, even if you dont share a common language (other than mage wars/bridge/chess)

I still hope to attract a few foreigners to Copenhagen/Viking Cup in October its the same time as Essen and ill gladly order beer for you.

Mage Wars wont die unless we let it die. It just to good a game.

[SharkBait]

Not sure if it's different in France, but in Canada, the French word for beer is bière (similar to the German/English word).  Cerveza/cerveja is Spanish/Portugese.

Other than the local crew, would anybody be willing to travel to Ottawa, Canada for a Mage Wars tournament?
*edit* Or perhaps a little closer to the US border... perhaps somewhere near Prescott, ON (across a bridge from Ogdensburg, NY)?

Depending on time/amount of heads up I'd love to go to Canada for a tournament.

[Sailor Vulcan]

In the meantime, maybe we should make other language editions of Mage Wars available on OCTGN. That way we can more easily encourage members of other Mage Wars forums to play online.

[exid]

"the scene in europe isn't dying, there never was one" The german speeking part is growing a lot

If you want hard numbers for this for the German speaking part (Germany, Austria, Switzerland):

2014, half a year after Mage Wars came out, we had our first official Mage Wars tournament with 6 participants.
2015 we had our first German Championship with 16 participants.
2016, with 1 month to go for the German Championship, we are already at over 30 registered participants and I keep getting asked every few days if there are still available spots for the tournament (they are!).

I see you're the swiss MW ambasador!
Reicht dein Einfluss die weiter, westliche französichsprachige Genf?
... And do you know why the shops here can't get AW's products in a normal time, for a normal price?

[jhaelen]

2014, half a year after Mage Wars came out, we had our first official Mage Wars tournament with 6 participants.
2015 we had our first German Championship with 16 participants.
2016, with 1 month to go for the German Championship, we are already at over 30 registered participants and I keep getting asked every few days if there are still available spots for the tournament (they are!).

Well, these numbers clearly look encouraging!

I'm also from Germany, and I actually enjoy opportunities to chat in English. I think, below a certain age, everyone here can speak English, although often with a pretty bad pronounciation. I blame our TV: In contrast to e.g. Scandinavia, US/British TV shows gets dubbed, so you aren't exposed to English if you don't want to. In Scandinavia at best you get translated subtitles, so it helps to keep you 'in training'.

[Drefan]

In the meantime, maybe we should make other language editions of Mage Wars available on OCTGN. That way we can more easily encourage members of other Mage Wars forums to play online.

That could help, however, I'm not sure what language would be next.

I do however believe that the biggest reason people turn away from Mage Wars is that creating your own book might seem like a very intimidating task or a time consuming one.

The spellbook builder provided on the official site needs to be a lot better. Imagine a builder closer to the like of Octagon's deck builder but with the option to create, save and share decks by just logging on to the site.

You wouldn't need to download an unofficial software to get a great deck builder, and you would also be able to do it anywhere. All you would need is an internet connection

And once people really get into the game, the natural step would be to look at Octagon for more Mages to battle against.

I'd love to see Arcane Wonders team up with the guys behind Octagon's deck builder and co-create one for the site itself. Perhaps having extra help from the outside is needed in this case since released expansions are not showing up on the official deck builder!

[Halewijn]

Maybe we should make a short steplist that new players could follow whilst designing a good spellbook. Could make the task easier. It could also prevent players to have situations where they have nothing to counter the opponent and basically could give up too soon.

AKA something like this:

Step 1: select your mage (very short explanation about the mages)
Step 2: Choose a main strategy (some examples)
Step 3: Try to find the weakness to your strategy and try to add some answers to that weakness (+examples of course)
Step 4: Find a backup strategy for some opponents (closely related to step 3)
Step 5: Do not forget certain aspects in your spellbook, not all of them are necessary but a lot of them might be good to add. (eg. movement cards, flying counters, enchantment counters, attack spells, unavoidable attacks, ethereal, ...)
...

[bigfatchef]

I am from Germany as well and believe nearly everybody speaks english. I use the chance to play with english cards to get english even more into daily use.
But I see many people who want a german edition to play for it is easyier and more intuitiv to understand. Words like conjuration, resilient and lumbering are not easy english standart. So I believe that in most countries without a native language mw-edition it will be tough to get a wide playerbase. Even worse if that country is big enough that everything else is happening in native language (for example france, spain,
 and italy love and live their language whilst in sweden or norway english is common in tv or printed).

I think adding french, Spanish and a depending where players live (czech, poland, ?) would help improve playstyles and beta in general. It would catch those “lonely nerds“. But it wouldn't bring new players.

For myself I am not the one to travel hours for a game or a competition. And even if beeing in this forum a lot and trying myself in thunderdomeG I would call myself more a casual than a competitive player. I try to get a szene running here that is now about 10 to 15 people more or less active. Maybe we will have a small local competition soon.
Only of these guys has ever heard of mw before. I tell people it's a game “like mtg but with a board and strategic movement. Also you plan cards instead of random picking“. What I want to say is, that mw is unknown (but everybody knows mtg) and it would be a lot easier to get people to play if more people would know about it.

About the time consuming spellboon building: Yes newbies dont't build a book. What would be great would be a well oehanized and simple collection of GOOD books. Not frugal and not hidden in a forum with variations on page 4. There should be a section on the odficial ArcaneWonders Site where books are sorted by mage and shortly described by how to play and how it feels. “this is adramelech rush. You want to through as much fire as possible in short time. Battleforge will help you with equipment and ring, hawkey and other cards will make your aggression even stronger. Be quick, because it will get tough for you if you don't win fast“. Something like that fit every book. So players read through it and feel like “oh yeah, that's how i want to play. Good to know that mechanic. Show me the cards o need!“

[Halewijn]

What would be great would be a well oehanized and simple collection of GOOD books. Not frugal and not hidden in a forum with variations on page 4.

Building 2-3 books per mage and a description how to build spellbooks is something we could easily do as a group.  It wouldn't even take time for  AW apart from uploading the final document.

[Anubis]

What would be great would be a well oehanized and simple collection of GOOD books. Not frugal and not hidden in a forum with variations on page 4.

Building 2-3 books per mage and a description how to build spellbooks is something we could easily do as a group.  It wouldn't even take time for  AW apart from uploading the final document.

I totally agree that this is something wonderful that should be on AW website.

We could organise books by style of playing. Each one described generally, with one or two openings detailed.

Who's in?