Let's talk Multiplayer Domination

[iNano78]

Hi iNano,

This is really a great resource!
Did you get to build/playtest some more?

Last week I finally got the Battlegrounds Set, a player in our boardgame group is willing to give it a try, _and_ I actually found a new Mage Wars player, so I'd really like to play it next month.

I hope I can use your spellbooks at least as a starting point (I noticed some Academy cards that I will have to replace with something else).
I'm still unsure what to do about Galaxxus, especially because there's only two copies of it in the box. It's pretty obvious that if I'm going to allow it in games, every mage (or side) will want one...

Glad you like it! 

My group generally gets together every 2 weeks, and we don't always play Domination, so... I generally get about 1-2 Domination matches in per month.  That isn't a rapid rate, so my knowledge changes slowly.  That said, I'll try to keep my spell books up-to-date in the second post.

I most recently tried the Adramelech Warlock and made some tweaks; I need to put up a Warlord - or perhaps get BigL16 to post his, since he's our local Warlord expert (although I also have a Warlord multiplayer Domination win under my belt  Elusive goblins with Whirling Strike are soooo gooood); and I'm starting to work on a Malakai Priest... 

[Ravepig]

Thanks for your post- your strategies for building a domination spellbook were great. Each person in my group *finally* each got a copy of domination, so we are looking to play our first game of domination next Tuesday. I'd be interested in seeing your beastmaster book in preparation for that game.

Thanks again! I'll post here on how our first Domination game turns out.

[BigL16]

Hi iNano,

This is really a great resource!
Did you get to build/playtest some more?

Last week I finally got the Battlegrounds Set, a player in our boardgame group is willing to give it a try, _and_ I actually found a new Mage Wars player, so I'd really like to play it next month.

I hope I can use your spellbooks at least as a starting point (I noticed some Academy cards that I will have to replace with something else).
I'm still unsure what to do about Galaxxus, especially because there's only two copies of it in the box. It's pretty obvious that if I'm going to allow it in games, every mage (or side) will want one...

Glad you like it! 

...or perhaps get BigL16 to post his, since he's our local Warlord expert...

LOL I hardly think my win rate qualifies me as an expert in anything Mage Wars   But I am starting to change my ways for the better

[iNano78]

Thanks for your post- your strategies for building a domination spellbook were great. Each person in my group *finally* each got a copy of domination, so we are looking to play our first game of domination next Tuesday. I'd be interested in seeing your beastmaster book in preparation for that game.

Thanks again! I'll post here on how our first Domination game turns out.

I haven't run a Beastmaster myself because he's popular among our other players. But as you can parse out from the opening post, you can't really go wrong if you start with the following and go from there:

Straywood Beastmaster
Lair
6x Thunderrift Falcon
1x Cervere, Forest Shadow
Maybe 1 of Tarraki or Rajah or Tarok
1-2x Panther Stealth
2x Battle Fury
1x Whirling Strike
4x Tanglevine
Lots of Walls of your choice
Some combination of multiple Force Push, Force Wave, Repulse, Teleport
A few attack spells (maybe Surging Wave and Force Hammer)
As many Rouse the Beast as you can afford
Packleader's Cowl (or Altar of the Iron Guard if you think you can get it out first)
Some armor (but not as much as you'd run in Arena)
At least one of each of Dispel (or Disperse), Dissolve (or Crumble), Seeking Dispel
Group Heal
Maybe some passive healing, like Raincloud or Renewing Spring or Mohktari or Highland Unicorn
Maybe ways to add Piercing (e.g. Lion Savagery, Wolf Fury or Tooth and Nail).
Consider a few Foxes or higher level creatures if you expect a longer game or are playing to a higher V'tar goal
Perhaps a Mage Wand so you can bind your most useful Incantation in a given match (might be Rouse or Group Mend or a Push or Battle Fury or a Dispel/Dissolve/Seeking Dispel).
If you have room, throw in an Eagle Wings for Cervere (!) or Mongoose Agility for your mage.  Or maybe a Guard Dog, since your creatures tend to be weak in that department (although your primary strategy should be to steal orbs and win through action economy, not necessarily to Guard your orbs).

You need a plan to deal with Idol of Pestilence / Altar of Skulls.  And maybe Burns. 

From there, you can try tricks like Giant Size (to cast either on your own creature or on a Sslak an enemy is going for) or Tangleroot (to weaken a creature your opponent is using to kill a Sslak, or on a Usslak you want to take out if you don't want its counterstrike to hurt so much).  But you're probably better off just strengthening your main strategy of swarming and stealing as many orbs as possible with your highly elusive and fast creatures.

[Ravepig]

Thanks for your post- your strategies for building a domination spellbook were great. Each person in my group *finally* each got a copy of domination, so we are looking to play our first game of domination next Tuesday. I'd be interested in seeing your beastmaster book in preparation for that game.

Thanks again! I'll post here on how our first Domination game turns out.

I haven't run a Beastmaster myself because he's popular among our other players. But as you can parse out from the opening post, you can't really go wrong if you start with the following and go from there:

Straywood Beastmaster
Lair
6x Thunderrift Falcon
1x Cervere, Forest Shadow
Maybe 1 of Tarraki or Rajah or Tarok
1-2x Panther Stealth
2x Battle Fury
1x Whirling Strike
4x Tanglevine
Lots of Walls of your choice
Some combination of multiple Force Push, Force Wave, Repulse, Teleport
A few attack spells (maybe Surging Wave and Force Hammer)
As many Rouse the Beast as you can afford
Packleader's Cowl (or Altar of the Iron Guard if you think you can get it out first)
Some armor (but not as much as you'd run in Arena)
At least one of each of Dispel (or Disperse), Dissolve (or Crumble), Seeking Dispel
Group Heal
Maybe some passive healing, like Raincloud or Renewing Spring or Mohktari or Highland Unicorn
Maybe ways to add Piercing (e.g. Lion Savagery, Wolf Fury or Tooth and Nail).
Consider a few Foxes or higher level creatures if you expect a longer game or are playing to a higher V'tar goal
Perhaps a Mage Wand so you can bind your most useful Incantation in a given match (might be Rouse or Group Mend or a Push or Battle Fury or a Dispel/Dissolve/Seeking Dispel).
If you have room, throw in an Eagle Wings for Cervere (!) or Mongoose Agility for your mage.  Or maybe a Guard Dog, since your creatures tend to be weak in that department (although your primary strategy should be to steal orbs and win through action economy, not necessarily to Guard your orbs).

You need a plan to deal with Idol of Pestilence / Altar of Skulls.  And maybe Burns. 

From there, you can try tricks like Giant Size (to cast either on your own creature or on a Sslak an enemy is going for) or Tangleroot (to weaken a creature your opponent is using to kill a Sslak, or on a Usslak you want to take out if you don't want its counterstrike to hurt so much).  But you're probably better off just strengthening your main strategy of swarming and stealing as many orbs as possible with your highly elusive and fast creatures.

This is excellent- thank you!!!

[iNano78]

This is excellent- thank you!!!

I threw together a Straywood Beastmaster book last night based on my post above.  http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=16804.msg69366#msg69366

Warning: Completely untested, and has way more creatures and enchantments and ways to heal than necessary in order to test a few possibilities.  In no way do I guarantee that this will work.  Player discretion is advised.

[Ravepig]

This is excellent- thank you!!!

I threw together a Straywood Beastmaster book last night based on my post above.  http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=16804.msg69366#msg69366

Warning: Completely untested, and has way more creatures and enchantments and ways to heal than necessary in order to test a few possibilities.  In no way do I guarantee that this will work.  Player discretion is advised.

Ha ha ha- understood! Still, appreciate the book. You are way more experienced with this than I am, so I will give it a try and let you know how it works for me. The benefit I have is that no one in our group has played domination, so just in me taking advice from you has already given me the advantage!

[Erebus]

Thanks for the great resource! I love Domination, especially with three or more people. My group will probably also ban Galaxxus, since it's an auto-include for us.

I've been wanting to play recently but haven't had the time to build any new spellbooks, so maybe we'll use a few of yours. Thanks!

[iNano78]

Earlier today I updated the first post with our group's win/loss/draw records for each mage in 3-way Domination (ignoring team play and other player counts).  Skill obviously plays a big factor, so there's certainly some bias towards "favourite" mages of our top players... but that said, the results sort of make sense.  Keep in mind, in 3-way free-for-alls, an average mage would expect to win 1/3 of its matches on average.

The Necromancer comes in right on average with a 33% win rate (2-4-0), although one of his losses was running zombies and trying to kill the other mages via DoT... which didn't work too well.

The Druid is very popular, and is well above average with as many wins as losses (3-3-1), which is impressive in 3-way competition.

The Bloodwave Warlord is our top mage, going 4-2-1 so far!

Straywood Beastmaster is our most played mage and is also well below average right now, with a 2-8-1 record.

Both Warlocks are winless (0-2-0 each), with each having a "kill everybody" attempt and a failed V'tar attempt.  They struggle to keep up with the more swarmy mages and often end up playing kingmaker.

We haven't tried a Holy mage or Forcemaster in multiplayer Domination yet, and the Wizard needs more plays to really get an idea of where he stands.

[Ravepig]

Earlier today I updated the first post with our group's win/loss/draw records for each mage in 3-way Domination (ignoring team play and other player counts).  Skill obviously plays a big factor, so there's certainly some bias towards "favourite" mages of our top players... but that said, the results sort of make sense.  Keep in mind, in 3-way free-for-alls, an average mage would expect to win 1/3 of its matches on average.

The Necromancer comes in right on average with a 33% win rate (2-4-0), although one of his losses was running zombies and trying to kill the other mages via DoT... which didn't work too well.

The Druid is very popular, and is well above average with as many wins as losses (3-3-1), which is impressive in 3-way competition.

The Bloodwave Warlord is our top mage, going 4-2-1 so far!

Straywood Beastmaster is our most played mage and is also well below average right now, with a 2-8-1 record.

Both Warlocks are winless (0-2-0 each), with each having a "kill everybody" attempt and a failed V'tar attempt.  They struggle to keep up with the more swarmy mages and often end up playing kingmaker.

We haven't tried a Holy mage or Forcemaster in multiplayer Domination yet, and the Wizard needs more plays to really get an idea of where he stands.

My beastmaster build is a variation of what you posted and with it won our first game of domination. Of course, I was playing against a Priestess and a Warlock, so maybe that wasn't a fair trial.

The warlock in general seems to struggle in our group over all. Only one win under his belt, and that was me playing a very new player, so again, not sure that one win was even legit.

[Ravepig]

Finally had our first official game of 3 player Domination last night. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun, and definitely the only way to play multi-player in my opinion. I ended up going with a Necro-skelly build, my opponents chose a Bloodwave Warlord, and the last mage was a basic wizard.

For the first couple rounds everybody sat back doing their basic build-up. So, I took the opportunity and decided to take the main zone with two orbs. From there it was all defense as I pretty much made myself the target collecting two orbs every upkeep phase. I held everybody off almost to the very end when the wizard cast chain lightening in my zone, followed by the Warlord using his Fast command to move a bunch of creatures two zones to attack finishing most of my guys off. It left me with my mage, 1 skelly archer and 8 orbs (needed 9 to win).

Because of that, there wasn't much I could do and the Warlord wound up winning as he had moved two guard dogs into the zone he needed to win.

Even having lost my first game, it was a lot of fun and I'm already excited for our next play. I definitely learned from a few key mistakes I made that would have likely won me the game, one of which is to make sure I have more teleports in my book. I only had 1 teleport that I used early on. Had I had a second, I could have teleported to that zone where you can sacrifice one creature for an orb, which would have won me the game. I will also be adding more walls. I only had 3 in my book. Had I had at least 1 more, I would have blocked the warlord from advancing that last round. And I will be adding some teleport traps as well. With just one or two of those in my book, I likely would have won the game as well.

Live and learn- either way, it was a blast!

[jhaelen]

Live and learn- either way, it was a blast!

Thanks for the report, sounds great!

[iNano78]

Another effect that I've found to be quite valuable in (multiplayer) Domination is direct damage that can be precisely controlled. Examples include Disciple of Radiance's passive ability, Necromancer's Plaguemaster ability, Moloch's Torment, revealing a curse enchantment, etc. The reason is, the timing of destroying a Sslak is crucial. If you "accidentally" destroy it with your last full action of a round, or it dies during upkeep in a round where you don't have initiative, an opponent might steal the unguarded neutral orb(s) with a later action or an early action with initiative priority at the start of the following round. Being able to deal that 1-2 remaining damage to an orb guardian with 100% certainty using your quickcast marker (e.g. a healing spell with Disciple of Radiance(s) in the zone) or during upkeep (Plaguemaster or Moloch's Torment or many curse enchantments or Malacoda, etc), or allowing it to stay alive with 1 health remaining (by NOT revealing a curse or NOT using Plaguemaster/Mordok's Amulet or moving Malacoda out of the zone, etc) can make the difference between you or an opponent claiming an orb first! I can't count the number of times where an improbably bad or good attack roll caused a Sslak to die at an inopportune time. And that could be the difference between a win and a loss in a close match. Thus, spells that can deal direct damage like those listed above can be surprisingly strong in Domination.

To counter this, sometimes it's appropriate to have a creature Guard before a Sslak is destroyed by direct damage (when it can be predicted), but that isn't foolproof since Elusive creatures - or, for instance, Aurora Lucere vs a Minor creature - could bypass your guard.

Conversely, you can also cause an orb guardian your opponent has been fighting to lose its last 1-2 health when it would be least advantageous for your opponent: e.g. drop a Poison Gas Cloud during the final quick-cast phase, causing it to die during upkeep, so you can swoop in and steal it with initiative to open the following round!

What effects have you noticed to be surprisingly effective (or ineffective) in multiplayer Domination?

[iNano78]

If you aren't playing Multiplayer Domination, this is what you're missing out on.

Wow! The most epic three-for-all Domination match yet. Here's a "brief" summary, for those who weren't there to witness it in all its glory!

The Skeleton Necromancer had initiative and opened with Altar of the Iron Guard (to beat the Warlord to it) and Graveyard. The Bloodwave Warlord led with Titanodon (for all his mana), and would later bring out 2x Garrison Posts and a Barracks. The Siren opted to open with Beds of Urchins and Shallow Seas in 2 zones that each contained orbs, including the one neighbouring the Graveyard, then corralled that orb with Coral Barriers. The Necromancer decided to move in and attack the Sslak anyway, dealing 0 damage to the Sslak and taking 10 damage from the Urchins + Sslak's counterstrike! No healing in the Necro's book meant this damage would stick. Then the Siren sent a Deptonne Bloodshaman into the Necromancer's/orb's zone, but the Necro countered with a Chant of Rage on the Bloodshaman to distract it with the legendary skeleton, Turghut. Meanwhile, the slow Titanodon was Lesser Teleported along and sent to attack the Usslak protecting 2 orbs. This drew the attention of the Necromancer, who conjured a Poison Gas Cloud, Stench of Death, Plagued (on the Warlord himself, who was in the zone under contention) and Idol of Pestilence (in the zone protected by Urchin + Shallow Sea + guarding Sslak + Coral Barriers) over several rounds, which meant a lot of direct damage for living creatures in the zone containing 2 orbs - which generally included the Titanodon, Warlord and Siren, plus their lesser minions. Titanodon received medical attention in the form of 2x Minor Heals to remove ~11 damage, but eventually died anyway from all the curses/direct poison damage, plus Rot + Plaguemaster ability, plus ranged shots from a Skeleton Archer and Turghut, and also having beenTeleported into a Hydrothermal Vent + Bed of Urchins! Meanwhile, an Orc Butcher, Goblin Alchemist and Knight of Westlock helped the Warlord secure the 2 orbs in the zone of primary contention while the Necromancer took 2 other zones with the help of Turghut, Mort, 2 Skeleton Sentries, and several Skeleton Minions, despite a Garrison Post located in the zone of one of these orbs. The race was on... albeit a little later than usual (e.g. nobody held an orb until 6 or 7 rounds in!). But the Siren kept pressure on the V'tar-scoring mages by bringing in Blightheart - who got a massive triple attack via Whirling Strike - and at least a couple Shoalsdeep Thrashers. Meanwhile, the Necromancer's minions took care of a Goblin Bomber summoned directly to his skeleton horde's zone (via Garrison Post), but lucky for the undead army, it didn't detonate upon destruction. The undead minions then focused on destroying the Garrison Post rather than other pressing issues... and in a round where the Necromancer might have walled himself off to protect his fragile body (along with his orbs), he instead opted to mess with the Warlord's creatures (including a recently summoned Dwarf Kriegshammer)... and then suffered the consequences, as the opposing mages teamed up to Teleport him into danger and attack him! He responded by dispatching his skeleton horde, abandoning both his orbs in an effort to take out all the Warlord's and Siren's creatures (all except the Kriegshammer), but it was too late, as the opposing mages hit him with attack spells and pushed him into the Arena wall, dealing the final ~12 damage to him despite his Rhino Hide (a Bleed he couldn't remove didn't help his situation). Then the Siren turned on the Warlord to deal ~4 damage and finish him as well! The Siren, with no creatures left on the map, won by annihilation!
(The losing mages were defeated while tied at 6 V'tar with a goal of 10; the Siren never even attempted to touch an orb, despite an unprotected orb in a zone with Urchins + Shallow Sea after the Sslak had been obliterated by damage from Idol of Pestilence)

[iNano78]

Mods, feel free to move this thread to the new Domination sub-forum, and each of my spell books linked in the 2nd post (quoted below for convenience) to the Domination\Spellbook Design and Construction child-board. Thanks!

*Reserved for links to spell books. WIP*

At risk of giving away all my secrets to my foes, here are spell lists for some of my current multiplayer Domination spell books.  Feel free to check them out and discuss them in their own threads.

• Skeleton Necromancer: "Skulls & Bones"
• Wychwood Druid: "Fierce Control"
• Adramelech Warlock: "And Hell Followed With Her"
• Straywood Beastmaster: "Aerial Dominance"
• Malakai Priest: "Step Into the Light"
• Air Wizard: "The Schoolyard Bully" (needs work)
• Siren: "Shark Frenzy" (has a win via killing all the other Mages!)
• Bloodwave Warlord: "Goblin Outpost" (needs work; not as good as BigL16's Domination Warlord books)