Second Chance in Academy

[Sailor Vulcan]

Today I would like to explain to you how and why the enchantment "second chance" is going to have a big positive impact on the balance of Mage Wars Academy. For those who don't know, Mage Wars Academy does not have a planning phase nor a quickcast phase. This is a problem in the core only academy metagame because it means that players can do two quickcast sand two activations consecutively without the opponent being able to interrupt it with anything but enchantment reveals. If we count a full action as being  worth two quick actions, then the cumulative of converted quick actions over the course of an academy game with only the core set is as follows:

Player1: 3
Player2: 0

Player1: 3
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 12

Player1: 15
Player2: 12

Player: 15
Player2: 18

Player1: 21
Player2: 18

Player1 is the player with initiative round 1. As you can see, by the middle of round 7, Player1 has had the chance to use 3 more of his mage's converted quick actions than his opponent. This means that if the game lasts until round 7, player 1 has a better chance of winning simply due to having 3 more converted  quick actions than his opponent without the opponent being able to respond until after those quick actions have been used. It also is not good for the game when players are able to do strings of 6 consecutive converted quick actions without the opponent being able to respond.

Except that you can respond with enchantments, but it doesn't usually help much because that doesn't put you any less behind in actions than your opponent. It would be much better if you could use quickcast phases right?

But if there was an enchantment that could give you a net increase of one converted mage quick action when you reveal it, with the same timing as a quickcast phase, that would be functionally the same thing as using a quickcast phase in Academy.

That's where "Second Chance" comes in.

Second Chance is a holy enchantment that has a reveal cost equal to the casting cost of the creature it's attached to. When the enchanted creature dies, you can pay the reveal cost to bring the creature back to life as a free action.

If player2 includes two copies of second chance, then by the middle of round 7 Player1 will only be one converted quick action ahead of player 2.

Unfortunately, second chance is a level 2 holy spell, which means that the wizard will need to pay double spellbook points for it. The warlock and the beastmaster probably don't need it though considering that they are more aggressive mages and therefore will prefer to have initiative round 1 anyways.

[Ravepig]

Today I would like to explain to you how and why the enchantment "second chance" is going to have a big positive impact on the balance of Mage Wars Academy. For those who don't know, Mage Wars Academy does not have a planning phase nor a quickcast phase. This is a problem in the core only academy metagame because it means that players can do two quickcast sand two activations consecutively without the opponent being able to interrupt it with anything but enchantment reveals. If we count a full action as being  worth two quick actions, then the cumulative of converted quick actions over the course of an academy game with only the core set is as follows:

Player1: 3
Player2: 0

Player1: 3
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 6

Player1: 9
Player2: 12

Player1: 15
Player2: 12

Player: 15
Player2: 18

Player1: 21
Player2: 18

Player1 is the player with initiative round 1. As you can see, by the middle of round 7, Player1 has had the chance to use 3 more of his mage's converted quick actions than his opponent. This means that if the game lasts until round 7, player 1 has a better chance of winning simply due to having 3 more converted  quick actions than his opponent without the opponent being able to respond until after those quick actions have been used. It also is not good for the game when players are able to do strings of 6 consecutive converted quick actions without the opponent being able to respond.

Except that you can respond with enchantments, but it doesn't usually help much because that doesn't put you any less behind in actions than your opponent. It would be much better if you could use quickcast phases right?

But if there was an enchantment that could give you a net increase of one converted mage quick action when you reveal it, with the same timing as a quickcast phase, that would be functionally the same thing as using a quickcast phase in Academy.

That's where "Second Chance" comes in.

Second Chance is a holy enchantment that has a reveal cost equal to the casting cost of the creature it's attached to. When the enchanted creature dies, you can pay the reveal cost to bring the creature back to life as a free action.

If player2 includes two copies of second chance, then by the middle of round 7 Player1 will only be one converted quick action ahead of player 2.

Unfortunately, second chance is a level 2 holy spell, which means that the wizard will need to pay double spellbook points for it. The warlock and the beastmaster probably don't need it though considering that they are more aggressive mages and therefore will prefer to have initiative round 1 anyways.

I don't have a tone of Academy games in, so I could be off base here... while I like the idea of this enchantment, it seems available mana may be the problem.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Perhaps. However, I suspect an aggro player will want to use more of his mana sooner than a control player in academy. I admit the relationship between actions and mana is a bit more even in Academy than in Arena. In Arena actions are more important, and you would never want to pass a quickcast action to save mana. But in Academy this is a viable option. You can pass on a quickcast action and do nothing, and that effectively is trading a quick action for more mana relative to how much you would otherwise have compared to your opponent.

Considering this, it is possible that the Wizard, because of the mana advantage he gets through mana denial over the course of the game, might not be hurt so much by the fact that he pays double spellbook points for Second Chance.

I'm not sure of this though. Maybe actions are worth just as much as if not more than mana, and mana is useful for the number of converted quick actions it gets you? So maybe the reason that passing on your quickcast to save mana is sometimes a good idea in Academy might not be because mana and actions are equally valuable, but rather that passing a quickcast now will give you enough mana to do more and bigger actions later. I still need more Academy games.

[Sailor Vulcan]

This should be moved to academy section.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Edit: After playing some more games of academy, I'm starting to doubt this whole line of reasoning. Maybe first round initiative doesn't give an unfair advantage, and people just aren't used to making academy opening moves with second round initiative, so they don't know how to do it right.  Therefore, second chance is probably NOT necessary in every defensive academy spellbook. I should have known better than to jump to conclusions like that when no one has even played Academy that much. For everyone who has been turned away from academy by this confusion I apologize, there likely isn't any such imbalance after all.