Wizard and Wizard's Tower Errata

[Halewijn]

Your english is pretty good

irrelevant to the topic wizard:

It's interesting to see that you consider the forcemaster to be this strong! The general idea on this forum is that she is middle-tier, not even top tier. I would love to hear your thoughts about her in another topic? Maybe you could start one and describe why you think a air/wind-wizard and a priestess would be at a disadvantage.  It would be an interesting read. Also, Priestess and wizard are considered top tier, but of course, this is all very subjective.

[Kaarin]

The Priestess, - at least one year ago -, definitely was not an opponent vs Forcemaster or Not-Wind-Wizard, so need another TOP mage. And not very sure if in the future not will see another big "errata" with those TOPs. So atm, I feel sad, and unmotivated with one of my all time favourites games.

One year ago was before release of Academy. Guess what mage won 2016 German Championships where every set before Academy was legal. It was Priestess.

[Sailor Vulcan]

The Priestess, - at least one year ago -, definitely was not an opponent vs Forcemaster or Not-Wind-Wizard, so need another TOP mage. And not very sure if in the future not will see another big "errata" with those TOPs. So atm, I feel sad, and unmotivated with one of my all time favourites games.

One year ago was before release of Academy. Guess what mage won 2016 German Championships where every set before Academy was legal. It was Priestess.

Remember, the problem with the wizard wasn't mere OP-ness. It was that he over centralized the metagame and *excessively constrained viable spellbook design and future card design*. The priestess-user that won probably had a significant number of spellbook points devoted to dealing with wizards, or their wizard-using opponents were not very skilled, or they faced very few if any wizards. Although I don't remember what their spellbook actually looked like, nor did I watch the entire final match.

The point is, the wizard doesn't need to win every single tournament to be unbalancing the game. Mage Wars uses deck building points with variable costs for including each card in your deck depending on what "champion" you build your deck with. And most other customizable card games don't do that. So when a card or deck archetype becomes overpowered in a tcg they win almost all the tournaments they are in. But in a game like Mage Wars, everyone ends up building their decks to overcompensate for cards that would otherwise be overpowered. The problem that would have severely impacted gameplay ends up severely impacting spellbook design and card design instead, and only impacting gameplay indirectly through those design constraints, or directly when people decide not to overcompensate for the problem by spending extra deckbuilding points to deal with it.

[Kelanen]

The Wizard/Tower errata is the best thing to happen in MW in years.  I completely support the errata, and the game has become sooo much better since. I say this as someone that exclusively played Wizard in tournament games, but it's made the casual games much better too.

Wizard was definitely overpowered. It was the top tier all by itself, with nothing on a par. The top few book archetypes were all wizards. Moreover, time and time again you would see people post book concepts that were perfectly in theme for the mage they had chosen, and often the experienced players here (myself absolutely included) would point out that the if you swapped the mage for a Wizard the book got better, 98% of your card choices still worked, and you now had an extra 10-20 spell points to play with. 

I have played around with errata ideas on both cards myself, and dozens were suggested here. The problem was Wizard could take any of them, even a lot of them combined and still dominate. To be honest Wizard could have lost all elemental schools and been fine, but it was critical that it lost Water and Fire, and it's for the best that it lost Earth too. The Tower errata is honestly better than anything I came up with, and it's perfect.

At a very casual level it wasn't needed (and anything beyond the broadest balancing isn't) but even at the more experienced/serious casual play Wizard was a problem, and competitively it distorted the whole game. It was killing Adramelech Warlock, it was hurting Arraxian and both Warlords, and the new Siren was never viable as it stood. It closed off so much design space for the future too...

[alboy]

As l am new to Mage Wars i was wondering if the Wizards errata change affected his Apprentice Spell Book in any way?

[iNano78]

As l am new to Mage Wars i was wondering if the Wizards errata change affected his Apprentice Spell Book in any way?

No. The recommended spell books (both Apprentice and full 120 point) are for an Air Wizard, and Wizard's Tower isn't in the core set (it was released in the Conquest of Kumanjaro expansion), so neither change affects the recommended spell books.

[DaveW]

Personally, I have come to like the Wizard change to Air training only mostly for flavor reasons. We now have a couple of Mages that are trained in fire, a couple trained in earth, and a few trained in water. My sense of elemental balance is satisfied now that there is one that always is trained in air.

The WT did need a change, and, while I don't know that I would have made the same changes, I am glad that something was done.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Pretty much agree 100% with Dave.

[Beldin]

Personally, I have come to like the Wizard change to Air training only mostly for flavor reasons. We now have a couple of Mages that are trained in fire, a couple trained in earth, and a few trained in water. My sense of elemental balance is satisfied now that there is one that always is trained in air.

The WT did need a change, and, while I don't know that I would have made the same changes, I am glad that something was done.

The wizard is trained in Air and Arcane.

[Darsul]

Wow... tower nerf was needed but, the school nerf is just dumb.

[V10lentray]

Wow... tower nerf was needed but, the school nerf is just dumb.

The School nerf was done to allow for future game development.

[Boocheck]

Wow... tower nerf was needed but, the school nerf is just dumb.

The School nerf was done to allow for future game development.

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[Reddicediaries]

Wow... tower nerf was needed but, the school nerf is just dumb.

I 100% disagree. In fact, I think the wizard nerf was needed and the tower nerf was nice, but not necessarily needed.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Just in case anyone missed it, my earlier post basically sums it up.

People hated the wizard because he was so powerful that he overcentralized the metagame. Everyone had to use a ton of spellbook points to deal with him leaving less leftover for everything else they needed to do.

The wizard didn't even play like a wizard back then, the optimal thing to do with him was to totally ignore his natural trickstery style and just overwhelm the enemy with sheer force. The wizard had more answers that could fit in his book than anyone else did, and he could generate mana and actions faster than everyone else and lock you down before you could do anything unless you devoted a ton of spell points to that one particular matchup. And no one ever played the wizard with air training. They always picked water fire or earth because those were more powerful.

On top of all these advantages, the wizard also had his tower which had spellbind at the time and he could still change the bound spell for free. This was effectively the same as raising his available spell points even more. He didn't need to include as many copies of his attack spells to make use of his tower, and he could include a lot more attack spells and he would never run out. He could easily have used 3-4 towers but he never needed to. 2 towers was always more than enough.

After the erratas the wizard is finally FINALLY fun to play and to play against. Most people probably don't hate him anymore. He's become one of my favorite mages ever since the errata. He's not the same as before. You should totally give the wizard another chance.

Also would like to emphasize in case it wasn't already clear, Mage Wars cards are basically never overpowered in the conventional sense in their intended formats because of the spell point system. If a card is really powerful, it often will require opponents to devote more spell points in order to deal with it.

Make no mistake, the wizard had been more powerful than all the other mages, and this did cause the game to be unbalanced. But the kind of brokenness that in other games would have resulted in an imbalance of gameplay ended up as an imbalance of deck design instead. Whenever you built a new deck one of the most important questions you had to ask was how would it deal with the wizard?

Also basically nobody used air wizard at all until after the errata.

[farkas1]

Yea agree some  changes needed to be made and since academy wizard with additional spells it kind of helped certain builds be possible. And the wizard did not have to choose another element school, because of the additional cards.  I will say it does not feel like cheating choosing a wizard to play against others.  The other schools have been greatly enhanced from all the academy, PvS and lost grimore sets making them more flexible. 

I do feel wizards tower was being overly used , too  powerful and something needed to be done.  Not sure if they swung it too far because now I rarely see a tower out. 

I said this somewhere else, I think they could of got away with making a mana cost to change the spell out of the tower keeping it's flexibility but making a bigger investment. 

Personally if the school choice was still allowed in the wizard I don't think siren would ever of been a great viable option to play. Wizard would have the one up on everything besides maybe songs.