Burst damage problems

[Halewijn]

Today my girlfriend has beaten me 4 times in a row with the priestess when I was the warlock. The games can be summerized as followed:

Game 1
By turn 3, the first real round, I had mhegedden and thus basically had 20 life left. She had a white cloak knight.

During this turn, she reveals giant size, rolls 6 dice, melee attacks for 2 and does firestream (4 dice). She dealt 19 damage and the burn killed me of.

Game 2

Same scenario but with 2 archers that had piercing. I died again due to the burn after the 3th round.

Game 3:

I lived 1 or 2 rounds longer now, and I used more guarding demons, but again she used her final and first qc for a firestream and she could start with an attack.

Game 4:

I gave up on mhegedden. This game went a lot better, I killed 4 of her holy creatures and had some huge treaths myself. I had only 8 damage while she had 14. She had 1 whitecloak knight with giant size (1 dissipate left), 7 damage and a burn.

She added paladin's valor, attacked with 8 dice, used firestream again.

Upkeep, her initiative, another firestream and a 4 dice attack from the knight.

Basically, even though I was winning by the numbers, she did 20 dice and I was not able to react.

Long story short, she keeps killing me with huge amounts of burst damage. Did anyone else have problems with this?

[Halewijn]

So 4 games, but the first 2 games were 1 round and the 3th 3 rounds. 

Game description:
"Mage wars academy is a fast paced strategy game."

They were not kidding with this one. 

[Coshade]

Is it possible you could post both of the spellbooks? I am curious on what your choices were on both ends.

[Ravepig]

Today my girlfriend has beaten me 4 times in a row with the priestess when I was the warlock. The games can be summerized as followed:

Game 1
By turn 3, the first real round, I had mhegedden and thus basically had 20 life left. She had a white cloak knight.

During this turn, she reveals giant size, rolls 6 dice, melee attacks for 2 and does firestream (4 dice). She dealt 19 damage and the burn killed me of.

Game 2

Same scenario but with 2 archers that had piercing. I died again due to the burn after the 3th round.

Game 3:

I lived 1 or 2 rounds longer now, and I used more guarding demons, but again she used her final and first qc for a firestream and she could start with an attack.

Game 4:

I gave up on mhegedden. This game went a lot better, I killed 4 of her holy creatures and had some huge treaths myself. I had only 8 damage while she had 14. She had 1 whitecloak knight with giant size (1 dissipate left), 7 damage and a burn.

She added paladin's valor, attacked with 8 dice, used firestream again.

Upkeep, her initiative, another firestream and a 4 dice attack from the knight.

Basically, even though I was winning by the numbers, she did 20 dice and I was not able to react.

Long story short, she keeps killing me with huge amounts of burst damage. Did anyone else have problems with this?

The priestess is my buddy's favorite mage and the one he usually plays with. Me on the other-hand- I mix things up to keep it fresh and interesting. Needless to say, in all our matches, I would say we are about equal with our win/loss record (when its me vs. his priestess that is). We have 2 draws and an even number of wins. It really comes down to this for me personally:  if I can kill his mage in <6 rounds, I will win. If I can't kill his mage in <6 rounds, he will win. So, for me, it's about rush and kill regardless. Holy Creatures are just nasty and difficult to deal with if the priestess is allowed to get too many out.

There have been three exceptions to the round six rule for me when going against the priestess:

My necro skelly and druid plant swarms are the two draws I have with his priestess, so those are the first two exceptions to the 6 rounds as those games wound up being 4+ hours and we simply ran out of time (we play to the death).

The other exception was when I played with Warlord- that game wound up going 15+ rounds or so before he conceded. I had destroyed all his creatures and dissolved all his weapons. My Warlord and Ludwig were basically chasing him down doing small amounts of damage per round. Got to the point that it was just a matter of time. I can thank the Warlord's catapult for the win actually. My opponent basically left it untouched which enabled me to take out every single enemy conjuration on the board, as well as multiple zone attacks when my buddy had multiple creatures camping out in the same zone.

She's hard to deal with for sure. Since that is the primary mage my buddy plays, I've actually never played as the priest or priestess, though I'm excited to try out my priest build against his Priestess. The battle of the holy mages to come!   

[Zuberi]

@Ravepig: I think you're talking about Arena while the OP is talking about Academy.

Burst damage is definitely more of an issue in Academy, as is the random influence of lucky/unlucky dice rolls. The lack of distinct Quickcast Phases allows your opponent to potentially get in 4 actions (2 at the end of the round and another 2 at the beginning of the next round if they have initiative) without you getting any chance to respond. You have to understand this and act accordingly. Guards are especially important, as is armor. Leaving yourself completely vulnerable to these kinds of tactics can definitely cost you the game. You can summon a non-pest on round one and put it on guard in round 2 so that your opponent can't melee attack you round 3. Attack spells are hard to defend against, but I assure you we tested attack spells thoroughly to make sure they weren't OP and you should be able to handle a few firestreams thrown your way.

[Ravepig]

@Ravepig: I think you're talking about Arena while the OP is talking about Academy.

Burst damage is definitely more of an issue in Academy, as is the random influence of lucky/unlucky dice rolls. The lack of distinct Quickcast Phases allows your opponent to potentially get in 4 actions (2 at the end of the round and another 2 at the beginning of the next round if they have initiative) without you getting any chance to respond. You have to understand this and act accordingly. Guards are especially important, as is armor. Leaving yourself completely vulnerable to these kinds of tactics can definitely cost you the game. You can summon a non-pest on round one and put it on guard in round 2 so that your opponent can't melee attack you round 3. Attack spells are hard to defend against, but I assure you we tested attack spells thoroughly to make sure they weren't OP and you should be able to handle a few firestreams thrown your way.

You are correct- my apologies! I read thru the post and couldn't wait to reply since this is all too common for me in the arena.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I think something that trips up a lot of new academy players, particularly the ones who have played arena, is opening moves. In academy as the wizard if your opponent has first initiative, you might i.e. round 1 summon a redcrested cockatrice and enchant it with giant size, then round 2 put on leather chausses and wychwood ironvine and have the cockatrice guard. Round 3 your opponent might have two active creatures, one of them attacks the cockatrice and gets a counterstrike plus maybe a week token. You then have uour cockatrice guard again. Other weeny creature attacks cockatrice and same thing happens as before. If enemy Mage attacks your Mage they probably won't do too much damage through 2 armor and regen 1 (unless they use a more powerful attack spell or something). Or they might summon a creature. Regardless of which they do, you should probably summon a second creature. Now opponent probably has three creatures and you have two. But your first cockatrice got to guard twice and deal some damage to both enemy creatures. On round 4, you might want to summon another creature and then start attacking and destroying enemy creature(s) maybe you could use a lightning jolt or something.

In arena an equivalent opening would be r1 gargoyle sentry and regrowth belt, r2 put on dragon scale hauberk and rhino hide, and then start shooting attack spells at enemy Mage and kill them really fast and recklessly.


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[kiwipaul]

Hmm, please note some of this thread relates to Arena, some to Academy

[Ravepig]

Hmm, please note some of this thread relates to Arena, some to Academy

Yes, that's my fault- sorry. I was skimming content and wasn't paying attention.

[Donovan]

Today my girlfriend has beaten me 4 times in a row with the priestess when I was the warlock. The games can be summerized as followed:

Game 1
By turn 3, the first real round, I had mhegedden and thus basically had 20 life left. She had a white cloak knight.

During this turn, she reveals giant size, rolls 6 dice, melee attacks for 2 and does firestream (4 dice). She dealt 19 damage and the burn killed me of.
Long story short, she keeps killing me with huge amounts of burst damage. Did anyone else have problems with this?

First of all call yourself lucky that your wife plays the game and is intelligent at the same time! =;-)

But she was a bit lucky wasn't she?

12 dice and 19 damage is not average? What is that? A 1% change?

What about Divine Reversal, Dodge, Tangleroot etc?

[Boocheck]

Or just Stagger, which is super effective because it covers Melee, Range and Spell attacks and stays until the end of the creatures next activation.

[Donovan]

After a couple of games in Academy core I feel the only winning strategy might be to leave the creatures of the opponent alone and just hit the mage as frequently and as hard as you can.

This seems to favor builds where just 1 or 2 creatures are being created, subsequently buffed with melee +X, and then they hit the mage and the game ends soon.

To counter that, you'd have to be very defensive, which leaves you with no time to become offensive. You can only delay your demise.

It feels as if the game is over too soon.

So you end up with 2 similar builds fighting eachother: 2-3 buffed creatures hitting the other mage.

Does somebody have a build that does not do that and still has a chance?

[Sailor Vulcan]

After a couple of games in Academy core I feel the only winning strategy might be to leave the creatures of the opponent alone and just hit the mage as frequently and as hard as you can.

This seems to favor builds where just 1 or 2 creatures are being created, subsequently buffed with melee +X, and then they hit the mage and the game ends soon.

To counter that, you'd have to be very defensive, which leaves you with no time to become offensive. You can only delay your demise.

It feels as if the game is over too soon.

So you end up with 2 similar builds fighting eachother: 2-3 buffed creatures hitting the other mage.

Does somebody have a build that does not do that and still has a chance?

Really? I've played academy quite a bit on octgn when it first became available to play on there, and I've played at least several games of academy against my sisters and one of my friends in real life. While it's important to attack the mage, most good decks are going to want to attack creatures too. Attack spells are expensive mana wise, and if you put on some armor and regen and use some healing it can be hard to make it stick. And if you summon creatures to guard you it's harder for them to hurt your mage. I suspect that you guys are playing the game wrong somehow. You know that pest trait works different in academy than arena right?

In any case, I've made some academy decks already that are different from what you describe and they seem to work fine. I'll post them later.

[Halewijn]

@donovan: thanks I know.

@coshade: we just build a deck before we play and remove them afterwards, so they did not really matter.

@vulcan: we are not playing the rules wrong. 

In general I think I just played mgheddon wrong during the first 3 games. I replayed him earlier today and this time it went a lot better. He gives a huge offense but you are in the open during the beginning of the game so you really need to combine him with a solid defence which I did not do. I also think you could really make good use lf the protective 1 time use enchantments like donovan mentioned. I just think its a bad Arena habit if mine to think they are not worth as much. In academy they are much better. (Shorter game, little unavoidable, ...)

In general, I wanted to combine offence with that sealed demon, but he makes you vulnerable. That and she played well and had some luck.. 

Also, I would really like to houserule the first and last quickcast back in, but as you can imagine, she does not agree! 

[Sailor Vulcan]

@donovan: thanks I know.

@coshade: we just build a deck before we play and remove them afterwards, so they did not really matter.

@vulcan: we are not playing the rules wrong. 

In general I think I just played mgheddon wrong during the first 3 games. I replayed him earlier today and this time it went a lot better. He gives a huge offense but you are in the open during the beginning of the game so you really need to combine him with a solid defence which I did not do. I also think you could really make good use lf the protective 1 time use enchantments like donovan mentioned. I just think its a bad Arena habit if mine to think they are not worth as much. In academy they are much better. (Shorter game, little unavoidable, ...)

In general, I wanted to combine offence with that sealed demon, but he makes you vulnerable. That and she played well and had some luck.. 

Also, I would really like to houserule the first and last quickcast back in, but as you can imagine, she does not agree! 

I think the issue with the lack of quick cast phases could be solved with enchantments like second chance. Second chance effectively gives you +1 quick actions, so revealing it at end of upkeep before the action phase would be a lot like a quickcast phase. Except that there is only one thing you can do with second chance and that is reviving a creature when it dies. I think we just need more enchantments that effectively give +1 quick actions that do other things.


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