ADMW Winter Special - OCTGN Tournament

[rant]

Any judges for Powlich - Keejchen on sunday at 7 pm central Europe time? If not, what about friday around the same time?

So you won?

Powlich did win. It was a super interesting match. Both powlich and parkdeck entered with fully fledged books. I encourage all to watch it when it is posted.

Powlich vs keechen should also be a very good match. Looking forward to it.

[Powlich]

Any judges for Powlich - Keejchen on sunday at 7 pm central Europe time? If not, what about friday around the same time?

So you won?

Hm yeah. Sry for the spoiler. :/

[bigfatchef]

Any judges for Powlich - Keejchen on sunday at 7 pm central Europe time? If not, what about friday around the same time?

So you won?

Powlich did win. It was a super interesting match. Both powlich and parkdeck entered with fully fledged books. I encourage all to watch it when it is posted.

Powlich vs keechen should also be a very good match. Looking forward to it.

So when will that be postet?
At the beginning sind games were uploaded more or less instantly. Now it was a high end quarterifinal or something and everything seems sleeping... There wasn't even a single note who won.
Come on guys, give the tournament back the hype it started with! (Right now everybody seems to hype about gencon and so on, but for all non-US-players that's kind of boring)

[Powlich]

It's up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5HZnNQB1BI

[Mystery]

Any judges for Powlich - Keejchen on sunday at 7 pm central Europe time? If not, what about friday around the same time?

So you won?

Powlich did win. It was a super interesting match. Both powlich and parkdeck entered with fully fledged books. I encourage all to watch it when it is posted.

Powlich vs keechen should also be a very good match. Looking forward to it.

So when will that be postet?
At the beginning sind games were uploaded more or less instantly. Now it was a high end quarterifinal or something and everything seems sleeping... There wasn't even a single note who won.
Come on guys, give the tournament back the hype it started with! (Right now everybody seems to hype about gencon and so on, but for all non-US-players that's kind of boring)

I agree that the community is not extremly active.

Watching parkdeck/powlich i see only bad play by the priestess up to 60min at least, dont want to offend anyone, but a magewand with dispel/disperse/remove curse to PERMANENTLY remove the ghould rots (even though there is a wardstone, just skip casting a creature once), which forces powlich to react and get close again, and the bit of dmg he took from the griffin with deathlock out hurts, with deathlock he cant heal himself, ghoul rots gone (2 easily if powlich wouldnt react even more) he cant use deathlink as no healing etc.
would be cool to know the deck of parkdeck, if it was just bad play or a bad deck

Hard to judge powlichs play if your oponent doesnt really do anything against your play. watched also keechen jacksmack, why take dmg from curse item for ages and then finally drop your armor, just drop and take a new one, was just like a dissolve in that case. If you already see its a direct dmg build, and again magewand/dispel/disperse early.

[Reddicediaries]

Any judges for Powlich - Keejchen on sunday at 7 pm central Europe time? If not, what about friday around the same time?

So you won?

Powlich did win. It was a super interesting match. Both powlich and parkdeck entered with fully fledged books. I encourage all to watch it when it is posted.

Powlich vs keechen should also be a very good match. Looking forward to it.

So when will that be postet?
At the beginning sind games were uploaded more or less instantly. Now it was a high end quarterifinal or something and everything seems sleeping... There wasn't even a single note who won.
Come on guys, give the tournament back the hype it started with! (Right now everybody seems to hype about gencon and so on, but for all non-US-players that's kind of boring)

I agree that the community is not extremly active.

Watching parkdeck/powlich i see only bad play by the priestess up to 60min at least, dont want to offend anyone, but a magewand with dispel/disperse/remove curse to PERMANENTLY remove the ghould rots (even though there is a wardstone, just skip casting a creature once), which forces powlich to react and get close again, and the bit of dmg he took from the griffin with deathlock out hurts, with deathlock he cant heal himself, ghoul rots gone (2 easily if powlich wouldnt react even more) he cant use deathlink as no healing etc.
would be cool to know the deck of parkdeck, if it was just bad play or a bad deck

Hard to judge powlichs play if your oponent doesnt really do anything against your play. watched also keechen jacksmack, why take dmg from curse item for ages and then finally drop your armor, just drop and take a new one, was just like a dissolve in that case. If you already see its a direct dmg build, and again magewand/dispel/disperse early.

+1 to Mystery.
Does this mean your a bigger fan of wands in the current meta?

[bigfatchef]

I don't exakt to offend anyone as well, but I think to just complain about bad play is not fair.

I know parkdeck personally and  know that he was competing for fun. We guessed he would have no chance to pass group stage, since we expected to see strong players. So he blew all his favourite mages right at the beginning, taking a personal weaker one each stage. Now he made it to 4th place with one of his personal weakest mages in the last game.

So instead of talking about bad play I salute him for coming so far in an international tournament!

Now if you think about it, the problem I see, is the thin playerbase that plays at a high level. How could he come so far of he played that bad, and where are those strong players?

I think the future of mage wars Arena is in danger and you can see this right here. And I think AW are the only ones that could change this, by changing their politics.
- start support for spellbookbuilder, app, podcasts and whatever had been started and suddenly stopped
- fulfill needed errata
- start pushing arena again instead of academy
- stop making the game complexer as needed
- give the players a transparent time table of future releases and stick to them
- and so on...

If I would try to compete at tennis worldchampionship in wimbledon and would find myself surprisingly on 4th place, I would not see the problem at my bad play at all 

And by the way comments like mysteries (even if true) don't help that much to get more players competing. I am thinking twice now if I would take part, if comments are that hard.

[Reddicediaries]

I don't exakt to offend anyone as well, but I think to just complain about bad play is not fair.

I know parkdeck personally and  know that he was competing for fun. We guessed he would have no chance to pass group stage, since we expected to see strong players. So he blew all his favourite mages right at the beginning, taking a personal weaker one each stage. Now he made it to 4th place with one of his personal weakest mages in the last game.

So instead of talking about bad play I salute him for coming so far in an international tournament!

Now if you think about it, the problem I see, is the thin playerbase that plays at a high level. How could he come so far of he played that bad, and where are those strong players?

I think the future of mage wars Arena is in danger and you can see this right here. And I think AW are the only ones that could change this, by changing their politics.
- start support for spellbookbuilder, app, podcasts and whatever had been started and suddenly stopped
- fulfill needed errata
- start pushing arena again instead of academy
- stop making the game complexer as needed
- give the players a transparent time table of future releases and stick to them
- and so on...

If I would try to compete at tennis worldchampionship in wimbledon and would find myself surprisingly on 4th place, I would not see the problem at my bad play at all 

And by the way comments like mysteries (even if true) don't help that much to get more players competing. I am thinking twice now if I would take part, if comments are that hard.

I think Mystery's just trying to convey his thoughts about the recent games.
That being said, I do think his post was a bit harsh.

[RomeoXero]

English (as I'm aware) isn't mysterys first language, and there hance been a few posts already as to the difference in commentary style between our US players and our European counterparts. I am certain that he meant no offence by  his remark. His meta discusses things in a much more frank manner. Its more direct true, but local folks from across the pond tend to take no offence to blunt commentary like that as they know it's simply an assessment, not an indictment of being a bad person or bad player. Good players make bad plays from time to time as well, doesn't make them bad players.
And not for nothing, hasn't Mystery won many tournament's both local and global? He's kind of looking at this from the top of the heap so to speak. Its an undeniable fact that he usually knows what he's talking about.
Just my 2 mana on  the subject.
Ps. As for the arena vs academy expansions, i say keep the academy stuff coming! We have gotten some amazing cards out of the academy sets so far, and they work great in arena!
Cards like glancing blow, dodge, cure, mend, firestream, wispwillow amulet, leather chausses, kajarah, 2nd chance, divine revearsal, sanguine hunter, white cloak knight, asyras blessing, sanguine thirst, disperse, crumble, arcane ward and a ton of others have made arguably more of a  impact on arena than they have in academy! Its not stopping either, the new quick cast creatures were getting from forcemaster academy? Yes please! Yes a new arena mage woulde be nice, but how many sirens do you see nowadays? Nobody's figured her out yet. What're'ya gonna do with another mage set? The meta just changed twice in rapid succession, once for pvs, and again for lost grimoire, and even to a lesser extent when priestess and warlock academy came out. There's so much meat to this game and so much more coming all the time. Give academy a chance. Take game commentary wth a grain of salt as this game is global amd not everyone hears things thr same way. This game is amazing, this meta is amazing, let's as jyst take a breath and relax no?

[Reddicediaries]

English (as I'm aware) isn't mysterys first language, and there hance been a few posts already as to the difference in commentary style between our US players and our European counterparts. I am certain that he meant no offence by  his remark. His meta discusses things in a much more frank manner. Its more direct true, but local folks from across the pond tend to take no offence to blunt commentary like that as they know it's simply an assessment, not an indictment of being a bad person or bad player. Good players make bad plays from time to time as well, doesn't make them bad players.
And not for nothing, hasn't Mystery won many tournament's both local and global? He's kind of looking at this from the top of the heap so to speak. Its an undeniable fact that he usually knows what he's talking about.
Just my 2 mana on  the subject.
Ps. As for the arena vs academy expansions, i say keep the academy stuff coming! We have gotten some amazing cards out of the academy sets so far, and they work great in arena!
Cards like glancing blow, dodge, cure, mend, firestream, wispwillow amulet, leather chausses, kajarah, 2nd chance, divine revearsal, sanguine hunter, white cloak knight, asyras blessing, sanguine thirst, disperse, crumble, arcane ward and a ton of others have made arguably more of a  impact on arena than they have in academy! Its not stopping either, the new quick cast creatures were getting from forcemaster academy? Yes please! Yes a new arena mage woulde be nice, but how many sirens do you see nowadays? Nobody's figured her out yet. What're'ya gonna do with another mage set? The meta just changed twice in rapid succession, once for pvs, and again for lost grimoire, and even to a lesser extent when priestess and warlock academy came out. There's so much meat to this game and so much more coming all the time. Give academy a chance. Take game commentary wth a grain of salt as this game is global amd not everyone hears things thr same way. This game is amazing, this meta is amazing, let's as jyst take a breath and relax no?

+1.

[bigfatchef]

English (as I'm aware) isn't mysterys first language, and there hance been a few posts already as to the difference in commentary style between our US players and our European counterparts. I am certain that he meant no offence by  his remark. His meta discusses things in a much more frank manner. Its more direct true, but local folks from across the pond tend to take no offence to blunt commentary like that as they know it's simply an assessment, not an indictment of being a bad person or bad player. Good players make bad plays from time to time as well, doesn't make them bad players.
And not for nothing, hasn't Mystery won many tournament's both local and global? He's kind of looking at this from the top of the heap so to speak. Its an undeniable fact that he usually knows what he's talking about.
Just my 2 mana on  the subject.
Ps. As for the arena vs academy expansions, i say keep the academy stuff coming! We have gotten some amazing cards out of the academy sets so far, and they work great in arena!
Cards like glancing blow, dodge, cure, mend, firestream, wispwillow amulet, leather chausses, kajarah, 2nd chance, divine revearsal, sanguine hunter, white cloak knight, asyras blessing, sanguine thirst, disperse, crumble, arcane ward and a ton of others have made arguably more of a  impact on arena than they have in academy! Its not stopping either, the new quick cast creatures were getting from forcemaster academy? Yes please! Yes a new arena mage woulde be nice, but how many sirens do you see nowadays? Nobody's figured her out yet. What're'ya gonna do with another mage set? The meta just changed twice in rapid succession, once for pvs, and again for lost grimoire, and even to a lesser extent when priestess and warlock academy came out. There's so much meat to this game and so much more coming all the time. Give academy a chance. Take game commentary wth a grain of salt as this game is global amd not everyone hears things thr same way. This game is amazing, this meta is amazing, let's as jyst take a breath and relax no?

Thanx for your feedback.
I know Mystery talked from an analytical point of view. I did not want to offend him. But there actually seems to be a lack of high class players taking part at the tournament. I wanted to open some eyes for that aspect.
From a businessman point of view AW should always have an eye on their customers needs. And I think they don't do that enough. A good player experience is essential for their business. And I also think that's part of the reason why there are only a few players. So I tried to analyse the analysis in a way

For academy vs arena. I like many of the new academy spells. And yes Ib don't see many sirens also. I don't want to say academy is bad. New arena mages every 6 months would absolutely be overkill.
I don't find good words for it. I miss some straight, focused masterplan behind what AW is doing.
Like if some players plays few big creature the first rounds, then meditates with amulet, then plays half a swarm. These all are good things to do, but they need a masterplan to really work well.

Maybe I am overthinking this and everything is great. I hope so since I love the game!

[Reddicediaries]

Well Bilblo, Drefan, and Mystery did not compete in the tourney. And in some order, they are the three top dogs in mage wars ATM imo.

[Mystery]

I am sorry if anyone feels offended. It’s important that a lot of players play and make mistakes. I thought more of giving helpful critics and maybe a bit of play analysis after to say what could be done better and so on. I was kind of a bit more suprised of the commentary @coshade bud :-*y. We already had a similar discussion at some stage in a german speeking tourney of our critics being to harsh, but I rather be strict than calling some play awesome if it isn't. And recap analysis sometimes is necessary and you don't see it right away, but might lern for the future - or not. (like i pointed out in the famous wizard duel with charmyna I could have tried shooting my wizards tower with my ballista to recast a new one).

Am not sure if it is really related to English, probably a bit, but more comes from my direct way in general. I had been reviewing games a few years and are focusing a lot on finding flaws... Also the ones of the play testers know my posts, I am often also more direct there and rather critical about a single life/mana/... balancing cards, even if many find a nice card I say its still a nice card with 1 life more, but also competitive so why not change it. I am very mathematical driven sometimes.

Concerning tourneys, the Winter special was meant for December/January wasn't it? That's why i didn't compete being busy there, just dragged a long a bit. Small prices might change participation and activity too (an academy pack or LG or ... for example). What I had really enjoyed about some of the older tourneys were posted books and small recap writing by the players in Thunder dome G for example. I think about two kind of tourneys, long one easy which take time or short ones were a game has to be every week roughly or even less and you write small after match reports and discuss the strategy. That will create a momentum of real community interaction for a rather short period. Some might invest the time from that experience we might be very motivated for a longer period to try what you see in the tourney, reading through the post-game analysis' for example.

In my PoV a short intense tourney is probably better for the community than a long one (which you can still do in a league format maybe) with spikes and new ideas.

I just want to make the best of the game, I think I tried to post a lot to the community and playtesting group to help people and get AW further. I am personally no huge fan of Academy, too spiky due to low dice on luck and secondly less strategic, i really enjoy the mind games on prepared spells and hidden enchantments, academy is just lighter there. And yeah I agree with a few posters that some new mechanics are getting unnecessary complex.

[Reddicediaries]

I am sorry if anyone feels offended. It’s important that a lot of players play and make mistakes. I thought more of giving helpful critics and maybe a bit of play analysis after to say what could be done better and so on. I was kind of a bit more suprised of the commentary @coshade bud :-*y. We already had a similar discussion at some stage in a german speeking tourney of our critics being to harsh, but I rather be strict than calling some play awesome if it isn't. And recap analysis sometimes is necessary and you don't see it right away, but might lern for the future - or not. (like i pointed out in the famous wizard duel with charmyna I could have tried shooting my wizards tower with my ballista to recast a new one).

Am not sure if it is really related to English, probably a bit, but more comes from my direct way in general. I had been reviewing games a few years and are focusing a lot on finding flaws... Also the ones of the play testers know my posts, I am often also more direct there and rather critical about a single life/mana/... balancing cards, even if many find a nice card I say its still a nice card with 1 life more, but also competitive so why not change it. I am very mathematical driven sometimes.

Concerning tourneys, the Winter special was meant for December/January wasn't it? That's why i didn't compete being busy there, just dragged a long a bit. Small prices might change participation and activity too (an academy pack or LG or ... for example). What I had really enjoyed about some of the older tourneys were posted books and small recap writing by the players in Thunder dome G for example. I think about two kind of tourneys, long one easy which take time or short ones were a game has to be every week roughly or even less and you write small after match reports and discuss the strategy. That will create a momentum of real community interaction for a rather short period. Some might invest the time from that experience we might be very motivated for a longer period to try what you see in the tourney, reading through the post-game analysis' for example.

In my PoV a short intense tourney is probably better for the community than a long one (which you can still do in a league format maybe) with spikes and new ideas.

I just want to make the best of the game, I think I tried to post a lot to the community and playtesting group to help people and get AW further. I am personally no huge fan of Academy, too spiky due to low dice on luck and secondly less strategic, i really enjoy the mind games on prepared spells and hidden enchantments, academy is just lighter there. And yeah I agree with a few posters that some new mechanics are getting unnecessary complex.

If you don't mind my asking, what are your thoughts on the recent mage/card releases?

[Biblofilter]

I gotta support Mystery here.

If you don´t play bad/make mistakes, you should win almost all you matches.

Luck rarely has much to do with who actually wins a Mage Wars Arena game.

Id rather have someone tell me what i do wrong and what i can do better, than people trying hard not to offend me.

On the Tourney subject i really think Arcane Duels are doing a great job. Please continue. Try out whatever format. Slow or Fast i don´t really care