Epic Mage Wars

[Zombie@Heart]

I've been playing with the idea of doing an epic Mage Wars Arena game. Where you treat all cards in a spell book as if they had the epic trait. i.e. only one copy of any one spell in a single spell book. I imagine it would really open up player strategies and get people away from only relying on one or two strategies and at the very least make for a fun game. It would also make spells with cantrip and spellbind invaluable.
This obviously presents problems for some mages, the druid specifically comes to mind. As well as any mage that focuses on swarm tactics like necromancer or beast master. But overall i could see spell books with multiple varying strategies over a single game.
Has anyone ever tried a game like this? Would love thoughts, feedback suggestions? Or any other house rules players have implemented into this kind of game

[Sailor Vulcan]

I've been playing with the idea of doing an epic Mage Wars Arena game. Where you treat all cards in a spell book as if they had the epic trait. i.e. only one copy of any one spell in a single spell book. I imagine it would really open up player strategies and get people away from only relying on one or two strategies and at the very least make for a fun game. It would also make spells with cantrip and spellbind invaluable.
This obviously presents problems for some mages, the druid specifically comes to mind. As well as any mage that focuses on swarm tactics like necromancer or beast master. But overall i could see spell books with multiple varying strategies over a single game.
Has anyone ever tried a game like this? Would love thoughts, feedback suggestions? Or any other house rules players have implemented into this kind of game

I have not tried it but it would likely not affect the gameplay the way you think it will. I suspect it will decrease the number of coherent strategies, not increase it. Also, for a spellbook to have only one or two strategies is not the same as being tactically inflexible, nor does that decrease the diversity of the meta.

Why not just make more kinds of spellbooks? If you're getting bored of people using the same old strategies all the time, try something new to spice things up and they will be forced to adapt their tactics and spellbooks to respond to you.

Do try it and let us know how it goes though.

[Kelanen]

Other than a few staples I rarely have more than one of a spell in a book anyway. I have lots of similar spells covering a need slightly differently - eg: most books have a Dissolve, a Crumble, a Disarm, an Acid Ball and a Rust before they add the 2nd of anything. You could drop your 2nd Teleport to a Lesser Teleport, and I already do drop my 3rd to a Force Push.

Swarm builds (already on the weaker side) lose their coherent swarm, but other than that it would be minimal impact.

[ClockWork]

cut card allowance in half like academy. Only 3 lvl1's allowed, and only 2 copies of everything else. Might shake up your local meta with completely gutting many books or strategies. I do feel you though, hate it when you have successful dissolved 3 mage wands off a wizard, while dealing with 4 nullify's, and the very next turn there is another mage wand.

[Halewijn]

While I also dislike plays like that I tend to leave it mostly. I try to use dissolve/dispel as little as possible in most of my games. Mostly I try to play around these things and go more on the offence. Only when a certain enchantment/equipment is a must destroy to win the game I'll actually dissolve/dispel.

[iNano78]

cut card allowance in half like academy. Only 3 lvl1's allowed, and only 2 copies of everything else. Might shake up your local meta with completely gutting many books or strategies.

This would have no effect on almost any of my spell books - except swarms, which would have to swap some level 1 creatures for different level 1 creatures.

If your goal is to hurt the guy playing 4x Elemental Wands and 6x Nullify, remember that every time you remove one with Crumble/Dissolve, you come out ahead in both mana and spell book points (since he loses the attack spell, too). There's also Curse Equipment and Explode.

In fact, with some of the redundancy (e.g. equipment that does basically the same thing, alternatives to Block, alternatives to Nullify, etc), I'm not sure limiting to 2/3 or even a "Highlander" does much other than push swarms out - unless you also restricted certain expansion sets (e.g. all Academy products, which then bans Wychwood Ironvine, the pants slot, Arcane Ward, Disperse, Crumble, Curse Equipment, Iguana Regrowth, Gator Toughness, Redirect and similar, etc).

[Beldin]

Building on what has already been said, I totally agree that in this format you just adapt and overcome. You do not hurt swarms that much either, you just change it so you have a swarm of different creatures.  It possibly only really hurts Necromancer swarm who has 3-4 good zombies.

A Beastmaster on the other hand stops being a low cost swarm and kicks it to mid range, lays a mana crystal and a mana flower in the first 2 turns, maybe a lair. Then hes on 11 Channelling or 13 converted channelling. He chucks out a Tinder Wolf, a Dire wolf, maybe QC a bat pet. So no, it just shifts paradigms without damaging any real archetype.

Adapt and overcome baeby. 

[Kelanen]

You do not hurt swarms that much either, you just change it so you have a swarm of different creatures. 

I disagree... A swarm needs lots of identical creatures generally. You need Falcons for an Aviary, you need Bear Cubs, Wychwood Hounds, Wildfire Imps, etc for their respective decks. Putting one of each in loses all synergy with the Conjurations/Matriarchs/other hounds/Zone Attacks spells, and leaves you with a much weaker book

A Beastmaster on the other hand stops being a low cost swarm and kicks it to mid range, lays a mana crystal and a mana flower in the first 2 turns, maybe a lair. Then hes on 11 Channelling or 13 converted channelling. He chucks out a Tinder Wolf, a Dire wolf, maybe QC a bat pet. So no, it just shifts paradigms without damaging any real archetype.

That's not a swarm, it's a mid-range book. Stretching definitions that far makes them meaningless - In which case have a buddy build that uses 6-8 buddies at a time, a control book that stops you doing stuff by killing you quickly and a rush book that will inexorably kill you on Turn 20...

Making all cards Epic doesn't stop mages or creatures working, nor does it stop rush books - but it does stop swarms... (which already have a lot of counters...)