Strategy/Playstyle chart for Mage Wars Arena attempt 2

[Kelanen]

I'm not sure I'm following your logic. If being able to have access to all the cards in your deck each round made control more powerful than aggro, wouldn't it do that regardless? The sample size of competitive Mage Wars play is not that big, but it's not so tiny as to be completely insignificant. Sure, there's no chance that you don't draw your ring of fire when you need it. There's also no chance you don't draw Etherian lifetree or Slavorg when you need it.

Take a hypothetical MtG environment where the best control and aggro decks are 50/50. Aggro decks are always highly redundant, with 4x all the most efficient creatures and spells, whilst control decks tend to be more nuanced, trying to fit more answers in by dropping the card counts, of some, and using their increased longevity to draw more cards, and usually some library manipulation or card draw, to increase the chances of getting to the right answer at the right time. So the aggro deck will generally have enough redundant pieces that it will fill it's mana curve efficiently for the first 3-4 turns, and whilst some cards will be slightly better than others, there is a high degree of interchangeability, and thus it stalls less often. The control deck in such an environment may be relying on it's Wrath of God effect top reset on turn 4, and the 50/50 win rate could largely come down to do they draw it or not.

MW has no such parallel, and that's one of the things that's great about it (full disclosure - I'm biased; I'm a control player at heart). You will get your Ring of Fire on turn 4, and if you put a 2nd in there, you'll get that when you need it too. The random element added into MW is via the Attack dice, but they create a very shallow bell-curve probabilitywise, and although confirmation bias makes us remember those zero/max damages, it all averages out over a pretty short number of iterations.

What I'm saying is that there isn't nearly the random factor in MW that there is in MtG (which is in turn much less random than your average FNM player will tell you). An aggro deck that could consistently win into the right responses would do so 90% of the time, not 50%, so the game is necessarily tilted away from that, and towards a more controlled environment.

Put another way, when you lose early to an aggro book in MW, you can't blame mana screw or bad draws, or your opponent getting a god hand. It happens because you made a mistake, probably several. Some will have been in book building, and some in play (moving too close, not armouring up early enough, not predicting your opponents actions correctly, and far enough in advance). This is why Coshade talks about Rush books as being good training books - they are precisely that; a very unforgiving tutor. They can absolutely be beaten, but they can also lay you out cold several times in a row whilst you work out how...

This is what I love about MW - there's nowhere to hide, blaming card draws. Even MtG those bad draws are probably mistakes - not enough land in the deck, not mulliganing aggressively enough, risking an extra round of damage before sweeping, etc), but it's easy to convince ourselves that we played well, and 'luck' screwed us. We play well when we win, but we are unlucky when we lose... (there's a whole psychology article just in that). What makes MW so good is it removes most of the real luck, as well as the bad excuses - when someone beats you, it means some combination of their book and their play was superior to yours. Then you get to analyse why and improve on it...

And as it was said earlier, straywood aviary is not really a rush deck. It's an aggressive swarm deck, which is not as aggro as rushing.

Agreed - it's an aggressive book, more than a controlling one, but it's not a Rush book.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I'm not sure I'm following your logic. If being able to have access to all the cards in your deck each round made control more powerful than aggro, wouldn't it do that regardless? The sample size of competitive Mage Wars play is not that big, but it's not so tiny as to be completely insignificant. Sure, there's no chance that you don't draw your ring of fire when you need it. There's also no chance you don't draw Etherian lifetree or Slavorg when you need it.

Take a hypothetical MtG environment where the best control and aggro decks are 50/50. Aggro decks are always highly redundant, with 4x all the most efficient creatures and spells, whilst control decks tend to be more nuanced, trying to fit more answers in by dropping the card counts, of some, and using their increased longevity to draw more cards, and usually some library manipulation or card draw, to increase the chances of getting to the right answer at the right time. So the aggro deck will generally have enough redundant pieces that it will fill it's mana curve efficiently for the first 3-4 turns, and whilst some cards will be slightly better than others, there is a high degree of interchangeability, and thus it stalls less often. The control deck in such an environment may be relying on it's Wrath of God effect top reset on turn 4, and the 50/50 win rate could largely come down to do they draw it or not.

MW has no such parallel, and that's one of the things that's great about it (full disclosure - I'm biased; I'm a control player at heart). You will get your Ring of Fire on turn 4, and if you put a 2nd in there, you'll get that when you need it too. The random element added into MW is via the Attack dice, but they create a very shallow bell-curve probabilitywise, and although confirmation bias makes us remember those zero/max damages, it all averages out over a pretty short number of iterations.

What I'm saying is that there isn't nearly the random factor in MW that there is in MtG (which is in turn much less random than your average FNM player will tell you). An aggro deck that could consistently win into the right responses would do so 90% of the time, not 50%, so the game is necessarily tilted away from that, and towards a more controlled environment.

Put another way, when you lose early to an aggro book in MW, you can't blame mana screw or bad draws, or your opponent getting a god hand. It happens because you made a mistake, probably several. Some will have been in book building, and some in play (moving too close, not armouring up early enough, not predicting your opponents actions correctly, and far enough in advance). This is why Coshade talks about Rush books as being good training books - they are precisely that; a very unforgiving tutor. They can absolutely be beaten, but they can also lay you out cold several times in a row whilst you work out how...

This is what I love about MW - there's nowhere to hide, blaming card draws. Even MtG those bad draws are probably mistakes - not enough land in the deck, not mulliganing aggressively enough, risking an extra round of damage before sweeping, etc), but it's easy to convince ourselves that we played well, and 'luck' screwed us. We play well when we win, but we are unlucky when we lose... (there's a whole psychology article just in that). What makes MW so good is it removes most of the real luck, as well as the bad excuses - when someone beats you, it means some combination of their book and their play was superior to yours. Then you get to analyse why and improve on it...

And as it was said earlier, straywood aviary is not really a rush deck. It's an aggressive swarm deck, which is not as aggro as rushing.

Agreed - it's an aggressive book, more than a controlling one, but it's not a Rush book.

Well, play skill is still fairly important in mtg, but it's generally one of the least important factors in game outcomes.

In mtg, deck building skill>card access>play skill<>luck. (whether luck or play skill is more important depends on the game. Mana screw/flood happens about a third of the time even at high competitive levels. And when it does happen player skill is much less likely to make any difference. But when neither player is mana screwed, luck is probably less of a factor then play skill.)

In mw, play skill>deckbuilding skill>card access>luck

While Mage Wars strategies do exist in a continuum, they seem like they tend to fall into clusters depending on how many actions and pseudo actions they generate per round and how offensive/defensive they are:  aggro swarm, control swarm, turtle, few big, rush, tank

I probably should have elaborated on that in the OP.



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[Kelanen]

Well, play skill is still fairly important in mtg, but it's generally one of the least important factors in game outcomes.

In mtg, deck building skill>card access>play skill<>luck.

In mw, play skill>deckbuilding skill>card access>luck

I'm afraid I disagree with all of that!

[Sailor Vulcan]

Well, play skill is still fairly important in mtg, but it's generally one of the least important factors in game outcomes.

In mtg, deck building skill>card access>play skill<>luck.

In mw, play skill>deckbuilding skill>card access>luck

I'm afraid I disagree with all of that!

It might seem to differ based on your experiences. The way to judge this isn't based on merely asking yourself what made the biggest difference in the games of mtg which you have played. The question is to ask how much of a difference these things would make relative to each other.

In mtg, if one players deck is better built than the other's chances are more likely that the first player will win, even if the worse deck is used by the better player or is used by a player who got luckier draws or if the worse player had better card access. A well built budget mtg deck usually wins against a poorly built expensive mtg deck.

If both players have equally well built decks but one of them has better card access, the player with better card access is more likely to win, because a lot of cards that are staples are hella expensive, and without them any remotely skilled player will shut you out on turn 1 no matter how skilled you are at mtg gameplay and no matter how well you built your deck with the cards you have access to. A pro level champion using a well built budget deck is unlikely to win against a regional or local champion who uses an expensive well built deck. Because they will be shut out on turn one unless they fork out the cash for more expensive cards.

And if both players have equally well built decks and have equal card access, then the game will be decided by some combination of luck and skill. Unless it's a match, in which case sideboarding becomes much more important than player skill. Because sideboarding is deckbuilding skill, not play skill.

In Mage Wars, if two players have equally well built decks, and get about just as lucky during the game, the more skilled player will usually win even if they have a smaller card collection. And if two mw players have about equal luck during the game and equal card access, the more skilled player will usually win even if they have a worse built deck than their opponent (unless their deck is completely trash). And a mw deck that uses fewer sets but is better built will tend to win against a deck that uses more sets but is not as well built.

[Kelanen]

Firstly MtG has a completely different order in say Sealed deck vs Constructed.

Secondly, whilst play skill in MW is more important, I think play skill plateaus more quickly than deckbuilding. I definitely beat most of my opponents at deckbuilding I think.

Also, I think card access is INCREDIBLY important in MW, or at least the right cards.

I do agree luck is at the bottom for both.

I think there is more nuance and variation in this than can be easily compared, let alone usefully however.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Firstly MtG has a completely different order in say Sealed deck vs Constructed.

Secondly, whilst play skill in MW is more important, I think play skill plateaus more quickly than deckbuilding. I definitely beat most of my opponents at deckbuilding I think.

Also, I think card access is INCREDIBLY important in MW, or at least the right cards.

I do agree luck is at the bottom for both.

I think there is more nuance and variation in this than can be easily compared, let alone usefully however.

Eh, maybe you're right that card access is incredibly important. If so, the fact that the Mage Wars card pool is still fairly small might have something to do with why core set only books can still be viable.

It's also possible that card access plateaus too. Maybe there are only a few expansions that a Mage needs to be viable in a competitive format at the minimum, and anything beyond that isn't strictly necessary from a competitive standpoint?

[Kelanen]

Eh, maybe you're right that card access is incredibly important. If so, the fact that the Mage Wars card pool is still fairly small might have something to do with why core set only books can still be viable.

I don't think they are. If viable means a reasonable competitive book, or a good causal one, then sure.  But no Acid Ball, Disperse, Crumble, Disarm, Leather Chausses, Lesser Teleport or Rust? Each of those is a pretty big hit against 80-90% of books, without considering anything mage or book specific.

A lot of books easily run 6-8 Armour and Vet Belts, and you need Corrode to deal with that. 5.5  of the choices are about mana/effect efficiency and if you are paying an extra couple of mana every round or two, then that's enough to take you out of viable.

It's also possible that card access plateaus too. Maybe there are only a few expansions that a Mage needs to be viable in a competitive format at the minimum, and anything beyond that isn't strictly necessary from a competitive standpoint?

Definitely not all mages need access to all sets. In fact I've often opined to new players that you can actually get  in striking distance of an optimal book with a core set, the mage's 'home' set (if not core) and one expansion.  The Academy Base Set (ABS) really needs adding onto that though, more than the extra expansion in most cases...

Beastmaster, Jokhtari - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?
Beastmaster, Straywood - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?
Druid - Core, ABS, DvN
Forcemaster - Core, ABS, FvW
Necromancer - Core, ABS, DvN
Paladin - Core, ABS, PvS
Priest - Core, ABS, PvS
Priestess - Core, ABS, PvS
Siren - Core, ABS, PvS
Warlock, Adramelech - Core, ABS,  FiF
Warlock, Arraxian - Core, ABS, FiF
Warlord, Anvil Throne - Core, ABS, FiF,
Warlord, BloodwaveCore, Core, FvW, FiF
Wizard - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?

CoK is a good set for everyone, but not unmissable for anyone.

That list makes everyone pretty good on a Core and 2 expansions. The key things you are missing are Acid Balls and to a lesser extent Disarms almost everywhere, and Guardian Angel from all Holy books and a few others.

I wouldn't call them tournament viable, but more than casual viable...

[Sailor Vulcan]

Eh, maybe you're right that card access is incredibly important. If so, the fact that the Mage Wars card pool is still fairly small might have something to do with why core set only books can still be viable.

I don't think they are. If viable means a reasonable competitive book, or a good causal one, then sure.  But no Acid Ball, Disperse, Crumble, Disarm, Leather Chausses, Lesser Teleport or Rust? Each of those is a pretty big hit against 80-90% of books, without considering anything mage or book specific.

A lot of books easily run 6-8 Armour and Vet Belts, and you need Corrode to deal with that. 5.5  of the choices are about mana/effect efficiency and if you are paying an extra couple of mana every round or two, then that's enough to take you out of viable.

It's also possible that card access plateaus too. Maybe there are only a few expansions that a Mage needs to be viable in a competitive format at the minimum, and anything beyond that isn't strictly necessary from a competitive standpoint?

Definitely not all mages need access to all sets. In fact I've often opined to new players that you can actually get  in striking distance of an optimal book with a core set, the mage's 'home' set (if not core) and one expansion.  The Academy Base Set (ABS) really needs adding onto that though, more than the extra expansion in most cases...

Beastmaster, Jokhtari - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?
Beastmaster, Straywood - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?
Druid - Core, ABS, DvN
Forcemaster - Core, ABS, FvW
Necromancer - Core, ABS, DvN
Paladin - Core, ABS, PvS
Priest - Core, ABS, PvS
Priestess - Core, ABS, PvS
Siren - Core, ABS, PvS
Warlock, Adramelech - Core, ABS,  FiF
Warlock, Arraxian - Core, ABS, FiF
Warlord, Anvil Throne - Core, ABS, FiF,
Warlord, BloodwaveCore, Core, FvW, FiF
Wizard - Core, ABS, CoK/DvN?

CoK is a good set for everyone, but not unmissable for anyone.

That list makes everyone pretty good on a Core and 2 expansions. The key things you are missing are Acid Balls and to a lesser extent Disarms almost everywhere, and Guardian Angel from all Holy books and a few others.

I wouldn't call them tournament viable, but more than casual viable...

I don't think the lack of acid ball, disperse, crumble, disarm, chauses, lesser teleport or rust makes such a big difference to whether it's possible for any book in general to be competitive. Just maybe some strategies that don't work as well without more sets.

Let's break this down a bit.

Acid ball corrodes to remove armor, and rust just removed two armor. But you can just dissolve/dispel/pierce their armor. This means that you have to either run a book with some piercing, or you have to be able to dissolve/dispel armor, or some combination of the two.

Basically the amount of dissolves/dispels you need to reserve for armor depends on how much piercing or dot you have.

The lack of crumble/disperse means that you need to use dissolve/dispel. To leverage dissolve/dispel properly you need a Mage that wants to move around. If your sitting in one place all the time then disperse/crumble would be better of course, but dissolve and dispel cost an extra 2 mana and cost a quick action rather than a full action like disperse/crumble. That means you don't want to turtle with a core only deck.

Without disarm or a good way to protect your familiars, you need to get up close to the enemy Mage to deal with their equipments or if they are obscured--if you care about their equipments/enchantments that much that you would want to destroy/disable them rather than deal with them some other way, anyways. For instance, if they put on regrowth belt, just put poisoned blood on them, and have an extra copy if they destroy it.

Decoys also are a good way to bluff arcane wards, reinforce, traps, etc. Opponents will try to seeking dispel it or something, and that will cost them an extra quick action. Or they'll call your bluff, in which case you just reveal decoy and get two mana back.

Dissolve is 2 more net mana than crumble, but a revealed decoy is 2 less net mana than an arcane ward or reinforce etc. dissolve and decoy is two quick actions, while crumble and arcane ward is one full action and one quick action. Plus, arcane ward refunds enemy mana while decoy does not. While in theory they could just ignore your facedown decoy, *they don't actually know that it's a decoy* so they'll have to treat it like it's something else, just in case because they might be wrong.

Lesser teleport only works on friendly creatures and doesn't free them from tanglevines or stuck or grapple. Why not just use force push and teleport? Sure it costs more mana and spell points, but it gets the job done just fine. You don't need to teleport things through walls in every spellbook. Just use eagle wings if it's a big creature, or destroy the wall if you have lots of little creatures. Or if the wall blocks los but not passage, just push it through if you think it won't kill the creature. Or you can use your own wall to put there first instead and prevent your opponent from putting a wall there.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any innately unmovable creatures in the core set, nor any that aren't big enough to be worth normal teleporting or giving cheetah speed/eagle wings too. And of the smaller ones I can't think of any that would need to be teleported individually. Of the ways of giving unmovable to creatures: steadfast boots, eagleclaw boots, tanglevines, stranglevine, force crush, force hold, and stuck conditions, the only ones that would be worth using against smaller creatures are stuck conditions. Of course, steadfast boots can be equipped to the enemy Mage to prevent them from pushing or teleporting themselves for a round if they don't already have boots on, but if they already have leather boots on then this trick won't work. Although I suppose someone can just dissolve leather boots first. Or they could tanglevine me and then put steadfast boots on me and jinx me. That would buy them two rounds in which I couldn't push or teleport my Mage instead of just one, but then why wouldn't they just use astral anchor? Not to mention steadfast boots is a war mage only spell and most war Mages will not include it for use on enemy Mages. And there are no war mages in the core set, so they can't cast steadfast boots on a core only deck anyway.

So basically, a core only deck will probably tend to be more aggressive than one that uses a larger card pool. Not because you have to always catch your opponents by surprise and beat them before they realize you're playing a core only deck. But rather because by themselves the cards in the core set tend to lend themselves more to aggressive styles of play.

[Kelanen]

Yes, you can do all of those things, but less efficiently - if you don't think 1-2 mana or an action here or there, then we are talking different levels of play, and distinctions of what matters.

I think they are huge. I also think changing a win rate by 5% is huge.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Yes, you can do all of those things, but less efficiently - if you don't think 1-2 mana or an action here or there, then we are talking different levels of play, and distinctions of what matters.

I think they are huge. I also think changing a win rate by 5% is huge.

I think you just ignored or skimmed over everything specific I just said up to and including "core only decks probably tend to be more aggressive". Also I am skeptical that the difference in win rates is as large as 5%. I wish there was some way to test the win rate of well designed core only decks, but unfortunately I'm the only one who seems to be making any.

Then again, it could also be that in Mage Wars there are almost never two players who are perfectly equally skilled at the game. So maybe the difference in win rates would be as large as 5% if Mage Wars playing skill were less variable.

Maybe I'm just unusually good at this game and that gives me the illusion that core only is reasonably competitive if built right--because a less skilled player who was equally familiar with a core only deck might still have a much harder time winning with that core only deck than another well built deck they were just as familiar with. I don't know.  But I'm not sure you do either.

[Kelanen]

I'm off to bed now, but I'll write a point by point rebuttal tomorrow. But honestly I think most of those core suggestions are pretty awful. I also don't often see people caring about face-down enchantments much.

[Enti]

I'd use another method to determine if a magebook is aggro/midgame/control.

By looking how much mana he or she invests into mana-generation.

The less mana he invests the more aggro he is. (And if he is not playing aggro and is not investing in mana either, the player is just a newbie, but talking about people who know what they're doing - generally speaking.)

For example the most aggressive move is to run 2 fields and play an enchantment on yourself. If someone opens like that, you have to bring out an armor immediately. Even delaying it for 1 round could prove fatal.

Then there is the ordinary midgame opening. 1 spawnpoint and 1-3 spells to boost your mana.

And finally the control build..  I'd say it starts when the enemy mage uses more than 4 actions to increase his mana base.
Spawnpoint, amulet, 2x manaflower. That is still a slow midgame strategy. But any additional mana investment - then it is control (lategame) from my point of view.

What do you say? Obviously the borders are not exactly determined, it's only a rule of thumb classification if you want to label your builds.

[Biblofilter]

Im having trouble with some of the terms in this tread and im not sure we are on the same page.

World Pro Tour is something we don´t have in Mage Wars - a big MW tourney would be something like 12-16 players.

To win an event like that you probably "only" have to win 4 out of 5 matches.

I think a core set book could have a chance of winning something like GenCon. So it could be both viable and competitive. However i can´t see a book like that being "best" and most certainly suppar to the book you could build if you used all the allowed cards.

And i don´t understand why you would do that?

Let say you up against a flying book. Having Gravikor would be really good, but if you don´t face any flyers your book would be "better" without it.

Trying to guess what other players are going to bring is tuff and uncertain anyway. Best chance would be if you know some of the participants really well. Like your training buddy or regular opponents.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Im having trouble with some of the terms in this tread and im not sure we are on the same page.

World Pro Tour is something we don´t have in Mage Wars - a big MW tourney would be something like 12-16 players.

To win an event like that you probably "only" have to win 4 out of 5 matches.

I think a core set book could have a chance of winning something like GenCon. So it could be both viable and competitive. However i can´t see a book like that being "best" and most certainly suppar to the book you could build if you used all the allowed cards.

And i don´t understand why you would do that?

Let say you up against a flying book. Having Gravikor would be really good, but if you don´t face any flyers your book would be "better" without it.

Trying to guess what other players are going to bring is tuff and uncertain anyway. Best chance would be if you know some of the participants really well. Like your training buddy or regular opponents.

Maim wings is in the core set. So is knockdown. So is flameblast. So is the wizard with arcane zap.

Also, no one is arguing that the core set only builds are just as good as non-core set only builds. Just saying that a well-built core only deck can still be reasonably viable/competitive. At least in the current meta. Maybe it won't be when the card pool gets too big, but I don't think we've gotten to that point yet. I have noticed that turtling or using a one-buddy build with core only might not work so well any more because of disperse/crumble being better for turtling than dissolve/dispel, as well as siren's call and the fact that the only psychic immune creatures in the core set are skeletal sentries.


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[Super Sorcerer]

ב"ה

In mw, play skill>deckbuilding skill>card access>luck

Actually, I disagree for the other side.
Let's say we have dice with a little modification, the d12 will have a chance of 10% for the 9-12 results and only 7.5% for the rest of the results, and the attack dice will have 20% for 1crit and 2crit and only 15% for non-crit results. A noob would still most likely lose against a skilled player even if the noob would use the modified dice. However, I would definitely rather have the modified dice and use only the core set without any expansions rather than getting access to all spells but using standard dice.

For comparison-
In MtG, even if a player is allowed to separate his deck into lands and non-land, and on each draw he choose whether to draw a land or a non-land (which is a far greater boost to luck than the one I suggested for mage wars), he could still do almost nothing with a core set against a deck that has access to all cards.