Eye in the Sky - Forcemaster

[RomeoXero]

See borg you took a step forward to take a step back again. If you're gonna apologize for hurting someone's feelings then do so. Don't follow it up by qualifying how it didn't insult YOU to say those things and then insult him again by calling his play "rude and insulting". He's a kid dude, just be nicen how hard is that?

To the OP i find that ignoring the eyes and destroying the spores feeding them is often the smartest choice. There's not many places to hide the squishy little wand critters on the 4by3 arena. Flying creatures help but i say knock the buggers out of the sky and the eyes will have far less to do and will consume the FMs spells (without wands that is) and make having cast eye in the first place a wasted action.

[Borg]

Well, let's consider the situation where an opposing mage pops out his Elemental Wand / Jet Stream early to focus on the Spores quickly, possibly protected by Champion's Gauntlets.
The usual DissolveSpore approach may turn out to be too slow to handle this focused attack.

How can the FM react to this direct assault with equal speed ?
Which cards give him equal speed ?

[mwcard=MWSTX2FFI03] Disarm[/mwcard]

A Spore with Glancing Blow should be able to live through 1 Jet Stream attack.
At that point the opposing mage will be within range 2 of the FM as well.
Reaction : Disarm the Gauntlets and Dissolve the Wand.

[mwcard=FWI09] Steal Equipment[/mwcard]

This one might be even better as this card bypasses the Champion's Gauntlets.
Potentially from range 2 : Force Pull enemy mage to within range 1 and take away his Wand with Steal Equipment. Why destroy something that might be of use to yourself ?

Anticipating to use this card at some point, the Wand of Healing may take the fall.

Other changes that seem appropriate :

As much as I like Piercing Thunderstrike, the 4 sbp's are a heavy cost and I think I'll prefer to expand my toolbox of attack spells with two other spells instead which may be more useful for the survival of the Spores.

[mwcard=MWSTX1CKA01] Surging Wave[/mwcard]

Only three attack dice but the ability to reliably put a Slam/Daze on a threatening creature round after round surely helps the survivability of the Spores ( and your Vampiress and FM as well of course ).
Bonus : possible push and ability to deal with Battle Forge.

[mwcard=MW1A09] Jet Stream[/mwcard]

Sometimes you just got to fight fire with fire.
Great in a mirror match and against Flying.
Gives you an Ethereal attack spell again.

[mwcard=FWA01] Arc Lightning[/mwcard]

Toolbox spell vs Lightning +2 opposition
Great to have around in the right situation but maybe a Force Hammer is more useful overall.
Undecided as of now.

An extra Teleport and a Tanglevine were added as well.

I'll update the book in the opening post.

[zot]

i believe the steal eq first destroys the target, so the gauntlets may be in play for preventing it.

[jacksmack]

Steal equipment bypasses gauntlets completely. (unless you (very in-efficiently) use it to destroy a warmage / warlord only ring / weapon.)

Its particularly nasty to steal a wand with a discount rune on, as it will now cost the DWARF addiotional mana to destroy the wand, and you may benefit from the rune yourself by paying less when casting an attached spell.

Just remember if you replace the spell, then the jetstream (or whatever is on the wand) goes back to the dwarfs spellbook.

[zot]

i thought there was a ruling somewhere that the theft included destruction first.

[jacksmack]

i thought there was a ruling somewhere that the theft included destruction first.

Thats new to me. Can you find where it is?

[bigfatchef]

Funny to see books changing. In reply #6 I asked you why there is no steal equipment. Your answer was a very good one. The main problem is the full cast and that it is not very efficient and very occasional. You have to be in range 1 to cast it since the eyes can't handle it. In early rounds (when the wand would come out) you need your full action to cast spores or vampiress not to walk.
Great card, but you convinced me it's not  that versatile in this book 

Besides that I am also highly interested to know how steal equipment interacts with champion gauntlets.

[Borg]

Funny to see books changing. In reply #6 I asked you why there is no steal equipment. Your answer was a very good one. The main problem is the full cast and that it is not very efficient and very occasional. You have to be in range 1 to cast it since the eyes can't handle it. In early rounds (when the wand would come out) you need your full action to cast spores or vampiress not to walk.
Great card, but you convinced me it's not  that versatile in this book 

Touché
Credit goes to you for bringing up that card early on, Chef.

Originally I didn't consider SE as I wasn't looking to steal weapons or armor.

If Jet Stream Wands become a more common counter to the Spores however it seems like Steal Equipment could be a good counter to that.

Besides that I am also highly interested to know how steal equipment interacts with champion gauntlets.

I'm sure Zuberi will have all the details about that interaction but I think it goes like this ( let's take Elemental Wand as example )

When you play SE you gain control of the Elemental Wand but it's still in the opposing Mage's Weapon or Shield slot, so Champion's Gauntlets still prevents it from being destroyed.
Champion's Gauntlets doesn't check who controls the equipment, it only checks location.
That means your only option is to attach it to yourself.

Works somewhat the other way round as when you would target a Lash of Hellfire.
Here your only option would be to destroy it as a FM can't equip it. ( Wouldn't be considered a great move though at that cost )

[Ridethesandworm]

I would think a book like this would get a lot of value out of including a crumble and disperse to put on the thoughtspores in order to save mana. Is the opportunity cost of giving up the ability to move your thoughtspores too expensive?

[Reddicediaries]

I would think a book like this would get a lot of value out of including a crumble and disperse to put on the thoughtspores in order to save mana. Is the opportunity cost of giving up the ability to move your thoughtspores too expensive?

Smart thinking!
Sadly, crumble and disperse do not work through eyes.

[Ridethesandworm]

I guess I didn't read the card closely enough. Thanks