Strategic Variety in the Mage Wars Arena metagame Discussion

[Enti]

Good analysis @ zot

You might be spot on.


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Although my newly made druid domination book looks very much like an arena book you have to PLAY it totally different. I really enjoy the different setup, it's a shame people take so much time to finish their ADMW games, otherwise we could soon start a huge domination tournament!

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For Sailor, some additional specific ideas to spice your games up:
- When you make an appointment with a friend, you both tell the other what mage you use beforehand.
Have fun with the deckbuilding, I did that a few times and it really is a totally different feeling when you build your mage and do not have to cover every eventuality. So many points suddenly that you can fill with counter-cards to exactly what you expect him to do.
Sadly, he is doing exactly the same, so... have fun! :p

- If you have someone with whom you play regularly: First game is like always, but the winner is not allowed to change his deck until he lost with it. So the loser gets a huge boost in the next game because not only can he modify his deck perfectly he even knows the strategy that his opponent will use.
Preferably you should both be on a similar level, otherwise it might get.. embarrassing? ^^

- If you want to go crazy and totally imbalanced, ban certain cards or certain entire schools. No more arcane eg.

[wtcannonjr]

- If you have someone with whom you play regularly: First game is like always, but the winner is not allowed to change his deck until he lost with it. So the loser gets a huge boost in the next game because not only can he modify his deck perfectly he even knows the strategy that his opponent will use.
Preferably you should both be on a similar level, otherwise it might get.. embarrassing?

We call this format "King of the Hill". It is fun because you want to design your books with multiple strategies to take on different mages and threats. During play you want to manage what you reveal to your opponent so that you can still have surprises for him in the next match if you become King. Our longest serving King is 3 matches at the moment, but my Necromancer has a chance to take it to four. I am just waiting for him to bring his next challenger to the Arena.

The other format that we use to change things up is to bring many mages to game day and then randomly select a mage AND randomly select the format of the match (Domination or Arena). This requires each mage to balance their book design for both options of play and potentially have a set of spells that are not useful in the format they find themselves. This adds another type of challenge to spellbook design which can be fun.

YMMV