Rush/Fast books are dead and will never recover unless cards are Errataed/Banned

[Puddnhead]

Just a note, sharkey's book was a ritual book and it did take first.

[DaveW]

Just a note, sharkey's book was a ritual book and it did take first.

Oh, that's right... the Necro that Tim was talking about. Sorry!

For some reason, I had in mind that the two Siren's were the Ritual books. Now that I look at it... it was the Necro and the Druid.

[zot]

what I don't want to see is that you have to rush or ritual to be competitive. that is what is bad for the game.

[Reddicediaries]

I have a few thoughts/questions on this.

Intangible from Arcane Duels talked about this way back, rushes have a lower ceiling and will not win as consistently. You are right that this is a trend that is becoming more pronounced. But is that a bad thing? The game is moving towards longer, more complex games, distancing itself from fast-paced mainstream card games.

Would you really prefer the opposite? That rushes were the main strategy in the game? Run forward, throw boulders, games are over in 30 minutes, all books are the same because opposed schools doesn't mean anything when only a small percentage of your SBP ever sees play. Obviously a middle ground is best, but at least long games are the lesser of two evils.

The big downside of Ritual of Kallek is that it burns your SBP for a short term gain. If SBP is worthless, then the Ritual is amazing. If SBP is worth something, then the Ritual is not worth as much. Same could be said about Wispwillow, Mana Lotus and Remove curse.

Everyone is limited by SBP, when building a book you need to balance it so you can win the game after your economy has paid off, both against rushes (which you claim is easy) but also other economy books (which should then provide you with some challenge).

How does your multiple spawnpoint Necromancer do against a multiple spawnpoint opponent? More importantly, do you consider those games boring?

Theoretically it is possible for a game of Mage Wars to last indefinitely, if both mages resolve to just sit in their corner and do nothing every turn. But how often does that happen? I think this has happened once in my MW career, no one wanted to engage so we agreed to a draw and played the next game. Does it often happen to anyone else? What happens in those situations?

Eventually you will have to engage to win, in a game of two economy books you should see skirmishes across the middle zones and larger, more important spells to swing the game like conjurations and zone attacks. Sounds fun and epic?

The biggest issue is probably real life time constraints? I like to think that quality games take time, and Mage Wars Arena at its slowest is still faster than most grand strategy games. Although it would really help if OCTGN had a save function.

Finally, the take from this is that more people should play Domination, it's a really fun game mode!

I think you are somewhat misunderstanding rush in this context .

Obviously just running and throwing boulders will not work and is not a fun experience for any player. But that's not what rush entails. Rush implies aggressive play, which should be a perfectly valid strategy. I personally find games which involve few creatures to be far more interesting and tactical than games with large armies. As JackSmack said, the later often divulge into teleport wars. No fun for anybody.

I can't help but notice that you hardly ever play rushes yourself (at least in competitions), instead favoring the long game. So perhaps you're biased against rushes.

I think the game should have a balance between more economy based builds and more aggressive ones. In an ideal world, I'd see this developing:

Rush beats economy builds
Economy builds beat defensive builds
Defensive builds beat economy builds

Obviously those classifications don't really exist inside the game at this point, but that's what I would have liked to see in an ideal situation.

[keejchen]

Of course I am biased, this whole thread is a collection subjective opinions about recent shifts in the meta.

I agree that there has been a drift towards longer games, I just do not agree that the game is worse off because of it. Nor am I suggesting that this trend should be pushed further, but the title of this post suggest that errata/bans are necessary to combat the recent changes and I disagree with that. I wanted to give voice to other side of the debate. I think the game is in the best balance it has ever been (even despite the Pillar! ), which is, again, an entirely subjective opinion.

Eventually you will have to engage to win, in a game of two economy books you should see skirmishes across the middle zones and larger, more important spells to swing the game like conjurations and zone attacks. Sounds fun and epic?

Never happened... never will happen... Zone attacks are not solution also they are expensive and often out of school. include 2 of them... there goes your spb's.

Happens to me all the time. Both the semi-final and the final in the league were won by zone attacks. Maybe you should try them some time.

[farkas1]

I’m on board with keejchen’s logic.  As I pointed out earlier rush builds are not dead. They maybe more difficult to execute.  I would say keep things the way they are until next couple of tournaments.  I don’t think we have fully explored the Current meta yet.   Zot took 2nd with well planned book construction and a rush tactic that worked.  I don’t know if he ran any zone attacks but I do feel they could have been very effective against a ritual of kallek book.   Zone attacks are really effective, my buddy and I run a tsunami in every other build because they can swing a game.

Also more mana does not mean longer games, I think it has and should make games shorter for longer timed builds to reach quicker peaks  in which they wish to target the opponent’s mage. I do think ritual needs to be looked at closely in future games and tournaments,  it is a card that has made a Large impact on the current meta. 

[jacksmack]

Whether or not its good, bad fun, annoying, entertaining, hilarious or whatever to the game that rush books are dead is obviously subjective but more importantly: completely irrelevant to the thread.
I'm just stating the current situation. I don't care who likes the state of the game or not.

And then suddenly we are off to zone attacks which is irrelevant to the fast / rush books being dead "issue".
A fast book will not win any games if they suddenly change strategy to board control and try to kill 2-3 bigs with zone attacks and attack spells before proceeding with the opponent mage.

Of course its problematic to the health of the game that more or less every release since Druid vs Necromancer overall favors long games and passive games.
Eventually a "game of dueling mages" will turn into a "game of emptying your opponents spell book before he empties yours!"

[Reddicediaries]

"The game is moving towards longer, more complex games, distancing itself from fast-paced mainstream card games."

And this is what I take issue with.

I do not see these longer games as more complex. Large armies clashing is boring, at least for me.

[jacksmack]

Imagine they released a full action upheaval with no level restriction and able to also target incorporal which also repays you 2 mana. Or in other words essentially be 2 mana cheaper than the conjuration it targets.

Then we have Soul Harvest. Imagine that it wasnt epic or restricted to necromancer and instead of healing it gave back 2 mana. Exchange "target creature" with "arena" to the target line" so it cannot be nullifed (Hello crumble), but put in the text that creature has to be within 1 zone.


Do you see the picture i'm trying to make?


Its insanely problematic that the undo cards are more efficient than the "do" cards in arena.

[DaveW]

Do you see the picture i'm trying to make?

No. My brain can only take so much.

[Enti]

First of all I want to address the obvious flaw in your reasoning:

if you disagree with this feel free to try any fast book of yours and attempt to beat my triple spawnpoint necromancer, my gate wizard....and for the sake of it... i could make a Priestess abusing the above mentioned cards as well.

The problem with that statement is that you are in the top 90 percentile of "experienced mw players"  / competitive players. So you probably beat 9 out of 10 players who challenge you regardless of the deck you use. So if you beat someone it's not necessarily because your "triple-spawnpoint+ritual"-deck is stronger, but because you just played better, sry ~  :p


---

That aside, it would be hypocritically of me not to admit that my own 2 strongest books are both using the Ritual  and are both spawnpoint-builds.

And that nicely leads to the point I want to make:

How do you define a fast/rush book?

1. First thing that comes to mind is probably this answer: By the amount of spawnpoint the book uses.
Example: If you are playing without a single spawnpoint you are by definition a rush/fast-book.

2. Another approach might be the question "in which turn does this book want to engage the enemy under regular circumstances?"
Example: If your strategy is to hit the enemy mage at least in turn .. 5? Then it's a rush book.

3. We neither ask how many spawnpoints a book has nor do we let an arbitrary number of turns decide if one book is a rush book or not, but we judge by the question: "What is the strategy of the mage?"
Example: If the book is tailored to attacking only the mage, never other creatures, conjurations or spawnpoints, then it's a rush/fast book.

Honestly, all of those ideas have merit. As long as we haven't even established what exactly a fast/rush book is, it's kind of strange to discuss how effective those books are.  Because everyone is talking about a different book in their mind.

Taking up my earlier comment about how my two strongest books are ritual and spawnpoint books, I would also categorize them as aggressive, maybe even early aggression-books. But I would not say that they are rush-builds.

Maybe a good way to figure out how aggressive a book is to ask how fast they get to their dmg-peak or near it?

[farkas1]

First of all I want to address the obvious flaw in your reasoning:

if you disagree with this feel free to try any fast book of yours and attempt to beat my triple spawnpoint necromancer, my gate wizard....and for the sake of it... i could make a Priestess abusing the above mentioned cards as well.

The problem with that statement is that you are in the top 90 percentile of "experienced mw players"  / competitive players. So you probably beat 9 out of 10 players who challenge you regardless of the deck you use. So if you beat someone it's not necessarily because your "triple-spawnpoint+ritual"-deck is stronger, but because you just played better, sry ~  :p


---

That aside, it would be hypocritically of me not to admit that my own 2 strongest books are both using the Ritual  and are both spawnpoint-builds.

And that nicely leads to the point I want to make:

How do you define a fast/rush book?

1. First thing that comes to mind is probably this answer: By the amount of spawnpoint the book uses.
Example: If you are playing without a single spawnpoint you are by definition a rush/fast-book.

2. Another approach might be the question "in which turn does this book want to engage the enemy under regular circumstances?"
Example: If your strategy is to hit the enemy mage at least in turn .. 5? Then it's a rush book.

3. We neither ask how many spawnpoints a book has nor do we let an arbitrary number of turns decide if one book is a rush book or not, but we judge by the question: "What is the strategy of the mage?"
Example: If the book is tailored to attacking only the mage, never other creatures, conjurations or spawnpoints, then it's a rush/fast book.

Honestly, all of those ideas have merit. As long as we haven't even established what exactly a fast/rush book is, it's kind of strange to discuss how effective those books are.  Because everyone is talking about a different book in their mind.

Taking up my earlier comment about how my two strongest books are ritual and spawnpoint books, I would also categorize them as aggressive, maybe even early aggression-books. But I would not say that they are rush-builds.

Maybe a good way to figure out how aggressive a book is to ask how fast they get to their dmg-peak or near it?

1.  spawnpoint builds can be still very aggressive like mention in your last comments they may not mean rush build.  I would say a battleforge can support a rush and out of all spawnpoints it has the best potential to support a big buddy mage, or solo mage.

2. I would classify rush book as engagement anytime before round 6.  typically turn 2-4 are where I see a rush book being more effective to a spawnpoint sit in corner and pump out creature book. 

3. I would agree in all points so far.  including the goal for winning condition for your Book/mage has alot to do with if your book is a rush book. 

The last comment is what I am finding out too that goes against the slow, long games that has been mentioned by players is that ritual books speed up slow long books.  Players will get wreaked real quick by a few big creatures swinging 5-7 dice each attack. 

That said... is ritual of kallek card in particularly good for the game, I dont know yet.  I would say in tournaments it does have the highest potential to get a nerf or bann from all the released cards so far.  I still think it is too soon to start nerfing any potential card, but that is my personal preference.  If there is a majority that think otherwise I am fine with the decision.  Again good topic and good debate.  I don't think it is an easy decision for future tournament organizers.

[farkas1]

A couple other things I do agree that crumble and disperse have the mana advantage but I still feel I see more dispels and dissolves than any of the other remove card spells.  I would say remove curse definitely hurt the curse game.  But I don’t believe the removal game is inhibiting a rush style book anymore than their counter parts.  Heck purge magic is in the base set and totally ruins most mass enchant builds. 

Stalling out, slowing down is a natural counter to rush builds.  It does take precious actions and mana to do tho. 

So counters like nullify, can get avoided and in my opinion I’m seeing less use of in many matches for good or bad.  But most of the time a player is going to double up maybe even triple up the spells like enchantments, equipment ect. they know they need. That maybe potentially removed. 

So the counter to the counter is just to cast more equipment or enchantments than the opponent can deal with.  The only removal game I’m not fond of is mana denial/drain and thankfully it is not fun to play or not popular in the meta. 



Okay that being said those are my opinions and observations.

What would you Jacksmack like the cardpool to be or what specific changes would you make for Mage Wars to be the style of game that would improve the variability of play styles? 

One solution and could be an easy fix is by only allowing Arena cards and banning all academy cards in tournament play.  This would allow for a different meta to emerge and avoid some of the problematic cards that seem to mostly academy focused.  I wouldn’t mind a smaller card pool or contained card pool for small tournaments.  It would be interesting to try out.  I know the convention up North East uses core set for first rounds ect.  That maybe too restrictive for players who like other mages tho. 

[DaveW]

Ban all academy cards from tournaments and you have a fixed card pool and the end of variety.

[Enti]

Yeah, I think banning a gigantic, random number of cards will solve no problems. And nobody seriously advocates for that.

I am still curious to hear what decks "are dead and will never recover [...]" - how he defines a fast/rush deck. Because if he uses the same definition as someone in Discord "Either you have won in T5 or you will definitely lose the game" then imho it's no loss that this kind of deck is not viable any longer.
If he was referring to something else, please let us know what deck exactly you mean. Every deck that doesn't use 3 spawnpoints + mediation amulet + Ritual? Hardly... so what are we talking about!?