Temple of Asyra Opening

[Tacullu64]

That one sticks in my mind because early on I thought I was going to make my mage fly with eagle wings too. Fortunately I realized my mistake before I tried it in a game. There were plenty others that I didn't catch. The enchantments has been the biggest learning curve for me.

[reddawn]

My biggest learning curve has been around learning the difference between additional attacks and additional strikes, like the difference between Battle Fury and doublestrike.  It's really important to how I play the Warlock because I try to leverage Goran heavily, and learning how all his abilities work together, or don't, is pretty important.  Usually I save up battlefury for something that rolls an effect die and has high melee skill, like the warlock with his Lash.  Or a Flaming Hellion bloodreaper.  That's a lot of dice and burns.

Im surprised I don't see much talk about Goran, tbh.  He's got to be the most efficient creature for his cost and stats and for how many dice he can roll (8 with his full action attack if you do it right), and effectively allows you to have two bloodreapers out.  Also gets around defenses easily too.

[DarthDadaD20]

The priestess Vs. Warlock is a tough match.  For the temple with clerics, I have walled them in a corner once and only summoned flyers, In my games decoy has been worth its weight in gold for nullify, If I geyser the battle forge quickly the game can swing in the priestess' favor. The best hope for me with the priestess is her staff and the angle of light plus temple of light and just keep on him with stun, any solo aggro build is going to hate stun. equip the priestess with a elemental cloak and the dragon hide for -4 fire and get that lash gone asap. And always save a dispel for vampirism. The fact that the warlock can get 9 attack dice in turn three makes vampirism target number one.

[piousflea]

I haven't played that many games either as or against priestess, but out of all her Conjurations the Temple of Asyra is my least favorite.

It costs a TON of mana to get up and running (because you need 2 Asyran clerics) and it is so vulnerable to zone attacks, it isn't even funny. While 3 mana per round (4 with harmonize) is nice, the Priestess also doesn't have the most massable units and doesn't have the best army support incantations or Conjurations. The hands of bimshalla and dawnbreaker temples are single target buffs, as opposed to a Rajans Fury or ToothandNail which are army buffs. And healing is best when you have only a few units, as opposed to mass army vs army engagements where units can be killed off in a single round, before you have the chance to heal.

For all of the above reasons, as a priestess I would much rather go without a Spawnpoint, and force an engagement in the early game so that I am fighting with small army size vs. small army size, not huge horde vs huge horde.

[dexmark]

I am playing Temple of Asyra Opening right now.

Due to I have only 1 core set, I am limited on Angels (Gray Angels).

My side
- First few rounds, I had the Temple of Asyra + 2 clerics + 1 Gray Angel out + Crown.
- 1 Gray Angel sent out to harass = given her 1D from the Crown
- Another Gray Angel Spawn
- A Royal Archer Spawn
- About 2 Knights Spawn too
- Then about 3 temples

Opponents side:
- Heavy equipment Warlock
- Elemental staff (with Fireball)
- demonic armor (the one with damage barrier - reason why my 1st Angel went down fast)
- ring of fire
- The conjuration that makes everybody finite
- a curse on my mage face down (most likely the curse that gives my mage finite life)
- Nullify face down
- Lash

First few turns were mana generation then the Warlock started to build equipment, I got the temple working. Then started harassing him with Gray Angel. He quickly destroyed the Gray Angel, then I sent another Gray Angel and so forth. Then he started positioning properly where my Gray Angel can't hit him on a move + attack while he does that Elemental staff attack on my Mage. With the finite life conjuration I cannot heal.

Who do you think would win?

I have 1 Gray Angel attacking him, a Royal Archer, 2 Knights and 3 temples (without the attacking one). I have about 10~12 life left while he has about 5. The turn before the potential last round, He cast FLY on his mage on a quick cast before creature action. Basically rendering both my Knights useless. This round I cast Dissolve on the Elemental staff (he nullified it).

He has initiative with potential burning spells like fireball + a full action attack spell.

Now 10~-12 life (for Priestess) versus 5 life (Warlock) with him with initiative for the last round.

I have no anti-attack spell cards or protection cards that would potentially nullify burns.

I know he will burn me (twice) but my 2 cards are:

1) The temple that attacks for my Quick Cast Turn - I have a place to put it down in range of his mage (potential quick attack on him with potential stunning I have 4 temples if this gets executed)
2) Another Royal Archer

I am guessing he has: 2 more burns..

1) Burn (Quick Cast - Elementalist Staff)
2) Burn (Probably a full action fire spell)

Who would win? It's all in the dice now..

The game was decided.

The winner: Warlock.

The potential final round went to the Warlock.

The priestess tried the temple that attacks but:

- I rolled a 12 on it dazing the opponent instead of stunning.
- The warlock successfully burn twice leaving the priestess burning
- it went for another round where the priestess got burn with attack spells.

To: Reddawn, I didn't realize that you can't cast Eagle wings on the mage. It was a mistake that I learned. Without that wings the Warlock definitely lost about 4 turns early.

This Temple of Asyra opening is a good and viable opening. That Eagle wings saved him (not a valid action) where I have 4 guys on top of him with two Knights ready to wail on him with 10 dice. He got saved because of casting Eagle wings on the Quick Cast round.

Overall: I think the Priestess should win but due to a lack on understanding on Eagle Wings. The Warlock won. We just decided it was not a valid win due to a misunderstanding of the card.

Thanks to those who commented about the Eagle Wings.

[reddawn]

I play mainly against the Priestess, so here's my spin on it...

While it's true that you can zone attack the temple and the clerics, the Priestess has the spells to deal with zone attacks.  

Sacred Ground is a very efficient way to deal with them, for example; for only 6 mana (5 with her ring) you give Aegis 1 to living creatures in the targetted zone, reducing the total number of dice by a good bit.  

Temple of the Dawnbreaker also helps too, letting you reroll lethal dice or high effect rolls (very, very annoying when I roll 11s and 12s for 2x burn...).  

Holy attack spells are also the most efficient mana-wise in the entire game for dazing your opponent; with her Dawnbreaker Ring, her Pillar of Light has an 80%+ chance (still a 75% chance without the ring) to daze for a mere 5 mana.  With how expensive zone attack spells are, being upwards of 9+ mana, you really do not want a 50% chance to waste you mana.  

She also has Group Heal, even if you do successfully cast your zone attack spell.  

The way I see it, the Priestess is similar to the Wizard in how she wants to gain advantage.  A lot of her spells are geared towards gaining a large mid/late game mana/combat advantage, which is when she is strongest with her assortment of temples and high-powered angels (one of which punishes you for slaying clerics).  The Wizard and Priestess, imo, are the two control mages in the base game while the Warlock and Beastmaster are the two aggro mages.  

Sure, you could opt for an early-game slugfest against the opposing mage (being on the receiving end, it's actually more effective than you'd think if you're not prepared), but I don't think the Priestess or Wizard does that as well as the other two.  Arcane and Holy creatures lack the piercing needed to bypass early armor (Brogan as a notable exception) and arcane creatures in particular usually have the slow trait, so they're not good at attacking outside of their range/initial zone anyway.  Besides, those Knight of Westlock are probably the best guards in the game, so I don't see the reason to go aggro with the Priestess early on.

Granted, I nearly got the crap beaten out of me against two Knights, but when push comes to shove, Slayers and other demons are better attackers.

[gos_jim]

Not that it changes the discussion but I thought I would mention that the Dawnbreaker Ring does _not_ affect the chance that Pillar of Light has to Daze. Ranged +X and Melee +X don't modify the Effect Die, only [Damage Type] +X and +X vs [Creature Type/Trait] modify the Effect Die.

[reddawn]

Checked the rules and sure enough you're right. Strikes me as kind of odd...it makes sense that a fire ring would give a slightly better chance for all your fire spells to burn.  Oh well, in either case, the percentages are pretty significant without the +1 to the effect die.

[gos_jim]

I think it's mostly for balance and simplicity. The ring gives Ranged +1 because there's no trait for "extra damage and bonus to effect die with x damage type". And you don't want to give Ranged/Melee +1 the bonus to the effect die because then it's too powerful. Imagine a Lash of Hellfire on a Warlock with a Fireshaper Ring and Bear Strength. That's already Melee +4, giving a 3-6 Burn, 7+ 2 burns.