Turn order

[Hid]

Hi.
I have some questions on the turn order:

1) Do I get a Quick spell phase between 2 actions of my opponent if I have no creature, that can activate?
a) If I have 1 creature and my opponent has 3. He takes his action. Can I pass and still cast a Quick spell, even though I did not activate a creature?
b) If I have only 1 creature and the opponent has 2 creatures. I have the initiative and I do my full action. Then my opponent does a full action with one of his creatures. Do I get an opportunity to cast my Quick spell before his second creature can act?

Following statements are only a deduction - I could be wrong with the whole thing. I haven't played with 4 players yet. I was wondering what other people think about this.

2) In team games following rules are proposed:
"Make sure to sit so that the teams are sitting in alternating positions: team A, team B, team A, team B, etc. That way each team will have a chance to react, rather than an entire team taking their Action Phases back-to-back."

This doesn't feel realistic and is maybe a little unbalanced. At least it makes creature tactic way stronger. Suppose one player summons 4 creatures, his teammate goes for armor/curses/anything but creatures. The opposing mages summon 2 creatures each. When they meet to fight, there are 4 creatures against 4 creatures, which in normal game is an even fight. But in a team game (since one mage didn't go the creature strategy, even though the other mage overcompensated and got 4 creatures out) the opposing creatures have an advantage - they activate at double rate. So if you have the initiative you activate 2 out of 4 creatures and the opponents get 4 activations back on you. Or if they have the initiative, you get only to activate 1 creature, while you get pounded by 4 creatures in what would be an even fight in a 1v1 game.

The lack of creatures is no different than 2 players on the same team sitting next to each other. It seems like an overlooked consequence, since the rules say - don't sit next to each other. First I thought - hey, they just think not casting creatures is just a bad strategy for a team game. You should adapt to a multiplayer game with new strategies. But then the Forcemaster came out and she's not really effective with creatures. So what's up with that?

It would make more sense if the team could choose to activate any friendly creature they agree on - not forcing to switch activations between players.

[Arcanus]

Hello Hid,

You can only use your special quickcast action before or after a friendly creature action phase. If you have no creature actions remaining then you will have to wait to use the quickcast action until the end of the round, during the final quickcast phase.

Note that you can pass on using a creature action, and hold it until later in the orund, as long as your opponent has more creature actions than you.

We had tried dozens of different ways to handle this quickcast action, and in 5 years of playtesting this is what we ended up with.  I'd be happy to discuss it with you further, but I am tied up this weekend working on the big FAQ we are about to publish. I hope in the meantime this helps.

As for multi-player games, we are releasing an update with lots of different rules and scenarios.  Stand by for that, but in the meantime please do try different things, have fun, and let us know what works for you.  We always listen to feedback and if you have a good multiplayer rule or scenario, we'd love to include it.

Thanks for your interest and support!  

[Hid]

I'd be happy to discuss it with you further, but I am tied up this weekend working on the big FAQ we are about to publish. I hope in the meantime this helps.

Sure, thanks for the quick answer. It's not a critical rule - I could play it either way. Take your time.
I'll start the discussion without you and you can come back in a few days (if you still find it).

I understand the rules now, but I think the (wrong) way I have played it makes more sense. Usually it doesn't matter, but there are those special "near death" cases or even normal cases with spells like Block. For simplicity let's try only a Block example.

[Setting the stage]
My mage is surrounded with 4 enemy creatures. He also has Block attached to him and he has the initiative. I have another Block and an area attack spell in my hand so it's better to take the full action now. I cast the area attack spell and 2 creatures are killed. It doesn't help to cast another Block now, since it would go to waste. My opponent activates the first creature and attacks - the attack is blocked by the Block enchantment.

[Making the difference]
1) If my mage is alone, he can't do anything at this point and is successfully attacked by the last enemy creature.
2) If I have another creature on the other side of the arena with sleep on it, my mage can cast the second Block and avoid the last creature.

This feels inconsistent. A sleeping creature at the other side of the arena should not make a difference for a mage trying to defend/attack with his quickcast action. If you allow for a quickcast phase between 2 enemy actions, you will solve this issue. From the top of my head I can't think of any negative consequences from such rule change. There's really only a few situations, that are bad or impossible, if you have to wait until the last quickcast phase. So the impact on the game would be minimal. I've been playing with this "incorrect" rule for the past 3 weeks (around 15 games) and we encountered no problems.

Can someone see something I have overlooked? I'm looking forward to other opinions.