what is the best way to counter the Forcemaster?

[paradox22]

What is the best way to counter the new Force Master, and which mage do you think is best equiped to do so.  I have my opinion, and I'll chime in, but first I'm curious to know what you guys think!  Ready?....GO!  :woohoo:

[Koz]

Although I haven't played with or against her yet, I think swarms will probably give her problems, especially flying swarms (Hawks and Bats), although she does have Mass Sleep (if she can afford to cast it).  Mana denial would probably hurt her pretty badly too due to all of her upkeep cards.  

I'm also not sure yet how well she will handle lock down builds.  Getting hit with Cripples and Weaks plus things like Tanglevine and similar stuff may be a problem for her since she is so melee orientated and won't have too many creatures to watch her back and help her offense.

[Sarkath]

The biggest thing that stops her, at least while I am playing, is the swarm. Warlord and Beast Master are both very capable of doing so. Heck, even another Forcemaster casting three Psylocks is enough to be an annoyance to get in your way.

Or it could be dice. Dice are fickle mistresses.

[Tacullu64]

I played her this morning for the first time. I used her base spellbook. Managing her mana was easier than I thought it would be, but my opponent didn't put enough pressure on her. I think if you pressure her early and don't let up you can force her into mana problems. She has the capability to defend herself but will not be able to mount as strong an offense. You should be able to chip away at her defense and eventually get to her. You be the one to dictate the terms of the engagement not her.

Establish a numbers advantage with creatures it shouldn't be difficult. This plays into both puting pressure on her and having more actions per turn.

Stack attacks with conditions. Since she is more or less a solo warrior all her actions are precious. If you can steal away some of her options with stuns, slams, cripples, dazes or even weakness to lower her damage output it will be huge.

Those are a few of my initial impressions.

[Diji]

I agree, a swarm build could have a devastating effect if managed properly. However, other weakness of the Forcemaster are her dealing with the "unavoidable" trait, unmovable, and non-living and/or psychic immune creatures and dont forget "da mana squeeze."

A build that will exploit "unavoidable" is a bad news for the Forcemaster (its even better if you can get Ranged and "unavoidable") as you directly negate her ability to defend. Now with said, that's what Forcefield is for, but Forcefield is quite pricey (2/10; Upkeep +2) and with the Stalker (Upkeep +1) and the Scimitar (Upkeep +1) likely to come out first it would be tough not to see a Forcefield foreshadowed. :whistle:  Seeking Dispel that joint.   :evil:  

Now a Forcemaster build -  what you got in that book eating at those 120 spell points? Mind Control (6), maybe a few Charm (2), a Forcefield (4), and more than a few Force moves pushing and pulling all over the place. Grab a few Skeletons to deal with the psychic enchantments, an Iron Golem that wont be controlled or pushed around, maybe a Whiling Spirit, maybe a Mana Leech. Whatever floats the boat.

But the Mana Squeeze... Man, you want to throw off a Forcemaster. Hit them with the Mana Siphon, (that 10 channel becomes 8 ) hit them with Mordoks Obelisk to offset some of what they save with the Psi Orb, and if you can manage it as well throw down the Suppression Orb. I had a buddy have to cancel his Forcefield and one of his Thoughtspores just to keep his Stalker alive and have it able to move. It was awesome, and he lost.

[Kytan]

I haven't played against a forcemaster yet, and I've been torn between two potential strategies. One is just a bird and bobcat swarm or biggish creatures that force the forcemaster to stop/control/attack them as a sort of mana and action denial strategy.  Leaning to the swarm but wanted to know if anyone had and opinion.

[Hey_Daralon]

My best advice would be to focus on range attacks, unavoidable attacks, charge, status effects, dispels, and mana denial if you can pull it off. If all else fails, I guess you can try swarming her, but watch out for Mass Sleep. In my opinion, the main thing to worry about are her defenses, you just have to break those down and do consistent damage to her.

[baronzaltor]

Falcon Precision.  Falcon Precision. Falcon Precision.  She is based on stacking defenses, unavoidable attacks cut right through it and forces her to crutch on her high end forcefield.

I feel like she has so many creature specific options that letting your mage carry the battle guts a lot of her options.  Cant put a mage to sleep, cant charm or mind control a mage.  she can keep pushing and pulling but with some cheetah speed and teleports you can deal with that.

She has no special counter against dealing with curses either.  chains of agony, debuffs, ghoul rot, magebane, and so on... they are non attacks and go around her forcefield and defenses, and require her to invest a lot of mana to dispel while you restack more.  Also Agonize takes the bite off of her hand to hand attacks and makes her force sword easy to let bounce off armor.  Add in some burns and rots that she cant out run and you can melt her or at least cripple her to death.  

Mark her for death and turn a slew of darkfenne bats loose on her.   She doesnt have much to work with against rots, burns, ghoul rots, mage banes and crush (which anyone can run) stacking up 10 damage or so a round on her once you get it all on her.

I feel like its a reason that this set included sectarus+falcon precision+ring of fire, for anti forcemaster style warlock beatdowns.

[piousflea]

The FM has a hard time dealing with Curses, simply due to action starvation. Even if she has enough dispels to constantly remove the Ghoul Rots and Agonies that you throw, she won't have the actions to do what she really wants to.

The FM has a tough time with flying creatures. She either has to use Knockdowns (3 mana, only hits one creaure) or Force Bashes (8 mana, hits 2, then she can sweeping strike) to even hit them. Therefore, any bird, bat, or angel deck will do well against her.

The Forcefield is incredibly efficient against small #s of strong creatures, but is useless against a swarm. Therefore, you either want to go all out swarm, or have a Dispel ready for her forcefield. Both seeking dispels and regular dispels are devastating against FF because it is such a high level spell that she can't afford to keep a ton of copies in her deck.

[Locusshifter]

Stack attacks with conditions. Since she is more or less a solo warrior all her actions are precious. If you can steal away some of her options with stuns, slams, cripples, dazes or even weakness to lower her damage output it will be huge.

This is what I've seen so far. I think conditions are doubly effective against the FM.

[sIKE]

From what I can tell preaty much the same approach to any other Beatdown style of play, loss of actions as people have been saying are what hurt the most. I have tuned the FM default deck and I am looking forward to testing it out here soon.

[Tacullu64]

Stack attacks with conditions. Since she is more or less a solo warrior all her actions are precious. If you can steal away some of her options with stuns, slams, cripples, dazes or even weakness to lower her damage output it will be huge.

This is what I've seen so far. I think conditions are doubly effective against the FM.

I remembered the daze condition as giving -1 to defense rolls since this has rarely come up in our games. When we had our pregame review of the expansion prior to playing Monday, I almost had to change my shorts when I saw the -2 to defense for each daze condition on a creature.

On a side note this was my quickest game yet. We finished in just under 30 minutes. My impression is the Forcemaster is an all or nothing mage, meaning I think she will either win fairly easily or lose big. I'll be curious as I play more games involving her how long they last.

[Koz]

Stack attacks with conditions. Since she is more or less a solo warrior all her actions are precious. If you can steal away some of her options with stuns, slams, cripples, dazes or even weakness to lower her damage output it will be huge.

This is what I've seen so far. I think conditions are doubly effective against the FM.

I remembered the daze condition as giving -1 to defense rolls since this has rarely come up in our games. When we had our pregame review of the expansion prior to playing Monday, I almost had to change my shorts when I saw the -2 to defense for each daze condition on a creature.

On a side note this was my quickest game yet. We finished in just under 30 minutes. My impression is the Forcemaster is an all or nothing mage, meaning I think she will either win fairly easily or lose big. I'll be curios as I play more games involving her how long they last.

Yeah, I was kind of wondering if that's how she was going to play out.  I think she may be a bit too one-dimensional for my tastes.  She is extremely predictable which is a major drawback in this game, she doesn't have a lot of versitility in her build options, her stuff tends to be expensive with lots of upkeep, and her defenses have easy counters.  

I'm not going to judge yet whether I think she's good or not because I haven't played her, but these are my concerns when I look at her.

[Tacullu64]

I agree that her defenses can be easily countered if you build your spellbook appropriately. The question then becomes how many spell points are you willing to spend to counter one mage. Unavoidable attacks are good against any Mage, but you are going to need more against the Forcemaster than you will against the other mages. How many extra are you willing to include? The Forcefield is a great target for Dispel, but that's not the only enchantment she will be packing you will want to dispel. How many Dispels do you want to carry? That is why I think building an action advantage is the way to go. Time your Dispels right and things should go poorly for her. I think you'll still have to play smart though.

While any Mage can beat another some will have better matchups against the Forcemaster because they are more prone to do the things that give her problems.

[Koz]

I agree that her defenses can be easily countered if you build your spellbook appropriately. The question then becomes how many spell points are you willing to spend to counter one mage. Unavoidable attacks are good against any Mage, but you are going to need more against the Forcemage than you will against the other mages. How many extra are you willing to include? The Forcefield is a great target for Dispel, but that's not the only enchantment she will be packing you will want to dispel. How many Dispels do you want to carry? That is why I think building an action advantage is the way to go. Time your Dispels right and things should go poorly for her. I think you'll still have to play smart though.

While any Mage can beat another some will have better matchups against the Forcemaster because they are more prone to do the things that give her problems.

Well, that's kind of the thing, it doesn't seem like people will have to alter their builds at all really to give her a hard time.  It certainly doesn't seem like they will have to dedicate many spell points to counter her specifically.  As you said, people are already running things like Knockdown and unavoidable attacks, and now with the expansion there is going to be more cards running around that mitigate defenses like the Slam effects and Falcon Precision.  I don't think people really need to add any more than they will already be running against other mages.

Also, she will be hit extra hard by Daze/Stun effects (which are WAY too easy to come by in this game IMO) because she is so melee focused and doesn't have a lot of options for versatility.  

Then there is the predictability factor.  Half of this game is trying to out think and outplay your opponent and being predictable is a great way to lose.  I don't see many Forcemaster's surprising me in what they are running in their builds, or how they use those cards.  

To me (someone who has yet to play the Forcemaster) it seems like good spellbooks are versatile and unpredictable (to some extent anyway), of which the Forcemaster seems like neither.

It'll be interesting to see how she plays out and I hope my fears are misplaced and she is able to hold her own in a competitive environment, but one-dimensional, predictable builds seem like a death-knell in this game.