>>47961016

Mage Wars is the best dueling wizards card game you could possibly play.

The mechanic of having your entire deck available to you and picking two spells at the start (for Arena) or when needed (for academy) make far more sense than a random card draw from a thematic standpoint.

The base game will keep you playing for a good long while, but the expansions are universally well done with the absolute weakest being Conquest of Kilimanjaro (and even that one was okay).

It is hard to get into and most people won't take the time to learn it though.

Academy is a good introduction to the concepts and offers plenty of quick play sessions, however, when compared to Arena or Battlegrounds it is super simplistic and off putting to many Mage Wars veterans because it gets rid of movement, zone control, building walls, and a whole spell class.

That said Academy does offer a lot of the feel of the same game, faster play, lower damage numbers, and all in all a newbie friendly experience. It also helps that the cards from Academy CAN be used in Arena but not vice versa.

Rolling dice for damage and effects is off putting to many people though, so be advised that they exist.

>>47961016
I have everything for Mage Wars Arena that's out so far except Forcemaster v Warlord and the Spell Tomes. It's an awesome game with crazy fucking depth.

>>47961016
The only issue I've encountered is lack of serious opponents.
It's always me lending premade decks to my filthy casual friends and going easy on them while they grasp the mechanics.

>>47961234

Forcemaster is basically a god damned Jedi.

Very few people play Warlord correctly though. They keep him to the back and build up defenses and spam lower cost creatures when he fails at that tactic in the long game compared to every other mage. You want low cost creatures to flood the board? Go beastmaster.

The Warlord plays best when he summons a few mid-tier elites and a big-ass monster and walks across the map with them to beat the shit out of the other mage's defenses, monsters, and the mage themselves.

He is an Orc boss that should be treated as such. He should alternate between swinging his massive warhammer around and summoning a new mid-tier to high tier monster each turn and that is it.

Forcemaster should be full on attack mode. She is a solo, melee heavy mage whose minor monsters should be annoyances to lightly soften the opposition until she gets across the map to kill them. A fantastic tactic for her is to equip her force blade, a dancing thought controlled scimitar, and then save up to teleport to the other mage's zone and just unless heaps of fuck you on them from that point forward.

Her health isn't that great, but her damage output in melee is the absolute best in the game.

>>47961391

True that.

We also had to house rule blanks as 1's, 1's as 2's, and 2's as 3's otherwise people bitch when they roll a bunch of blanks.

It also makes the game go by a lot faster because of the damage being slung around.

You want to make a newbie's head asplod, try getting them to wrap their head around the druid's mechanics.

Whose your favorite mage?

I dig the necromancer while focusing on a bunch of cheap skeletons personally. Although a full zombie rush is pretty nasty to given how on critical hurts their slow ass, but the draw back is that slow speed and the other player being able to walk through them like they weren't there.

Given the cost, flooding the board with skeletons and causing poisoning board effects is always a good tactic since everything he has is immune to those effects.

Is this game 1v1 only or can you comfortably play 1v1v1 or 2v2 or something?

Paladin and Siren looks like they might finally get some use out of that god damned FREEZE effect they have been giving things immunity towards for years now.

>>47961685
You can play a four-way or 2v2 game without too much trouble, and the Dominions Battlegrounds expansion allows you to create custom maps, several of which support a three-way game.

>>47961685

1v1 is the preferred gameplay style and the only available for academy.

You can do up to four players if you grab some accessories (markers and such) but to be honest, you are looking at a game that will take hours and hours of play that way and it isn't very fun because of all the shit going on at once and the time between turns due to the already insane amounts of analysis paralysis that can occur.

>>47961723

Battlegrounds really sped the core game up for me.

>>47961779
I had to retire a spellbook after it got 9 V'tar while neither of my two opponents scored any.

How would you rank Mage Wars base game when compared to other LCG base games?

>>47961919

The most complete out of the box LCG I have ever played to be honest.

A single copy of Mage Wars allows for 1v1 gameplay with really high customization available for a long, long time.

>>47961475

>Whose your favorite mage?

Beastmaster. Enchant heavy, pump up steelclaw Grizzly and flood with bobcats early on. Gotta get muh ferret companion out too to buy me some time.

Big ol' grizzly bear walking across the map with amped up damage, defense, and speed is pretty nasty.

Of course it is easy peasy to counter this tactic by just removing buffs or outright kicking the bear off the board.

Really, if you are playing with good players, you don't want to bring out the same spell book twice because they will counter the piss out of what you drop pretty fast.

Mage wars was good. It's dead now though.

>>47961016
No. It's great, but it requires the dedication to strategy and counterbuilding of a game like Warmachine.

Any game like that means you'll never find a worthy opponent and everyone will burn out or not want to spend hours just listbuilding so often.