This post is written by Zuberi, a prominent member of the Arcane Wonders forums, and a newly recruited playtester.
Writing Your Own Spellbook
A mage's spellbook is as intregral a part of them as their hands and feet. Without it, they are just a common peasant in funny robes. However, it can sometimes be difficult and frustrating for new mages to tackle the task of building their own book from scratch. The sheer number of possibilities can seem overwhelming. I am here to help with this issue by presenting a general method one can follow when designing a new book. This is by no means the only way one can build their spellbook, but it should hopefully give you an idea of what you should consider while doing so.
My method for designing a spellbook can be broken down into four simple steps. Below I have given a rough idea of each of these steps, but I shall be exploring them more in depth in future articles.
Step One: Offense
The first thing you need to consider is how you plan on winning the game. There are many strategies you could base your book around, but having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with the book is very important. Once you have an idea of what you want the book to do, you should pick out the spells necessary to accomplish that.
Step Two: Defense
After you have your plan of attack set up, you need to start thinking about what your opponent might do to mess up or defeat your plan. Then you pick out cards to protect yourself from having this happen. For example, if your plan hinges on a single powerful creature, you need to have ways to keep it from being restrained or incapacitated.
Step Three: Adaptation
At this point you have a pretty solid core for your spellbook. Now it's time to think about contingency plans. Try thinking about the types of books your opponents may be running and how you can adapt your strategy to best handle them. If you have a friend who likes to play with Swarms, you may want to include some Zone Attacks or a Mordok's Obelisk to really make him suffer.
Step Four: Trimming
If you're anything like me, at this point you have way more spells than your mage's spellpoint budget will allow you to have. It's time to start making the hard choices of what you need to keep and what you can afford to cut out so that you can make your spellbook legal.
That's the general idea behind how I go about building a spellbook. Next time I will take a closer look at constructing a good offense. We'll discuss several of the major strategies you might choose to adopt and what is needed to pull off such strategies.
Writing Your Own Spellbook
A mage's spellbook is as intregral a part of them as their hands and feet. Without it, they are just a common peasant in funny robes. However, it can sometimes be difficult and frustrating for new mages to tackle the task of building their own book from scratch. The sheer number of possibilities can seem overwhelming. I am here to help with this issue by presenting a general method one can follow when designing a new book. This is by no means the only way one can build their spellbook, but it should hopefully give you an idea of what you should consider while doing so.
My method for designing a spellbook can be broken down into four simple steps. Below I have given a rough idea of each of these steps, but I shall be exploring them more in depth in future articles.
Step One: Offense
The first thing you need to consider is how you plan on winning the game. There are many strategies you could base your book around, but having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with the book is very important. Once you have an idea of what you want the book to do, you should pick out the spells necessary to accomplish that.
Step Two: Defense
After you have your plan of attack set up, you need to start thinking about what your opponent might do to mess up or defeat your plan. Then you pick out cards to protect yourself from having this happen. For example, if your plan hinges on a single powerful creature, you need to have ways to keep it from being restrained or incapacitated.
Step Three: Adaptation
At this point you have a pretty solid core for your spellbook. Now it's time to think about contingency plans. Try thinking about the types of books your opponents may be running and how you can adapt your strategy to best handle them. If you have a friend who likes to play with Swarms, you may want to include some Zone Attacks or a Mordok's Obelisk to really make him suffer.
Step Four: Trimming
If you're anything like me, at this point you have way more spells than your mage's spellpoint budget will allow you to have. It's time to start making the hard choices of what you need to keep and what you can afford to cut out so that you can make your spellbook legal.
That's the general idea behind how I go about building a spellbook. Next time I will take a closer look at constructing a good offense. We'll discuss several of the major strategies you might choose to adopt and what is needed to pull off such strategies.