A common complaint I've heard of the Manor Maps is that wizard teams suck. When I first started playing the new maps, I would have agreed. I did not like them during those first few days, but over time have come to rather like their unique attributes. As for the allegation that wizard teams suck compared to the past, I could not say. I have only been around for the previous two sets of maps. And while I did adore playing as 3 Elf Wizards around the 1200 range, I must admit that 3 wizards is one of the builds I am less experienced with. Anything I could say on the matter would be mostly speculation. Spoiler: The Speculation seriously, this is just a bunch of rambling. go on to the more interesting parts of the post. the parts that show you how warriors get killed. Spoiler: this is the part that shows you how wizards get killed long, multi-paragraph tirade-that-didn't-really-say-anything THE MAPS: Those are not victory points. They are victory areas. None of the past rotations have had as many VP's packed as tight. It's just that much harder to cover your opponent's VPs in bad terrain, forcing them to leave or take damage. Each VP has no more than 2 spaces between itself and any other VP. No more contesting seperate VP's from a distance. Every map (except kitchen) has its victory area backed up against a wall. Pushing someone off a VP, it's difficult to also move them away from you. The force line of control becomes incapable of doing so. If you take the VP's yourself, it's that much easier to get cornered. Do I even need to mention what goes on in the Sanctuary? Smaller maps with many chokepoints and fewer large circles makes it hard to run.(?) THE META: The basis of Control is trading your drawn cards for their base movement. They are guaranteed one move per turn. You are not guaranteed Control. What Control are you running? Does damage? It's food for martyrs and elves. Elves are the most likely to be in range. Slide 2? Same distance as a dancing cut or nimble strike. If it's to get someone out of melee, you're probably gonna get hit anyway. Terrain? Synergizes well, but if this is your main damage, it puts a limit on how quickly you can hurt things. Liable to be moved off of. Path of Knives? I've stopped running this ever since an unfortunate incident involving a Dwarf Warrior, Sparkling Cloth Armor, and 3 Elf Wizards. It can be good damage, but don't count on it to deter movement. None? There's an idea. You'll be hard pressed to outdamage warriors, but you have the unique ability to focus fire at range. How much Control are you running? Enough to keep them away? Enough to make them dead? However, in response to these complaints, I took it upon myself to try building an effective 3 wizard team. It has kept me above 1500 for the duration of its use. Spoiler: Wizard One Grumpy Gus Level 17 Dwarf Wizard Staff Of The Fire God Torching Staff Avakiria's Cup Rantic's Orb Of Inner Fire Boiling Stone Miligar's Dragon Tongue Ironcurse Robes Kerrick's Steel Boots Raging Battler Focused Pyromancy 5 x Flame Jet 2 x Blind Rage 1 x Traveling Curse 1 x Perplexing Ray 1 x Instant Burn 2 x Unstable Bolt 1 x Boiling Armor 1 x Hot Spot 3 x Firestarter 2 x Fireball 1 x Brain Burn 6 x Glob Of Flame 1 x Shuffle 4 x Reliable Mail 2 x Magma Spray 3 x Flame Spit This is by far the most patchwork part of the build, the most legendary-heavy, and also the most open to improvement and customization. The main idea is to be the party tank, and to deflect the brunt of incoming damage. I do this by being a dwarf, for high hp, and by having 4 copies of Reliable Mail. Helps soak up wizard fire and step attacks. Mantle Of Instinct might be a better choice for the armor slot. After defense, you want lots of damage. Punishing bolts are a good option if you have them, but I went with fire because I had some good burning items that I picked up, and because Wizard 3 already had armor removal. It packs great damage over a turn or two, and a turn or two is all you'll get, but it's also all you'll need. Items with parries are also a decent choice for your staffs. Electric staffs might be a good source of damage if you switch to Focused Electromancy, but then I don't know what you'd do for arcane items. If you do stick with fire, and need some arcane item slots, or to free up tokens, consider Boiling Stone. It packs a punch, and the armor should help with the Brain Burn. Spoiler: Wizard Two Merling a Ding Dong Level 1 Human Wizard Staff Of Winter Staff Of Winter Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Portal Frock Sticky Slippers Perfect Tactics Forceful Teleportation 1 x Hardy Mail 9 x Force Cannon 2 x Immovable 1 x Unreliable Block 4 x Dimensional Traveller 1 x Wild Run 2 x Cold Snap 2 x Chilling Rime 1 x Lateral Thinking 1 x Inspirational Thinking 4 x Penetrating Zap 8 x Frost Jolt This is your Cold/Cannon Controller. His sole purpose is to buy time for your damage dealers to work. Frost Jolt slows for 2 turns. It slows almost everything down to a crawl. You might consider using Cone Of Cold instead, but I didn't want to risk slowing my own frontliner, and it deals a mere 1 damage to Frost Jolt's 4. You can't stop a charge for more than a turn, maybe two, so you want to down someone as soon as possible. Force Cannon is the other key card. It has the most distance of any control card, clocking in at a hefty 4, and unaffected by your own encumbers. You can get 2 of them on a tokenless uncommon. Between these and the Cold, you can pack a lot of distance into very few cards. However, Force Cannon has Slide Back. You don't get to choose where your targets end up. That means that very careful positioning is CRUCIAL!!! I cannot emphasize this enough. This is exactly why you are running Dimensional Traveller in your other slots. It's why you're running Immovable on your boots. You can halt even an Elf with Vibrant Pain, but it requires you to be in exactly the right place at the right time. You are a Cold Control Capacitor. When your hand is full from your early-game draws, your power is formidable. But when it's gone, it's gone. Spoiler: Wizard Three Narya Level 20 Elf Wizard Blue Destruction Oxha's Sparkspreader Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Cotton Wizard's Robes Ulalia's Boots Superb Mobility Focused Electromancy 1 x Little Zap 4 x Memory Loss 6 x Arcane Burst 3 x Spark Generator 3 x Jumpspark 1 x Elvish Insight 4 x Combustible 3 x Arcane Aura 4 x Dissolve Armor 1 x Elven Maneuvers 2 x Flanking Move 1 x Slippery 3 x Arcing Spark You might recognize this as the star of "Why you shouldn't dismiss Elf Wizards". It plays much the same, with the focus being on heavy damage, but I squeezed some extra utility out of it by pairing her with a burning wizard so that the removal isn't as dead as it tends to be otherwise. Mostly though, I was just being lazy and swapped in what I had. Really, you could probably put in anything built around damage, but you do get some benefits from being able to do hit-and-run at long range. Switching out to single-target electric staffs, such as the Stormstaff and Mighty Sparkping Staff, is much more acceptable here, even if it does cost you range. A team of three like-built wizards has gotten me above 1400 on previous rotations just from its sheer damage output. Spoiler: the sheer damage output Specifically, it was two Stormstaffs each, on 3 human wizards, with Sticky Slippers on boots for cycling, and running Advanced Flexibility. The leadership let me cycle out the armorbane cards for more damage, as well as the racial moves if someone was already in range. Coincidentally, this is also what I ran during the Golden Shrine leagues. Anyway. You also might consider Sparkblast Staff for the extra force cannons and additional range, as well as freeing up your major tokens if they were wanted elsewhere.
Glad to see some emergent diversity of builds in the manor rotation. I've seen more and more 1/1/1 builds at the high tiers, and also some triple warrior builds running a lot of Shimmering Auras in order to deal with wizards, signaling for me that wizards are commonplace.
Decided to try this out with my three human wizards, and this is what I came up with. Spoiler: Wizard One j. lawrence Level 9 Human Wizard Staff Of Winter Staff Of Winter Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Blasting Amulet Portal Frock Sticky Slippers Perfect Tactics Advanced Teleportation 2 x Chilling Rime 4 x Penetrating Zap 1 x Surging Blast 1 x Hardy Mail 2 x Cold Snap 2 x Immovable 1 x Lateral Thinking 1 x Unreliable Block 1 x Inspirational Thinking 8 x Frost Jolt 8 x Force Cannon 1 x Wild Run 4 x Dimensional Traveller Spoiler: Wizard Two t. swift Level 1 Human Wizard Stormstaff Oxha's Sparkspreader Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Armorbane Pendant Robes Of White Wylla Ulalia's Boots Trained Tactics Focused Electromancy 2 x Powerful Spark 3 x Jumpspark 5 x Arcing Spark 3 x Spark Generator 1 x Subtle Parry 1 x Arcane Aura 2 x Flanking Move 4 x Dissolve Armor 4 x Memory Loss 1 x Dangerous Maneuver 2 x Lateral Thinking 2 x Mighty Spark 4 x Combustible 2 x Arcane Shell I did like using Trained Tactics on the Armorbane-mage, however, as I think the 2 Lateral Thinking might be helpful to purge the Combustible. Spoiler: Wizard Three j. chastain Level 1 Human Wizard Furnace Staff Searing Pain Rantic's Orb Of Inner Fire Smoag's Bucket Of Pitch Ring Of Hot Spikes Pendant Of Artax Robes Of Foz Bertha's Big Clogs Perfect Tactics Focused Pyromancy 2 x Burning Fingers 7 x Glob Of Flame 1 x Inspirational Thinking 1 x Walk 1 x Stone Spikes 1 x Ember Spray 1 x Officer's Harness 3 x Firestarter 1 x Boiling Armor 1 x Little Zap 2 x Dangerous Maneuver 1 x Lateral Thinking 1 x Unreliable Block 3 x Flash Of Agony 3 x Fireball 4 x Sizzling Bolt 2 x Reliable Mail 1 x Telekinesis I liked the Furnace Staff for the 4 Sizzling Bolts, and the range 10; but, like you, the fire mage is likely a work in progress.
It's really interesting to see Advanced Teleportation and Forceful Teleportation (for Surging Blast and Force Cannon, respectfully) but not my favorite all-around arcane skill, Superb Teleportation. Same cost, but with Gusts of War. It never hurts to have a Gusts of War! I'll never understand people's attraction to Perfect Tactics. Inspirational Thinking functions as "Draw 2 cards", which is good but it's no Demonic Power. Lateral Thinking is good as far as cycling one card for you. Then there's Unblock, which is garbage more than 83.33% of the time. It seems like people think the I.T. is SO GOOD that it's worth paying a major token for. Why are people paying so much in the hopes of drawing one mediocre card? [rant] I mean, look at Solid Rock or Superb Mobility. Solid Rock has 1 trait , one Toughness( Ignore damage and draw a card), and one parry (block melee and draw a card). Putting aside the benefits of Immovable, that prevents two damaging attacks and cycles 3 cards. Admittedly, you require your opponent to hit your parry with a melee attack, but they are usually more than willing. Superb Mobility has 2 traits and Elvish Insight. That's right, two traits that cycle AND another card that cycles. But hey, Elven Maneuvers can draw you a number of cards, and Slippery is like having a free half-cantrip Scamper 3 turns in a row. If that isn't card advantage I don't know what is. What would be cool, is if Inspirational Thinking turned into, "Draw 3 cards and then discard your hand at the end of turn". Maybe that would be worth the price tag on skills with it. [/rant] Even though it's slower, I'd rather run Advanced Flexibility for cycling or Perfect Command. Flanking Move on a wizard is so, so useful, and having two Move, Team! cards is like having the old Winds of War back, except it targets allies only but without line of sight.
If I had to guess, mostly because it's an obvious go-to self-cycling item for humans, as anything with more than one Lateral Thinking is a legendary. As it pertains to this build, the ability to discard one also gives you a bit better control over what you draw, since a third of your cards are sub-optimal for control, between the pen.zaps and the non-frost-jolts being either encumber/duration 1. The major token doesn't hurt either, since my arcane item and staff choices left me with extra. And while I agree that an elf/dwarf would have better racials, I was looking more at movement when I was building it. Since you need to be in the right spot to use your cannons, I was worried a dwarf might be too slow. And I felt the mobility of an elf might be wasted, between it being dangerous to outpace your armored vanguard, and needing to park yourself where you have good lines for your slide backs to work. Moreso, I wanted to go with the theme of having one of each race. I think two elves might have been more effective overall, but I'm a sucker for style, sometimes. Other Items: Unreliable Block: Don't get me wrong, this thing IS mostly junk, but I'd like to point out one thing. If your hand is empty enough that you can hold onto it at no cost, it can keep on rolling until it does hit something. It's never something you can rely on, but spread across 3 or 4 weaker attacks, it's almost as not-quite-that-good as a regular block. Perfect Command: Since the frost wizard's deck is already geared around creating distance, helping your allies retreat isn't as useful as it is normally. Especially since the dwarf is geared so he seldom needs such a retreat. The flanking move is, however, a solid card. Advanced Flexibility: Could be another solid choice, as both of his teammates want to cycle their armors into their hands. However, I find that leadership is often one of those cards that's better on paper. If you have enough unwanted cards in your deck to really make use of it, then the odds probably aren't so hot on your new cards, either. Besides which, it loses some of its value once you're already engaged, as unless you're burning your moves for more cards (a risky proposition), it's kind of difficult to get enough out of it to justify the cost. Good input, though. I still think Perfect Tactics fits in here, but I feel I've been getting sucked into the trap of glossing over some more interesting skill choices in favor of my old go-to's.
Lots of AoE, burning wizards out there. I fear only the buffed ones. Electrical wizards can be very painfull with the few good draws. Nobody uses control wizards, it's hard to play with it and hard to get that stuff, but 1 excellent control wizard can usually make 2-3 units useless per turn.
