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After a long, long time between games, I'm happy to open sign-ups for Mage Wars 2!

For those who have never played Mage Wars before, it's a lot like the board game Battleship. All players have a mage tower on a grid, from which they can strike any other place on the grid. Along the way you can also find monsters and artifacts that can help you in your quest. If you strike another player's tower, that player is eliminated and the goal of the game is to be the last player standing. The game is turn-based, with players posting their actions in the game topic and then the host (me) summarizing the results.

This second full game will include The Masters of Men expansion, which centers around apprentices, people who come to your tower to serve you in the hopes of learning in the process so they can become masters of their own domains someday. Apprentices can make improvements to your tower, scout the map, learn spells and skills in their own right, and more! I'll post the exact mechanics when they're more fully developed, but suffice to say it'll put a new emphasis on exploring the map rather than just striking in the dark. 

This game won't start until after taulover's Arena game is finished, but you can go ahead and sign up now just by posting here. I'm looking forward to hosting the game, and hope that you'll join in on the fun.

Ich will join, I love battleship

I haven't been very active the last six or so months here on the forums, so I'll go ahead and sign up.

I'll sign up

I'll join

Mage Wars tends to be a bit of a long RNG slog, but maybe this expansion will make things interesting. I'll sign up.

Five players so far, how awesome! Thanks to everyone who signed up.

I thought I'd start out by talking about some things I considered adding to this game but decided against, just for fun.

The first is Field of Vision, which I think would add a lot to the game...players would have to explore to know what was going on, units would take on new importance as scouts, and players could use the cover of darkness to surprise their opponents. It would allow for more secret elements in the game that don't make sense when players publicly announce their actions. The problem is that it'd turn Mage Wars into a completely different game, one that would have to be played entirely over PM. I may create a version of the game with this sometime later, one that people can play privately without a host, but I really want to keep Mage Wars as a forum game so I decided to toss this idea.

Tile Improvements is the other one, which falls in the category of secret elements you'd need field of vision for. The idea was that you could build structures around your mage tower that would give you benefits but make it easier for other players to find you. The problem is if you're publicly announcing where you're building them they're painting a target on yourself, and even if you move that portion to PMs you run into complications with when and how other players can discover your buildings that requires a field of vision system to resolve. Some parts of this moved to improvements to the mage tower, which is the only part of the game that's secret. Apprentices will start at the mage tower, and players can direct that they move or teleport to the mage tower without giving away where it is.

Additionally, I tabled a few ideas that will probably show up in future expansions. Unlike these two I gave away here, they're workable with enough time and effort. I just didn't want to throw too many new and different things into a single game...I think it'll make for a better game if I work with one new concept and try to make it the best it can be. But I tell you, you've got some cool stuff to look forward to in future editions of Mage Wars.

At this point I have the basics of the expansion outlined, but I still need to fill in the details. For example, apprentices will be able to learn skills and spells, but what those exact spells and skills will be is still up in the air. I'll post a better update once things are ironed out.

I will sign up.

Ah, so we'll still playing by forum post then?

@taulover: That's the plan at the moment. Do you believe that playing by PM would be better?

@taulover: That's the plan at the moment. Do you believe that playing by PM would be better?

Nah, I was just wondering if you'd make it a web game, like Clickwar, but you said that you were hoping not to at this moment.

I think it'd be cool to have a web version that people could play whenever without necessarily needing a host...there's so many ways we could go with that, and you could even say it'd be our first "product". But I also think there's something to be said for having a version where players interact with the host and with each other...something that's more community-based that encourages real interaction with each other.

Maybe someday we'll have both versions.

Progress on designing the game continues...tonight I nailed down what the apprentice stats will be (name, health, mana, movement, sorcery, summoning, and clerical), and some of what the tower improvements will be. While I nail down some other things, I wanted to get input from our players on a few things: @TGN, @Dawcreeke, @Gerrick, @Imaginative Kane, @taulover, @Dawsinian.

1) If an apprentice is reaches 0 health, should they be knocked unconscious with a chance to recover at the mage tower OR should they be killed and removed from the game?

2) Should combat follow the hitbox system from taulover's Arena game (where players can target their previous location if they moved on the same turn) or should rounds be split into move and attack phases?

Thanks for your input.

Both apprentice mechanics sound alright.  I would suggest a mixture of both options depending on how much damage is dealt to the apprentice with each hit.  The specific mixture would be that the first time an apprentice is taken out, it is knocked unconscious with the chance to recover but after that first time if it goes down again it is gone.  One way to make the chance to recover work is to have it respawn at the player's tower on either the same round or a later one.

For the second question I think the move and attack phases would work better than the hitbox system if this is to be like Battleship.  If not then the hitboxes would probably work better with apprentices than the player towers (Rage Revenants and other beneficial items aside).

Just my two cents.

Either way the apprentice needs to be balanced. So if it is easier to revive then it probably should be harder to get them, which makes them less replaceable, and vice versa.

How would the move and attack phases be structured?