If you've played through as the mage before, you know that the mage is the most flexible of our original classes. While warriors run around bashing things and clerics aim to crush opponents under the weight of their ridiculous health totals, the mage has a range of options which can change drastically depending on your race. For me personally, that makes the mage the most replayable of all of the classes. However, that flexibility and replayability comes at the price of a much lower health total by comparison.
Hey gang! Ryan Sutherland, aka HexRysu, with you once again. I’m here to bring you the last of our class previews for Chronicles of Entrath: Chapter II. In case you missed it, Jared covered the cleric’s update here, Phil covered our warrior update here and Dan covered the new ranger class here. However, for those of you more magically inclined, you’ll find a force to be reckoned with in the new mage order I will reveal today.
Part of working on the new chapter of our campaign has been spending some time reflecting on the decisions of the first chapter. After much discussion, we decided that the mage’s starting health total of 14 (before race talents) is a tad too punishing. Therefore, we’ve decided to move the mage’s starting health total up to 17 from the beginning. In addition, there will be some more options to improve the survivability of the mage. Of course, there will still be a bunch of options for those of you who just want pure destructive power. Our mage is all about options.
One thing you’ll notice is that the new mage talents makes your leveling choices really matter. Unlike the other classes, our mage talent tree forces you to choose one of two very different paths. The mage's second tier of talents is the most restrictive of all of talent trees, but in return you are granted awesome arcane power.
Rock of Mages
Let’s start with the more destructive half of the mage tree. First off, you’ll have access to a brand new spell called Chaos Missile. While this spell is fairly innocuous looking as it just deals 1 damage for one SP, it’s actually extremely useful for killing off any troops your opponents happen to drop early on. Sure, many times it’s a coin flip, but because its SP cost starts so low, you’ll be able to fire Chaos Missile off two or three times in a game and still have enough SP left over for other talents.
Behind Chaos Missiles we have the first class card for mage to show off, Destructive Magic. This is an extremely powerful card, assuming you are able to keep it in your hand for a few turns. If you can manage to hold onto it, Destructive Magic has the power to completely swing the game in your favor, if not flat out win it.
Both SP Boon and Wizard’s Cap give the player a few new ways to pick up some starting SP, which as most mages know is invaluable. Behind both of those talents we have one of my favorites, Eye of Chaos. Eye of Chaos is a slow card that can eventually just win you the game. With this card, every time you play something you get closer and closer to creating a new Chaostouched. This is truly the path that leads to madness. Just by naturally playing the game, you’ll be slowly moving closer and closer to summoning tentacly terrors. In case you aren’t familiar, a few of our Chaostouched friends like Shoggoth, Poet of Gla'aki and Bastardspawn of Bokrug can leave your opponent whimpering in terror. Of course, you do run the risk of creating a Chaos Gate and just outright destroying everything. What the chaos giveth, the chaos can taketh away.
Finally, Alchemy adds a bit of extra damage to the mage’s arsenal. You can pick up this talent to deal a bit more damage with a random card in your hand, or you can build your deck around it with some expensive cards and have a shot at just completely blowing your opponent up.
Spelling out the Defense
On the opposite side of the talent tree we have the makings of a much more defensive mage. This side of the tree is also quite a bit more straightforward at keeping you alive long enough to leverage your spells to win the game. Let’s start off with the other new Learned Spell offered on this tier - Magic Barrier. Magic Barrier gives you a 0/4 wall with Flight. The Barrier acts as a stopgap for nullifying opposing attackers. It’s probably as good a time as any to remind you that spells like Chaos Missiles and Magic Barrier can be used at Quick speed. This means you can wait to see what the dungeon’s attacks are before committing your hard earned SP to creating a blocker.
Hiding behind Magic Barrier is Destruction Magic’s kindly sister, Protective Magic. This card works very similarly to Destruction Magic, while also being its mirror. Instead of dealing a ton of damage to your opponent’s face and decimating their board, you get to refill your hand and gain a bunch of health. While obviously Destructive Magic can just easily end the game, Protective Magic comes at a much lower cost. Plus, since you’re investing in the defensive side of the tree, you’re much more likely to survive long enough to cast much more powerful magics down the line.
Moving up the tree (and past another free point of SP with SP Buff), we find the Guardian Golem. Guardian Golem is a 0/2 that starts in play during your games and gives you a little speed bump if that’s what you need. It also has a One Shot ability to make any of your cards invisible for a turn. This can be great if you want to play defensively or protect that much needed combo piece. Just behind Guardian Golem is Golem Graft, which gives your little golem a brand new ability to exhaust for 1 health and 1 SP. If you’re the kind of player who has wanted a way to get an endless source of SP, well, here’s your chance!
The final talent on this side of the tree is Concentration. Concentration provides a very interesting style of play for those who are interested, and I think those of you who loved our lower health version of Mage may perk up at this point. This talent will reduce the cost of your charge power down to 2 charges! However, it comes with a pretty big cost, since when you use your charge power, you’ll become Vulnerable until the end of your next turn. This means you’ll have far more Spell Power than any other build, but you had better know how to protect yourself. There's great risk and great reward for those who seek to control nearly infinite cosmic power. I’m excited to see which of our players are up for this kind of challenge.
Coming of Mage
Last, we have two final talents to go over which are in the middle of the tree. First off we have the Mage Gems, and these are nothing to scoff at. The Mage's Minor Orb of Thought grants the ability to add draw to any of your socketed troops when you play them out. This is a pretty insane deal for mages. Moon'airu Sensei is a card that has seen a lot of play in PvP tournaments, and this gem let's you put Sensei's power on practically anything. Not to mention how powerful this gem is on any double socketed troop. On the other side, the Mage's Major Orb of Spell Power grants the ability to make any of your troops into an SP generating machine. Look at how this card would work with something like Eldritch Dreamer. Generating 6 SP a turn is a pretty insane rate. As with all of our gems, there are countless combinations, but mages have some of the most powerful ones in the game if you build your deck wisely.
The final talent I have for you is Balance, and it's a bit of a hint towards the future. Balance massively upgrades both Destructive Magic and Protective Magic. With Balance, both cards now have their abilities upgrade every turn while they are in your deck. This means that when you eventually draw them you’ll have a card much more powerful than any we’d ever rightfully print in HEX. However, as the name implies, doing so requires you to balance the yin and the yang of becoming a mage.
The entire idea of a mage in Entrath is destructive and creative forces pulling at one another, and Balance shows the mage's inner struggle. With the release of Chapter II, it's currently very difficult to get both Protective and Destructive Magic and then find Balance. It is possible, but you’ll have to give up everything else in the tree. Obviously, when our next installment comes out, it’ll be much easier to get there... but that’s for another day. Here’s our mage tree so you can balance the books yourself:
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of the mage’s new Spells and abilities. We're very excited for all of the new builds possible in what was already our most versatile class. We hope you are too. Stay tuned to HEXTCG.com to get the latest on Chronicle of Entrath’s next chapter as we get ever closer to the release.