Fear of your own Mages

Magic Duel is a very real threat in the hands of certain players. If you want to see it abused, try playing T'ien Ch'i and relying on Celestial Masters in a MP game with Pythium, Arco, or R'leyh in the game as well and you will see it's effectiveness.

While I admit the other nations with at least 2 in Astral have a minor thought of Mind Duel, any nation with 1 Astral on their primary -expensive- mage has to worry about such things.

And Quickness and Mind Duel on the Astral King will wipe out huge masses of small end Mind Duelers. In my Experience Astral 7+ on an Astral King can typically nullify anything with 3 and Below Astral and kill them all with very little actual threat to him (weird luck aside).

Also Mind Hunt is a very real threat if you go into their Dominion with your Astral Mages.

[ March 18, 2004, 22:30: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zen:
And Quickness and Mind Duel on the Astral King will wipe out huge masses of small end Mind Duelers. In my Experience Astral 7+ on an Astral King can typically nullify anything with 3 and Below Astral and kill them all with very little actual threat to him (weird luck aside).

I recall that the safety margin for magic duelling was 6-over. If you're 6 over, always duel, otherwise, only duel if you killing him is more important than the survival of your mage.

Of course, the more duellers you face at once, the more likely they'll communion themselves into a large duelling array and gun you down anyway. The stronger their leading astral mages are, the fewer astral mages have to attend for this to happen.

It is, however, very true that the Celestial Master is particularly weak against duelling: He's only astral 1, which means you only need an astral 7 mage to kill him, and Pythium, R'lyeh, Arco, can all easily achieve that with a combination of items, communion, and/or randoms. The price tag of the CM being what it is, he can't quite be considered sufficiently expendable small-fry that nobody will bother, either.

[ March 18, 2004, 22:38: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

The Mind Duel does the highest first. So if he has 2 or 3 Masters with 4-8 Slaves (Assuming they are all lowend Astral Users).

I know what the 'safety' range is, but you win with anything 4+ in levels I have found except with freak occurances (which can happen, but 1 in 20 or 30 MD's or so). So all you have to do is win against the ones who are higher and mop up the lower end ones. What would be even better is if it targeted the lowest first to MD to kill Communion Slaves, however this would still give Pythium an edge. Most of the time you'll be dealing with Light of the Northern Star, but other than that, the odds still work for the higher end Astral user.

For other players it may be less of an impact. If I'm playing an Astrally strong nation or pretender, I always script Mind Duel first on those mages who have 4+ Astral (After LotNS) And I rarely lose any while the opponent loses Grand Thamaturgs, Warlocks, Grand Masters, Nornas and others with much more than the % frequency.