Has anyone played the Force of Will TCG?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Aug. 10, 2015, 2:31 a.m. by kengiczar
I'm considering playing it. It uses the WUBRG system, has "mana", and uses tapping to denote creatures attacking and blocking. Not to different, but seems different enough.
If you have played it here are my main questions:
Do you find it expensive to field a competitive deck? (Compared to say, Grixis Twin, America Twin, Jund or Infect MTG in modern.) I see that that the vast majority of rare creatures or whatever they are called all cost close to $10.00 on TCG, and only 1-3 cards from each set go over that.
Next, do you find it more or less expensive than Vanguard. That game seemed rediculously expensive, like getting into it was between MTG Modern and MTG Standard pricing to keep up with the latest decks.
Does each of the colors have a shot at winning?
Are the archetypes the same? (Combo, Aggro, Control, Midrange, Burn, Reanimator, Prison) Which ones are present and which ones are not?
Does playing dual or tri-color decks give you an edge?
Does each color play differently?
What's unique to each color that isn't seen in MTG?
Are there lots of otherwise good cards that are just garbage because they are overpriced as far as CMC goes?
Do you find yourself with more "waste" after opening Force of Will or MTG Booster packs?
If I wanted to play, do you think I should pick up the kits with 2 of each dual land now, or is it safe to assume those will be reprinted in their current iteration? I would hate to miss out on those because of something like a "reserved list".
What formats are supported?
A big concern is that the smaller amount of phases really pushes a lot of the complexity on the games versions of non-creature spells. If these aren't interesting enough, I'll get bored. Do you think this is a problem?
Lastly, do you think in any given game there is more or less interaction than MTG?
Wow thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. After reading this and seeing how low the prices are I am dolphinately at least going to invest enough for a fun hundred dollar smash face deck.
A lot of the people I talked to about it today said the same things. I'm looking forward to it!
August 11, 2015 12:09 a.m.
@ yeaGO - OMFG TY!
Btw I've been playing it and I love the game.
January 20, 2016 6:19 p.m.
Thats awesome. I find this game to be far cheaper and more manageable than MTG. I still play MTG of course. But the nice thing about this game if you get into it enough to buy booster boxes is the 3 boxes get a free playment. Just extra loot, but the bonus is that since the sets have fewer cards its far easier to pull playsets of everything in a set. 1 box generally gets you 4x all the commons and uncommons. 3 boxes generally gets you most of everything making the need for less trades. The benefit is that you can be constantly brewing. Every turn seems action packed. Even the slower decks still have something to do generally. I havent regretted getting into this game one bit. I absolutely love it. I get to pretty much play a new deck every week at my LGS and run through ideas all the time.
If you havent found it, there is a FOW TCG - US group on facebook. 10k+ members. Granted its facebook, so plenty of trolly idiots but you get to see peoples brews and all the news of course.
January 23, 2016 1:22 a.m.
I was watching some youtube videos of box opening and it's truly majestic. When opening the latest set out of 6 boxes every single time you get one of each regalia and one foil version, 3/4 of a playset of every single common, 3/4 playset of 3/4 of the rares in addition to some play sets of rares, and 2 J-Rulers. Also in all 8 of the box openings I watched there was always minimum 7 stamped foils and sometimes 8.
weisemanjohn says... #2
Whoa, that is alot of questions all at once! I picked up this game and have been playing semi-competitively for about a month now at my LGS. I can say that the closest feel this has to MTG is commander, as you will often rely on your "ruler" as either continuous support, or as a finisher.
This game is EXTREMELY cheap when compared to modern, and is more similar to standard in deck prices. Even then, standard can get more expensive as your priciest card will likely be with Cheschire cat (Brainstorm on a body) or your ruler, who you would only ever need one of.
I haven't done any singles purchasing online, but I was told to usehttp://www.cyberlordgames.com/ as that is what my LGS uses to get their singles.
I cannot compare to vanguard as I have not ever looked into it.
No, every color does not have a chance of winning at this time. The strongest color by far is green and the weakest is blue.
I have not been at a tournament yet, so I cannot say what archetypes are present at that level, but I have played with/against aggro, midrange, control, reanimate. Combo I have yet to see anything that goes infinite, nor have I seen a prison deck aside from control "resting" (tapping) down your board.
I have a dual color deck and a mono color deck. The advantages of multi color are similar to that in magic, where you get a wider base of cards, but you will not necessarily always have mana to make it work.
One of the nice things is that you have a "stone deck" which is where all your will stones (lands) go. You always have to option to rest your ruler to get a will stone off the top (NO GETTING MANA SCREWED!)
White is your life gain color as well as having your board wipe, first strike and resonators (creatures) that will work with eachother. I have not looked too closely at white and cannot tell you too much about it.
Blue is your tempo. You will get the abilities to rest opposing resonators, draw spells (though they are often higher cmc and you don't get as much out of them), flying. This has generally been a splash color.
Black is your reanimate, kill spells, and all things demonic pretty similar to magic.
Red is your swiftness (haste), pierce (trample), fight, and burn. Very effective for aggro.
Green is your ramp, counter spells, buffs, and can be beats dependant on the deck. It takes away alot of what made blue good in magic and removed alot of the bigger tougher creatures, giving those to red and black.
I would not say there are garbage cards, because even if you do have highly costed cards, there are ways to play them. This game highly encourages thematic decks as there are spells that will have replacement text based on your ruler.
I have not opened many packs beyond the box I bought that I already knew contained 80% of the deck I had intended to build. One of the nice things is there aren't too many cards per set so you are more likely to get the stuff you want.
I highly recommend buying the vingolf boxes (two of them) as it contains many of the staple cards that have been printed (dual stones, thunder (Lightning Bolt), stoning to death (destroy target resonator), law of silence (Silence)) and you can build decks straight out of the box. The dual deck package that was release along side the vingolf also contains many strong cards and was able to win a tournament by combining the two starter decks.
The supported formats are Valhalla (starter decks and Europe/Japan only using "break" cards), bifrost (non "break" cards), cluster specific (same as only using one block in magic), new frontier (standard using the two most recent clusters), and draft (you will get to pick whatever ruler you want that has been printed to go along with the drafted deck.)
The reduced phases to a draw, reset, main, end phase setup is definitely something to get used to. You will draw a card before untapping, allowing you to cast an instant with leftover will (mana) at the beginning of your turn and then resetting for your main phase. You can attack at any point in the main phase and you only declare attacks one at a time. In addition to that, you can attack rested (tapped) resonators your opponent controls directly or use the ability "target attack" to attack unrested resonators directly. Blocking requires resting your blockers and you may only single block.
Normal spells (non creature) are what will support you, but ultimately you will need resonators and combat to win games. I have not seen any token generating spells yet.
The things that will make this attractive is the art (there are two themes, one being anime esque and the other being realistic), the thematic elements of having decks that follow a pattern such as my mono green wizard of oz deck (literally featuring dorthy, tin man, lion, scarecrow, oz, and a substitute for toto using a wolf),and the bit of separation it has from magic while still being familiar, breathing some freshness into playing a TCG.
I'd say the games are slightly less interactive, though Red and Black probably maintain about the same level and green interacts more often.
If you can, find some people who already have decks and try it for yourself to see if you'll like it.
August 10, 2015 7:56 a.m.