Mage Wars Arena: Paladin vs Siren

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 7 out of 10

   jgoyes

   2017-10-30 Initial Rating: 8.5 (October 2017) I love Mage Wars, a game currently among my Top Ten favorite games of all time, so it is only natural that I also love its expansions. Mage Wars Arena: Paladin vs Siren Expansion Set comes with (obviously) two new mages :D. I have only played with the Siren so I cannot comment on the Paladin yet. I know he uses auras somehow but when I play with him, I will come back to comment again. The art continues to be top notch. The Siren is a very interesting mage, she has a lot of aquatic creatures that are more powerful if they are underwater and she also has the capacity to summon conjuration cards that change the terrain to aquatic, these new conjurations don’t have any life, so you cannot attack them, due to this they are very resilient :evil:. The aquatic conjurations seem very powerful because they affect non-aquatic creatures if they don’t fly, sadly, my opponent (both times) only had flying creatures so I couldn’t hurt him much in this way. The Siren´s training is water magic (obviously) and she had some interesting abilities. 1. Siren´s Call which forces a creature to move toward your mage but she cannot attack the siren this turn and Fermata that allows the song spell to dissipate in more turns. If she is on an aquatic terrain, she can heal one point each turn. It seems she has to wait for the opponent to attack her due to the advantages of the terrain cards. The dissipate token were introduced in Mage Wars: Academy, but they are used here as well. The grapple mechanism is new and it is used by tentacle aquatic creatures. The rules for grapple are the longest I have seen for any trait, but they are logical and easy to learn and teach. Bottom line, I love Mage Wars Arena: Paladin vs Siren Expansion Set and I want to explore it further. Sadly, Mage Wars is one of the games that doesn’t comes to the table easily as it is long and two player only. I will try the Paladin next. Current Rating: 8.5 [hr] 2022-02-09 Last year, I downgraded Mage Wars´ rating. I still love the game and I don’t think I will ever get rid of it, but it is way too long so it is very hard for it to hit the table. Due to this, my desire to play the game again isn’t as high as before so I´m also downgrading all the game´s expansions. Current Rating: 7.0

2. 10 out of 10

   Rodge

   I've looked forward to this set for SOOOO long. I love the Holy creatures - the idea of Angels and Righteous troops seeking retribution for any perceived offense, just love the idea of a book built like this. However, I always think of the Priestess as a sit-back and turtle character. I had high hopes for the Priest, but he's always seemed quite squishy and weak to me. The Paladin looks to be the kind of mage I've always wanted to play. The Holy spells in this expansion are just amazing and I can't wait to get them onto the field! The Siren seems an interesting character. While less appealing to me, my girlfriend has indicated that she's the Mage she'd like to play - so I might get more games of Mage Wars! With the introduction of terrain in this expansion, there's just so much to love in this pack

3. 8.5 out of 10

   latindog

   I enjoy both mages in this set. They are both among the more complicated mages to play with some very unique special powers. I don' t log plays for individual expansions of Mage Wars because I generally use cards from several expansions in each game and I don't necessarily know where each card came from and it's just too much to keep track of anyway. I am giving all of the Mage Wars expansions the same rating to reflect how much I enjoy "Mage Wars with cards from all the expansions" not the individual components of this particular set.