Hey! We’re veering off hard and talking about leadership and organization stuff.  Don’t worry, there’s battle gaming articles in the works, I still have more things to talk about with wizard, and I’ve been playing a lot of another caster class that I’m DYING to spill some ink on. I want to keep my mostly informative but still fairly opinionated battle gaming content away from my PURELY OPINION DRIVEN EDITORIALIZING DRIVEL so these posts are going to be known by…  Something else. I’ll figure it out. Promise. (Taking suggestions).  They’re not a proper Babble, they’re just an essay about the game. So if you’re here for educational content that actually has a basis in objective, rulebook written fact- this article isn’t for you.  If you want to hear my musings on a subject that I’ve gotten fairly familiar with over the past year or so, read on. This is also definitely not as refined as some of my Babbles, because there’s a LOT to say on this topic and I don’t exactly need to fact check it because…

This is just sorta like…My opinion man….

Cool?  Cool.

You know what’s awesome?  Whacky bats.  You know what’s a lot less awesome?  Moving.  Moving sucks. In the summer of 2021, I had to leave my comfy home of Eugene, Oregon and my home Amtgard holding of Iron Keep in order to attend college.  This put me in a precarious spot for LARPing, because my nearest non-defunct Amtgard park became Silvermoon, nearly an hour’s drive away. And on top of that, not long after my car got wrecked and we were forced to take on a far less reliable vehicle. So I was basically dormant at the end of lockdown, not really able to get out and wack nerds or craft much. Needless to say, this was not good for my mental. 

Enter my good friend and co-conspirator Toast, who promised to come up at least twice a month if I filed off the paperwork to create an Amtgard freehold.  Then, when he got impatient and filed it for me because I was frankly too much of a sad sack to do it myself, he kept to his promise, and as such the fledgling Freehold of Satyr’s Hollow was born. Helping run this park over the past year has been an honor, a privilege, and an insane learning experience.  Within a year, our holding has attained barony status and attracted a solid playerbase of both noobs and previously disenfranchised veterans who were stuck in limbo like myself.  At the risk of sounding like I’m taking too much credit for the success of this park (which, unfortunately is just going to be a theme here.), I wanted to outline a few things that worked for us when we were starting out and trying to grow in the hopes that it might help someone else looking to start or grow a holding.  This is by no means a definitive guide, nor am I willing to guarantee the principles laid out here are what’s led to our modest success. Some of this stuff might even seem painfully obvious. But I like to think there’s something I’ve learned here that might be useful to someone. 

Satyr’s Hollow – Day 1 10/8/2022

You’re Going to Start Small

Right before we got our freehold contract, we were holding little fighter practices in a public park for fun.  These fighter practices consisted of me, my partner, and two guys I met almost by pure coincidence that were interested in doing LARP, only one of which had prior european LARP experience (shoutout to Fyord).  Toast is going to laugh at me because I was horribly unmotivated to do this until stuff really started to fall into place, but it’s probably safe to say that nearly 99% of Amtgard parks start off with a handful of friends whacking each other in a public park. The important thing is consistency.  Be there every week, rain or shine.  It doesn’t have to be for the same amount of time, but it’s important that somebody is holding down the park.  When we were still only five or six people, if I was out of town at an event or busy with school we had two remarkable individuals who kept coming out and fighting each other. Partially so they could get their weekly sparring in, but I think it’s part of what cemented us as a consistent, weekly thing.

Reach Out

Is anyone else you know stuck in LARP Limbo where you’re at, too far from the nearest park and too lazy to start their own park too?  Reach out.  It’s really that simple.  If you know people close by, reach out and drag them to your park.  Kicking and screaming if you have to.  They’ll thank you for it later, promise.  Or they’ll jump right onto it and become one of your most consistent players.

Plug Yourself

So we made a post to a local subreddit in May of last year, and it netted us like 5 people. And those 5 people brought in another 10 people.  And every now and again that Reddit post still brings in a curious (or bored senseless) soul. I browse the Corvallis and Oregon State University subreddit regularly and make comments on appropriate posts when tasteful. We also put on a big event every year called BATTLE OF THE BONES which we try to plug wherever possible and specifically design to be something people can just walk onto with little to no knowledge. A lot of these tools are free, they just require a little bit of tech savvy and some patience/persistence.

Get Some Loaners

The most common thread you’re going to find in all this is that one of the keys to success in recruiting new players to come do this crazy thing that’s going to eat up a prime weekend time slot is that you need to try to lower the barrier to entry as much as humanly possible. There’s a lot in the way of getting out to park, and while you’ll occasionally get a new player who’s 100% on board from the get go, sometimes people need a little more nudging. One of the main selling points that I get to give bored people in Corvallis is that this is a free weekend event that only requires you bring a fighting spirit, clothes you’re comfortable exercising in, and water (and even then we usually have water on hand). “Loaners” shouldn’t just mean shortswords and daggers too, if you can help it. We have the amazing benefit of having loaner shields, loaner spears (only permitted to be used after we can trust the person not to swing for the fences with it), loaner spellballs, a tiny scrap of loaner leather armor, and even a loaner bow/some arrows.  This stuff is all communal, and we basically let people use it on a first come first served basis until they feel like they’re ready to make/purchase their own stuff.  Loaner garb and sashes are also a must. Loaners should ideally serve to give new players a vertical slice of the game and encourage them to experiment a little bit with different playstyles. It also means that if you get a new player who’s less immediately interested in going at someone with a shortsword and maybe a little more keen on say- shooting a bow you can almost immediately hook them with that.  Oh, and bonus points if your park gear includes a few really basic things for running battle games. Objectives, cones and the like.

Give Out Swag

Don’t be afraid to send loaners home with people.  By week four or five you should ideally be giving someone a piece of equipment to take home. Either to keep, or on a long term loan. This almost guarantees some level of attrition for your loaners, but having a physical piece of equipment reminding you about the foam sword fighting people that meet up every weekend can help with player retention. Again, this is a bit of a risky play.  I never give away something I’m not okay with never ever seeing again. I gave out a healer sash my partner sewed me real quick on the first day we had “proper” park and I’ve yet to see that player again, much to my partner’s frustration. We were lucky enough to run a promotion for some time that saw every player that signed in five times get a free shortsword provided by the kingdom, and later by Toast, and that very much got people excited and invested. People were SO jazzed to have me stamp their little cards.  Again, this is very much a “funds and resources willing” bit of advice, but if we can hack it you might find a way to as well.

If You Can, Feed People

My co-conspirator Toast has a medical condition that means he needs to make sure to eat.  Frankly, I could be doing a better job in remembering to eat before Amtgard. When we first started off, and Toast was coming up he calculated that it’d be far, far cheaper to bring some hot dogs or something to grill than it would be to eat out regularly. So began a tradition at our park, that we usually bring an excess of food for people to snack on between games. I honestly could personally do a better job of contributing, but if you can grill up some glizzies and slam them at people it’s one less thing they have to worry about doing before showing up to park on the weekend.  And, the promise of free food has been enough to tip people over the fence into coming to check us out.  Obviously this and loaners are a little contingent on having money around, but if you have the means you should very much consider doing both.

Let The Kids Play (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Appreciate the Munchkins)

Holy crap does opening the field up to kids get you places. We recruited a veritable pillar of our community through his son who saw us playing in the park one day and informed him that there was Amtgard nearby.  Not only does letting younger kids take the field with their parents permission and a waiver net you a bunch of really passionate, young players but it frees their Amtgarder parents up to come out more. Our murder children are the best, and they’ve been doing a great job of learning the rules from the adults.  Not only that, but noobie kids often bring their parents with them and can sometimes be a consistent part of your park outright.  I know that hanging out with a bunch of kids while you do your HIGH INTENSITY FOAM COMBAT SPORT might make you feel like a bit of a dweeb, and there’s definitely pitfalls and risks, but seriously. If you get passionate, younger players to show up, give them a chance to take the field and be patient with them, you might have a new die hard LARPer in the making. Also, some of the kids are phenomenal recruitment tools. You have no idea how many people we’ve gotten to give us a spin because they stopped to watch us and my page bounded up to them to give them a sales pitch. It’s Scald’s game folks, we’re just playing it.

Run Some Militia Games (Other Than Ditch)

Ugh.  Okay.  So to say I have a complicated relationship with militia is a bit of an understatement.  I like playing Belegarth as well as Amtgard, and Bel has a more contact heavy ruleset and permits bows and armor in what’s considered the primary game mode. 6 points armor wearers are always who I focus on in militia games though.  On a particularly noobie heavy day, it’s really useful to not throw class gaming at people right away.  Your mileage may vary though, some of our newer players have taken to the V8 and even the V9 ruleset like ducks to water.  But for your average joe, having a warm up game for 10 minutes where you play Ring the Bell or King of the Hill in Militia lets them get to grips with the core ideas of Amtgard combat, fighting as a group, and learning to recognize when you’ve been hit. You know, the sort of stuff that veterans might take for granted.

If Need Be, Lower Your Power Level

One of the things I had to promise myself when we started having battlegames at park was that I was strictly forbidden from playing Wizard. I know.  What a sacrifice. And like, the unfortunate truth is that I’m maybe a A- to B+ Wizard on a good day, and a C- to C tier stick fighter on a good day as well.  But still, I’ve been doing this for close to six years now at time of writing, and I’ve faced noobs who right off the bat vary wildly in skill level. Sometimes, in the interest of keeping someone engaged and in the spirit of good sportsmanship it’s important to not go as hard as you normally would.  Fight with your non-dominant hand, try a different loadout, play a class you don’t really know super well, run a meme spell list. Not only does this make sure that Joe Shmoe walking up to you at the local park to swing stick doesn’t get intimidated but it encourages you to maybe open up and try new things. I’ve been REALLY into playing Healer lately (That’s likely what the next Babble is going to be about, for those of you invested in such a thing.) and I likely would’ve never picked up the class had I not needed something to level alongside the newer players.  And now some of my noobs who were completely fresh to LARP last year are taking over kingdom level quests because they’re such good little objective fiends, and can actually hold their own in a kingdom level battle game.  Sometimes, a newer player will need to hit the wall and will walk away with a passionate desire to “git gud”, and that’s a wonderful thing. But sometimes they just hit the wall and walk away, and it’s your job as a park leadership to limit that as much as possible.

Be an Inclusive Space

I feel like this is kind of goofy to say, but don’t be a group of elitist nerds. Be welcoming, be friendly, and at the risk of introducing dreaded politics in my silly little LARP essay: Don’t be a bigot, and handle bigots as soon as they out themselves. Welcoming nerd spaces are rare to find and a major appeal of a local LARP group can just be a welcoming, inclusive third space to hang out with other people and not feel judged. I think my proudest accomplishment with all of this is that for the time being, our holding is a very welcoming space where people seem to feel safe, and I think that is so cool.

Facebook Sucks

In the Cyberpunk Future Year of 2024 there is no reason for you to JUST have a Facebook page for your LARP. Hell, there’s less and less reason to HAVE a Facebook page for your LARP. Our main means of communication is our Discord server, which we link to with our handy dandy business cards designed by my impeccable Person-at-Arms Wicke Kellinglo. Not only is Discord a lot easier to organize, but it promotes your people interacting with each other in real time throughout the week. We do keep a Facebook page up, and it helps for discoverability but it mostly serves to point people towards our Discord.  Ditch the FB page, make a Discord.  Stick with the times for when Discord becomes too bloated and we all have to move someplace else.

Bend the Rules

Okay okay okay.  Don’t get mad at me.  And don’t narc. Just hear me out. I’m risking my Paragon and Walker cred for budging on this one. Some of the rules as written for Amtgard and some of our social norms suck. Not only do they suck, but they increase the barrier to entry for playing the game for little to no good reason.  At Satyr’s Hollow, if you’re a newer player you can expect the following:

• Look the Part even if you’re not wearing garb.  (After a few months, I might bully someone by taking away their Look the Part until they make a tabard or something but we’ve yet to have that happen! People make garb on their own timeline.)  Being low level sucks, and giving people that extra point of magic or extra ability is oftentimes what lets them have fun and tide them over until they play for the ELEVEN WEEKS required to hit level 3.
• Any credits from your first like…  Six or seven park days can be transferred over to another class if you don’t like the class we saddled you with on day one.  Let people play around a little and find what they like, then move their credits into it.  Don’t force someone to start from level 1 all over again when they find the class they actually enjoy.
• We don’t really use spellstrips.  They’re finicky, and annoying, and noobs don’t benefit from them anyway. One less loaner to worry about.

That is about it, promise.  Provided you’re not in FLAGRANT breach of the CoC or rulebook, and anything you do locally doesn’t ruin your noobs for KLEs and larger events, I think you’re good to fudge a few things to improve the new player experience. At least until V9 does away with spellstrips and Look the Part as it exists entirely. Also you know, don’t get rid of rules that are there for safety?  Just keep an eye out for what rules might cause friction with newer players and see about selectively looking the other way.

Mentor People

So like, I’ve had my red belt for a little while now.  And for the longest time I didn’t really think I’d have any underbelts.  But these noobs man.  I have two At-Arms and a Page now, and they’re all utterly remarkable people who’s drive and skill sets and just sheer passion make me wish I was a more impressive player to be belted under. Mentorship comes in many forms obviously, but keep an eye out for what your new players take to and offer to link them up with people who know how to do that stuff.  Goes for fighting, battlegaming, A&S, service, WHATEVER.  And if you gel with someone, just give them the belt.  They can always move later if there’s a better fit elsewhere. Or don’t, I won’t tell you how to run your belted line.

Location, Location, Location

So I usually don’t show these to anyone else before I publish them, but I figured I’d be remiss to not show this article to Toast before I post it. He’s the reason why I’m a lot less swear-ey here than in some of my other articles, and one of the things he brought up is that having a really good park/meeting place is very important to having a successful holding. A good park/meeting place can make a good park great, and conversely a bad park/meeting place can make an otherwise good park struggle. I poked him a little more and got the following points on what makes a park good.

• Good access to bathrooms.
• Is it accessible? Is there enough parking?
• Is it a public park? Do local ordinances allow you to use bows?
• If it isn’t a public park, are the park owners cool with 10-20 nerds running all over the grass and tearing it up regularly?
• If you live in a place like Oregon, like me, you might want to check for good drainage for when it gets rainy.
• Is it a safe place to leave your gear?

There’s probably more, but these are good questions to ask yourself when screening potential meeting places for your holding.  It should also be noted that depending on your corpora, there’s nothing really saying that you need to meetups in a public space. If you have land that you can make accessible for wacky bats?  That’s probably a strong contender.

Adopt a “Local Level First” Mindset

In Blackspire at least, we have at least one KLE a month somewhere in Oregon or Washington.  This is awesome, we’re very close together and as such the entire kingdom feels like a coherent whole. But it can be rough for your recruitment capabilities. If everyones gone for a given weekend, any walk-ons or new people looking to come out for that weekend are in for disappointment when they learn that their local group is actually 2 hours north at some kingdom thing. I have visited other kingdoms only to find that nobody is actually meeting up at the weekly local meeting, they’re all 3 hours north at someone’s birthday party. As such, I recommend sending your populace out to KLEs sparingly and ensuring that there’s always some people looking to stay behind and hold down the fort. Recently, we had a number of people go to a local KLE, but we still managed to pull a modest weekend attendance.  Stuff like that helps you catch people who might otherwise not turn up, and helps you keep people who aren’t quite ready to drive a bunch for this weird hobby they picked up but are still down to driving 20 minutes for it in the fold.

There’s Going to be Turnover

The grim truth at the bottom of all of this.  You’re going to lose people. Truth be told? You’re going to lose a LOT of people. You’re going to lose people because they move away. Two of our founding members? Same dudes I talked about doing our first practices with?  They’re gone now.  As are a number of people who showed up for 5, 6, hell even 10 or so different park days. And we don’t lose them on bad terms.  Sometimes it’s life, or maybe they just get bored. The trick is to not let it discourage you, and keep the door open in case they want to or are suddenly able to come back.  Low barrier to entry doesn’t just net you a bunch of new players, it lets the old ones slot right back in easily. Keep moving forward, and remember the players that wind up leaving for their contributions to your park! Most everyone who comes out regularly is going to leave some sort of lasting impact, and I think that’s worth celebrating.

You Cannot Do This Alone

Alright this is where I get really corny. Satyr’s Hollow would not be doing nearly as well as it is right now if it weren’t for the fact that we were incredibly fortunate to secure some absolutely phenomenal players who are consistent, skilled, and just altogether fun to be around. I think there’s this nasty habit in Amtgard leadership where we attribute titles and awards to one person who “did a leadership”, but the fact of the matter is that a holder really is only as good as the people they’re working with. And hooo boy do I have some people to work with.  I’m honestly still a little dumbfounded that I can delegate, or even just straight up miss something and someone else at my park or in my leadership team is able to pick up the slack.  Watch for the talented people who turn up to your park.  Hell, watch for the passionate people who just want to be helpful. They are your lifeline. A holding should ultimately strive not just to be a place to play a game, but a community that’s able to support itself and its members. Oh and award them.  Responsibly, of course. 

Oh Geez Here’s Rapid Fire Miscellaneous Stuff

• Yes, Barbarian and Monk are good classes for beginners.  But so is Scout.  Assassin can be a little complicated but lots of newer players LOVE playing it.  A forcebolt wizard list with a shortsword is also a lot of fun at low levels.
• As much as I personally really do not care for monster, monsters are really good for people’s first day/week/month.  Slap ‘em with a mask and make them into skeletons.
• Pressure your noobs to spellcast! If they seem like they have the head for it, nothing is going to get them familiar with the rules faster than dipping their toes into a casting class.
• Pink sash (five foot call dead) is a godsend for accessibility. You just plain get people who normally wouldn’t play to play, and it’s really not that hard to implement.
• If you can afford them, get a bunch of business cards. Disperse them through your park.  Give them out to weirdos in your day to day life. 
• Play nice with the city! Try to do community outreach if you can.
• Try to submit for your contract early.  Ours took several months and had several hidden snags between us and freehold status, but I’ve heard of other contracts being approved in mere weeks.  It honestly seems like a bit of a crapshoot.
• Try to be a welcoming place for non-combatants.  We have a sizable noncom population at our park and they’re vital to keeping things running.
• If you can, get your new players to a KLE within their first three months of playing, and get them to a campout within their first six months of playing.
• Make sure your chancellor/land level PM equivalent enters attendance promptly. New players are excited to level up.

I think that’s about it. Thank you for reading all that! I’ll probably be writing a few more of these opinion pieces in the near future, so if you for whatever reason are invested in my hot LARP takes, stay tuned. Otherwise, I hope some of you found this article informative. Now go forth and spread the joy of whacks!

Satyr’s Hollow – Elevation to Barony Status 12/16/2023

I’m counting this as two Babbles in one year, and you can’t stop me. This one is over twice the length of anything I’ve done before, so if we really want we can count it as three.

Enchantments are a really important thing in Amtgard. Unless you’re playing Barbarian, just about any class can benefit from finding the right person to give them the right thing at the right time. Warriors get to stomp around with their Ancestral Armor and Phoenix Tears.  Druids terrorize the battlefield with magic armor, wounds kill weapons, and immunities that make them trickier to deal with. If you’re playing a class that can take enchantments, and your team is running them, there’s not much reason to not seek them out in most battlefield settings. However, as a new player (or a new Wizard) may note.  There’s a LOT of enchantments.  Around 41 which can be taken and given to other players by my count (Though I’m sure I totally missed one or two, and somebody is going to loudly remind me about which one I missed.) Some of these enchantments synergize so well with most Wizard playstyles that if offered you should always take them. Others have niche uses on certain fields or battlegame types, and some are just…  Just bad.  Very bad.  Or don’t really affect Wizard, even if there’s nothing saying we can’t wear them.  

So to that end, I wanted to put together a little guide on what enchantments a Wizard should be utilizing on the field, who to seek out for them, and some general tips and tricks for getting the most out of them. Because I like being contentious and encouraging people to yell at me about how bad my takes are floods my cold, dead heart with joy- I’ve decided to format this article as a tier list so you can see what enchantments I think are objectively terrible on Wizard, and which ones I think are actually just sort of okay. So without further ado, I want to define some tiers.

S Tier – Objectively a phenomenal choice.  Cream of the crop.  Basically worth considering taking in any situation if someone is offering it to you. 

A Tier – Workable, strong enchantments that meaningfully contribute to the Wizard playstyle but otherwise aren’t as synergistic as the options in S tier.  Still really good.

B Tier – Usable enchantments that either don’t work well with Wizard’s kit, have really niche applications or just have better alternatives. Usually best taken for meme potential or to catch somebody off guard.

C Tier – Enchantments that are an active hindrance to playing Wizard and don’t synergize well with their kit, or sometimes even any kit. Sometimes these spells are just bad on rate. You might not even see people take these on the field.

Oh, and I’ll be starting from the bottom up.  Because these enchantments get cooler to talk about the further up the list you go.

NULL TIER –

Except I lied.  Here’s the tier for enchantments that don’t do ANYTHING for a Wizard.

Alright, really.  This is just a list.  A short one. There’s not really much else to say.

Imbued Armor, Ancestral Armor.

The class that can’t use armor in any way doesn’t benefit from the enchantments that affect Armor.  Shocker.

C Tier – 

Contagion – Interesting enchantment.  A budget Imbue Weapon on Wizard that makes you fragile.  This is very bad to receive as a Wizard, and frankly pretty bad on rate on anyone other than maybe a Warrior.  I’d love to see them look into reworking this into something actually fun and useful.

Gift of Earth – Just about anything that makes you suppressed basically is an auto-include to this part of the list.  Gift of Earth is such an underwhelming enchantment that barely anybody takes it though. Two points of magic, non-ancestral armor, and a Greater Harden is pretty lame. Especially for a Druid enchantment.

Gift of Fire – Also sucks.  Immunity to Flame is nice, but how often are you really catching another Wizard’s Lightning Bolts and Fireballs? Otherwise, you’re making yourself less susceptible to a Druid’s Call Lightning and people casting Heat Weapon at you. Not worth it for you, not worth it for the Druid.  Even if it gives you a per refresh, rechargeable, Heat Weapon. Again, very lame, especially from Druid.

Gift of Water – It’s Great Value Brand Regeneration.  Or Trollsblood.  It’s a point of armor and an unlimited self only heal. Of the four Gifts Druid has, I call this one the least egregious of the “bad” ones (We’ll get to the good one later, don’t you worry.) I actually think this spell might see more niche use if they removed the self restriction on the heal. It still wouldn’t be great but letting certain types of backline classes have a heal to use on other people might be fun. As it stands though, I believe the main use for this spell is to give it to your teams Archers in order to make them slightly better at dueling other Archers. For Wizards though, it’s C tier.

Corrosive Mist – For the low low cost of being stopped and not being able to take another enchantment, you can cast 5 uses of Destroy Armor on a specific hit location using a special incantation that feels clunkier than just casting Destroy Armor at them. Underwhelming Druid Enchant #4.

Essence Graft – “But Rook!”  I hear you cry.  “Essence Graft is awesome!  You get to wear THREE Enchantments.”  Yes, yes you do.  Essence Graft is awesome.  But it’s way, WAY more impactful on somebody other than a Wizard.  You could, hypothetically, slap every enchantment in S tier onto one Wizard and turn them loose to dominate the field.  But you’re far, far more likely to instantly eat a Naturalize Magic or a Dispel Magic and lose the entire stack.  Stacking enchantments is fun, but it can also very much a “win more” sort of tactic, and without a Golem making everything persistent, one death and you’re wasting a great deal of resources. Golem/Essence Graft would probably be better if Druids weren’t able to give eachother Golem and ride off eachother as spawn points. If you really want my ideal Wizard Essence Graft enchantment stack, for the way I play it would look something like this:

Protection from Magic  -> Essence Graft (Order matters here, as Essence Graft means you can only receive enchantments from Druids.) -> Gift of Air -> Ironskin -> Sleight of Mind

This is a lot to throw on one player, especially considering just one of these enchantments is potent when utilized in its own right.  Furthermore, there are just better classes for stacking enchantments on. Druids cast Golem on each other for a reason. As such, I put this in C Tier, though if you’re really the only person that your Summoner buddy wants to throw stuff onto, I could bump it up to B tier.

Bear Strength – Not as good as Poison, rarely ran by Druids.  Better on someone who can get up close and fight in a shield line.  It should be noted that starting at level 4 with the addition of Fireball to your kit, a Wizard has far, far better options for dealing with shields than Bear Strength.

Flame Blade – Alright, for a moment, I’d like you to imagine my explanation for why the Flame Immunity on Gift of Fire isn’t very good.  Then, I want you to wedge that onto the end of my previous explanation of Bear Strength. Then, I want to casually remind you that Wizards have way better ways of dealing with armored classes than becoming a diet Barbarian who can’t wear armor and can’t Fight After Death.  Better on a Druid, or an Anti-Paladin.  Or someone who can seriously throw down against armor.

Blessing Against Harm/Ward Self/Blessed Aura – Ugh.  Ok, so these three are basically the same spell.  Ward Self is Blessing Against Harm for Wizards and self only. Blessed Aura is Blessing Against Harm, but it can stop something that affects equipment, like a Fireball or Pyrotechnics.  I hate these spells because there are very few middle-ground results in casting them. You either get phenomenally lucky and use it to eat a Finger of Death, a Sphere of Annihilation, or an Abeyance. Or, it stops the first schmuck to run up and take your arm off and die immediately after. Feast or famine, in the most abject sense. There’s a world where this suite of spells doesn’t totally suck, but as it is I find them incredibly niche in spite of their potential to be an absolute blowout in terms of exchanging resources.

B Tier – 

Harden and Greater Harden – Not useless, as they allow you to use your equipment to block arrows. But there are far better options.  Take this if your team really has nothing else to offer you, but that’s pretty unlikely.

Barksin – Point of magic armor on all five hit locations!  Yay!  It’s not Ancestral Armor, so you’re still weak to spellballs! Boo!  It’s dirt cheap and still blocks Arrows! Yay! Worth taking it if offered. But there’s stronger, better alternatives that most Druids are willing to give out.

Poison – Surprise, surprise.  Killing someone by taking their arm or leg is pretty good.  Poison, is pretty good.  Wizards aren’t the best at getting up close and killing someone with poison, that’s more of a Druid or Assassin shtick. But all and all, making your weapon slightly more dangerous at the low cost of a per life enchantment from a Druid?  Probably pretty worthwhile.

Regeneration – Swift Heal (Unlimited) are three pretty spicy words.  The ability to bring a limb back with the only caveat being you need to stay 10 feet away from an enemy player makes you really good at pulling back and putting yourself back together if the need arises.  That being said, and I might be confessing to a bonafide Skill Issue™ here.  Wizards don’t get wounded on their own very often. If you’re playing a Wizard that goes deep into a backline to try to tear stuff up with a short and spellballs with Teleport.  A single wound is the least of your worries. In a more team oriented strategy, odds are pretty good your teams Healer(s) are going to be nearby to patch you up anyway, so I’d save this one for other classes. 

Lycanthropy – I almost want to be a contrarian and put this one in A tier, and maybe if Paladin and Anti-Paladin weren’t such massive players constricting the lifeforce out of every Bard player in the game right now I would. For a 4th level Druid Spell, Lycanthropy gives you 2 points of magical, non ancestral armor, shield crushing melee weapons, and immunity to Command.  Back when I first started playing, before Barbarian received its buffs and Paladin and Anti-Paladin were knights only classes, Lycanthropy was a premium answer to Bards being utter nuisances with Awe and Lost. It’s a bit of a weird enchantment, and I’ll be the first to admit to overestimating it when I played it as a Healer last event I went to- but I think it’s something you could run on a Wizard. The shield crushing should basically be considered bonus, as again we have far better ways of dealing with shields (Though notably not on a Battlemage build), so I would consider this almost like a slightly weaker Ironskin for our purposes, providing the same amount of armor, albeit non ancestral, and giving a more relevant immunity to Command rather than an immunity to Flame. 

Poison Glands – Stands to reason that if Poison is B tier, Poison on a Stick™ might make it to A tier, but this is what I’d consider high B Tier.  Poison is nice.  More poison is more nice.  But not enough for me to actually recommend seeking it out unless you really want to lean hard into playing sword wizard.

Imbue Weapon – Again, sort of the same deal as Poison and Poison Glands. Useful if you want to lean hard into the sword wizard playstyle, but otherwise there’s far better options. Especially for a 6th level spell.

Undead Minion/Greater Undead Minion – Alright, I’m going to try to keep this one brief in spite of these being kind of bastard enchantments that are really, really complicated and can make people really confused and angry sometimes.  You’re Suppressed, you’re Fragile (At least, on UM. GUM removes this caveat, and that’s basically the only difference.) and you’re Cursed.  When you die, you go Insubstantial instead of dying as per normal, and can be revived by the person who Undead Minion’d you at a rate that’s usually faster than your average death count. Only way to kill you for good is to either kill the person you return to, remove your Insubstantial state while its active with something like Tracking or Planar Grounding (Banish also works, for the flavor win.) Oh, and if you get Lost or something you can return to your necromancer master instead of running all the way back to base.

Now, I get what you’re thinking.  Suppressed on Wizard is a non-starter, right? I can’t Wizard without my spells, otherwise, I’m basically just a slightly better peasant.  This is true, and why Gift of Earth is so bad I almost wanted to give it its own tier. However, there’s weird thing you can do with Undead Minion/Greater Undead Minion and Wizard which allows me to bump it up to B tier, and that’s a little trick that I’m going to refer to as BARRAGE ZOMBIE.

Elemental Barrage is not an enchantment.  It’s an ongoing effect and thus can be used while suppressed. This means that if you activate Elemental Barrage and then have someone cast Undead Minion on you.  You basically guarantee that you can be a really, really annoying zombie who runs around throwing a sack of spellballs at people and just refuses to go away. Is it powerful?  No, not really.  Is it a fun interaction that can make for a high-energy, low-stakes good time if you’re good enough at barrage wizard and have a healer buddy?  Definitely. Just remember that Barrage ends when you pick up a spellball, so you do need to properly die and respawn between each usage. And that you can’t cast Barrage while suppressed, only charge with an active Barrage.1

Circle of Protection – Weird enchantment, but I’m including it anyway even if it’s not something you can have cast on you.  Healer makes themselves and up to 5 people insubstantial and can enchant, heal, etc while the enchantment is up. Which is until they drop it, or someone pulls them out of it. If you need to take a breather and hard recharge some stuff, you can do it inside a Circle of Protection.  That’s really about it.  It’s a bit niche, but I’ve definitely done it before in slower games with no battery bards.

Battlefield Triage – More of a “WTF” spell to cast on a Wizard. I could see this being fun now that you’re no longer stopped when you use it, and nobody’s going to expect the Wizard to be busting out swift Greater Heals while they run around smiting fools with the power of death. B tier.  I wish more people played around with this spell to be honest, I think it’s cute. One of the noobs at my park (Shout out to Wicke!) has been taking it on their Bard list and it’s been serving them pretty well on a small field with no healers.

Phoenix Tears – No kill like overkill, I guess.  Phoenix Tears is best put on someone who gets to benefit from both it granting you the ability to defy death, similar to Trolls Blood, and its ability to repair equipment (including armor) as well as giving you an extra Protection school spell to throw on top means that you really, really want this on a team player who’s going right into the fray. Maybe that is you, and if so you could easily consider this A tier, but with the plethora of better targets to throw this on I can’t put it higher than B.

Vampirism – This one is weird.  Not only is it an enchantment that’s also effectively a monster in Dor (More on why I hate the Dor and Monster in general in a later 5000+ word deluded rant posted to WordPress. Also the Dor version of a Vampire is more powerful than the enchantment version of a Vampire because it’s the Dor of fucking course it is.) Unlimited healing, so long as you can keep getting kills and an Immunity to Death makes this tempting to put on something like a Druid or a Scout, but its also a Wizard enchantment that you can pick up at 4th level, meaning it rarely makes the cut for lists since there’s just far more consistent options. On a Wizard it’s…  Fine.  Relevant immunity, a bit of sustain, would be better if it provided the Command immunity the Vampire monster has in the Dor and didn’t rob the wizard who took it of a Fireball or Shatter.

Silver Tongue – Weird enchantment that I rarely see taken, and rarely see used. A Bard says a few tongue twisters at you and gives you a Swift metamagic that can be recharged on a Charge x3, but you can’t use any other Swifts for the time you have this enchantment on you.  It’s…  Fine.  I think it’s better on other casters. You could in theory use this to make a sort of diet, Best Value brand Evoker before level 6 or while running Generalist or Warlock. Swift only works on touch range verbals and spellballs though, so while I usually run at least one on most of my lists, having a recurring one might not be the most useful thing to dedicate an enchantment to.

A Tier –

Troll’s Blood – While certainly not as good as some of the other options in A tier, and not something I’ve personally gotten to play around with a whole lot.  I think there’s merit to Troll’s Blood in a tentative, low A Tier spot.  You know what’s nice?  Not dying.  Troll’s Blood keeps you from being killed by anything other than a Phase Bolt/Arrow. I’m even reasonably sure that it picks you back up after Sphere of Annihilation. There’s still probably better targets, and I still can’t see the Regeneration aspect coming into play all that much on a Wizard, but if someone’s got one spare and you want to be a nuisance, I say go for it.

Stoneskin/Ironskin – Two points of magic armor on all locations that’s isn’t subject to armor breaking and can block spellballs.  It’s not really a secret that when it comes to enchantments, Stoneskin and its slightly upgraded cousin Ironskin are some of the ones to beat.  Cheap and effective, it stops people from killing you dead with arrows, throwies, swords, and spellballs.  Unfortunately, there really isn’t much else to say about it other than it is in fact, a really good option.  On just about everyone that doesn’t have access to armor.  And even some people who do. 

Blessing Against Wounds – I hovered over putting this one in B tier, but the fact of the matter is that Blessing Against Wounds is the Lays Potato Chip of Enchantments in Amtgard.  Man is that a sentence. You slough the next wound.  Interestingly enough, this does protect you from things other than regular swords and arrows. A Fireball can be stopped by Blessing Against Wounds, as can a Poison Arrow. As can any number of things that are Wounds Kill. This spell is cheap, it comes back every time a Healer respawns, and most Healer lists I’ve been making take at least one to throw on somebody. Oh, and while it limits you from wearing other Protection school spells (Which, frankly, most of the best Wizard enchantments are)- You can still put stuff like a Void Touched or a Lycanthropy on with it.

Adaptive Blessing/Adaptive Protection/Extend Immunities – I’m lumping all these spells together because they’re the “Thing what covers your butt from one school of magic and only that school of magic”.  I love these spells. I think they’re really tightly designed and versatile.  Scout has been a class I’ve been interested in lately basically off the back of the minor tweaks they made, one of them being changing their once per life Adaptive Blessing into an Adaptive Protection.  These spells are really powerful if utilized correctly, and really underwhelming if used incorrectly. The main trick is to keep in mind what matchups you’re going into and what school of magic it’s most important to have immunity/resistance to at that time. There’s no objectively correct answer with these spells, and I think that makes them really well designed and fun to use. You need to ask yourself a bunch of questions when you go to put these spells on. Do you want to be made more resilient to crowd control by picking Subdual or Command?  Do you want to be slightly less resilient against crowd control, but have more options against things that straight up kill you dead by choosing Sorcery or Death?  Do you want to cry, realizing that most Flame spells affect equipment, and your immunities don’t extend to that equipment meaning an Immunity to Flame is effectively an “immunity” to like three spells?  The choices truly are endless, and you need to choose wisely if you want to use this enchantment optimally. Or just get a Protection From Magic/Enlightened Soul, who cares?

Protection Against Projectiles – Archers (The class, and bow users in general) are the bane of most casters.  Especially Wizards, what with out lack of access to shields. I’ll be honest, I think my most fatal flaw in battlegaming has been and forever will be a lack of field awareness, and even a middling bow user can abuse that fact to pick me off again and again like it’s open season on spindly nerds who talk too much.  Protection from Projectiles dulls that pain on a caster, keeping them safe from both arrows and throwies- which are their own nightmare when utilized effectively.  I don’t like it quite as much as Gift of Air, and any high skilled player will tell you to just use a sword/dagger to block the arrows and stay near your team, but if ProPro is on the table I’m usually tempted at the very least.  The worst part of this enchantment is the hidden passive effect it includes, wherein almost every time I’ve been shot in the groin/mouth/face it was with either this or a Stoneskin on, ensuring that not only was I stunned for a little bit and forced to walk off the field for a bit, I had to groan out an “Immune” or “Taken” on top of that.

Enlightened Soul – Stops you from being victim to other casters. It’s a good trait to have on a Monk, and it’s a great enchantment to have here. I almost don’t want to say more because I think this speaks for itself, but Enlightened Soul is sort of contingent on your opposing side having some casters that know how to point and shout good. Otherwise, you might be better off with magic armor or Protection from Projectiles.

S Tier –

Attuned – If someone is willing to give you Attuned so you can have two goodies at once, you take it.  It’s lower cost than Essence Graft and frees you up to take enchantments from people other than the Druid giving you Attuned. It also doesn’t involve quite as many resources being wasted when you get dispelled or die compared to Essence Graft, so I rate this one significantly higher.

Void Touched – Okay, okay, okay.  Hear me out.  I love Void Touched.  I think it’s a really cool concept, and the way that it gives you a tiny bit of evasion on top of some useful resistances is really cool and really flavorful. Being Cursed and Immune to Sorcery magic means that the only thing that can pull you out of your complimentary Shadowstep is a Scout using Tracking, which I feel like really captures the vibe of being an incomprehensible cosmic horror that regular magic bounces right off of. I also think it’s cute that it has the only Charge x30 in the game, meaning the Shadowstep it gives you is basically only meant to be recharged by using Steal Life Essence or an Innate. (One of these days, maybe I’ll hard recharge it during a battlegame for fun.) Steal Life Essence (Unlimited) are words that are written in the Amtgard Rules of Play, and I for one think that’s pretty insane. Unlimited Steal Life means that so long as people are dying (Which, in most battlegames, even small battlegames, is often) you can keep the party going by charging your spells off of your fallen comrades and enemies.  This spell is awesome on Wizards.  It’s even better on a Bard with Confidence, because suddenly the battery Bard recharging everybody’s stuff is doing it by dragging corpses into a meat grinder. But alas, Void Touched is a per refresh spell purchased by Wizards at 5th level, and there is NO enchanter archetype for Wizards.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  This is a shame, because I feel like Wizard has some of the coolest enchantments in the game (Besides maybe Bard). Anyway, the unfortunate truth is due to the cost of this spell and the lack of synergy it has with any of the Wizard archetypes, I rarely see it ran. Every now and again, I’ll feel a little frisky and run it myself to either great or middling effect but the fact that you can’t cast this on yourself and there’s no real way to up its frequency really blows.  If another Wizard wants to exchange Void Touched, maybe even put Persistent on it.  You take them up on that because the potential can be huge. But otherwise, don’t expect to see it very often.  The only other thing that I’d like to add is that if we wanted to buff Warlock, which is easily the lamest Wizard Archetype due to giving up a huge bulk of its utility and supportive capacity for some mediocre Flame verbals and a few good Death ones, I’d make Warlock double uses of Death school enchantments as well. That way you’re not a completely unsupportive bastard and can throw a couple Vampirisms and Void Touched enchantments out for the people on your team who care to use them.  Just an idea.

Gift of Air – Honestly, if there was one enchantment that could go into a special S+ tier for the truly best enchantment to shove on a Wizard, I’d put this spell there.  Gift of Air is just…  It’s bananas. I mean, just read this text:

Alright, there’s a lot there. But the jist of it is that the next time someone hits you with an arrow, or a throwie, or a non armor/shield breaking/destroying weapon strike.  You just ignore it.  You ignore it, and you go Insubstantial.  From there, you can either remain planted or choose to walk back towards your base (We’re going to come back to this in a minute). Insubstantial is a tricky state to interact with, and the fact that you can just choose to hoof it in the other direction means that this enchantment provides a great deal of defensive utility if you get caught out by anyone not equipped to dispel it or otherwise deal with it.  You can still get targeted by verbals or spellballs, but who cares? People’s main way of killing you in Amtgard, running up and bapping you with a foam stick is gone unless they have a truly massive stick, are playing Barbarian, or have an enchantment.  Gift of Air does prevent you from carrying any weapons, so your defensive and offensive abilities are a little bit more limited but if you want to get out on the field and throw down with verbals and balls, there’s really not a better overall enchantment to pick.  

The clause on returning to base is also interesting, as you do need to make the decision from the moment Gift of Air activates.  You control the pace at which you move, and there’s a special clause on Gift of Air that makes the ability to move after it triggers all the more interesting.

Bearer may end the Insubstantial state caused by Gift of Air at any time with the standard Incantation (“I return to the physical world” x2).

This basically means that, unlike other enchantments, going Insubstantial is considered an unwilling effect and thus the bearer cannot end the state with the return incantation. Gift of Air allows you to make a beeline back to your base and drop the Insubstantial prior to arriving at base in order to make a tactical retreat. You have no idea how many times I’ve gotten out of some truly sticky situations by having some poor schmuck activate my Gift of Air before someone cast something at me or swung something at me that would get through it, permitting me to get out of dodge and go back in when I had time to regroup and collect myself. 

Also, I guess as just some additional knowledge.  Gift of Air can activate as many times per life as needed, so you’re up and running so long as someone doesn’t bring the right tool to kill you dead.  You can still have your Gift of Air dispelled while Insubstantial, so oftentimes making a beeline back to base is the play unless you’re really confident they can’t deal with you. 

Sleight of Mind – Sleight of Mind is awesome because it lets you keep your stuff. Dispels are aplenty in the game of Amtgard, especially with the changes to Scout and Druids still having the absolute powerhouse that is Naturalize Magic. Sleight of Mind, while a bit expensive at 4th Level Bard gets dispelled instead of everything else when someone tries to dispel your enchantments. It’s usually the crowning piece to any crazy enchantment stack. So when your Druid friend is running around with 5 enchantments or whatever, you can put a Sleight of Mind on them in order to keep them from having the entire stack sniped off by a well-placed Naturalize Magic or Dispel.  For us, it’s only useful if we have something really valuable on us, like a Persistent Protection Against Magic, or a Golem. Keep an ear out, and see if any Bard on your team runs it. You might be pleasantly surprised when you get to save the enchantments that have been dutifully keeping you in the action for most of the game.

Protection Against Magic – Beloved by both stick jocks who don’t want to let some nerd throw things at them and point and shout until they’ve died and seasoned battle gamers who are hard-focused into oblivion whenever they choose to take the field for fear of letting them get an incantation off.  Protection Against Magic is really good.  Maybe I’m captioning the obvious, but like- a lot of stuff is magic.  This stops you from getting hit by a lot of stuff.  Get it from a Healer, and maybe consider taking 2 points at 6th level on your Wizard lists in order to run a Persistent ProMag.  Spells good.  Not much else to say.  It’s a bit of an anticlimax really.

And… That should be all of them.  Let me know if I missed one. Eventually, I might be writing an article on what makes a good enchantment, or what makes a good spell overall. But that’ll be for another time. This is Squire Rook Silas Whitehallow, Paragon Wizard, signing off.

Hi there, welcome to The Babbling Rook, where I, Rook Whitehallow, talk about Wizard Things™. This week, we’re going to talk about spell selection, specifically Archetypes and their trade offs. This article was originally entered into the Blackspire Spire Article Writing Competition, but since the Spire has taken a hot second to publish it and I’m anxious to write this column on a close to bi-weekly schedule, I’ll be self publishing The Babbling Rook moving forward. I’ve tried to keep the original styling of the entry intact, though I’ve opted to make it a little less flurby and cut down on the flowery language.

Now you, dear reader, may now be asking yourself “Rook, I know what spells/archetype I should be taking, X is what I’m comfortable with and what I’m best at.” and send me your perfect spell list, which is perfect in every situation and never fails, and to that I would say that while Wizard is incredibly varied in its spell arsenal, the perfect spell list does not exist. Though I am immensely fond of a generalist, master-of-none playstyle (Of which you will hear me excitedly espouse the virtues of in some future segment, or whenever prompted in person) your spell selection and archetypes should vary heavily depending on the battle game, it’s objectives, how many players you are opposing, and your team’s composition. One of the wonderful things about playing Wizard is we can hypothetically field answers to pretty much anything.

As an example, a Battlemage utilizing experienced Icy Blast and Shatter as their primary kill engine may be very effective in smaller battle games with fewer people, especially if they take plenty of Innates and Steal Life Essences to consistently get their Icy Blasts and Shatters back. However, such a strategy falls apart in longer more grueling battles of attrition, as even with the help of a Bard their power is very much finite. Conversely, an Evoker finds themselves equipped to deal with longer battles of attrition, but may find themselves struggling against Ancestral Armor, as all but two of our spell balls are negated by it and the Evoker sacrifices many of the Wizard’s most powerful utilities including Dispel Magic and Break Concentration. Warlocks can serve as tempting middle ground, with the increased uses of verbals from the Death and Flame schools giving you more resources to spend while sporting a reliable kill combo, however it still carries with it a few of the same problems as Evoker, little flexibility and utility. Warlocks are barred from many of the same spells as Evoker, including practically all of the spells that come in handy when things turn south and you find yourself overrun such as Teleport or Astral Intervention.

In summary, as a Wizard one of your greatest strengths is your ability to adapt towards any team composition or battle game type. You should try to read the situation and select your spells accordingly. With that, I’ll leave you all with a challenge question, which will be answered in the next column.

Challenge Question: A Warrior with 5 points of Ancestral Armor and enchanted with Golem is frozen with an Icy Blast. While frozen, can you cast Dispel Magic at them?