Just replying to clarify a misconception some of you have about MoM.

EVERY spell that has an option to channel more mana into states exactly and clearly what would said increase will do.

I don't remember the numbers, but I think Icebolt was +1 mana --> +1 spell power and Fireball was +2 mana --> +1 spell power. The difference was that fireball did its damage to every unit in the stack. Lightening was percing and Firebolt was just weak. Drain Life, for example didn't increase the spell power but instead lowered the target chance to resist.

And that's how you make a ton of pure damage spells which are all different enough from each other that you would actualy need to think which would be ideal for the given situation. This of course means you're an evil bastard that actualy knows the exact mechanics behind defence, attack and resistance rolls.

Also, MoM has a shitload of spells that nobody remembers. Did you know there was a spell that brings the whole battlefield into the friggin' WARP*?

*WH 40k referance.

I hate when there are a ton of unusable spells too.  Heck we could extend this to units or anything else.  If things are unusable, then that is a sure sign of weak balancing by the developers.  A factor I see a lot of developers miss when balancing units is  flexibility vrs. specialization.  Spells that are global in nature, useful more frequently and in more situations are more desireable.  For example, damage spells should always cost more to use, because they are way more flexible(ie. easy to get into a situation where you can use it). I HATE it when I'm forced to use a certain spell because I'm at a disadvantage if I don't.  One way to gage spell value would be to have usage statistics.  Its pretty obvious that a spell is useless if it is hardly ever used.    I don't mind so much if a spell is useful for a certain level range.  In that case, the players just have to make a decison whether to spend their precious resources to use it for the little time it has value.

So, my preference is that there is number of spells included that can be balanced properly.  That number can always be increased with expansions.

How many of MOM spells were actually used ? Were Cloak of Fear and Flying Fortress fun ? (hint - neither spell...actually works !). How about Subversion ? The spell worked against you. Instead of worsening other wizards' diplomatic relations, it worsened their relations... with you ! If I remember correctly, Resurrect spell was notorious for corrupting savegame files !

You can't imagine ? Let me come up with such a situation. No-brainers. The concept isn't new. Sometimes one option (spell, unit etc) is soo much better than other than the other is made obsolete. Examples from MOM:

War Bears vs Hell Hounds (War bears are often beaten by a unit of swordsmen. They're weaker than hell hounds AND cost more. Optimal play dictates to never use War Bears if you also have Hell Hounds).

No-brainers are options which remove other options, especially in a marginally competitive environment. In multiplayer, expect any ridiculously poor options to never get used.

How about Cracks Call ? It was the 25 mana spell that had 25% chance to outright kill any non-flying corporeal unit, no matter what. It was basically coin flipping and it could either totally nuke your huge investment or do nothing. Do you think having more spells *like this* contributes to fun ?

My point: Having more options is useless if not all are viable. It's actually dead code ! It can even be detrimental to the gameplay.

Yeah that's great and all.. but what you're arguing for here is a lack of BROKEN spells and nothing to do with their number! No one here is endosing buggy spells, that would be insane, we can only make recommendations for the game assuming that SD will implement them properly. All the concepts for the spells above would be interesting and fun within the context of the game assuming they did what they were supposed to do (more spells in this case would equal more fun).

What I said was that I couldn't imagine more spells decreasing my enjoyment of the game, and I fail to see how superflouus spells would do that. If a spell is, for whatever reason, totally obsolete then I just don't use it and get on with the game, this doesn't decrease my enjoyment of the game one bit apart from having to navigate a slightly longer list of spells.. and, assuming that the game has a good user interface (including filtering and searching facilities) this wouldn't even be a problem even the extreme case of there being thousands of superflous spells in the game. Now obviously I'm not advocating that.. but from my personal standpoint it wouldn't cause me to have less fun.

Actually I quite liked Cracks Call, it maybe needed a simpler counter than just making all your best units able to fly (maybe having the cost of the spell go up with the quality of the unit you were using it against) but in general I thought a probability based direct damage spell was an interesting way of adding some variety to that part of the game.