Pesky Deathmatch

[spirokeat]

Has anyone noticed that it always tends to be the ghost king that wins that damn deathmatch. I usually tottally ignore it as someone invariably sends their god and Im usually playing an immobile pretender.

But ! I decided to play with the new Ctis dessert tombs from the patch, so I took Lord of the Gates and immediately reserached to hand of death on the off chance a deathmatch happened. Lo ! one pops up so I thought why not, my god has like 220 hps, bags of strength etc so I scripted hand of death 5 times and sent him in.

Suprise suprise I'm fighting the damn ghost king in the final. Instead of wandering up and hand of deathing him like I wanted, I stand there and chain cast animate dead, decay (which misses 90% of the time) and dust to dust which is resisted constantly. No melee, nothing. result, one dead lord of the gates.

Am i missing something about how hard the Ghost king is, I know he's Ethereal etc, but Ive seen that hand of death trick coming from him onto other high resist pretenders in other games and it seemed to work. Sigh, only turn 9, time to start over.

Spiro

[Breschau]

I may be wrong (by no means an expert on this sort of thing) but I think you'd have needed one or two "attack one turn" before your hand of death - otherwise you'd be out of range. If you're not in range the AI will look at your choice of spell, see that it can't hit the enemy from here, and pick a different spell instead - it won't move closer unless none of its available spells/attacks are in range or you've explicitly told it to. Ideally you give the unit flying so it closes the gap with a single turn of attacking, then it can start throwing out the close range spells.

Don't think most people risk their pretenders in the arena though, the prize isn't worth it.

[Vynd]

I think Breschau is right about why your Hand of Death plan didn't work out. I also agree that sending your Pretender to fight in these things is going to be a bad idea pretty much every time. I know that the AI does it, but hey, that's an AI for ya. The prize is nice, but not so awesome that it is willing to risk your Pretender over. This is especially true when you realize that, if you do win, then you will be stuck with the Champion's Trident until you die. You can't remove it. And so long as he is carrying it, your Pretender will be required to attend every Deathmatch from there on out.

[Cohen]

Well, an Immobile pretender has easy access to Soul Slay with high astral path.

However I agree with the fact your pretender has to go at every death match ... and this weaken it a lot since the enemy can prepare some nasty surprise like sending a scout with a disasing item...

[PDF]

Is Hand of Death affecting UNdeads ?
Desciption doesn't say anything specific, but it'll be quite logical it shouldn't ...
To a pretender the prize is more of a liability than a benefit, if only the Arena could be restricted to Non-pretenders it'll be *a tad* funnier (in SP ! )

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
Suprise suprise I'm fighting the damn ghost king in the final. Instead of wandering up and hand of deathing him like I wanted, I stand there and chain cast animate dead, decay (which misses 90% of the time) and dust to dust which is resisted constantly.

He didn't go to melee range because you didn't tell him to. Dust to dust can't be resisted, which means that he missed when he cast it.