Death Magic on the Battlefield

[OmikronWarrior]

The title says it all. How do you turn your researching death mages into battlefield contributors. Shadow blast stood out in the manual as a good looking spell, but the research requirement was high. Any other ideas?

[Gregstrom]

Summon Skeletons.

There may be other spells, depending on which nation you're playing.

[Endoperez]

Raise Skeletons, from Enchantment. You need several D3 (or D2+Skull Staff, but that's expensive) or better casters, but they can spam large enough armies that most armies will just fall down from fatigue against them.

S1D1 mages, like LA Jotunheim's Siethkona, can spam Nether Darts.

Another way, which takes longer to pay off, is via casting Dark Knowledge, summoning Bane Lords and forging Wraith Swords.

[Niarg]

Omikron, I thought the same thing as you however my mages quickly ran out of gems and it wasn't that effective. Then the ai decided to keep casting summon skeletons and I started beating even large armies with a few mages.

[OmikronWarrior]

Dang, I didn't notice the gem requirement for shadow blast. Yeah, that changes things. So, summon skeletons, eh? I'll try that out.

[thejeff]

Raise skeletons works wonders against the AI.

Unless heavily massed, a dozen mages or more, it'll be ineffective against a decent player. Good troops or thugs cut through skeletons like butter, priests are cheaper than death mages and banish doesn't use fatigue.

It's good, but not a long term solution. The real strength of death is in summons.

[Sombre]

Shadow Blast is great if you can stand a little micro (very little, really) and your opponent is using massed elites.

Shadow bolt can actually be half decent against expensive troops too.

Fear and terror,.. not generally much good.

Darkness is a total killer of mundane armies. Darkness + skelspam will take down almost any mundane army.

[Twan]

Death has some better AE spells costing 0 gem in higher levels if you can have D4 or more powerful mages. Namely the two cloud spells, Cloud of Death and Leaching Darkness. Their precision is low and they often kill some of your own troops but they offer a good synergy with the spam of skeletons, as your undeads are totally expandable and their numbers should block your ennemy in the clouds. Their fatigue cost is so small you can easily cover all the front with 2 D4 mages.

There is also disintegrate usefull to kill ennemy thugs or high hp units, when you reach alteration 8 (of course if you have astral mages rather search thaum 5 for soul slay).

But the main strength of death on the battlefield is the battle enchants like Darkness (all ennemy archers become useless, and living ennemies without darkvision become crappier troops than your undead chaff), and Rigor Mortis (unresistable fatigue for all non undead being).

There is also Bone Grinding (3 dammage to all units on the battlefield + a possible "crippled" affliction) very good if your own troops are ethearal like ermorian vestals (as it's mundane dammage they have 75% chance to resist) or if you have a powerful air mage to cast fog warriors on your army (your troops take 1 dammage per cast of Bone Grinding, when the ennemies take 3).