Blood Magic as Combat Magic?

[Jazzepi]

Has anyone had any luck using blood magic as combat magic? It seems extremely cumbersome, considering the fact that you basically have to drag around a ton of gems just to have any effect. Shadow blast is a ridiculous beating, but then you expect it to be for the effort of loading up all those gems, etc.

I was just curious what people thought were good blood combat spells, especially ones that are good against troops.

Jazzepi

[konming]

Shadow blast is death magic. Blood magic in combat is not very effective. Sure there are a few spells that are good. Summon imp is good to distract enemies. Hellfire is a decent low level falling fire like spell. Blood rain has its use sometimes. Leech is a very potent spell. Life for a life can kill lots of SCs from Fomoria kings to Seraphs. Infernal prison and its icy counterparts are also good against SCs.

However the biggest problem with blood magic, aside from absurb high fatigue, is that your gems are acutally units and can be easily defiled by earthquake and like. Even if they are not killed, they can longer be used as "gems".

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by konming

Shadow blast is death magic. Blood magic in combat is not very effective. Sure there are a few spells that are good. Summon imp is good to distract enemies. Hellfire is a decent low level falling fire like spell. Blood rain has its use sometimes. Leech is a very potent spell. Life for a life can kill lots of SCs from Fomoria kings to Seraphs. Infernal prison and its icy counterparts are also good against SCs.

However the biggest problem with blood magic, aside from absurb high fatigue, is that your gems are acutally units and can be easily defiled by earthquake and like. Even if they are not killed, they can longer be used as "gems".

Are you saying that if a blood slave takes damage they aren't gems anymore? O.o

Jazzepi

[Lingchih]

Jazz, you have been playing this game as long or longer than I have. Surely you know that blood slaves are units in battle, and can be killed by any means.

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by Lingchih

Jazz, you have been playing this game as long or longer than I have. Surely you know that blood slaves are units in battle, and can be killed by any means.

I was asking about this. It seemed very clear to me that I was asking about it, and not blood slaves dying in general.

"Even if they are not killed, they can longer be used as "gems"."

Jazzepi

[Wokeye]

I use hellbind heart if I've got a bunch of slaves, and a few powerful foes (eg elephants).

[Dragar]

I think the question was as to whether a wounded blood slave was usable - I certianly wasn't aware that they weren't

[capnq]

I haven't noticed my Abysian Warlocks being unable to use their blood slaves that have caught fire from standing too close to them.

[Poopsi]

wounded (or even afflicted) blood slaves are usable, in my experience.

Now, blood magic... it IS extremely cumbersome... mostly because of the high fatigue rates, but also because it´s combat spells are expensive and not too good. The fatigue can be offset with a highly empowered spellcaster, or a communion (which I think is more practical to use with Astral mages as slaves, as otherwise you´ll be spending many slaves just to set it up).

If you do commune up your casters, make sure that you have the exact number of slaves you are going to use in your first five turns, and/or extra communion slaves. I had one communion with four slaves set to be reinvirgorated by a sabbath master while the other casted agony at the enemy (I sort of hope it to perform well with a death bless), which resulted in a wipeout of all the slaves when my caster decided to use his increased-due-to-communion blood level to cast the level 5 battle-wide life leeching spell, which has horribly high fatigue. My mages survived that, but in the following moments he casted mind burn four times, each one resulting in a dead turkey...

[Baalz]

Blood magic can be very effective in combat. As Jazzepi points out though there is a higher bar to use it as you'll only do so in the fights where it makes sense to burn gems. With that in mind, here's some suggestions:

Summon imps + bloodlust is a very nice little combo to pull off with a bunch of cheap research mages and modest research. It's surprisingly effective in many situations. They're flying so they'll tangle up archers and mages, they're size 1 with 2 attacks so they'll overwhelm high defense, they do decent damage buffed, they have a good defense so they've got a bit of staying power in numbers, and they're fire immune so they're a perfect screen to drop fire evocations on or to tie up that fire brand wielding SC.

Bloodlust & Rush of Strength can be worth the price of admission all alone depending on what you're fielding.

Bloodletting is one of the easier battlefield wide spells to cast and you can keep casting it because it reinvigs you. One casting of this spell is a bit underwhelming, having 2 guys cast it several times though...20 blood slaves is a cheap price for killing a large army.

Blood rain - fabulous for use in combination with other fear effects. Panic, terror, starvation, horrors....even super-elite forces have a breaking point. I think this is an underrated spell, you know how easy it is to break those 8 morale militia? Well in my dominion your 13 moral elites now break that easily and horrors have a *huge* fear aura.

Call horror - a bit of a niche spell, but it's not too hard to find situations where 2-3 horrors will really ruin somebody's day even without counting on their fear. With horror marks it's not too difficult to point them in the right direction either.

Reinvigoration - people keep this one in mind for communions, which it's great for, but it's also very worthwhile to have SCs/Thugs at 0 fatigue before going into melee, and it can allow you to cast those big spells several more times.

Hellbind heart is like charm with a much larger range and easier path requirements.

Leech is one of my favorite spells. Easy requirements, AOE1, no way to get resistance (unless you're already lifeless), AN. Not only is it perfect to counter most SCs, you'll be amazed at how fast 20 triple blessed whatevers evaporate before they can even close on your PD if you get 4-5 (cheap!) casters to spam this.

Life for a life + go to hell - The best anti-SC spells in the game.

PS wounded blood slaves are definitely usable. You can easily witness this by casting bloodletting several times as it effects your slaves.