possible anti SC strategy

[hunt11]

I was just playing around and i was wondering if anybody else came up with this idea as well.
You need
one lizard shaman (for being a level 1 astral mage, and a level 1 nature mage)
one level 2 astral mage
2 barbarian leaders with weak magic items
20 barbarians
10 archers

The idea is to not to kill the SC but to make him useless. So you have your shaman cast curse on the SC whilst your mage spams horror mark. Your normal barbarians hold and attack with their leaders, this group is supposed to attack the SC and try to inflict as many afflictions as possible, whilst your archers add supporting fire, and act as bodyguards to your mages.

[Sombre]

Curse isn't generally a huge issue for SCs, because they tend to avoid taking any damage whatsoever, or have so much health and regen that they don't get afflictions. Horror marking them A LOT can be useful, but it's hard to pull off. Many SCs eat non doom horrors for breakfast, some can even mess up the doom horrors.

Against thugs it's not a bad idea, but they're unlikely to be running around on their own. Additionally if they have fear then your anti thug squad will reun away before doing much more than cursing and trying to horror mark them.

[atul]

There is a time one could use such a trick.

Namely, if your neighbour rushes you with his early expansionist pretender. And even then it's not foolproof, after all awe tends to stop barbarians and archers don't pack the punch. Anyway, with little research done you should have something better than Thau1 spells, but if that's not viable, credible threat of cursed and horror marked pretender could keep your neighbour away. Just don't count on it actually helping if you push for the war....

[MaxWilson]

It's better to kill SCs than to afflict them. Many SCs are item-based, and if you afflict them the opponent can make a new SC and transfer all the items over, which is much cheaper than making one from scratch (especially if the SC is using uniques).

-Max

[hunt11]

but the whole idea is that these guys are supposed to die, their job is to make it so that when you send something to take out the SC then their job will be a whole lot easier. because as long as when you actually take it out then you have lost about 10 gems while your opponent has lost at least 40 (GORed tartarian)

[Foodstamp]

Horror marking SCs is hot stuff. I do it every single game if possible, but it seems a few patches ago they toned down the power of horror mark, so it can take a little while for one of the big baddies to show up.