Death vs. Fire bless

[krpeters]

I've been trying out Mictlan recently, and I discovered something odd. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the results, but it seems that a Death-9 bless is more effective on my Eagle Warriors than a Fire-9 bless. I haven't tested it rigorously, but it seems like they cut through enemy troops like butter with the death-9, and only beat up on them a bit with the fire-9.

I did this as an experiment with a "cheap bless" strategy. Taking a MA Prince of Death pretender only costs 364 pts to get to Dominion-10 Death-9, while getting a Fountain to Dominion-10 Fire-9 costs 547 pts, a lot more.

Does it make sense that a 2-AN MR attack would be more effective than an 8-AP attack, especially without the bonus +4 to hit? Note that this is against knights and other heavily armored indys in single-payer, not against chaff (which I imagine fire to be much more effective against) or MP-SCs (high MR would probably stop the Death Weapons easily)

[Endoperez]

Well, you tested it and it works for you. It sounds plausible, against high-protection, low-MR troops.

High magic resistance would stop Death Weapons, but not the extra afflictions.

[Baalz]

The thing about it also is that AN weapons ignore shields, this in many cases is as significant as punching through the armor itself and is often better than the +4 attack bonus for fire (the defender still has the defense penalty from the shield but no protection!). It wouldn't surprise me at all if a death bless does better on average in LA against heavy infantry and knights while fire does better in the lighter armored, less shield using EA. Another thing many people overlook is the extra damage from a blood bless can be better than either one sometimes as well.

[Cor2]

dont forget that the affliction part of the death bless also works for bless mages casting AOE spells.

[MaxWilson]

Eagle warriors have two low-damage attacks IIRC, and knights are size 3 so are easily swarmed. It's not surprising that the death bless does relatively well in this situation because:

1.) The 6 AP fire attack won't often hurt high-Prot knights.

2.) The Eagle Warrior's weapons (daggers?) also won't often hurt knights. Thus, fire bless is relatively impotent in this situation.

3.) Death weapons do something like 2.7 points of damage on average, when they get past MR. (Vs. Prot 17 knights it's like a Damage 19 attack.) Baalz says they ignore shields--I haven't tested it, but it's probably true given how shields are supposed to work. That helps offset the -4 to attack, relative to fire bless, since the daggers don't do anything to the knight anyway. I'm AFG, but 3 Eagle Warriors will probably hit 2 knights through their shields 3 or 4 times per turn for 8-11 points of damage, which kills one knight per turn (and causes about 2 afflictions per turn). Plus the occasional lucky dagger strike that actually does damage, call it 0.3 per turn. Fire bless will hit just as often, and will ALWAYS hit with a dagger, but breaks through the Prot much less often. I'd be surprised if it were more than 2 or 3 HP damage per turn.

So yeah, Eagle Warriors vs. knights would rather have Death bless than Fire bless because they don't need the boost to Attack, and they can't get through the armor with their natural weapons or with fire weapons. Fire bless would stack better with Strength of Giants, though. However, death bless helps mages and death magic is more fun than fire magic, IMHO, so I might take a death bless even if I didn't expect to fight knights with eagle warriors.

-Max

[ano]

I think that death bless is very good for cheap sacreds that you can amass. My games with mictlan convinced me that for jags and eagles death bless is very, very good. However, they both need a boost to attack to be able to counter high defense (and vine shield) SC's. With D9 bless a normal SC doesn't really need to be killed - hitting several times is enough and even if you lose the fight it will be victory.
From what I played and experienced an imprisoned D9W9F4 PoD is splendid for EA\LA Mictlan in many aspects. And your scales won't be that bad with him...

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I think the damage done by death weapons is higher than the average implies because the variation is capped at 0 damage on the low end which is close to tie while there's no upper cap. If you hit twice and there's a difference of 10 between the attacker and defender's rolls both times but the winner is reversed, you deal 0 and 12 damage - it's a bit misleading to think of it as 2.7 damage per hit. Of course this doesn't take into account the MR check, but I guess my point is that 2AN damage is more than it sounds when you're talking about a lot of rolls. Look at it this way, if you hit twice, figure MR is gonna fail once, and you're gonna roll 0 damage once...then that means every other eagle warrior lands a kill or at least significant damage - not bad at all against heavily armored troops.

I also again want to point out the ignoring shields is almost always *at least* as good as +4 attack against any troops with shields, and often quite a bit better. Against units with tower shields (not common in indies, but much more so against real opponents) it's more than twice as good.