Best guards when horror marked?

[Reverend Zombie]

Wish said:
on the other hand if you position the 5 guards right, they may be able to hamper the horrors ability to get close to the commander...

Get the Ring of Warning and you could have 10 guards, 5 Spring Hawks, 5 something else...

[thejeff]

Lots of blood slaves. Not useful in combat, but keep the Horrors at a distance.

Of course, I believe the Doom Horrors nasty attacks are ranged.

[Nick_K]

Would a hit from mage bane give the 100 fatigue and stop the horror acting? If so fly + high mr + high attack skill + attack orders (no spells) might well work.

[jutetrea]

don't forget wraith crown - instant 4-10 or so undead in front of the commander. Usually a no-brainer on my main SC, so enough time for 3-4 buffs then no problem. Haven't really met a lot of the big horrors, so unsure if it would make a difference.

[Micah]

Best Horror guards are two astral pearls and a returning script.

[Wish]

Micah said:
Best Horror guards are two astral pearls and a returning script.

quoted for truth

[Shovah32]

You know his god is a lord of the forest, right?

[Hellboy]

This has been an interesting thread, but most of the comments above seem oriented towards a pretender w/ the likelihood of high level horror attacks. I'm also wondering about low level horror attacks. For example, if you're fairly sure you've got a low level horror mark (say your mage was using a lightless lantern, and he stopped using it after the first turn a horror mark showed up).

To be more specific, if you have a useful, but expendable mage with a probable low level horror mark, is there any point in guarding with 5 heavy infantry? If not, is there a not so very expensive way for a non-astral mage to protect himself?

[Micah]

Good question Hellboy.

Your best bet for small horrors is 5 (or 10 with a ring) flying units with the best offensive potential you can get. Non-magical weapons need not apply unless they've got multiple attacks or enough strength to get a 1-hit kill due to ethereality. Basically this means spring hawks are your only safe bet for most nations, and at 20 air gems for 5 it's probably not at all worth the investment. Blowing 20 gems to keep someone that's not that important alive is not a good deal, even if they could always kill a horror before it moved.

I guess if you have a slightly marked commander that was very important (Cast a global maybe, and got a mark from a booster you slapped on him to get the spell off, or a powerful battlemage you keep in the back where his bodyguards will be safe) you might want to try 5-10 spring hawks if you're rich in air gems and strapped for pearls, since empowering is a bit more expensive. 5 hawks have somewhere between a 50-75% chance of dropping a lesser horror before it moves from the few tests I just ran, I'd imagine 10 would be a pretty sure kill (but at 45 air gems that isn't cheap, especially given the low liklihood that you'll actually get attacked with a low-level mark. Worth it if you just sunk a couple hundred gems into a global, perhaps).

Any normal-HP mage is pretty screwed once the horror moves, since they have a 12AN damage attack with a 13 attack skill, which I think comes after their life drain shot, so that's at another -2 defense.

My slightly flippant earlier response was pretty much because it was true. Your choices when it comes down to horrors really do narrow down to the following in 99% of cases when you're not talking about an SC commander:

1. Hope the mark doesn't actually trigger an attack
2. Cast Returning
3. Invest far more resources protecting a commander than the commander is worth
4. Die

Kitting out certain SCs may be a good plan, especially if you're using non-cursed equipment that you can pull off of him before he meets a Doom Horror...the problem being that you can't give an SC flying guards because they'll die.

An SC that has high enough defense (not counting a shield, I think, since their astral hook attack is AN), or that flies and hits really hard (Enough to kill a 22 HP, 15 prot ethereal critter with 13 defense in a turn) are the only ones that will stand up to a horror, since anything that's relying on protection or any kind of shield-based damage will get hit, and marked more. (Unless it's an MR attack, I'm not sure on that...if you get an MR roll to avoid the marks any decent SC should be fine with lesser horrors, but that's still not addressing the "guards" question)