Blood Magic as Combat Magic?

[Poopsi]

ALL HAIL BAALZ

[dirtywick]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned with blood magic in battle is while you have the gems out there to be killed or whatever, you don't need to find a lab or bring gems to your mages. Just hunt in your current province and you can find more.

[mathusalem]

and don't forge Agony and Harm : there are very potent with High level mages

[K]

Baalz pretty much has it, but there are a few things he missed.

Storm Demons are less of a combat unit and more of a battle magic. Each tosses str-based AN lightning bolts(10 per battle) fired with Storm-immune Precision 14, so when you are rolling in with 20-30 of them you can have a devastating magical assault before you engage in melee.

Summon Imps is a great way to win assassination/failed seduction/deathmatch battles.

Agony is also a fear effect, so it has value beyond just weak attack.

Send Lesser Horror/Horror is a great way to add in killers with low amounts of resistance against high numbers of attackers. I've had more than a little success with casting a few of these and only having a few mages and no troops on defense to cast battlefield spells or other large area magics. Sheer probability means that the Horrors will attack the vastly larger force(barring Horror Marks).

Hell Power has a number of niche uses, so don't discount it despite it's great cost.

Infernal Prison/Claws of Cocytus are the best way to defeat Doom Horrors.

[void]

Hey dear Baalz,

Multiple bloodletting kill all your gems before you are able to take out the entire army

it does have a serious impact on your oppo's morale however -- one of the best way to route a 1000+ army, and one could always send (lesser) horror to cut off retreat...

Also wanna mention that life for a life behaves strange sometimes. You'd think two LFL's definitely enough to take out an elemental royal as long as it's not clovered, but that's rarely the case...

[Baalz]

Yes, bloodletting takes out your blood slaves, but (assuming human level MR) it takes out the bad guys at the same rate. You don't have to kill 100% of the enemy troops for the army to be 'destroyed', killing 60% and routing the rest with heavy afflictions is, at least to me, destroying the army. This is very doable with 4 castings, which is more or less what your blood slaves will handle if you bring a few extra.

[Ironhawk]

Blood magic, is all about SCs. And that carries over into its battle magic too. While it does have a handful BE and AoE spells, the real power of blood magic on the field is for killing SCs. Life for a Life, and the go to hell spells are the best anti-SC spells in the game.

[Agema]

Early on, I wouldn't underestimate summon imp. They have okay HP, they're hard to hit, and fly, which means they cross the battlefield and can stop the enemy army immediately for some time, which you can leverage for considerable advantage with the right units.

[chrispedersen]

you know... units probably don't evaporate when they're morale is 0 - they have to take enough casualties to prompt the morale check...

Interesting... and maenids - if they take a small amount of damage will go berserk..... interesting.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by K

Hell Power has a number of niche uses, so don't discount it despite it's great cost.

Some may not be aware, but casting Hell Power will automatically horror mark its caster. Considering the spell brings possible horrors during battle its uses are costly.