Zen and the art of Thugging

[Endoperez]

It doesn't have to be paired with anything. If any battle lasts 50 turns, the attacker's side routes. After some time, the defender's side routes. If there are still units in the battlefield at a spesific turn count (I presume it's 75), they are all killed.

The mechanics is there to prevent two feeble-minded Sphinxes from staring at each other for an eternity, but since the berserking vine whip-wielder is berserk and won't rout, and the Cyclops is entangled every turn and can't rout...


Since they will both die if all goes well, you don't want to spend any extra gems.

[Ironhawk]

Doesnt the vine whip trick fail if the SC you are attack has Quickness? It uses one action to break out of the vines - and does due to its probably high strength. And then the second action to bash your guy's skull in... ?

[Redeyes]

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

Doesnt the vine whip trick fail if the SC you are attack has Quickness? It uses one action to break out of the vines - and does due to its probably high strength. And then the second action to bash your guy's skull in... ?

Nah, didn't work that way.
Tried with a quickened tjatse who had 48 strength due to a heroic ability as the target dummy.

You need actually hit to entangle your foe but you do not need to deal any damage (penetrate protection).

[OmikronWarrior]

Just to be certain, is the entangle effect from the Vine Whip AoE, or does it actually have to land a hit? A thug with reasonable defense is bound to avoid getting his sooner or later.

[thejeff]

He did say it fails against high defense SCs and to give it to your highest attack thug. Attack boosting items would help too.

Using 2 of these would almost guarantee the target would always be entangled.

You'd have to be immune to any damage shields or other attack items as well.

It's a neat counter to some SCs. Cheap, easy and tailorable to what you see coming at you.

[Redeyes]

The Whip has a length of 5, so will probably always work better if you don't dual wield it.

[DonCorazon]

I enjoy Baalz guides which always introduce some off the beaten path ideas. That said, for raiding PD it is hard to beat the humble Frost Brand with an AoE effect, CR50 which will solve your fatigue issues in Cold 3 provinces (indeed I will sometime give surplus Frost Brands to mages, just for this), and nice combat stats, all for 3(w/hammer) W gems - one of the least useful types of gems IMHO so nothing to feel guilty about spending given they have less late game use then say S, D or E gems. AOE is hard to beat - not only does it wipe out squares of units but can help with high defense guys that would otherwise be unhittable. Speaking from experience, brands are one way to make use of blind units and Frost brands are cheap.

For shields, its hard to beat the Vine Shield. Awe is fun, but often needs Fear to be effective, and there are lots of high morale troops that can make an Awe unit a paper tiger - vine ogres, undead, skinshifters, anyone with a berserk bless, minotaurs, centaurs, etc. The Vine Shield can entangle most PD and basic units and has a decent parry value as well.

Thinking of anti-thug gear, I find SR is often the most overlooked resistance. CR/PR often comes with the typical undead chassis, and FR comes with commonly used Fire Brands, Charcoal Shields, and Dragon Helms, but SR is trickier to get. Most thugs will overlook it unless they are fighting a strong air nation. So as I think vfb alluded to, just giving a few Thunder Bows to some indie commanders, or to some high str/high precision unit if you have access to them, can be an effective and cheap deterrent. Pretty funny to watch 3 cheap indies with a 9 air gem investment trash a 100 gem investment while it sits their buffing itself up. I have been on both sides of that btw.

[Baalz]

It's not hard to beat a frost brand if you've got no water mages. Or if you're aggressively clam forging. Or spamming wolven winter every turn. Or you're trying to save for the Maelstorm. Or you want to crank out boots of quickness or bottles of living water or rings of water breathing. Or you're just simply trying to crank out 3 thugs per turn and have had bad luck finding water sites (a common occurrence, say, following my Eriu guide).

One of the concepts that I've touched on in several of my guides which I think I haven't done a good job expressing is how relative costs are. Sometimes water gems are cheap, sometimes they're expensive. Sometimes every other province seems to have an S1 indie mage, sometimes you'd sell your soul for somebody, anybody to make those mind hunts stop. Two different thugs, outfitted exactly the same can have drastically different "real costs" to two different players because the "real cost" is the opportunity cost. You using your pretender to forge those frost brands? They're not nearly that cheap if you are. In a very real sense 10E can be cheaper than 5W, and 10W on turn 30 can be cheaper than 5W on turn 10.

I give several good, concrete suggestions for things costing the same (or less!) gems than a frost brand which are often "good enough" and quite possibly using resources which have a "real cost" to you which is quite a bit cheaper. Certainly a frost brand is an above average weapon and there are plenty of times it's the right tool for the job, but from what I've observed in games I've played is that about 95% of "crowd control" thugs/SCs have a frost or firebrand. This is a significant misallocation of resources lots of times. You're raiding PD? My claim is you don't need a brand weapon to accomplish that goal most of the time and you can often get a whole lot more effeciency from your resources by putting to better use gems who have a small opportunity cost for the situation you're currently in. I'd much rather have 3 guys "good enough" to run PD off than one who kills the hell out of them - assuming I'm using them for raiding.

Also, it's absolutely not the case that you generally need fear to make awe work. I'm not sure what the exact mechanics of the vine shield are but I find the shield of beaten gold to be roughly comparable against "normal troops", and neither one is sufficient without considering the other factors of hitpoint preservation. Again, it comes down to "real costs", sometimes a N2 mage is not easy to come by.

The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Baalz

The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game.

And an aspect of our readers. If the only "good" posts are those which list the highest most unarguable tactics, builds, etc (as if there is such a thing) then we create an elite atmosphere. If there are better choices then there is nothing against listing them but lets not give the impression that any lesser choice must be removed from the lists with only the end-game choices worthy of pursuit.

[DonCorazon]

Originally Posted by Baalz

The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game.

Where did I say you have to limit yourself to a Frost Brand and Vine Shield? Thats taking my point ad absurdem. I just said “for raiding PD it is hard to beat the humble Frost Brand”. In your original post when you tried to compare things to Brands IIRC you reference the Flame Brand which costs 7 and requires 2 paths to forge – which I agree is expensive. But a Frost Brand can be just as good and costs 3 with only one path. And I tried to point out an aspect of the Brand that might be neglected – having 50 of CR (or FR) is enough to eliminate the fatigue penalty in extreme temperature scale provinces.

Of course there are times when you may need Water gems for other things. I guess I need to caveat everything with the phrase “may not apply in all situations” in order to avoid you taking the extreme case. But I generally find W gems the least useful of gems (again there are obviously times when this may not be the case). But I was making the point of relative cost and (many times, not always) find, say Earth, in shorter supply and thus relatively worth more. I can cite all sorts of spells that require those types of gems (eg for earth, Hammers, Crumble, Earth Attack, Mechanical Men, Earth Kings...) but obviously the player must decide themself what has the least opportunity cost.

Originally Posted by Baalz

You using your pretender to forge those frost brands? They're not nearly that cheap if you are. In a very real sense 10E can be cheaper than 5W, and 10W on turn 30 can be cheaper than 5W on turn 10.

Again, of course using your pretender to forge Frost Brands is more expensive than using some non-cap only mage. I mean if you want to use that to argue 10E is cheaper than 5W because you need to use your pretender, then I can just do the same and say using your pretender to forge any item you suggest is more expensive than a W item. It is sort of ridiculous.

Again on the Vine Shield, its almost always easier to forge than the Shield of Gleaming Gold (Con 4 vs. Con 6 and only requires Nature – the easiest path to get through indies, although admittedly getting N2 might be a challenge but overall is less difficult then getting E+F if you start w/o either). And again,in talking about raiding PD/taking indies, I think the Vine Shield works much better than Awe for the reasons I cited - basically high morale PD/national troops are more common than high Str PD/national troops (again there are exceptions as I am sure you will rush to point out).

I am not trying to discourage innovation, only pointing out the Frost Brand is pretty cheap for what you get and the vine shield is often better than the Shield of Gleaming Gold. Not in all cases.