Quick Q: defending against shadow blast?

[jutetrea]

Pretty brutal spell, other than high MR troops what's the best way to defend against it?

Spread out troops?
Chaff frontline?
"Decoys" (seems to still target large groups)?

Is Antimagic battlefield ench worth trying?

[Sir_Dr_D]

the Antimagic battlefield enchanment is a good one. It is the best defense.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, I was going to suggest Antimagic. It should cut your losses by 2/3.

Also, remember that it costs gems with all the micro-management that entails. It might be worth hitting the army in question with Arouse Hunger/Call of the Winds/etc. spells on the turn before you attack it (or it attacks you), in the hopes that casters will use up their death gems before they hit your main army. This will work better against an army on the offensive, because it's harder to replenish gem stocks.

Darkness drops precision and so would probably reduce damage from this spell, but also helps undead and so is probably counterproductive. Storm might be worth trying, though.

-Max

[Sir_Dr_D]

Does storm stop spells. I thought it only stopped arrows. Casting mist is another alternative.

[Micah]

Storm should lower the caster's precision, so it might make it miss your army...that said, it's generally aiming for a fairly huge clump of troops, so a little deviation isn't going to help you much. Antimagic is the way to go if you're the defender (you'll get first cast). If you're attacking the damage will probably already be done by the time you can actually cast AM. Max's suggestion to send in decoy ritual attacks is a good one, although you can't use undead spells to do it. The undead are immune to it, and I think the AI is just competent enough to not cast it at them. Spreading out your troops and putting your junk troops up front is also helpful, but lone decoys usually won't work. Shadow Blast is one of the spells that can turn a large battle on its own, though (The other one that comes to mind is flaming arrows).

Killing the casters is also a really good plan if you can pull it off. Earthquake if they have low defense or rain of stones if they're unarmored will work pretty well against anything with human-range HP. Assasins with trample (skel spam will pretty much kill anything without) may also work. Dropping a vengeance of the dead will probably work well too after they've done some damage if you can beat their MR.

[MaxWilson]

Addendum about the gem usage: even a D9 master lich uses up 3 of his 6 death gems to cast Shadow Blast. This is tactically stupid on the part of the combat AI and you can take advantage of it. Either your opponent will give lots (15+) of gems to each Shadow Blaster, or he'll store most of them on scouts and allocate just enough for each attack. If the latter, each caster will only get off a single Shadow Blast and then have to switch to something cheaper like Cloud of Death. If the former, well, at least it costs him a lot.

-Max

Edit: when the master lich has 6 gems, he uses 3 for Shadow Blast. When he has 4 he uses 3. When he has 3 he uses 2. When he has 2 he uses 2. When he has 1 he uses 1. I'm not sure what the pattern is, but 2 casts costs 3 gems and 3 casts probably costs 6. (When he had 6 gems the fight didn't go on long enough for him to cast multiple Shadow Blasts.)

[Ironhawk]

Antimagic + chaff should do you right. Even with antimagic, squads that get nailed by concentrated shadow blast attacks will see be shredded up something fierce. If you know you are going to be fighting this spell, be very sure to bring along 1-2 full squads just to decoy it.

[MaxWilson]

Just thought I'd mention that I've given this spell (Shadow Blast) another look after this thread, and I'm actually still not really impressed with it. It's nice that it only requires D2 to cast, but I'd much rather have Sauromancers spamming Cloud of Death than Shadow Blast, because 1.) Cloud of Death has a larger AoE, 2.) Cloud of Death costs 10 fatigue and no gems, and 3.) Cloud of Death lingers for 2 rounds. Sure it only does half as much damage (9 vs. 20) and no paralyzation, but in practice Shadow Blast just doesn't seem worth the extra micromanagement headache.

I'm playing as LA Agartha at the moment if that makes a difference, primary opponents EA Ermor and MA Ulm.

-Max

Edit: correction. For a D4 caster, Cloud of Death and Shadow Blast will have exactly the same AoE. However, Cloud of Death gets 2 extra squares per level and Shadow Blast only gets 1, so for my D9 master lich CoD is a clearly superior choice that costs no gems.

[Baalz]

Cloud of death doesn't have anywhere near the punch of Shadow Blast in most cases I've found. 3-4 fairly cheap D2 casters starting a fight off with a volley of shadow blasts can cause a disturbing amount of damage to most vanilla troops. It is more expensive, and more of a pain to micro, but more than worth it for important battles.

[jutetrea]

Cloud is very effective but:

Higher level - level 7 vs 5 evo
Higher path - 4(?) vs 2 death

Both of which can be very limiting, both in access time and # of available casters. Plus it depends on opponents a bit as well, cav will blow right through cloud while infantry may get nailed multiple times.

Both great spells but it seems like blast is more prevalent in my limited experience...plus the outright chance to kill units vs. wounding.

edit: oh yeah, range difference as well - cloud = shorter i believe.