Death Magic on the Battlefield

[OmikronWarrior]

The title says it all. How do you turn your researching death mages into battlefield contributors. Shadow blast stood out in the manual as a good looking spell, but the research requirement was high. Any other ideas?

[Gregstrom]

Summon Skeletons.

There may be other spells, depending on which nation you're playing.

[Endoperez]

Raise Skeletons, from Enchantment. You need several D3 (or D2+Skull Staff, but that's expensive) or better casters, but they can spam large enough armies that most armies will just fall down from fatigue against them.

S1D1 mages, like LA Jotunheim's Siethkona, can spam Nether Darts.

Another way, which takes longer to pay off, is via casting Dark Knowledge, summoning Bane Lords and forging Wraith Swords.

[Niarg]

Omikron, I thought the same thing as you however my mages quickly ran out of gems and it wasn't that effective. Then the ai decided to keep casting summon skeletons and I started beating even large armies with a few mages.

[OmikronWarrior]

Dang, I didn't notice the gem requirement for shadow blast. Yeah, that changes things. So, summon skeletons, eh? I'll try that out.

[thejeff]

Raise skeletons works wonders against the AI.

Unless heavily massed, a dozen mages or more, it'll be ineffective against a decent player. Good troops or thugs cut through skeletons like butter, priests are cheaper than death mages and banish doesn't use fatigue.

It's good, but not a long term solution. The real strength of death is in summons.

[Sombre]

Shadow Blast is great if you can stand a little micro (very little, really) and your opponent is using massed elites.

Shadow bolt can actually be half decent against expensive troops too.

Fear and terror,.. not generally much good.

Darkness is a total killer of mundane armies. Darkness + skelspam will take down almost any mundane army.

[Twan]

Death has some better AE spells costing 0 gem in higher levels if you can have D4 or more powerful mages. Namely the two cloud spells, Cloud of Death and Leaching Darkness. Their precision is low and they often kill some of your own troops but they offer a good synergy with the spam of skeletons, as your undeads are totally expandable and their numbers should block your ennemy in the clouds. Their fatigue cost is so small you can easily cover all the front with 2 D4 mages.

There is also disintegrate usefull to kill ennemy thugs or high hp units, when you reach alteration 8 (of course if you have astral mages rather search thaum 5 for soul slay).

But the main strength of death on the battlefield is the battle enchants like Darkness (all ennemy archers become useless, and living ennemies without darkvision become crappier troops than your undead chaff), and Rigor Mortis (unresistable fatigue for all non undead being).

There is also Bone Grinding (3 dammage to all units on the battlefield + a possible "crippled" affliction) very good if your own troops are ethearal like ermorian vestals (as it's mundane dammage they have 75% chance to resist) or if you have a powerful air mage to cast fog warriors on your army (your troops take 1 dammage per cast of Bone Grinding, when the ennemies take 3).

[Shovah32]

If you can get a high death mage(preferably 7 or higher), perhaps with a communion or your pretender, shadow bolt can get insane. If you also give the caster a spell focus, eye of the void(assuming he has enough precision to take the hit from losing an eye), skullface and runesmasher+shield or a skull staff then things get... fun.

The damage, AoE and range and penetration(I think D6 gives +2 penetration and D8 gives +3) all scale nicely, so if you end up with a D7-D10 caster you can decimate any non-undead without insane magic resistance. And if you happened to use it against massed ulmish infantry... any square hit would end up empty.

D8, spell focus, eye of the void and runesmasher grants +8 penetration. Anything that survives that must be either undead or have crazy MR. That's the point at which you pull out wither bones and drain life.

This works great with skelespam too, as they are immune to friendly fire from this spell.

[K]

Drain Life is probably the best Death spell as it removes fatigue from the mage(or skull Standard user) as it kills units, meaning in a long battle you are casting it every round.

Summon Skeleton is best for those times when you are tossing down big evocations (which can be Leeching Darkness). you want dumb chaff to slow down the enemy while AoE spells are raining down and killing everyone. Also, as a defense in castle sieges, it can plug up the entrance indefinitely.

Shadow Blast is a desperation tactic as it blows Death gems, but it can be an effective way to kill a large army.

Terror is a good spell as long as you don't mind facing your enemies later rather than now. Like most players, I usually prefer to kill an enemy now rather than fight them later.

The battle spells like Darkness, Rigor Mortis, Winds of Death, Wailing Winds, and Bone Grinding are nice, but they are only really good for very specific kinds of armies.

If you can get a little Fire together, Banefire is an awesome killer of things like Super Combatants (SC).

Disintigrate is Death's SC killer, so most death nations shoot for it. Its great for big low Mr things like elephants and Dark Vines.