Death Bless and Seeking Arrow

[Bwaha]

Like Calem did in kickabout. Yesh he spammed my Hinnon leaders with the seeking arrow spell. About 12 in one turn, Wiped all my leaders out except for one Indie commander. 5 giants lost in one turn. The army immoblized, Was a near thing. But thats over with... Who would of thought of Calem with a 9D blessing?

[sansanjuan]

My first game was Eriu with a D10 blessing. Made a shroud of BS and tried plague and seeking arrows. Seemed to work "ok". Likely would have been better with lesser bless and better scales...
-SSJ

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

That's why the point is, that the D9 is best with a nation that has low cast recruitable anywhere sacreds, or cheaply summoned ones, AND has sacred mages.

AKA Marig.

[archaeolept]

dunno about mary... the flags are so poor, they need a lot to be viable, and have the flaming head to get them to f9s9 for relatively cheap. I don't think a death bless would get you anywhere for early expansion. Mind you, D9 smiters would have me keep anything valuable a long way away from them

Mictlan, or perhaps MA pyth or Shinu... they would be scary for a purely mage bless

also sacred hydras for LA pyth, as has been mentioned. anyone w/ sacred archers

[SlipperyJim]

I'm playing (SP) as Ashdod right now, and I'm relying on heavily-blessed Adons to take provinces for me. It's worked really well so far. In fact, I've only built one actual army, and the Adons have done all of the rest of my expansion.

Until I ran into a D9-blessed Machaka. I didn't know he had a D9 bless, so I sent an uber-Adon charging into a nest of those sacred spider knights....

My Adon limped out of the battle with a Limp (go figure), a Never-Healing Wound, and an injury to his vocal cords that left him Mute. Yuck. I have to agree that Death blesses can be a serious deterrent to a strategy that relies on thugs and/or SCs.

...

Just to finish the story, I pulled my injured Adon back to a province which was strong in my dominion and allowed Gift of Health to do its thing. A few turns later, he's just about back to 100% effectiveness. Meanwhile, I'm advancing with a new army, a few more uber-Adons, and a lot more respect for the evil spider knights.

Revenge shall be mine! Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!

[Sombre]

In all fairness a 'nest' of hunter spider sacreds is going to be pretty damn expensive. I mean they're over 100 gold each. I'd have to hope they manage to do something.

[SlipperyJim]

Originally Posted by Sombre

In all fairness a 'nest' of hunter spider sacreds is going to be pretty damn expensive. I mean they're over 100 gold each. I'd have to hope they manage to do something.

Wow, really? Never played as Machaka, only against them. So the AI spent over 1000 gold (I think there were ten of the bugs) to cripple a 400-gold Adon? That makes me feel a bit better.

They weren't totally undefeatable, either. The Adon managed to kill a few of the bugs before he had to limp away. A few turns later, I sent a horde of archers to finish the job.

---

But back to the original point, which is: A Death bless on some decent sacred units will cause some pain for a thug-based or SC-based strategy. It's not unbeatable, because your opponent can always change strategies. (As I did.) But you can sure buy yourself some time while the opponent changes gears....

More importantly, I'd have to agree that a lot of Death magic is more powerful in the late game than a lot of Fire magic. This principle is especially true because of how "bootstrappable" (is that a word?) Death magic is. One D9 mage (your Pretender) can summon other Death mages, who can summon other Death mages, etcetera. Revenants, Mound Fiends, and Liches ... oh my! Add the convenient Death booster items to the mix, and you've really got an undead party.

Meanwhile, your F9 Pretender is going to ... um ... summon Fire Kings. Those guys are great, but they're unique, so you can only get a few of them. What else can you do with a F9 mage in the late game? Fires from Afar and Flames from the Sky? Cool spells to be sure, but there's only so much you can do with them.

So yeah, a late-game SC may not have much to fear from most Death-blessed sacreds. However, by the late game, the same D9 Pretender that got you the Death bless will also have started the Death Machine rolling. Conquer the world with your undead hordes! BRA-A-A-AINZ.....

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by SlipperyJim

But back to the original point, which is: A Death bless on some decent sacred units will cause some pain for a thug-based or SC-based strategy. It's not unbeatable, because your opponent can always change strategies. (As I did.) But you can sure buy yourself some time while the opponent changes gears....

I don't know about that. Most afflictions don't actually hurt SCs. Limp, Never-healing Wound, Lost An Eye, etc., on a blessed, thugged-out Adon basically don't matter. You got unlucky in getting one of the few (Mute, Feebleminded, Chest Wound) that does hurt but I wouldn't be deterred from using SCs against most nations even with a D9 bless. Machaka and other poison nations are slightly different because poison is hard to defend against, but that would be mostly true even without a D9 bless. I'm probably either prepared for poison or prepared to ignore poison.

I guess this means I have to test it...

-Max