Looking for help with SC pretenders

[Huzurdaddi]

So I have been trying out SC pretenders and here is what I have tried so far with the results:

In all cases I only sent them out after Alteration3 and Enchantment1 were researched.

1) Ghost King. The current "hot" SC choice. Gave him 1 Fire, 2 Air, 3 water, and 3 earth. Buffs: Quickness, Iron Skin, Mistform, Breath of Winter, Fire Shield.

Results: a crap shoot. Sometimes he cleans up against all indeps. Once in a while he dies. I have seen him die against militia once. Amazing. Quite often he runs into mages who cast dust to dust and he gets killed. Heavy Cav has I would figure a 20% chance to kill him. He gets aflications, on average, after about 10 provinces.

2) VQ with 1 Fire, 2 Air, 2 Water, 1 Earth. Buffs: Quickness, Iron Skin, Mistform, Breath of Winter, Fire Shield.

Really quite solid. But really expensive it hurts your scales. Hard to get much more than 5 dominion which limits where you can go ( you have to follow dominion around ).

2) VQ with 1 Fire, 2 Water, 1 Earth. Buffs: Quickness, Iron Skin, Breath of Winter, Fire Shield.

A little cheaper, but had real problems with Heavy cav, less than 50% chance of killing a HV province, but OTOH the only thing you lose is time.

3) Wyrm with 1 fire, 2 water, 1 air, 3 earth. Pretty decent. Does not pick up afflictions. Better against Heavy cav, but still can get killed perhaps 25% of the time. And will never be able to fly ( no feet ) which is a serious drawback. But it was doing better than the Ghost King.

So am I missing something? Does anyone know of a better build? Indeps were set to 7 since that is the game I am about to start. I would hate to use the ghost king since it seems like a crap shoot. Maybe one out of every 2 or 3 games everything works great and he does very well. But the other times something goes horribly wrong and he's done.

[Cheezeninja]

What i would suggest is putting more than the minimum required in all those paths, most especially Air. The main thing about Mirror Image is that it creates 1 image for each level of air you have, and as far as i can tell there is an equal chance for each image to be attacked. It only goes away when they land a solid hit on the real image (i believe a solid hit, not just an attempt). So with 4-5 in Air you get 4-5 images as opposed to only 2, with correspondingly better odds for avoiding the hit. Also with higher level's in the paths you accumulate less fatigue which can be important to the non-undead SC's. I usually avoid fire and focus on air water and earth. 4-5 air, 2 water, 3 earth minimum. As soon as possible i try to get them a luck pendant which helps out a bunch for its cost/low requirements. I'm alot more willing to sacrifice scales then you evidently are though, so you might not be able to afford everything im suggesting.

[Molog]

You get +2 images for every level above one. Mirror image seems to be the best in keeping your pretender alive against independents.

[archaeolept]

its true that the GK is not the best combat pretender. I like it a lot, and think it's paths should be increased in price, but it is still not as good an indy clearer as a VQ, or numerous others in fact.

[Cohen]

Usually Air is needed for Mistform and Mirrors (that is 2*Air +1 mirror images).
Water is needed for quickness, optional breathe of winter.
Earth optional for protection.
Fire optional for Fire Shield.

Otherwise another non race specified choice is Virtue.
An A9 or something about Virtue could take out Indep with Awe and few less than 20 Mirrors.
Could think on a 1W for Quickness.
Later however the SC role falls into a mobile gunship.

[Boron]

A PoD is quite good too .
Nationspecific the Nataraja is just awesome . Against indies he is already good and later with equipment he just rocks . Jotunheim and Pangenea have good nationspecific pretenders too .

Any indy fliers are bad
Against heavy knights 15 protection is not enough to survive the lance attacks . With mistform + ironskin you are relative save though . If you are not playing Arco or using Vq i think your pretender is not worth being risked against indies with Knights/Heavy Cav + X-bows .
You survive normally but the risk to get an affliction is quite high .

I personally mostly take A2 , W2 and E3 on my Sc-pretenders . Air 2 for mistform + mirrorimage but mainly for cloud trapeze as magic movement later .
W2 for quickness + BoW and later i can forge then some boots of quickness this way if i have no watermages like as ulm .
E3 is for forging dwarfen hammers + earth boots later and this way i can use later invulnerability instead of ironskin as buff too

I think the best indy expander sc is the Vq .
Later the strongest Sc pretender is probably the Nataraja , especially with Arco .

The problem is though that some of the summonable Scs are really good too and can give any other pretender than the Nataraja a really good fight and win probably .
Normally you prefer to equip your Airqueen/Niefel Jarl/Ice devil and use him as antiplayer-sc then to risk your pretender .

[Kel]

The GK isn't good because it is an uber SC, like the VQ was, it is good because it is a relatively economical indy clearer, forger and site searcher.

The VQ was all of those plus a top notch SC. It is still good, it just isn't as economical anymore. I hate things that sound fanboyish but in this case, the developers really did a good job of balancing without gimping.

- Kel

[Vynd]

It's always seemed to me that the most crucial spells for your early expansion, indy-killing, SC are Mistform and Mirror Image. Ironskin/Invulnerability are next on my list. I've experimented with many of the chassis that people have mentioned (Ghost King, Wyrm, etc.) with some air and earth magic but none of this "1 point of fire for fire shield, 2 points of water for quickness and breath of winter." And they've mostly done just fine against all but the toughest indies. And this frees up quite a few more points to use on some non-SC related magic paths, or on better scales.

Have other people found that quickness, BoW, or fire shield, really make a big difference? I haven't been seeing it but I know there are plenty of folks with more experience than I have.

On a different note, one thing I have noticed is very helpful in cleaning out indies is a powerful Fear aura. When I tried a Carrion Dragon chasis with 7 Death magic on top of his naturally very high Fear, he would often rout high morale units with just a single kill. Regular morale units often ran without even getting close enough to fight. He had no air or earth magic at all but still had no trouble with indies, not even knights. A Prince of Death could probably do something similar, although I haven't tried it.

[Kel]

Vynd said:
Have other people found that quickness, BoW, or fire shield, really make a big difference? I haven't been seeing it but I know there are plenty of folks with more experience than I have.

I pretty well always build in quickness for an early indie clearer. I start with quickness, ironskin, mistform, mirror image. All the others you listed (+ a few others like Soul Vortex) can help later, against other players, but for non flying indies, that usually does the trick with pretty much any pretender.

Vynd said:
A Prince of Death could probably do something similar, although I haven't tried it.

The PoD is great for routing indies with fear. The only thing I run into with him is that if I don't give him the aforementioned spells, I occasionally lose him to some group that got lucky with their morale roles. I still use him but only when I really want the death magic anyway (as it should be). He is also one of my favorite choices for Miasma Ctis.

- Kel