Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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).

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Your hat doesn't zap people while you're unconscious. I suspect it will still zap if you're entangled, though, since you still get an action ("break free").

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

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.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

One more quick comment about thugging/anti-thugging and quantity: a unit will preferentially engage units in front of it, and then I think directly behind it and then to the upper-back corner. This means that a thug surrounded by chaff will always attack the same square (or 2 squares if he's quickened and clears out the first square) every turn, with 2 or 3 new chaff plugging the "hole" every turn. The implications are both bad and good: the units attacking him will gradually fatigue out, unless they die from repel (or Fire Shield) damage first, but it also means that an anti-thug mixed in with a bunch of chaff is going to get a lot of free hits in without the thug ever hitting back, unless the anti-thug is unlucky enough to wind up in the frontal square. And of course, multiple cheap anti-thugs are exceedingly unlikely to all wind up in the unlucky square. This is yet another instance where quantity tends to win out over quality.

SCs may be able to counter this by using *real* AoE weapons like the Stone Sword, Sunslayer, and the Sword of Many Colors, combined with Quickness. Sunslayer w/ Quickness is sometimes able to kill *all* the squares surrounding the SC, every turn.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Oh yeah, one more thing I wanted to mention is the casting route can be a particularly good anti-thug route that I have yet to see anyone else use. Hand of death in particular is a great one, works great with...say vampire counts buffed-to-fly liches. :)