Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

What now? 20? you get 10 for each casting, they have bows, not xbows, and have 12 shots each. (Both in cbm and vanilla).

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Fire/Death doesn't seem to coexist much with air. None of the major F/D nations have A except EA Ermor. LA Man could also get longdead archers through 1/16 judges, but they really don't benefit with how many good archers and crossbows they already have and their inevitable use with flaming arrows, plus how their opponents will definitly stress defence against arrows.

Though if you do get arrow fend, regular xbows and magic bows would be mostly protected from counterattack while longdead archers can still get banished.

@soyweiser: the idea is that their stats are identical to xbows barring the generally useless decay on hit effect, except without the precision bonus or the only 1 shot every 2 rounds limitation. So they're like 20 slightly less precise xbows that run out after only 12 rounds.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Trumanator: They also have darkvision and are magical.

Me:
Banish spam is preventable by just dropping more low level undead in the mix. Esp if those other undead have higher hp. Also, you can spread out archer units, and boost the mr. They are unbreakable, cold and poison res. Which helps in some situation. And decay has some situational used, if foul air is up, the decay effect will cause any old units to die pretty quick.

Please say Xbows when you mean xbows and bows when you mean bows. It helps people understand you.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Hmm, maybe massed longdead archers plus skelly spam for screen plus darkness. Can anybody besides LA C'tis pull that off?

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Maybe if Ermor took a fire pretender, they could bolster their longdead archers to protect against banish.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Decay on hit effect functions like "poison on hit effect" of androphrag archers. That is, it effects units even if their shield or protection blocks the hit. The fact that "on hit" for arrows means "even if blocked or protected against" is a serious upgrade to the worth of androphrag archers and it is the same with reanimated archers. Decay is 5 years per round, with old age afflictions popping up quickly after young units hit old age. Many high prot units have maxage of 50, I think, and start around age 20-25. This means that low-MR, high-prot, slow units are having serious difficulty by the time they reach your front line troops (who don't have to attack at all and can just form a wall around some indie commander).

Decay is definitely not a useless effect! Run some tests with it in raiding scenarios against Abysia or some other high prot, slow army like Ulm.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Decay is very effective in combination with fear effects. I've executed some pretty nasty ambushes using LA Abysia warlocks to gateway in longdead archers & drop blood rain + a couple horrors (the archers will make short work of the horrors after the enemy routes) on big armies that have been starving for a couple turns to siege my empty-ish castle in heat/death scales. Situational to be sure, but can certainly be very effective and it makes me cackle to see all that blood fountaining up at the battlefield escape line.