Helheim dirty tactic
 

As soon as I got the full game I started a game as Helheim just to see what everyone was so excited about with the sacreds. I keep starting other games but then fun tricks occur to me that wouldn't work without Helheim's combination of paths (the only path I wish it had and doesn't is Astral) so even without dual-blesses I keep coming back to it. Here's one I haven't tried yet but which seems quite dirty.

For a long time I didn't know what to do with the Air-1 Svartalfs beyond using them as inferior earth or death mages. Then someone pointed out that the +350% affliction chance from death-9 applies to spells as well as weapons, and suddenly possibilities... emerged. The E3A1 Evoc-7 spell Rain of Stones claims to be pretty much equivalent to Blade Wind except that it covers the whole battlefield. It's not. Unlike Blade Wind, shield-equipped units still take heavy damage. It's usually not enough to kill them, but most units in the army will take 3-7 points of damage even with Prot 12. Combine that with a D9-blessed Svartalf (which requires astral mages to forge Shrouds of the Battle Saint for 5 pearls, available at Const-4) and pretty much the WHOLE BATTLEFIELD is going to be afflicted. Of course that includes your own forces. I can therefore see two scenarios:

1.) Soften up enemy armies the turn before attack with a blessed air Svartalf placed on the back of the battlefield, scripted to <Summon Earthpower, Rain of Stones, retreat>. If you want to save the Svartalf, add Ironskin in there first and give him three Earth gems instead of one to reduce his fatigue enough to still be able to retreat. Or write him off and save the gems. Cost: 5S, 1-3E, in exchange for annihilating an enemy army of arbitrary size as a useful force.

2.) Research Enchantment-4 and use a Winged Helmet or Bag of Winds to boost him to A2. Then cast Cloud Trapeze to drop said Svartalf onto an enemy army in the magic phase before normal movement takes place. Follow up if possible with a normal army attack on the same turn to wipe out the pathetic remnants--they'll still be low on hitpoints and probably morale. This tactic would work even without the D9 blessing, but the synergy is that even if the enemy out-foxes you in the movement phase (causing your regular army to miss), your Svartalf will have done more than just killing off 20% of the force with Rain of Stones. He'll have crippled the whole army. Cost: 28A, 5S, 1-3E. Hopefully you get to reuse the helm and shroud so the marginal cost is 3A, 3E, for a cruise missile that can cripple armies of arbitrary size.

I'm dying to test this out, but I understand the #startspell map command is broken so I can't use Gandalf's test map and I haven't had a chance to do it in a game vs. myself. It occurs to me that the cruise missile variant wouldn't work vs. armies with lots of Paralyze, etc., in which case you'd probably add a couple of castings of Call of the Wind to provide extra targets, and give him Earth Boots to eliminate one round of delay.

-Max

Edit: Of course, in practice you've got Dwarven Hammers so the cruise missile variant only costs 20A, 3S, 3E, and the regular is 3S, 1E. Plus 180 gold for the Svartalf. : )

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Okay, so I tested this and it looks like I overestimated the damage Rain of Stones does against armored troops. Out of an army of 100 Ambibate nobles I tried this on, fully 38 survived with no afflictions, and some weren't even wounded. But 24 were killed and 46 were afflicted. Even Flames From the Sky won't get you that affliction rate.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

12 chest prot vs 14 damage...I'd think it would be biased to head hits, which would be 15 prot instead, but it's hard to tell without a mod or a lot of living pillars.

The chance of getting a 0 damage body hit is 38% though, according to the table, which is pretty close to what you got.

No idea how 24 of them died though, that seems like a really really high number.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

38% had no afflictions, but when I watched the battle replay a lot of those were from little 1-2 point hits, and the occasional unscratched guy. I did run it a couple of times and 25% dying is about par for the course; maybe it's not really 14 damage. Or maybe it's armor-piercing; one Ironskinned Svartalf with Prot 20 took 11 points of damage and died, which is a lot more plausible with AP than normal attacks. The thing I was most surprised about, though, is that shields don't help. Blade Wind does almost nothing to Ambibate Nobles, but Rain of Stones stomped all over them and I presume it will do the same to any medium infantry (or EA heavies).

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

it comes from above, maybe it hits the head (thus taking into account mostly their helmet)

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Wish,

Micah pointed out that the Ambibate Nobles' protection is actually *better* on the head (15 vs. 12), so 14 damage should be negligible. And the Ironskinned Svartalf's Protection was 20 on both head and body.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Critical hits? There's probably a base chance of getting them.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Not according to the rulebook Sombre...unfatigued units can't be critted.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Yeah, the critical hit might explain the Svartalf casualty (his fatigue was 70-something after casting).

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

hmm, weird.

I noticed svartalfs are also well suited for wind of death. (and you throw twiceborn on them, and the sacrifice results in them comming back stronger.)

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Good idea. They still lose their items even with Twiceborn, though, right? If so I might reserve Twiceborn for Hangadrottir.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

they do, thats why don't send them in with items, just have them earth power up, and stick around to die.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

But he was saying this because getting hit on the head would ignore the shield, while blade wind wouldn't, and that's a huge difference. Of course, I have no idea what an Ambibate Noble is and whether they have shields or not, lol. Obviously I'm assuming. Also, that one instance of the guy being killed is obviously a high roll. Check the debug log, it will explain everything if you're really curious.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Is it just conjecture that a head hit bypasses the shield? The manual sounds like all ranged attacks go through the opposed roll calculation and doesn't mention anything about exceptions for head hits--I've never seen any mechanics for how head hits work but I assumed hit location was generated after damage had already been rolled (but before checking Prot, obviously, and before generating afflictions). And it's quite thematic that a shield could be raised overhead as easily as it could shield you from missiles from the front.

After a little bit more experimentation, I'm pretty sure that the one guy getting killed was a moderately high roll combined with a critical hit from spellcasting fatigue.

Thanks for the tip about the debug log, I will check it out.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

In a recent SP game I played MA Ulm, augmenting my protection 20 troops (head to toe + tower shield) with "legions of steel" (+3 prot to every "part"), and still I got the odd 9 - 11 damage from slings (damage 9) while advancing. It was VERY rare though.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

That's understandable; one out of 36 sling hits will have a +10 bonus because of the open-ended roll. I've tried the Rain of Stones thing a couple more times, though, and ended up with Ironskinned-but-dead Svartalfs fairly frequently. (25%-50%?) It does look like the fatigue is causing critical hits, and possibly Rain of Stones does more than 14 damage. I'll check out the debug log to know for sure.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Update, since I've learned a lot since I first tried this.

1.) If a Svartalf has A2 for Cloud Trapeze he also has A2 for Mistform, right? Much better choice than Invulnerability because now Rain of Stones will *never* kill you, you'll simply take 1 point of damage.

2.) Helheim has good access to Bloodstones because it starts out with B1 mages. Blood is an unusual path in that because it's fairly trivial for 4 B1 mages with Sanguine Rods or whatever they're called to be collecting 20 mages per turn, it's really not infeasible to empower up to B3. Thus, you can forge Bloodstones (Empower a Svartalf up to B3E2). Now you don't even need to forge Bags of Wind to play the Cloud Trapeze/Mistform/Rain of Stones game. Since 1 Hangadrott in 4 in has E1, with a Bloodstone that's E2, which lets him cast Summon Earthpower to get E3, which lets him cast Rain of Stones since he already has A2. Voila! And since your Bloodstone produces 1 earth gem per turn, you can go raiding without any micromanagement hassle. 1 Hangadrott for Rain of Stones plus 2 more for Raise Dead (or else scouts with Skullfaces if it's cheaper for you) makes a fun raiding party. Cloud Trapeze deep into enemy territory and have fun romping and stomping all over his PD.

Obviously there are counters, but it's a fun tactic that most other nations couldn't pull off.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

there is a similar tactic with Argatha and Earthquake.

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Hmmm. I guess I can see that, but Agartha will have a hard time replicating the mobility. You'll need a Ktonian Necromancer (S variant for teleport) with a Crystal Coin and Skullcap in order to Teleport (I'm assuming it's not worth blowing 15 points and risking death on a Stygian Paths just to carry out a raid). Then you need Earth Boots and 3 earth gems for the spell proper, and a script <Summon Earthpower, Blessing, Earthquake>. You'll wind up with 200 fatigue, so there's negligible chance of surviving even if you script Ironskin or something in there too. It doesn't seem really feasible to me because it's so expensive and you end up losing the mage and the items. I suspect Agartha has to deploy this tactic quite differently, maybe in pitched battles or with an Earth Necromancer to bolster PD. (The Earth random + no Teleport requirement means you can do it with no magic items, just gems.)

I love Agartha but they're not very mobile/agile for the most part.

-Max

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

I'm doing hellheim is SP now, and since this is the only thread in the strat index about them (no guide http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.. would be nice) I'm asking a question/placing a remark here.

I agree the sacreds and the sacred commanders are VERY nice and a dual bless works wonders.

There are 2 problems I encountered though

1. Hellheim has no decent researchers/combat magicians outside the capitol

2. small armies of sacreds can't siege castles.

The 2nd one is dealt with relatively easily (though a bit of a hassle) by recruiting indies and indie commanders naturally but the first point is kinda annoying. I create about 1 hangadrott and 1 swartalf every 2 turns and the swartald the researches. But that doesn't leave much for combat and later in the game it kinda sucks for research too.

Last point: what magic is best used on the battle field with just the regular paths commanders have. (the specialized and taking a lot of organizing heavy hitting magic tactics above are nice and I'll use them but I need my regulars to do stuff too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif)

I see the D2 skelleton raising for the hellheim commanders, if needed shadow blast too and bladewind for E3 swartalfs (the only ones I send to combat really, the rest had to research.) THey can buff nicely too.
For F1 swartalfs magmabolts might be used but I think they might be better of researching then

A2 doesn't give that nice spells for the vans (probably better of going in melee with a W9/F9 bless) except personal buffs

what other spells can you pplz advice?

(and in that same line, which research goals.)

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

I assume Owl Quills and Skull Mentors would solve any problems Helheim has with research, if you have the gems for that.

There were significantly more discussions about Helheim tactics back when Svartalvs were recruitable everywhere and glamour protected from spells and missiles, but they were mostly along the lines of "what can I do against them" - "nothing, really". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

OK, that settles it, Endo you have earned the right to create a hellheim strat guide http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Helheim dirty tactic
 

Re #2, you can use serfs as well as indies for knocking down walls. Also consider magic items like the Gate Cleaver.

Re #1, you do have recruitable-anywhere A2 mages who can cast Thunderstrike if there's a Staff of Storms around so they can cast Air Power. For the research, it's probably best to take at least Magic-1 so you can leverage any cheap indy mages you find. That said, I originally started this thread when Svartalfs were recruitable-anywhere, which made Helheim a lot more fun to play. I'm a fan of recruitable-anywhere mages, and so in my SP games if a nation has no good ones I will sometimes turn a capital-only one into a recruitable-anywhere and raise the price by 15%. I did that with Helheim because IMHO that's what Svartalfs "should" be.

-Max