MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Want to try something new with MA Abysia in CBM1.3? This strategy makes use of early Call Horror and Salamanders. Call Horror is a level-1 spell in CBM, but it's powerful enough to clear out an indy province. Salamanders have an AoE-1 20AP fire attack, and they can pull off five of these before they hit 100 fatigue.

I am currently using this strategy in a small MP game and it is working nicely at around turn 50. There were six nations to start, and now there are three.

This strategy guide uses these advantages of MA Abysia:
- Call Lesser Horror at Blood 1 (only in CBM)
- Cheap B2S1 mages
- No income loss from death scales
- Resource-cheap Salamanders
- Lots of Fire Gems for Lanterns

To expand using Call Lesser Horror, you need an awake researching pretender. I think only the Great Sage gives you at least 40RP on the first turn, but you might be able to find something else that works.

SCALES

The scales this strategy employs are:
Order 3: You need gold for your mages and salamanders
Sloth 3: You won't be hiring many troops
Heat 3: Yay, free scales
Death 3: This lacks synergy with Order-3. But if you don't take Order-3, then you won't have enough gold at the start of the game.
Luck 3: Once all your peasants are dead, you'll appreciate the free income, temples, and forts. Lacks synergy with Order-3, but you'll still get 2 or 3 events a month in the midgame if you have 45 provinces. Also it's a bad plan to take Misfortune with Death. And Aby has a Fire-Death hero, perfect for summoning spectral infantry, but I think you can only get him in SP. (Joke :P)
Drain 2: Oh no! Drain with Aby? 160 gold for 3 RP? This works because your non-capitol mages are just vessels for Lanterns.

EXPANSION

Your starting army is strong enough to take indies on its own. I like to make a warlord prophet just because they are cool.

Hire just one Warlock to start, he will help your research and occasionally blood hunt. Don't be afraid to Blood Hunt in your capitol a couple of times, but try not to make it a habit. To get my initial slaves, the first province I hunted in was my capitol, with my Warlock.

Besides your initial army, your expansion is fueled by Warlock Apprentices with 3 slaves. Place them at the back of the battlefield and script with:
- Call Lesser Horror (he'll use 2 slaves)
- Call Lesser Horror (he'll use the last slave)
- Retreat

The Lesser Horrors empty out the province, so it can be taken the next turn by a single indy commander or your starting assassin. The Apprentices can blood hunt in appropriate provinces, and you can send indy commanders with replacement slaves to the province you anticipate your Apprentices will retreat to.

I usually throw my assassin at 1-commander or 2-commander indies without bodyguards, like Horse Tribes. And he usually dies. Unless it's SP, then he does just fine and gets some heroic attribute like Awesome Presence. :)

The double Call Lesser Horror is weak to indy armies containing elephants, barbarians, undead, or dark vines. You can double up the Apprentices for barbarians. Your initial army can handle undead. For dark vines, hire a few indy archers. Elephants must wait until you've built a new castle, and hired some Beast Trainers. Beast Trainers have animal awe, so a few of them can hold the line against elephants while you lay down some damage with evocation. Add rat tails to rout elephants even faster.

Hire some Humanbred units every turn since you don't have many resources and it's good to accumulate some shield chaff. Once you are about to hit Alt-3, hire a bunch of Salamanders. You can use Apprentices to cast Body Ethereal on the Salamanders, which prevents them from dying as quickly.

I don't hire many Demonbred with this strategy in the expansion phase, because I need lots of Apprentices.

You can pop up another castle at the end of the first year, or just build a lab and temple in an indy province that can give you nature mages. Your god can site search N, but he'll be at home researching for a while. It's nice if you can poke around in the forests with an N1, and later your indy mage is a cheap chassis for a lantern. Also, I like to empower an N1 in blood to make some jade knives and cast Cross Breeding.

Wolf tribes or Jade amazons are the best, because you can get a random D mage. It's good to empower a D mage in fire so you can summon spectral infantry.


RESEARCH

Blood-1 This must be your first research target, for Call Lesser Horror.
Evo-2 Emergency army boost with Fire Blast, which is really effective when you've got a high-mobility Demonbred to cast it from just behind your fire-immune infantry line. Infantry being your PD or your starting army at this stage.
Alt-3 Gives you Body Ethereal to cast on Salamanders.
Const-4 Gives you shrouds to keep your diseased mages alive.
Const-6 Don't delay this any more ... you need lanterns if you're not going to fall behind in research. Lots of lanterns. Make a few Boots of Youth for your Warlocks.
Thau-1 For your God to script returning while site searching.
Conj-2 Actually, if you get the Fire-Death hero, research this before Const-6, since he can cast Summon Spectral Infantry every month. Just 1D in CBM! Or if you got a lucky Death indy mage, empower him in Fire, so he can cast Summon Spectral Infantry.
Conj-3 Summon Earthpower, Phoenix Power.
Blood-2 Bowl of Blood to exhaustively search for blood discount sites.
Ench-3 For a Revenant to cast Summon Spectral Infantry, if you didn't get an indy D mage or a DF hero.

What you research next totally depends on your situation. If you're at war you might need more Evo for Falling Fires. The Chalice is really nice for healing your sick mages, so you could head to Const-8 to try to get it first. Otherwise Blood-6 gives you Five Gates and Ice Devils. Blood-7 gives you Leech to handle pesky enemy SCs, except Golems, which you can Magic Duel. Conj-3 for Banes to lead your demons. You could find lion tribes and decide to build a castle there and go to Ench-5 for flaming arrows. Enchant is also needed for your god to dome up your capitol.

Watch your mages who are carrying lanterns. Every single turn I review all lantern mages using the F1 screen, and take the lanterns off mages with horror marks. Yucky micro, but they last a lot longer if you do this, and you don't lose the lantern.


DOMINION

Every new temple in a fort you build should get an H3 to preach it up to max dominion (7). You can simultaneously sacrifice with another priest, and if you empowered an N indy mage in blood, wield a jade knife. You won't get a dom kill with this strategy because your starting dominion is too low, but you can spread a little influence onto your negihbors.


SITE SEARCHING

Once you've researched Const-6, your god is free to wander about site searching. Script him for returning just in case something unlucky happens. I've only ever managed to spend about a year and a half manually site-searching, because there's so much else for your god to do, like summon (a Revenant to empower in fire if you never got a death mage) or forge (hammers, thorns armor, S rings, etc). So use rituals when you give up on having your god search.

I alchemise fire into pearls and have a Apprentice casting Arcane Probing. It's important to get some pearl income so you can make shrouds to put on your diseased Warlocks. And there are some really great astral sites that can help you diversify more.

Your power will increase immensely if you can get a blood discount site, so search everywhere (except water) up to B3. If you manually searched with a Demonbred, and you don't see 4 sites in the province, it needs a Bowl of Blood too. But you will only find a good blood discount site if you are playing SP.

If you find a couple of Great Gold Mines or Gems in a province with low (2000) population, I find it useful to just kill everyone and tax at 200%.


BLOOD HUNTING

See Baalz's blood hunting guide. I prefer 2 B2's, no rods, using indies to shuttle the slaves, tax at 20% or lower, no patrolling. Hunting at 5K pop provinces, but you'll still get results even at 3500 pop lands.


FIGHTING

The Call Lesser Horror strategy also works against enemy armies/PD that does not include fliers (so no Caelum or Pan) or long-range archers (R'lyeh, Ashdod) or mindless/undead.

Otherwise in the early game use a front line of Humanbreds, screening Salamaders buffed with Body Ethereal, teamed with a few Demonbred casting evocations. If you run into Ashdod or a Cyclops, you may need to try Magma Bolts (from a Warlock), Destruction (a Warlock with Earth Boots casting Summon Earthpower), or Stellar Cascades. Horrors can work here too, they have an AN attack. But you'll need about 6 Apprentices to summon a bunch of Lesser Horrors all at once.

Shut down capitol production of Ashdod with Rains of Toads from your god and your NB (thorns & staff-wielding) indy mage. Your god should Dome your own capitol.

Around the start of the third year I've switched from Apprentices to Demonbreds, and the occasional new Warlock. B4 Warlocks only need one booster for Five Gates.

Later you'll bring in Smoulderghosts and creatures from Cross Breeding, and in the mid-game you'll start adding Frost Fiends, Storm Demons, and Demon Knights from the Five Gates, and an Ice Devil or two. Save your regualar Devils until you get a big mass of them because they don't have a ranged attack and are more fragile than Demon Knights. In the mid-game you'll also have Leech to handle enemy SCs.

You can easily decimate many PDs with Send Lessor Horror, which most Warlocks can cast (you might need to give them a starshine cap).

In the end stages of the mid-game, you've got a great chance at grabbing the Arch Devils and Helios. Arch Devils can be used as SCs, and the Helios can do more Five Gates work.

For the late game, gear up your Devils, summon more Five Gates, have Pazuzu bring in the Storm Demons and Pedoseion embark on his Infernal Crusades. Apply Send Lesser Horror liberally. If it looks like the end of the world is nigh, then it's probably time to fire off AC with your god.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Now that's a pretty damn innovative idea. Though I'm going to have to speak to qm about whether send lesser horror really should be level 1!

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Thanks, but it's Call Lesser Horror (the battle summon) that is at level 1 at a reduced price.

Send Lesser Horror (the remote ritual) is the same price/level as in vanilla.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

oooh my mistake.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Interesting strategy! I am playing MA Aby in 2 MP games but went for more traditional ways :D I'll give this a shot (in SP first of course :smirk:), seems something very worth trying... Blood apocalypse! :evil:

That's definitively the season of the guides btw. How much dom3 played you gurus in the holidays??? :happy:

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I'ved used the same call lessor horror trick it works beautifully with EA-Vanheim. As I recall, I'm doing it from *your* province, with a stealthy unit.

usually pop a hole. Then have all the hidden units around the hole, clh the following turn. Gives them a place to retreat to.

Tactic also works well with LA-ULM vampires.
And Pangaiea.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Very nice strat, I’ve now tested the horrors and they are an awesome tool for abysia, which struggles to field multiple expansion parties early.

I have a question regarding the early usage of your rainbow pretender, I'm uncertain how best to use him. Going for Blood 1 immediately is obvious, as is alt 3 for body ethereal if using salamanders, but is it preferable to then hit the research or first do some manual site searching?

My first thought was to get the research to constr 6 first for lanterns, however:

• The rainbow pretender you’ll have is about as good as an acashic for site searching
• Researching first Excepting fire you’ll have no gems to spend quite a way into the game, and for abysia to diversify effectively it really needs to be pulling in gems early
• Finding earth sites early in particular lets you get into hammer and bloodstone production early, improving lantern production on top of everything else, including the sanguine rods you’ll produce once you hit C4

Given that a lot of what you want to do with your research requires gems anyway, is it worth priming your gem economy before hitting the hard research? The only major downside I can see here is that your mages will be left without decent spells in an early conflict, but presumably abysia with D3 scales isn’t much of an early target anyway..

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Even with your god researching you won't have anything but Evo-2 for combat, since he's on Const.

It's really nice to get Const-4 by the end of year-1. Then if your Warlock or two is diseased, you can stick the shroud on them and make them last longer.

Nearly all your capitol mages are going to be out expanding, with this strat. So there's no-one to research at all if your god doesn't do it. I suppose you could take 6 months and search 3 provinces bordering your capitol. It's just a chance you're taking with old age disease.

I didn't bother with rods since I don't want to patrol with death scales, and except for all the Mutes everyone is a B2 at least.

And I wouldn't bother with hammers for the lanterns, they are only F5. I made a few Wands of Wild Fire but regretted it, because it's just as easy to fly in a Demonbred. I probably should have empowered another D mage in fire, for more Smoulderghosts.

I hate falling behind in the research race, that's why I want to hit Const-6 ASAP.

You're right though, once I hit Const-8, I was looking at all the stuff my god could forge, if only he had some gems. :)

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Yeah, I was thinking of just the surrounding provinces. Combined with luck gems might be enough to get some indie's remote site searching, as well as the earth benefits. Oh, and naturally a death site early provide smoulderghost potential. Depends on the magic site setting for the game I suppose as to how worthwhile it is.

The shroud for warlocks is a good point - how were you planning to get the astral gems though? manual searching, events? Unless you take the enchantress of course, but she is a fair way behind the sage for research. Dunno, I'd probably sacrifice a warlock or two for a reasonable early gem income and possible good indie mages

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I think I'd go with hammers for lanterns as soon as I could get them.

Sure, it's only 5 gems, but it's only 3 with a hammer, which is a 40% discount not 20%. 3 Lanterns for 9 gems instead of 2 for 10. That research adds up fast.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

To get S gem income I alchemized fire into pearls and cast Arcane Probing once I got Evo-2 (which I researched right after Blood-1).

I think maybe Dragar and thejeff are right though, searching the capitol neighbors first and making some early hammers make a lot of sense.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I really like your guide. Esp. about the awake sage.
In vanilla though I found MA Aby to be very weak: Luck scale may or may not work, your income is hurting and shrinking (due to death) and you must forge const 6. items in order to be able to research competitively. Then you need to forge a const. 4. for your mages not to die of old age. And you need to empower a D mage to summon your infantry. Too many shackles on MA Abysia. I wonder whether its an oversight of IW in the transition form dom-II to III.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

If you empower an abysian mage to cast spectral infantry in vanilla, you deserve to lose.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

:lol
couldn't agree more

This spell is meant as torment to MA Aby, so close yet still out of reach.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

It's like forbidden fruit. Only when you do finally bite in it's full of offal.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Well, I'd probably take a pretender who has at least one Fire and Death for access to Flaming Skulls.

I might use him to churn out some Spectral Infantry when he didn't have anything more pressing to do.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Seriously? That spell is /awful/. You might as well be throwing your gems away.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I may have only tried in CBM. It seemed decent there, though I still wouldn't empower for it.

That much worse in vanilla, I take it?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

It's much better in cbm, yeah. 5/5 vanilla, I think it's 5/1 in cbm or something.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Empowering early (around turn 10 I think), at turn 60 I'll have paid 1D1F for each group of 5 smoulderghosts. It's still pretty expensive for a Prot-0 unit with an MR-resistable weapon, but they do have a lot of situational uses, and map move 3.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

empowering death is a big call.. there have to be better uses, particularly using your pretender to summon some death casters?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

So you can empower fire rather than death?
Smoulderghosts are really great if you get a legion of steel on them. They have mapmovement 3, making them quite mobile unlike other Abyssian troops.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

vfb: How will they have cost 1D1F? I don't get it.

And I don't see how legions of steel helps when they have no armour. I'm also completely unimpressed with mapmove 3. You don't have the commanders to use that and it's no big deal on a small quantity of overpriced chaff.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

A mental spoonerism, was thinking about the iron warrior line of spells.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Yes, of course it's empowering in Fire, not Death.

It costs 50F to empower a D1 caster. Amortize that at 0%APR over 50 turns, and it's 1F per turn. Add the 1D from the actual casting every turn, and it's 1F1D.

Map move 3 Demonbred commanders can move your Smoulderghosts around. Plus I like to get me some Bane thugs, also map move 3. But the whole map move 3 thing was trying to find some sort of light in the tunnel for the poor guys.

If you neighbor C'tis, then Smoulderghosts are not going to be affected by miasma. The only other early options you have are Bone Fiends, which suck even more than Smoulderghosts, and Serpent Fiends, which come a bit later but are actually not too terrible. Spine Devils are okay too, but don't have PR. Any C'tis players in any MP games I am playing should not consider this to be some kind of threat to them.

But anyway, this strat is mostly about the early Call Lesser Horror, not Smoulderghosts. You don't really need them.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Smoulderghosts cost 5 gems for 5, not 1.

Ctis miasma doesn't care about poison res and I'm pretty sure disease doesn't bother demons (though they do get diseased from it), but I could be wrong.

Sorry to go off topic, just not sure why people are rushing to the defence of a summon as flat out awful as Spectral Infantry.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Sombre, I thought they were 5 for 1 gem in CBM? And this is explicitly a CBM thread.

-Max

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Sorry, you're right, I forgot this is a CBM thread. When people didn't state they were talking about CBM ghosts I assumed they were talking vanilla.

My bad. I think in CBM they're great value. So were/are bone fiends though.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Smoulderghosts are undead so they are immune to disease (miasma). The PR is for the C'tis slingers. Not all of the low-level demons are PR immune.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I believe you that you've used your guide in regards to research+Drain, but I've got difficulties imagining how you get to Constr6 "in a sensible amount of time" with Drain and Abysia researchers. I mean, it's 920 points you will need...

I take it that your Sage is doing most of the research in the beginning, but when have you reached that Constr6 in your game? Have you been lucky with indy researchers as well (something nice, but nothing you should have to rely on)..?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Are lightless lanterns at con 6 in cbm?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Yep. Unfortunately, at least from an Abysian perspective; that's why he wrote he's hurrying for Const6 ASAP.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Lanterns are Con 6, and I got there midway in the second year, without hiring indy mages. The sage has 42RP per turn, so 920 / 42 = 21 months.

Add in a couple or three Warlocks, and one of those Warlocks is hired on turn one. Turn two he blood hunts in the capitol and I hire an Apprentice. From turn three the Warlock is pretty much just researching.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Impressive. Of course, probably not involved into an early war where you need mages, or....?

I guess your point is really not to need much money for troops (horrors doing your dirty work, sure), so you can spend it on 'locks every turn. Still, if there was a war going on, you'd have to hire "real" troops (most probably Humanbreds) which then cost money + need several mages as artillery support..

Of course you've got much more experience with that one, and I have been playing differently (without the sage, for example ;)), but the MA Abysia I have right now is (too) far away from Const6 for my taste. Was looking for a "what could I have done better", and the only idea I had was "more Magic Scales next time".

But you seem pretty inclined on using the Sage to compensate in the beginning, and later on use the lanterns to catch up... hm...

Another question regarding lanterns:

They're supposed to horror mark their bearers, right. And while I occasianally pick up a horror mark (really rarely, with 20 lanterns not a mark every single turn), it's not really something I'd call "frequently".

Can that be tied to Luck scales as well? From others you hear about lanterns as a "death sentence for the bearer"....?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

With this strategy, you need to use mages for fighting, even in early wars. You can't just hire Warlocks, they are too expensive, and you won't be able to keep them all alive. You need to hire Warlock Apprentices, and nearly all of them should be out expanding (including hunting if they are in a decent province and have run out of slaves). You need indy commanders to shuttle slaves back and forth, and to hold slaves so your Apprentice is only carrying 3 when he attacks an indy, because if he's holding more you'll lose them when he retreats.

And of course I was involved in an early war. :)

The first war I had was with Pan, around the end of year 1, which was horrible and not what I would have chosen. The Call Horror strategy really doesn't work well against harpy PD, so I could only attack with Salamander-infantry armies. I think I made a few fireball wands for indy commanders just because I couldn't hire enough mages in my capitol. We hit a stalemate on one front where we both had lots of PD, and then I broke through an elephant indy on the other side using Beast Trainers. Pan had already been weakened on that front by another fight.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I probably just can't imagine sending my mages out to fight without a decent amount of meat between them and the enemy. Might be my (un)creativity ;) I just imagine a horde of Mictlan Jaguars running towards your mages.... will a few inf, salamanders and mages (without real AoE spells) hold that one?

If you say it worked, then I'll just try to adapt this to other nations with similar weaknesses. Got to learn thinking outside the box - Abysia with Drain3 for sure is "outside standard" :p

Any idea on the lanterns + Luck?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

You can send just a Warlock apprentice if there's no fliers. Summon the horrors and retreat.

For uncooperative armies, you need a humanbred screen, with enough salamanders behind that they can burn up the opposition before they run out of gas. Add in a few Demonbreds to cast Fireball and Fire Blast, or wands of wild fire on indies, or lifelong protections.

I micro my lanterns. It has nothing to do with Luck scales. The first time he gets a horror mark, and that's it for the mage, no more lanterns for him. That mage can go preach somewhere or blood sacrifice or forge or site-search H2 or in the worst case give me 3RP a month.

From the F1 screen you can click on each mage and if he has a mark you can drop the lantern in the lab right away, without leaving the F1 screen, and rename your mage "hm f2h2" or whatever you want to call him. Then exit the F1 screen and find some mages you hired last month (tribals are good too) to drop your excess lanterns on. Obviously Warlock Apprentices and anyone else who works with horrors should not be given a lantern (they should be blood hunting anyway, not researching).

You gotta be down with OCD though I think.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Lanterns: Oh, I don't have any problem MM'ing my lanterns, it's more that I've read some ppl claiming "all their mages carrying lanterns were dead" after one or two years. Well, in Methadone I didn't bother switching lanterns at all for at least ~20 turns or so, and got exactly zero horror attacks (with 30+ lanterns, less than 10 horror marks for sure).

So I was wondering about that discrepancy.

Standard fighting: Sure, without fliers you can send in an apprentice and leave. Although Jaguars will probably tear through a lesser horror quickly enough, right?

I had got the impression that I needed LOTS of Humanbreds and LOTS of fire mages to be able to fight efficiently. Must have spent my money differently/wrong maybe... what Humanbreds were you recruiting? I thought the spear wielders would be the most resilient kind, due to shields+spears.

I'm also just wondering what I did wrong playing Aby, ending up with soooo much less research than you :p Other than "no Sage"..

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

I have had a similar experience with lanterns. I never moved any of them and only saw one horror attack over 20+ turns. So I think you benefit from micro, but you don't /have/ to.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

In another game I've lost about 5 mages to horrors. And I'm micro'ing there too, it's just a single month of marking that was enough to trigger it. Probably got about 30 lanterns, on around turn 40.

Toran, you're right Humanbreds can't fight very well at all. But they can be useful eating up hits and arrows on their shields. I bought the spear ones too, in hope that the parry would make them last longer. The Salamanders (and some fireballs/blasts) dish out the damage. Body Ethereal helps the Salamanders stay alive.

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Well, that's why I'm asking - I have never seen it happen this bad, and was wondering if I was just lucky (or you unlucky...), or if was tied to Luck scales maybe, which I had as Luck3 in both my cases where I was using lanterns.

Ah, ok, same choice then. I find them surprisingly resilient against most enemies, they usually hold longer than the enemy probably prefers - they don't really hurt the enemy (unless fatigued from running into the shields/spears, or the Fire magic from behind), this is done mainly by the Fire mages with me. Where it definitely helps that the Humandbreds are 100% FR ;)

But ethereal salamanders... yep, could be an idea. I know that one isn't exactly new, I just wasn't using it. Do you intermingle the Salamanders into the Humanbreds, or make them separate squads, consisting only of Salamanders?

Re: MA Aby CBM Strategy
 

Separate squads of 6 Salamanders, each with its own Apprentice to Body Ethereal it. If I can't get enough Apprentices then just the front Salamander squads get Body Eth. Usually one or two Salamanders in the squad gets missed, because the Apprentice gets stuck in a square with one.

Everyone is on Hold & Attack Rear, the Humanbreds are right on the front line and the Salamanders are a few squares back, staggered where there are holes in your Humanbred line. I think if you have too many Humanbreds, the Salamanders won't get a chance to attack, because you won't have any holes in your front line for them to get through.