Taking down SCs
 

What is the best way to tackle an SC?

In a current duel game, I am facing Hinnom with Ermor. My opponent has a melqart kitted out with a fire brand, shield of gleaming gold, ring of regen, and a luck pendant. How do you fend these guys off?

If I was Caelum I could nuke the guy with lightning. If it was later in the game (or if I had better luck with randoms) I could paralyze spam the guy or use stellar cascades to get his fatigue up. But my question still stands, what is the best way to stop these guys?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

If he doesn't have reinvig to give him 0 enc then skelly spam from 4+ mages will kill him easily. If he does, then you can also spam vengeance of the dead. There are a lot of ways to kill SCs, those are just 2 fairly easy ones.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Soul Slay, Frozen Heart, Petrify and Paralyze are just a few options that work well against SCs. choose according to what he has. Ring of Regeneration and Pendant of Luck means no Amulet of Anti Magic, which means MR negating spells such as Soul Slay and Petrify would be more useful. if he brings Amulet of Anti Magic or by any chance has an Astral bless, but not cold immunity than Frozen Heart. there are more options, such as the skelli spamming Trumanator mentioned, and a lot more, so use according to what you have available at the area and what your opponent isn't immune to.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Banes with Duckdaggers?

Edit: Duskdaggers have been known to work better.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Unit with fire/frost aura works well, unless he's immune

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Another thing you could try is using small communions with one or more air random augur elder masters spamming precision-boosted lightning bolts. You only have to land a few to guarantee his fatigue goes up above safe levels.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

No assassins or seducers? Maybe black heart someone?

I see lots of "SC's too strong" and "assassins/seducers suck" on this forum but to me they offer a balance. An assassin or seducer gaurantees a one-on-one conflict. Then use something majorly damaging for one-on-one instead of the area effect equipment people like to make. Maybe the crossbow that does 999 damage, or the rod that disintegrates.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

That's terrible advice. The SCs are going to be on their own pretty much anyway.

He has a shield of gleaming gold, so good luck with projectile weapons. He also has high mr so with your 999 damage crossbow you're talking 1 shot before the SC walks over and kills him, which has to beat the insane parry on the shield, then the good mr on the SC. And you have to get the SC to stay still for a turn to assassinate him in the first place. On top of this black heart is a high level blood item and he's talking early midgame by the looks of it.

Remind me, what level is the rod that disintegrates someone? How much does it cost? How many shots is the assassin going to get off before he dies? Does it check mr?

If you want to push how people should be using one of your favourite tactics (assassins) more, this isn't the right thread for it.


To OP: What nation are you?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

OP is ermor.

Probably one of the best assassin kits you could use on a melqart would be something like vine whip+dusk dagger, boots of quickness, and a bottle of living water. I'm not sure this would even work, and that's a lot of gems to spend on a random assassin. Anyway trying to assassinate a melqart doesn't sound like the best idea with something human-sized that's liable to be killed in one hit if anything goes wrong at all.

IIRC there is no such thing as a disintegration rod. Perhaps you meant a phoenix rod, which lets you cast incinerate? Those can be nice but melqarts have inbuilt 50% fire resistance, and with a fire brand he gets to 100. So it won't work there.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Good points.
Of course if SCs are a big concern from the beginning of the game Id tend toward something bigger than human. Anything with stealth can be given a black heart. Titan gods work well if you expect to be pushed back to your castle by SCs or Tartarians

@Sombre: I have often seen suggestions of including flak armies with SCs altho I understand that a solo SC might be YOUR favorite tactic. And the OP mentioned he was facing Hinnom with Ermor if that helps.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Things to look for:

1. Black bows, vineshields, net wielding gladiators. Void eye + soul slay.

First one of the real questions is what is the hinnom bless. I'm guessing he didn't go e9 due to no bracers.

Regardless, as others have alluded, the first key is this SC will have good but not great MR. Black Bowing him will lower his MR by 5, allowing him to be soul slayed.

Set up a screen of net weilding gladiators, Netting him is a way to slow down his killing; I'd attach two thugs preferably with fire resistance and a vineshield or eye shield. I'd also look at either evening star, or star of heros - which ever one does the non resistable strength loss, if this is cbm you might give a hero blade

Spam skellys at him or add a communion with soul slay.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Evening star :) Star of heroes wouldn't be bad either actually, if you can land a hit... because then his armor will be broken and his main form of protection would be the shield.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

If you expect to be pushed back to your capital by tartarians you've lost anyway. So which titan with stealth is it that works well with a black heart against SCs and tartarians? From your mp experience. Or is it all of them?

I highly doubt the SCs he's describing have an army with them. If they do, kill or rout the army and the Baal will rout (make sure you cut off his retreat too). Far easier than dealing with the Baal.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

The OP probably doesn't have soul slay since he said it's too early for him to have paralyse ready.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Nether bolt/nether darts might work If you haven't got the gems or time to make botox bows.

You can also horror mark him with your astral mages while retreating.

You should have hordes of undead horsemen and skeletons, use them to flesh out your skelespam. Combine with ghost grip.

Set up a reverse communion and have them spam smite. Let the masters cast drain life.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Hmm... on checking Ermor vanilla there doesnt seem to be any good choices for pretender one-on-one. Too bad. The deity boost to hit points inside dominion can be tremendous Especially with a pretender that starts high already.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

These countermeasures are a bit late in coming for what he's implying his research level is (might be nice if we actually knew his spell levels), but yes, all of these are viable solutions. You also seem to be assuming MA ermor? He was trying to kill a melqart so he's likely playing ea ermor. No cheap reanimation of horses for him. Doesn't mean he can't still summon them though.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Sorry, was away for most of the day.

EA Hinnom vs. EA Ermor Duel on Dawg Biscuit CBM 1.5

Conj 3
Alt 1
Evo 4 (researching 5 for shadown blast)
Con 2
Enc 1
Tha 4 (just got)
Blood 0

I have two Augur Elders with S2, my pretender is F2A3W2E4S4N2D2.

I could, now that it is researched, drop in with my pretender and hit him with Orb Lightning or Thunder Strike.

I guess my question should be more along the lines of how to stop Hinnom that is using a mix of SCs with size 5 tramplers...

Re: Taking down SCs
 

I recently won a successful war against Hinnom using Ulm. They too were using chariots with melquarts.

First up - dealing with the tramplers - High Def units like your principe are as good as you going to get in avoiding getting trampled. Def Save Vs Trample. Mass these guys. a 4:1 ratio to each of his chariots absolute minimum. Have them at your back line with "Hold and Attack" orders

Then get some of your F2 mages - as many as you can muster behind the wall of principe casting bonds of fire (Thaumaturgy 2) to slow down the chariot charge, hopefully they arrive in smaller blobs so that your principe can overwhelm them.

I'd try and avoid fighting his main army until you can muster enough principe and F2 mages to beat him, make smaller armies and hit behind his lines if you can, possibly forcing him to split his larger army up again.

I used the same strategy above with Ulm but swap Principe with Shield Maiden and swap F2 mage with E2 mage casting Earth Meld. Once the chariots were gone the Melquarts went down amid a sea of shield maidens.

Good luck!

Re: Taking down SCs
 

you could combine Horror mark and Summon Lamshata to the above tactic to really slow down a big trample army.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Principe don't really have good def. For trample checks remember it uses the actual def, not the def+parry that is listed on the unit right click screen.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

What else uses the actual defense sombre, do you recall off the top of your head?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Do the Lammashtas preferentially attack horror marked units? It doesn't explicitly say that in the description.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

I wonder would the Retiarius with the net/trident combo be able to ensnare the chariots?

If so there very easy to amass...although you lose them after one battle, still...worth trying to see if they are effective or not.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Anything that checks defense. Parry is only displayed added on to def in that screen because it's helpful to see what you're likely to survive in melee (because anything that doesn't beat that value will hit shield or miss entirely).

So earthquake, falling frost, any of those kind of spells. They work great vs shielded guys because they actually have less defense due to the enc from the shield.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

They will, but the nets are one shots.. so you need to stagger their purchase and deployment.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

The nets work ok. Frantically trying to get to con 4 so I can start producing some penetration items and kit out a couple of SCs. What stinks is there is no cost effective counter for their chariots. At least their SCs cost an arm and a leg, plus a lost soul, plus...

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Sure there are.

Earthmeld + longbows.
Quagmire + long bows.
skelly spam + long bows.

And if those don't work.. elephants.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

No elephants available, I do not have access to Quagmire, don't think I have access to Earthmeld either. I could go the skellyspam route, but I don't have longbows either (aside from those I can craft).

I could also try some terror and frighten, but not sure how those are going to work due to their higher morale than elephants and mammoths.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Spamming Terror and frighten are good if you can force his chariots to take morale checks.

Does he use the chariots in one large unit? or lots of smaller units? (like my last opponent did - thus making it easier to route them).

Re: Taking down SCs
 

He uses one large unit. The thing I don't get, they have a unit vastly better than any elephant/mammoth unit (and does the same thing), and it costs significantly less?

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Yes, they will go for the horror marked units first. Being Ethereal makes them good against the tramplers. And they cause fear.

If the SC is alone and has a horror mark already, 2 or 3 mages with a death gem each may just summon enough to cause a 1st round retreat before his buff cycle.

Don't forget to spirit Curse!

Re: Taking down SCs
 

It's not as healthy as mammoths/elephants, and is smaller, so it's not quite vastly better. They also cost many more resources than eles/mammoths. Bigger tramplers do much more damage when they trample. They do have a lot more protection though. When you get to stellar cascades try spamming that with 4+ mages and aim a bunch of slingers or something at them. They'll take a lot of extra damage as the fatigue mounts, and you'll eventually be able to take them down probably without too many losses at that point. You could also try fire bolas.

Curses are very good against SCs, if you can give a melqart a chest wound it is going to die eventually regardless of how good of a bless it has.

Re: Taking down SCs
 

Actually under cbm firebonds are very strong.. firebonds if they don't do MR + frighten for the win...

but your rate of putting on the firebonds >> his rate of getting out.. especially as you willfatigue and he won't ..