The horror harmonica

[WraithLord]

Ok, so it horror marks its owner and its used to cast call horror. Am I missing something here?- What good is it for?

Has someone been able to come with a way to make use of it?

[Jack Simth]

Astral mages with a Ritual of Returning, a clam, a few loose astral gems, and boots of quickness scripted for Call Horror / Returning?

[NTJedi]

Jack Simth said:
Astral mages with a Ritual of Returning, a clam, a few loose astral gems, and boots of quickness scripted for Call Horror / Returning?

Boots of quickness no longer allow the mage to cast twice in Dominions_3. As a result this unique artifact is less valuable since you want to make sure something strong like a Golem is holding the item and thus able to survive a horror attack.
In Dominions_2 the boots would allow any astral mage to summon a horror with the harmonica and return to the capital.

[geo981010]

How about the Horror Harmonica and the Armor of Virtue? Preferably on a unit that can take a hit without dying, and used against an army with some horror marks already (or have some astral mages to do it, and/or a thug with an Accursed Shield).

Wailing Winds was the big use for this. For me, the new horror marking rules make items like this are too risky to use on good units and too expensive to keep on cheap ones as soon as they get the horror mark. The old horror mark meant nothing, but the fix seems to have swung too far the other way...

[FrankTrollman]

It also causes morale to drop all over the battlefield. It's a very weird device, but one could potentially send in a team of Astral Mages to horror mark the enemies while you're calling in horrors - and then have your entire team great return home.

It's a isky and bizzare item to use, but it can potentially destroy a lot of stuff. Perhaps more importantly, it virtually ensures that the army you unleash it on will scatter - lots of troops on both sides will route - scattering well formed armies into multiple provinces.

-Frank

[mivayan]

WraithLord said:
Ok, so it horror marks its owner and its used to cast call horror. Am I missing something here?- What good is it for?

Has someone been able to come with a way to make use of it?

It also automatically casts wailing winds in battle, (evoc7, D4A1, 100 fatigue, 1 gem, Battlefield enchantment, a Fear +0 attack on each unit on the battle field each turn).

Could be usefull if you have some high morale leaders, a pile of undead or elite troops, and not enough D4A1 mages.

[Shovah32]

Or are using troops with awe (with fear reducing enemy morale your units become almost untouchable) such as dyrad hoplites.

[WraithLord]

Processing what you guys have said what do you think of the following use.

Give the HH to a golem, teleport him with a squad of 4-5 astral mages to a province with a big enemy army. Script the golem to call horror X5, cast spells and the astral mages to horror mark X5. The golem will never route and won't die to an accidental attack by a horror and the astral mages will make sure that the horrors are attracted to the enemy army.

Only question is, what happens when the enemy army routes and a bunch of horrors remain on the battle field???

[FrankTrollman]

If there's nothing but horrors on the field, they'll turn on you and everyone dies.

That's why I suggest that each mage has their 5th script as Returning with enough gems on hand to cast it.

Hopefully you should be able to get in and out before the enemy buff scripts are finished and the horrors will rampage across a battlefield you aren't even in.

You can sweeten the deal by throwing down an Arouse Hunger on the same province, give the enemy something to shoot at during the crucial first turn or two.

-Frank

[Agrajag]

Are you sure Returning will help? IIRC the mage still takes the damage from the attack and only then returns back home, which would mean that in this case there will be several dead bodies teleporting home :X
I haven't played around with Returning much though, so I might as well be wrong