Has anyone ever had any success with "shards" spells?

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Potatoman:
With high enough accuracy (20-25) stone shards can actually be quite deadly. Good luck getting there without cheating though.

Buy yourself some Air mages, and you'll see some with very decent Precision. That's another reason why I like Man; those Tuatha are expensive as hell, but when they cast an Orb Lightning, they do hit.

[Jasper]

I've had some very mild success with Shards used by a Pretender during early expansion. The problem is that you need a high earth skill to counteract it's high fatigue cost, and need a high precision to hit.

On a Pretender with high Earth and some Air or Nature (for Aim/Eagle Eye) it's a decent early spell, altough such a Pretender may well be tough enough to be better off just attacking.

[Norfleet]

Spells that tend to spray all over the map are best used when your enemies are all over the map. You don't even need precision. Being outnumbered just means it's harder to miss.

[velk]

You think that shards is bad - wait til you try using tartarian titans - range 30 lightning bolt with 6 precision is kind of amusing 8)

You would need to be fighting against an army of 10,000 to have any chance of hitting anything that wasn't standing right next to you.

[HJ]

My moloch actually bought it from a dwarven smith with stone shards. He was standing fairly close to him though, so the entire spray hit his square.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by velk:
You think that shards is bad - wait til you try using tartarian titans - range 30 lightning bolt with 6 precision is kind of amusing 8)

You would need to be fighting against an army of 10,000 to have any chance of hitting anything that wasn't standing right next to you.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Lightning bolt has a precision modifier of 7, so with a base precision of 6 your overall precision will be 12. Add in an aim to make it 17 and you will only miss at extreme long range. Even 12 is good enough for moderately sized armies.

[velk]

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Lightning bolt has a precision modifier of 7, so with a base precision of 6 your overall precision will be 12. Add in an aim to make it 17 and you will only miss at extreme long range. Even 12 is good enough for moderately sized armies.

You obviously haven't used tartarian titans 8)

They are normal troops with a specific ranged attack called "Lightning Bolt", and they have a precision of 6, which can't be modified because they aren't commanders.

If you line up 20 of them and have them fire at a group of 400 enemy troops that are directly in front of them at range 30, they will hurl lightning bolts that are so far off course that they are more dangerous to enemies in entirely different provinces 8)

You should try it - it's pretty funny 8)

Fortunately they have 300 or so hp and great combat stats so they are actually pretty tough if you order them to melee attack or when they run out of ammo...