Pseudo-SC building question

[LintMan]

I really recommend the Stymphalian Wings for the armor on your seige golem. It provides 3 main benefits:

- Flying: useful in battle, but even more useful for being able to get your SC where it needs to be in a hurry on the strategic map. You can also more easily raid behind enemy lines this way.
- Fear: nice effect to help route enemies
- Trampling: Against normal masses of units, a quickened size 5 trampler (ieL a seige golem with stymph wings) will decimate them far quicker than a quickened seige golem just swinging its hammers will. Faster killing = more kills before they route and less likelihood of getting afflictions.

As a bonus, the Stymph Wings use the same path/gems you already have for the seige golem.

If you can manage it, I'd recommend the normal golem over the seige golem, because it has hand slots (for a charcoal shield, and/or shield of valor or shield of gleaming gold), and astral magic to cast body ethereal, astral shield, luck, antimagic, and maybe astral weapon or twist fate.

If you go with a seige golem and the Stymph Wings, I'd also add:
-Wraith Helm - Ethereal is awesome, and this gives you a few chaff skels to distract the enemy slightly (your golem shouldn't route when they die). If this is too pricey, I'd maybe go with a Horror Helm to boost the fear effect.
-Stymph Wings - discussed above
- Boots of Quickness
- Pendant of Luck
- amulet of antimagic or missile protection

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
You can't rely on Life Drain for you SC, unlike Soul Vortex it is one-time-only spell.

Buh? Life drain owns hard on anything that isn't lifeless. How's this different from Soul Vortex? A Wraith Sword or Blood Thorn is nearly a must-have.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Buh? Life drain owns hard on anything that isn't lifeless.

You should learn to read more carefully. He was referring to the spell, which was listed in the previous post.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Norfleet:
Buh? Life drain owns hard on anything that isn't lifeless.

You should learn to read more carefully. He was referring to the spell, which was listed in the previous post.

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Indeed.

[tinkthank]

Siege golems get no hands? Bummer. What can I take instead? A normal golem isnt nearly as neat...

[LintMan]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Siege golems get no hands? Bummer. What can I take instead? A normal golem isnt nearly as neat...

If you look at the Seige golem picture, you'll see they have hammers where their hands would be.

The two normal golems I have sitting at #2 and #3 in the HoF in my game, with 650+ kills each beg to differ! (My highest-ranked Bane and Wraith Lord SC's lag 200+ kills behind despite being around as long/longer.)

If you really don't like regular golems, some other ideas:
- some people really like Ice Devils: they have W3 magic, full slots and are pretty tough.
- If you can manage to get to Death-7, Tartarian Gate can produce some awesome SC material for a measly 10 death gems. But many have afflictions that need to be healed and/or they need to be Gift of Reasoned, to use as an SC. They're well worth the effort, IMHO.
- Bane Lords and Wraith Lords are always good SC choices. Banes are much cheaper, but Wraiths are ethereal and have Death-3 magic to cast Soul Vortex.
- In my SC thread, someone suggested Firbolgs. They are pretty tough, but their one extra ability ("Standard (+25)") doesn't really benefit them in the SC role, compared to the beneficial abilities that a golem or wraith lord has.
- I've been thinking about GoR'ing an Iron Dragon. They have full elemental immunities (IIRC), and kick some serious butt. I just don't know what slot they'll have though, to make it worthwhile.
- As Cheezeninja suggested, a Queen of Elemental Air could also work well.

[Taqwus]

Firbolgs make decent snipers, but have non-zero encumberance and aren't THAT super.
Don't neglect the Elemental Queens of Water, either. One's amphibious and the other two can go on land with an Amulet of the Fish, and all have all slots except feet, zero enc, recuperation, significant hp, and massive regeneration. They're not on par with a well-equipped Tartarian Titan, but then you don't need Conjuration 9 to get Elemental Queens. Oh, and they're all water mages, so quickness and Breath of Winter are easy.
Gargoyles might be fun, having decent hp, very good basic prot, zero enc, all slots, and flight.