How to take down this pesky pretender?

[st.patrik]

this could be a typo - but you said the orders were to 'attack rearmost' which would mean that he would never fire his weapon, but instead attempt to get in melee range.

A lot of spells have a range too short to be used - I don't know if that was the problem with the Shadow Blast.

One pretty nice (unresistable) spell is 'Gifts from Heaven', if you have the mages to cast it. It has poor precision, so don't expect to hit first time, but if it hits it does 150 damage. A few hits later the Wyrm is dead.

One approach that may work is to try to overload the target with fatigue. Stellar Cascades is an Astral spell which creates fatigue (I'm sure there are others too) which is easy to spam (assuming you have Astral mages)

BTW, even if your guy fired, if may not have had any effect, since the Ethereal Crossbow involves a MR check, depending of course on how strong his MR is.

It really depends on what nation you are playing, what strategy to adopt.

[Ironhawk]

Well, if the Wyrm is only taking a few troops with him at any time then the most cost efficient way to kill him would be to surround that army and force them to rout by killing those few men. Then the Wyrm would die in retreat w/o you ever having to fight it.

After that, there are plenty of spells which will kill an SC. One example is Soul Slay. Even if the Wyrms MR is good, enough massed soul slays will eventually get through. There are plenty of other spells in that category: Frozen Heart, Charm, Blindness, etc. Or if you want a way that doesnt check MR, you could use Gifts from Heaven, Incinerate, or even Farstrike or Star Fires (if you had enough of them). Additionally, casting Curse on a dangerous enemy SC is always good. If you wanted to use equipment you could always go with a Heart Finder sword, or equip a commander with an Eye Shield and send him to go get eaten. Additionally there are plenty of artifact weapons which would settle this dispute pretty quickly.

[thejeff]

Horror Mark him and wait?

[Nick_K]

Wyrms don't have many item slots... Surely it's possible to design an SC that'll splatter him,especially if his dominion is not so high

[Loren]

st.patrik said:
this could be a typo - but you said the orders were to 'attack rearmost' which would mean that he would never fire his weapon, but instead attempt to get in melee range.

I thought it meant to attack the rearmost enemies but didn't specify melee. The wyrm was always in back, I figured it would either get him or his prophet. (I got the prophet in ordinary combat anyway.) That could explain why he never fired.

A lot of spells have a range too short to be used - I don't know if that was the problem with the Shadow Blast.

I didn't realize spells had range limits. I thought the only issue was accuracy and my precision was enough to take care of that.

One pretty nice (unresistable) spell is 'Gifts from Heaven', if you have the mages to cast it. It has poor precision, so don't expect to hit first time, but if it hits it does 150 damage. A few hits later the Wyrm is dead.

My prophet could have cast anything. Looking at the really high damage spells, though, they would incur so much fatigue I would only get one off.

One approach that may work is to try to overload the target with fatigue. Stellar Cascades is an Astral spell which creates fatigue (I'm sure there are others too) which is easy to spam (assuming you have Astral mages)

I didn't have much in the way of mages. My ancient ones had been rolling over everything else, I had recruited for research, not spellcasting.

BTW, even if your guy fired, if may not have had any effect, since the Ethereal Crossbow involves a MR check, depending of course on how strong his MR is.

I should have seen an arrow, though. I had no other shooters.

It really depends on what nation you are playing, what strategy to adopt.

I was thinking in general, I won this one with dominion but I was wondering how to do it next time.

[Potatoman]

If your has a higher magic skill than is required to cast the spell, the fatigue cost is reduced (by 50% per level, I think). Powerful mages can keep on casting spells for a very long time, especially if they have good reinvigoration.

[lch]

Loren said:

I thought it meant to attack the rearmost enemies but didn't specify melee. The wyrm was always in back, I figured it would either get him or his prophet. (I got the prophet in ordinary combat anyway.) That could explain why he never fired.

Nope, "attack" always means melee. I think the tooltip explicitly says so, too. I think that ranged units fire when they are set on hold, too, but you should either give him the "Fire" / "Fire and flee" command or no command at all. I ususally use no special combat command unless there is a good reason to do so and the AI makes the best choice there is by itself.

[Wish]

and seriously - large enemy monsters instead of rearmost. Rearmost sometimes means the back end of the closest group of enemies.

[KissBlade]

Mind Hunt

X 50.

Gets them all the time.

(Unless they're astral) =)

[mivayan]

KissBlade said:(Unless they're astral) =)

Or mindless.