Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?

[Saxon]

So, this strategy came out two months ago and we only have one person, Ironhawk, who reports using it. If it is such a great idea, why are we not seeing it more often? Further, Ironhawk reports it is a lot trickier than expected. And from what I know of Ironhawk, he is one of the top grade players, so this is no simple thing to do.

Looks like the poll is right, this strategy is not the exploit that was feared.

[NTJedi]

A way to decrease the number of afflictions is casting Regeneration or Mass Regeneration.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah, but that makes them that much harder to kill off, NT

I agree, Saxon. While I still believe that this technically counts as an exploit, it is simply too hard to put into practice to worry about. I'll let you know if I find a way to do it. Or will I??

[NTJedi]

Ironhawk said:
Yeah, but that makes them that much harder to kill off, NT

Actually units of low hitpoints such as priests which receive the regeneration only pickup one hitpoint of regeneration. From my experience the one hitpoint of regeneration on units of low hitpoints has almost no value for preventing death. I see regeneration for units of low hitpoints a strategy for preventing afflictions on survivors of a battle.

Regeneration of 3 or more hitpoints on units with many hitpoints is where they become harder to kill.

[llamabeast]

PVK - there's no point drowning them because drowning happens outside of battle, and you can only have Life After Death in effect during battle.

[JimMorrison]

So is the consensus of those assembled that exploit or not, the "mass producing" part is so near impossible, as to render the point somewhat moot?

[Endoperez]

Has anyone tried to do this with giant nations? There's one case where reanimating priests would actually be great.

It's easy to kill the targets. The secret is in auras, obviously. 10 Winter Wolves set to guard cold-immune commander will kill his two non-immune friends in few turns. Bog beasts do the same even faster. If you do this with indy priests and get back Longdead Giant/Rephaim reanimators, it's worth the trouble.

The main problem with auras is that you need a fight that last for 5 turns or so.

[PvK]

llamabeast said:
PVK - there's no point drowning them because drowning happens outside of battle, and you can only have Life After Death in effect during battle.

Oh, I see, you guys are talking about using the battlefield enchantment Life After Death so you can use indy priests with no magic abilities. I was somehow thinking you had a way to cast Twiceborn on them in advance, but of course that's a caster-only Death spell.

[Saxon]

Funny timing on this thread, I just had a big battle involving it. Instead of casting Control Undead, my mage casts the “life after death” spell. Not very helpful, as I am MA Ermor and don’t have a lot of live troops at this stage. Then he casts rigor mortis. I also have a big communion going. Soon, my mages start dying from fatigue, not ideal.

Oh well, they come back to life, so not a problem. They can still re-animate, so nothing changes. The next turn, the army gets sieged by the enemy SC pretender, who has high regeneration due to high dominion. No problem, I will just preach it away and then smack him down. Except that my newly undead priests can not preach…

Seems that getting re-animation comes at a cost.