Dealing with an early N9 E9 Niefel Giant rush

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Nounours

Niefel Giants can freeze your troops to death before they do enough damage to kill them ? Try undead troops, they are immune to cold, and if you play nations like Helheim, Agartha or Fomoria, or better, Lanka or Yomi, you can mass them easily to deal with the big guys...

I would favor Lanka and Yomi, because they have priests who are demons, and so can reanimate undeads while your mages cast Reanimate (which is only Ench. 1). You can also summon more undead units with low-level Conj. spells, and Lanka have Host of Ganas (which is only Conj. 2 IIRC), which gives you something like 20 ethereal undead units for only 12 gems...

Hmmm, I will try undead troops, as well as Skelly spams. I usually do not like to use Blood or Death magic out of aesthetic reasons

[Nounours]

Oh, I see, but do you prefer to be (c)rushed to death by Niefel Giants ? I seriously doubt you would find it aesthetic ?

[Executor]

Nief. can't deal multiple enemies, try to bribe someone into fighting him.

[Executor]

A combination of skelly spam and drain life works best from my experience, but I guess you can't have that before turn 20 or so.

[Aezeal]

Personally I just rolled over Lanka myself with Niefelheim. I think that early game (like most of the better bless nations) they are just very hard to stop 1-1, they basicly have invested a lot in the early game and if you haven't you have a huge disadvantage. 2-1 is a good option (it's probably one of the better options for all problems in MP anyway).

[djo]

I was that Lanka. My palankas were w9n6e4, if I recall. I tried to swarm with reanimated undead while punching through with palankas, but it didn't work. The same Niefel Jarls that bless the giants also spam Banish quite effectively.

[Nounours]

And with a bunch of death mages to cast raise dead/raise skeletons ? He will banish some of your undead, but if you keep summoning more and more, won't you eventually overwhelm him ?

[K]

Originally Posted by djo

I was that Lanka. My palankas were w9n6e4, if I recall. I tried to swarm with reanimated undead while punching through with palankas, but it didn't work. The same Niefel Jarls that bless the giants also spam Banish quite effectively.

Two questions:

1. Did you pick Heat 3 and let him come to you (fighting him in your Heat 3)?

2. Did you spam Summon Imps to redirect Banishes?

I play Lanka quite a bit and prefer the W9/N9 bless. Beserking is too much of an advantage to not get even if it fatigues you out, and once you can Wooden Warriors/Mass Protection up Asrapas you don't worry about fatigue ever again.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by djo

I was that Lanka. My palankas were w9n6e4, if I recall. I tried to swarm with reanimated undead while punching through with palankas, but it didn't work. The same Niefel Jarls that bless the giants also spam Banish quite effectively.

This is why lanka should play an F9W9n4-6 bless. That extra 6 fire ap from the fire blessing just rocks against niefle - fire susceptible, if you recall.

[Sombre]

It would take a lot of D2 mages to skellywall a niefel group and force them to retreat. It's pretty hard to organise ahead of time and avoid losing most of your territory. It's also pretty unlikely to actually kill them afaik, because they won't fatigue out.