LA Utgard guide

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by Dragar

exactly, very economical - especially given the equipment he is losing. Even if you get unlucky firs ttime you use it, it will certainly scare him

Interesting... need to think about mass seithkonas then.

Also, is the mind duel then also unbuffable re protection? i.e. would luck help in the case of an adverse duel result for example? guess the answer is no?

[Gregstrom]

Indeed. If you lose mind duel you die with no get-outs.

Although... I don't know about Life After Death or Twiceborn. LAD+Mind Duel would be interesting if it worked.

[thejeff]

I would assume that any of the normal "Get another life when you die" effects would save you. Immortality and Twiceborn in dominion. Phoenix Pyre? Life after death. The Elixir of life.

How about second shape? It works on soul slay.

[vfb]

Second Shape works on Magic Duel too.

[chrispedersen]

So does twice born. And phoenix pyre used to before patches. I don't know if it still does.

I used to use it with marignon / Ea Ermor.

And I love giving B4 or S4 to the phoenix depending on what my nation has. S if it has blood, b if it has s...

[Viajero]

Playing Utgard again, got to love those werewolves. Now, beyond uberthugging, is there a life for Utgard? What would be a practical mid and end game strategy for the cold guys if the chalice and sceptre of regency were not available? Not really sure what to aim for other than Tartarians as the easy option...

[Baalz]

Oh yeah, Utgard has a lot of versatility that's often overlooked because of the obvious stuff. They've got extremely powerful communion potential with triple path 90 gold Seithkona supported by blood magic (reinvigoration). Norna are amazing and by mid game you should have several set up to teleport wherever you want. They won't be thugging obviously, but dropping in to lead a 4 man (er woman) Seithkona communion is a hell of a lot of whoopass for under 600 gold. If you keep popping reinvigoration those 90 gold communion slaves go a long way 4X shadow blast, or raise skellys, or disintegrate, or charm (use gems) or wither bones (gems) or ... well lots of nasty stuff every round till you run out of script. Don't overlook fun things you can do buffing your troops with that communion master, even your PD takes some work to bring down when you stack battle fortune on top of mass regeneration & mass protection while the Jotun Hirdmen become positively beastly.

[Viajero]

Thanks yes. Re communions I presume one has to apply care and ensure the teleported Nornas actually deploy at the bottom of the army set up list so to allow the reverse communion you indicate with the local waiting seithkonas, or otherwise arm them with a bow or something, no?

[Baalz]

Yeah, exactly. What I was really thinking though is since you're mixing magic movement with non-magic movement you'll often want to stage them a turn before combat so you can make sure everything's peachy, the teleporting is really mostly to make you not have to worry about them being cap only with a map move of one...though its not hard at all to teleport 5 Norna into a province you expect to be defending an important fight in and making sure your communion order is good that way.

[Viajero]

Indeed communions should be a powerfull tool for Utgard, but... in my short experience these have prove indeed usefull up to mid game. Once Fires From the Sky, CloudTrapezed Tartarian Cyclops with A2E2 casting Rain of Stones, etc etc start appearing, communions are effetively cancelled as an offensive tool: move out of a Dome and you're fried. Unless one starts diligently crafting tons of Ring of Fire, Robe of the shadows etc that is.

Which begs a question which may deserve its own thread: How to efectively use communions on the offense past the mid game?