Black Forest - Ulm

It has no description.

The Ghoul Guardians are weak in the old MR department, but that's fine since you have a astral readily availiable and casting Antimagic isn't a chore at all.

It comes with the classic 'Ulm has low MR' weakness, but when you can field twice as many troops as you could normally because you went hog wild on provinces (and thus income, and thus research) you can field massive armies frighteningly quick.

You have cheap xbows (reminding me of Marignon) in the Ranger. Ghouls don't rout (a Ulm problem) and you have more spell catchers than you can shake a stick at (with wolves/etc) You also have Pikeneers, Halberdiers, Morningstar Infantry of Ulm and Zweihanders if you are feeling 'Ulmy' and want to throw some high armored men at a situation.

Not the cheapest communion in the world, (Illuminated Ones = 80 gold, 1 Res, stealth) but pretty close. And the Fortune Tellers have 1 random, so you can have your pick of spells to cast.

Note: For my test I played on Indep 6. The effect of the Vampire Counts would be *more* pronounced on higher indeps.

[ January 13, 2004, 18:41: Message edited by: Zen ]

[rabelais]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
To me this theme seemed obvious as a sneak-army. Its one of the few nations where an entire army can be out into the field. Good leaders, infantry, archers, mages, Hmmm I dont remember about the priests. Fast wolves for flankers. Basically scouting with the ability to maybe even win if your caught.

The fact that fortune tellers can actually lessen the instance of bad luck might mean that you could push a bad-luck dominion onto another nation while lessening its affects at home?

The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe

[Kristoffer O]

As you say, Vampire Counts gives the theme rather quick access to Vampire Counts. You are also right in presuming that the theme hasn't gone through extreme playtesting. Thats your job .

Keep posting your findings. We're listening.

[Kristoffer O]

Next theme is an Arcoscephale theme. It is missing descriptions, heroes and some other stuff, but they are in the works.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
As you say, Vampire Counts gives the theme rather quick access to Vampire Counts. You are also right in presuming that the theme hasn't gone through extreme playtesting. Thats your job .

Keep posting your findings. We're listening.

huhu, from another company it would irritate me to be treated like a paying beta-tester. Now for IW, it makes me smile and a special treatment can be made
Seriously, some of the forumers (no I'm not speaking of me) are rather good as betatesters, perhaps you should give to them the patch a week before general release (Psitticine is still around, sometime Daynarr too, but I think they have their hand rather full). On top of my head, in no particular order : Cherry, Gandalf, Keir, Apoger.

[ywl]

Originally posted by rabelais:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
To me this theme seemed obvious as a sneak-army. Its one of the few nations where an entire army can be out into the field. Good leaders, infantry, archers, mages, Hmmm I dont remember about the priests. Fast wolves for flankers. Basically scouting with the ability to maybe even win if your caught.

The fact that fortune tellers can actually lessen the instance of bad luck might mean that you could push a bad-luck dominion onto another nation while lessening its affects at home?

The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe

---

It seems to be a very powerful theme even without the Vampire counts ...

Cheap crossbow, archers. And they're all sneaky. I imagine that you can have a super-fast early expansion with them alone. You can use the simplest early strategy of a Wyrm at front (or Green Dragon if you're more risk-taking) and a whole bunch of archers behind. Some of its infantries can be even called decent!

The shortcoming is a *very* limited choice of national magic, even though most mages are very cheap. With these mages and a magical scale, your research will be fast but you still need somebody to cast the spells .

You need the pretender to compensate. A rainbow mage is usable but in most competitive MP game, it's kinda suicidal to use it. Also, you probably want death 3 and blood 3 on your pretender, which would also tied up a lot of nation points.

I think you are right in saying it's limited, but not totally limited. The Fortune Teller is your friend I think her random is only Sorcery (astral, death, nature, blood) so she in and of herself doesnt have alot of leeway. The Counts are decent (2 Death, 2 Blood) but overall they don't have very much mage variety. And I'll be the first to admit that Blood doesn't have very many combat spells.

If they did ... eh?

Also most of their mages are recruitable outside of their capital (Illuminated Ones, Member of the Second Tier) so it works well with they hyperexpansion and later the uberraiding of the theme.

I just can't seem to get past how quickly you can get a factory of the counts rolling while almost totally ignoring researching Blood. Combine it with a strong foundation of armies (again, xbows and free patroller/fodder) it seems that Black Forest was given all the cards while some nations/themes are sitting in the trailerpark watching it on TV.

I don't know how abusive the Ice Devil strategy was in Dom 1, but if the sacrifices (Getting a Pretender with Blood/Death, forced Misfortune (no big deal)) allow you to win the game then it should be addressed if not *For* Black Forest, *for* all the nation/themes that don't have an easy way to deal with Supercombatants (I.E. Paralyze, Blindness).

[ January 13, 2004, 20:51: Message edited by: Zen ]