Helheim dirty tactic

[BigJMoney]

MaxWilson said:
Wish,

Micah pointed out that the Ambibate Nobles' protection is actually *better* on the head (15 vs. 12), so 14 damage should be negligible. And the Ironskinned Svartalf's Protection was 20 on both head and body.

-Max

But he was saying this because getting hit on the head would ignore the shield, while blade wind wouldn't, and that's a huge difference. Of course, I have no idea what an Ambibate Noble is and whether they have shields or not, lol. Obviously I'm assuming. Also, that one instance of the guy being killed is obviously a high roll. Check the debug log, it will explain everything if you're really curious.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[MaxWilson]

Is it just conjecture that a head hit bypasses the shield? The manual sounds like all ranged attacks go through the opposed roll calculation and doesn't mention anything about exceptions for head hits--I've never seen any mechanics for how head hits work but I assumed hit location was generated after damage had already been rolled (but before checking Prot, obviously, and before generating afflictions). And it's quite thematic that a shield could be raised overhead as easily as it could shield you from missiles from the front.

After a little bit more experimentation, I'm pretty sure that the one guy getting killed was a moderately high roll combined with a critical hit from spellcasting fatigue.

Thanks for the tip about the debug log, I will check it out.

-Max

[Dedas]

In a recent SP game I played MA Ulm, augmenting my protection 20 troops (head to toe + tower shield) with "legions of steel" (+3 prot to every "part"), and still I got the odd 9 - 11 damage from slings (damage 9) while advancing. It was VERY rare though.

[MaxWilson]

That's understandable; one out of 36 sling hits will have a +10 bonus because of the open-ended roll. I've tried the Rain of Stones thing a couple more times, though, and ended up with Ironskinned-but-dead Svartalfs fairly frequently. (25%-50%?) It does look like the fatigue is causing critical hits, and possibly Rain of Stones does more than 14 damage. I'll check out the debug log to know for sure.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Update, since I've learned a lot since I first tried this.

1.) If a Svartalf has A2 for Cloud Trapeze he also has A2 for Mistform, right? Much better choice than Invulnerability because now Rain of Stones will *never* kill you, you'll simply take 1 point of damage.

2.) Helheim has good access to Bloodstones because it starts out with B1 mages. Blood is an unusual path in that because it's fairly trivial for 4 B1 mages with Sanguine Rods or whatever they're called to be collecting 20 mages per turn, it's really not infeasible to empower up to B3. Thus, you can forge Bloodstones (Empower a Svartalf up to B3E2). Now you don't even need to forge Bags of Wind to play the Cloud Trapeze/Mistform/Rain of Stones game. Since 1 Hangadrott in 4 in has E1, with a Bloodstone that's E2, which lets him cast Summon Earthpower to get E3, which lets him cast Rain of Stones since he already has A2. Voila! And since your Bloodstone produces 1 earth gem per turn, you can go raiding without any micromanagement hassle. 1 Hangadrott for Rain of Stones plus 2 more for Raise Dead (or else scouts with Skullfaces if it's cheaper for you) makes a fun raiding party. Cloud Trapeze deep into enemy territory and have fun romping and stomping all over his PD.

Obviously there are counters, but it's a fun tactic that most other nations couldn't pull off.

-Max

[Omnirizon]

there is a similar tactic with Argatha and Earthquake.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. I guess I can see that, but Agartha will have a hard time replicating the mobility. You'll need a Ktonian Necromancer (S variant for teleport) with a Crystal Coin and Skullcap in order to Teleport (I'm assuming it's not worth blowing 15 points and risking death on a Stygian Paths just to carry out a raid). Then you need Earth Boots and 3 earth gems for the spell proper, and a script <Summon Earthpower, Blessing, Earthquake>. You'll wind up with 200 fatigue, so there's negligible chance of surviving even if you script Ironskin or something in there too. It doesn't seem really feasible to me because it's so expensive and you end up losing the mage and the items. I suspect Agartha has to deploy this tactic quite differently, maybe in pitched battles or with an Earth Necromancer to bolster PD. (The Earth random + no Teleport requirement means you can do it with no magic items, just gems.)

I love Agartha but they're not very mobile/agile for the most part.

-Max