Countering End-Game Astral

[Folket]

Nuke their armies with overland rituals.

[Twan]

MR spells won't save regular troops, they are only usefull to protect people already having correct MR, as you can expect an endgame communion master to have full penetration gear (-5 MR) and one or two more penetration from his level if communion is large and ennemy use LoNS.

So just don't use regular troops, if you need chaff use mindless who can't be enslaved (at least if the opponent don't use arcane domination or undead mastery too).

Ideally only send thugs and mages with MR gear (MR gear = not just one amulet, you usually need 2 MR items in addition to an antimagic spell to start to be safe).If you can summon some, golems are of course a very good choice as they are immune to mind spells. As the communion master may cast soul slays or simple enslave with insane bonuses, you should expect your guys to have to resist against 9 or 10 penetration.

But you can exploit the way the spell AI use these one target spells, as your SC with the higher number of hp is the more likely to be targeted. So if you can give 30 MR to your toughest SC, he will protect a full team of thugs with lower hp and MR (it's not 100% sure but work usually).

Once you can have a thug/mages team surviving astral spells, it's rarely hard to win against astral nations (who rarely have as good access to thugs as their opponents, and usually don't have exceptionnal troops). In addition to mass dammage spells etc..., designing your thugs for making battle long + using some fatigue BE to kill the slaves can very well do the job (especially if the opponent use an half-reverse communion with some casting slaves).

[Xietor]

And if you are fighting underwater against the ryleh, you have even less battlefield spells in your arsenal. And you can count on a heavy dose of VOTD to back up the communions.

Which is why the Ryleh is in my top 3 power aces in the Middle Era. That said, there are ways things that can be done.

I am presently engaged in a fierce underwater fight with the Ryleh in one of my mp games. I tend to try to weaken his armies before the battles.

Earth attacks take out keys mages. There are other tactics.

[sum1lost]

I'm a big fan of mass flight, personally.

[MaxWilson]

Communions aren't very mobile. He will have trouble stopping thug/SC raids (3-4 thugs or 1-2 SCs) behind his lines with big communions. He will also have trouble protecting communions against overland rituals and/or assassination/remote attack spells. It just isn't feasible to teleport a 12-man communion around. At best, communions are an anvil but you can still smash the hammer.

-Max

[Tifone]

Assassins would be fun. You imagine a mage with a knife at a couple cms from his throat, cry out loud "COMMUNION... SLAAAVEEE!" ??

[JimMorrison]

I'm Assassinating communion members in one game I'm in. He's besieging a castle so not really going anywhere.....

When they're scripted for a large army battle it's kind of hilarious how pathetic they are against an assassin.

[Endoperez]

What about group of flying thugs with high MR? I'm thinking of Iron Angels in here. They have base mr 20, base enc 1, reinvigoration 4, full slots and they fly, and while MA Ulm has some trouble getting a summoner, they're cheap to mass once they have one. For 25 Earth and half-price equipment, you can afford to lose some.

[Epaminondas]

Sorry for a newb question. What is there to fear from end-game Astral battle magic other than Master Enslave?