Dealing with an early N9 E9 Niefel Giant rush

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

Not sure what's wrong with me but i have never seen skelly spam be effective on anything.

It takes a certain critical mass. 1 skelly spammer works well against very small groups (e.g. an assassin with a Skullface will kill almost any individual commander), but in order to defeat an army you need at least 6-10. The key is to produce skellys fast enough that they can't kill them all before you make more. Eventually the enemy troops fatigue out and then evaporate.

This obviously works best against heavily-armored troops without much missile support, and ideally you have some normal troops as well set to Guard Commander.

-Max

[DonCorazon]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

It takes a certain critical mass. 1 skelly spammer works well against very small groups (e.g. an assassin with a Skullface will kill almost any individual commander), but in order to defeat an army you need at least 6-10. The key is to produce skellys fast enough that they can't kill them all before you make more. Eventually the enemy troops fatigue out and then evaporate.

This obviously works best against heavily-armored troops without much missile support, and ideally you have some normal troops as well set to Guard Commander.

-Max

I guess to put it another way, every time an opponent has tried to skelly spam me, it has failed miserably. The tactic seems very overrated in MP as far as I can tell. I don't recall the fatigue cost of the spell but IIRC it is rather high so wonder how high a level are the casters usually when you have used this effectively?

[Huzurdaddi]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

I guess to put it another way, every time an opponent has tried to skelly spam me, it has failed miserably. The tactic seems very overrated in MP as far as I can tell. I don't recall the fatigue cost of the spell but IIRC it is rather high so wonder how high a level are the casters usually when you have used this effectively?

You need a good set of D3 mages. This means, generally, C'tis. A few other nations can do it, but they usually require capitol only mages. As for how many mages, about 1 mage per 10-15-ish human level troops on the other side.

OTOH having a few priests in an opposing army pretty much whoops up on skelly spam, but usually people do not have more than one or two priests.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

I guess to put it another way, every time an opponent has tried to skelly spam me, it has failed miserably. The tactic seems very overrated in MP as far as I can tell. I don't recall the fatigue cost of the spell but IIRC it is rather high so wonder how high a level are the casters usually when you have used this effectively?

D3 or higher. I don't think of D2s as really skelly spam-capable, even though technically they can cast it in a pinch.

You're right in that skelly spamming is not a tactic that most nations can use effectively--it just happens that I love playing death nations with recruitable-anywhere mages (Helheim, Ashdod, EA Ermor) and for them it's a viable counter to many attacks, e.g. "Defend the library from E9N8 Niefel Giants!"

-Max

P.S. Of course, this no longer applies to Helheim. *Sigh* My poor Svartalfs...

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

D3 or higher. I don't think of D2s as really skelly spam-capable, even though technically they can cast it in a pinch.

-Max

Well, they'll get 3 casts off and then pass out, and a couple of turns later, do another cast. 20 skellies apiece isn't too bad for a D2 mage, especially if you have a couple doing something else to help those bones kill or rout faster.

Alternately you can just have them cast twice, and then switch to Ghost Grip or Frighten for the rest of their fatigue capacity.