Better Know a (Bad) Pretender: the Terrible Three

[Baalz]

Yeah, obviously its an uncommon situation where it makes sense to deploy your pretender just to push dominion, but it's not that hard to think up a couple times that's a nice trick to have up your sleeve. Perhaps as your NAP is in the middle of expiring and you're pretty sure there's gonna be a big fight right there on the border where there is a massed enemy army and weak enemy dominion. Or where you're expecting to fight enemy immortals.

Also, another advantage to having stealth is it lets you avoid most ritual spells. Being immortal, this isn't a huge deal most of the time, but it allows you to play a little aggressively out of your dominion if the gain is big enough. Say you just really need a flying heavy hitter to jump behind this huge enemy army to cut off their retreat route but it's out of dominion. Risky move, but sometimes moves like that can win you the war/game and you don't have to worry about a dozen seeking arrows dropping on you the turn after as you sneak away.

[chrispedersen]

Pretenders get 1 automatic, + 2 temple checks. I actually find its a pretty huge deal as a pretenders strength, hp are related to dominion. Against squishy (1-2) dominion a pretender will almost always flip dominion.

[OmikronWarrior]

@MW, Thanks for the catch, I'll have to fix that.

@Wraith Lord/Manticore, you sort of hit the problem with the Manticore, the Wyrm is almost always better. And even on rough terrain maps, the Dragons can provide flight and real SC status that make them worth the extra points.

/Freak Lord, he isn't an awake SC, at all. 10 HP, 0 protection means a single arrow can kill him. That, and trample isn't that great on a size-4 chassis. Which means he needs spells and equipment to survive, and even then with only 10 HP would do so on a very slim margin. And loosing a rainbow (and 1 in every path) is very painful.

@Baalz, OK, you made your a case and its enshrined for prosperity. I actually had your "exception" in mind when I wrote her up, but I double checked and it seemed like you were writing her with CBM in mind, which drops the costs to 100 point, which makes her competive with liches, which was one my contentions at the end. Otherwise, I think its still a very close call between her and a Master Lich. For example, the ML has has Base Dominion 3, which can really help your blood sacrifice dominion spread. He also gets Fire much cheaper. And your Exploding Phoenix Pyre+Soul Vortex+Immortality trickes looks great, but requires some high level spells. So it goes back to my contention of points going "unused" for to long.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Ah, the outrageously overpriced VQ of Dom3.

In Dom2, she used to be a popular choice for a super combatant chassis (albeit a somewhat fragile one) and many people used her to moderate success in MP - not to the degree that they dominated the game, but it was an overall safe choice, everybody loves immortality on a pretender, and besides, we had all heard about the great success others had with her. A few used her very well, and one person, who was always willing to point out her weaknesses in public, did very well indeed with his nations in MP in general and very frequently used the Vampire Queen.

She got clobbered with the biggest nerf bat this side of seal-clubbing and was relegated pretty much to the dustbin of history.

Now, it needs to be said that the one person who was mentioned the last in the above was a most unique personage - namely one who was ultimately revealed as a cheater who had managed to add considerable resources to his nations in MP play, presumably via modifying the turn file (or possibly the host in his hosted games: he once boasted of having strong abilities at reverse engineering c compiled files). The revelation came, if I recall correctly, for 'tis 5 years ago and my memory is imperfect, with an undead Ermor that had to have gained many, many, hundres of bonud death gems to summon the leaders it sported as revealed by dissecting the turn files.

And thus the great cheater was cast out of civilized society when he failed to come up with a plausible explanation and his name was held accursed by the majority of posters and, unless he has rejoined the forum under another name, he lurks in the shadows still.

And it came to pass that various attempts at cheat prevention were enabled and the angels played a jazzy tune while smiling on the world, for the Vampire Queen never recovered from her undeserved clobbering plus changes from Dom2 to Dom3 affecting her indirectly (EDIT: such as gold/magic rebalancing, life drain nerf, etc). And so on and so forth goes the tale of yesteryear.


With the rebalancing in CBM to bring her closer to her old self, she probably has a niche role nowadays, but since I am playing my very first game using CBM right now, I obviously don't have the experience to make a general evaluation; still, I'd be surprised if it was more than a niche role.

[Foodstamp]

Yeah, the guy above me pretty much summed up why the Vampire Queen was nerfed. The last time this was brought up though there was an uprising of vet players that said she deserved to be nerfed so intensely. I agree with Peter though because part of the nerfing was her being removed from Ermor, which is the nation the cheating guy always used.

[Benjamin]

I feel like I must have accidentally stumbled into Hogwarts. Are we worried he may come back if we use his real name?

Stop withholding gossip from us newbs!

[Trumanator]

here is the thread. No comments are necessary, lets keep this one on topic.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

here is the thread. No comments are necessary, lets keep this one on topic.

Sorry for OT but I have read this thread and am amazed that all that blatant cheating went on when I was actively playing dominions w/o me knowing nothing about it. Oh I later heard rumors and half hints but never really knew what went on there.

Last OT remark. Cheating didn't die in dom-2. I personally raised the flag and with the help of good ppl and IW flushed another one in dom-3 days. After that IW improved their anti cheating methods(in what way I honestly don't know). Now why oh why would someone choose to cheat in a game???- It's sooooo annoying. Way to go StormBinder, you're my hero

[Foodstamp]

I just want to make it known I felt really bad for Stormbinder once the truth came out. He constantly caught smack on the forums for accusing Tom Riddle of cheating and even in that thread people were still lowrating the poor guy.

But ultimately, it's a shame that the Vampire Queen was a mostly innocent bystander that was punished for his evil. One of the first things I did was change her back to her earlier glory with a little bit higher price tag than before.

[Trumanator]

You mean you felt bad for all the flack he got before it came out, right? I thought afterward he got a lot more appreciation.