Your favorite spell

[Meglobob]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Wind Ride is broken?

Many patches a go I was in a MP with a 1 province strip of land, half a dozen provinces long, next to a huge sea. I had a castle on the NW shore with a mage casting wind ride at enemy commanders coming up north along the land bridge. Using wind ride I dragged commander after commander to a instant watery grave in the deep seas.

What seeems to happen is wind ride can no longer bring a enemy commander more than 1 or 2 provinces so drops them along the way...

[Tifone]

? Wow, huge nerf it seems. Still yeah, used that way sounds like a true instakill Not to mention on enemy researchers' provinces...
Maybe still useful to grab the enemy commanders about to enter your province and organize them a meeting with your PD before their troops?

[Gandalf Parker]

I never use it in battle either altho a mage with blink or sandals might do ok.

But I LOVE giving it to assassins or seducers. People who get into 1-on-1 combat. If an assassin charms his target then the next message is a combat in that province between that commander and his old army. Much fun.

Giving it to seducers can vastly improve their effectiveness. They try their seduction, then if that fails they end up in combat where they can try charm once or twice before fighting.

It also works great with spells like Winged Monkeys to have a small group of Charm casting mages ready to greet the new arrival. Setup a lab with no PD and turn it into a recruitment center.

[Amhazair]

It has to be ghost riders for me. There's nothing that compares to the feeling of taking out several enemy provinces each turn without even having to move out of your cozy castles. One casting is enough to take out any decent amount of PD unless it is equiped with magical weapons. If your oponent tries to retake your newly acquired provinces using small forces of his own you destroy them with two castings. If he sends out a reasonable force or thug, you can teleport something really big and nasty on top of him. This spell helps tremendously to take and hold the initiative in the decisive lategame wars. (coupled with more traditional raiding tactics. )

Of course, if you don't have native D4 mages it does require a rather serious investment to get yourself a stable of casters ready. (Lich+skull staff+skull helmet = 54D with a hammer. If you do have D3 mages you can give them the hardly inexpensive RoS for the same effect) On the bright side, these are the same guys you want to summon your tartarians (with a RoS on top of the above equipment) so you'll want to get as many as you can afford anyway. They can chain-summon Tartarians for you to Gift of Reason the unafflicted ones until the war begins, and then seamlessly switch to Ghost riders. My current game is the first time I didn't manage to get a nice number of casters ready before end game.

Of course, this time I have access to send horror casters, so I can hopefully accomplish the same thing.