Quick Q: defending against shadow blast?

[jutetrea]

Pretty brutal spell, other than high MR troops what's the best way to defend against it?

Spread out troops?
Chaff frontline?
"Decoys" (seems to still target large groups)?

Is Antimagic battlefield ench worth trying?

[Sir_Dr_D]

the Antimagic battlefield enchanment is a good one. It is the best defense.

[MaxWilson]

Yes, I was going to suggest Antimagic. It should cut your losses by 2/3.

Also, remember that it costs gems with all the micro-management that entails. It might be worth hitting the army in question with Arouse Hunger/Call of the Winds/etc. spells on the turn before you attack it (or it attacks you), in the hopes that casters will use up their death gems before they hit your main army. This will work better against an army on the offensive, because it's harder to replenish gem stocks.

Darkness drops precision and so would probably reduce damage from this spell, but also helps undead and so is probably counterproductive. Storm might be worth trying, though.

-Max

[Sir_Dr_D]

Does storm stop spells. I thought it only stopped arrows. Casting mist is another alternative.

[Micah]

Storm should lower the caster's precision, so it might make it miss your army...that said, it's generally aiming for a fairly huge clump of troops, so a little deviation isn't going to help you much. Antimagic is the way to go if you're the defender (you'll get first cast). If you're attacking the damage will probably already be done by the time you can actually cast AM. Max's suggestion to send in decoy ritual attacks is a good one, although you can't use undead spells to do it. The undead are immune to it, and I think the AI is just competent enough to not cast it at them. Spreading out your troops and putting your junk troops up front is also helpful, but lone decoys usually won't work. Shadow Blast is one of the spells that can turn a large battle on its own, though (The other one that comes to mind is flaming arrows).

Killing the casters is also a really good plan if you can pull it off. Earthquake if they have low defense or rain of stones if they're unarmored will work pretty well against anything with human-range HP. Assasins with trample (skel spam will pretty much kill anything without) may also work. Dropping a vengeance of the dead will probably work well too after they've done some damage if you can beat their MR.

[MaxWilson]

Addendum about the gem usage: even a D9 master lich uses up 3 of his 6 death gems to cast Shadow Blast. This is tactically stupid on the part of the combat AI and you can take advantage of it. Either your opponent will give lots (15+) of gems to each Shadow Blaster, or he'll store most of them on scouts and allocate just enough for each attack. If the latter, each caster will only get off a single Shadow Blast and then have to switch to something cheaper like Cloud of Death. If the former, well, at least it costs him a lot.

-Max

Edit: when the master lich has 6 gems, he uses 3 for Shadow Blast. When he has 4 he uses 3. When he has 3 he uses 2. When he has 2 he uses 2. When he has 1 he uses 1. I'm not sure what the pattern is, but 2 casts costs 3 gems and 3 casts probably costs 6. (When he had 6 gems the fight didn't go on long enough for him to cast multiple Shadow Blasts.)

[Ironhawk]

Antimagic + chaff should do you right. Even with antimagic, squads that get nailed by concentrated shadow blast attacks will see be shredded up something fierce. If you know you are going to be fighting this spell, be very sure to bring along 1-2 full squads just to decoy it.