Good Tanker units?

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Ents dish out 100-140 damage per unit They hardly get a mention on here?

[Smash]

They are plants plus no useful abilities :/.

[Muzzy]

I like shamens early on and to cast the totems. Most enemies go out the way to attack them first. Whilst you can cast spells and rage off from range. Phantoms a good spell to us with them and ice orb handy to tank with.

[Shadowdrake]

The problem is that either you have emeralds with stoneskin and target (assuming you have Higher Magic, otherwise just target - you'll have to use Sacrifice later on to heal them) or giants/ents with teleport - but then you have to choose between target and stoneskin.

[Comandan52]

A good tanker unit IMO is the Giant with Peacefullness. Else i suggest the Dwarf. Toooooo damn resistant!!

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Kings Bounty Hunter

Ents dish out 100-140 damage per unit They hardly get a mention on here?

Ents and their stronger friends are REAL TANKS, but as my personal long term KB tactics is to create army so I won't change it till the end ASAP - I don't go for plants nor treants / ents for their FIRE vulnerability... (which may not be a problem in many KB battles, so yes - you can hire them as real tanks - but don't wonder if you will suffer a lot in demonis or fighting dragons in haas labyrinth)

[Lysander]

Still early in the game, but I've discovered two units that tie up the other side while my distance fighters (mages, archers, etc.) pick them off bit by bit. Both Lina's ice orb and the phoenix (cast as spell) have plenty of hit points, so I place them in the middle of the enemy troops and watch while their units keep busy fighting the orb and the phoenix. The phoenix doesn't have a powerful attack, but she's versatile (can move anywhere) and has plenty of hit points.

[lobo76]

use dryads. remember that when u use phantom, they also have the abilities. aka. you can sprout a lot of plants, and multiple sleep ability at the same time.

[Sensemaker]

Originally Posted by lobo76

use dryads. remember that when u use phantom, they also have the abilities. aka. you can sprout a lot of plants, and multiple sleep ability at the same time.

I am just a beginner and haven't played elves yet, but looking at the stats and abilities of dryads make me impressed. 12 in defense and 25 hit points for a 20 leadership unit. That is very good. Add beauty which means male humanoids have 30% chance of missing entirely. They can summon thorns to do extra tanking for you.

Still in early game, I prefer to use the phoenix to do a bit of tanking for me. After moving my first units I can typically summon it and move it right to the middle of enemy archers where it will hit several of them with a single attack. When counter-attacked they retaliate and cause more damage to other archers. As often as not, the AI neglects to step onto the hex with it's corpse and I get to use it once again after it is killed. 20 mana and one turn of spell casting is a bit steep but you get a lot of us from it if your opponent is heaving in archers.

Sensemaker

[jwallstone]

I also used Phoenix just like you do, Sensemaker. It was great for blocking ranged enemies. But I switched over to using phantom more. After a certain point, the phoenix just died too easily, usually in one hit. Sure, you can revive it, but if it dies right away from a faster melee troop, it's not blocking the ranged troops. With phantom, it scales with your army, so at this point it has significantly more hitpoints. If I need to block ranged troops, I usually move some royal snakes forward a few spaces, summon a phantom, then move that to block. With phantom, I'm getting over 20 royal snakes at this point, which has over 5 times the hitpoints of the young phoenix. Plus, the no retal of the snakes lets it hit without fear of dying from retal. The icing on the cake is that phantom costs less, and I always find myself in short mana supply when using this strategy repeatedly.

Right now, I'm working on building up a griffin stack (with sacrifice) to do the same thing. The multiple retal should be nice. Griffins also have more hp than leadership, (royal snakes do not), which should translate to more mileage.