Undead only?

[Gatts]

Someone said that that Vamps can be damaged hardly when more units attack them :
Well, you just move your vamps in the most nearest hexagon to attract all attacks - but you leave him one move point and press WAIT - if you defence is nice - no matter ho much damage you get - you can re-suck it back.

I play with UNDEAD in majority (at least 3 of five, mostly 4 of five) and I am totally happy about that.
Not that it is the best army overall - but it is the best army for lazy players (as I am) with huge megalomancy and egocentrism (you need to win no matter what)... luckily I am no perfectionist

Why this is so great for lazy players? - Instead of opening magic book and shoot crazy spells like sheep, ressurect, god armor... you only use you normal attack instead of ressurection (steal life)

I don't use necromancer, so I have only Hand-to-hand army (+ abilities) what is handy - you don't need to create crazy strategies how to preserve your shooters (who are always targeted by enemy magick/shooters/abilities)
This army is imune agains mind spells

Using the Zombie Girl you get +1 INIT, +1 Speed (quite handy) + Undead Commander (additional INIT)

your whole army becomes TANK and Storming army.
Hugest problem : no fire resistance
Hugest problem #2: fighting other undead army sucks : no live stealing possible

using Ghosts correctly (both types) can help you through 50% of the game (ends be usefull in undead country) why? You can raise up to 150% of your max Leadership each fight (yes, above 100% you lose control, still they will not attack you, but randomly attack the enemy) So at the end of the combat move some of the ghosts to the backup slot (leave yourself 80~90%)

You want use undead army but you are afraid the UNDEAD LANDs? : put some undead away and hire black/red dragons... or thorn kings... or treants... (dragons because they do huge area fire damage - hiting the most weaker point of undead - they are mobs and are fire vulnerable)

But in Hell is the undead army the best choice (even if I take in account that hell heroes use armageddon spell)

Basically most of my battles looked like:
Whoaau! We start again first... look at those puny black dragons...haha, only 25 of them ..
Dark Commander : "Hey red vamps - don't screw it, transform and be nice living target...hush hush!"
Vamps: " oki doki sir.."
Dark Com: "it's siryessir soldier!!!"
Vamps: "Sir, yes sir!"
DC: "fine, now move"
--- rest of the army awaits when vamp bats are getting all the damage from dragons, shamans, shooters or casters ---
Bone Dragon :" Hrrr... Bah! they managed to kill 20% of our bats... hay boss, it is not much... what about increasing our ranks by sacrificing some of the damn vamps... huh?"
me: " fine... there you go"
-- sacrifice : damaged red vamp bats, 1 bone dragon risen --
Vamp bats suck blood from black dragons with nasty sound of spilled and swallowed blood...
-- new round --
Vamps attack treants (now they have 100% units back again and battle is going to end soon, it is second round anyway)
Bone Dragons fly in the middle of the crowd and poison them - the weaker units die.
last 3 balck dragons try to kill my 19 (sorry, 20) bone dragons... do puny damage and die from counter attack
blue vamp bats finish one of the weaker enemies
Blue Vamps: " Hay commander, don't be a wuss pink sissy and get to kill some o em!.. See? even the damn living emerald dragons fly to finish them and give some mana to our master!:
Dark Commander : " Shut up asshole or you will end before war court and I will persue our master that necromancers are better than you looser blue bats"
Emerald Dragon : " Master, Master, pleaase take my offer of mana... here, mana for free, even more mana... liky likye... just don't let me sleep with that darn bone dragons in the same tent again... "
me: " shut up emerald wuss - you can't be ressurected, nor repeplenished by sacrificy... you walk on thin ice... you know I am to lazy to reload the game if you diy... and gimme more mana, buster!"
Combat won... loses : 0 , gainings : 1 bone dragon

[kadrzys]

I enjoyed your post very much so you're using vampires, ancient vampires, bone dragons and emerald green dragons? what about fifth unit?

and the most important thing, did this army well through Haas Labyrinth? coz my current setting sucks against hero dragons using only 5lvl units :/

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by kadrzys

I enjoyed your post very much so you're using vampires, ancient vampires, bone dragons and emerald green dragons? what about fifth unit?

and the most important thing, did this army well through Haas Labyrinth? coz my current setting sucks against hero dragons using only 5lvl units :/

My fifth unit is Dark Commander (aka Black Knight)
slow unit but his morale bonus to my undead units is the bonus I like.

Yep - this was my final combination - I had red vamps, red bats, blue vamps, bone dragons, dark knights - but as I am lazy to pay attention, I used to transform accidentally red vamps into red bats - both units of red bats gone FRENZY (bad thing) - so in the labyrinth I changed the red vamps with green dragons.

Note : the change was not because I had critical problems - because there is always at least one stack in enemy army that I used for blood sucking, the reason I removed red vamps was to avoid accidents (see above) and I find that green dragons came handy - I could use sacrifice more often in one combat (it saves time - when you make level and your leadership rises - you don't need to return and buy new units - you replenish them with sacrifice used on one or other vamps)

Note on sacrifice:
sacrifice does not impact the blood sucking "mas" unit number:
example:
you start battle with 140 red bats
you use sacrifice on blue bats (kill cca 10), blue bats hit living unit and replesnish the lost 10 units easily, but you gand +5 red bats (now you have 140)
BUT (not it comes) if your red bats are hit and killed - you will replenish by STEAL LIFE skill only up to 140, not 145 as I would await)
Also as I mentioned - sacrifice can't be used on replenishing green dragons - so you rather buy out all of them into your back up slot - and replenish them from this back up slot (but don't tell them that there are enough for replenishment - because these lazy green bums would not care of dying, bah.)

NOTE 2: this combination is not the best if you want go for 0-loss policy as the final battle is followed by armageddon (weakness of undead) and many dragons... Still I have tactics that could work - keep one stack of red bats (or red vamps - if you are not lucky enough to get red bats) - plase them on the best possible hexagon of the battlefield (actually I believe any is good, but if your defence is not so nice as mine - 25, you may consider moving to margin line of the field - so fewer enemies may attack you).
Cased gloth's armor (as the armageddon goes first), and cast some protective spells on them (sad that KB is missing fire resistance spell ), using some luck and the ultimate blood sucking skill - you may end w/o loses.
Did I mention I had equipped two dragon slayer swords (lucky me - by this I could replenish more vamps than I lost in normal battle - but the armageddon was the BLEH of the last battle) - w/o high defence/attack the blood sucking ability is not so great (as you may lose more units - the fewer units deliver less damage - you won't be able to replenish back to original number of your vamps)
That's why warrior goes better for this tactic than mage ... (palladin is nor best, nor worst - surprise surprise)

[Smash]

Originally Posted by Gatts

My fifth unit is Dark Commander (aka Black Knight)
slow unit but his morale bonus to my undead units is the bonus I like.

Yep - this was my final combination - I had red vamps, red bats, blue vamps, bone dragons, dark knights - but as I am lazy to pay attention, I used to transform accidentally red vamps into red bats - both units of red bats gone FRENZY (bad thing) - so in the labyrinth I changed the red vamps with green dragons.

I failed to understand, what are red bats? Isn't red bats and elder (red) vampires same? Did i missed something? I know that red bats are count as different units but how you make it?

[Gatts]

Originally Posted by Smash

I failed to understand, what are red bats? Isn't red bats and elder (red) vampires same? Did i missed something? I know that red bats are count as different units but how you make it?

OK, I see that you haven't had the luck to find red bats.

Red bats = Ancient Vampire BATS

As you know - you can hire vampires (blue), ancient vampires (red)
Both these units can be "transformed" using thei special ability into bats (who can suck blood)
Now we are neer the point... just read:
This ability works only in combat - hence you will always see normal vampires in your slots - and always start the combat with normal vampires
Nearly there...

When lucky enough - you can find in shops the Vampire bats or Ancient Vampire bats for hire - so they will appear in your slots in form of bats also each combat will start with them in form of bats (of course you can still transorm them into normal vampires/ ancient vampires)

This was exactly what caused my units to go FRENZY - as I had one full stack of ancient vampires and one full stack of ancient vampire bats - when I accidentally transformed the ancient vampires into bats - the game realized I have 200% of same unit - and both these stacks went FRENZY... (stupid me - I coldn't remember that I can only transform the normal Vampires, when I have red bats already - that's why I swapped the ancient vampires with green dragons)

If you are not lucky enough to find bats, of course you should use vampires/ ancient vampires (normal vampires are weaker, but hey! they still suck blood!)

[Smash]

I see. Isn't better to swap elder vampire in your army with necromancers? I know Emerald Dragons are awesome but for undeads only army? What do you think?

[JudgeMan]

I'm using an Undead only army (vamp, ancient vamp, black knight, necro, bone D.) and it's doing very good vs anything living. Like Gatts said, you just let the vampire (in bat form) do everything because you won't loose any. Necromancers are really useful. They have 10 init with rina zombie and dark commander, can magic shackle a lvl 5 unit if you want, spawn undead stacks out of corpse 3 times and plague everything (reduce hp, att, def by a %). Your undead troops get it, are not affected, but can spread it on other stacks when it wears off.