Yeah, the beastmen were kind of boring. Credit where credit is due though, those Minotaurs can wreck some faces. Plenty of attack, plenty of health, decent shields, and that Large Shield ability keeps the ranged attackers from decimating them. They went up against Stag Beetles quite well, and the beetles were doing decently against earth elementals. The Centaurs feel like horsebowmen to me, and the manticores remind me of wyvern riders. Lots of unit variety in this race, leaving it feeling like an amalgamation. It is dependable, just...boring.

Tried the Air Elemental some more, and it just looks rather luck based to me. Sure, it can mow through really weak units, and against 1-2 mid tier units (halberdiers) it is fairly reliable. However, its weapon immunity only grants it an extra 2 shields against non-magic weapons. Just seems like the fighting can go either way, heavily depending on the dice. It DOES close with the enemy very well, and between the flying and invisible attributes, most things have to fight it in melee.

Also, I think I need to eat some words. Sorcery has some amazing buffs, if the situation is right. Guardian Wind on a Sky Drake is mean. Haste, invisibility, flight, wind walking; really nice stuff at the higher rarities.

Okay, I started with Warlord, Alchemy, Famous, Charismatic, 5 life, and Halflings. Also, it took about half a dozen replays to survive an early neutral raider stack, because I was greedy and didn't want to waste some production (had to run out the timer by using one rush built settler versus two nomad swordsmen). A rush built sword took them out on the next turn.

I got over that first death hump, and everything is coming up Bookwyrm. Halfling swordsmen are ridiculously OP when backed with warlord and Alchemy, against anything even remotely in their class. I haven't even started on an armory for Slingers yet.
-A group of 3 swords went after Merlin's fortress, guarded by 2 war bears and 3 sprites. Merlin eliminated (yay, no spreading klackons!), no losses on my side.
-Nomad Horsebowmen run out of arrows, then die in a single exchange with my swords. Occasionally a healing spell is called for, while the horsebowmen exhaust their arrows.
-Neutral Nomad city, 7 swordsmen of regular and veteran status. 2 halfling swords, one ultra elite and one elite. It wasn't even a fight. I took 5 hearts of damage, total.
-1 sword versus 1 sprite and two klackon spears. Swords came out on top.

Malleus just randomly shows up, looking for work, packing Super Arcane Power and 60 xp. He showed up at Captain level (pre-warlord!) and only wanted 112 gold to sign up.

Mystic X just randomly shows up, looking for work. Might, Arcane Power, Sage, Agility, Lucky. Like 150 gold to sign up. GFG.

Famous, Just Cause, and taking a bunch of cities early has boosted me to 30 fame. Heroism is about to make Mystic X an utter beast.

Edit: A single unit of Ultra Elite Halfling Swordsmen solo'd 4 units of Giant Spiders. Later, I realized I had just Bilbo'd those ruins.

For halflings, I gather it is the Lucky ability that helps them kick so much butt, because the ability is pretty seriously bugged. It auto-blocks every 3rd hit against the halfling unit (or something like that), in addition to giving each figure a +1 to just about every roll. +1 to hit, +1 to defense rolls (one of only like 3 different ways to get this particular bonus), +1 resistance, and I think a few other things. Halflings do have a racial -1 attack strength, but big whoop-te-do considering their bonuses.

Mystic X can be a hard hero to have really good, since he gets 5 random rolls. He's likely to have maybe 2 useful abilities, and 2 trashy abilities, but he has massive potential to be either great or terrible. And yes, I'm enjoying him. Heroism pushed him up to Champion level, and Malleus just made Champion too. The two of them just took out a Hydra guarding a Chaos Node. I did have several other shooters in there, but the hydra had half a dozen Hell Hounds, I'd call that about even.

Heroism + Warlord = Ultra Elite = +2 to hit.

Alchemy = +1 to hit.

Lucky = +1 to hit.

+4 to hit, no wonder the Swordsmen annihilated its opponents. +4 to hit is comparable to a high-level hero. That is a 70% chance of every sword icon scoring a hit with every attack. Add to that the +2 defense and +1 hit points and you've got a monster. Oh, and a +1 to defense rolls for Lucky as well. Oh, AND a -1 to hit for any unit attacking a Lucky unit. Oh, AND eight figures per Swordsmen instead of six like the usual kind. 8 figures x 4 melee strength x 70% is a whopping 22 damage EVERY time the Swordsmen attacks. Against a Regular non-magical Dwarf Halberdiers 3 defense? That is not war but murder.

Playing Warlord/Alchemy/Life/Halflings is MoM's version of Super Easy mode. I actually think that's pretty cool, Halflings being the game's power race. Better than High Elves or the other predictable races that are always the power races in every game. And figuring out broken combos is half the fun of playing Master of Magic. Now that the computer opponents are much tougher in the v1.5 patch, you can freely play on Extreme or Impossible and take all the broken combos you want and you won't feel bored because the game will still be a challenge.

Doot doot doot.

Dusted this off to try something new: playing without (most of) my usual units. No hell hounds, sprites, paladins, wolf riders, stag beetles, longbows, etc.

I turned the difficulty setting down to Normal (just in case), Medium land mass, Normal magic power, and randomized a wizard. 7 nature books, Nature Mastery, Mana Focusing (definitely not my usual), Artificer, and Conjurer. I chose Orcs, just to really dig in to those basic units; they don't have any of the bonuses that other races have.

My initial thought was "Nothing stronger than Halberdiers, and none of my usual summons", but I've amended it to "Try to avoid things I'd usually make". Exploration has revealed that this may be easier than expected: there are only Barbarian, High Man, Orc, and Halflings cities on Arcanus, and a measley TWO Dark Elf cities (total!) on Myrror. I can't think of any time I've ever seen so few races present in a round of this game, nor of when Myrror was so very empty.

On the flip side, I think the game was trying to lure me back into my Paladin-Alcoholism; first a single Paladin showed up, looking for work, then a little while later a pair of Paladins showed up. As much as I want to put them on the front lines, all 3 have been assigned wizard tower garrison duty. A Nightmare asked for work, and I did decide to use that unit; while powerful, it isn't among my usual allotment.

Sharee, Ariel, and Freya were positioned on two of the large continents on Arcanus, while Tauron and I (Sss'ra) each got a smaller island.

The two High Man cities on my island both had swordman guards, and I built my own swords to go fight. It took several waves (and Bagthru) to conquer each one; Orc Swords are pretty bad, and Orc Spears are terrible. I did allow myself to use Magic Spirits to scout (and harass enemy wizard outposts), and I used War Bears to supplement my early forces. Sprites are in my spell book, but they are off-limits for this game.

There were two nodes on my island, one with 2 Giant Spiders and 3 War Bears, while the other had 5 Spiders. Orc spears and swords were just fodder for them. Bears did alright, sometimes winning and sometimes losing against enemy bears and spiders. Bagthru became spider food in one failed wave (so long, Stoning Sword! :( ), and later Rakir made a mis-step and also became spider food (so long, basic armor and resistance pin! :( ), while Theria narrowly avoided the same fate. All of their guards were...not so lucky. Orc spears, swords, and halberds are all terrible; several halberds MIGHT manage to kill a spider, but probably not (the node stat buffs probably made this even worse than it might otherwise have been). Orc shaman are available with a Shrine, but they look terrible even on paper, bowmen look even worse, cavalry are very similar to halberds, and everything else Orc is way down the tech tree. A new Halberd can be rolled out every other turn with some decent instrastructure (and only an armory!), but even with a Fighter's Guild doesn't give them enough stat boosts to be okay.

Then High Men pikemen (with Alchemist Guild, because I was tired of losing guys to no effect) came online, and they could chew through some dudes. A 7 stack (with a rando-sword that I yet hadn't managed to get killed) took on a pair of colossi and won, though only 2 pikes left the battle alive. Pikemen are still squishy, but they have the attack and armor piercing to actually deal some damage before dying. A pikeman handily killed a Demon that thought it would be fun to ransack a city.

The other big breakthrough was Basilisks. Those suckers don't have great defense, but they have really good offense and amazing hp reserves. 4 shields and 30 hearts means a LOT of punishment can be absorbed, and the stone gaze is nice too. The 15 attack means damage is being dealt back, while the thing is being wounded. A basilisk could chew through several war bears and spiders in short order, though it gets pretty banged up in the process. They are a little pricey in the early game, but I'd say they are definitely a good investment for their cost. Amusingly, basilisk versus basilisk fights were something of a coin toss because of the instant death stone gaze; they aren't immune to their own ability.

After escaping her disastrous Spider foray, Theria got several defense boosting items, courtesy of Artificer, so she's now roaming around killing things on her own. 19 shields + Charmed is a hard shell to crack, though her offense is a (comparatively) paltry 11 attack.

Zaldron has been assigned Capital duty, researching stuff and boosting my spell casting ability. Tumu showed up for work, but I don't have a good way to get him to the front lines; thankfully there are plenty of low resistance units for him to poison, and I found a few weapons to boost his pitiful 3 attack.

I think my big take-away lessons here are "Generic Spears, Swords, and Halberds suck. The Orc special abilities are building every building, decent race relations, and getting generic units cheaper and slightly earlier than other races (shaman with shrine, halberd with armory)".

Finished that run. Theria wrecked everything I put her up against, though she only fought things of middling strength and below. Freya pulled out Crack's Call a few times in one battle, which was really worrisome, but it didn't work.

Tumu is indeed basically useless. He doesn't have the stats to seriously fight anything. His poison might be useful in wrecking low resistance units, but he doesn't have the defense or hp to survive more than a single pass (if that)!

Shin Bo was interesting, but I may have pushed him into combat too quickly and without enough support. He kept getting sniped by things, and I'm not entirely sure why. An enemy B'Shan with 8 ranged attack managed to kill my Shin Bo, even though my guy had 8 hearts.

Basilisks will go down quickly under concentrated ranged fire. A few of them were killed by medium to large groups of shaman and priests without dealing any damage. Use basilisks on enemies that melee or that will be tied up enough to allow the basilisk to close and do its thing.

Cockatrices are interesting, but having only 3 shields and 3 hearts means they are too flimsy to be of practical use for their cost. A single unit of shaman managed to kill 3 of the 4 cockatrice figures.

Running Lizardmen, all sorcery, with small land size.

I decided to try out dragon turtles, instead of just go with Javelineers. As first I was very, very underwhelmed. First impression: they had decent defense and decent hp, but they just didn't have the damage output I was looking for. They tanked okay but they couldn't kill things very effectively. Most anything they were able to kill, it felt like Javelineers would have killed faster while taking less damage. Getting to Elite has helped the turtles quite a bit, and I think I've discovered their primary area of effectiveness: they're not great brawlers, but they are pretty hardy so they are hard to put down as they struggle to eliminate their opponents. They can kill halberdiers and weaker units while surviving the battle, and they have been surviving the ranged attacks at the same time. Swimming has been very nice to have, and the two movement is also quite nice.

I'm not very impressed with Dragon Turtles. Javelineers are cheaper, can shoot, and don't require a Stable and an Armorer's Guild. A mixed stack of naga and javelineers has been wrecking weaker dudes just fine, and turtles don't have the offensive power to compete with the stronger things I'd want them attacking. Turtles do make pretty good defensive walls, though. Maybe I should try putting them in a mixed force with javelineers and just accept the hit to overland movement speed.

Lizardmen are perhaps the worst race to pair with Sorcery. There isn't really any synergy there. Lizardmen pair much better with Life and Chaos, and even Nature. Lizardmen really need either Flame Blade or Lionheart to be worthwhile.

Sorcery shines with naturally powerful units, like Wolf Riders, War Trolls, Minotaurs, Paladins, Hammer Hands, Heroes, even Stag Beatles. Also, Sorcery has nothing to help the horrible Lizardman economy.

Also, Sorcery benefits more from Warlord than just about any other school, because there are so few unit buffs, so in comparison to the other buffs on hand, Warlord does more for you.

With Sorcery its better to either to go for a Warlord, Conjuring, or Heroes strategy.

My favorite way to play Sorcery is probably with Gnolls, as I discuss in my other recent post.

The big Uncommon spell, IMO, is Flying, which can give a huge strategic advantage when you get it. Wind Walking is also very powerful for letting you carrying around a full stack and include slow units like Priests or Slingers, etc. Flying Minotaurs, Paladins, Pikemen, etc., can be game changers. Flying doesn't really do much for Lizardmen, though, as they can already cross water and hit flyers.

Random wizard generator, ftw!

I'm thinking Floating Islands will be more economical for moving wolf riders and nomad pikemen around, in my particular situation. I've got Wind Walking in my back pocket as well.

The advantage of Flying units isn't just mobility on the map, it's battlefield mobility and being able to hit flying units and not being hit by most other melee units, and being able to attack over walls.

A town can be protected from Paladins just by being garrisoned with Sprites because the Paladins can't hit them, yet a single Paladin with Flying can easily conquer such a town.

Minotaurs go from a slow moving plodding tank that can't help much in a lot of fights, to fast moving slaughterers that can take out Great Drakes, etc. Flying Pikemen can be insanely effective early on, before Paladins, if going against strong melee units. And if you're going against non-magical ranged attackers, like Slingers, then Guardian Wind will do the job.

Flying Wolf Riders with Haste are also amusing...

I am well aware.

I am also well aware that every instance of Flying needs time to cast, costs mana to cast, and requires mana to maintain. I could work on casting Flying on every offensive unit I have, but that takes resources that could be used elsewhere or stored for an emergency. Enabling a stack of 8 wolf riders to fly will require 600 mana (includes 11 book discount), 24 mana/turn to maintain, numerous turns to actually cast on all of them, and I'm paying partial maintenance while waiting to accumulate a large enough stack. A single Floating Island will cost 30 mana to cast, 5 mana/turn to maintain, I can cast it exactly when I'm ready for it, and it can be repurposed or removed when the stack reaches its destination.

If they have flying guardians (they don't), then I can use Flight judiciously to deal with it. My guys are either using ranged attacks or will be suffering melee retaliations anyway; the enemy mostly doesn't have special abilities that only trigger on attack.

Yeah, you don't want to put Flying, or virtually any Sorcery buff (Except Guardian Wind and Resist Magic), on a full stack of units. That's why Sorcery works so much better on high value units. Sorcery has powerful and expensive buffs, so typically you want to use them selectively on powerful units that you only need 1-3 of to get the job done. Stuff like Slingers, Longbowmen, Javaliners, etc, really need large stacks to be effective, and you typically move around with a full slow moving stack and destroy whatever you come across. But with stuff like Wolf Riders, Paladins, War Trolls, etc., you can easily conquer a lot of stuff with only 1-3 units.

2 Flying War Trolls with Magic Immunity and Invisibility can wreak havoc, whereas 2 Flying Slingers isn't going to be nearly as effective.

A unit of nomad pikes turned one of my dragon turtles into turtle soup with a single exchange of attacks. The pikes didn't even have the decency to get seriously injured in the process.

I realize that was a pretty bad match-up for the turtle (pikes being pretty explicitly an anti-armor unit), but I'm really not feeling these turtles. Their niche is simply too small to be useful.

Also, apparently Myrror only has 6 cities this game. Total. And one of them is a Klackon city that Ariel planeshifted over. Sss'ra has been virtually unmolested all game, but he only seems to have sat around and cast Chaos Surge. The AI is not good with water.

Must have had bad luck against the Pikemen. The Flame Breath should have done some damage to them. But yeah, Dragon turtles are really not good. Given that what it takes to produce them, they really aren't worth it. And, of course, Javaliners are the better way to deal with Piekmen, but of course that's not always what's on hand.

Another thing I found really annoying about Lizardmen is that they can't build boats. This may seen like a non-issue, but in one game I was using them on a Small land map and I was on my own island so I ended up making other Lizardmen settlements. The next closest island that I found, and started to invade, was also populated entirely by Lizardmen! This was not good.

By this point I had gotten some heroes, but I had no way to get them off the island. (I was playing White BTW). So I looked for other places to invade, but the other two islands were very difficult to crack, and one which was also mostly Lizardmen, that apparently from the invading forces of the island I had already conquered. By the time I got Torin I still had no way to actually get him off my island :p And my economy was ho horrible I was struggling to get a force that could conquer a non-Lizard town.

Yeah, that was frustrating.