[Minor Kitty]

Let's see Berserker pelt: 5 nature gems that can be forged by indies

Dual weld AP/affliction weapons : 10 earth gems/10 virgins, forged by most low level guys or indie earth mages.

A mounted/large chassis: 50-100g

PD/party: 150g-250g

Add in a load of small guys to swarm the SC and take hits from your thug and you can kill most early-mid level guys this way.
Feel free to tweak it with more thugs/better equipped ones or w/e.
A bonus if the swarm is summoned since it won't affect the thug's unit morale, but then you'd have to bring support units. Ideally you get swarm which costs 1N to cast at ALT LVL 4, doable by any indy mage: 20 little buggers to take hits and bring down DEF.

Total cost: 5 earth gems + 10 variety gems, and 200-300g
Doable for any nation even with indies for a party(PD if you prefer), disposable and it could be re-equipped as a raiding party.



Tag team of 2x2 scouts with piercers and vine bows (fire bolas/bane fire crossbows if no nature). 2 vines to immobilize and 2 piercers to kill. You can have them with your army or hidden for a nasty surprise and all it requires is level 2 in cons. Upgrade it into mid game with ethereal crossbow for an additional 10 gems(vision's foe for air if astral's not available) from cons 4 and eyes of aiming.

That's right, stealthy teams of scouts that are impossible to target individually in your PD crowds. Paranoia much?

Total cost: 80g,10 nature gems ,and 10 variety gems. (+10 astral mid game)

Scalable throughout the game, requires no castle recruits and can be mass produced on the fly. Fold them back into your army as elephant/Calvary killers after your done.


Note the emphasis on reaction time and nature gems/mages. Something everyone has that can be produced on the fly as opposed to ad hoc responses that require time and money to setup.

An early to mid game SC is usually fully decked out at the cost of 5-10 gems per slot and considerable recruiting/summoning cost. That's roughly 50 gems worth of equipment they have to construct with 7 mage turns and get to the front. That's a few hundred gold, dozens of research pts, and upkeep they could be using elsewhere while you create a counter in a single turn for much less.

By late game I expect you to have your own counter SCs or be dead.