Guide: Guide to communions

[Squirrelloid]

You don't attack with massive communions, you trick your opponent into attacking your massive communion.

(Well, if you're absolutely certain your opponent cannot nail you with RoS or the like on turn 1, by all means do attack with your communion. But attacking blind with a communion is a recipe for disaster!

[Psycho]

Or cast some ghost riders and some such to make the opponent waste gems first. Or teleport a SC, buff him 5 turns and retreat him for the same purpose.

[RadicalTurnip]

I have one question I haven't seen addressed...I've read through all 14 pages, but not since coming up with this question.

The situation was this: it was late-game and I had an enemies pretender and a few angels fly (or maybe teleport?) on top of one of my castles. The pretender was summoning hoards of elementals (I don't remember the spell, but he was F9 W9, and got like 10 Fire elementals in one casting, and then 10 water elementals).

I had 5 vampires (I was Ulm, but these were the 3D 3B ones that everyone can summon, not the 2D 2B Ulmish ones) that I had a perfect idea for, so I gave one of them the blood tome, a RoS, and the blood Chest-piece (the non-unique one) and a runesmasher and 30 slaves, scripted to communion master, Hellbind, Hellbind, Reinvigoration, Hellbind, Spells. I gave the other 4 vamps crystal matricies and scrpited them to summon skelly hoards. I then stuck some faeries (Or whatever the unit you get with Fairy Queen's Court is) and some Air Elementals that one of my Elemental uniques was summoning to keep them occupied while hellbind did its job.

My question is this: does it matter that my slaves were B3 casters for the purpose of increasing his effective level of casting? Could have I just as easily thrown in some of my (now useless, I've finished researching) 1S Sages to do the job just as well (They couldn't summon undead, and they would take slightly more fatigue, I know)?

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by RadicalTurnip

I have one question I haven't seen addressed...I've read through all 14 pages, but not since coming up with this question.

The situation was this: it was late-game and I had an enemies pretender and a few angels fly (or maybe teleport?) on top of one of my castles. The pretender was summoning hoards of elementals (I don't remember the spell, but he was F9 W9, and got like 10 Fire elementals in one casting, and then 10 water elementals).

I had 5 vampires (I was Ulm, but these were the 3D 3B ones that everyone can summon, not the 2D 2B Ulmish ones) that I had a perfect idea for, so I gave one of them the blood tome, a RoS, and the blood Chest-piece (the non-unique one) and a runesmasher and 30 slaves, scripted to communion master, Hellbind, Hellbind, Reinvigoration, Hellbind, Spells. I gave the other 4 vamps crystal matricies and scrpited them to summon skelly hoards. I then stuck some faeries (Or whatever the unit you get with Fairy Queen's Court is) and some Air Elementals that one of my Elemental uniques was summoning to keep them occupied while hellbind did its job.

My question is this: does it matter that my slaves were B3 casters for the purpose of increasing his effective level of casting? Could have I just as easily thrown in some of my (now useless, I've finished researching) 1S Sages to do the job just as well (They couldn't summon undead, and they would take slightly more fatigue, I know)?

The b3 mages don't boost your masters paths more, but they take much less fatigue from blood and death spells cast by the master.

In this case, if you had some 1s mages as well, I'd make two vampire masters and one sage master. The vampire masters cast hellbind, darkness and rejuvenation. The Sage master casts power of the spheres and light of northern stars. Vampire slaves cast first imps and then skellyspam, sage slaves spam paralyze.

[RadicalTurnip]

Yeah, the elementals and the skelly spam killed off 1 angel, I stole 1 angel, 1 angel retreated, and the pretender was gone. From now on, I'll just use my little S1's as slaves ( have about 40 of them). I just like the vampire army because I didn't mind too much if it died.

So far, I seem to be steamrolling the opposition, but I'm thinking of giving each of those S1s a cap (and maybe a coin?) and (maybe?) a matrix, and reverse-communioning with summon earthpower, power of the spheres, maybe body ethereal, luck, invulnerability...etc

All the slaves would be spamming...uh...that 999 damage spell...mind burn? Does this sound reasonable? What's the best/most efficient way to use them?

[Fantomen]

Paralyze is better if you are also casting hellbind since a paralyzed unit is effectively dead if you win and can still be hellbinded.

Soulslay is the other spell to consider, but putting caps on all those mages just for that isn't worth the pearls. Better to reverse communion them with Power of Spheres and light of the northern star.

A matrix on a smith is a good idea, but body ethereal can't be reversed since it isn't a personal buff. You want earthpower, mistform (use an air smith) and invulnerability, that should be enough to protect slaves. Then he can cast a couple thunderstrikes or something. Or he could do resist lightning then wrathful skies.

Buffing up vampire counts in reverse commuion is fun too if you are in friendly dom and have a lot of them, don't forget fire shield and astral shield in that case.