EA Vanhiem advice

[Kuritza]

Dunno about the pretender, but magic-wise try Van sabbath. Van jarls as slaves, vanadrotts as masters. Cast storm and air power, then van jarls proceed with thunder strikes while drotts take turns casting rejuvenation between thunder strikes. It resets fatique for all slaves - result can be really scary. Lots of high precision mages spamming thunder strike and not getting any fatique until turn 5.

One big problem is that sometimes storm is the last spell being cast... thus air power fails, whole combo is screwed. Dont know why it happened for me, really, I thought globals are always first in the stack. So a much safer idea would be a staff of storms or just storm on turn 1, while your sabbath is busy gutting blood slaves.

When I had that untimely storm, my Hangadrotts (I tried Van sabbath with Helheim) decided that spamming raise skeletons is a very good idea and killed Jarl slaves with fatique At least the huge tide of skeletons won that battle for me.

[Olive]

Kuritza said:
One big problem is that sometimes storm is the last spell being cast... thus air power fails, whole combo is screwed. Dont know why it happened for me, really, I thought globals are always first in the stack.

Commanders are taking action in the same order than they are displayed on the strategic map (left of the screen) or in the army setup screen.

[Kuritza]

Oh blast it. I suspected something like that. I dont believe there's a way to alter that order, is there?

[thejeff]

No, it's based on the unit's id number.

Still, since you know it, you can predict it. In your case since only the masters need cast Air Power, just have the first master in the list cast Storm.

Ideal order for this combo would have all the Jarl slaves first, then the Storm casting Drott, then any other Drotts, who cast Air Power.
The Jarls get Air Power from the Masters, the Drotts are boosted by their own air power and the communion. Since the Jarls act before any Masters they will cast on their own, letting you get off thunderstrikes.

If the jarl slaves are after even one Master, they won't cast and you'll just have a very expensive communion powering a few Drotts.

I'd still worry about any Drotts with paths other than Air and Blood. Once they go off script, with no more rejuv, casting anything offpath will kill off the Jarls quickly.

[Baalz]

Nope, just to plan for it.