Stacking guides: Part II, Phantasm

[flyingfox417]

I've posted a blue (phantasm) stacking guide before, but now I will post a more complete one.

Blue mages have the highest spell level and access to the most units in the game.  They don't have a direct predator/prey relationship (ie, white is strong against black, but is weak to green) with any of the other four colors.  This means that blue mages can usually attack any color, and in return, be attacked by any color.  This makes the blue defense stacking one of the toughest to make, because you cannot stack against a specific color.  Because of the large number of complex units that blues have access to, I will not list them this time.  Instead, I will start with the stackings right away.

Let's start off with a fairly common one:

Archangel
Unicorn
Mind Ripper
Lich
Horned Demon
Medusa
Water Elemental/Ice Elemental
Nymph
Psychic Wisp
Dryad/Soul Speaker


Notice that this stacking revolves around water or ice elemental actually.  The fact that they are ranged makes this stacking possible.  Also worth mentioning is the fact that only the top stack, namely the archangels, are flying units.  The rest are ALL ground.  What this means is that a relatively few number of archangels will end up at the top because of the flying modifier (2.25).  Basically, you can have twice as many mind rippers as the archangels and AA would still be before the mind rippers.  AA are the best defensive units in the entire game.  You want them at the top ALWAYS.  Lastly, this stacking actually is very mana-intensive, which means this is only possible at 4k lands or higher.  At lower land sizes, perhaps around 3000 to 3500, you can get rid of the elemental, or perhaps replace the lich with wraith.  Let's now take a closer look at what each stack does.

archangel: The best defensive unit in the entire game.  Even though they have some major weakness in poison, breath and paralyze, they still have the overall best resistance.  The only unit that really hurts AA is chimera (AA are okay against red dragon).  But then again, you can't possibly defend well against every unit. Beauty and healing abilities always help greatly.

Unicorn:  One of the best GROUND defensive unit.  Ideally blues want lich to be their top ground stack to block the major threat of treants, but that requires way too much mana and too many turns, which is inefficient.  Plus lich can't be put up too high because whites then will just eat you alive.  Unicorns have good HP, okay resistance, good abilities in beauty and swift.  They have bad melee resistance (30%), so treants can kill a lot of these.  However, overall, unicorn is still the best top ground unit for blues.

Mind ripper:  The best unit that blues have.  These can deal a LOT of damage to most units in the game, but they have mediocre resistances and no ability at all which make them bad defensively.  This is why they cannot be top ground for blues.  Always hide MR after unicorns.  MR along with Lich are your primary damage dealers in the battle.

Lich:  Pretty much the best unit in the game.  They are incredible both offensively and defensively.  Even though it's hard to summon a lot of these as blue, you should still try to include these in your stacking.  Because of their weakness against holy attacks, lich should never be put in the top 3 stacks.  Hide them after MR at 4th stack, they should deal a LOT of damage along with MR.

Horned Demon:  As mentioned previously, this unit is one of the best average unit.  They have incredible attacking power.  Another must have unit as blue.  This unit, if matched well, can clear your enemy fodder stack.  This is called a "fodder killer" unit.

Medusa:  Another "fodder killer" unit.  Good attack power.  Used along with Horned Demon because usually the enemy has more than 1 fodder stacks.

Water/Ice Elemental:  Both are great at killing fodder.  However, if the enemy isn't deep-stacked (ie, only a few stacks), these will aim at the enemy top stack, which is pretty good as both have huge attacking power.  I prefer IE over WE because the attack type cold is much less resisted by most units, but since the conjure elemental thing is random, you have to work with what you get.

Nymph/Psychic Wisp/Dryad/Soul Speaker: These are average or simple units ALL with ranged attacks (this is important as they won't be countered) and initiative 3.  Any color should try to include these at the bottom of their stackings.  These units, if unpaired, will aim at the enemy top stack, which is usually ultimate units.  They can each take out a couple of dominions or phoenix, which is nice.


If you compare this stacking with the previous eradication stackings, you should find a pattern, something like this:

Flying blocker/ ground blocker/ damage dealer/ damage dealer/ fodder killer/ fodder killer/ fodder/ fodder

It should be quite obvious why each unit is at their position now.

[flyingfox417]

continued from the previous post


Blues also have a large number of defensive magic assignments possible.  Popular ones are Slow, Paralyze, Fog cloud.  Let's take a look at what each spell does.

Slow: Lowers all enemy initiative by 1.  This is a great spell because lowering enemy initiative means you have a better chance of attacking first, which is always good.  Also, one of blue's greatest threat is treants, which has initiative 1.  However, since treants have 80% phantasm spell resistance, Slow usually doesn't affect treants.  Therefore, it is best that you couple Slow with the Item Spider's web, which does the exact same thing as slow, but cannot be resisted by enemy units.  This way, you make sure that enemy treants won't attack.  At the same time, most enemy units' initiative will be lowered by 2, which pretty much guarantees that you attack first at all times.  The combo Slow + Spider's web is one of the most popular amongst blue mages.

Paralyze: This disables 1 random enemy unit.  It works best against a red mage because generally red units have low phantasm spell resistance.  You can use this spell as your defensive assignment if you expect a lot of red mages attacking you.

Fog Cloud: This reduces both your enemy units and your own units' accuracy, so that they kill less.  Most of the time this simple spell is coupled with the item Satchel of Mist to further reduce accuracy. Another popular combo.

[flyingfox417]

As mentioned in the first post, as a blue mage, you either don't use elementals, or if you do use them, you revolve your stacking around the elemental you got.  Personally I don't like to disband some type of elemental just because it's not what I wanted/needed (don't want to wasted my mana and turns for nothing).  There's always a use for any type of elemental.  We've seen how Water and Ice elementals can be used in a certain stacking.  Now let's take a look at Air Elemental.

Personally, AE is my least favored type of elemental.  While they are superb damage dealers, they just die too easily, and it's pretty hard for them not to be your top stack because they are flying units.  In order to use these effectively on defense, we need to come up with something completely different. 

As mentioned in the eradication guide, pretty much every color can use some sort of all-flying stacking.  Air elementals would be a GREAT fit in such a stacking for blue.  In a perfect world (notice the "perfect" part, which means this is not very likely), we could have a stacking as follows:

Archangel
Djinni
Air Elemental
Wraith
Vampire
Angel
Pegasus
Sylph
sprite
faerie dragon (if possible, buy these from the market)

The last five stacks are just there to fill the spots and shouldn't be a big part of your army,  Most of your army power should be concentrated in your top 5 stacks.

Now, I said that this is in a "perfect world" because this stacking is not realistic at lower land sizes (3500ish).  You need too many AA to put them ahead of just 1 cast of AE.  So, a more realistic stacking should be:

Djinni
Air elemental
Wraith
Vampire
Archangel
Angel
Pegasus
Sylph
Sprite

Notice that we've now pushed archangel all the way down to the 5th spot.  1 cast of them is enough.  We just need them to push down the "filler" units so that those have a  less chance of being attacked.  It's fairly easy to summon enough djinni to be ahead of the air elementals.  Djinnis are far worse defensive units than archangel, but still better than most other units a blue mage can have.  In this stacking, your main damage dealers are your top 3 stacks.  You should use the combo Battle Lust + Ash of Invisibility.  The reason is that, in this stacking, most of the units are VERY weak defensively, but can do some good damage.  Similar to the eradication style, with this stacking, you should try to lose a big percentage of your army, but still outdamage your enemy.  This way, you enter the protection status quickly.  Battle lust works similar to Battle Chant.  It increases your attack power but reduces your HP.  Ash of Invisibility is required because you MUST make sure that your units attack first.

[flyingfox417]

With all the units blues can summon, there are a lot of different stackings for blue.  What you need to do is keep an eye on the mages around you.  If there are a lot of nether mages right above you, perhaps put a few melee units in your stacking and use Sword of light as a defensive spell assignment.  If there are a lot of eradication and verdancy mages above you, perhaps put your lich higher (2nd or 3rd stack).

Finally, the main problem for blue mages is mana, mana, and MANA!!  You need so many off-color complex units to be effective, which means you need to spend far more mana than most other colors.  I havn't played blue for quite a while so I don't remember the exactly numbers, but build at least 50% of your land as nodes at all times as blue.  Sometimes population might be a problem as well with all the pop-eating units you use (MR, lich, wraith, horned demon, or vampire).  You don't want to accidentally summon too many mind rippers and zero your population.  Also, as always, it is recommended that you keep full barrier at all times.  It is so easy to crack a blue stacking with an Oil Flask, or a spell like Rust Armor.  At lower land sizes (3000 or below), you can get by with 50% barrier.  Once you get past 4000, full barrier (75%) is a must.

[ChaosSoldier]

Good guides Fox, thanks for posting it

[flyingfox417]

Good guides Fox, thanks for posting it

Too bad there seems to be nobody reading them   

[ChaosSoldier]

Nah, it's easy, only need a translator and the people read all, remember, the 95% of the game talk spanish, one day we translate the guides to spanish with the credits for you, thx for all ^^

[inti]

great guide thanks!!!!

[Gomorrah]

geez, you forgot about leviathans, they are the best in defense when it comes to blue mages

[flyingfox417]

geez, you forgot about leviathans, they are the best in defense when it comes to blue mages

Leviathans are weak against fire breath attacks.  Each leviathan is worth 49,500 a piece, 1 summon of them will be pretty hard not to be in the top 2 stacks.  A rd/chimera top stack red can easily crack your defense by killing enough leviathans.  Plus, leviathans are exceptionally bad in offense.

[Gomorrah]

you wont use them mostly on offense, and of course with a deep stack, its very hard to get in through.

[flyingfox417]

Indeed, leviathans are only good as a mono-stack with defensive assignment Flight + Scroll of Protection from Fire.  This works only below 3500 land though.

[sam1164]

Im no agree. >_<

Leviathans are good killer fooder and great in defense. Only you must discover her side in your stack. 

Elementals. Mr and Levianthans are my favourite unite.

Um.. this post es very long ago  ;/

[Gomorrah]

yep, very old topic. i might need to practice blue for now and use those leviathans 

[Luchito]

pretty good

how can i calculated the power on my stack

take that.. it is one calculator ;)

http://torredestino.iespana.es/leyes.htm         check the seccion called "calculadora de stacks" ;)