Stacking guides: Part IV, Verdancy

[flyingfox417]

Green mages have one of the best units in the entire game, the treants.  This unit alone makes green one of the easiest colors to play with.   Green mages should have absolutely no problem gaining land.  However, defending might be a little difficult.  Also, like white mages, green mages have one of the worst spell levels.  This means that casting off-color units would cost too much mana due to the high failure rate.  This forces green mages to stack mostly on-color units, making the defensive stacking somewhat predictable.  Let's go directly to the stacking.  Usually there are only 2 possible top stack for greens.  They are phoenix and treant.  You should vary the order of these 2 from time to time, but they should be your top two stacks at all times.  A typical green stacking should look like this:

Treant/Phoenix
Phoenix/TTreant
Mandrake
Earth Elemental
Werebear/Efreeti
Efreeti/Werebear
Salamander
Hell Hound/Spirit Warrior
Nymph
Dryad/Elven Magician


Notice that 7 out of 10 stacks in this stacking are native green units.  Let's see what each units does in its position.


Treant:   First of all, whenever I talk about treants, it is implied that the enchantment Plant Growth is on.  This enchantment makes treants almost 4 times as strong as they normally are.  PG'ed treant are in most people's opinion the best unit in the game.  Even though they are slow (initiative 1), have bad attack (melee), and have weakness to attack type fire, their sheer attack power and hit points make them poweful units.  There are only 3 units that can seriously hurt treants.  They are: chimera (fire breath attack), treants with battle spell Flame Flame (fire melee attack) and Phoenix with batthel spell Call Hurricane (fire burst).  Other units, including the mighty red dragons, will simply do insufficient damage to treants.

Phoenix:  Phoenix has 100% fire resistance, making them reasonable blockers against red dragons and chimera.  However, they are very weak against other units such as mind rippers and unholy reavers.  You should put phoenix at top stack ONLY IF most mages that attack you are red mages.  If not, switch treants and phoenix from time to time.  Phoenix has powerful attacks and are very fast (initiative 5).

Mandrake:  Mandrakes are also quite powerful with the help of Plant Growth.  These are quite durable because of their nice HP and because they regenerate.  These are a smaller version of treants.  Overall, mandrake is still a powerful unit both offensively and defensively.

Earth Elemental:  Earth elemental is not that good of a unit.  In fact it is quite weak in some areas.  However, green mages don't have many choices as their options are limited due to their poor spell level.  Ideally EE should be put 6th and below to serve as a great fodder killer.  However, they need to be at 4th stack to push down some even weaker units.    EE's are okay offensively and have bad resistances but that's made up by their good HP.

Efreeti/Werebear:  Ideally, efreeti should be your 4th stack and they will do WONDERFULLY at that position.  However, they are off-color complex units and are hard to summon.  Also, they are a ranged unit with only a modifier of 1, making them even more difficult to be pushed to 4th stack ahead of EE's.  Efreeti is a great unit with ability Fear which makes them very strong defensively.  Their attack type and attack power aren't too shabby either.  Werebears are okay offensively but pretty bad defensively.  You should only put werebears ahead of efreetis when you are running low on mana and can't summon enough efreeti.

Salamander:  Salamanders are a pretty good fodder killer.  They have huge attack power but are pretty weak defensively and are slow (initiative 1).  That's all about this unit.  (Horned Demon is better than salamander as a fodder killer, but salamanders are easier to summon as a green mage)

Hell Hound/Spirit Warrior:  Another fodder killer.  These are not great fodder killers, but again, green mages don't have many choices.

Nymph:  Fodder.  Good attack type and attack power.  This is one of the best fodders in the entire game.  Green mages should use a great number of these as they are native green units.

Dryad/Elven Magician:  Both are good fodders.  Use dryads if you want a bigger number of units; use eleven magician for a slightly higher attack power.  These are also two of the best fodders in the game.