Blue strategies

[SpiritSlasher]

We have to do something for blue mages. I remember in the old AM days, when Mandingo played blue. He would make top 10 everytime.                    

[DarkLord]

You can\'t do anything with blue mage right now the game is not balanced. Each color easily stacks offcolor units except blue one. Example this are spell costs of blue mages. Listed below are 1 spell of each color.



Summon Archangel 104,000 5

Summon Lich 159,800 6

Summon Efreeti 304,200 4

Call Treants 224,900 4



Compare them with the other colors and you\'ll see why you can\'t play blue in here. Each color withough blue can buy spells on the market if don\'t have them and cast them like they are spells from a friendly color and this way making good stacking easily. Try that with blue one it\'s not possible. And one other thing right now blue and green rule withough weaknesses being implemented.                    

[Distinius]

but blue was always a tough color to play....  I\'m trying out a blue mage on one of the servers on the notion that if I can get good at blue, I can get good at anything.



My question to you blue vets out there is:  is it feasible to have a blue all-flyers stack?    Or will mana costs just be too high to maintain?



Second question:  I know that a very standard blue stacking has AA top flyer stack and Leviathan top ground stack - are there other feasible options there?



Third question:  Blue is a mana-hungry color  Has anyone here ever gone above 55% nodes?   It occurs to me that 60% nodes will give the same income as 50% nodes, but with a significantly higher max mana.                    

[Konvikt]

Blue with a top flyer stack ---] AA very likely ;)



top ground stack can be contemplated, for instance MR are a good ground stack also as well as Lich or Demon Knights even. But too much undead makes white mages eat ya alive lolz.



AA/uni/mr/vamp/djinni/fodder was a feasable stack for Apprentice Server on old AM.



but when I have been playing this super blitz server I found out that mono AA goes with everything (ghey0r stack0r) but still.



I have never used more than 50% nodes myself, simply because I didn\'t try it :D                    

[SpiritSlasher]

HAHAHA Listen to this one guys. I am playing my verdant mage... I have 6 million NW. And a guy with 12 million NW attacks me... Well he had 12 million NW when he was finished with his run at least. So here\'s the deal. He attacks me, I lose 14 efreeti and he loses 425 Liches. Anybody can tell me how I did that? Its a riddle. I do know how it happened. I had 9 stacks. Go ppl. Guess how.  :ban:                    

[EL KAISER]

only one thing

i was a mind ripper lover in mari servers and i can say they were one of the best units of the game if you knew how to use them correctly, but now is not the same, rippers are now a bad unit, not because they have less attack, they are bad because they die a lot versus ground troops, more than ever and when you loose so many of them is hard to win a battle

sorry for my english                    

[plutohu]

Blue is tough....but it shouldn't be SO tough that only a very small percentage of people use it.

I'm not sure why DarkLord says blues having all complex spells in the game is a bad thing.  Blue has the highest spell level of all colors.  The direct result is that the chance of spell failure is greatly reduced.  This is good because blues will reply on a lot of off-color units.

Do NOT use opposite color (red and green) complex units.  They are way too expensive to summon.  If you really need a good unit such as efreeti, buy them from the black market.  However I would suggest you not use them at all as blues have a LOT of choices to choose from.

Konvikt posted an OK blue stacking consisting of AA/uni/mr/vamp/djinni/fodder.  The weakness of this stacking is vampires.  At the 4th stack, vampires alone will lose you the battle.  I guess it probably is ok in Apprentice Server, but on any other servers where there are ultimate units vampires cannot be stacked this high.

The strength of a blue mage is the ability to deep stack.  That is, having 10 stacks of roughly equal net power.

Here is a very good defensive stacking:

AA
Unicorn
Leviathon
Mind Ripper
Djinni
Lich
Vampire
Salamandar
Nymph
Ice Elemental

Always keep full barriers.  I cannot stress this enough.  Battle spells and items really make a huge difference on the outcome of a battle.  For example, a red mage can use the combo of Stun/Oil Flask and burn everything you got; a green mage can use Rust Armor/Ash of Invisibility and his trees will totally destroy everything as well.  One might say "but man....the upkeep for barriers are so huge".  Well you know what, live with it.  Learn to run huge mana deficits.  Full barriers (2.5% of total land) is well worth it.

Let me now discuss the purpose of each stack in this stacking.  

AA:  Not much to talk about here.  They are simply the best defensive units in this entire game.  Their ability Beauty reduces enemy accuracy and Healing means less AA will die.  Very nice overall resistances as well.

Unicorns:  Obtained from the spell Gate along with AA.  The best possible top ground unit blues have (in terms of defense that is).  Ability Beauty reduces enemy accuracy; Charm reduces the damage dealt to unicorns as well.  Nice resistances.

Leviathon:  These guys cannot do much damage due to bad attack types.  However they are pretty tough to kill due to high HP as well as ability Scales which reduces damage dealt to them.

Mind Ripper:  The most powerful units blues got.  They do amazing amounts of damage and can be further enhanced using a cheap item Monkey brains.  They are not that great defensively (die badly to treants).  But being the 4th stack, they are well protected and can deal serious damage to your enemy.  

Djinni:  Relatively cheap to summon; nice HP, above average resistances; used primarily as defense, but can do some damage as well (attack type lightning is nice)

Lich:  Probably the best units in the entire game.  Other than their weakness to holy, their resistances can match most of the ultimate units.  They also have very powerful attacks.  A smart white can sneak in a unit with holy attack low in the stacking to catch you by surprise.  To avoid this, never stack liches in the top 3 stacks.  Anywhere between 4th to 6th is fine.  Since I'm discussing a defensive stacking here,   I put liches at 6th stack.  They would dismantle emeny fodders easily at this position.

Vampires:  Similar to liches, they have weakness to holy but otherwise have good resistances.  Nice attack types, relatively low HP, but compensated with Ability Swift, Charm, and Steal Life which reduce casualty numbers.  Also does wonderfully against enemy fodder.

Salamander:  Huge Attack Power/Net Power ratio.  Downside is they have initiative 1 so they always attack last.  If a green mage attacks you and he is not deep stacked, your salamanders will most likely hit their top ground units (most often treants) and burn the crap out of them.

Nymph:  Good attack type (psychic).  Mainly used to fatigue enemy top stack.

Ice Elemental:  Nice attack type (cold).  If red mages attack you, IE's will kill a lot of their red dragons.  Must be placed 10th so that if enemy is not deep stacked, IE's will hit enemy top stack.   Also IE's have bad resistances especially with weakness to fire so they must be protected extremely well.  

Other good choices for blues include: horned demons, hell hounds, and water elementals (all should be placed down low).  

There are many defensive assignments possible for blues depending on which color attacks you the most.  If reds attack you a lot, then use Scroll of Protection from Fire (increase fire resistance).  If greens attack you a lot, use either Brooch of protection (increase melee resistance) or Carpet of Flying (make all your units fly so ground units like treants can't attack you) or Spider Web (decrease all enemy stacks' initiative by 1 thus stopping treants from attacking completely).  If all colors attack you, then use either Carpet or Web.   For magic assignment, Slow and Paralyze are popular choices.

For enchantments, Mind Bars are optional if you have full barrier already.  But some people still like the added insurance.  Hallucination is pretty useless since most people would just keep attacking you until they finally find your kingdom.  

That's about it for now.  I will post the stacking for offense later.  Blue stackings are generally very mana intensive since blues rely on so many off-color units.  Keeping the stacks in their proper places is also a great challenge.  But once you master deep stacking, you will rarely lose land, if at all.  

[Necrófago]

nice, well explain...
so you dont lose  land... now how u get it??
with the same aa up and atak black?
a few litle lich more and red(with the ie down)??

PD:i often learn more here, that in spanish forum

sorry sor my english...

[plutohu]

OK, so now that I've explained how to defend, it's time to grab some land

I play primarily in the Mega Blitz server and find that there are a ton of red and green mages there.  So I will focus on how to attack these 2 first.

Like I said earlier, Leviathon is pretty awful in terms of offense.  So before your attack run, disband all of them.  

If you want to attack red or green, you shouldn't be putting AA at the top.  AA's have a weak breath resistance and thus die to red dragons in masses and they will die also to phoenix due to fireburst.

A good unit to soak the damage from red dragon is actually zombies.  They are cheap to summon and have a very good Hit point/Net power ratio thus losing a lot of them won't matter much to the outcome of the battle. So here's the stacking I would use to attack red:

zombie
Mind Ripper
AA
unicorn
Lich
Vampire
Horned Demon
Salamander
Nymph
IE

Mind rippers beats all red units except for red dragons.  It would be extremely difficult for a red mage to not have red dragon as their top stack.  Therefore placing mind rippers second is usually safe.  The damage done by your MR and IE should win the battle for you easily.

To attack greens, the best units to be place at top stack is actually lich.  They have great melee and magic resistances and should block phoenix and/or treant's attack well.  However since they are ranged it is rather difficult to summon so many of them to be first stack.  So again I would place zombies top, and my stacking would look like this:

zombie
Djinni
unicorn
MR
Lich
Vampire
Salamander
Hellhound
Nymph
IE/WE (both deal the same amount of damage to phoenix)

The reason why I replaced AA with Djinni here is because AA attacking Phoenix would trigger fireburst whereas Djinni's attack wouldn't.  Placing MR 4th should be safe enough for them not to meet treants.  Your salamander and hellhounds can deal some nice fire damage to their treants.  Lich and vampire will kill a lot of enemy fodders as well.

To attack whites, you must have Water Elementals and be lucky to have them attack enemy AA instead of dominions.  AA's have no poison resistance and will die horribly to WE.  If the white mage is lame enough to run pure dominion, it will be hard for you to deal enough damage unless Blood Curse (stops enemy units from resurrecting) can go through.

You can also attack fellow blue mages.  But since there are many varieties of stackings blues can have, it will hard to guess what they might have.  So really you can just try to siege them and hope for the best

I recommend not to attack black mages.  They have a lot of powerful units that can totally screw you over.  Plus usually black mages are in protection anyways from the constant attacks they get everyday from white mages.

That's about it for now.  I hope this helps and will be glad to answer any questions.

[Avahor]

how many zobies??

[Vorgon]

correct, in denfense you can evade the Dracos attack, but, what will you do against greens using Rust armor and treants?. And if you atack green, obviously that green will have RA in defense, so your zombies will be food for trees...

[plutohu]

It's rather simple to block treants with RA.  Simply use either Spider's Web or Carpet of Flying for defense (web is actually better).  For offense you'd have to get lucky for your item to go through the green's barriers.  There's few units in the entire game that can block treants + RA.  You just need to get around the problem.

[Avahor]

 ok..  

[Vorgon]

ok, I'm gonna try it...

but the use of carpet wouldn't carry another problen? I'm talking about nixes. many green mages are using nixes in first stack to atack blue mages (supposing that Blue mages are using AA in first stack, or merely pure of AA), so, if I receive an attack of a green mage who use nixes in first, with zombies + carpet, that zombies are gonna die for 4 different reasons:

1- secondary attack of nixes
2- primary attack of nixes
3- Fire burst (melee against nixes make them explote)
4- Nixes´counter.

I agree is better to use web...

[Necrófago]

ra??

[neyboll]

Rust Armor i think,
en cristiano oxidar armadura de toda la vida