Fog Warriors - Solid Counters?

[mel]

Fog Warriors is arguably one of the best spells in the game, but I am having a hard time finding actual experience and info on it. Often I find people recommening stuff that clearly will not work, like weapons of Sharpness or earthquake.
What are some tactics you have successfully used against it? And what have you tired that did not work?

[Staythecourse]

Defensive movement 1st turn Earthquake or Rain of Stones certainly do work, as they work on anything.

But as actual counters go, Fire Storm and Acid Storm are solid assuming your nation is capable of using either effectively. Note, that using Fire Storm is quite viable even without Firerez, if your troops are significantly more heavily armored than those of your enemy. Another counter that people really should use more often against any gem heavy force is gem burning. Dropping a mage or a bunch of horrors on the army in the Ritual Attack phase to burn off their gems before your actual army engages in the Regular Combat Phase is quite effective. For that matter, Fog Warriors is a very expensive spell, and even nations without Ritual movement options can just run enemies out of gems through repeated hit and runs.

And not so much a counter, but Skelespam + Heat from Hell/Grip of Winter/Foul Vapors simply couldn't give a crap about Fog Warriors. Unless of course, your enemy is leveraging Fog Warriors to drop Rain of Stones on your skelespammers, in which case you need to defend them, but besides that, Fog Warriors doesn't change the effectiveness of your force at all.

Obviously, any asymmetric attack would also work fine, whether it's assassins, or remote attacks.

[berandro]

I second Fire Storm. I won a war against Caelum as MA Marignon basically using Fire Storm against Fog of Warriors.

[mel]

Yes, if earthqake is cast before fog warriors is up and kills the mage that was supposed to cast it. Once FW is up, it doesn't do anything though. Multiple times I've seen people claim that EQ does magic damage and would remove FW.

Ritual spell attacks could be pretty solid. Which besides send horror have you used to trigger spells? This could be difficult against glamour nations which like to use FW and you're not really sure where their armies currently are.
Also I seen a few people state that they and others they know consider this trick frowned upon. Apropos, does an army still carry out movement orders after it fought in magic phase?

[Staythecourse]

Yes, armies keep moving after ritual battles unless defeated. And any ritual attack can trigger gem use, though I can't remember the calculations. I remember Pale Riders being the most efficient one after Horrors. And any teleporting mage with 4 paths and 2 gems (read, something that can cast RoS) or a geared thug trigger gem use too.

Unless the game specifically states certain tactics are banned, I would ignore whiners. It's not as if there isn't counterplay. Like glamour as you mention, though it slows down an offensive greatly if it needs to repeatedly duck in and out of stealth (and Mindhunt works on stealthed commanders). Or sniping a teleporting mage with spells scripted before the Fog Warriors cast. Or simply realizing Fog Warriors and other expensive battlefield spells aren't actually press to win buttons, and using weaker spells you can feed with a gemgen has advantages.

[Twogun]

flaming arrows is cheap, and short bowmen are usually ez to get. might be one trick pony though. if they can cast FW then they'll have counters to massed archers.

if you are worried about them seeing your archers, you could use bows of war/flaming arrows. again, it likely won't work twice, so make it count.