Counters to storm demons?

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

Hi. So in an MP game, the Helheim player is currently running roughshod over the map with armies of irritating numbers of storm demons and ziz's. I have access to Shedim and generally late-mid blood summons, but am nervous about investing a ton of blood slaves into them in the hopes their higher strength and sacred status (bless is BV and +3 reinvigoration) would let them slog it out with storm demons. Se'irim have done real well against other stuff backed up with bloodlusting and agonying mages, but despite their awesome strength and berserked 3 attacks I don't think they'll be much good against the ethereal storm demons. Thunder fend will get me shock resistance and I'm researching ench5 for it now, but what are my options for actually killing the ♥♥♥♥ers? Is my best shot pretty much just trying to kill all his commanders with disease demons? I'm not sure what he's actually using to command them and move them around - probably a hangadrott or something since they're glamoured and don't show up on the army descriptions from afar. If they have no leadership will they just disperse? Join the local garrison? Everyone knows storm demons are great but how the heck do I counter them?

I have a wide range of magic paths at my disposal, with decent mages in F/E/A/B/D/W, though no real W or D income to speak of. I don't think the game will last long enough for me to get spammed vampire lords to throw endless skeletons at them, and even then those would only really be safe to use on the defensive. Ideas? I could get out Father Illearth and put a ring of tamed lightning on him and give him a magic weapon but it'd be a big investment for what seems iffy

E: He has Foul Air up and is definitely pumping them up with storms in every fight, if that makes a difference.

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

Would father illearth with a ring of regen (trading for it), ring of tamed lightning for shock resist, flambeau for the triple dmg vs demons and holy pyre spell, and a shroud of the saint for the blood vengeance bless be able to take on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of storm demons? 25% regen with 130 base hp and blood veangeance should ♥♥♥♥ things up, right? But he'd only get five casts of holy pyre before getting exhausted and would have ziz's on him from round one. And would all the stun dmg from the lightning bolts still ♥♥♥♥ him up?

[Gregstrom]

Storm Demons and Shedim fail hard against almost anything with high SR, including each other.

Anything with good SR (15+) and at least 5 CR (for the Ziz) will do fairly well. I suggest using something that's good in a fight, as Ziz are a sizeable meat shield.

[jBrereton]

If you have a lot of W mages you should be casting as much Cleansing Water as possible at the demons. You will almost inevitably lose a slew of mages doing this but it is really the one good anti-demon tactic if you have it available to you.

Father Illearth is going to get enslaved with Hellbind Heart after one battle if your opponent has any idea what they're doing.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by KuK the herb pantagruelion:

what are my options for actually killing the ♥♥♥♥ers?

Massed priests spamming Banishment spells won't hurt, since it ignores the "Etherealness" of the Storm Demons despite their high Magic Resistance. Evocation spells which aren't MR (Gifts from Heaven, Falling Fires, etc.) will also hurt them. Flaming Arrows has the side effect of changing all missile weapons to magical, flaming missile weapons, so massed flaming arrows should be able to erase the Storm Demons in particular.

If they have no leadership will they just disperse? Join the local garrison?

Demons who are left without a Demon/Undead Leadership commander on the battlefield immediately rout and scatter to the surrounding provinces, so singling out the enemy commanders is a definite option.

He has Foul Air up and is definitely pumping them up with storms in every fight, if that makes a difference.

I assume you mean Perpetual Storm? Foul Air is a Global Enchantment which has a chance of diseasing any mortal unit which is wounded in combat, and doesn't synergize with Storm Demons. ;)

[jBrereton]

Helheim can almost certainly cast Arrow Fend, so FA'd archers are a bit of a long shot.

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by KuK the herb pantagruelion:

what are my options for actually killing the ♥♥♥♥ers?

Massed priests spamming Banishment spells won't hurt, since it ignores the "Etherealness" of the Storm Demons despite their high Magic Resistance. Evocation spells which aren't MR (Gifts from Heaven, Falling Fires, etc.) will also hurt them. Flaming Arrows has the side effect of changing all missile weapons to magical, flaming missile weapons, so massed flaming arrows should be able to erase the Storm Demons in particular.

If they have no leadership will they just disperse? Join the local garrison?

Demons who are left without a Demon/Undead Leadership commander on the battlefield immediately rout and scatter to the surrounding provinces, so singling out the enemy commanders is a definite option.

He has Foul Air up and is definitely pumping them up with storms in every fight, if that makes a difference.

I assume you mean Perpetual Storm? Foul Air is a Global Enchantment which has a chance of diseasing any mortal unit which is wounded in combat, and doesn't synergize with Storm Demons. ;)

No, it's foul air. Just in case that information plays into trying to use a regenning SC at all (which, alongside mass assassination, I'm currently looking at as my best option).

I have a lot of W1 mages and a lot of priests but unfortunately I see cleansing water is W2 and at evo6 is a longer detour than ench5 from trying to beat Hinnom (i'm Berytos) to the B9 megasummons. With the reduced precision from storms I'm wary of massing my mages because if I lose then there goes my entire research corp.

I have a single very lucky F5 mage so I'm considering massing archers with flaming arrows but 20+ storm demons will shred archers from far away and I'm 99.9% sure he has a vanjarl or something casting storm on turn 0 of every fight (he'll be defender so he gets first round).

Does hellbind heart automatically target the most badass unit on the field? I would back up Father Illearth with i.e. a pack of seirim and some fodder spearmen to take hits while he rolls up. He has a base MR of 18 - what if I packed on some +MR gear instead of going for the shroud for BV? But then if he loses BV his tankiness loses very much of its appeal..

The whole ethereal thing on storm demons is really annoying because otherwise I could just throw enough bloodlusted berserking blessed seirim at them maybe with someone casting fend to tear through them with the 3/round 30+dmg attacks. I guess I have to kill his commanders. That's probably the cheapest/safest option and is something I was going to start doing right away whereas getting an SC podesion up would take me at least 4 turns or so including paying another player for a ring of regen.

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

I do have a 6/turn fire gem income I haven't really been using for anything so maybe I could just throw rings of tamed lightning and flambeaus on a whole bunch of dudes. That seems like a reliable counter. Could even use my indy commanders that have no purpose but ferrying bloodslaves then, and avoid risking mages/priests. Unfortunately I just alchemized my whole stock of 65 so I'd be looking at another ten turns of outfitting to get 4 guys ready to spam holy pyre while spearmen eat hits.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by KuK the herb pantagruelion:

No, it's foul air. Just in case that information plays into trying to use a regenning SC at all (which, alongside mass assassination, I'm currently looking at as my best option).

Ah, apologies for misunderstanding you. I was thinking Perpetual Storm as a natural choice for the Storm Demon-ing player to cast since they have Storm Power (3).

Does hellbind heart automatically target the most badass unit on the field?

It's hard to say anything definitive about the spellcasting AI, but Hellbind Heart (and other "charm"-type spells usually targets single targets with high HP and seems to preferentially target commanders (if any are in range). Without access to the source code, it's impossible for us to know exactly how it works.

[Staythecourse]

Shedim are not sacred, so they will not use your bless. Flaming Arrows do not make arrows magical. They used to in Dom3, which is why it was so good, but it does not any longer. The fire damage part is still magical, but the arrow itself is not, and does not gain the magical bonus to hit.

Archery will be useless in any case if Helheim is putting up storm in every battle, as Storm eats half of all arrows as well as nerfs precision (except for storm immunes like the storm demons).

Disease demoning the commanders is a great idea and works well. A geared strongly shock resistant melqart can take on infinite storm demons. Cloud trapeze one of the air randoms on top. Both Air Melquarts and Disease Demons also keep the Storm Demons from just flying around. Fire Storm or Acid Storm deal magical damage to the whole battlefield, and is great at killing very large numbers of storm demons. Regenerating Seirim can tank the damage far longer than storm demons even without Fire Fend. Acid Storm is available to Berytos innately, though damage is much lower than Fire Storm against unarmored targets. You need to trade for a booster to get Firestorm which is better against Storm Demons, especially since Berytos can cast the Fend spell while Helheim cannot (depending on pretender design)

Finally, you need to consider how much of an investment those Storm Demons are for Helheim. They have to be summoned one at a time, using empowered 265g mages, which are also the cheapest bloodhunters. Berytos is vastly better at the Storm Demon game than Helheim is. I can tell you as a someone who's massed Storm Demons before (as Vanarus, which is slightly better at it than Helheim, but still much worse than Berytos), that my Storm demons could be defeated simply by a large enough regular army, and cost me far more than the conventional troops did my opponent.

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

Whoops, dumb mistake on my part confusing shedim with seirim. Yeah that definitely rules them out then. Fire storm might be an option but I'd have to spend a bunch of time researching evo7 for it.

How would you recommend equipping a melqart for that kind of mission? Bear in mind his SDs are backed up by ziz's so theres a source of decent, fear-immune physical damage to contend with too

[jBrereton]

Another possible option as Berytos is maybe Air Elemental/ even better Living Clouds from a Storm Caller or Bride-in-Waiting to try to trample his Storm Demons.

They won't get targeted in the first instance but their lightning resist will help if they get stuck into hand to hand if they botch a trample, and not only are they storm fliers but they're much more dangerous with a storm up due to their increased attack skill.

[[KuK] the herb pantagruelion]

Hm, didnt realize AE's had trample. Figured they'd be useless since their only actual attack is shock-based. The problem remains of getting mages in place to have them summon AEs and not get instagibbed.

[jBrereton]

The other-other problem is not getting them ♥♥♥♥ blocked by Ziz', but your opponent is likely to only have so many.

[amuys]

Use one of your melqarts as a thug with a tamed lighitng ring and a fire brand. He will functionally immune to any of their attacks and melt right through them since they only have ethereal as a defence.

[Shinuyama]

What you use depends on what you have locally, the strength of the storm demons, and many other factors.

Ethereal negates attacks with a %(I forget if it's 50% or 25%, it's literally irrelevant), enough attacks overwhelms it, or anything magical. Battlefield wipe overwhelms it.

The real strength of storm demons is their high hp, good stats, AN attacks (Lightning ranged and lightning punch), stormpower, stormflying (can attack rear even through a storm, the only means of stopping flyers normally), lack of morale, demon status, etc.

A melq SC with LR will kill them. Plus a vine shield and whatever you need to be functionally immune to a Ziz.

A battlefield wipe in Fire or Cold will kill them, so Firestorm, Heat from Hell, Grip of Winter, + something for them to shoot at with lots of hp while those things do their work.

Astral Tempest would also work, or rigor + enough undead.

Evo that's in range will kill them dead. Again with something for them to shoot at. Flame Storm, Niefel Flames, massed fireball, etc.

Air Elementals will, hilariously enough, trample them to death while being immune to their lightning attacks.

Other kinds will do the same, but slower, and be subject to blockers.

I mean if you wanted you could spam Creeping Doom enough times and kill them with frogs.

You can kill the leaders out from under them with Earth Attack/Manifestation/Disease Demon/Assassins/etc, and then attack in the normal battle phase with an army and watch them melt away with no undead leadership.

Flames from the Sky x 5 will kill most of them, at a ruinous cost in gems (but y'know, if someone puts enough stuff in the same province). More cheaply(if they survive), teleporting or cloud trapezing SCs will do the trick, with thugs to cut retreats.

Se'irrim will, if buffed, just beat them to death.

Send me a turn file and i'll take a look at your position and tell you what i'd recommend.