How to deal with Irminsul

[Lord of the Wizards]

So things are going well for Kailasa. Our pretender is The Destroyer of Worlds, with A2 D5 N5. A phalanx of armored gorillas retreats towards the back of the line as the arrow bait. Sacred generals, armed with terror-casting masks and panic-casting banners spam the battlefield with morale damage, while hordes of awe protected sacred naked men dance in from the flanks and crush the enemy. Back in the citadel, I have a lot of mages tirelessly researching and manufacturing weapons for my naked generals.

Mictlan is dominion killed, but then TirNaNog wants a war over the capital ruins, so I give them one. Within 3 months I'm sieging their capital. I storm the gates, fill their castle with monkeys and sacreds, obliterate their army. But then I get to Irminsul. The ugly stump has covered itself with layers of protection: liquid body so I can't cut it, resistance so my frost brands do next to nothing, and to top it off it regens 50 hits every round. It turns my army to ashes with shockwave, but lightning barely tickles my Destroyer of Worlds. He is armed with 3 frostbrands and a vine shield. They go toe-to-stump until my DOW gives up and flees. I should have gone for the dominion-kill.

So, in dealing with him, I chose not to do a dominion kill. It was too late for that. I wanted vengeance.

Meet Bombasta

4 Axes of Hate in action

Look at that stupid look on that stupid stump face.

Next game, I'm rolling an Irminsul.

[Shinuyama]

A teleporting immobile pretender will wreck people's day, yeah. It only works once, but it can be a hell of a once. Statue gods have higher starting prot, though.

[Zonk]

Irminsul does have a (deserved, I suppose) reputation as being a very good pretender chassis, especially if you want a Nature blessing. I mean, it's the one immobile that can ALSO defend itself in melee! And as it's not lifeless and has Nature magic it can easily get regeneration...

As you yourself say - going for the dominion kill may have been the better idea though it will be slow. Fire magic may be worth considering too - except as Kailasa I don't see you having too much of it.

Perhaps try MR negates instaslaying spells if you have access to them, using penetration boosters and trying to get its dominion lowered just a bit? After all, Soul Slay may be unlikely to work each time you cast it, but it only needs to work *ONCE*...

[commiesocialist]

Soul Slay would have been a no-brainer if tree's MR was in the lower 20's. But gotta give style points when they're due.

I rolled an Irminsul in one game. Dirt cheap N9 and great scales. It's certainly easy to recommend, even if you end up losing some diversity for it.

[Shinuyama]

MR 20+ = soul slay useless. Double 6 on the die isn't super likely. Unless you're packing penetration.

the best answer to immobile god is AN weapons on a thug, usually. Or MR-less stuff like Incinerate.

[commiesocialist]

If you can cast soul slay, you can forge spell focus and void eyes. I've killed MR +20 stuff with soul slay without issues. Yes, it takes repeated castings, but that's why you take a bunch of mages with penetration gear and whatever chaff that can hold the target in place for enough rounds (if we're talking about a combat SC).

Of course soul slay is not the be all end all spell of big target killing, but it's a pretty good thing if you've got enough S casters to spam it. As is often stated about SS: it only needs to succeed once.

Reason I'm advocating soul slay here so much is because we're talking about a monkey nation, they should have S mages pouring out of their ears. And I'm assuming the target MR is at most low 20's. High 20's and I'd recommend looking elsewhere if at all possible, even if you consider penetration gear.

[Lord of the Wizards]

Yes, I have not consider a monkey mage soul-slay spam, that's good advice, and changes my kailasa strategy completely.

[Shinuyama]

If you think that's crazy, check out an Evo 5 spell called 'Stellar Cascades'. Underwhelming on a single caster, but you get 30 gurus and a Light of the North Star, and suddenly everything is unconscious and your markata beat palankasha to death.

[Lord of the Wizards]

Since you guys seem to know about Kailasa, do you know how reincarnation works? One time I got a random event message that stated one of my gurus had reunited with God, and I got a skull mentor out of it, but I don't know if that's related or not.

[Shinuyama]

Oh. It's based on experience stars iirc. Very occasionally an experienced dude will die and then come back as himself. To test it, play a 2 nation game, get expreienced monkey dudes, then cast 'Burden of Time'. They will die a lot, come back a lot, and get more experience, and be basically monkeycycling. If a dude has super experience (maybe hall of fame?), he can come back as a better version of himself. Guru into that other mage, other mage into yavana, etc.

I have no idea how the 'reunited with god' thing works. I THINK it may have something to do with your PG coming back from the dead, or your god's experience total. Either way, it's not amazing.

If you want to get good with kailasa, i've played some duels against good kailasa players, I could probably help you out. Also Maer has a guide somewhere for Elite Monkey Tactics which would be helpful.

[commiesocialist]

IIRC, it rarely turns a dead monkey into a dominion candle or a new monkey commander (not sure what type). It's pretty rare and inconsequential so it's fairly safe to just ignore it, shouldn't affect your overall strategy.

[Lord of the Wizards]

Originally posted by Shinuyama:

If you want to get good with kailasa, i've played some duels against good kailasa players, I could probably help you out. Also Maer has a guide somewhere for Elite Monkey Tactics which would be helpful.

Yeah, I'll /f add you if you have the friendspace, maybe we can get some games going on.

[Davadin]

Trying to move from overwhelmed noob status to slightly-less-overwhelmed noob status.

What's a "thug"?
What's a "S caster"?

[Nalbem]

A thug is a commander armed with magic items that can take on troops that lack mage support by himself. The prime example are Vanjarls (and other poneymen such as Sidhe Lords). They usually get a fire/frost brand plus a shield and buff themselves with magic (Blessing if you have a bless and Mistform in the case of Vanjarls). They can also be used for anti-thug duties by giving them some weapons effective against single targets (Duskdagger or Flesh Eaters) and teleporting (through teleport or clod trapeze) on top of them. They can also be used for army support in the flanks. Non undead thugs should also have means of controlling fatigue to stay away from lucky crits that will ruin gem investments (items or an E bless if your thug is sacred).

There are different chassi for thugging (giants, ponymen, many of the monkey summons), but universally in Dom 4 the ones worth using should be able to cast spells (defensive, mostly) and have some mobility tricks (flying, stealth, paths that let them teleport from labs).

S is slang for astral magic. Paths are usually abreviated like this:
A-Air
F-Fire
W-Water
E-Earth
S-Astral
D-Death
N-Nature
B-Blood
H-Holy

If followed by a number (S2) it means the mage has two points in astral magic. Randoms are also expressed like this (specially in guides): Ashdod's Zamzummite is a 1E 2D 2H 100% ED 100% FESD. This means the mage has a base magic of 1 earth, 2 death, a pick between an extra point of earth or death and another pick between an extra point of fire, earth, astral or death. Ashdod's Talmai Elder is a 100% 3EFS mage 10% FESD which means it gets three points randomnly in earth, fire or astral and has a 10% chance of getting an extra point in fire, earth, astral or death. Sometimes randoms get linked, so for example a mage with a 110% AEWN pick has a 100% chance of a pick at those paths and a 10% chance of an extra pick at those same paths.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Davadin:

Trying to move from overwhelmed noob status to slightly-less-overwhelmed noob status.

What's a "thug"?
What's a "S caster"?

Also, don't be afraid to start new threads (or use your recent "thread of many questions"), rather than necro-ing a two-year-old question. It can be confusing, especially in lieu of recent patches, if respondants don't notice the date of the original post. ;)

[Davadin]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Also, don't be afraid to start new threads (or use your recent "thread of many questions"), rather than necro-ing a two-year-old question. It can be confusing, especially in lieu of recent patches, if respondants don't notice the date of the original post. ;)

I stumbled onto this thread, looking for answers about reincarnation. Ultimately I just used it as a spring board for asking a couple of basic questions, since they had been referenced here.

Originally posted by Nalbem:

A thug is a commander armed with magic items that can take on troops that lack mage support by himself. The prime example are Vanjarls (and other poneymen such as Sidhe Lords). They usually get a fire/frost brand plus a shield and buff themselves with magic (Blessing if you have a bless and Mistform in the case of Vanjarls). They can also be used for anti-thug duties by giving them some weapons effective against single targets (Duskdagger or Flesh Eaters) and teleporting (through teleport or clod trapeze) on top of them. They can also be used for army support in the flanks. Non undead thugs should also have means of controlling fatigue to stay away from lucky crits that will ruin gem investments (items or an E bless if your thug is sacred).

There are different chassi for thugging (giants, ponymen, many of the monkey summons), but universally in Dom 4 the ones worth using should be able to cast spells (defensive, mostly) and have some mobility tricks (flying, stealth, paths that let them teleport from labs).

S is slang for astral magic. Paths are usually abreviated like this:
A-Air
F-Fire
W-Water
E-Earth
S-Astral
D-Death
N-Nature
B-Blood
H-Holy

If followed by a number (S2) it means the mage has two points in astral magic. Randoms are also expressed like this (specially in guides): Ashdod's Zamzummite is a 1E 2D 2H 100% ED 100% FESD. This means the mage has a base magic of 1 earth, 2 death, a pick between an extra point of earth or death and another pick between an extra point of fire, earth, astral or death. Ashdod's Talmai Elder is a 100% 3EFS mage 10% FESD which means it gets three points randomnly in earth, fire or astral and has a 10% chance of getting an extra point in fire, earth, astral or death. Sometimes randoms get linked, so for example a mage with a 110% AEWN pick has a 100% chance of a pick at those paths and a 10% chance of an extra pick at those same paths.

Thanks! This was thorough and helpful. :D

________________________________________


As to thugs- in CoE3, I used to call them Superheroes. I wasn't trying for wordplay, persay, but it was a good term because the best units to give all of the magic equipment to were usually either "heroes" or "wandering heroes". Calling them a superhero just fit rather well.

Interestingly- in that game, you had an opposite problem. While artifacts were very hard to come by, once you had them, they were yours, unless you lost a full battle. If a unit equipping them died- the items got transfered to a commander in the army. If there were no commanders, they would get transferred to any old unit, and could easily be transferred again (no labs in that game). You -could- loose items if say boots were lost and your only remaining units were cavalry, but it was very rare. However, the problem in that game was that it was very hard to acquire heroes- they were random 1-turn-only purchases, and cost some decent money. Often you needed a hero to equip about as much as you needed an artifact.