Impossible to beat the vortex battle in the vortex campaign

[RandomPlayer]

EDIT : Solved, I beat Malekith.

Hi,

I'm playing on hard difficulty with HE as my 1st campaign on TW WH2 and i didn't know anything about the vortex battle.

I'm fighting Malekith with Tyrion as LL and I struggle to destroy Malekith's army which is very, very powerful compared to mine.

My army consists in :
- Tyrion 29
- 6 Phoenix guards
- 5 Hoeth swordmen
- 2 Lothern guards
- 1 dragon prince
- 2 Bolt throwers
- 3 star dragons

I tried different compositions to face Malekith and did more than 10 tries to fight but well, I lose every time.

I really don't know what to do right now concerning this fight ... I didn't even want to do it, I wanted to conquer, that's all.

Is there any way to beat Malekith or, at least, to skip this battle ?

pic of Malekith troops : https://imgur.com/Aaqhdy7

Thanks and have fun

EDIT :
I play right now with :
Tyrion
6 PG
3 SM
6 lothern sea guards
3 SD
1 DP

[RandomPlayer]

Originally posted by Setheus:

Looks maybe winnable. I'd like to try it because it looks like fun. If I add you on steam and send you my email can u send me the save file and I will have a go?

i'll send you a link with my save filelater if you want to try but I would like to success myself 1st.

Originally posted by Pink:

Are you using the banners? I see on your photo that the lord has 4 of them, but none are applied to your units (maybe you applied them later?).

I use the banners indeed.

Originally posted by ChaosKhan:

Originally posted by S3ygle:

I've a 26 noble but he's destroyed in seconds when he has to face the hydra, so i replaced him with a phoenix guard unit.

Anyway, the timer (4 turns, seriously ...) makes it impossible to level more nobles for this battle.

You aren't supposed to just run a noble 1v1 to a hydra and duel it. You kill monsters with agents by sending in a fodder unit to soak up the attacks and then following up with one or two agents right behind to deal the killing blow. This way the hydra will attack the fodder first and your agent will clip himself through his troops and attack the target wihout a fear of retaliation.

Originally posted by S3ygle:

My army consists in :
- Tyrion 29
- 6 Phoenix guards
- 5 Hoeth swordmen
- 2 Lothern guards
- 1 dragon prince
- 2 Bolt throwers
- 3 star dragons

Too much melee, not enough archers to kill the enemies ranged troops. Dark elven crossbows have high armor piercing damage, so they slaughter your frontline choice if you leave them alive. Also... where is your mage? Magic alone would already make a huge difference.

Try something like this:
Tyrion
Mage
Noble
6 PG
2 SM
2 BT
2 SD
2 DP
3 Shadow Warriors or Sisters of Averlorn

As I wrote before, the biggest problem I have here is that I can't level mage or sisters or anything else because i've only 2 turns left before the battle.

And I forgot to mention it but I made some modifications to my army, i'm close, very close to beat them now but I still lose.

I play right now with :
Tyrion
6 PG
3 SM
6 lothern sea guards
3 SD
1 DP

[RandomPlayer]

Originally posted by nord2hammer:

Originally posted by S3ygle:

Hi,
I'm fighting Malekith with Tyrion as LL and I struggle to destroy Malekith's army which is very, very powerful compared to mine.
My army consists in :
- Tyrion 29
- 6 Phoenix guards
- 5 Hoeth swordmen
- 2 Lothern guards
- 1 dragon prince
- 2 Bolt throwers
- 3 star dragons

Too many melee units.....

You have 4 turns? And you do not have The Queen and the Crone DLC.(sigh too bad you missed Winter sale)-So no Sisters nor Handmaidens....
Also you only have one lv 26 noble? No Swordmasters or Mages(life)?

Would try with Tyrion,noble(lv26 ) 4 Phoenix guards,2 swordmen,6 archers,3 Dragon Princes and 3 Star Dragons then.

In a better world would say try Tyrion,Handmaiden,Swordmaster,5 Phoenix guards,6 Sisters,3 Dragon princes and 3 star Dragons.

(Keep in mind your hero is considered a large target while mounted.)

I've 2 turns left so i can't do a lot at this point, i can recruit 1 turn troops but that's all and like I said, I didn't buy the DLC (I could but semeone told me in this thread it would be pointless since I won't be able to recruit the sisters.

Originally posted by Horsthammer:

Originally posted by ArchAnge1LT:

Have 6 armies of that composition instead.

when he have enough gold income
S3ygle how much have u?

17k right now and 10k in income.

[Wh♂♂par]

Originally posted by ArchAnge1LT:

Have 6 armies of that composition instead.

6 armies won't do ♥♥♥♥ in the ritual battle? You send 1.

[FROSTCestrell]

if i were you and had time to prepare (i have like 5 armies so one is always full and on reserve) i would make :
1 Everqueen
1 maiden
8 sisters of avelorn
1 Scions of Mathlan
3 spearmen squads (as high as you can get them in experience)
2 stardragons (doesnt rlly count how high they are)
3 phoenix guard (best is if they re golden)
and the legendary version of the phoenix guard

alternatively if you dont have a dlc so u cant have the everqueen you should swap the sisters of avelorn with 2x lothern seaguard (shield) and 6x archers (light armour).

ary is useless, since the enemy will be coming to u anyways, the sisters can melt dragons down easily, so chances are if the ai is stupid that malekith dies before he comes even down. spears first row, behind them 2x phoenix guard, 2x phoenix guard to watch the sides. the dragons should stay back so the can use their breath later when the enemys are clustered at your spearmen, the maiden (or lord) should stand next to the archers (and buff them passively oc), and whats also important is that once they are stuck at your spears you engage with your leader. and the archer should run if the ememy comes too close. that being said you can alos use the widowmaker if you happen to have it, it sure is useful.

edit: just saw that you down own the dlc

[Wh♂♂par]

Originally posted by FROSTCestrell:

if i were you and had time to prepare (i have like 5 armies so one is always full and on reserve) i would make :
1 Everqueen
1 maiden
8 sisters of avelorn
1 Scions of Mathlan
3 spearmen squads (as high as you can get them in experience)
2 stardragons (doesnt rlly count how high they are)
3 phoenix guard (best is if they re golden)
and the legendary version of the phoenix guard

alternatively if you dont have a dlc so u cant have the everqueen you should swap the sisters of avelorn with 2x lothern seaguard (shield) and 6x archers (light armour).

And the Everqueen, and the Maiden. And the RoR.

[RandomPlayer]

Originally posted by FROSTCestrell:

if i were you and had time to prepare (i have like 5 armies so one is always full and on reserve) i would make :
1 Everqueen
1 maiden
8 sisters of avelorn
1 Scions of Mathlan
3 spearmen squads (as high as you can get them in experience)
2 stardragons (doesnt rlly count how high they are)
3 phoenix guard (best is if they re golden)
and the legendary version of the phoenix guard

alternatively if you dont have a dlc so u cant have the everqueen you should swap the sisters of avelorn with 2x lothern seaguard (shield) and 6x archers (light armour).

ary is useless, since the enemy will be coming to u anyways, the sisters can melt dragons down easily, so chances are if the ai is stupid that malekith dies before he comes even down. spears first row, behind them 2x phoenix guard, 2x phoenix guard to watch the sides. the dragons should stay back so the can use their breath later when the enemys are clustered at your spearmen, the maiden (or lord) should stand next to the archers (and buff them passively oc), and whats also important is that once they are stuck at your spears you engage with your leader. and the archer should run if the ememy comes too close. that being said you can alos use the widowmaker if you happen to have it, it sure is useful.

edit: just saw that you down own the dlc

Ty for the advice, i'll probably start a new campaign and do this if I still don't beat them !

[Kaelus Von Sestiaf]

Originally posted by S3ygle:

I don't understand why I didn't find more threads about this battle, people don't do this campaign or ... am I just bad ?

The thing is it's not often that an AI gets to finish the last ritual to trigger this "win or lose the campaign" battle, and before a certain patch (or so I've read) that battle was also trivial. Got heavily buffed I hear.

So simply, not many people have had to fight that battle in its current iteration. They tend to stop enemy rituals earlier or complete their own before anyone else.

[RandomPlayer]

That was close but I finally did it https://imgur.com/a/Y5MykRq

damn dark elves ...

Originally posted by Kaelus Von Sestiaf:

Originally posted by S3ygle:

I don't understand why I didn't find more threads about this battle, people don't do this campaign or ... am I just bad ?

The thing is it's not often that an AI gets to finish the last ritual to trigger this "win or lose the campaign" battle, and before a certain patch (or so I've read) that battle was also trivial. Got heavily buffed I hear.

So simply, not many people have had to fight that battle in its current iteration. They tend to stop enemy rituals earlier or complete their own before anyone else.

It makes sense, in my campaign i didn't care about the "story", it was a huge mistake as far as i know.
Is the defense easier than the attack ?

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

You're playing high elfs and your only ranged are 2 sea guards. The phoenix guards with the dragons should be able to kill him, but archers would have been better.

Unless he's got the dlc for sisters of averlorn, archers are a complete waste of a unit slot. He's fighting multiple stacks of armored enemies, archers will just run out of ammo.

The problem here is you don't have a caster hero. The easiest way to win a lot of fights is to just clump up multiple single entities, spam heals on them, and maybe throw down a vortex spell (dragon breath works too). Or to spam more powerful ranged but lothern sea guard just don't cut it (if you have sisters of averlorn on the other hand, you spam a full stack of them and play the battle out with allarielle or a princess with that trait that increases their range damage).

Originally posted by FROSTCestrell:

if i were you and had time to prepare (i have like 5 armies so one is always full and on reserve) i would make :
1 Everqueen
1 maiden
8 sisters of avelorn
1 Scions of Mathlan
3 spearmen squads (as high as you can get them in experience)
2 stardragons (doesnt rlly count how high they are)
3 phoenix guard (best is if they re golden)
and the legendary version of the phoenix guard

alternatively if you dont have a dlc so u cant have the everqueen you should swap the sisters of avelorn with 2x lothern seaguard (shield) and 6x archers (light armour).

ary is useless, since the enemy will be coming to u anyways, the sisters can melt dragons down easily, so chances are if the ai is stupid that malekith dies before he comes even down. spears first row, behind them 2x phoenix guard, 2x phoenix guard to watch the sides. the dragons should stay back so the can use their breath later when the enemys are clustered at your spearmen, the maiden (or lord) should stand next to the archers (and buff them passively oc), and whats also important is that once they are stuck at your spears you engage with your leader. and the archer should run if the ememy comes too close. that being said you can alos use the widowmaker if you happen to have it, it sure is useful.

edit: just saw that you down own the dlc

Why would he ever use spaermen? Name 1 thing that a spearmen will do better than a phoenix guard. This is terrible advice. And why would he use archers with light armour. They're strictly worse than sea guard with shields other than a bit more range.

You can make this fight so much easier. If you have the dlc and allarielle is high level, just spam sisters (if you can get them above level 7 especially). If you don't, get tyrion sword of khaine, an incindiary life wizard with earth blood, and 18 star dragons. Everything clumps on tyrion, sword of khaine vortex and dragon breath kills all the infantry, any single entity will die instantly to tyrion and 18 dragons, and as long as the life wizard doesn't die you're army is like 160% hp.

Any person here who is telling you to build any unit thats cheap is wrong. Cheap units require you to know how to use them. Much better to just get a unit with so much raw power you can't possibly screw it up. You build units like that for fun, but if you're just trying to win you abuse the ai's tendency to clump around single entities and raw powerful units.

One exception on cheap units is if they're rank 7 or above. A rank 7 sea guard is probably better than say a level 0 phoenix guard assuming you have the lord skills (especially since sea guard get buffs from 2 of the red like trees). I also didn't realize you had 2 armies reinforcing you from the other 2 factions, so archer spam is pretty good.

[Kaelus Von Sestiaf]

Originally posted by S3ygle:

That was close but I finally did it https://imgur.com/a/Y5MykRq

damn dark elves ...

Originally posted by Kaelus Von Sestiaf:

The thing is it's not often that an AI gets to finish the last ritual to trigger this "win or lose the campaign" battle, and before a certain patch (or so I've read) that battle was also trivial. Got heavily buffed I hear.

So simply, not many people have had to fight that battle in its current iteration. They tend to stop enemy rituals earlier or complete their own before anyone else.

It makes sense, in my campaign i didn't care about the "story", it was a huge mistake as far as i know.
Is the defense easier than the attack ?

Much easier, even though you're severely outnumbered the fight is divided into these little segments where you fight a small army of each race, and after the first segment, you gain control of the vortex and get access to two army spells that are absolutely busted, cost no winds of magic and have a decent cooldown.
Congratulations on beating them! The Dark Elves are now completely out of the race for the vortex, and you only have to worry about the skaven and the lizardmen completing theirs... which would give you a fight much like this one. So be prepared.
Also, like others have said, keep in mind it doesn't have to be Tyrion's army going into it. You can select any army and then go to the quest battle and choose to teleport.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Kaelus Von Sestiaf:

Originally posted by S3ygle:

That was close but I finally did it https://imgur.com/a/Y5MykRq

damn dark elves ...





It makes sense, in my campaign i didn't care about the "story", it was a huge mistake as far as i know.
Is the defense easier than the attack ?

Much easier, even though you're severely outnumbered the fight is divided into these little segments where you fight a small army of each race, and after the first segment, you gain control of the vortex and get access to two army spells that are absolutely busted, cost no winds of magic and have a decent cooldown.
Congratulations on beating them! The Dark Elves are now completely out of the race for the vortex, and you only have to worry about the skaven and the lizardmen completing theirs... which would give you a fight much like this one. So be prepared.
Also, like others have said, keep in mind it doesn't have to be Tyrion's army going into it. You can select any army and then go to the quest battle and choose to teleport.

Well I don't think he's got the dlc, and the best bonuses on allarielle are to sisters. And I just don't think teclis is as powerul. Sure hes got a lot of winds but I think just bringing a loremaster or incindiary mage is better since get 2 combat capable characters rather than just a caster.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by S3ygle:

As I wrote before, the biggest problem I have here is that I can't level mage or sisters or anything else because i've only 2 turns left before the battle.

And I forgot to mention it but I made some modifications to my army, i'm close, very close to beat them now but I still lose.

I play right now with :
Tyrion
6 PG
3 SM
6 lothern sea guards
3 SD
1 DP

Just take any mage, no matter how low his lvl is. He is still a force multiplier. If you really have only a lvl 1 mage (which shouldn't be possible because there are enough things which let you recruit higher lvl mages), then take a Loremaster. You need some vessel to utilize your winds of magic, this should be your top priority. The mage alone should already tip the battle in your favor. And get in your damn noble. He is worth more than 3 Sea Guards if used properly.

Seriously, you are fighting a high end caster without any magic support for yourself... Did you never think that this might be actually an issue?

[Sn3z]

Your problem is you have no agents and one dragon prince won't make the cut, the dragons are there too be used to ideally help in different areas freely or couter other air. you need more of flanking presence and more of missile counter too free up dragons. With HE you could always cover your flanks or one side with LSG.

Your composition is aggressive but the trouble is your dragons are overloaded with work. HE are at their best with balanced army composition.

-Tyrion
- 3 Phoenix guards
- 2 Hoeth swordmen
- 5 Lothern guards shields
- 2 dragon prince
- 1 Bolt thrower
- 3 star dragons
- 2 Archers/sisters
1 extra slot you can also take out the bolt thrower

[FROSTCestrell]

unless i am having a single army which is costing me thousands in unkeep i prefer to have spearmen as a front unit, capable of holding any enemys long enough for the archers to deal with them (especialy the sisters), and even if one of my units of spearmen is getting destroyed i can get reaagarnge the rest of them, while in case i loose an unit they are easily to recruit on a high rank compared to the phoenix guards/dragons. When playing the campain im in constant war with arielle meaning i need to have armies to defend the island while rituals, conquer new places and after that securing conquered places with enemys who are eager to use rituals to bring armies to ur territorium.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

Your problem is you have no agents and one dragon prince won't make the cut, the dragons are there too be used to ideally help in different areas freely or couter other air. you need more of flanking presence and more of missile counter too free up dragons. With HE you could always cover your flanks or one side with LSG.

Your composition is aggressive but the trouble is your dragons are overloaded with work. HE are at their best with balanced army composition.

-Tyrion
- 3 Phoenix guards
- 2 Hoeth swordmen
- 5 Lothern guards shields
- 2 dragon prince
- 1 Bolt thrower
- 3 star dragons
- 2 Archers/sisters
1 extra slot you can also take out the bolt thrower

People say balanced armies on a lot of factions. But really you don't need balanced armies. The game doesn't support that well in a lot of situations (especially with techs, red skills, lord bonuses, etc).

High elves are technically at their best when your entire army is sisters of averlorn with all the techs and upgrades and a lord that supports them, and a couple single entities to get the ai to stupidly clump around. You beat every stack with next to 0 losses, especially with allareielle where even if they get in melee the sisters have 60-70 md. The other best is dragon spam with heals. Again, wins every battle with no damage taken, cause its just a really slot effecient army.

The stack he won with the sea guards made sense cause they were level 7. But if he had to recruit new units, waste of a slot compared to sisters or even units like dragons which despite fulfilling a different role would perform a weak archers role better than they do. I mean you said his dragons are overloaded with work, so what if he just had 10 of them?

These sorts of balanced army things are just not necessary in any campaign. High elves are one of the only factions where you aren't actively punished for it (except early game where anything but archer spam with the full 6 red line skills that buff them is just a waste of money).

The only real problem with his composition was a lack of a caster. But other than that, stacks that abuse the ai are where your army is best. Balanced armies aren't the best at that. Archer spam is (except without the dlc his armors don't armor pierce so sea guard are good but too cheap to be the best at winning by themselves).