From The Five Pillars

Guide to master swamp alignment

Preface

Hello. This is my attempt to write a guide about black alignment to share my knowledge with you. This is part ONE with some general stuff, more to come in the next week including...

1. ...Description of units you can use and how you can use. 2. ...Collection of different armies I used with my two mages. Advantages and disadvantages 3. ...Description of enchantments and what shall be casted 4. ...Spell and item combinations both for defence and offence as black 5. ...How to make an attack run 6. ...How to use Plague of Doom and recover it without losing any heroes 7. ...Special ideas how to run a black mage with more than 4500 acres for advanced mages 8. ...Some anecdotes from my experience to show what is possible and what mistakes people can do

In advance I wanna thank some people from normal that gave me a lot of input: Westwind (for teaching me all general stuff at start and giving us a home after our leader left without a word), Startroll and Loverfrench from NES for interesting armies they used, Carlito Brigante for some discussions about black in general and Halwen Spectres in special and thanks to the admin for creating this game. If I forgot somebody I am sorry.

Some requests: 1. I am not a native English speaker and I probably included a lot of mistakes. So please read over it and send me corrected versions in PMs. 2. Give me input on what I say and tell me if I am wrong somewhere. Also feel free to add stuff.

As promised to the admin I will write a guide about swamp alignment to share my knowledge with all of you. As an introduction I wanna say some stuff about me: I play now since one and a half resets. Before I played similar turn based games with pretty good success. In this time I chose swamp or black how it is mostly called because I was used to that colour from another game. Now you might say that I am not experienced enough to write a guide but at exactly this moment I am rank two on normal server with 8700 acres of land and rank four on jumpstart server. So I guess my knowledge is not that bad about black. Do not ask me questions about other colours though. ? Another thing before I start: This is a ranking guide. Ranking means that you start and prepare your mage to go up in ranks, get as much land as possible and therefore as much power as possible. Your goal will be to get a hall of fame spot and become an immortal of the T5P-world. For that you have to be in the top 1% of active mages at the end of Armageddon, when the reset ends after a 24 period of anarchy. This is called havoc mode. So you can guess it is not that easy to get there but if you work hard enough nothing is impossible.

But time to start:

Preparations

A successful mage has to do some preparations before he starts ranking. That includes buying items, collecting heroes, increasing your spell-level by researching or buying spells from market, build a wonder and other things. I should mention that this guide is more or less written for players that start at day one of reset when everybody starts at zero, but it should also be some help for others. The time when you go up and the way you prepare is determined by research in my eyes. In general you have three borders where you can consider going up.

a) Rush This is the only strategy where you do not prepare at all. You start to rank at day one of reset, using the few simple and medium spells you can research at start. Your armies will therefore be full of simple and medium units. I never tried this strategy but it can work, however it is very difficult. You will have to work with the money you get during your attack runs (run explained later). Claim extra taxes is not really possible because you need all your turns to attack, build up your kingdom, charge your mana and go back up in ranks to be out of reach for all possible hitters. What I can say from my limited experience here is, that you will need a scholar as soon as possible. Can even be level 10, but the items he gives will save your land.

b) Level 8

At level 8 you can research complex spells the first time. That means that you have access to some of the best units black has or can use. For example Death Knights, Ice Hexes, Magmademons and Storm Giants. So people often tend to chose that moment to try to rank. Before they normally do following stuff:

- Collect extra taxes: Get as many houses as possible and tax most of your turns. This will give you the money to buy heroes, spells and items from the market.

- Elemental Conversion: This is a blue medium spell that gives you money and items or simply nothing. If you plan to use it, collect some taxes before, because the more money you have, the more money you will get from that spell. Then convert some of your houses into blue mana lands and charge mana, cast the spell, charge mana when your blue mana is gone, charge again and so on. Do not expect too much here, as black mage you will most of the time get nothing but sometimes you get wonderful stuff like 5 Shrouding Carpets, 5 Sleazy Magazines, … so I always spend some days casting that spell.

- Build a wonder: I strongly suggest that you build a wonder. People tend to do that at the beginning of the reset because wonderturns also give your more experience. Here it is also important that you have a lot of houses so while you build, your people produce money for you, which you can invest. Cash has to flow! ? To be fast enough, join a guild, because alone building takes too much time. Invest around 150-200 turns a day until the wonder is done, because if all guild members do that, you should finish a wonder within around one week. The choice of wonder is difficult. While all wonders help you somehow, there are only a few wonders that really boost black a lot. Good options are Academy of Trajectory (Black has access to many good ranged units), Necropolis of Ebz (if unique maybe the best wonder for blacks), Tavern of fellowship (The better your heroes are, the better is your mage) or Zephyrian Aviary (special wonder for a special strategy which will be explained later. However your choice of wonder is determined by your plans for the resets. Be creative!

- Heroes: A ranking mage needs heroes. No doubt there. And the higher the heroes are in level, the better for you. Buy only heroes on market that are level 12 or more. Artisan and Scholar are an exception which you can buy at level 10 too. Now you might ask, which heroes you need or if you should simply buy all heroes. The answer for part two is simple: No! Before you go up, have between 5 and 10 heroes. The more heroes you have, the more difficult it will be for you to rank on the lower acres you will start with. Remember that heroes cost upkeep! The character of heroes you buy is determined by your strategy again but I will tell you what I do: I buy all inspiration heroes I see. Inspiration increases the damage of your units. The more damage, the more battles you win in defence and offence. For me nothing is more important while playing black than damage, damage and let me think, ah yes damage. So a typical Arch Dux collection of heroes when he starts to rank is: Elite Ranger, Executioner (my starting hero), Champion, Pilgrim, Mastersmith and Lich (very helpful hero that can give you some extra mana later and lowers the attackpower of enemy´s stacks). Add Scholar and artisan and you are setup very well. That are eight heroes already. Do only overstep and add heroes like Planeswalker and Filth Dealer if you are really sure what you are doing.

- Items: Items are the key to defend against the attackers that will try to grab some of your acres. For your own attacks at beginning cheap items like Dragon Toothed Arrows, Dice of Powers, Waggon of Missiles or Scrolls of Guardians are enough but for defence you need poweritems. My strategy in defence is adapted to what I said while I was talking about heroes. While my heroes increase my damage, my items make sure that I hit first. Normally that does enough damage, so the opponent cannot deal the 10% damage he needs to have a chance to grab land from me. Furthermore I most likely will do a lot of damage to him and even if he does 10%, he first has to do more damage than me to win. To achieve hitting first you need Sticky Gues (makes opponent slower by 1 on both attacks) or Shrouding Carpets (makes your primary attacks a LOT faster). Which is better I am still not sure. Some weeks ago I would have said Carpet but with many blacks and greens above you, that have several units with initiative 1, the gue is even better. Make sure to have at least 10 of each before you try to go up. If you are not such a fast ranker than me that gains acres quickly, better have more so you do not run out of them right before you break into top positions. As good addition always try to have one or two Gravity Spheres. Those items are better sticky gues but very rare (uncommon items). While I do my attack runs, I always try to have a Gravity as assign to make sure that I have a good chance to block a hit, while I am at the lowest point of my attackrun. If an enemy unit does not hit at all, it won´t do much damage. ? If you lack Gues or carpets, items like Scroll of Levitations, Waggon of Missiles or Manual of Specialities are also good for defence. But nothing is better than hitting first.

c) Level 15 Some wait until level 15 to go up, so they have the ultimate spells in their pocket. That means that you spend a lot of time very low with taxing and collection stuff and go up late. Advantage is that you can go up with a stack that includes ultimates. Another good thing is that you will most likely have a lot of items and good heroes (if you go up that late you should have around 10 heroes). Bad thing is that the top of the ranks is already formed. Most of the times one or two guilds rule and you will face a lot of incoming attacks. Was this way in AM/TR and is this way here too. Maybe some greens will land muld already and you will have a hard time to get close to them. So this is not my preferred time to start ranking.

How to go up

There is a smaller problem to start ranking with a good collection of high heroes. You need some solid stacks, so you do not lose any heroes during your first attack runs, but you also need to pay their upkeep. Money will be a problem, but also to get the amount of acres to upkeep a decent army.

But no fear, there are several solutions for that:

One solution I have seen includes meditating. People that have many heroes and do not wanna risk them during low acres runs, spend some days to explore up. During that period they build barriers, some mana lands and summon up on crap to be hit into protection in one hit. For black a pure Mammoth Maggot stack would be the choice there. Then when they have explored to around 3000 acres and get hit into protection, they use their next full turns to explore, make barriers full, charge mana up and, at the end, enter meditation. Three days later they can leave meditation with around 2800 to 3000 acres and have 240 turns (250 if you get luckbringer). Enough to charge and summon to get a good army that can defend the next 20 hours. After that time they start playing normally with attack runs.

The way I went up, is a little bit different though. Before I go up, I tax for two or three days to get around 200 million as money reserve. When that is done, I start changing the shape of my country. First I build barriers and mana lands. I only keep as much houses in order to still get enough money so my 200 million hold for some days. The other acres are converted in the mana acres I need, barriers and maybe barracks. When you are ready charge your mana pillars full. If that is done, I start exploring to around 2400 acres and wait. Next full turns I see if somebody attacked me and how many acres I have left (I have no army at that time). If nobody or only one attacked me, I explore some more to 2600 acres, maybe 2800 and keep at least 120 turns. With the remaining turns I summon a decent army. Should have some mana for that if I charged the pillars full the day before. Always have your barriers full at 2,5%, which gives you 75% spell and item resistance when enemies attack you. If too many mages attacked my armyless mage, I repeat that for a while, one day always happens where only one mage attacked you. Finally if you have your army, wait until you have full turns again and do your first attack-run. Assign a decent combination so you do not lose land. By the way: Possible armies, spell and item combinations and other stuff will follow later in this guide.