Black Magic for New Players
From The Five Pillars
Black Magic for New Players
orginal by Wyatt http://www.jaggu.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1175
Updated by Akaran and wiki-ized by Zebulon
T5P's black magic derives it's power from the filthy swamps. It is the color of fear and dark arts (you can almost hear an evil laugh in the background...). Just like every other color, it has two allies --blue and red.
The main strength of black is its great offense complemented by a decent defense. It has access to one of the best offensive units in the game in draugs, while having death knights and abominations to hold the fort. One trade-off for this strength is that many units are undisbandable, thus it requires a lot more attention to play a good black, oversummon with too many undisbandables and you might run out of population. Another one would be the low flash resistance that most black units have.
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Important things to remember
- As soon as you can, cast the red enchantment Mountain Strength on yourself, it's a must for a successful black mage, it will boost all your unit's attack power. Keep it on at all times. Once you cast this spell, it will remain untill dispelled by you, or go off due to lack of wild mana. Remember that Mountain Strength will boost attack power but also lowers hit points.
-Cast the enchantment (Mist of the Swamp) on yourself as soon as you can. This spell gives your kingdom a good spell resistance vs white magic for a cheap cost. Useful to block white mages' spells when they come knocking on your door. (Astralysis, Motion logic, Desert Dreadnaughts)
-Always be careful when casting undisbandable units. Calculate in advance how many you need, because after casting you will not be able to disband them. With black, being very careful gets you very far.
-Always try to have barriers at 2,5% of your land, it will give you chance to block enemy spells and items when they attack you. Barriers have unkeep in your main mana(black) and a little in other colors.
Unit Review
A brief review of each of black's non-barrack units follows...
Mammoth Maggots - for many people this is the best fodder in the game. It has good hit points for it's net power, nice attack type and power and it is disbandable. Also you get hordes of them in 1 cast. If stacking a lot of them, cast Maggot Infestation, it will boost their Attackpower, Hitpoints and heal a small number after battle, whilst creating a small number of them every turn. If you use really big numbers of them, try to use item “Flask of Formic Acid” on attack and defence. It will boost your Mammoth Maggots initiative, attackpower and accuracy.
Halwen Wraiths - flying unit, OK in attack but defence is horrible. They are worthwhile in the early part of the server, when everybody is still in research and they meet things like Knights and such. Watch out - they are undisbandable and have pretty high upkeep in mana and pop. Their biggest minus is -50 resistance to Flash attacks. Remember that as flying units they have a 2,25 Battle modifier.
Marrow Reapers/Demoniacs/Dryders- The worst medium units all around, they die incredibly easy to almost anything, while not helping much on offence. Marrow Reapers have a bonus, having a good Attack type on their secondary attack. Item Manual of Specialities will boost that secondary attack even more. Use them only in research for power up purposes. These are undisbandable too, except Dryders. Try to not stack them high in your army.
Ice Hexes - Missile unit with good resistances, except one major flaw, the weakness to Flash. Offensively they are great, having very high initiative on their Secondary Attacktype, and good attack power on both attacks. Their Primary Attacktype type is ranged ice, making it great for hunting down nidhoggs. The way to overcome their weakness to flash is to stack them lower in the stack, say 5th or below. Even if they meet units with Flash attacks in that place, they will still most likely draw with them, hitting first with good ap and all that. Also their good melee resistance makes them useful against green mages.
Death Knights- among the best damage absorbers in the game... '[[sand worms]|small worms]]' like someone put it. Very good hitpoints for their net power... good all around resistances... perfect for defence. These are good candidates for 1st or 2nd stack. Their attack power is pretty low, but attack is not their purpose, they should be used to take enemy fire away from your damage-dealing stacks. Undisbandable and high population upkeep but with their high net power you don't need so many to keep them high in the stack. Mountain Strength lower their HP, but its still useful to have that spell on.
Draug- among the best units that black have, but that comes at a price, they have huge gold upkeep. Still one could overcome that by disbanding some of them when manacharging, then recasting. Great attack type in it's Primary Attacktype; lightning, considering most units have medium to low lightning resistances... they can kill almost anything. Defensively they are not the best, having only medium resistances to ice and psychic for instance but still they will hold to some degree. Their place is in 2nd to 4th stack offensively, possibly higher on defence.
Abominations- ultimate unit... good all around resistances. The have good hitpoint/netpower ratio, medium attack power... only one drawback, the are weak to Flash atacks. One could use them anywhere in the stack without the fear of losing you the battle, unless flash attack unit will hit them, even top stack because it's unlikely that a white would run lightbringers top, and even then with a good assignment and barriers they would kill enough lightbringers before they get hit. They are undisbandable though and have a big pop upkeep, so watch out when casting, don't go overboard.
Offcolor
Don't restrain yourself only to black units, use units from friendly colors, they will complement your stack nicely. Good choices are :
Magmademons (red magic): good ranged unit
Mountain Rises (red magic): good melee unit that can do a lot of damage
Nagas (blue magic): good melee unit
Mind Flayers (blue magic): very good ranged unit, important part of most black armies
Salamanders (red magic): medium good melee unit to hunt green mags
Acid Beasts(red magic) are also good shooting simple unit u can access, always stack them very low
Some ideas for stacking
Here are some examples of a black stack. The format I'm going to use to represent the stack is: 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/... and so on. It is simple enough to read, the first unit is the unit at the top, the second one is the second unit in the stack, etc.
Keep in mind that there is no perfect stack. Every stacking has a weakness, it all depends on your opponent if he exploits it or not. The same goes for you when you are trying to make an attack. The more answers you have to your opponent's stack, the better your chances of winning. It will help you if you keep in mind what armies your opponents use, and be flexible with your stack to match them, rather then just using the same stack all the time.
That being said, with black you'll never go wrong with stacking Death Knights, Draugs or Abominations high. They'll usually be among your top 3 stacks. The only thing you need to do next is to find other units that will complement them. (Death Knights and Abominations are low flash resistant units so lookout for whites)
Here are a few samples of complete black stacks with some comments:
Abominations/Death Knights/Draug/Mind Flayers/ Magmademons/Ice Hexes/Mammoth Maggots
This stack would be difficult to run, using 2 ultimates and offcolor units, but it would be hard to beat. It represents the toughness and at the same time the fierceness in attack of black magic .. Watch out for the heavy gold and population upkeep.
Death Knights/Nagas/Draug/Mind Flayers/Ice Hexes/Mammoth Maggots - a nice blend of black and blue units.
Death Knights/Ice Hexes/Magmademons/Draug/Salamanders/Mammoth Maggots - good for attacking greens; DK's and Ice Hexes having high melee resistance, Magmademons, Draug and Salamanders providing the firepower. Of course if you know what the green who you're gonna attack stacks, then match your Magmademons with his treemen, you'll get a good result. Change the stack for defence by moving Draug and magmademons higher.
-During research (not freshman server when you have already most spells researched but on other servers) you don't have access to some of the units in the stacks previously mentioned. Considering black's weak medium units, in research you'll want to hunt the unit market all the time to buy good units to help your stack. Otherwise, for starters use mono wraiths, then add black medium units as you research them...even if they are weak, in research they'll do ok. Hurry up and research Death Knights, they will be the pillar of your stack.
Spells and items
Darth of Filth - has a chance of killing a small number of units from one of your enemy stack. Great if it hits an ultimate and it isn't resisted.
Shadow Runes – good spell to use against whites mags to boost your flash resistances if u attack. Also if u use a lot of low flash units its good to have it on defence from time to time.
Brain Leech – good at start of game in research stage when you have not anough blue mana to cast Mind Blast
Vampirism – very good spell to cast both on def and attack, it will make your units be able to recreate from dead enemy.
Disease Blade or Fireblades – good if u have a lot of melee units, fireblades are also very usefull against green mags.
Here are some good spell/item combos that you can use
Feeble mind or Mental Quagmire/any good item - good combo on offense. Steam blast/Acid Spraycan or any good item - another good offensive combo. Darth of Filth/any good item - now all you have to do is pray . Steam Blast/sticky Gue or Scroll of Levitation - great on defense, especially against green mages.
Good items might be Shrouding Carpet, Sticky Gue, Metal Grid, Scroll of Levitation or Potion of Brawling, but it's not the point of this guide to describe what items do and such. And many more that u will find fun finding on your own.
Finally...
Understand that this guide is not the law on how to play black !! I did not make it to make you lazy, rather I hope this gets you motivated to develop your own strategy and stacks.
No two players are alike; everyone's got their own style. If a certain strategy works for you, then by all means keep it !
That'd be all then, have fun and be nice to Roline :)
(thanx to anigel for some of the base layout)
