Value of th new units: Your Thoughts

[Rhygadon]

My experience from early-game play (up to about level 12):

So far, I'm enjoying the Orc Tracker and the revised (basic) Goblins. Goblin Shaman is interesting but seems to die too easily, and I don't like that setting up the spirit link to a Goblin stack uses up an action. (For only 50% protection for a few turns, where another stack loses the HP anyway, that seems expensive.) Very nice that the basic Goblins are now officially "Archer" units!

Blood Shaman has the same problem as the original Shaman - good on paper, but often useless in an actual fight. Except even worse, because the spirit attack is weaker and the other attacks aren't often available. Plus, the Adrenaline 2 power forces a sacrifice of a Goblin Shaman, which really hurts in the early game. Late game, with bigger stacks and Adren 3 available, they might be much better.

Fire Engineer + Droids was OK, but quickly got boring. Might be interesting as a combo with Necromancers or some other fragile spellcaster unit.

Witch Hunter is intriguing, but the damage from the special anti-mage power seems fairly weak (at least in the early game; I hope it scales up with the target stack), and the base melee attack is so weak (for the Leadership cost) that even against mages it's unimpressive.

I tried Faun + Thorns for a while. The Sleep is better than you think - the key is to let it run for two turns to keep that unit out of the fight *before* you finish with the Nightmare. Still, it isn't very fun to play, and there are too many limitations (terrible basic attack, debuffs at night, plant-resurrect is zero-range). I'll try the Faun again if/when I have access to Dryads and Ents -- *that* could be fun!

The Adrenaline mechanic overall has been interesting, and certainly makes the basic fights fresh again. I do wish there was a way to see units' Adrenaline levels without right-clicking them all ...