Good Tanker units?

[aaaaa]

There are many good attacker; unit with good attacking capability & damage, i.e damage dealer. But IMO, this game lacks good tanker/defender units; Unit with good defense and high health (HP) with high initiative and moderate movement point AND relatively low price & leadership requirement.

I personally prefer shooter type units like archer. But to make good use of relatively weak shooter units, I need good tanker. It will jump into middle of advancing enemy troops and take all the enemy fire/hit in behalf of shoots. The knight unit is good example. But the knight is too high level unit. It is expensive and too good attacker, too. I need good defender/poor attacker, less expensive and with less damage. High initiative and moderate movement point are plus but not priority. Talent like Evasion is good plus.

Do you have unit to recommend for such defender/tanker unit?

[Paksenarrion]

In terms of health per leadership there are only 4 units above 1.00

Dryad = 1.25 (25/20)
Griffin = 1.125 (90/80)
Orc = 1.083 (65/60)
Black Knight = 1.067 (160/150)

These units would tend to be better defensively.

[edwin]

Griffins are superb for that at low to mid levels i find. They have good hp, decent defense, furious so they do loads of damage while grabbing the enemies attention, are very fast with high initiative so that you can park them right next to the enemy base line. Sure they'll need support when taking the brunt of the attack but that's to be expected.

Archmages can cast Shield which halfs the incoming damage. Stoneskin may help, Resurrection II can bring them back to health, Magic Spring gives you mana and strengthens their defense a bit etc.

Polar Bears are also decent tanks, they have 160 hp or so, so you may be able to keep them alive with Heals against weaker enemies. They are slow though.

[Infiltrator]

Black Dragons are the best tanks, no contest, the dryad may have a high HP/ldrs ratio but you will still lose a lot of them from most attackers. Whereas the enemy has to really make an effort to kill a single black dragon.

[ender]

Griffin seems good, with unlimited retaliation.
Ressurection+magic spring+a single stack of griffins=win many battles without loss and good experience for rage box.

[Zhuangzi]

Griffins. They are the best, hands down. Black Dragons are too expensive and by the latter stages of the game your strategy will probably be different. I do use Black Dragons at the end, but not in this fashion.

[Victor86]

Ancient vampires .. against non-undead and non-plant enemies , along with some defensive spell on them.
Ofc griffins too.

[player1]

Simple Swordsmen or Guardsmen can be great tanks if having Iron Fist talent to reduce their leadership by 20%. I also had lots of tanking with Dwarves. As someone mentioned Griffins are great too.

Anyway, any unit whose HP is higher then (or equal to) its leadership and has decent defense rating makes good tank. And if it has physical resistance of some level it's even better. Those units are also best to use phantom on.


P.S.
Warrior armes, in practice, need more tanks then other heroes, since that best way to minimize loses for hero who doesn't relly on damaging spells or ressurection to keep enemy attack power down.

[Namel]

Don't forget ghosts and cursed ghosts. With little planning I actually gain ghosts in almost every fight.

[Metathron]

Originally Posted by Namel

Don't forget ghosts and cursed ghosts. With little planning I actually gain ghosts in almost every fight.

Good, but have you had problems with your leadership? Or is there some sort of cap, i.e. do ghosts add more ghosts only up to your leadership's limit?